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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The man Liz Truss chose to be her chief of staff has already been interviewed by the US FBI in relation to vote-rigging in Puerto Rico.
Now it transpires that he is not being paid directly by the government for his government role, but by a private firm, for which he works (or has worked). So the government has been privatised. Is there a tax dodge involved here?
It’s a lobbying firm, which means this company seeks contact with the government in order to influence it.
Worse still, it’s alleged that Truss persuaded Fullbrook to take the role in return for running the Conservatives’ next general election campaign.
This has really upset Tory MPs.
Here’s why…:
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Cash cow: campaigning organisation We Own It created this banner, with a highly-relevant message. And why DO the Tories want to privatise Channel 4 so much? For their own profit?
What is the point of the government running a public consultation if it is only going to ignore the result because it disagrees with it?
That is the question we should ask after a public consultation on Nadine Dorries’s plan to privatise Channel 4 showed that a massive 24/25 of the public don’t want it to happen.
96% of responses to a Government consultation said they did not agree with the statement that there are “challenges in the current TV broadcasting market” that present barriers to “a sustainable Channel Four” staying in public hands.
Just 2% said they agreed.
A large number of responses to the consultation came through the social campaigning organisation 38 Degrees, which rephrased the Government’s statement as: “Do you think Channel Four should be privatised?”
But even with these stripped out of the figures, the vast majority of the other respondents – 89% – disagreed that Channel Four is facing challenges to a successful future in public ownership, while 5% agreed.
Dorries has unilaterally decided that the 55,737 UK citizens who responded to her consultation don’t matter.
In a response, she reiterated her claim that the broadcaster faces “serious challenges” and that anyone “choosing to dismiss them” is “burying their head in the sand”.
It seems to This Writer that it is the Culture Secretary who is burying her head in the sand!
Her counter-claim is that Channel 4’s current ownership model, as a publicly-owned, advertising-funded broadcaster, is too restrictive.
But it is a model dictated by the government. Dorries says after the channel is privatised it will be better-able to make its own programmes, because the government will then lift restrictions on borrowing money or raising private sector capital by issuing shares.
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.
There is absolutely no need at all – and no public desire – for Channel 4 to be privatised.
Governments don’t make any changes lightly. They always act (in the case of good governments) in the public interest or (in the case of bad governments like that of Boris Johnson) in their own members’ selfish self-interest.
Look at the increasing influence on the National Health Service of private health companies who count dozens (if not hundreds) of MPs as shareholders.
Dorries’s decision means it is appropriate for us to ask: what do the Tories hope to get out of this? And why should we tolerate the loss of another great public institution to their greed?
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Let’s not beat around the bush: your lovable Conservative government led by cuddly Boris Johnson deliberately starved schoolchildren by outsourcing free school meals to a very expensive company – because it was part of the so-called ‘chumocracy’.
The government had promised to provide £30 to feed children for periods lasting 10 days.
But rather than giving vouchers to parents so they could buy the food themselves, or even tasking local authorities to do it, the Department for Education outsourced the job to private, profit-making firms.
£30.00 food voucher direct to family for £30.00 of food to feed starving kids = socialism = bad. £30.00 to private Co. to provide £5.00 of food to starving kids and pocket £25.00 for shareholders and CEO = Capitalism = Good?
I call it disgusting.
— Tom. Just wear a mask, FFS! Esq. 🇪🇺🇬🇧 (@tominfrance) January 12, 2021
One of these firms is called Chartwells. It seems it won the contract as part of the so-called ‘chumocracy’ – it is part of the food service giant Compass Group whose former chairman, Paul Walsh, was once a member of David Cameron’s business advisory group.
Chartwells have always been ridiculously expensive. When hosting visitors in my last university they charged exorbitant amounts for vacuum pump containers of really awful ‘coffee’. The whole system stinks.
Instead of putting all £30 into food hampers for hungry children, it seems Chartwells provided just £5.22 worth of food and kept the remaining £24.78 as profit.
Food parcels have been brought in to replace £30 vouchers given to parents to spend in supermarkets as schools close for remote learning. But one mum valued the contents of her parcel at no more than £5.22, if bought from Asda.
She was given two jacket potatoes, a can of beans, eight single cheese slices, a loaf of bread, two carrots, three apples, two Soreen Malt Lunchbox Loaves, three Frubes, some pasta and one tomato.
