E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

Having 0 MPs will do that.

 

It depends what Brexit we get and to what extent you feel you can assume you know why they voted the way they did. May decided they all voted about immigration and nothing else. I think she was wrong. I suspect other generalisations are also wrong.

 

Well someone earlier was saying FPTP was the problem..........................

 

I'm almost sure they didn't vote for more austerity, a wider rich/poor gap, fewer employee rights, less influence on government, less control over their own laws, the end of the NHS, and more immigration by brown people. But that's what they're going to get. The point is: most of the electorate didn't understand what they were voting for (which is different from what they thought they were voting for), and it is not going to get them what they want.

It is. You think UKIP getting 83 seats in parliament (as they would have in the 2015 GE) would have been a bad thing? It would have been a good thing. Because every time such nutter extremist parties actually get a seat in a parliament, they collapse into ineffectuality. They're unmasked as all mouth, no action. They can shout from the side lines but they cannot hack it in real politics.

 

Every election you announce that if the Conservatives win it will be the end of the NHS. seems it works for referendums too.

 

I want you to dwell for a second on the fact that I work in the NHS. Fairly high up the food chain too --there is only one step between me and the Chief Executive of the Trust.

I am telling you now, the NHS will be gone in less than a decade. It has been a slow process, but it has been underway for a while, and is currently at stage 3 of 5.

 

So you're telling me, that we'll be in the s***? Sounds fun!

 

Nexxo, I swear you will be saying this when you retire. We've had since 1979 we've had 26 years of conservative led government to fail to privatise it and 13 years of Blairite reforms to help too. There will be an election in the next 3 years. You will declare it is the last chance to save the NHS. You have said that before. Every single election.

 

As someone who, until the last four years, had not frequently visited the NHS, I cant believe how many things have changed. In terms of third parties doing things that, in the past, had been NHS staff.

The NHS sell off has been quiet and slow. It's not like a light switch they can flip - people would notice that. Contracted staff that earn more than the direct employees for the same job, subcontractors parking trailers in the criminally small car parks for CT scanning machines and charging a pretty penny to do so. Porters that are now employed by a third party that is contracted to the NHS and strut around in their employers branded clothing while they wheel patients and equipment around. Ambulances that have subtle but very present third party branding.

There always seems to be a disconnect between these sunbird and the NHS staff, too. Just making the visit that little bit more frustrating - leading people to complain and make a big stink.

IMO they're subbing off parts of the NHS to declare the remainder expensive and inefficient, so when we the people get told it's for our benefit we've had so many years of dodgy service we straight up ask for privitisation.

But then, I don't work there. I just walk past the nurses and junior parking areas with clapped out shitbox cars, and the 'other' parking area with Aston martins, top end German luxury cars. My first doctor for the cancer bit drove an Aston Martin. He was a contractor. My second, because he retired, was directly employed and drove a VW with such ratty keys I'm confident it was an old golf or Polo.

I'm not confident that the British government has had the NHS' best interests at heart for a long time.

 

Hopefully I'll retire before then, so sure. But I have not been saying that "it's the last chance to save the NHS"; I've been saying that the NHS is already being privatised. It has been steadily happening for decades. Don't be fooled by the logo on the façade of the building. All cleaning, estate management (including car parks and building maintenance), portering, catering and parts of admin, payroll and pensions management, occupational health etc. are already supplied by the private sector. So is some of our CT/MRI imaging; you see the trailers parked next to the hospital. Your GP, dentist, optician and pharmacist are private; Primary Health Centres and ambulance services are private/NHS partnerships. Several Trusts locally are now private/NHS partnerships (with the private part steadily growing). Hospices are mostly charity funded private enterprise. In 2009 Hinchingbrooke Hospital was franchised to a private sector operator, Circle (which predictably made a mess of it and then bailed). NHS Professionals, which supplies flexible staffing to the NHS, was going to be mostly sold off in 2016 but the government has now paused this as it couldn't get a good enough bid from the private sector. But private agencies are badgering us every day with offers of flexible bank staff. The NHS is gradually being hollowed out from the inside, so you can't see it. But I work behind the façade, so I can see it happen.

But just chalk it down to Project Fear.

 

And that is before we even get to the clusterf*ck that is mental health services...

Just one example of many:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...orse-depression-bipolar-anxiety-a8531396.html

Oh what the hell, have one more:

https://www.nhs.uk/using-the-nhs/nh...ervices/how-to-access-mental-health-services/

And those are standards they still struggle to meet.

Sure it hasn't technically been abolished, but calling it substandard is a compliment.

 

Obviously it depends greatly on where and what you look at but, to be fair to Risky, the total revenue spend on private firms within NHS spending was 'only' around 7.6% in 2015/16, granted that's up from 6.1% in 2014/15 and it's been slowly increasing 06/07, but if we look only at central government spending then it's a fair way off from privatised.

(link)

(link)

 

The groundwork is being laid. Internal markets with purchaser/provider split in the 90's; PFI and private contracting in the 00's; devolution of the health care executive with the Health and Social Care Act. Also budget cuts while setting unachievable standards, setting services up to fail. It isn't visible until you step back and look at the whole picture because it is not some grand master plan at work; just a steady force of shared interests pushing the NHS in a certain direction over decades until a critical tipping point is reached.

 

Same goes for Nation State democracy in a globalised world.

 

Meanwhile Brexit is the gift that keeps on giving: Nissan is abandoning plans to build the new X-Trail model in the UK.

 

And UKIP on great form. Shades of 1930's Germany, anyone?

 

Well if it goose-steps like a duck...

 

Oh, and Boris Johnson is true to form: