Britain's National Health Service

I have been absolutely opposed to the NHS since my earliest recollections in the late nineteen forties. A nation that hands responsibility for each individuals health to the state, and places all medical practitioners on the state payroll, always seemed to me to be at risk of ending in exactly the kind of position in which Britain finds itself today. Nevertheless I am now used to being in a tiny minority on this point and must accept that this rotten system has a special place in the hearts of most of my countrymen. I therefore reproduce below a detailed paper sent to me by its author titled "Our Health Service in Hock for many Years to come and for future generations to pay off" by Anne Palmer. It is rather long but worth reading in full as in my view a typical case history of the EU's advance into even the most sacred areas of what was once a purely national policy area. Quote

Our Health Service in Hock for many Years to come and for future generations to pay off. Anne Palmer 26.8.2006.

The Health Service WAS ours. We paid for it through our taxes and it remains (for now) free at the point of service. We pay for it in the same way we pay for our politicians to allegedly work for us, and they, on our behalf keep the National Health Service free at the point of delivery.

I am writing this to open the public’s eyes at the way EU law forces Member States to reorganise their welfare services, looking also at the affects of free movement and competition practices on health care. It tends to result in national welfare institutions being replaced by private providers. The process is not being discussed by the public because it is not being debated openly by our MP’s. What comes under “Welfare reform” is not being led by welfare reform at all. The major cause is that EU law as it stands authorises a great deal more interference in welfare than has been thought about. Our National Heath Service that developed here in the UK after the Second World War may be gone forever (if we do not fight for it to remain) and there may never be a public discussion about this but it may disappear without anyone realising it

Welfare is perhaps the last bastion of nationalism, but it is one nationalism that the vast majority of people will most definitely want to keep, it poses however, a problem for the European Union, for how can the Union, that is dedicated to the removal of national borders allow our welfare state to remain as it is when other member state’s welfare systems are not all free at the point of delivery? Are WE the odd one out, yet again?

Even now, although people are concerned at how many hospitals are closing and nurses and doctors are being made redundant, have no idea WHY this is happening, and even less understand perhaps why I am putting the first point of blame on to our involvement in the European Union and my second point of blame to the present Labour Government.

What happens to our Welfare system brings the EU right into our homes because there are very few people that get through life without at least one spell in hospital. I have only touched on the subject lightly because in everything else to do with the EU, it will eventually require our hospitals to be “liberalised”, “opened up” magic words, “open to competition” taken over in the same way that most of our great industries have been taken over.

There are two choices, one, just stand back and let it happen, or two, fight for your health service as those before you fought to get it put there for us all to use free at the point of delivery.

I can remember the day our National Health Service was born. Although it was the Atlee Government that created the National Health Service (NHS) based on the Beverage Report in 1942 Aneurin Bevan carried out the actual introduction of the Service for the launch July 5^th 1948. I never met the man although I spent one whole afternoon with Jenny Lee, his wife, in my mid 20’s when taking part in a fashion show. (Organised by the Local Labour group) She was a remarkable dynamic lady.

Before the introduction of the NHS, we as a family used to pay hospital ‘fee’s’ of one (old) penny a week, but at least we were able to have hospital treatment as long as we were ‘in the hospital fund’ club.

The NHS covers four separate (once) publicly funded systems, General Practitioners, Accident and Emergency, long term health care and Dentistry. Since 1948 we have all had the use of them and perhaps taken them for granted far more than we should have done.

There has always been Private Health care for those that could pay for it or prefer the privacy provided by private care. It is usually paid for through private insurance. NHS services on the other hand are “free at the point of delivery” paid for by our taxes and I understand the budget for 2006-7 is £96 billion. It employs over 1 million people and is reputed to be the largest employer in Europe if not the world, depending on who is the teller! We, the people, by way of our taxes, employ them all.

Things seemed to roll along fine until 1997, but the urge to join the euro by Prime Minister Blair started the changes I am writing about here. My attention was drawn to The Times (In 2003), which reported that if (and we may not have that option of “if” one day) we join the Euro, the European Central Bank had warned Britain it might have to give up its National Health Service. Even the Bolton Evening News, May 2003 reported that, “Britain would be forced to scrap the NHS if we joined the euro, so warns the ECB, saying free health care could be slashed to just emergency services”.

Also, “The ECB recommends jettisoning the NHS in favour of private health care, saying Britain’s aging population will send NHS costs soaring, and euro-zone rules would not allow Gordon Brown to borrow necessary funds to foot the bill”. Does Britain have an aging population more so than any other country?

But hold on, this is a Labour Government we are talking about and a Labour Government to boot, that brought the NHS into being, it was their pride and joy, yet we now have a Labour government that wants to end our Sterling currency by joining the euro, has signed up to an EU constitution and knowingly by their actions now, are destroying our NHS system. How can I say that? Because it is privatising our NHS “by the back door”. I have read two quite separate papers that refer to what they are doing as “Enron by the Thames”, and, “an Enron accounting system”.

An informative booklet on the “Services Directive” (A race to the Bottom) by Brian Denny, explains how EU rules attack public services, jobs, pay, pensions and collective bargaining rights”. Plain speaking indeed. “Following the exclusion of healthcare from the Services Directive, the EU Commission immediately announced plans for a new separate directive by the end of 2006 to open up health services to free market competition. Not surprisingly, the ECJ ruling have helped this process along by using internal market arguments first mooted in the Services directive.” If the EU does not get their way in one matter, they will get their way in another.

“Page 5”, “EU Health Spokesman Margaritis Schinas said that the ECJ ruling on patient mobility, ‘clearly states that there is scope for community action to achieve public health objectives’. He went on to claim that patent mobility was covered under Art 95 of EU Treaties covering internal market rules.

