The BBC’s hosted a completely bizarre interview.
The NHS is in crisis. Labour’s deliberately funding Scottish and Welsh NHS Trusts at the expense of the English NHS but the crisis is “a restructure”! My local NHS Trust is £6m in the red but the interviewees on BBC Breakfast will tell you that this is to be expected during a restructure.
To be honest I would expect some forewarning if this was the plan all along. Isn’t it far more likely that the Government has had to admit what their 1997 manifesto said afterall: Throwing money at public services doesn’t improve them.
There are several solutions:
- Create an English Parliament to manage finances for the benefit of those living in England rather than allowing Welsh people to have medication that English people cannot.
- Follow the Conservative policy of liberalising the way the NHS works. The freedoms from 2008 are a step in the right direction.
- Encourage more private profit-making operators to enter the UK health market providing discounts for value-for-money providers where that discount continues to be less than the cost on the NHS.
- Get in genuinely competent consultants to look at cheap and easy IT solutions to simple computer-based tasks like issuing letters to patients
April 12th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
I don’t understand how an English Parliament would help, surely then England and Wales would still have seperate finances and therefor there might be a disparity in what each get?
I don’t like devolution, its a con trick, the only way to have a fair system would be all together, or total independence with different levels of taxation.
The problem with privatising the NHS is the MSM, they talk as if the government has an unlimited amount of money, they don’t seem to consider when one person in the NHS gets a very very expensive treatment that could be denying cheaper treatment to several other people. Thats why the Conservatives ‘must’ challenge the consensus in the strongest possible terms!
Another thing, I don’t wanna seem like I’m obsessed with immigration but the government hired loads of foreign staff to come into the NHS, and now they are going to lay off loads of staff.
Whats gonna happen to the foreign legion we were told we desperately needed?
April 12th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
First paragraph:
The fact that England doesn’t have devolution means that there is no-one fighting for the English. There’s no reason for the British government to give England Herceptin or equal funding because there’s no political group that effect matters. Labour have passed laws that effect only England using the votes of Scottish MPs. If there was an executive making laws for the English then there would, in all likelihood, be similar drug entitlement and buying power for the English constituents.
Devolution was, like most of Labour’s actions, a half-way fudge to avoid separatism and undermine the Plaid Cymru and SNP votes. There’s nothing to like about it. Given, though, that devolution is effectively irreversible in Scotland and Wales (because of the benefits they are getting having direct governance), the only fair solutions are devolution to Regions or devolution to an English Parliament.
For many, presumably obvious reasons, I am opposed to devolution to Regions. If it is not obvious, see question 11 at the CEP FAQ page.
Sadly, I don’t think Cameron’s going to attack the monolithic NHS in the way he should.
It’s not odd to worry about the immigration (and so brain-drain) from third world countries to provide nursing staff which now seems to have been for nought. It is irresponsible and bizarre. Not, though, as bizarre as the televisual media’ ability to completely ignore this anomaly.
April 12th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
It said on skynews, if I remember the figure correctly, that the Labour party had increased staff in the NHS by 300,000 since coming to power and now could possibly want to lay off 100,000.
What an unbelievable cockup.
Yes, devolution was/is a terrible thing, but the problem is an English Parliament may lead to the breakup of the UK which I personally wouldn’t want to see. England is so much bigger in terms of GDP than the other parts of the Union if the English parliament desided to try to ‘block’ UK decisions it could do so, but Scotland and Wales probably couldn’t, effectively giving England an ‘unfair’ veto over the UK government, I’d like to think it wouldn’t be an issue, but if radical socialists got in control of one and ultra market globalists in the other there would be trouble.
April 12th, 2006 at 9:04 pm
The English Parliament would have the same devolved powers as the Scottish Parliament. There’s no reason it should harm the Union at all — unless, that is, the people of England want it to. The English would have no power to block or veto UK government actions any more than the Scottish Parliament can.
And you’ve sort of hit the nail on the head. It is not inconceivable that Cameron could win in England and Wales (or just England) but lose in Scotland and the UK at the next election. That would mean that even more perversely than the current perverse situation, the UK would be running England with a different party.
See also the answer to question 10 at the same place as I directed you last time: the CEP FAQ.
April 12th, 2006 at 10:36 pm
removing the Barnett Formula is going to upset a very big apple cart, so much so that Scotland and Wales would be in real trouble for a short period of time, and the English would get the blame, and afterall we stole all the oil so we owe them anyway, they would say.. infact already say.
I think real trouble is ahead for anyone who tries to sort the mess out.
April 13th, 2006 at 7:01 am
Ultimately it wasn’t ‘their’ oil while they were part of the ‘United’ Kingdom. But the amount of subsidy Scotland receives from England is more than both the export-potential of oil and whiskey combined.
Ultimately the formula will have to be abandoned eventually…