Off Topic General Election Special

Leaving the EU on WTO terms, a boarder in the Irish Sea, a break up of the union should all be political suicide too, but the Tories seem to be barrelling towards any or all of those options too. This is not the Tory party of old, and as i'd mentioned in a previous post i've voted labour, tory, lib dem and green in the past in local, general or EU elections, this is a new ever further far right leaning party that is basically Bluekip, a party that doesn't seem to give a **** about anything but making themselves and their backers richer, they don't care about business, the NHS, the poor or pretty much anything other than power and money. I would not put anything past them in their current guise.

Edit - on the selling the NHS side of things, this is where the long game comes in, death by a thousand paper cuts, another 5-10 years of a failing NHS and some privatisation starts to become palatable

 

I doubt even the Tories would be daft enough to try a full privatisation, but there is a shocking (to me) amount of private business going on in the NHS already. Not in Hull, but my mum attended a clinic on a Saturday for her dodgy shoulder, and I looked it up, it was run by a public-private enterprise on behalf of the NHS. I am really wary of this kind of thing, PFI etc as its a slow creep of "for profit" businesses which, in my opinion, has no business being near our healthcare. One of the founding principles of the NHS was that it was run by medics for the people and no one made a profit out of it. By all means make sure it's efficient and audit the buggery out of it, but once you start having people making their "cut" you abandon that principle.

This is the kind of thing I am deeply concerned about the Tories doing more and more - they will claim it's not privatisation, but improving services but 5 years down the line the public purse is paying private, profit making companies and their shareholders for a service that is no better than today. I give you the East Coast Mainline as an example - runs far better when under national control but we keep auctioning it off to private companies who promise the world and then hand it back when they can't deliver.

 

They're trading at 225p now and the long term trend is down as letter delivery has dropped off a cliff and their infrastructure and costs are too high to adequately compete with the cheaper parcel delivery companies using self employed workers, so the British public got out at the right time.

The issue with the NHS is poor hospital financial management, disincentives for doctors to work beyond their early 60s and as with all UK national industry, appalling procurement.

 

My understanding of this is that the little lad was seen immediately on arrival,was given a bed and oxygen but the bed was then taken off him for another patient?

In no way am I condoning this but as a parent I would've kicked up #':# with admissions and hospital staff.But alas Boris Johnson seems to be the recipient some considerable time after the event.

 

Granted, but shares are down globally following the last 3 years of trade wars and Brexit uncertainty. Those original backers made an absolute mint though, that is undeniable.

 

Share indices are just off all time highs, in spite of the tariff wars.

When a large company is made public, the initial offering price is always offered at a discount to the institutional buyers, because they guarantee to buy up all the shares and stimulate market interest for their large customers - pension funds etc. It's the payment for the risk. From what I remember, every UK resident or citizen had the option to apply to buy £250 worth at that initial public offering price and so could have nearly doubled their money if they sold at the high, so it didn't only benefit the large backers. The company has been haemorrhaging cash ever since, so it was great timing to sell and a great price when the market was moving sideways just after the financial crash.

 

Not sure there is not a Brexit deal done, there is a Withdrawl agreement that has passed the initial vote in parliament, but the terms of the exit arrangement are not yet negotiated or agreed, and given the red lines drawn up by the Tory party to leave on the terms they want is going to mean a border in the Irish Sea, and the likelihood or NI breaking away much more likely. FWIW, I think Labour are a shambles and won't be voting for them either.

 

The issue was that they were sold off on the cheap to prioritised investors who then immediately cashed in (quote from this money) "A group of institutional investors given priority by the government were able bank millions of pounds in profits from the meteoric rise in Royal Mail’s share price in the days that followed its London debut. The National Audit Office found 16 priority investors reneged on a gentleman’s agreement to hold their investments for the long term, instead selling their shares at a massive profit within weeks."

 

It said on BBC news that he had a bed and oxygen immediately on arrival?

 

NHS is brilliant when it's brilliant, poor when it's not. Its size and structure renders it virtually impossible to manage efficiently in my opinion. Also I've seen a fair bit of the French system in recent years and it suffers as much as the NHS only in different areas.

 

Yes, that was a rule break. But it's a zero sum game, so those institutions profited, but whomever they sold to, have lost.

The share price now and continued annual losses made by the company show that it was one of Cable's few successes to sell when he did. The British tax payer made over £3 billion, which is £3 billion more than they would have had if it had remained nationalised.

 

Large chucks are already sold off (around £9Billion) and I expect that will continue.
If you accept that those parts are being delivered more efficiently than pre sale, and you might be right, then it’s an absolute fact that if it was delivered within the NHS in the same way it would be cheaper again because the costs would be what they are now, less the profit for the people who are currently making profit on it (and they are otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it)

I do believe it can be delivered more efficiently, and it should be, but it’s just fact that if it was achieved successfully within public ownership it would cost less.

just maths init

 

Why on earth is the NHS so inefficient though? Have we made the organisation so complex that bureaucracy has taken over completely and lost touch with the medical side? Has it been over-burdened with regulations and red tape? Have we become so litigious as a society that the NHS has to always cover its own back? Is it ideological, internal markets and all that?

I honestly don't know, I'm only a service user, but I can honestly say I don't trust the Tories with the NHS at all. Waiting lists and waiting times up, the Conservative party is in power, what a surprise.

 

NHS needs a long overdue massive overhaul.

Never designed to manage type 2 diabetics, druggies, alkies and people with nosebleeds.

Nor was it set up to be cash cow for cynical medics & consultants to line their pockets, or the middle management spreadsheet brigade.

Neither was it introduced to deprive other countries of their doctors and nurses to work in our own.

And it certainly wasn't set up to be the International Health Service.

It's being weaponised by the cynical hard left to scare the electorate .

 

Pathetic to see a serving British Prime Minister being ambushed to show empathy by cynical politically hacks.

I want efficient leadership of the highest quality not the ****ing One Show.