As already pointed out above, the ECB report from May 2003 called on Euro zone members to reform health services and although we are not in the Euro, we still have to abide by the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). One way round the removal of the ability to “borrow” more money was to introduce Public Private Partnership (PPP) or, Private Financing Initiative (PFI) into the Health Sector and turning hospitals into Trusts. According to Brian Denny, these moves have already led to a cash crisis in the NHS and the loss of over 7000 jobs.

The EU also wants more power over healthcare, which does not surprise me at all. Alan Milburn once said though, “As long as there is a Labour Government, the NHS will be funded from general taxation and health care available according to need and not ability to pay”. I think he forgot to mention that the Health Service as we know it would be gone, that it would be slashed with hundreds of excellent nurses and Doctors abandoned, Hospitals closed, with not all medicines available to all.

Is this what all this is about? To come into line with the ECB? So that we can abandon sovereignty over our sterling currency and reserves or the authority to control our interest rates? Only the rich will be able to have peace of mind if they fall ill for they will be the only ones that will be able to afford to pay. The elderly, old and poor will no longer be cared for. Vote for Labour?

According to the World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3860 March 2006 (By Jack M Mintz and Michael Smart), “Incentives for Public Investment under Fiscal Rules” (page 10) “To produce health services, governments employ doctors and nurses and construct hospital buildings. The hospital buildings are obviously capitol inputs used in producing health services and should be amortized under capitol budgets and doctor and nurses salaries should be expensed. The health services, however, are arguably consumption goods to reduce pain and suffering even though an element of public capitol might be entailed if current health services improve the long-run productivity of workers (who later remit taxes to the government). Some judgment is needed to determine whether any health service expenditure should amortise under public accounts since a majority of health expenditures tend to be focussed at the end of a person’s life”.

(Page 12) “The Maastricht Treaty contains a provision requiring member states to avoid running “excessive” deficits, whether or not they have adopted the euro. A protocol to the treaty specifies in turn that members’ fiscal stance is to be judged by two criteria; whether the budget deficit is less than 3 percent of GDP, and whether the total government debt exceeds 60 percent of GDP. If the Council determines a deficit is excessive, there is a procedure to encourage its elimination. The Council may issue warnings and impose deposit requirements and, eventually, fines. The SGP corresponds to the provisions of the Maastricht excessive deficits procedure, but it clarifies the terms, introduces monitoring procedures, and it gives the Council greater teeth in the event of violations. Under the SGP, deficits may exceed the 3 percent level if the excess is “exceptional, temporary, and limited in size”. Some discretion is accorded to the Council in determining whether this provision should apply”

(Page 13)“The UK has also moved to accrual accounting for financial reporting. For budgetary purposes, the UK Government focuses on two main “flow” measures of the fiscal stance.

(i) adherence to the golden rule is measured by the current budget surplus, defined as difference between tax revenues and current public spending (including depreciation):

(ii) the government also reports public sector net borrowing (PSNB). Both measures are accrual-based concepts: the PSNB can be contrasted with the previous use of the Public Sector Net Cash Requirement (PSNCR), which was essentially the cash deficit.

“ In particular, proceeds from privatisation and other asset sales are excluded from the PSNB, but not the PSNCR. Both the current budget surplus and the PSNB are cyclically adjusted before the fiscal rules are applied”.

“These rules impact on public investment spending. The UK for example is WELL WITHIN the 60 percent gross debt limit specified in the Maastricht Treaty (its own 40 per cent net debt limit is surely more binding). Net borrowing in the UK is currently about 1,8 percent of GDP, and substantially less on cyclically adjusted bases. While an increase in investment there is planned, it may be that the UK Government’s reliance on largely off-budget Public Finance Initiatives means that the Maastricht deficit limit is unlikely ever to be more binding than the golden rule policy” End of quotes.

Although this paper is mainly about the NHS, and the mess we are in through PFI/PPP, the latter two have been used in many areas, the London underground for one major venture. Recorded in Hansard for the 24^th July 2006, Col 1387W A question was asked about PFI Contracts. The answer given was, “There are currently over 500 projects that have been signed and are now in operation. Around a further 200 projects have reached financial close, but are yet to become operational. The combined capitol value of all signed projects is over £48 billion. Information on PFI projects that have reached financial close may be found from the ‘PFI Signed Projects List’ on the Treasury’s public website”.

“At the time of the Budget around 80 projects were at the preferred bidder stage and around 155 had yet to appoint a preferred bidder. The estimated capitol value of these projects is around £26 billion”. End of Quote.

I am looking at PFI as, ‘on the never, never’. If I ran up hire purchase debts into the hundred thousands, it would not just take me thirty years to pay off, but it seems as if I might expect my children and grandchildren to continue paying off my debts long after I have left this earth. From all the businesses that I have found, this Country will ‘be in hock’ if not bankrupt, and what for eh? So that we can either eventually join the euro, and/or stay in the European Union and be governed by it forever? How can one Government, a Labour Government at that, that is supposed to be all for the people, run up so much debt and what on earth for? Labour has taken something very special from which each and every one of us at some time in our lives, have been glad the NHS is there for us, yet is prepared to see it trashed just to remain in what is, without doubt, about turning into a federal, political state and a totalitarian state at that. Many MPs we now know, (and can prove) knew that from before we joined the European Community.

My poor father, a very strong true Labour man, must be spinning in his grave. Mind you, he would not recognise these men of Labour as the Labour’ he once so admired.

George Monbiot woke up to what was going on in this field on 27^th June 2002 when he wrote, “PPPs are a Public Fraud”. He began his article with “Poor visibility corrupts; invisibility corrupts absolutely.” He wrote, (please remember this was written in 2002), “ As the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) points out, the government allows public bodies to reclaim the VAT on privately funded projects, but not on publicly backed schemes, thereby favouring private finance by 17.5 percent. National health Service trusts have to pay the Treasury a 6 per cent “capitol charge” on the buildings they own. Private builders have no such obligation. The Government gives local authorities an annual grant of 11.5 percent of the value of the Public Finance Initiative scheme they commission, but there is no corresponding sweetener for publicly funded projects. Private financiers are permitted to use “discount rates” way out of line with inflation. This false accounting masks the appalling value for money offered by private finance. As the British Medical Journal (BMJ) report shows, 39 per cent of the price of PFI hospitals is incurred by the extra cost of borrowing. Governments have a better credit rating than corporations, so they can borrow more cheaply. As interest is levied across the 25 or 30 years of the project, small differences in rates contribute vastly to the cost.”

