Even the mainstream media feel compelled to drop hints that Owen Smith is not what he is being promoted as. The Guardian’s words yesterday were unintentionally revealing;
the former shadow work and pensions secretary plans to pitch himself as the soft-left option
Note “to pitch himself”. For PR professional Smith, political stance is nothing to do with personal belief, it is to do with brand positioning. On Channel 4 News last night, an incredulous Michael Crick pointed out that the “soft left” Smith had previously given interviews supporting PFI and privatisation in the health service. He also strongly supported Blair’s city academies.
As chief lobbyist for Pfizer, Smith actively pushed for privatisation of NHS services. This is not something Pfizer did very openly, and you have to search the evidence carefully. Footnotes often tell you what is really happening, as in this press release in which Owen Smith says of a Pfizer funded “focus group” study:
We believe that choice is a good thing and that patients and healthcare professionals should be at the heart of developing the agenda.
You have to look at the footnotes to see what kind of choice Owen Smith is actually talking about. Note to Editors 3 includes
“The focus groups also explored areas of choice that do not yet exist in the UK – most specifically the use of direct payments and the ability to choose to go directly to a specialist without first having to see the GP.”
Well, at least it is clear – direct payments from the public to doctors replacing current NHS services. Smith was promoting straight privatisation. As Head of Policy and Government Relations for Pfizer, Owen Smith was also directly involved in Pfizer’s funding of Blairite right wing entryist group Progress. Pfizer gave Progress £53,000. Progress has actively pursued the agenda of PFI and privatisation of NHS services.
Owen Smith went to Pfizer from a Labour Party job, while Labour were in government, and there is no doubt that his hiring was an example of the corrupt relationship between New Labour and big business which is why the Blairites are so hated by the public. It is also beyond any argument that if Pfizer had any doubts about Owen Smith’s willingness to promote the Big Pharma and NHS Privatisation agenda, they would never have hired him.
Owen Smith is a strong supporter of Trident and assiduously courts the arms industry. He is a regular at defence industry events.
Perhaps most crucially of all, Owen Smith joined his fellow Red Tories in abstaining on the Tory welfare benefit cuts.
I do not doubt Owen Smith’s expertise in brand positioning. I expect that there are indeed a large number of Labour Party members who might vote for a left wing alternative to Corbyn. But I also suspect that Smith has adopted the PR man’s typical contempt for the public, who are not as stupid as he seems to think. There is no evidence whatsoever that Smith is a left winger. There is every evidence that he is another New Labour unprincipled and immoral careerist, adopting a left wing pose that he thinks will win him votes.
People will notice, Owen. They really are not that stupid.
Rob G, I really don’t know.
But it seems to me that the plotters have gone too far. Their tactics bear the marks of the dreaded Likud, to whom nothing save raw power is sacred.
The history of the Labour right is one that is full of contacts between them and Security Services, with the US Embassy often serving as the base for plots. But this one is much cruder and much more dependent on the media’s ability to obscure and mislead with a view to legitimising the outcome. It is all very “un-English” not in that it is scandalously unfair but in that it is flagrantly so, designed not just to squash Corbyn but to demoralise his support to the point that they drop out again and return to their allotments or whatever.
One thing is certain: this is a battle to the death. The words “No More Mr Nice Guy” must be inscribed on the People’s Flag and never be allowed to fade away.
If Corbyn keeps the leadership, on his own terms, he will win the General Election and the slow business of civilising society will begin again. In the meantime: no solitary country walks; and beware the lone wolf assassin with an SWP membership card or tickets to the Bolshoi Ballet or a signed photo of Yasser Arafat in his pocket.
It’s not just money but the West Bank and Israel itself at stake.
Honesty is the new infamy: it must be wiped out.
They’ve fought us every step of the way, and not subtly either, with maximum propaganda. The fighting is become more insane, more aggressive. Don’t forget what the CIA did to Gough Williams in the 70s, brought down his entire government. Corbyn offers similar policies, and he’s being treated the same way. What’s bizzare is that Labour aren’t in power, or even close to it. I worry for JC’s safety.
To me there seems to me more to it, like an older generation who don’t want to give up the rains
It isn’t their age that’s the problem but their feeling of ‘entitlement’. I am old and I support Corbyn all the way … Fight on folks – every … step …. of .. the… way
I didn’t mean it by age so much as an entrenched older system that’s been very inward looking – I didn’t mean any offence, I am certainly aware that momentum members are from every age group 🙂
” I worry for JC’s safety.”
