Our National Health Service is being taken away from us while the government and the mass media pull the wool over our eyes.
The new Integrated Care Services are based on an American model, but with a slight name change.
The American system is the most expensive and least efficient that the NHS could possibly morph into – but you’re not being told that.
If you don’t think our biggest national treasure is being perverted into a parody of a system that profits from pain, then you need to watch this:
And don’t think Labour will be in better hands with Keir “Labour’s greatest achievement is Nato” Starmer!
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Dr Bob Gill is a leading campaigner for the restoration of the National Health Service to its former position as an entirely publicly-owned organisation serving the health of the people of the UK and not the profits of a few corporate shareholders.
On Not The Andrew Marr Show, he destroyed Keir Starmer’s claim that a future Labour government would be dedicated to “improving the NHS” by expanding private sector involvement in it.
“If Starmer was a doctor, he fails to examine the patient, fails to come up with an accurate diagnosis, but has a prescription for a medicine which is going to kill the patient,” he said.
“Where is this idle workforce in the private sector that is going to help us? Why is it necessary that we have to use private sector capacity?
“Starmer, New Labour and the Tories have all engineered a collapse of NHS services so they can present the private sector as coming to our rescue.
“The solution Starmer is prescribing for us is the same old New Labour pro-privatisation nonsense.”
He said: “Public-private partnership is a mechanism to conceal corruption… Money we pay in taxes is being siphoned off for other uses – for corporate profit, for shareholders.
“Starmer and Wes Streeting have indicated time and time again that they have no desire to restore the NHS.
“The prescription he should be writing for the NHS is a re-nationalisation Bill… That is definitely not what a Starmer-led Labour Party is going to deliver.”
He challenged our friends in the mainstream news media to get Starmer to name a single public/private partnership that has not enriched the shareholders and CEOs of the private company.
“Public/private partnership is a con trick,” he warned.
Here’s the full interview:
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Enjoy the sight: this archive image shows probably the cleanest water you’ll see all year – but the price you’ll pay for this universal necessity that Margaret Thatcher privatised in the 1980s is set to rise by the highest amount in 20 years, in April.
I think it’s uncontroversial to point out that Clive Lewis was one of the Labour MPs singled out for racist abuse by right-wing factionalists who remain party apparatchiks in the Keir Starmer regime.
Rather than waste time fighting his unreasonable and dictatorial leader, Mr Lewis has concentrated on doing his job.
In the following Twitter thread, he raises awareness of the fact that the UK is the only country with a privatised water system, that it doesn’t work, and that – despite this – our bills are set to rise by the largest margin in 20 years, in April.
1/5 I have received a very large number of postcards from constituents expressing outrage and concern about the water pollution scandal.
3/5 The private companies that control what should rightfully be our shared common wealth, pump raw sewage into our seas and waterways. And they make you pay more and more for that privilege.
How about you? Do you want water to be privately-owned?
Or do you want it to be clean?
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Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham has at last given voice to what could be the real reason the government is not talking about pay with the unions responsible for strikes in the National Health Service.
It’s a simple reason, too:
The Conservatives are planning to privatise the NHS outright.
This Site has made the point already; private health companies are more likely to snap up elements of the service if payroll costs are low.
Here’s the discussion between Ms Graham and Sky’s Sophie Ridge:
It’s good, also, to see someone making it plain that the government has been lying – about ambulance drivers endangering lives and about pay discussions.
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Health Secretary Steve Barclay outlined plans to ease “severe pressures” on the NHS and free up hospital beds.
The emergency measures were announced hours after talks intended to end strike action by NHS workers ended in failure.
So what happened?
Well… First we were told that prime minister Rishi Sunak was planning to offer a lump sum to help nurses who were facing “hardship”.
But this created a problem for the government because it meant the Tories had to admit that their starvation wages were causing hardship – and that’s a bad look for any government:
Did he even offer these payments?
Apparently not. All we know is that leaders of Unite said the government had missed “yet another opportunity” by demanding “productivity” improvements …
And those at Unison came out of the talks complaining of no “tangible” offer from the Health Secretary…
So there you have it.
Steve Barclay is bulk-booking beds in private residential homes – with £250 million of public money – because he refuses to pay nurses a living wage.
Indeed, he has demanded that they should work longer than 18 hours a day in order to justify any increased payment.
This is simply unreasonable and reinforces claims that the Tory government is pushing NHS wages down in order to make it more appetising for private buyers after the public has been convinced that privatisation is the only way to improve healthcare in the UK…
And we know that this is a lie. Private health cherry-picks the most lucrative health procedures but then cuts corners in order to make ever-higher profits, and the public purse ends up being forced to pay to put matters right.
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One of the most consistently-reliable critics of Tory government health policy appeared on a social media politics programme – and explained the policy behind the current NHS crisis and staff strikes that Rishi Sunak and Steve Barclay don’t want you to know.
