What Are They Doing To Our Country?

So the polite formalities have been done away with and the Tory Democrats are instigating a new period of Class War. We’ve already had the ‘get on your bike’ rhetoric, so consider this an extension in awfulness - new government, new politics folks!

From the Guardian:

‘The health secretary has unveiled a radical pro-market agenda for the NHS that would permit hospitals to leave public ownership to become "not for profit" companies, hand more consumer powers to patients and allow failing medical centres to go bust.

Andrew Lansley's white paper, which sparked anger from unions and some doctors, could, in the words of one analyst, herald the "denationalisation of healthcare services in England".
The plans could represent the biggest shakeup of the NHS in a generation, with a whole tier of the NHS decapitated: 10 strategic health authorities would be abolished by 2012 and the 150 primary care trusts scrapped by 2013; up to 30,000 managers face being cut or redeployed.
Lansley warned that NHS job losses were "inevitable" but said it was vital to switch cash from bureaucracy into frontline services. "The sick must not pay for the debt crisis left by the previous administration. But the NHS is a priority for reform too. Investment has not been matched by reform. So we will reform the NHS to use those resources more effectively for the benefit of patients."

At the heart of the blueprint are family doctors, who will take over the purchase of care and be overseen by an independent commissioning board and a new economic regulator. England's 35,000 GPs will be handed £80bn of taxpayers' money and be forced to form consortiums by 2013 – there will be no opportunity to opt out of the new system. These 500 consortiums will commission treatment from hospitals on behalf of patients. At present, the NHS works via primary care trusts and the Department of Health determines each trust's spending priorities, which involves managing GPs' surgeries.

The ambition is for GPs, who are, in effect, private businesses with a contract to provide services to the NHS, to help patients choose which hospital to use on the basis of detailed success rates, down to the level of individual surgeons.’

This IS privatisation as far as I am concerned. This is literally the hacking off, the maiming of a public service in order to appease the Profit God. Here we have a 65 year old institution, one of the last bastions of nationalised industry, soon to be cut up because we ‘don’t have enough choice’ in this country. This is such an awful, despicable move in an entirely awful and despicable catalogue IIhave trouble even venting my utter contempt for this policy, for this government and for all those people who helped the Conservatives/Lib Dems into power.

The callousness and the greed and the general vulgarity of this move is made even more breathtaking when once considers this piece of evidence;

‘John Nash, the chairman of Care UK, gave £21,000 to fund Andrew Lansley’s personal office in November.

Mr Nash, a private equity tycoon, also manages several other businesses providing services to the NHS and stands to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of Conservative policies to increase the use of private health providers.’

There are no adjectives in the English language that have the strength to describe how hysterically evil this plan is and the Tories/Liberal Democrats are. I exhaust myself trying to find the words that encapsulate how diabolical the scum that we deign to name ‘our government’ truly is.

...On the other hand, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. Let’s remember who made the privatisation of public services palatable in the first place:

‘By 2014 every hospital will be a foundation trust and all will be allowed to leave public ownership while still providing public services. This would mean they could borrow "off balance sheet" – fulfilling Tony Blair's original vision of the bodies being outside Treasury control.’

Neither are the coalition’s junior partners that much better. Vince Cable’s come out with a similar policy concerning the graduate tax.

‘in a speech entitled "the looming crisis", Cable warned that universities which were struggling financially would be left to go bankrupt in future.

The government wants to encourage the expansion of private universities and chains of globally-branded universities. This would inevitably lead to more competition and some universities would struggle, Cable said.’

Hail the McUniversity! Hurrah for the Coca-Cola College!

‘Universities had to be prepared for a period of contraction, he said. Britain is a poorer country than two years ago with a loss of income of over 6%, and future spending had to be adjusted accordingly. He called for the public to "rethink the case for our universities from the beginning".

He said: "The university sector has experienced half a century or more of expansion – in numbers of students, staff and institutions. There is enormous forward momentum. I wonder how many people in this room really – deep down – are psychologically prepared for a period of consolidation, perhaps even contraction," he said.

"We need to rethink how we fund them, and what we expect them deliver for the public support they receive."

But what’s the alternative to University? Around here at least, the manufacturing industry has been dead since the 1980s. A lot of kids have no other choice but to go to university in order for them to be able to get a job at the end. And because so many kids are going university, that also means that competition for jobs is that much greater, which in turn leads to less people being employed, in addition to those already unemployed at the current climate.

No prospects, no help, no hope - a government bent on screwing the poor and the spectre of mass unrest up and down the country. It’s like Thatcher never left!

May as well have some appropriate music for this - to Compassionate Conservatism!