A private company, listed on the stock market, has been given the right to deliver a full range of hospital services for the first time in the history of the NHS, reigniting a debate about the use of business in the health sector.
Circle Healthcare, a John Lewis-style partnership valued at around £120m, will manage the debt-laden Hinchingbrooke hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, from February after the government signed off on a decade-long contract on Wednesday.
For fucks sake, people. Calm down. It’s not a privatisation. Can’t you people see that?
The takeover is not considered a full privatisation as the buildings will remain in public hands and the employees retain their pay and pension on existing terms.
It’s not a privatisation because the NHS will still own the building. *rolls eyes*.
Seriously though, how can anyone claim this is not a privatisation? The building remains in the hands of the NHS, so the NHS becomes the landlord. *Everything* else is down to Circle.
The current staff stay on their existing pay and pension terms, but what about new staff taken on? Will they be on contracts the same as NHS staff? What about when Circle decide they don’t want existing staff on NHS terms? They’ll find a way of getting people to re-apply for their existing jobs on different contracts.
Former Tory Health team member Mark Simmonds MP is also a paid strategic advisor with Circle. Coincidence?
And then added:
Two of Circle’s major shareholders are Tory Party donors. Coincidence?
In fact, emails released to the Guardian (by SpinWatch) in July this year showed Circle was part of a lobby group that took the NHS regulator to expensive gala dinners.
Privaatisation started quietly with a little contract here and a little outsourcing there, this though, is the real deal.
Charlie Flowers once claimed to be doing the work of Nadine Dorries. No, he didn’t claim to be a researcher, but a thug harrassing and threatening Tim Ireland. Nadine has said nothing about it.
Well, it seems someone else has decided to join in on the action, not against Tim, but someone else Nadine sees as a mortal enemy, Ms Humphrey Cushion.
. @humphreycushion Enjoy your day tweeting. Remember Nadine and I might be watching you! ;) (closely) and oh lastly FUCK OFF #blocked
It’s not as if @DarkblondAngel is unknown to Nadine, infact the tweets between each other I’ve seen between them, before Nadine quit Twitter (again) could be described as quite chummy. Will Nadine denounce this latest bit of imtimidation and bullying like she didn’t with Charlie Flowers? Probably not.
At least these people aren’t hired thugs, but I’m guessing this isn’t an example of the ‘Big Society’ the Tories’ will be trumpeting.
Just a quickie as I’ve got other stuff to get on with.
Gareth F Compton is, according to his Twitter profile, a Conservative activist and councillor for Birmingham Erdington.
He has some wise words about the violence at todays student demo…
Wise words indeed…
Just saying. that’s all.
*delete as applicable
Update 23:40
Oh, look. What a surprise. Gareth has now deleted his ‘stoning’ tweet.
Update 11/11/10
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is not happy and Gareth could be in the shit with this one…
The columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has said she will report a Conservative councillor to the police after he posted a message on Twitter saying it would be a “blessing” if she was stoned to death.
What a lovely aoplogy too…
Twitter is a forum for glib comment of the moment. It was a glib comment. Who could possibly think it was serious?
“Obviously I apologise. No offence was intended.
As ever with these things, it’s not just that Gareth would do something like that, I’m sure he wouldn’t, but that someone else might take it up on themselves to act on it however remote the chance.
If someone publicly, or privately for that matter, called for my death, I’d be bloody upset too.
Long-term benefit claimants could be forced to do manual labour under proposals to be outlined by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith.
He is due to outline plans for four-week placements doing jobs like gardening and litter clearing.
He said the message would be: “Play ball or it’s going to be difficult.”
Heh. The lazy shitters are gonna have to do more than just wander down the dole office once a fortnight for their housekeeping/pub money now. They’re gonna have have to do what they’re most scared of – work.
Jobseekers will have to do compulsory work, at least 30 hours per week…
Under the plan, claimants thought to need “experience of the habits and routines of working life” could be put on 30-hour-a-week placements.
Anyone refusing to take part or failing to turn up on time to work could have their £65 Jobseekers’ Allowance stopped for at least three months.