Chartwells has protested that it followed Department for Education guidelines – which throws the blame back towards the Tories – but has also admitted that details of the contents of its hampers do not conform with its own specifications.
Whichever way you slice it, someone has been creaming cash from this scheme and allowing children to starve – and the only reason they’ve managed it is because of the Tory obsession with privatisation.
The Tories are starving children & have been for a long time. We cannot ignore this. pic.twitter.com/wpe5cwKEto
It is a ridiculous state of affairs. Everybody in the Tory government, from Johnson down, knows that giving a contract to a private company means it will keep some of the cash for itself.
So a claim to be providing £30 to feed children is a lie. They were always providing £30 to their friends in food companies.
Sadly, many of the parents whose children are now being forced to starve on pennies-worth of food per day actually voted for this treatment in December 2019.
An awful lot of people will say that the food in the right hand photo is all that poor kids deserve, /because/ they are poor. They’re the same people that watch Benefits Street and other shows demonising poor people. https://t.co/3UzaEtGC1P
The question has to be asked: why weren’t vouchers provided to parents?
Was it because another Tory – Ben Bradley – put out a false claim that they would squander the money on “crack dens” and “brothels”, even though the vouchers that existed at the time specifically prohibited their use for such purposes?
This Tory MP spread this story and refused to apologise. The effect was to fix in people's minds the idea that food vouchers were being exchanged for crack, thus justifying lucrative contracts to companies to leech our tax money. Again. #ToriesStarveKidshttps://t.co/cD0kI8WCE8
— CrémantCommunarde#ActivistLawyer 🕊️⚖️ ✋💙 (@0Calamity) January 12, 2021
It only takes a piece of fake news like this from one influential source to influence large numbers of people into believing the lie, and I wonder whether this was what enabled the Tory government to starve children in the way it has.
Think of it this way: Isn’t it odd that many people get outraged at the (faked) possibility of someone spending a fraction of a food voucher on alcohol (more likely than Bradley’s choices but still impossible) – but don’t bat an eyelid when private firms take 80 per cent of food vouchers for their own profits?
Perhaps the most pertinent comment on this whole shabby affair is the following:
I think we all agree that we want a government that can turn a £5 food voucher into £30 worth of food rather than the other way around?
Sadly, it would have been necessary for millions of people to have voted a different way in 2019 for that to have happened. And something stopped them:
When I see hundreds of tweets expressing understandable outrage over the latest #FreeSchoolMeals fiasco, I just think of the hundreds of Labour MPs, staffers and grandees who worked their socks off to destroy Labour's electoral chances under Corbyn! They are more vile than Tories
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Fears are rising that the Conservative will use the Covid-19 crisis to push for the closure of the National Health Service.
It seems they will lie to you that the NHS is responsible for failures to contain the disease, when in fact the problems were caused by their own political decisions.
This Writer had a few things to say about that:
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Airhead or conspirator? What did Helen Whately mean when she said student nurses were ‘not deemed to be providing a service’?
After 25,000 student nurses volunteered to help NHS staff cope with the Covid-19 crisis in April, ‘care’ minister Helen Whately has announced that a new £5,000 grant will not be backdated to allow them to receive it because they are “not deemed to be providing a service”.
The government scrapped the NHS Bursary system for student nurses and midwives in 2015 which subsequently led to a significant drop in the number of applicants.
Later this year the government will introduce the NHS Learning Support Fund which will provide non-repayable grants of up to £8,000 per year for both new and current student healthcare professionals.
Those who completed their course between this period feel understandably short-changed by a lack of financial aid – relying solely on student loans.
Tom Pursglove MP – himself a Tory – wrote to Ms Whately, asking for the grant to be backdated after he was contacted by student nurse Jessica Collins.
Ms Whately writes; “The Government has no plans to introduce a scheme that will backdate the offer for students who completed courses in earlier years.
“Student nurses in training are supernumerary and are not deemed to be providing a service. They are required to undertake 2,300 hours of clinical practice to learn the skills necessary for entry to the workforce.
“Whilst they may be performing limited clinical duties, this is under close supervision and they are not being paid to staff hospitals.”
Fine words from a government minister whose department would have been overwhelmed if those students had not volunteered their apparently non-existent services in April!
It would be easy to dismiss this comment as the witterings of an airhead and there is plenty of evidence to support such an interpretation of Ms Whately’s contribution to society.
