it’s late at night
and I was just thinking or reflecting on those mothers that were in so many hours
and then knocking them out in those early – so wonderful – hours
[edit: and even in leap years reversed! Wow!)
My first Ankh
I bought my first Ankh at age ten, eleven, twelve or so. It was pressed steel cheap nonsese on a chain but I chose it.
I wore my parrot earing in my left ear at age about 21 or so. I’m looking for another parrot earing. If you looked at me, it would be at your right.
I didn’t have any idea what it meant then – or did I?
I thought it meant love.
Anyway, I bought my first Ankh at about age ten, twelve or whatever.
Now that I know what it means, I’m need to get a big one in Welsh gold.
No big deal ~ symbolism works ;)
[later edit: I want a big chunky one to swing about since I can – if ‘one’ has the right to ‘one’. ‘one’ may as well swing it about. What else is it ‘good’ for then? I’m going to swing my Ankh]
[later later edit: I will do it. I am not asking for or expecting anything. Enjoy yourselves.]
NHS news review
- Conservative election poster 2010
A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat(Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
TUC: six months left to save the NHS
A leading trade unionist has claimed there are just six months left to prevent the NHS from ending as we know it.
The TUC’s John Lister, Director of Health Emergency, insisted efforts to resist the controversial Health and Social Care Act must be increased before it is too late.
Mr Lister said an “urgent clarion call” is needed to “resist the privatisation, cuts, closures and wage reductions”.
He said that the Act aims to “fragment the NHS, marketise it, commercialise it and privatise the services that offer profits, while leaving the rest as an underfunded, understaffed shambles.”
Despite being at the heart of the health reforms, Mr Lister claims that GPs “will be in the hot seat for future cutbacks.” “In reality all of these plans are cash-driven, cynical efforts to meet Lansley’s £20bn target for ‘efficiency savings’,” he said.
The activist has now called for a “firm rejection of the Act” by union members, increased publicity to raise “public alarm” over the proposed reforms and a planned demonstration as a “landmark” to “highlight the lethal threat the coalition poses to the health service.”
“We need to get people aware, angry, campaigning and reclaiming our NHS before the private sector reclaims the bits they have wanted since 1948 and dumps the rest into permanent crisis,” he said.
Commenting on the appointment of the new Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Mr Lister added that Andrew Lansley’s replacement has “all of the neoliberal politics” of his predecessor but “none of his declared attachment to the NHS”.
“He has made none of Lansley’s conciliatory gestures and promises to GPs during the progress of the Bill through Parliament and will no doubt find all of its worst proposals most congenial,” he said.
“His appointment as part of a rightward lurch by Cameron seems likely to result in accelerating the implementation of the Bill, while no doubt briefly diverting the energies of the British Medical Association and others who will feel obliged to give him the benefit of the doubt for a few weeks, wasting a bit more time before recognising the need to crank up the fight.”
TUC to support consultants’ resistance to NHS regional pay
By Francesca Robinson
The TUC has voted to ’strongly’ resist moves to introduce regional pay into the NHS after a debate led by hospital consultants.
Regional pay would lead to a cut in take home pay, Eddie Saville general secretary of the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association, told the trade union movement’s annual conference in Brighton.
After years of pay freezes and an attack on their pensions, this latest development had driven consultant morale down to an all time low. “Hospital consultants tell me that some may opt to go early, some have even said they will leave the UK altogether,” said Saville.
In the South West, 20 NHS trusts have formed a pay cartel which has drawn up a package of 28 proposals which include cuts to on-call payments for consultants, slashing time for supporting professional activities by 80% and reducing sick pay and annual leave entitlements.
“Regional pay means two hospital consultants or specialists with the same experience and same skills doing the same job but getting different levels of pay simply because they work and live in different parts of the country.
…
BMA calls regional pay proposals ‘shortsighted’
South West NHS trusts proposing to introduce regional pay and conditions have been accused of being “short-sighted” and making plans to “undermine the national ethos of the NHS”.