_________________________
On a point of information, so does “Lysias” (“Jeremy Corbyn had better watch his back”,)
Great minds obviously think alike.
Well Simeon firebombed his constituency office tonight
You surely mean Gough Whitlam? I confess the parallel had not occurred to me, but you are quite right – very similar indeed.
I did mean Whitman – spell check – I even googled him before hand to check I hadn’t made it up
Ok, so is Hillary Benn ‘entirely fake’ too then ? Because someone could make out a case to paint him as right-wing, whereas the truth is that he’s done some things which might be defined as Blairite, or right of centre, but then many things too which put him firmly on the left. The general consensus in the party is that he is on the left-wing of Labour. So is it really fair to pick out some aspects amongst many and hold these up as definitive? Smith’s work tearing into Duncan Smith as shadow DPW minister was superb, few could have done it so well, so should he not at least get some credit for this?
Hillary Benn is certainly a warmonger:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/12/zionist-benns-grab-for-power/
Remember how he had the Blue Tories cheering to the rafters, as he thundered out his “Give War a Chance!” speech?
Slightly off subject, but here’s another old war criminal, enjoying himself rather too much at a memorial:
http://wonkette.com/604047/was-george-w-bush-drunk-at-the-memorial-for-the-slain-dallas-police-officers
I thought Dubya had sworn off the old jungle juice.
Perhaps he just had one pretzel too many on the way.
Oh here we go, as a last resort the Red Tories are going to trade on the Benn name. It’s dynasty, or destiny, or dysentery! The people aren’t that stupid I hope, Benn can keep his flowery murderous oratory for his clucking fans, Becket and Balls-Cooper.
The name Benn means “Marine Broadcasting Offences Act”, otherwise know as “force the people to listen to the BBC only”; that is a completely totalitarian family.
Nonsense these pirate ships after the initial couple, were in general CIA run and financed. Their object was to get Heath elected, in which they were successful through limitless-budget 24/7 propaganda attacks on Wilson and his government, for the multi-owned and entrapped Heath then to take us into the EU, then present membership as a fait accompli to a bewildered populace. One of them was so blatant it was an identically constructed and equipped sister ship of the US surveillance platform, the ill-fated Egyptian tanker, the USS Liberty.
Did not Mr Harold Wilson also contemplate re-applying for EEC membership in 1968 before De Gaulle told him to fuck off?
But I forget – Wilson was also a CIA puppet!
“Did not Mr Harold Wilson also contemplate re-applying for EEC membership in 1968 before De Gaulle told him to fuck off?”
Yes! I can testify to that because his government forced us to learn O-level Physics twice, once in Imperial measurements and then again in Metric. Wilson also brought in decimal coinage. “This won’t affect the Pound in your pocket” the lying SOB said. Too dumb to see that making one new penny worth 2.4 old ones would cause massive inflation.
Alan
Are you feeling alright?
The “pound in your pocket” claim came with the 1967 devaluation of sterling, not with decimalisation.
Hillary Ben is establishment through and through, he’s clearly under pressure from higher sauces and lacks his father fortitude to stand up to them. The way he behaved on the Syria vote. In fact I’d put money on him being Mi6 along with a number of other “Labour rights”.
Timfoil hat? Well now…
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/01/frederick-forsyth-i-was-an-mi6-agent#comments
http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
Make your own mind up.
Not only a fake himself, but the whole overpaid management class to which he belongs is fake.
The motorways are full of new BMWs driven by the likes of Owen Smith. Dressing yourself as a superfluous and arse-licking waste of space might appeal to CEOs as a buffer between themselves and workers, but these right-wing brown nosers are the bane of working people in middle to large companies up and down the UK.
Do political parties need this breed of yes-men, trained in fudge and bilge? definitely No.
Nothing wrong with new BMWs, Guano (although I prefer Mercedes myself).
I knew you were a mini-cab driver!
Because the left wing has principles and the centre-left does not?
I know that the NHS is the third rail of UK politics, but if we leave aside the hysterics for a moment, I see no reason why a centre-left politician could not favour getting the government out of the business of subsidising doctors and into the business of empowering patients. That’s what the last Dutch Labour-led government did 15 years ago.
Go empower yourself!!!
