TTIP stands for The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, something that only came to my attention a few days ago thanks to the open rights group, yet the more i read about TTIP the more i have concerns of the impact that such an agreement would have. TTIP is a comprehensive free trade and investment treaty currently being negotiated – in secret – between the European Union and the USA. As officials from both sides acknowledge, the main goal of TTIP is to remove regulatory ‘barriers’ which restrict the potential profits to be made by transnational corporations on both sides of the Atlantic. An article published on the Independents web site gives six reason why we should be scared, so should we be concerned or scared, would it even matter ? The NHS Food and environmental safety Banking regulations Privacy Jobs Democracy A booklet (PDF Warning), written by John Hilary, Executive Director of War on Want, explains in short what TTIP is and how it will affect the lives of all of us if it comes into force. Should we be concerned about TTIP ? Or as Lee Williams from The Independent says "I would vote against TTIP, except… hang on a minute… I can’t. Like you, I have no say whatsoever in whether TTIP goes through or not." Why bother worrying if there is nothing we can do about it.
**** yes we should be concerned! It basically allows US companies to sue the British government for profits that those companies claim they could have made if it wasn't for perceived obstacles to making those claimed profits, such as consumer protection regulation or, say, keeping the NHS. That's right: US companies will be able to sue the UK government for the NHS being 'unfair competition' to their private health care business. The one that has been proven to be the most expensive and least efficient in the world. The very fact that the government has not mentioned a word of TTIP to the public, and hopes to quietly sign it, should tell us that this is a very bad thing.
"Don't worry about starving the people to death, there is noting they can do about it" one rich french dude to another right before his head ended up on a pike.
Not surprising though, I cannot believe that many more people, including those in government, had no knowledge of the Libor fixing scandal, with the government being so focused on the financial and business world you would assume they would be very aware of such a critical market force? Source. REALLY, No one ever suspected this? What would be the USA's reaction if the TTIP was in force and this happened, would they again claim 'unfair competition and sue the UK, you bet they would.
I have been following this for a long time now, and also the effects it has had on trade between the US and Australia and Paraguay and Uruguay. I will like some cases later that will make you cringe. Basically countries cannot make laws that effect the profits of private corporations negatively without being liable for the loss. Imagine that standard when ban on smoking and cigarette advertising were introduced. The UK would have been potentially liable for hundreds of billions because they were trying to protect the health of the population. This needs to be exposed.
Found a quick YouTube clip that highlights what TTIP means for those who ain't up for reading about the implications this would have. And another on the implications for the NHS. I'm not sure it makes much difference if you/we think TTIP is a good or bad thing, it seems we have no choice in the matter.
We need to retain democratic nations in which companies trade, not company nations in which democracy is strangled.
Just wait until weapons manufacturers drag governments to court if they try to stop them from selling weapons to the likes of IS... All hail prime minister Raytheon, health secretary Coca Cola, environment minister Glencore. Might as well just declare Issa Sesay as Emperor of the World.
I could get behind this movement a lot more if there weren't buzz/scarewords being thrown around every 5 seconds. Also, I do find it funny how everyone seems to get up in arms when there's any mention of changes to the NHS. Reminds me of those angry rednecks who are so convinced that the filthy liberals have come to steal all their guns.
That's because there are constant changes being made to the NHS, all eroding its future and inexorably leading to privatised health care. But these changes are difficult to understand for ordinary people who don't know how the NHS works, and they are gradual and cumulative. So it is laughed off as a bit of scaremongering. (Left axis: cost of health care; right axis: life expectancy. The US has the only private health care system in the Western world) "The man who laughs has not yet been told the terrible news" --Bertold Brecht
How do we know if they are buzz or scare-words, all we have to go on is leaked information and heavily redacted documents from FOI requests. It's hard to know if the impact is being exaggerated when there is so little information to go on, is it not ?