The British Medical Association (BMA) said the 20 trusts in the region which plan to fix the pay, terms and conditions of health workers in the South West would also waste resources and could make it harder for some areas to recruit high-quality staff. Proposals put forward include cutting pay and increasing hours.
In a new paper, the BMA describes the measures as “short-sighted”, saying they could lead to demoralised staff and an increase in regional variations in quality of care.
Dr Mark Porter, chairman of council at the BMA, said: “If this initiative is allowed to go ahead, other regions are likely to follow suit, taking us further away from a truly national health service. We do not want to see skills drain away from certain areas of the country, particularly in more remote regions.
“This is a distraction from serious attempts to address the massive financial challenges facing the NHS.
“Instead of wasting resources on short-term measures for which there is no evidence, and that will only serve to demoralise staff, we should focus on ways to genuinely improve efficiency and quality.”
…
GPs say NHS treatments rationed because of costs
A THIRD of GPs believe that health authorities are rationing NHS treatments because of costs, according to a survey.
Despite orders not to limit services, 35 per cent of general practitioners said that primary care trusts are restricting access to a number of treatments.
The poll, conducted by GP Magazine among 682 GPs, found that primary care trusts are rationing operations for hernia, joint replacement and varicose veins.
There were also restrictions on fertility treatments – such as IVF – and tonsillectomies, and access to some drugs.
GPs believe that health commissioners are also raising thresholds so most patients are not eligible for treatment, the magazine suggests.
In June, it emerged that pressure to save money had left 90 per cent of primary care trusts restricting certain procedures, including hip, knee and cataract operations and weight-loss surgery.
…
Cuts raise HIV care fears
Health professionals warned today that the quality of care given to HIV sufferers may plummet after Tory NHS “reforms” take effect next year.
The British HIV Association revealed that two-thirds of its members are worried the changes ushered in by the Health and Social Care Act will fragment services provided to patients.
From April 2013 commissioning will be split between the NHS Commissioning Board responsible for HIV treatment and local authorities, which will commission sexual health and genito-urinary medicine services including prevention and testing.
Thousands of elderly left suffering by ‘cruel and random’ eye surgery rationing
Nearly half of health trusts ration operations, with many turning patients away unless they can no longer drive, read or recognise their friends.
…
NHS privatisation: Compilation of financial and vested interests
“We do want to break up the NHS. We don’t want to privatise it, we want to break it up.” Nick Clegg.
Nick Clegg’s demand for the NHS to be broken up
…
Opponents said the comments about the NHS, in a 2005 interview in the Independent, showed that Mr Clegg had no understanding of the way the health service works.
In the interview, carried out while Charles Kennedy was leader and two years before Mr Clegg took the job, he said: ‘I think breaking up the NHS is exactly what you do need to do to make it a more responsive service.’
Asked whether he favoured a Canadian or European-style social insurance system, he said: ‘I don’t think anything should be ruled out. I do think they deserve to be looked at because frankly the faults of the British health service compared to others still leave much to be desired.
‘We will have to provide alternatives about what a different NHS looks like.’
Under a social insurance system, members pay into an insurance scheme, either themselves or through an employer, to guarantee their healthcare. It means that those who pay into a more expensive scheme can get better care.
Under the NHS, however, everyone pays into the same scheme through taxes – and is then guaranteed care that is ‘free at the point of use’.
In the interview, Mr Clegg said ‘defending the status quo’ is no longer an option. Instead, he called on his party to ‘let its hair down’, ‘break a long-standing taboo’ and be ‘reckless’ in its thinking.
‘We do want to break up the NHS,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to privatise it, we want to break it up. Should the debate be taboo? Of course not, absolutely not.’
A year earlier, Mr Clegg had contributed to the notorious Orange Book in which those on the right of the party discussed how policies should change under Mr Kennedy’s leadership. The conclusion of the book outlines in more detail the type of insurance scheme he was outlining.
‘The NHS is failing to deliver a health service that meets the needs and expectations of today’s population,’ it said.