These days there a lot of empowered people attending to their own teeth and pulling them out, because they cannot afford the costs of dentists. Evidently now it is time for people to be empowered to cut themselves open to carry out appendectomy.
Empower my foot!!!!!!!!! Filthy lying sons of bitches!!!!
Your issue isn’t with privatisation, but with the level (or absence) of subsidies for those who can’t afford appropriate health insurance.
………of subsidies for those who can’t afford appropriate health insurance.
Yeah best help the insurers and their scams seeing as those free loaders are not already enjoying the monopoly of the failed market in car insurance* that has evolved to the money grabbing monster with our police turning into insurance premium enforcers and less conferenced with traffic issues.
As the failed market in US health insurance is the model of the empowerment spewed here too.
Empowerment all the way, and without a reach around for the bother!!!!
* Third party insurance premium used to be one fifth of the fully comprehensive insurance, in the days of yore when these blood sucking vermin did not have the mandatory insurance laws foisted upon the nation. These days the difference between the two premiums are just a few pounds ie between five and ten pounds!
Have you ever looked at a country with health insurance that is not the US?
“That’s what the last Dutch Labour-led government did 15 years ago.”
With this sort of result, you mean?
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2015/12/more-households-in-debt-through-rising-health-costs/
Normal Dutch health insurance runs at about €100 per month. For those who cannot afford that, there is a bespoke subsidy. Your issue is with the current (centre-left/centre-right) and previous (centre-right) government’s policy of strengthening the efficiency incentives in the system by increasing deductibles. That may or may not be a sensible way to achieve the stated goal, but it is in no way a central part of the idea of privatising health care.
OK, do how did that benefit the people? You’re making the case – remember. You have just replied with nothing but a flimsy and weak dismissal of manifest, fundamental flaws.
How did what benefit the people? Increasing deductibles? I’m not sure that it did, hence my ambivalence in the previous comments. A switch to 100% private health insurance? It reduced the costs of health care, although not as much as it would have done if the market weren’t so concentrated.
What does “empowering patients” mean?
And what does “subsidising doctors” mean? The NHS pays doctors; it doesn’t “subsidise” them.
A government run healthcare system like the NHS is vulnerable to doctor strikes. It so happens that we have a pretty – ahem – tough Tory government, but normally NHS doctors have the government over a barrel. All else equal, you’d expect NHS doctors to make more than in a privatised system. (Although the latter might have more cushy admin jobs.)
Empowering patients means giving them more choices, both in terms of their insurance and in terms of their treatment. Again, because patients have the government over a barrel (NHS being the third rail, etc.) there are a lot of things the NHS already does in this area, except that at the moment nobody worries about how that gets paid for. So perhaps the better way to put it is to say that there is a closer link between who makes the choices and who pays for them.
“you’re expect NHS doctors to make more than in a privatised system” ?!
1) Since you don’t say otherwise are you actually trying to suggest that NHS doctors are paid more than private practice doctors?
2) Even if you’re not that ridiculously ignorant why on earth would you think it in the first place? Government jobs are pretty much never paid as well as private.
1) No, because if you put both side by side, private practice will tend to recruit the best doctors with the highest salaries. So comparing average salaries would show private practice paying more.
2) With normal government jobs, the government is often a monopsonist and therefore able to push wages down. But that doesn’t work in sectors where workers are able to leverage their sympathy among voters or their ability to annoy voters. See: overpaid tube workers for a non-NHS example. They can grind London to a halt whenever they like, and as a result they are massively overpaid relative to bus drivers.
The NHS is one of the most cost-effective healthcare systems among countries of comparable wealth. It is far more cost effective than the US system.
“Giving patients more choice” is weasel argument. The vast majority of patients do not have the years of medical training, followed by years of experience of treatment, necessary to make informed healthcare decisions. That’s why we see doctors, rather than relying on folklore or highly dubious New Age publications.
Cost effective i.e. cheap. Is that really what we most want from our health system?
The NHS is indeed extremely cost-effective. But that is entirely due to its ability to buy medicine at massive scales and its centralisation of many management functions, thus reducing the number of paper pushers they need. Neither of those things need to go in a world with private health insurance.
– “normally NHS doctors have the government over a barrel”
I haven’t seen much evidence for this. If anyone has “the government over a barrel”, it would appear to be the mass “news” media, not the doctors.