Indeed, her letter goes on to claim – falsely – that those assisting with the COVID-19 pandemic were required to join an “emergency register” and would be paid a six-month clinical placement. According to Nursing Notes, this is not true – another lie to add to the ever-increasing pile of porkies the Tories have laid at our feet during the crisis that they made so much worse for people in the UK by their own selfishness, ignorance and laziness.
And what does Ms Collins, a mother-of-two who is graduating with debts of £60,000 because the Tories cancelled student bursaries, and who launched a petition calling for student nurses’ debts to be written off that attracted 200,000 signatures, think of the minister’s unkind words?
She told the Mirror: “The most shocking point of it was that we’re ‘deemed not to be providing a service’.
“I think you would only need to work one shift with us to see how we’re providing care for patients.
“We are under exactly the same pressures, we’re under exactly the same stresses.
“And the way she’s worded that just seems un-empathetic and so callous.”
Jessica said nursing students already feel undervalued and “to have it in writing I think is awful”.
She added: “I shared it with my closest circle first and there were a lot of tears, proper tears because it was that upsetting to some people.”
It seems Ms Collins will have a chance to clear the air with the minister next week, as part of a group conference call to discuss the issue.
This Writer believes nothing will come of this call apart from more hot air being blown down the phone lines at Ms Collins and student nurses like her.
And I reckon that – national loyalties notwithstanding – they will need to look to their own best interests when they graduate.
Other nations’ health services provide better pay and conditions than the NHS as it is run by the Conservatives, and nobody would blame them for taking employment that will help them clear the debt into which Tories like Ms Whately have pitched them.
If it creates a problem for the Department of Health and Social Care, so be it. The Tories already told nurses from foreign countries that they are not welcome, and it would do the country good to see that any problems in providing nurses are entirely caused by Conservative MPs.
And now I must ask: is that the plan?
Remember Noam Chomsky’s words on how the National Health Service could be privatised?
The Tories de-funded student nurses – and have now added insult to injury by saying they were “not deemed to be providing a service” during the Covid crisis.
If those nurses quit the NHS for better pay, then the NHS won’t work and people will get angry.
You know the Tories won’t take the blame – they never do. They’ll simply say the NHS as a system was always doomed to fail because socialist models always do – the usual baloney – and finish privatising the lot.
And the next time you need hospital treatment, they’ll slap you with a bill so large you could never, ever, hope to pay it.
Are you looking forward to that?
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Money: Matt Hancock is more interested in making a profit for private firms than in your family’s health.
If you ever needed evidence that the Conservative government is hell-bent on wrecking as many UK lives as possible, this is it.
Just when the coronavirus pandemic is proving that the worst thing possible for a nation’s health is a privatised, profit-driven health system, Matt Hancock and his gang are using it as an excuse for more privatisation!
Apparently he reckons this is a great chance to push through the changes because they aren’t being subjected to proper scrutiny.
In recent weeks, ministers have used special powers to bypass normal tendering and award a string of contracts to private companies and management consultants without open competition.
Doctors, campaign groups, academics and MPs raised the concerns about a “power grab” after it emerged on Monday that Serco was in pole position to win a deal to supply 15,000 call-handlers for the government’s tracking and tracing operation.
Deloitte, KPMG, Serco, Sodexo, Mitie, Boots and the US data mining group Palantir have secured taxpayer-funded commissions to manage Covid-19 drive-in testing centres, the purchasing of personal protective equipment (PPE) and the building of Nightingale hospitals.
Now, the Guardian has seen a letter from the Department of Health to NHS trusts instructing them to stop buying any of their own PPE and ventilators.
From Monday, procurement of a list of 16 items must be handled centrally. Many of the items on the list, such as PPE, are in high demand during the pandemic, while others including CT scanners, mobile X-ray machines and ultrasounds are high-value machines that are used more widely in hospitals.
Centralising purchasing is likely to hand more responsibility to Deloitte. As well as co-ordinating Covid-19 test centres and logistics at three new “lighthouse” laboratories created to process samples, the accounting and management consultancy giant secured a contract several weeks ago to advise central government on PPE purchases.
The point on PPE purchases is crucial: the government is making it more expensive to buy this vital equipment, at a time when it should be widely available to as many people as possible.
Just think how different this would be if Jeremy Corbyn had won the 2017 election (it has been alleged that he only lost because of a right-wing faction in his own party that sabotaged him): these items would be free.
More people are going to die as a result of these decisions. Your friends and family perhaps. Maybe even yourself.