He asks, “So why is the Government forcing public bodies to fleece the taxpayer? In 1997, it claimed that the purpose of the PFI was to reduce government borrowing. But PFI does not reduce borrowing: instead it defers and extends it.” One of the headlines used was, “The policy has the potential to bankrupt the UK”, and I believe that to be true. End of quotes.

How on earth did we get into this mess? Under funding of the NHS to begin with? In the mid 1990’s, under the Conservative Government of John Major, a number of hospitals effectively opted out of central NHS to become Trusts. Can anyone else remember the waste of money on new logos? At around the same time we started to see or hear of hospitals and medical centres being built using PFI. Which as we already know involves the building of public buildings by private companies, which are then “rented back” to the NH Trust at a higher long-term price which is only to be expected because the firms have to make a profit to stay in business. Under the NHS, the taxpayer owns the hospitals and paid the salaries. Where is our compensation for losing that asset? We are expected to pay far more now under PFI.

This disastrous PPP/PFI adventure has almost gone off the scale, under New Labour. To me, we are beginning to see ‘rationing’, we are being kept fit, we have to lose weight (might we not be treated if we are overweight?) We have to stay healthier so we are discouraged every which way from smoking. (Will we be refused treatment if we DO still smoke?) Our children may not be allowed the “Gob-stoppers” we once used to stuff our mouths with because the “We are watching what you eat” patrol are on the lookout, what the children eat at meal times. (Animal farm was but a comic compared to today’s lot)

In the “Health Unions Briefing for MPs”. July 2006, it becomes obvious the Unions are concerned, for they “recognise that across England (Scotland etc are devolved) NHS organisations are being forced to make cuts which affect patient services. Trusts have been told by the Government that they have to pay off their debts by the end of the year and are having to cut jobs and services in order to meet this target”. “Nearly one third of all trusts are in debt. There have been a growing number of compulsory redundancies in trusts across England. Although these have, largely, been dealt with through freezing posts and natural waste there are a whole range of measures taking place such as closure of departments and severe cuts in education and training, which will have a huge impact on standards of care and services to patients, both in the short and long term.”

Although there is a great deal more to this subject, I will say ‘finally’ in looking to Hansard on the last day before recess in the House of Commons where there is a mixture of questions and comments from different MPs that reveal what is happening (or not happening) in their area re Health care and in the hospitals. It is not only enlightening, but also frightening. It may well bring anger in the revealing. The closing of wards, beds and hospitals could be prevented if we came out of the European Union now.

We could build and pay up front for the hospitals we need if we did not have to obey EU laws or pay our alleged “Share” of the EU budget that is wasted, wasted, wasted. We could do what we liked with our own money; we most certainly would not have to be held back by the Stability and Growth Pact. We would become a sovereign State once again and our own politicians would have to do the job we pay them for from the day they are elected. The Union is still attempting to become the all-powerful state it wants to be, (It is stealthily and undemocratically working toward that end now) it must become one without the United Kingdom of Great Britain for we will indeed be “Better off out”. Anne Palmer.

Notes: Others quoted in the paper above. Jack Mintz is the Deloitte and Touch LLP Professor of Taxation. J L Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and President and CEO of the CD Howe Institute. Michael Smart is Associate Professor, Dept of Economics at the University of Toronto. The paper was prepared as part of the World Bank’s Latin American Regional studies program.

Last day before recess,

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm060725/debtext/60725-1069.htm I urge you to read it.

Works noted and read, from Dr Mica Panic (Fellow, Selwyn College Cambridge and Vice Chairman, UN Committee for development Policy. George Monbiot is the author of Captive State: The corporate takeover of Britain. He is also honorary Professor at the Department of Politics in Keele.

Bevan Brittan LLP. Works of Sir Peter Gershon. Works of Professor Allyson Pollock in Chair of Health and Policy and Health Services Research at UCL and Director of R & D at UCL Hospitals NHS Trust. Work of Michael Burnett, Lecturer-EIPA Maastricht. Government Research Papers on PFI

COM(2004) 327 (30.4.2004)

Unquote

The NHS is a "moral mistake" - Senior Establishment Figure

Charles Moore, former longstanding editor of the Daily Telegraph, has slammed the shambles that is the NHS, which Osborne should have brutally pruned in his budget yesterday, in place of further taxing the North Sea oil industry and one of our main hopes for the slim chance of an eventual economic recovery. Furthermore and even more critically at present, North Sea energy in a declining phase thus needs extra tax incentives as it provides a protection against the ever growing middle-east chaos. The oil companies will inevitably be forced to recoup the two billion pounds of extra costs raised by raising their prices to Brtitain's motorists, the UK market being a distinct tax area which includes UK Continental Shelf activities.

Looking to the disgraceful NHS, where waste, inefficiency and indolence thrive in an equally unsanitary environment, the latest report arriving in my immediate circle, for example, being that of a young mother suffering an infected wound some weeks after a caesarean section.

The report referred to in this post's headline, appeared in the Spectator Magazine on 19th February, overlooked on first reading.The statement is so significant, I quote it in full herewith, it is linked here:

The National Health Service has now lived almost long enough to test its claim of full treatment ‘from cradle to grave’. 