Dr Bob Gill explained on the Not The Andrew Marr Show that the NHS has too few staff because people don’t want to work for the increasingly-lower wages the Tories are offering – and the Tories are cutting wages because a lower wage bill will make the health service much more attractive to private health firms when the Tories finally offer its constituent parts up for sale.
Apart from that, the main takeouts from this interview are firstly that a public-private partnership – in health or any other public service area – never works. Private firms will simply cherry-pick the most lucrative and least risky elements of the service to provide themselves, but they will be motivated by profit, meaning they’ll cut corners in service provision and mess up the procedures they carry out – and the public purse will have to pay to put matters right.
Secondly, Labour are as little to be trusted as the Tories, now that the party is rotting under the leadership of Keir Starmer. He’s as New Labour as they come, and under Tony Blair, that organisation went through with the Private Finance Initiative for the provision of hospitals, that led to a huge number of NHS beds being closed – and now the NHS is in crisis because there aren’t enough beds for the number of patients.
Here’s the clip:
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Conservative Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan has confirmed that the government will not go ahead with a controversial plan to privatise Channel 4.
And quite right too!
Former Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries had been determined to sell off the company in order to make a fast buck for Boris Johnson’s spendthrift government, last year.
She ignored a public consultation that resulted in 24/25 of respondents saying privatisation should not happen, claiming that Channel 4’s current ownership model, as a publicly-owned, advertising-funded broadcaster, is too restrictive. That model was, of course, dictated by the government.
Giving evidence to the Commons Culture Committee last May, she said Channel 4 is dependent on just one stream of revenue – advertising – but income is falling as advertisers have more choice. She claimed Netflix would be a better option.
And the government could not allow Channel 4 to borrow to invest, because the taxpayer would be liable for those debts, she said. This actually did make sense of one of the restrictions on the channel’s funding.
But later in the session, the SNP’s John Nicolson pointed out that Channel 4 is currently making record profits – belying what Dorries has been saying about advertising revenue.
Her response?
“That means it would be a good time to sell.”
Dorries said after the channel was privatised it would be better-able to make its own programmes, because the government would then lift restrictions on borrowing money or raising private sector capital by issuing shares.
But while remaining in public ownership would preclude the issuing of shares, it would be perfectly possible for the government to vary Channel 4’s current ownership model to provide it with other forms of revenue generation in order to make, and then sell, programmes.
And now that is what the government seems keen to do.
According to the BBC,
Michelle Donelan has now said the broadcaster “should not be sold”, instead proposing other reforms because “change is necessary”.
Her alternative reforms include allowing the broadcaster to make and own the rights to some of its own programmes – many of which are currently made by independent production companies – and moving more jobs outside London.
“This announcement will bring huge opportunities across the UK with Channel 4’s commitment to double their skills investment to £10m and double the number of jobs outside of London,” Ms Donelan said.
“The package will also safeguard the future of our world leading independent production sector. We will work closely with them to add new protections such as increasing the amount of content C4C [Channel 4 Corporation] must commission from independent producers.”
Channel 4 welcomed the news, saying the decision “allows us to be even more of a power in the digital world”.
The announcement came a day after a letter, in which Donelan recommended the move to the prime minister, was leaked – sparking an angry response from Dorries, who said the privatisation was one of a number of “progressive” policies that were being “washed down the drain”.
Here’s a video clip responding to that:
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The Conservatives are getting desperate and their attacks on the National Health Service are showing it.
They are relying increasingly on their ill-informed client journalists in the likes of the BBC and Sky News for stories alleging that people’s lives are being endangered.
So on the BBC website today (December 21) I see claims of “a baby struggling to breathe” being rushed to hospital by parents after an ambulance failed to arrive – but this happened before ambulance workers started their strike; it was a result of Tory NHS underfunding.
“Will we know if more people have died due to strikes” a BBC editorial asks, in a ridiculous bid to say striking nurses will be responsible. They won’t; the strikes have been structured to ensure that any life-threatening situation will have adequate nursing cover – or at least as much cover as may be provided by the Tory-impoverished health service.
Again, it is the government that will be to blame – not nurses.
But like the Nazis, the Tory government and its client media think that repeating a lie often enough will persuade the public to believe it.
That seems to be the reason a Sky reporter quoted Health Secretary Steve Barclay as saying ambulance drivers had made a conscious decision to put lives at risk, while interviewing GMB National Secretary Rachel Harrison.
And what happened? She dropped him right into his place in no uncertain terms:
The point about the 133,000-strong staff shortage is hugely important. The government is spending a fortune on agency workers, and they’re not enough. Higher pay and better conditions form a much better alternative.
And the GMB hasn’t even made a pay demand like that of the nurses; it simply wanted a reasonable rise now, with a promise to return to parity with 2010 levels in the future.