Like I said, the current round of strikes are very much the exception. Before that, when’s the last time the doctors were on strike? The news tells me it was 40 years ago. That’s the point of having a really big gun: not having to use it.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-britain-strike-idUKKCN0UQ0RE20160112
Where do you get your (mis)understanding of health care from?
From spending the better part of a decade studying the economics of public administration. You?
People of Scotland, his imperial maj David Mundell, has spoken through the medium of Johnston Press and commands we get in line and get behind Theresa May. If we don’t comply they’ll thaw out Michael ‘Lord’ Forsyth, you have been warned.
PR is given a bad name here. Often it can give a shy retiring person a new image to go with their new responsibilities, but sometimes it is used to push a point of view that no sane person wants. Like the overthrowing of the Mutual Building societies to get a payout from them and turn them into banks that could be taken over and corrupted into Real Banks. Thus removing the competition.
This man wants not only to destroy the British way of life with a decent Health service, but to take over a political party that was designed to speak for the working class and the other underprivileged by Keir Hardie. He’s not fit to lick his boots after a day campaigning in the Gorbals before the wonderful Glaswegian cleansing department was invented.
Well said. I cannot imagine how these traitors convince themselves they are doing the country a favour, by stealing the opposition. Since they are natural Tories (scum, in other words, professional liars who fool the masses while they serve the rich), why don’t they join the party to which they properly belong?
I was particularly pleased with SNP MP’s at PMQ’s the didn’t applaud David Cameron, a PM who has left thhe UK in a dismal state, and has strengthened the cause of Scottish independence.
Meanwhile Blairites claim Owen Smith is a far better candidate than Angela Eagle to lead the Labour party because, he wasn’t a MP during the Iraq war,and he voted against the bombing Syria.
Despite the unprecedented hate campaign against Corbyn, it’s interesting that this week the ‘forces of darkness’ have all been trying to wear his clothes, because they know how popular Corbyn is, and they know there’s a high chance he’ll be elected tomorrow as PM if there’s a general election.
Most notable was Theresa May and her ‘vaguely socialist’ pronouncements to make Britain a better place, despite the fact that May’s present lot of tory psychos are just as bad as the last lot, if not worse.
Then there’s the red tories, exemplified again in Craig’s post about creatures like Owen Smith, who are lying scoundrels who are trying to wear Corbyn’s clothes.
Will the voting public fall for this totally corrupt BS, all egged-on by the presstitutes?
I’ve a sneaking suspicion that this time round they won’t.
Corbyn will be the next PM, and I’ll take a wager on that.
She pinched his line. It’s what they do steal your lines and then do the exact opposite, that coupled with doing outrageous things to us whilst accusing us of doing the same thing. Both tactics are to achieve the same goal which is to leave the opposition speechless.
There is only one way to be it, and that is by calmly sticking to the truth and talking directly to the public.
Smith is what we call in Wales a ‘Red Prince’, i.e. part of the Welsh Labour Taffia. His dad is Chair of the Arts council Wales and was a big BBC Wales man, mentor to a slew of Labour politicians (usually of the anti-Welsh and anti-devolution wing) and is best mates with Kim Howells, Hywel Francis et al. An absolute first-rate specimen of his kind, and we Welsh have had these nepotists and placemen, these Kinnocks in their ermine, lording it over us for decades.
I never used to enjoy historical fiction, but somehow Edward Wilson nails it with A Very British Ending.
Those who enjoy weaving sense out of scents and facts and rumours will love this story and it somehow seems so timely and apt. Peter Dale Scot theories as fiction, but with so many facts. Gaitskell / Wilson. Smith / Corbyn (though I concede the differences are vast). One theme now as then is that when so much happens so quickly everyone needs their wits about them.
Incidentally where did Owain Smythe go to school?
Barry Comp. Told you that a page ago.
Another Kinnock, just as verbose and self serving.
Meanwhile with EU citizens right to reside in the UK hanging in the balance, despite past promises the Westminster government never did get round to signing Protocol 7, of the ECHR which would’ve given them some form of protection.
Even the often demonised Russia has ratified Protocol 7, mind you the Netherlands and Germany have yet to put Protocol 7 into operation.
No doubt the new PM Theresa May will be pleased she can now bin any thoughts of Protocol 7 and the protection it afforded EU citizens living in Britain.
Our new British PM, looks like Thatcher and no doubt will try to out do Thatcher, in vileness. I wonder how George Osborne whom May sacked feels about her, remember he cried at Thatcher’s funeral, whilst the poor areas of Britian threw street parties, and a song about Thatcher reached number one in the charts.
