Good start it seems to have got off well with McDonnell sounding as if he has a plan and a model which seems like he knows his stuff.
I thought the conferences looked good it was full and they seems to like what they heard and this matters if you cannot gain the conference you have little hope of gaining the voters.
Austerity is the game in town we have to accept this is a serious issue and we will need to be seen as understand, but the NHS is our not the Tories, people who look after the sick the disabled carers people who are low paid mostly on zero hour contracts which Blair knew would happen.
We need to fight to save the NHS but people are tired of fighting, we keep on fighting we win and then we have to start again.
The Tories are back to form they look after their own the middle upper class the rich and the very rich, but who the hell was labour fighting for it was not me or people like me, it was not the poor although once Brown knew he was heading for the door he found money to give us Child credits and tax credits, but then labour were willing to back caps on welfare caps on wages , the caps and the cuts the Tories brought in labour were willing to back .
Labour is now back they have a new leader yet I will not be ready to join until I see the battle lines
Wednesday, 30 September 2015
Socialist Health Group. 2015
Nye Bevan’s creation of the British NHS in 1948 has to be one of the greatest achievements by any single politician. The list of formidable opponents he had to take on is impressive, but he prevailed.
At its creation he famously warned that “The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it”. Few compromises were made , but as early as 1951 he had already resigned over the introduction of dental and spectacle charges.
In 1952 he produced a collection of essays “In Place of Fear”. His warnings 63 years ago are as relevant today.
Ironically those opposed to the NHS have taken Bevan’s advice.
“No political party would survive that tried to destroy it”
“No government that attempts to destroy the Health Service can hope to command the support of the British people”.
“They knew the Service was already popular with the people. If the Service could be killed they wouldn’t mind, but they would wish it done more stealthily and in such a fashion that they would not appear to have the responsibility”.
Perhaps the first organized ideas to get rid of the NHS came from Arthur Seldon , one of Thatcher’s heros, in his 1968 book “After the NHS” published by his creation , the Institute of Economic Affairs. The plot evolved further in Thatcher’s time and has been carried forward by the Neo-Liberal policies of all British Governments since. Health is a multi-trillion dollar business for exploitation , not a service.
So , as Bevan stated in 1952…
“The field in which the claims of individual commercialism come into most immediate conflict with reputable notions of social values is that of health”.
“Powerful vested interests with profits at stake compel the public authorities to fight a sustained battle against the assumption that the pursuit of individual profit is the best way to serve the general good”
“A free Health Service is a triumphant example of the superiority of collective action and public initiative applied to a segment of society where commercial principles are seen at their worst”.
“a public undertaking of this magnitude is big business. It touches trade and industry at a hundred sensitive points”.
For these reasons the NHS needed to be destroyed in a devious secret way, and because profit and big business over-rides Bevan’s higher moral values…..
“no society can legitimately call itself civilized if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means”.
“Society becomes more wholesome, more serene, and spiritually healthier, if it knows that its citizens have at the back of their consciousness the knowledge that not only themselves, but all their fellows, have access, when ill, to the best that medical skill can provide”.
“The essence of a satisfactory health service is that the rich and the poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability, and wealth is not advantaged”.
Bevan was proud of the…
“massive contribution the British Health Service makes to the equipment of a civilized society. It has now become a part of the texture of our national life”.
….a texture that is being destroyed.
He predicted , correctly, how the dismantling would happen
“Instead of rejoicing at the opportunity to practice a civilized principle, Conservatives have tried to exploit the most disreputable emotions in this among many other attempts to discredit socialized medicine”.
So we see the attacks on foreigners , NHS staff including doctors and nurses, and a daily menu of anti-NHS stories, where apparently the NHS is to blame for the failure of Government to have sensible public health policies. Lack of staff, poor performance and governance issues are the NHS’s fault , not Government. Even funding is now not the Government’s fault. It appoints a man (Simon Stevens) who says the service needs £x and so the Government pretends to give £x.