Public opinion remains firmly with the NHS workers:
People don't blame strikers for failure in the NHS. They blame government underfunding that leaves it short of staff. The government cannot win against this. Data from Ipsos Mori pic.twitter.com/2HeDh6nwP8
When it comes to who the public trust in the NHS dispute, the politicians (trusted by only 15%) have failed to grasp that we believe our nurses (trusted by 92%). The government have already lost the argument!#NursesStrikepic.twitter.com/RsxEMM1HYZ
The problem for the Tories is that they have an agenda: they need to undermine support for people working in the NHS to push forward their plan to privatise healthcare altogether.
That plan is now in jeopardy because they do not expect to win the next general election, in late 2024 or early 2025. A government led by any other party – even Keir Starmer’s Labour – is likely to fortify the health service, rather than undermining it further.
And if the Tories lose an election, it seems unlikely they will ever win another, judging by current demographics.
What does this mean?
I’d say it means the argument over who is responsible for the disintegration of health care in the UK is going to get a lot nastier.
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Alistair Phillips-Davies: he’ll be raking it in while you rake over the coals for a little more heat.
Apparently the chief executive of energy firm SSE can’t do anything about the massive 47 per cent pay hike he enjoyed this year – to £4.5 million – because his salary is set independently.
In 2016, his pay was £1.7 million – which is still far too much. But the next year (2017) his pay had risen by 72 per cent to £2.9 million. It seems that trend has continued ever since.
Just think how much money has gone to bosses like him, and shareholders, altogether. Enough to fund a complete change of direction to renewables, perhaps? But they didn’t bother because they were greedy and wanted the cash for themselves. Am I right?
No doubt that will be a huge comfort to his millions of customers who will be freezing in their own homes this winter because they chose to eat food that day instead of staying warm and can’t afford to do both because of the huge hike in energy bills that pays this man’s wages.
I can just hear the conversations over the cold and lifeless hearths: “Why do we have to freeze while Alistair Phillips-Davies rakes in £4.5 million a year?”
“Ah, well – his pay is set independently so there’s nothing he can do about it.”
(I think somehow the actual conversations may run a little differently!)
Here’s the clip:
If this man’s wages really are set independently, it proves only one thing:
The system is corrupt from the bottom to the top.
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This Site used to discuss the economy with Jonathan Portes back in the early days, so I tend to trust his observations – especially where he had a direct hand in matters.
So his observations on the water privatisation “rip-off” of 1989, in The Guardian, are very interesting.
He says the Thatcher government was not interested in providing value for money to taxpayers or water consumers; all the effort was put into making a “successful” sale – in which the demand for shares was high.
This was an ideological objective: water privatisation was extremely unpopular, with every poll showing that a substantial majority of people were opposed to the policy – so shares were sold well below their value in order to provide an average gain of 40 per cent to investors on their first day of trading. That’s how taxpayers lost out.
Consumers lost out because the political requirement that shareholders must profit hugely meant there was no support for tighter regulations to restrain future bills and/or require investment in infrastructure improvements.
As a result, over the following two decades the privatised water companies paid more than £57bn in dividends, at the same time as running up large amounts of debt, the interest on which is effectively paid by customers.
So water consumers are subsidising the water companies’ profits by paying off their debts for them, while also pay through the nose for the poor service they receive – because Thatcher wanted to pretend that privatising water was a good idea. How perverse!
Professor Portes goes on to say that the head of the Centre for Policy Studies, Robert Colville, provided the most illuminating political reason for privatisation when he said the “single greatest justification for privatisation is competition for capital”.
He meant that, as a public service, water would always be in competition with other priorities, from HS2 to hospitals, and the result would be underinvestment.
But we have seen that the current operating model, in which companies face public sector levels of competition and risk, and get private sector levels of profits and return, is simply not acceptable.
Prof Portes says keeping water in the hands of private companies may not be a bad idea because “governments, especially but not only Conservative ones, pursue stupid, self-defeating policies for short-term political reasons, so it’s worth consumers massively overpaying the private sector to secure the level of investment that is required, even if the public sector could, in theory, do it more cheaply”.
He suggests that the government should renegotiate its relationship with these firms, pointing out that they are contractors delivering a public service and should be treated as such: forced to bid competitively for the right to operate.
From This Writer’s point of view, it looks like a lose-lose situation.
If we accept the claim about government decisions – and I think that is reasonable in the light of the Tories’ huge failures in recent years – then the water firms can’t go back under public control.
But treating them as government outsourcing firms would create a situation where they ended up claiming they could carry out the work required – infrastructure improvements, value-for-money for customers – with less money than they need to avoid bankruptcy, meaning they would eventually go to the wall. Does nobody remember what happened to Carillion?
Is there another alternative?
Perhaps there is. What’s wrong with saying that the profit motive has failed and demanding that water be run by autonomous, non-profit-making organisations, for the benefit of the consumer?
And…
If this is the case with water, isn’t it also the case with the privatised energy firms? With the railways? With all the other Tory privatisations? Why shouldn’t they go non-profit too?
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