If May is to out do Thatcher’s reputation as evil personified, well she’ll need to step up to the plate.
Here are a few things that May voted for that will puts her on the path.
Voted to cull badgers.
Votedagainst fracking regulations.
Vote to invade Iraq.
Vote against the hunting ban.
Voted in favour of the bedroom tax.
Voted against implimenting proposals to reduce tax evasion.
Voted in 1997 to oppose a national minimum wage.
Committed to replacing Trident.
Voted to increase regulations and threshold on trade unions to stop them striking.
Voted against the mansion tax.
May will probably out do Thatcher, as head of the nasty party.
You sort of left out this:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/06/un-declares-uk-s-austerity-policies-breach-international-human-rights
If only that last sentence were right
If one studies the period, the decade up to the outbreak of the English Civil War, there are similarities with our current state of affairs. Battle lines are beginning to be drawn between different groups in society. Emotions are rising and symbols of conflict on almost relgious lines are snapping into focus.
Those attempting to topple Corbyn and what he represents are carelessly setting events in motion that may have terrible consequences going forward. Putting the democratic geni back into the confines of the New Labouir bottle, now that it’s out and growing in confidence and strength, is going to be extremely difficult indeed and the desparation of the NEC and the MPs attests to this. They are now abandoning all pretense that the Labour Party is a democratic instituiton. Their dreadful attempts to ‘rig’ the leadership election by preventing Corbyn from standing and disenfranchising his supporters, is really shocking. Are we living in Chile under the generals, or the UK?
Where does this end? Crushing, so brazenly, the democratic aspirations of so many young people who’ve joined the Labour Party and dreamed of another type of society, where people are put before profits, is a terrible lesson to learn. How many people does take to start a revolution? Well, surprsingly, it’s far, far, fewer than most people imagine. Tens of thousands of young people being pissed on from on high by the MPs and the NEC, is a great way to start one. Life lessons are being taught here. Illusions about the character of UK democracy are being stripped away, brutally.
We seem to be moving, seemingly inexorably, towards a kind of realignment of UK politics. The creation of a form of grand coalition, or de facto one-party state where factions within it, in Westminster, struggle over power, but not really. It’s all for show a form of political theatre designed to divert attention away from many harsh truths and challenges we face, like stopping the slide to conflict with Russia and China and the threat of runaway climate change, let alone the serious domestic challenges.
If Corbyn is crushed and the great democratic awakening in the Labour Party rolled over, it will have consequences far outside the Labour Party itself, because it’ll mean the crushing of the only place the opposition have a voice and a platform, everything else is under firm control, despite the result of the Brexit. So the stakes are very high. Rather than this coup signalling end of something, it could merely be the beginning of something worse to come.
Or is it not that the Corbyn era will be seen as a departure from the norm ie after a short interlude in which the members were in control the elite took back power.
If we compare members with shareholders and the elite with crafty directors we might conclude that the corporate world though rough and full of cowboys is more democratic than the world of the (by and large traditionally unregulated) unincorporated political members association.
For eg you don’t get to fundamentally change the articles or constitution or voting rules of a company as easily as within a political party.
It would make sense for political parties and the country as a whole to have something more akin to a corporate set up whereby more than a simple majority is required for a fundamental change of the “articles” . Maybe 60 or 75 %?
But we don’t and the fact that we don’t make says something who we are, namely pragmatic hucksters able to turn on a sixpence and tell a good story.
Is that good or bad. We can have some sentimental feel for the myths we spin, but as long as we do not fall entirely under our own spell and instead remain flexible able to adapt argue plot spin deviate campaign and battle on then us it so bad if we do not perfect democracy? You may well plead yes because the present state is like boiling a stew and the scum rises to the top, but democracy …. Is it a myth … can it really work …. Is there collective wisdom in a crowd? If so is it any less cruel than what we have now? I don’t know. I do suspect that power like wealth and influence can never be shared equally. What counts is for there to be fluidity and movement on the one side and stability on the other At present we live in fluid times. Opportunities will arise for some, but if change is on the rise so is instability. How and why has this come about?
Very good to see you posting a bit more regularly here, Writerman. I, for one, had missed your thoughts.