Certainly most of those now dying under its care have paid taxes for it throughout their working lives, in the name of this proposition. Now we hear from the Health Service Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, that it frequently neglects old people, often to the extent of killing them. Why does this surprise anyone? It is in the nature of a service which forbids genuine choice to patients that it will end up suiting the convenience of those who work in it rather than meeting the needs of the sick. Until money truly follows the patient, each old person walking into a hospital will be seen by those working in it as an additional burden, getting in the way of treating others. More than 60 years of state medicine have almost killed off the original Christian ‘Big Society’ motives behind nursing and replaced them with trade union ones. The wider culture increasingly sees ‘assisted’ dying as positively virtuous, and the contempt that this implies for the value of an old person’s life therefore spreads through the nursing profession. The old people now being killed by the NHS are of the generation which most fervently believed in it. Their hopes are being dashed. We shall never have humane health care in this country until we understand that the creation of the NHS — though not the subsidy of health care for the poor — was a moral mistake.

This blog editor has crusaded against the NHS since his first experience of it in the nineteen-fifties, read one recent quote here. It is refresshing to have such a senior former mainstream journalist join this cause, the essential point is still being missed however, this being, if normally healthy individuals cannot at the outset be made responsible for their own personal hygiene, physical health, fitness and well-being, why should we expect them to be responsible for all the other aspects of a normal human life?

More from this blog on the NHS is here.

British Government sells Britons' organs to Foreigners in the UK

The disgraceful system that the NHS always seemed doomed to become has finally been found out in one of the most shameful incidents that now occur almost daily under what Churchill foretold would become its potential Gestapo like bureaucracy (see the link on my post of yesterday). The Sunday Times, linked here, reports that the NHS has been selling organ transplants and the following quotes give the essence of the scandal:

The liver transplants took place at NHS hospitals, despite severe shortages that mean many British patients die while waiting for an organ that could save their lives.

The documents disclose that 40 patients from Greece and Cyprus received liver transplants in the UK paid for by their governments. Donated livers were also given to people from non-European Union countries including Libya, the United Arab Emirates, China and Israel.

The surgeons who carry out the transplants receive a share of the operation fee — believed to be about £20,000 — as all the work is done privately in NHS hospitals.

It comes as a record 8,000 Britons are on NHS lists waiting for transplant organs. About 260 British patients are waiting for a liver.

May I point my readers to the link at the end of my posting of yesterday which gives a neat presentation on the history of the NHS in detail, excluding the destruction of the national character which even Churchill did not foresee as an inevitable side effect. Excluding smokers, the obese and other groups from treatment can never be the answer but there are workable alternatives; the example across the Channel in France works quite well but still consumes too much of the national wealth! Think what a monster this NHS has become - selling livers to foreigners while British subjects wait and die, was this the spirit of Beveridge? Where is the political party with the courage to propose reform?

The fatal flaw of the NHS will destroy our country.

The Speaker of the House of Commons has today granted an emergency  debate under Standing Order 24 on the NHS Bill.

Fact Number One on the NHS

Medical science is advancing so fast with treatments so costly that the goal of free universal health care is now a total impossibility beyond utopia!

In pursuit of this impossible dream Britain's dwindling wealth is being squandered in a hopeless attempt to hide from this reality. Those benefiting from this "get out from austerity" so far provided by this coalition government, seem prepared to elude reality and sponsor a miriad other untruths to maintain their privileged positions in society by means of this sordid avoidance of the true facts. Many examples of such devious schemes have been evident during the passage of this disputed NHS Bill.

The debate today, coming as it does just before the budget statement, should address the above basic fact. The NHS Bill should be abandoned and the budget revised to impose swingeing cuts right across the NHS. Huge sacrifices in health care provision should always have been the obvious starting point for righting the nation's economy.

The disgrace that is the British NHS

All the papers are full of just a few of the woes that afflict the National Health Service in Britain this morning.

Some of us foresaw the problems arising a long, long time ago, and in that respect I thought it worth quoting a passage from my novel, written in the mid to late nineteen-nineties, mainly about an EU crisis, but here touching upon the trickly politics regarding NHS and its role in the British psyche:

NHS from Millennium Blitzkrieg

Seeking urgent public spending cuts the Conservative PM and his Chancellor meet in the former's  Downing Street flat: (Page 84 of the novel which was set in the year 2014):

“Well, I’ve one crazy idea, but you’re not going to like it.”

“Go on then!”

“The National Health Service,” David hesitantly muttered.

“The NHS!” Michael looked astounded. “What about the NHS?”

“Well,” David reluctantly continued, “it’s by far the largest item in our budget and we don’t really get a lot for it. Let’s face it, governments have coddled it for nearly seventy years and thrown cash at it like there’s no tomorrow. In spite of all that money you couldn’t really say the country has got anything like an adequate health care program. Waiting lists seem to get longer and longer. Every time there is an outbreak of flu hospital corridors fill with patients and ambulances queue for miles. Meantime we train nurses to leave and then sign on with agencies at rates we can’t afford to pay. There’s tremendous scope for huge cuts in spending you know…..” He trailed off seeing a thunderous look on Michael’s face.

“We can’t meddle with the NHS!” Michael exploded. “Do you want me to go down in history as the man who committed electoral suicide and destroyed his own party? What the hell are you suggesting? Pull the plug on it!”

“Not totally,” David explained, seeing it was too late to go back. “I see it as a bit like the Royal Yacht Britannia at the end of the last century….a source of tremendous public pride and affection, but nevertheless so old and decrepit that no amount of extra money, repairs or even replacement parts can salvage it. Sooner or later someone’s going to have to bite the bullet and send it to the scrap yard.”

“Well, that someone is definitely not going to be me,” Michael somewhat less loudly asserted. “What in heaven’s name are you proposing to do with the sick?”

“I’ve only just started to formulate my ideas, but what I had in mind was to announce no further funding, hand the titles of the hospitals, doctors’ surgeries and other fixed assets entirely over to the medical staff employed in them as compensation for loss of salary. They could then keep on the administrators as they see fit and charge for their services as they deem appropriate. We would save billions of pounds and could reduce the standard rate of tax quite substantially, once the EU funding crisis is over, to help people meet their medical bills.”

