- Re: Nothing more sickening than to see Johnson clapping for the NHS nm Archived Message
Posted by Ian M
on April 3, 2020, 2:29 pm, in reply to "Re: Nothing more sickening than to see Johnson clapping for the NHS nm"
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Derek said: 'It was labour who really got the ball rolling with the dismantlement of the nhs, so govt in general is to blame.' Don't know if they got it rolling (PFI was a tory invention I seem to recall) but yes it got severely eroded during the neo-labour years too. However the point the quote was making referred to the 2019 election where the labour manifesto made strong statements against the privatisation of, and cuts to, the NHS. Some excerpts from the manifesto: 'NHS and Social Care The National Health Service is one of Labour’s proudest achievements. The right to free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare, universal and comprehensive in scope, is socialism in action. A decade of Tory health cuts and privatisations has pushed our greatest institution to the brink. Our hospitals are crumbling, equipment is outdated, IT systems are inadequate and community facilities are neglected. There are 100,000 staff vacancies in NHS England, including a shortage of 43,000 nurses. There are 15,000 fewer hospital beds. Every winter, bed occupancy rates exceed dangerous levels. Patients now wait far too long to see their GP, for an ambulance or for treatment. Our immediate task is to repair our health services. Our urgent priority is to end NHS privatisation. [...] Every penny spent on privatisation and outsourcing is a penny less spent on patient care. Labour will end and reverse privatisation in the NHS in the next Parliament. We will repeal the Health and Social Care Act and reinstate the responsibilities of the Secretary of State to provide a comprehensive and universal healthcare system. We will end the requirement on health authorities to put services out to competitive tender. We will ensure services are delivered in-house and also bring subsidiary companies back in-house. We will halt the fire sale of NHS land and assets. [...] We will stop Tory plans to further entrench the private sector delivery of health care under the cover of integration plans set out in the NHS Long Term Plan. Instead we will join up, integrate and co-ordinate care through public bodies. [...] A Labour government will end the crisis in our health and care services, plan for the future and guarantee real-terms pay rises every year. [...] A Labour government will review the tax and pension changes implemented by the Tory government to ensure that the workforce is fairly rewarded and that services are not adversely affected. [...] We will ensure that all parts of the NHS, the treatment of patients, the employment of staff and medicine pricing are all fully excluded and protected from any international trade deals. [...] Social care funding cuts have left 1.5 million older people without the care they need. Almost £8 billion has been lost from social care budgets since 2010. This is having a profound impact on unpaid carers in this country, with 2.6 million carers quitting their jobs to provide care to family members. The current care system is at risk of collapse. A Labour government will build a comprehensive National Care Service for England. We will provide community-based, person-centred support, underpinned by the principles of ethical care and independent living. We will provide free personal care, beginning with investments to ensure that older people have their personal care needs met, with the ambition to extend this provision to all working-age adults. [...] Our National Care Service will work in partnership with the NHS, ensuring care is delivered for people, not for profit. Contracts for providing care will not be awarded to organisations that do not pay their fair share of taxes and do not meet our high standards of quality care. Our focus will be on the ethical delivery of care that ensures growing public sector provision and providers who meet standards of transparency, compliance and profit capping.' - https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/rebuild-our-public-services/#2 British voters 'spat in its face' by rejecting this in favour of business-as-usual by the tories, in spite of the results of their decade-long attacks on the service being visible to all. You could say they were duped, or they didn't know what was on offer, or that they didn't trust labour as a party, but then does that excuse actively enabling the party that has been wrecking it for so long? A sizeable proportion will have done so out of financial self-interest, damn the consequences to society. I think they will accept above-and-beyond service from NHS and other key workers with this kind of phoney gratitude, but then immediately go back to their default position after the crisis. It'll be a kind of Big Society bail-out with all of us dupes rushing around to do the work the government was supposed to have been funding all this time (with our taxes), and then they will merrily go back to prostrating themselves at the altars of capitalism when the crisis is over. Maybe that's overly cynical, I'd be happy to be persuaded otherwise! cheers, I |