John Lister, of the lobby group Health Emergency, said: ‘These comments show Mr Clegg does not understand the NHS. He seems to be ignorant of the fact that social insurance schemes in Europe are far more expensive.’
Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: ‘The NHS is one of Britain’s most loved institutions. People will be worried that Nick Clegg wants to “break it up”.’ [!!! That’s Andrew Lansley pretending that the NHS is safe in Tory hands before the election !!!]
How the Orange Bookers took over the Lib Dems
…
What Britain now has is a blue-orange coalition, with the little-known Orange Book forming the core of current Lib Dem political thinking. To understand how this disreputable arrangement has come about, we need to examine the philosophy laid out in The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism, edited by David Laws (now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury) and Paul Marshall. Particularly interesting are the contributions of the Lib Dems’ present leadership.
Published in 2004, the Orange Book marked the start of the slow decline of progressive values in the Lib Dems and the gradual abandonment of social market values. It also provided the ideological standpoint around which the party’s right wing was able to coalesce and begin their march to power in the Lib Dems. What is remarkable is the failure of former SDP and Labour elements to sound warning bells about the direction the party was taking. Former Labour ministers such as Shirley Williams and Tom McNally should be ashamed of their inaction.
Clegg and his Lib Dem supporters have much in common with David Cameron and his allies in their philosophical approach and with their social liberal solutions to society’s perceived ills. The Orange Book is predicated on an abiding belief in the free market’s ability to address issues such as public healthcare, pensions, environment, globalisation, social and agricultural policy, local government and prisons.
The Lib Dem leadership seems to sit very easily in the Tory-led coalition. This is an arranged marriage between partners of a similar background and belief. Even the Tory-Whig coalition of early 1780s, although its members were from the same class, at least had fundamental political differences. Now we see a Government made up of a single elite that has previously manifested itself as two separate political parties and which is divided more by subtle shades of opinion than any profound ideological difference.
…
NHS news review
- Conservative election poster 2010
A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat(Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
GPOnline Editorial: Time for the new health secretary to listen to GPs
Few GP tears are likely to be shed at the departure of Mr Lansley, whose Health and Social Care Act became law earlier this year.
Mr Hunt’s promotion is curious because health is not a subject in which his expertise is renowned and he has also been under recent pressure for his handling of the BSkyB takeover bid.
There have also been changes at the top of the BMA. GPonline last week revealed that retired GP Dr Kailash Chand, an outspoken critic of Mr Lansley’s vision, had been elected deputy chairman. Dr Chand was uncompromising about Mr Lansley’s two-year reign as health secretary, describing him as doing an ‘utterly miserable job’.
Away from the corridors of Richmond House, Westminster and BMA House, 212 clinical commissioning groups covering the entirety of England are undergoing authorisation by the NHS Commissioning Board to take over from PCTs from April 2013. The BMA and other unions are at loggerheads with the government over proposed NHS pension changes and ministers are expected to give the go-ahead imminently to revalidation of GPs.
There’s a great deal for the BMA and the RCGP, thanks to the profile-raising work of its chairwoman Professor Clare Gerada, to discuss with Mr Hunt.
Mr Lansley spent many years shadowing the health secretary and it seems likely that his opinions may have been more firmly entrenched than Mr Hunt’s. The BMA and the RCGP should waste no time in seeking to put their views to a fresh pair of ears.
NHS staff in fear of pay cuts
HEALTH workers believe that plans to introduce regional pay and conditions would have a “devastating” impact on their lives.
A survey by union Unison of 1,000 NHS employees in the South West showed almost all were concerned about the prospect of pay cuts, increased hours and performance-related pay being introduced by a group of 20 health trusts, including Bristol and Weston’s hospital trusts.
Unison describes the South West NHS Pay Consortium as a cartel and says some members it surveyed would have to cut down on essentials such as food, and might not be able to pay their mortgage, if their wages were cut following years of pay freezes.