It could very well end in another sectioning off of the Labour Party, as MPs rush off to test their “third-way” supposed popularism in a splinter party, just like the SDP did. And how popular were they really? The answer was nothing even approaching what the collective egos in the SDP had imagined!
Nevertheless, they pulled enough votes from Labour voters to get the Tories in again, back in the 80’s.
The Liberals, ever eager to dance with the devil if it got them a sniff of power, jumped into bed with the SDP at once. Just like they did with the Tories, and each time made them hated and irrelevant for a generation.
This time, however, I think the split will just meld in with the Tories, Lib-Dems, and some new Red Tory party (whatever they decide to call themselves, in their stupidity and arrogance). With a true Labour party alternative – something to positively vote _for_ , the people might well vote NO to the Establishment in even greater numbers than they did over the EU.
“The focus groups also explored areas of choice that do not yet exist in the UK – most specifically the use of direct payments and the ability to choose to go directly to a specialist without first having to see the GP.”
________________________________
What exactly are the arguments against those two things and how are they “promoting direct privatisation”?
1/. Going directly to a specialist
This is possible in most European countries. If I am feeling generally unwell, I might go to a GP first and he will, if necessary, refer me to a specialist (whereupon I would probably have to wait for (quite) a while before getting an appointment). If, on the other hand, I am having difficulty pissing, I can go directly to a specialist – he is called an urologist. Both my time and that of the GP are saved. Another example : if my child is ill in the UK, I have to go to a GP, who may well refer me to a specialist aka a paediatrician (who works in a hospital). In many continental countries, I would go directly to a paediatrician, who works from a surgery in the same way as a GP. Again, time saved.
2/. Direct payments
What is the moral argument in favour of a service free at the point of delivery as against a system whereby I am obliged to pay a modest monthly amount to a “mutuelle” (the equivalent, in the UK, of the price of one packet of cigarettes or three pints of beer in a pub or five Starbucks coffees), which enables me to recover 80% of the modest amount I have to pay directly to the GP at the point of delivery? What is the value which should be placed on (1) the ability to always see the same GP (as opposed to being shuffled around between the various doctors involved in a GPs practice every time I go) and (2) the ability to choose, without fuss, whichever GP I wish according to my evaluation of how well he does his job, how much time he gives to listen to me, etc…?
My impression is that the debate about the NHS is deformed by (1) an unwillingess to recognise that the UK might have something to learn from how other countries organise the provision of health services (aka a refusal to evaluate seriously what best practice might be) and (2) the propensity for certain political elements to claim that any reform of the current NHS system must inevitably lead to the imposition of a US kind of system.
GPs like solicitors are the gate keepers. I concede that as a patient being able to go directly to a consultant would be a welcome step, but if possible on the NHS there would be a lot of waste. In the private world some private GPs are sniffy about who they take on and I suspect some consultants too. Direct access takes away the mystery and barristers and consultants less convincing. What might appear to be efficient Thatcherite market liberalisation may end up undermining confidence. In any event what is sold to as good for customer choice is bull. It’s spin to deliver profits and it is self deception to think otherwise. We don’t hear patient lobby groups. We hear drug companies.
… go directly to a consultant would be a welcome step …
Not necessarily a good idea. Suppose you develop tachycardia (fast heart rate). It’s the heart, so naturally you go and see a cardiologist. Turns out you’re hyperthyroid (overactive thyroid) and should be seeing an endocrinologist. In fact, on examination your gp would probably have suspected hypert4 and prescribed a beta blocker while waiting for blood test results. If confirmed, gp doles out some carbimazole … job done. Lots of other examples where direct access to consultants would be a waste of time and resources.
Hal
What if you happen to owe the Building society £10 k in arrears for you mortgage, the bank £10 K for paying your bills and you discover something wrong with your ability to take the piss.
I know you have never yet failed in that department. That’s the point about the NHS, shit happens.
Not everyone is able to shill for a living like you, and some people have principles. Are they to be penalised now for not having the requisite small change to pay for the consultant. As you know full well, in countries like Kurdistan a small operation will cost £1,000.00 Here it’s free. So why don’t you just fuck off like a good troll and try and sink into the dead sea when you’re tired of Tel Aviv IDF slappers?
You insure yourself (like you insure your house). As Rob G would know if he talked to his neighbours, it’s quite possible to construct an insurance system which is subsidized for low earners
If the tax dodging super rich were to be taxed properly there would be no need for any insurance companies ripping the masses off, and as ever take the money and default on any payments or to pay out a fraction of the costs, as in the pet insurance that is now proving so efficient and so effective that people are dumping their pets.