Bevan’s arguments for free treatment for foreign visitors are the same today , and perhaps more persuasive as the Country is much richer now than in the aftermath of the World War.
“One of the consequences of the universality of the British Health Service is the free treatment of foreign visitors. This has given rise to a great deal of criticism, most of it ill-informed and some of it deliberately mischievous”.
“The fact is, of course, that visitors to Britain subscribe to the national revenues as soon as they start consuming certain commodities, drink and tobacco for example, and entertainment. They make no direct contribution to the cost of the Health Service any more than does a British citizen.
However, there are a number of more potent reasons why it would be unwise as well as mean to withhold the free service from the visitor to Britain. How do we distinguish a visitor from anybody else? Are British citizens to carry means of identification everywhere to prove that they are not visitors? For if the sheep are to be separated from the goats both must be classified. What began as an attempt to keep the Health Service for ourselves would end by being a nuisance to everybody. Happily, this is one of those occasions when generosity and convenience march together”.
But this Government are to devise ways of distinguishing “the sheep from the goats” and with help from the right-wing press greatly exaggerate the cost to con the public. They ignore both generosity and convenience in pursuit of their ideology.
Bevan tackled the elephant in today’s room and that is the conflict of money interfering with clinical decision making. Well before Blair introduced “Payment by Results” Bevan had this to say…
“Neither payment by results nor the profit motive are relevant”.
“In claiming them, capitalism proudly displays medals won in the battles it has lost”.
“Danger of abuse in the Health Service is always at the point where private commercialism impinges on the Service; where, for example, the optician is paid for the spectacles he himself prescribes, or the dentist gives an unnecessary filling for which he is paid. Abuse occurs where an attempt is made to marry the incompatible principles of private acquisitiveness with a public service”.
“They are silent where economies could be made at the expense of profits”.
And the consulting room is being polluted by rationing , financial spreadsheets and biased clinical decision-making despite Bevan’s warning…
“The consulting room is inviolable and no sensible person would have it otherwise”.
Other ways of funding are back on the (secret) agenda. Bevan considered many methods and dismissed all but state funding.
“Some American friends tried hard to persuade me that one way out of the alleged dilemma of providing free health treatment for people able to afford to pay for it would be to ‘fix an income limit below which treatment would be free while those above, must pay. This makes the worst of all worlds. It still involves proof, with disadvantages I have already described. In addition it is exposed to lying and cheating and all sorts of insidious nepotism.
And these are the least of its shortcomings. The really objectionable feature is the creation of a two-standard health service, one below and one above the salt. It is merely the old British Poor Law system over again. Even if the service given is the same in both categories there will always be the suspicion in the mind of the patient that it is not so, and this again is not a healthy mental state”.
But today this is being pushed forward and again with the “help” of some American “friends”
Breaking up the NHS and “devolution” is happening despite Bevan’s warnings…
“no local finances should be levied, for this would once more give rise to frontier problems; and the essential unity of the Service would be destroyed”.
His other great adversary was of course the BMA…
“But the hardest task for any public representative charged with the duty of making a free Health Service available to the community is overcoming the fears, real and imaginary, of the medical profession”
“…the propaganda of the British Medical Association, which warned the people at one time that, although they would be paying their contributions, the Health Service would not be there to meet their needs”
“In dealing with the medical profession it is wise to make a distinction between three main causes of opposition to the establishment of a free National Health Service. There is the opposition which springs from political opinion as such. This is part of the general opposition of Conservative ideas, and it is strong in the medical profession, though the expression of it tends to be supercharged with the emotions borrowed from other fears and ambitions. Second, there is the defence of professional status and material reward. The latter, of course, they share with other pressure groups. Then, thirdly, there is the opposition which springs from the fear that lay interference might affect academic freedom and come between the doctor and his patient”.