The union was due to lobby MPs today on the “dangers” of introducing regional pay and conditions.
Christina McAnea, Unison’s head of health, said: “This survey shows that the South West pay cartel’s plans could push health workers in the region to breaking point. They are worried about the impact on their families, but also what these changes would mean for their patients.”
…
UK politicians gain from privatising National Health Service
Social Investigations, an independent news blog offering research on political matters of social interest, has compiled an extensive list of British MPs and members of the House of Lords who are set to gain from the ongoing privatisation of the National Health Service.
As this year’s Health and Social Care Bill was being debated and voted on in both houses, more than 200 parliamentarians held financial interests in businesses involved in private health care.
Hedge fund boss John Nash, chairman of Care UK, has over the past five years donated £203,500 to the Conservative Party. Back in 2009, it was a donation by Nash of £21,000 that helped fund Andrew Lansley’s “personal office”—from 2010 until this week, health secretary in the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition.
Last year, some 96 percent of Nash’s Care UK’s business, amounting to more than £400 million, came from public money channelled via the NHS. City firm Sovereign Capital, also founded by Nash, runs a string of private health care firms.
Lansley was also sponsored by other players in the health care industry. In 2008, he received a donation from Julian Schild used to support his office in his capacity as shadow secretary for health. Julian Schild’s family made £184 million in 2006 by selling hospital bed-maker Huntleigh Technology.
Landsley’s wife, Sally Low, according to a February 2011 article by the Daily Telegraph, is the founder and managing director of Low Associates. Her company web site boasted pharmaceutical companies SmithKline Beecham, Unilever and P&G among its clients. This information was swiftly removed amid her insisting that her company does not work with corporations that have an interest in the health sector.
Social Investigations highlighted another influential Tory donor as Nash’s business partner, Ryan Robson. To date, Robson has donated a total of £252,429 to the Tories, £50,000 of which was given to position himself as a member of the party’s “Leader’s Group”, a cash-for-access club.
Back in 2010, Prime Minister David Cameron, shortly after taking office, gave private care home tycoon Dolar Popat a peerage. Lord Popat is reported to have donated £209,000 to the Conservative Party. Of this figure, £25,000 was registered as a donation a week after the Tories’ health reforms were unveiled.
Fellow Tory Lord Ashcroft has also gained from the government’s NHS recruitment freeze. Over the last three years, his company Medacs has benefited to the tune of £7 million by providing agency staff to cover the 28,610 jobs lost as a result of Lansley’s ban on NHS recruitment.
The Labour Party has its own ties to private health care. McKinsey & Co, which drew up many of the proposals finally accepted into the Health and Social Care Bill, paid David Miliband, Labour MP for South Shields and brother of the current Labour leader, Ed Miliband, £10,000 in February 2010 for a speech at a Global Business Leaders Summit. This was the same year that he was positioning himself for the leadership of the Labour Party in a contest lost to his brother. In March 2011, he received a further £10,044 from the same company for travel expenses and accommodation in Singapore.
Alan Milburn, the former health secretary under Labour, was a consultant for Alliance Medical’s parent company. Alliance Medical runs diagnostic services for the NHS, including in Birmingham and Falkirk. In 2008, his registered parliamentary interests highlight that he was a member of Lloyds pharmacy’s Healthcare Advisory panel and was paid in the region of £30,000.
Also in 2008, Milburn was a member of the European Advisory Board of Bridgepoint Capital Limited, the private equity firm that acquired Care UK.
Labour’s Lord Peter Mandelson was also registered as late as May 2012 as a senior advisor to an international advisory investment bank known as at Lazard Ltd, which holds corporate interests in private health care.
Since 2004, the Liberal Democrats have received donations to the tune of £440,000 from Alpha Healthcare Ltd. In 2010, the year they entered into coalition with the Conservatives, £125,000 was donated to fund Nick Clegg’s party by Alpha Healthcare. In 2004, the director of the company, Bhanu Choudhrie, made two donations of £10,000, and a further £20,000 in 2008. His father, Sudhir Choudrie, in 2006 made donations totalling £95,000. This donation was gratefully received by the Liberal Democrats, despite several cases being filed by the Confederation of British Industry alleging his use of manipulation and bribery in defence purchases.