Subsidies insurance my foot, in any case the rip off merchants get their money by hook or crook. There is only one insurance and that is national insurance and that is enough. Stop making excuses for the lack of money, tax the corp[oration and stop the tax dodgers from enjoying the off shore banking and shell company benefits.
Precisely.
How do you get on with the French health insurance system? Is it really that bad?
Of course it’s not. Many would say it’s a damn sight better than what you have in the UK (except that most have to pay – a little).
But yes, let RobG answer…..if he dares.
It is indeed shameful to intellectualise corruption and evil.
But would you care to intellectualise your apparent feeling that direct payments and being able to go directly to a specialist are corrupt and evil?
Habbabkuk: My main problem with your second point above, is that such insurance – unless we were in a strict single-payer system – would inevitably gear itself towards preferential treatment between providers, and huge amounts of administration and profiteering overheads in the insurance industry.
My challenge to you and others has gone unanswered – can you name a single profitised (privitised, if you will) service or utility, that has gone on to better the country as a whole?
Health services would not benefit from the magic sprinkling of Unicorn Fairy-dust “market forces” upon it, any more than the other wretched banes on our lives such as the profitised energy companies.
The main problem with the NHS is the lack of funding, comparable with similar countries, and the sneaky partial privatising that has already taken place.
Continuing the theme of the media not asking searching questions, I monitored as many broadcast media reports today as I could about Liam Fox. Not one single report out of roughly 30 throughout the day so much as mentioned anything related to Fox’s resignation after running his own personal zionist agenda in Israel. Not a word about Atlantic Bridge and no enquiries as to the whereabouts of Werrity. How short memories are!
Q. When was “soft left” ever electable? A. Never. Blair was a Red Tory, a right wing neocon “progressive” of the US variety – and won a few times on a socially liberal, fiscally liberal platform, which was packaged as something that it clearly wasn’t, since that blatant slice of mass media mind control many voters have savvied up, and Labour will never win again by trying to emulate that. Owen Smith is clearly the preferred candidate of choice for the Corporate wolves who have bought the Labour Party brand. Eagle a decoy duck. Corbin wins and struggles to wrestle the party back from the neocons who don’t even care about winning, least of all about representing working people, who will then try their damnedest to ensure Labour is unelectable – or he gets spat out and destroyed by the machine, leaving Labour unelectable. It’s a massive stitch up. It’s time to create a proper people’s movement again.
FRANCE’s foreign minister has said his newly-appointed British counterpart, Boris Johnson, is a LIAR with “his back against the wall”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36795502
That’s rich coming from a Frenchman/politician
That was just being friendly. It probably came from some pocket English language phrase book, to demonstrate entente cordial with his new mate.
The Indie has a map of all the countries Boris has offended. It would appear he hasn’t upset Greenland, but then again, so few people actually live there.
http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/update-a-map-of-all-the-countries-boris-johnson-has-offended–W1zaTLC63rW?utm_source=indy&utm_medium=top5&utm_campaign=i100
“What does “empowering patients” mean?”
It means that they are thrown onto the mercies of a market rigged by oligarchs, who strip them, systematically, of their property, at which point they are left to die and their relatives have to borrow money to bury them.
This happens, literally, all the time in the United States where a family of four often pays hundreds of dollars weekly for medical insurance which is insanely difficult to claim.
A nonagenarian relative living there spent much of the last time fate allotted her sitting on the end of a telephone attempting to find an agent with whom to plead her case at the insurance company’s call centre.
The privatised medicine that this “soft left” lobbyist for Big Pharma promotes is a species of cannibalism.
The average cancer patient in the USA is worth $1,000,000 profit; that’s profit, and not helping human suffering or finding a cure.
I can’t say any more without losing control of my anger.
“The average cancer patient in the USA is worth $1,000,000 profit; that’s profit, and not helping human suffering or finding a cure.”
Plus it is possible their employer has them covered by “dead peasants insurance” making them worth more dead than alive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate-owned_life_insurance
I’m trying not to get too angry and be calm and reasonable, but you’re not helping (because you’ve made an excellent point).
This has gone on for years. Poorly considered employees at low-end jobs like Wallmart and MacDonalds were flattered to learn their employers had been providing life insurance, free of charge, without even troubling them by mentioning the fact.