I see a flaw.
If people are made to work, it is not voulantry. If the £65 a week job seekers allowance can be revoked if the claimant fucks up in any way with regard to this ‘work placement’, it could be argued that the allowance is wages for the work. With me so far?
£65 allowance, or wages, a week divided by a 30 hour working week equals £2.17 an hour.
The minimum wage for over 21 year olds is £5.93.
The coalition is proposing to employ people on short term contracts for less than half the national minimum wage.
Miss Blackwood said she sympathised with the disappointment of the schools which had been promised funding.
But she added: “It was a flawed programme and an enormous amount of money was wasted on bureaucratic processes, rather than the schools they’re supposed to help.
An enormous amount of money may have been wasted on the admin of it, but does that justify the stopping the funding? Have bloody big shake up of bureaucracy, which rightly should be blamed on Labour, and make some savings that way.
“At a time when we have to deal with the horrendous financial legacy of Labour’s Government, we couldn’t justify continuing the programme.”
Couldn’t be arsed thinking how to keep improving schools whilst not spending a shed load on admin, more like.
Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in his behaviour with regard to his election spending, does it? I wonder what he will be like as an MP once he gets settled with his feet under the table good and proper. Oh, and what a lovely little threat, too…
Either they [the electoral commission] will decide not to look at it – in which case you want to watch it. Or they will decide to look at it and give me a green light – in which case you want to watch it.
… thinking about New Labour cheerleaders here, that they feel a bit betrayed by what the Lib Dems have done – getting a bit of power in return for shacking up with the Tories and biting the bullet on stuff they used to believe in.
Why do people feel betrayed?
The LibDems might have compromised on some stuff they believe in, not used to believe in but still do, in return for what? For getting some other stuff they believe in. What was the alternative? Being the third party in the parliament, or a smaller part in a coalition of even more competing voices in ‘rainbow’ coalition, with less say, and less chance to influence things.
Sometimes you have to get what you want in small steps. That is what the LibDems have done. They’ve looked at the bigger picture and thought they could get some stuff done now rather than wait bugger knows how long for the chance to do everything at once.
The Tories are going to do what is most important to them whether they have a junior partner or not. At least this way, with the LibDems in there as well, it’s not going to be all their way.
Betrayl? Look at the bigger picture without your parties blinkers on and it becomes anything but.
The electorate are cunts.
Yeah, I know that’s a big sweeping statement but how else can it be explained? Dr Evan Harris (Lib, Oxford West & Abingdon) lost his seat and Nadine Dorries (Con, Mid Beds) retains her seat with an increased majority. What sort of society are we living in that chucks out an MP that has a rational, evidence based approach to scientific issues? An MP that is against the encroachment of civil liberties and has a positive record on gay issues?
Whereas the other MP, Nadine Dorries has a provable track record of obfuscation and smears. Would rather listen to religious fundamentalists on public health issues because they say things that confirm her own prejudices and dismiss anything that doesn’t. An MP that would rather shout ‘stalker’ that engage in debate.
Where is the justice? Where is the sense?
Tim Ireland went to Flitwick to record and broadcast a hustings that Nadine Dorries was appearing at.
It didn’t quite go to plan, due to a couple of misunderstandings. Even leaving those misunderstandings to one side, the amount of vitriol spewed by Dorries in the form of lies and smears is incredible. All of which she is unable, to substantiate.
and Adam Crofts’ post. Adam was attending the hustings and is not associated with either Tim or Nadine.
(Special mention also goes to Chris Paul that somehow also got dragged in to all this even though he wasn’t present and coined the phrase ‘The Flitwick Flounce’.)
I don’t have a phobia about Tories. That would suggest an irrational response. I hate them for a reason. For lots of reasons, actually. For the miners, apartheid, Bobby Sands, Greenham Common, selling council houses, Section 28, lining the pockets of the rich and hammering the poor – to name but a few. I hate them because they hate people I care about. As a young man Cameron looked out on the social carnage of pit closures and mass unemployment, looked at Margaret Thatcher’s government and thought, these are my people. When all the debating is done, that is really all I need to know.