This is my YouTube short this morning:
The transcript is:
Wes Streeting seems to hate the NHS.
He's written an article for the Sunday Times saying we shouldn't worship it.
The people who work for it, all appear to be, well, mass murderers according to him.
Its managers are thugs and bullies, apparently.
And he wants us to prepare for a future where it's totally different.
What could that future be?
I am quite sure that what Wes Streeting is saying is that we should all anticipate a privatised NHS. After all, why else is he accepting donations from so many private health companies to support his campaign?
I think West Streeting is wrong. I believe in the NHS. I believe that 99.9 percent of the people who work for it are good, honest and dedicated people.
I believe that most of its managers are competent.
So, I think he's barking up the wrong tree and I believe we should all have and all believe in a state owned NHS.
If you do, please ask your candidates about this issue because it's vital to our well-being in the future.
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We all remember during the Referendum people saying “Love Europe, just hate the EU”
Streeting’s version of this would be something like “Love universal quality health care, just hate the NHS”
It says a lot about the corruption in British politics that a Labour MP Wes Streeting can be bribed to say vile things about the NHS which was set up under a previous Labour prime-minister Clement Attlee and greatly revered and treasured by the nation. Notably the snake Keir Starmer is allowing Wes Streeting to undermine the NHS whilst calling himself a socialist! Meanwhile many voters are so shallow in their understanding and thinking they are completely unaware of the treachery being pursued by this Labour Party leadership!
Thank you and well said, Richard.
Streeting’s emoting of issues, not just healthcare, is, unfortunately, all too typical of the PMC and so many of the Labour PPCs. Opponents of their “liberalism” are slagged off as indulging in student t shirt politics, being tankies and anti-semites and Putin lovers etc. In Streeting’s case, it goes back to his running for office at Cambridge.
When engaging candidates, I would add to ask what the shadow cabinet members like Lammy* and Kinnock promised to US Capital on their tour of NYC and DC organised by the Heritage Foundation** a fortnight ago. *At one panel, Lammy confessed to being a small c conservative and having things in common with Trump, with whom he could work. **Heritage Foundation: Authors of the give away to US insurers known as Obamacare / Romneycare / Boehnercare and based on the big pharma dominated Swiss model.
The Friday before the late May holiday, Mandelson was hosted by my former employer, the main City trade body, to address mainly foreign banks. Mandelson referred to the shadow cabinet’s US engagement and how US capital is being wooed to help reform the British state and deliver public services and infrastructure and urged other financial institutions not to miss the boat. Mandelson added the review of the Brexit agreement will be a technical tidy up exercise and no further rapprochement, if only because the EU is no longer interested. I agree with that, but caution that the EU’s attitude is driven by the UK’s attitude, too.
The Heritage Foundation, one of my American friends showed me on Facebook, flew the stars and stripes upside down ( a sign of distress) on their building after Trump was found guilty.
I remember that claimed to have written two-thirds of Trump’s legislative program .
Yet I don’t think the rank and file Labour members would support that. We might be seeing “interesting times”.
Thank you, Ian.
The Heritage Foundation is as embedded with the neoliberal and neocon Dixiecrats and New New Labour as it is with the Republicans and Tories.
@ Ian: I should have added that I don’t think the Labour Party membership and trade union affiliates count for anything. They will chew a wasp for Starmer.
At least after Blair and Brown in 2010 – although they had saddled the NHS with disastrous PFI – NHS was in a reasonable state with 70% satisfaction and top of OECD health care league table.
Its now teetering on the edge of destruction –
But why the hell doot the BBC ask Streeting and co about their US healthcare comany funding>?
It really is 1984.
Thank you, Andrew.
Many senior BBC hacks are freelance and do corporate work like writing in publications, moderating panels, voicing films and offering insights (into things they know nothing about) and do not want to upset their real paymasters. Others are wannabes and want to join that gravy train.
In addition, legacy media is declining. Working for business makes financial and political sense. One of the first was, famously, Michael Cole.
This goes for the other broadcasters, too, including those who flounced out of the BBC and peers and set up their own podcasts.
In much of the west, politics and media are one and the same. If you ever see the guest list for the Spectator’s summer and Christmas receptions, you would be outraged. It’s worse under New New Labour and will do us great disservice as crises engulf the country in the years ahead.
I also worry when politicians say they’ll fund improvements in the NHS by reducing the number of its managers. I want to ask them who will do the work currently done by those managers – will it be doctors & other healthcare professionals?
If it is by eliminating the internal market that could be done
If you eliminate managers the tasks will be subcontracted ; at a price.
If done by clinical professionals you will need more professionals and be pray to their vested interests.
If you abolish the internal market and in effect revert to the cash limited budgets of the eighties it will produce the same results as serial blockages and shortages grind the system to a halt. Read the Enthoven report on the NHS of the era.
In truth large scale complex services need management . Get over it.
Of course the NHS needs management – and professional managers at that
But to pretend that getting rid of the internal market takes us back to what you call the cash limited budgets of the 80s is absurd: the two are utterly unrelated.
And maybe you have not noticed that NHS budgets are severly cash limited now?
Calling for the removal of inefficiency is not the same as saying let’s get rid of management