If ordinary people cannot hope to understand it then why does everyone seem so sure that all every single one of these proposed changes are going to cause it to slide into ruin? Also, the reaction many people give doesn't seem to align with the situation you are proposing. I think privatization would be bad for the NHS as much as the next person, but that doesn't automatically mean that any attempt to inject some more market-focused features will lead to the death of public healthcare. There are large inefficiencies in the way the service is run (even as a patient I have experienced many of these, although that's not to say that it's a bad service) and looking to the private sector for inspiration is not an inherently bad idea. The way I see it, if we really want to protect the service we know and love, we need to be prepared to try different approaches. Personally I don't feel a lot of these market-driven methods are likely to work, but we need to be willing to give them a try. What really irks me though, is the way the NHS is brought up in so many situations to unfoundedly imply that some other proposed change would lead to its destruction. We've seemingly enshrined the NHS in it's current form as a sacred entity and I fear this is going to bite us in the behind, not least because it makes it convenient ammunition for political rhetoric. That's not to say I think that many of these concerns aren't valid, I just don't like the way the issue is used for political points, and I think we'd do well to try and be a bit less hot-headed about the issue.
Because all the other changes that recent governments have implemented worked out so well: - Privatisation of the railways: rising costs, poorer quality of service - Privatisation of utilities: rising costs, poorer quality of service - Privatisation of postal services: rising cost, poorer quality of service. So much for commercial business being more efficient. The US example shows graphically that market-focused approaches don't work for a health service. We don't privatise the police, the fire service or the army for a reason. Why should the health service be any different? The problem is not change; the problem is who is proposing them, considering their track record on "improving" other services and their expressed philosophy of putting economic considerations first.
Also all the downplaying of the NHS in order to slowly try and encourage the idea of privatisation to 'improve it' is a nonsense - I'm particularly referring to Jeremy *cough*Hunt. In a recent US report by The Commonwealth Fund, with regards to the NHS. '"The United Kingdom ranks first overall, scoring highest on quality, access and efficiency" when compared to 10 other countries who spend more on healthcare including France, Germany and Canada. It's the misinformation and talks that go on behind closed doors that make a mockery out of democracy and the sad thing is a lot of people couldn't give a monkey's.
And why should they care if they know that even if they cared it would change nothing about the outcome? You can't even threaten to vote for a party that opposes TTIP because you can't be sure which ones support it and which ones don't.
So what's to stop me starting up a new 'murder to order' business in the States? Let's say I charge £1mill. per murder. What's that? You say murder's illegal in the States? Sorry, but I now need to sue the States for £300,000,000,000,000 of lost earnings. What's not to like?
Let me set things straight. I don't believe that privately owned companies are generally more efficient than public organisations. At the end of the day you have a bunch of people organized in one way or another and incentivised in one way or another - the potential for these incentives to become misaligned with the public interest are pretty equal. For major services such as you've listed, I'd rather have a public body governing them if only because it gives the government better control over the bigger picture, but beyond that it really depends. The fact is, public bodies have to keep evolving as much as private corporations do and that sometimes means encouraging competition for resources to drive innovation and efficiency. It's not a particularly nice or elegant solution, but it's far better than stagnation. Also, going back to my original point of our infatuation with the NHS, why didn't we make even half the fuss when RM was sold at a ridiculously low price? That to me is orders of magnitude worse than anything that is ever likely to happen to the NHS. It shows the US implementation of privatisation is non-functioning, which given half a glance is hardly surprising. Indeed, the health care system in most countries in Europe is what one might consider privatised (or at least, more private than any proposed reform of the NHS, as far as I understand it), so it's clearly not the anathema many people present it as. Also, most importantly, note that introducing more market driven mechanics is miles away from the privateisation of the NHS. Granted, the recent UK spate of privatisation has been a complete disaster, so yes, healthy skepticism is well advised. Personally I don't feel what has been suggested recently is particularly likely to give results, but these measures will have been thoroughly researched even if there is a large element of political motivation. The problem is, too many people seem willing to dismiss all these ideas purely out of devotion to the dogma that the NHS needs to remain as public as possible, without paying attention to what we actually want which is free-to-use, cheap, accessible healthcare. Personally I'd be prepared to sell it off to the likes of Rupert Murdoch if I could guarantee the same or better service for a similar price (unlikely, but who knows). So it's not so much opposition to these proposals, but the ferocity which members of the public attack them with.
