Posted by Mark Doran on December 1, 2024, 11:10 am
Yes, health service homilies from the pop music millionaire who made a mint as the public face of fucking AmEx (remember this shit?)
In Labour’s Budget, charities will not be exempt from increases in employer National Insurance, even those operating within the NHS. Staff costs will rise in an already hard-pushed sector. “This is crazy,” Daltrey says. Of course, he notes, the government will be putting money into the NHS. “But what will actually come out to the charities? Nothing.”
Does he think the new health secretary Wes Streeting is capable of reforming the NHS? “Well, I’ve written to him,” Daltrey says, “and he hasn’t written back. I wrote to him four weeks ago.” The problem, though, is bigger than one political party, he stresses. “All my life, all I’ve ever heard is the state of the health service blamed on the previous government. The public doesn’t deserve that. They deserve politics to be out of it, it should be a cross party thing.”
He believes people have their part to play, too. “We need to change the public’s perception of the NHS. They treat it as a buffet. When you see people eat at buffets, they usually eat twice as much as they usually do. Well, I don’t think that’s a good idea. We need to take more responsibility for ourselves.”
"People need to take responsibility for themselves, too".
Actually that's true, but the way you deal with that is called public health, and social concern and humane intervention, and not waving a big stick or criticising from your ivory tower or funnelling off the rewards of society to a few favoured members. .Or inflicting austerity on citizens already living austere lives. .
You help people this way, making sure they're not poor and making society more egalitarian, , promoting physical activity, dealing to the large monopolistic multinational corporations who peddle bad diets and food, tax sugar, tax salt, control supermarkets and farming for basic fresh food and foodstuffs, control fast food outlets etc. Reinstate local cooperatives with government and local authority help, owned by the citizens and profits returned to them. Ultimately you make people happier and they will look after themselves. Make sure anyone working in a company or business with more than say, one hundred workers, is unionised. Bring back pride in the value of work and fairness in doing it.
You might stop pretending you still have credentials for empire and control May be save money on no nuclear weapons, no aircraft carriers, no war in Ukraine, be peace makers not war mongers. Severely control immigration and have a population policy.
You might provide a political culture where people regain trust in politicians, hope and self-respect, and feel part of a society making progress, investing on the common weal and local facilities , and not wallowing in nostalgia for a past that really wasn't as great as people like to think. You stop kowtowing to and aping the most toxic and troublesome nation and dysfunctional society on Earth, the USA. Ask the Yanks, politely, to go home (that is actually the other, unacknowledged, part of of the Monroe doctrine) and make people feel safer by constructing a Europe wide security umbrella with Russia. This is all related to health, there's no health in a frightened and controlled country.
But people do need to understand the direness of the way we now live our lives, our demands on the planet are unsustainable, and just as people need to look after themselves, they need to look after the planet that is the ultimate and only provider of life and happiness to its human population. We actually need to take life more seriously.
“All my life, all I’ve ever heard is the state of the health service blamed on the previous government. The public doesn’t deserve that. They deserve politics to be out of it, it should be a cross party thing.”
Apart from the fact that Daltrey lives on another planet it needs to be said that the project 'privatise NHS' is speedily chugging on.
In the ole days (say 10 odd years ago) I used to go and sit in my surgery waiting room and wait for the GP to see me. Simple pimple. Now, I need to phone and arrange for a phone interview. Then I get a slot for 10 days later. WTF.
Isn't he the bloke who died before he got old?....nm
on December 1, 2024, 11:10 am