[Image description: a black & white photograph of Aneurin 'Nye' Bevan;
underneath is one of his quotations]
The quotation reads:
"The collective principle asserts that…
no society can legitimately call itself civilised
if a sick person is denied medical aid
because of lack of means."
(In Place of Fear, 1952, p.100)
Since the current coalition "ConDem" (a pun on the word 'condemn') government was formed between the Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties, some "£7bn of our NHS has ended up in the mitts of private health" per Dr. Éoin Clarke who writes The Green Benches blog (q.v.). This figure is now expected to leap to a staggering forty billion pounds. That is £40b on an annual basis being syphoned off from the National Health Service to private companies. Approximately a third of UK parliamentarians from both houses hold shares and/or positions and/or interests in many of these health-care businesses (see for example this investigation). Many folk have been shocked to determine that MP's and Lords with financial stakes in issues are indeed permitted to lobby, join in the debates by speaking and vote for their own pecuniary advantage rather than that of their constituents or the benefit of all Britons. In the vernacular we call it corruption; but the reader can no doubt imagine that is not the label used by the spinners of the powerful élite.
Folk are already having to pay for minor operations and treatments and have been doing so for the past year or so under the ConDems including for such things as hip ops and baby scans.
Labour's health team have produced a report that measures the number of patients treated for routine operations last year 2011/12 in comparison with the same operations for the last year of a Labour government. The report found that the Tories have restricted more than 100 treatments in the last 2 years. Of those 100+ restrictions, 22 treatments have been completely halted on the NHS in some parts of England. Strictly speaking, we no longer have a Free at the Point of Use National Health Service.
This week the House of Lords (HoL) with the assistance of quisling Shirley Williams and other FibDems (In the UK 'fib' is another word for 'lie' or 'untruth') effectively privatised our NHS - and most media ignored the event on the night and afterwards. David Owen openly wept tears in the HoL as he ended his speech:
I warn this House: do not think that this is a minor step. If this goes through, the NHS as we have seen it, believed in it and persuaded the electorate that we support it, will be massively changed. It will take five, 10, 15 or maybe 20 years, but unless we pull back from his whole attitude there will be no National Health Service that any of us can recognise, and tonight I feel one feeling only: overwhelming sadness.
(Hansard, columns 1490 - 1492)
Well done to all those who tried to do something. To those of you who didn't, don't be coming to me to raise money for your sick child's operation, your ambulance bill or your parents' life-preserving medications. You only have yourself to blame!
British civilisation has in effect taken a massive step backwards.
To any who would like to finally make a stand for our public, free-at-the-point-of-delivery NHS, you may wish to follow The Green Benches, MelloJonny's blog abetternhs, or get involved with the National Health Action Party.
To fight political corruption, you could sign this petition:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/44971
To help those struggling against the austerity cuts imposed on the weak & vulnerable, one could sign and share the WOWpetition:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/43154
There is no need for apathy: together we CAN make a positive difference; let's put the Great back in Britain!
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