I think it’s time Matt Hancock had a nickname. What should it be?
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Behind bars: Boris Johnson’s plan for extended jail terms – stretching overstrained prisons beyond their limits – is criminal. But Johnson seems immune to punishment.
Conservatives can’t run prisons.
We all know this – right?
They tried privatising prisons and the cuts imposed by the privateers (in order to make a profit) meant wardens could not keep control.
Consider the failure to control drug use or even to stop drugs being passed into prisons.
Overcrowding led to unrest and even the occasional riot.
Now Boris Johnson has announced an intention to extend jail terms, meaning even more people will be packed into our limited prison space.
Or is he going to build more (like he promised to build more hospitals)?
Even if he achieved this – and I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting – would he not simply turn them over to private companies that would cock it all up again?
Yes, of course he would.
The UK’s prime minister is deliberately plotting a disaster for the justice system.
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“Blatantly Backing Conservatives”: but is the BBC irredeemable or could it be restored to its role as the greatest impartial news provider in the world – if the Tories don’t privatise it first?
Did you enjoy a lot of TV over Christmas? Did Worzel Gummidge tickle you? Or was Dracula more to your taste? How about that classic-with-a-new-face, Doctor Who?
BBC output – and not just drama – appears to have won the Christmas ratings war, but the corporation itself is in danger of being destroyed by politicians.
Boris Johnson said in the run-up to the general election that he thought the BBC in its current format – as a public service broadcaster supported by a licence fee paid by all television users – has had its day.
This Writer finds that a strange way to repay the organisation that has done more to re-elect the Conservatives than any other. Around 70 per cent of the UK gets its news from the BBC and a high proportion of those people let its newscasters tell them what to think.
The BBC’s election coverage was hugely controversial; there is a large body of opinion that the Corporation went far too easy on Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, despite policy positions that are, frankly, completely whacko.
In contrast, BBC presenters were almost feral in their reaction to Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, whose policies – should they ever be discussed – were actually far more in tune with the thoughts of the nation.
There are many possible reasons for this behaviour by a broadcaster that should have been impartial – especially considering the fact that it relies on our money for its existence.
But I don’t think that’s why YouGov has just released a poll saying most people want to scrap the licence fee.
YouGov is the Tory polling organisation. It was set up by Nadhim Zahawi and another prominent Tory, and has always existed in the shadow of its founders’ political ambitions.
So, following up on Mr Johnson’s comments, it seems likely to This Writer that YouGov has polled the people most likely to support the end of the licence fee, in order to produce these results.
Remember: polls are published in order to tell you what to think, not to tell you what other people think.
The Tory plan would be to turn the BBC into a subscription-only or advertising-funded service, making it far less capable of providing the services it currently offers.
Then private, billionaire-owned companies could rush in to fill the gap – especially in news programming – with pro-Tory propaganda.
And the BBC itself could be taken over by privateers, leaving the logo only to mislead us into thinking that it’s the same as it ever was.
You know – like the Tories are doing with the NHS.
Labour offered reform of the BBC to eliminate political interference but you (or your fellow voters) didn’t want that.
If you lose the best broadcaster in the world because of the election result, I hope you know where to place the blame.
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The Conservatives will swear blind that the National Health Service is still a publicly-owned, universal system because it is free at the point of use – falsely.
It isn’t a universal system any more because, after some services were sold off to private firms, those firms have chosen not to provide them in certain parts of the country.
And it isn’t free at the point of use any more – obviously – because patients who have been left high and dry by the privateers in the NHS have been forced to seek treatment by private providers – at cost.
Meanwhile, other healthcare services are being starved because the Treasury is having to pump inflated amounts of cash into the private providers, to accommodate their profits.
And their mouthpieces in the Tory-owned media will still parrot the nonsense that, because it is funded by the Treasury, it is a publicly-owned, universal system, free at the point of use.
Please don’t let anyone get away with spreading the lies.
NHS cancer care and kids’ treatments are up for grabs in a stealth Tory sell-off.
Private firms are being invited to bid for chunks of our health service – in complete contrast to Boris Johnson’s repeated election campaign denials.
Cardiology, gynaecology, paediatrics and oncology are among the services being offered to companies.
A new framework drawn up by NHS Shared Business Services will see hospital trusts buying clinical care from a list of suppliers.
It could lead to deals worth up to £117million being handed out over four years.
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