Michael stared at David as though he’d taken on the form of an alien from outer space. “What about the pensioners and the poorer people? They’re to be left to die in their beds, I presume?”

“No, no!” David countered, heartily wishing he’d never started the conversation. “I believe there should be some form of safety net, but in the short term we’d have to rely on a bit of social engineering by the doctors themselves. Veterinarian surgeons have been doing it for years. Little old ladies from council flats with only their pets for company rarely meet the costs of expensive surgery or other treatment. These costs invariably are re-proportioned, probably ending up as a little extra charge on a wealthy farmer or race horse breeder’s bill.”

Michael regarded his colleague and finally exhaled. “Sometimes, David, I wonder if you’re really cut out for politics. Things are not always as simple as in Big Oil, you know.”

“That’s a bit rich, Michael. After all, your instructions on giving me this coordination job were to think the unthinkable and rule nothing out, however drastic.”

Michael, seeing the hurt look on David’s face, smiled and quickly apologised. “I’m sorry. You’re right, of course. I guess this whole business is putting me on edge. Let’s just keep that idea of yours as a very last resort and mention it no further outside this room.”

§§§§§

Whether my forecast of a terminal crisis for the EU in 2014 turns out equally accurate, of course, yet remains to be seen! Although looking pretty certain this morning in my view.

Britain is beyond rotten

The leading article in The Times today is headlined "Something Rotten" it may be read from here. The topic is the pension and tax arrangements of the outgoing head of the 70 per cent now tax payer owned Scottish Bank RBS. It describes an outrage. The Daily Telegraph meanwhile has a report of up to 1,200 unnecessary deaths at one single NHS hospital, read here. This should be no surprise, on 18th January 2008 The Guardian reported that 17,000 unnecessary deaths had been caused in the NHS, read it here. I started the New Year on 3rd January this year with a post, linked here, on the NHS which began as follows: A New Year needs a new start! The NHS lies at the root of Britain's now nearly terminal problems. If individuals will not take responsibility for their own health and well being they will not take responsibility elsewhere. The next day The Sunday Times carried a report of the NHS being in the organ sales business, read my post from here. Look at any area of Society in England, neglect imposed by the incompetent Scottish thugs who largely govern, unemployment figures rose today to 2.029 million yet Lord Mandelson (three times the subject of scandals over questionable dealings yet ennobled and running huge swathes of government policy) denying on TV that job centres in England have closed when all know they have and that millions more English citizens now fear for their jobs not just their lives in run- down and shabby health services. Money being printed by the BoE will further reduce the real amounts available for expenditure whilst providing a fleeting charade of passing prosperity - no wonder University Chancellors have divined that they will soon need to at least double tuition fees. The IMF today confirmed that Britain's recession will be the worst in the world in my view simply because it has the worst Government and zero opposition! Yes there is no opposition under David Cameron while Government Ministers lie and demonstrate their ignorance in almost every area of their supposed responsibilities. Sir Fred Goodwin is a shameful example of Britain, but scratch the surface and there is far worse within.

NHS now turns to killing off the new born!

The week before last I posted a blog with the very startling headline "The NHS is a 'moral mistake' - Senior Establishment Figure" which linked to an article describing how elderly people were being deliberately neglected in a manner which amounted to murder. Note the following direct quote:

Now we hear from the Health Service Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, that it frequently neglects old people, often to the extent of killing them.

This morning the Independent reveals unsurprising facts on infant mortality within the NHS. Read it from here 'British maternity wards in crisis', while the Daily Telegraph, in a column by Martin Beckford, asks 'How did David Cameron get in this mess' opening with a picture of a vandalised poster of Cameron making his stupid pre-election pledge on the NHS, which to this writer carries more of a message on his having handed the governance of the country to the Germans, rather than any statement on health!

This posting is however mainly about the NHS, for which there is only one cure, just as in the Treaties delivering our subjugation to the EU, both must be scrapped. The country's navel gazing on health blinds it to our poverty and the lack of sufficient sovereignty which prevents us from reversing it.

Can Cameron and Clegg grasp these fundamental facts? Nothing they have done to date indicates that they have sufficient vision or even the ability to discern the true awfulness of the situation!

Broken Britain

A good article in the Telegraph this morning from Iain Martin, linked here. My comment is here: Quite so and well spotted. I have been waiting all week for somebody, indeed anybody in the media or world of blogs, to pick up on the dreadful portion of Brown's speech on his personal experiences of the NHS. Are there any left in Britain sufficiently untouched by the national obsession with the marxist NHS not able to recognise that care and concern for the patient is something possessed by almost all who take up a career in the medical professions. The NHS cares for none it is a centralised, bureaucratic monstrosity that inefficiently consumes and wastes a large proportion of the national income, trails the rest of the developed world in health care and with its flawed ideology drags the country downwards in many other areas of national life. Making adults responsible for paying for their own health provision by scrapping the NHS would probably be one of the best first steps to solving many of the nations other ills mentioned above. Will we hear this at Blackpool? You bet we wont! Posted by Martin Cole on September 30, 2007 8:18 AM

The NHS is sucking the lifeblood from Britain

Now the fascists exempt from any expenditure cuts are demanding the right to breath test all pregnant women for evidence of smoking. Tobacco has nowhere near wrought as much damage on the country as has the message delivered by the NHS that the state is responsible for individual health! Oppression starts with the notion that we are not individually in charge of our own fates. Cutting state funding to the NHS will quickly show how caring our medical professions still remain. Local provision of care for the truly sick and incapacitated will return a sense of community to towns cities and villages up and down the country. The great charitable hospitals built by the Victorians were largely as a result of foundations and charitable donations stolen by the state in the chaos that followed World War II. How much does your GP pocket each year? What right do supposed non-fascists have to impose compulsory breath tests? Read the report here. Maybe the real policy of the Coalition Government is to reveal the true waste and inefficiency of the NHS by leaving them sufficient rope to hang themselves, if so then "Bravo" are law and order, justice, education, helping the unemployed etc., all really less important than this kind of nonsense?