They warned that doctors would be made into civil servants, there would be no free choice of doctor and
socialized medicine would destroy the privacy of doctor-patient relationship
“The BMA refused…a graduated system of capitation payments (which) would have discouraged big lists”
…..a system it eventually accepted. .They claimed the “independence of medicine is at stake”, and voted 9:1 against the Act. It was said this was the “first step, and a big one, towards National Socialism as practiced in Germany”. The BMA have re-written history and now claim to have been in support of the NHS.
The Government and Jeremy Hunt in particular would be wise to recognize Bevan’s views on GPs….
“I have a warm spot for the general practitioner despite his tempestuousness The family doctor is in many ways the most important person in the Service. He comes into the most immediate and continuous touch with the members of the community. He is also the gateway to all the other branches of the Service”
And how much is now devoted to administration ?
The separate expenses of the bodies engaged in the administration of the British National Health Service amount to about 3 per cent of the total sum spent
It was no more than 4% until the introduction of the market and now the commercialization of the NHS has increased this to at least 16%. When the U.S system is properly established it will rival their 36%.
Bevan not only achieved the creation of one of the institutions that help define our nation , but one that the British people claim to be most proud of.
He knew and predicted the threats to its existence from the outset. In “In Place of Fear” he tried to warn us all. Have we let him down ?
Wednesday, 23 September 2015
Wales the NHS.
I was rushed into hospital a few months ago after a reacting to my medication, six hours of laying on a bed waiting for a doctor, I was told the hospital was not due to take emergencies, but Carmarthen had to close it's doors , and Llanelli was told to take emergencies at the last moment. It only had one doctor on duty in the whole hospital.
For the past four years now I've had problems with my teeth and I need to be seen by a dentist, I phone up the NHS direct and after being take on a journey around the old table i was told oh for god sake take out private insurance.
I said no thank I need to be seen by an NHS dentist now , how far will you travel well 10 or 20 miles and was old what about travelling to England Bristol .
Are we that far gone look the NHS has saved my life more then once with my disability and my illness but the fact is the NHS in Wales is holding on by it's finger tips. But this is not going to be the case for long now you can say this is a case for funding being upgraded by Parliament we are getting less then Scotland , but we of course are a small Principality of the UK , if we wanted to go independent I suspect London would break out into delirious laughter . But it's a fact we give each year to London £35 Billion and we are now getting back about £13 billion since we have lost near to a Billion after cut backs and this may well be the reason our NHS is struggling and why we have no NHS dentist or our GP's are struggling.
But the fact is labour is running Wales and if it cannot do it with the funding we are getting then it down to the Welsh Government to do something about it.
But it does seem we are not going forward but backward Major said we should be more like the Victorians, and it seems labour in Wales agree, Major was of course talking about the upper middle class, but the non working class in the UK seems to be less important these , pensioners are hardly spoken about, the sick the disabled and the poor are the scrounging class.
Look at Welsh labour new manifesto labour is the party of hard working, so what next insurance for health private insurance because it does seem to be the n
For the past four years now I've had problems with my teeth and I need to be seen by a dentist, I phone up the NHS direct and after being take on a journey around the old table i was told oh for god sake take out private insurance.
I said no thank I need to be seen by an NHS dentist now , how far will you travel well 10 or 20 miles and was old what about travelling to England Bristol .
Are we that far gone look the NHS has saved my life more then once with my disability and my illness but the fact is the NHS in Wales is holding on by it's finger tips. But this is not going to be the case for long now you can say this is a case for funding being upgraded by Parliament we are getting less then Scotland , but we of course are a small Principality of the UK , if we wanted to go independent I suspect London would break out into delirious laughter . But it's a fact we give each year to London £35 Billion and we are now getting back about £13 billion since we have lost near to a Billion after cut backs and this may well be the reason our NHS is struggling and why we have no NHS dentist or our GP's are struggling.
But the fact is labour is running Wales and if it cannot do it with the funding we are getting then it down to the Welsh Government to do something about it.
