Outside the Westminster Ghetto, the number of people who want to reorganise the NHS is negligible, and a party which had had this in its manifesto would not have won one seat under First Past The Post.
If the Coalition had really believed in this, then it would have said that it was going to legislate for the entire United Kingdom, as Westminster still can if it wants to. But Scotland, Wales and, in this and a number of other cases, Northern Ireland are always allowed to remain recognisably British while the other eighty-five per cent of the population is constantly subjected to the barking mad experiments of the think tank schoolboys. Well, we were until today, anyway.
I would tell those whose antipathy towards the NHS (among other things) proves that they know nothing about this country except that they hate it, to clear off to America. But even there, they are now gearing up for a Presidential Election between the man who gave them socialised medicine and the man from whom he nicked the idea. So, where can she run to now, and why?
Until today, I had been seriously considering emigration to America for the healthcare. But after today, there is no more need.
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Your passion on this subject is obvious, but some of this post is nonsense.
ReplyDeleteIn front of me I have the manifesto of a well-known British political party, in which is proposed, as I read it at the time, a very similar reorganisation of the NHS to the one that is just being abandoned. Hospitals will be accountable to patients through patient control of funding; GPs will be the usual holders of patient budgets and will be in charge of commissioning, foundation trust hospitals will be encouraged to remove NHS hospitals from NHS systems, any health provider will be eligible to be paid the NHS tariff for services bought by GPs for their NHS patients.
That party didn't win a majority of seats, but it did win more than any other. Just because you didn't vote for it doesn't mean lots of people didn't.
On the subject of the application of this reorganisation to England alone, that has a rough justice in the sense that England alone gave a majority to that party (and a substantial one). But clearly, also, all parties have effectively committed to allow the devolved institutions to run without interference. Of course they could intervene in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; as a unionist I wish they would. But it isn't a question of belief in the health policy, but of complicity in the devolution policy.
For the record, and in the interests of full disclosure, I repeat that I don't support this policy, which is a Blairite half-way house. Myself, I would end central government's responsibility for healthcare entirely (because I hate this country, I suppose.) I'm happy to say so, but I don't see any prospect of getting my way, though there are a few of us extremists around who are not allowed near the centres of the party any more.
Alos in the interests of full disclosure, I should reveal that the party referred to is the Conservative party. But of the four features of the reorganisation that I listed, two (and arguably three) were also in the manifesto of the Labour party. They also won a number of seats. But you can't blame me for that.
That's politics...
ReplyDeleteAnd we've won this one.
Indeed you have, and I don't begrudge you the win, not least because I wouldn't have liked the corporatism that resulted from the proposal.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless if your views, or mine for that matter, or any others which you rightly point out are ignored by the Westminster ghetto, are to be effectively heard, then what we need is more of your creative telling of the truth, and less nonsense, however understandably motivated by a great victory.