The 'Cloud Cuckoo Land' of the UK Property Market and NHS

The Daily Telegraph's Personal Finance Correspondent writes this week that UK property prices return to 2007 levels until 2014. Read the entirely incredible article from here. Elsewhere the same paper reports that the IMF predicts Britain's gross debt to GDP ratio will reach 109.7% by 2015 (Le Figaro reports the IMF predicts 115% by the same year for France, our supposed ideal partner for future aircract carriers on which more tomorrow). The Telegraph this morning quotes a second month of property price falls, read here and concludes: The average home currently costs £169,347, according to Nationwide. Yet Myra Butterworth, Personal Finance Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, informs us that homeowners "will have to wait until 2014 for a recovery, when average prices will reach £226,900" We recall that Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, astute finance commentator on the same newspaper, last November reported Société Générale advising its clients of potentiel global collapse and suggesting they buy "sovereign bonds (to) "generate turbo-charged returns" mimicking the secular slide in yields seen in Japan as the slump ground on. At one point Japan's 10-year yield dropped to 0.40pc" What else was forecast in that perceptive report: "Governments have already shot their fiscal bolts. Even without fresh spending, public debt would explode within two years to 105pc of GDP in the UK, 125pc in the US and the eurozone, and 270pc in Japan. Worldwide state debt would reach $45 trillion, up two-and-a-half times in a decade.

(UK figures look low because debt started from a low base. Mr Ferman said the UK would converge with Europe at 130pc of GDP by 2015 under the bear case).

The underlying debt burden is greater than it was after the Second World War, when nominal levels looked similar. Ageing populations will make it harder to erode debt through growth. "High public debt looks entirely unsustainable in the long run. We have almost reached a point of no return for government debt," it said."

And the crowning UK National disaster that is the NHS, read this gob-smacking nonsense from the Daily Mail this morning:

£130,000 to quit now for NHS bosses facing axe as plans are drawn up to sack up to 20,000 managers

Does Lansley not know the nation is bust. Cash from public employees and those sitting on large unearned house equity are the only future source for repaying the debts if private enterprise is to be allowed to play its historical role of wealth creation. Cap public pensions at three times the OAP as a maximum, recoup the wealth with a five year reducing property tax as earlier proposed on this blog (read the Brown Levy from here). In reality there are no other choices!

25% Cuts everywhere to save the sacred cow of the NHS!

Only Overseas Aid will be exempt from the 25% cuts everywhere else in government spending to allow the outdated, inefficient and obscene relic of Marxism that is the NHS to continue its grotesque squandering of the national income and what is worse the country's ever growing borrowing of overseas funds. If the public attending the Channel 4 TV debate on public sector cuts of one hundred billion pounds this week are representative of the nation at large then 75% of the nation are in agreement with this strategy (one reason I choose not to live in the lunatic asylum that England has become is that I believe the staggering insanity this figure represents as fact). Only when the individuals represented by this 75% number are sufficiently screwed by the 25% across the board cuts everywhere else will elected politicians have the courage to take a scalpel to the NHS, winter fuel allowance, universal child benefits and all the other trappings of the extreme socialist society that is the UK as daily promoted in the media, particularly the BBC, itself exempt from any pain in this far left, blindfolded Chancellor's budget!

Britain is Broke - George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer!

“The British Government has run out of money because all the money was spent in the good years,” the Chancellor said. “The money and the investment and the jobs need to come from the private sector.” Daily Telegraph, 27/02/12

Link.

All well and good, clearly obvious facts, known by all sensible people for several years! So what is the job that should now be being done by the Government and all the other institutions and facilities of the State?

First; those responsible must be brought to account and punished with the full force of the law for both their criminal negligence and where it can be proven, outright fraud. They are of course spread out everywhere across British society, mainly within the public services and institutions, (but not exclusivey see T. Dan Smith and John Poulson).

Second; large areas of public expenditure are wasted. That waste is a function of public administration, it is most evident within the MOD and NHS, but exists across central and local government. The NHS reform has become a farce, not least because an individual's health should be that individual's own primary responsibility. Scrap the NHS.  Withdraw the major part of the cost of working adults' healthcare, from the state, and replace it upon the individual.

Both the above steps might bring home to the wider public the severity of the actual crisis the country today faces!

 It will be poltically difficult for both the Coalition parties, but the senior figures of the third, should initially be safely behind bars and unlikely to benefit until the economy has brilliantly improved, which with these two steps, it is practically guaranteed so to do!

NHS Stupidity & Political play acting

No reform of the NHS, nor repair ofthe nation's finances, can occur unless the NHS becomes mainly funded through majority self-insurance. Meantime national hypocrisy becomes the order of the day and the end result is as shown in this video:



In the accompanying Daily Telegraph article, the incident is explained with this significant quote:

Mr Nunn had previously written to The Daily Telegraph about the “dress code” imposed on his hospital.

“I now have to half undress to see my patients, and have certainly not been provided with any protective uniform, any more than I was provided with a white coat,” he wrote in 2007.

“While I wholeheartedly endorse any measure to reduce the risk of infection, I cannot see this but as window dressing. The problem of cross-infection in hospitals in Britain is caused by an adherence to the use of open wards instead of individual rooms, and by the level of bed-occupancy caused by the reduction of total bed numbers, and the need to ‘hot-bed’ to achieve government-dictated targets.”

Making the NHS the rock upon which stands Britain!

As Showbiz the London Olympics opening ceremony, with odd exceptions, was fantastic spectacle. As a statement of what Britain has become during my lifetime it was to me almost 100% spot on. The quite frankly completely weird dance to the oddly rendered hymn "Abide with me" being a particular case in point.