But it does seem we are not going forward but backward Major said we should be more like the Victorians, and it seems labour in Wales agree, Major was of course talking about the upper middle class, but the non working class in the UK seems to be less important these , pensioners are hardly spoken about, the sick the disabled and the poor are the scrounging class.
Look at Welsh labour new manifesto labour is the party of hard working, so what next insurance for health private insurance because it does seem to be the n
Sunday, 20 September 2015
I'm not expert at this but here we go.
I'm disabled sick and as is normal seen by politicians as non working Scrounging, and cheating, the hard working tax payers of this once great country seems to hate us.
But I did not ask to be disabled or sick or to be seen as a scrounger I paid my NI stamp and my tax for 36 years and then one day I go to work have an accident and that's it.
I've been involved in politics by voting when asked, and I've been involved through my trade Union, plus of course I was a labour party member .
But the Blair years and ATOS and UNUM Provident and of course the welfare reforms changed my mind on who I should be voting for.
Then this year we had an election for a new leader, we also had one when Miliband was elected sadly he was not strong enough to defeat the Progress. Progress now claim to be moderates in the party, the moderates who went to war in Iraq and lied to get it. Blair then walked away of his own free will to make himself mega rich while still hoping his ideology would like on through the right wing Moderates (another Joke).
Today we have Corbyn who is seen by the moderates (joke) as being a Trot to the hard left and unelectable and yet he did win, the Blair-rite Kendall was thrashed and the others were seen as second rate.
But here we are with a Tory Government doing what it wants, attacking the poor the sick the disabled changing the country like never before and backed of course in the main by Progress, well better to back the welfare cap and welfare reforms then be part of the hard left .
I really do think if labour is not careful both the right and the left will see labour become so unelectable it will slowly slip away like the liberals the left is on a high now but will it be in 2020 I hope so I really do, but a party which is so split simple will not be trusted ..
Well I'm in Wales so most of my thought are about Wales, England has it party of the right the Tories so to win labour has to offer something different which is why Corbyn was elected if it again tried to go to the right it will find it hard the Tories are no longer in a mess Thatcher is dead, Blair has gone although you not think so and the right is bitter and broken, maybe looking to move on to the Liberals we will see.
Big risk in leaving labour for a party which has not been trusted since the second world war.
Rant ended.
But I did not ask to be disabled or sick or to be seen as a scrounger I paid my NI stamp and my tax for 36 years and then one day I go to work have an accident and that's it.
I've been involved in politics by voting when asked, and I've been involved through my trade Union, plus of course I was a labour party member .
But the Blair years and ATOS and UNUM Provident and of course the welfare reforms changed my mind on who I should be voting for.
Then this year we had an election for a new leader, we also had one when Miliband was elected sadly he was not strong enough to defeat the Progress. Progress now claim to be moderates in the party, the moderates who went to war in Iraq and lied to get it. Blair then walked away of his own free will to make himself mega rich while still hoping his ideology would like on through the right wing Moderates (another Joke).
Today we have Corbyn who is seen by the moderates (joke) as being a Trot to the hard left and unelectable and yet he did win, the Blair-rite Kendall was thrashed and the others were seen as second rate.
But here we are with a Tory Government doing what it wants, attacking the poor the sick the disabled changing the country like never before and backed of course in the main by Progress, well better to back the welfare cap and welfare reforms then be part of the hard left .
I really do think if labour is not careful both the right and the left will see labour become so unelectable it will slowly slip away like the liberals the left is on a high now but will it be in 2020 I hope so I really do, but a party which is so split simple will not be trusted ..
Well I'm in Wales so most of my thought are about Wales, England has it party of the right the Tories so to win labour has to offer something different which is why Corbyn was elected if it again tried to go to the right it will find it hard the Tories are no longer in a mess Thatcher is dead, Blair has gone although you not think so and the right is bitter and broken, maybe looking to move on to the Liberals we will see.
Big risk in leaving labour for a party which has not been trusted since the second world war.
Rant ended.
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