These are the politicians the trade unions insist can be persuaded to turn away from privatisation and preserve the NHS by applying a little moral pressure.
“We do want to break up the NHS. We don’t want to privatise it, we want to break it up.” Nick Clegg.
Nick Clegg’s demand for the NHS to be broken up
…
Opponents said the comments about the NHS, in a 2005 interview in the Independent, showed that Mr Clegg had no understanding of the way the health service works.
In the interview, carried out while Charles Kennedy was leader and two years before Mr Clegg took the job, he said: ‘I think breaking up the NHS is exactly what you do need to do to make it a more responsive service.’
Asked whether he favoured a Canadian or European-style social insurance system, he said: ‘I don’t think anything should be ruled out. I do think they deserve to be looked at because frankly the faults of the British health service compared to others still leave much to be desired.
‘We will have to provide alternatives about what a different NHS looks like.’
Under a social insurance system, members pay into an insurance scheme, either themselves or through an employer, to guarantee their healthcare. It means that those who pay into a more expensive scheme can get better care.
Under the NHS, however, everyone pays into the same scheme through taxes – and is then guaranteed care that is ‘free at the point of use’.
In the interview, Mr Clegg said ‘defending the status quo’ is no longer an option. Instead, he called on his party to ‘let its hair down’, ‘break a long-standing taboo’ and be ‘reckless’ in its thinking.
‘We do want to break up the NHS,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to privatise it, we want to break it up. Should the debate be taboo? Of course not, absolutely not.’
A year earlier, Mr Clegg had contributed to the notorious Orange Book in which those on the right of the party discussed how policies should change under Mr Kennedy’s leadership. The conclusion of the book outlines in more detail the type of insurance scheme he was outlining.
‘The NHS is failing to deliver a health service that meets the needs and expectations of today’s population,’ it said.
John Lister, of the lobby group Health Emergency, said: ‘These comments show Mr Clegg does not understand the NHS. He seems to be ignorant of the fact that social insurance schemes in Europe are far more expensive.’
Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: ‘The NHS is one of Britain’s most loved institutions. People will be worried that Nick Clegg wants to “break it up”.’ [!!! That’s Andrew Lansley pretending that the NHS is safe in Tory hands before the election !!!]
How the Orange Bookers took over the Lib Dems
…
What Britain now has is a blue-orange coalition, with the little-known Orange Book forming the core of current Lib Dem political thinking. To understand how this disreputable arrangement has come about, we need to examine the philosophy laid out in The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism, edited by David Laws (now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury) and Paul Marshall. Particularly interesting are the contributions of the Lib Dems’ present leadership.
Published in 2004, the Orange Book marked the start of the slow decline of progressive values in the Lib Dems and the gradual abandonment of social market values. It also provided the ideological standpoint around which the party’s right wing was able to coalesce and begin their march to power in the Lib Dems. What is remarkable is the failure of former SDP and Labour elements to sound warning bells about the direction the party was taking. Former Labour ministers such as Shirley Williams and Tom McNally should be ashamed of their inaction.
Clegg and his Lib Dem supporters have much in common with David Cameron and his allies in their philosophical approach and with their social liberal solutions to society’s perceived ills. The Orange Book is predicated on an abiding belief in the free market’s ability to address issues such as public healthcare, pensions, environment, globalisation, social and agricultural policy, local government and prisons.
The Lib Dem leadership seems to sit very easily in the Tory-led coalition. This is an arranged marriage between partners of a similar background and belief. Even the Tory-Whig coalition of early 1780s, although its members were from the same class, at least had fundamental political differences. Now we see a Government made up of a single elite that has previously manifested itself as two separate political parties and which is divided more by subtle shades of opinion than any profound ideological difference.
…