At the centre of it all was the NHS, those grotesque letter combinations (representing as they do Olympic Gold levels of managerial incompetence and waste at almost every level of its delivery,) even putting in an appearance at the centre of the stadium, with the massed rows of metal framed beds, with their child-patient occupants, pointing up the national obsession with the absolute right to free health care at every level of society, regardless of the self-neglect causing the complaints, or the cost to other tax-payers in attempting to rectify them with money being no object and often in the face of nature.

The absolute belief in the NHS, itself a major cause of my choosing not to live in my native country of England, not for health care reasons as I avoid medical profession encounters as far as I am possibly able on grounds of both cowardice and fear of quackery, but more for the muddled thought processes such a belief requires.

Perhaps this ceremony, highlighting the absurdity and huge cost of the wastefulness and complete social injustice delivered by such a healthcare system, will prompt a questioning as to its point and purpose in the minds of the people of Britain, and begin to effect a change towards the self-reliance for which the country once stood, which change is evermore essential if the age of austerity and EU corporatism (otherwise formerly known as National Socialism and Fascism) is to be brought to an end. If it manages that then the £11 Billion costs the Olympics have now cost will eventually yield a dividend.

On a positive note the opening theme from rural idyll to satanic mills was brilliant, the forging of the hoops absolutely spectacular and inspired while the final flame lighting in the cauldron being raised upwards completely breath-taking. Overall I enjoyed the concert outside Buckingham Palace for the Queen's  Diamond Jubilee marginally more on TV

Anti-EU Campaign links and update

DEFENDING HEALTHCARE AND SERVICES (Circulation: Campaign for an Independent Britain supporters and Petition signatories) Dear Friend Many people have long been concerned about the effect Private Funding Initiatives (PFIs) and general cost reductions are having on our health service. People are asking why, if the British economy is doing so well, do we continue to face cuts and closures in our NHS? That is why Campaign for an Independent Britain launched our ‘Support for Nurses and Pensioners – or Billions for Brussels?’ leaflet at the TUC conference earlier this year. The response has been fantastic; we’ve had to do three re-prints in as many months. People are clamouring to be told the truth – that both the privatization and the general cost-cuts in the NHS are as a DIRECT result of the billions we lavish on the European Union and because of Brussels-enforced PFI programmes. Please order and distribute more of these leaflets if you can (there’s a link to the order form at the end of this newsletter.) And, if you’re able, do attend our important meeting on this subject, to be held in Leicester on 25 November. (Details from CIB Vice Chairman, George West, at gc.west@btopenworld.com. Together with other Parliamentarians in both Houses of Parliament, I have regularly called upon the Government to conduct and publish a roper cost/benefit analysis into the value (if any) of staying in the European Union. These calls are always brushed aside with a lofty ‘the benefits are obvious.’ Yet when the Swiss government conducted exactly such an analysis earlier this year they concluded that EU membership could cost up to NINE TIMES as much as staying out! (Very sensibly, the Swiss have long decided to have nothing to do with the EU). Now, our friends at the Bruges Group have launched an campaign to pressure the UK government into conducting a proper study into the costs of EU membership. I hope you will support them – there is a link to the Bruges Group campaign from our site at http://www.eurosceptic.org.uk. We’ve been inundated with replies to our SwitchOffThe.EU website launched the week before last. This, you will recall, is in response to the EU proposal that we will all have to drive around with our headlights on in broad daylight. The issue is not whether this is a good idea or not (although motoring organizations and even the Department of Transport say it might actually result in MORE traffic accidents) but that such decisions should be taken in our own country, by our own lawmakers – not by foreign bureaucrats. Please forward the email message published at http://www.eurosceptic.org.uk/ campaign/c06s1.html to alert people to this issue. What all these campaigning issues have in common is that they emphasise how powerless our Government is in the face of the Brussels machine, and the extent to which they will try to cover up the facts of their impotence. Otherwise, of course, people might start asking searching questions regarding why we pay our Ministers and Civil Servants huge salaries when all they do is rubber stamp insane Directives from their masters in Brussels. Faced with the task before us, and the conspiracy of silence from our politicians, I make no apology for ending with an urgent appeal: if you can help us financially, either by joining Campaign for an Independent Britain and/or by making a donation, please do so. There are details of how you can help at our website http://www.cibhq.co.uk. Thank you for your support. Yours sincerely LORD STODDART OF SWINDON Chairman, Campaign for an Independent Britain ================== USEFUL LINKS Campaign for an Independent Britain: http://www.cibhq.co.uk Campaigning website: http://www.eurosceptic.org.uk/campaign General facts about Britain and the EU: http://www.eurosceptic.org.uk NHS information and leaflet order line: http://www.eurosceptic.org.uk/ health CIB Head Office 81 Ashmole Street London SW8 1NF Tel: 020 8340 0314 Fax: 020 7582 7021 Email: info@cibhq.co.uk

Lord Stoddart regrets that owning to pressure of work on the campaign it may not be possible to reply to individual enquiries.

The NHS cannot continue

The Independent in an interesting series of articles this morning on the new era of austerity for Britain describes the squeeze to be put on the ridiculous NHS, link here. As repeatedly pointed out on this blog, if people cannot be made responsible for their own health they are likely to become irresponsible in other areas! The Guardian also tries to alert its readers to the reality behind the spin of Demented Darling's budget, read here.

NHS to become centre of US battle of Collectivism vs. Individualism?

Just as I suggested last Saturday, Paul Ryan's nomination as running mate for the Republican Party, in the coming Presidential Elections, is likely to propel Obama into the White House for a second term thus creating complete economic collapse in the USA under the massive extra debt that will inevitably arise. Voters in the USA seem unlikely to voluntarily opt for reality.

President Obama yesterday, as reported in the Daily Telegraph this morning, could mishandle this scenario by focusing the public's attention on the true awfulness of socialised medecine by offering the Republicans the opportunity to use the example of the widely known failings of the NHS in their campaign. Note this passage from the linked report:

Writing in the Wall Street Journal in 2009, Mr Ryan said that universal healthcare made citizens "dependent" on the state and unwilling to back necessary cuts to government spending.

"We need only look to Great Britain and elsewhere to see the effects of socialized health care on the broader economy. Once a large number of citizens get their health care from the state, it dramatically alters their attachment to government," he said.

As the further evidence of the state of Britain's socialism inspired failings develop over the coming months, the rail fare rise this morning being but one example, it is possible that this could be a sufficiently stark warning for US voters that the Republican Presidential team could win through, particulalrly if that same socialism finally brings the euro to break-up before polling day, as now seems evermore likely!

The Looters and Moochers (as defined by Ayn Rand,) are rampant and run everything in Britain, further evidence of which was adequately provided in the State Controlled Displays in the Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, what a terrifying prospect for any typical free-thinking US elector!

The Slog report on a possible halt to building work on the new ECB HQ in Frankfurt, giving one further straw in that wind this morning.

A Murderous Prime Minister?

Consider this question asked by the Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the chamber of the House of Commons yesterday accompanied by a hand gesture to his own cabinet ranked alongside (as reported in Hansard): I come back to this: do we want to get rid of the objective and, indeed, the guarantee that within two weeks someone suffering from cancer can be seen by a clinician? Do we really want to go backwards on that? Surely that must be a national objective which all people can support. Earlier the Leader of the Liberal Democrats had put these telling points: Does the Prime Minister believe that the culture of frenzied target setting that has been introduced into the NHS by his Government had any role to play whatsoever in the horrific events that occurred at Stafford general hospital? Nonsense reply Mr. Clegg: When doctors at that hospital have confirmed that they were instructed by their managers to abandon seriously ill patients and to treat people with minor ailments instead in order to meet the Prime Minister’s targets, it is not enough to talk of reviews, inquiries and to blame other people. Will he scrap the mad targets that make hospitals tick boxes rather than look after the desperately ill? A National Health Service absolutely requires some form of rationing. Targets rather than waiting lists result in the situation described by Mr Clegg in parliament yesterday. Voters have chosen to be lied to by their politicians on the matter of the NHS for decades - continuing on this route requires the greater British public to become or continue as deluded as their highly dangerous Prime Minister.

Heywood's never-ending cuts, Doctors discontent and braving Britain's bankruptcy.

Cruising in the Med some twenty odd years ago my step-son, then around 11 years old suffered a nasty collision between his face and an out of control winch handle. We put into Gibraltar and at the Royal Naval hospital he was x-rayed, treated and comforted and combined with the delights of the islands and coasts of our cruise, he suddenly professed a desire to join the RN as a career. I cautioned that holding joint US citizenship as he did, that should he wish to pursue a "seagoing" career, he had better aim at the US Navy.

Doctors and Consultants in the NHS and Mandarin Senior Civil Servants, ripping off Britain's taxpayers in a multitude of highly discreet ways as they do, may not have enjoyed similar options, but coming as they mainly do from the well-educated levels of the upper middle-classes they should have foreseen that the institution which they were joining for a lifelong career, was led by obviously dishonest manipulators - the politicians of the two main parties and was therefore heading for certain and early bankruptcy.

These powerful groups are now stuck with the results of their earlier career decisions, just as the middle and upper management of such companies as Enron, with no knowledge or culpability for the mispractises at the top, were stuck with their redundancy. Read what Britain's Senior Civil Servant now has to say on the nation's prospects for the coming years in the Daily Telegraph today from here.

Britain was a prosperous world trading country and its public servants enjoyed the benefits that such accrued. The upper middle classes, have supported our entry into the EU, the effects of which THEY are now suffering. In Asia, Australasia and elsewhere there are incredibly prosperous booming economies. Our upper class influential opinion formers have all along the way supported policies that have put trade with these areas beyond Britain's reach and bound us tightly to a sclerotic, cancerous and now barely living corpse that is the EU.

In the process thay have removed the democratic accoutrements that would have earlier allowed full debate on these issues and driven us to a sensible and soundly based national financial future which the country does not possess today.

I am afraid the senior civil servants of Britain, attract my extreme distaste while the doctors of the dreadful NHS get none of my sympathy. These are the people who have set our course towards the rocks, taking "industrial action" as we are about to hit, when we could be turning about, seems odd and ignores the long-coming realities!

Amy Winehouse & Rebecca Leighton - A Double Dose of Despair?

Amy Whitehouse, died at 27 years of age, on the same day that Rebecca Leighton, 27 years of age, was charged with criminal damage with intent to endanger life, following the deaths of five patients at Stepping Hill hospital. Co-incidence perhaps, yet both youngsters surely epitomize the despair that the baby boomer generation has passed to so many of their children.

Take the words of Amy Whitehouse’s greatest hit, “They tried to make me go to rehab, I said, “ no,no,no”. Consider the press pictures of the partying Rebecca Leighton, but consider too what may have motivated her - trained as  she was as a nurse, in an environment of cost cutting and huge administrative incompetence. What was the attitude of those who should have been her role models from Stepping Hill hospital to the very peak of the NHS within succeeding Cabinets. Hypocrisy was and is the ethos of the NHS, contempt for the sick and elderly the truly sickening end result.

Was news of the evil acts emanating from Norway the final straw for Winehouse? We will never know!

Few of us who had the duty, to care for and nurture today’s younger adult generation, can examine our own lifestyles with a completely clear conscience, I would wager. What motivated Anders Behring Breivik, we shall soon, no doubt, hear in his own words. Those who should be in the dock with Rebecca Leighton, we shall never know, but let us hope, that they themselves, at least have some remaining shreds of decency and self-awareness to at least have a clue.

The above post will eventually be also published on "Orphans of Liberty"