Only problem was, those corporations themselves were the sole beneficiaries of the policy, if – most tragically – it were to mature.
The soft soap of “private is good” is no longer a saleable concept* so the new tack is the cock and bull yarn “empowering the patients” syphoning off money to feed the oligarchs rapacious appetite with the acquiescence of masses is the key to the operation, hence the usual lickspittles are out and busy selling the unsaleable.
* the privatised telecommunications resulting in the rotten internet connections are clearly an example of the efficacy, then there is the privatised trains with our train fares in UK being highest in Europe if not the world with the crap service and no room for sitting despite the very expensive charges, and so forth. In the bad old days you had one ticket and one charge and it was good to board any train going to your destinations. Now you have ten thousand permutations to pricing of the tickets and still cannot use the ticket to board an earlier or later train, even the damn train is going empty, you will need to pay a surcharge there too!!!!!
“What does “empowering patients” mean?”
More succinctly, “pay for it yourself” 🙂
Bev
You will be aware that there are several models for healthcare which are different from the NHS and which are nothing like the US model.
The (deliberate) mistake the far left makes is to pretend that any reform of the NHS in its functioning and financing must take the form of the US model.
That is not the case and it is typical far left dishonesty to pretend that it is.
Habba-
you are right to say there are other models of healthcare, other than the American one. The problem is that the model most often alluded to in the political system here as an alternative is most often, the american system.
Glenn correctly pointed out that one of the main problems with the American system is that it has , in effect, to support a very large bureaucracy because of the incredibly complex coding system that applies to every tiny aspect of treatments-detailing say -number of swabs and relating this to the fine(small print ) terms of the health policies. It is possible to buy in to partial health care, where many treatments and conditions are excluded.
In the past many people had health insurance through their employer and it was generally of a high standard but as employment practices changed, and labour has become contracted out fewer and fewer people have that kind of health policy.
Until recently(not sure about the Obama health care reforms) it was very common for people to be uninsured due to unemployment,relationship breakdown, poverty, chronic illness and disability and childhood.(Children do not have any health concessions except that which is provided by parents).
Non0insurance was running at about 15-20% in most states in 2008, although it varied. Rural areas had higher rates of non-insurance. Health care for the uninsured is actually very inefficient because they are forced to fall back on emergency care through the hospitals, even for relatively simple chronic conditions such as COPD.
There are many charitable concerns where funding is sought from donors but the scope of these facilities are often extremely limited. I could certainly take you to a free clinic where the chronically ill are treated for a number of of the more common conditions such as COPD, type 2 Diabetes and minor infections etc, but there are often no examination facilities, as these surgeries are held in places such as church halls with only some makeshift screens.
Follow up appointments are nearly impossible as there are a very limited number of appointments usually on a first come first serve basis. It is all rather ‘third world’ or pre-2nd world war in UK.
For those with a good level of insurance through employment or wealth, quality of care is very good. These patients are potentially very profitable and for anyone who has had any experience within the american health care system it is difficult to avoid the impression that the financial consideration has skewed the system to cater ‘very fully’ (more fully than necessary) for these people, to the point of providing futile or even harmful forms of medication and treatment for the reason that it is a very profitable activity.
At the time of the Obama health care reforms- about 2009, there was a great deal of adverse comment about ‘socialised medicine’ and oft cited as an example, by anti- universal health insurance – was the treatment for prostate cancer in the the UK.
The argument was that in the UK , testing for prostate cancer was rationed, and by implication the treatment was rationed, and that one was helpless in the event of the patient having the condition and therefore missing out on treatment.
The truth was that the procedures in place in the UK were generally much more effective.This apparent anomaly is related to the nature of the test, and the numbers of false positives and false negatives, and gives rise to the rather anti-intuitive result that testing is best used only in particular circumstances, where there are a number of other key factors present. It was not the case that testing was ‘rationed’ it was the case that testing was more rigorously applied.
In the US, since money was earned from the test, it was often the case that a patient would demand the test, since it seems, intuitively, like a correct thing to do,and the practitioner would accede with the result that there were more unnecessary (and harmful) treatments and more cases where the condition was neglected.
It turned out that the British model was actually not just more efficient, but also more effective in the identification and treatment of the condition, and had better outcomes.
Healthcare is not as ‘scientificn as is often assumed; A look around at different systems-european/Eastern European/Middle Eastern etc reveals that all these areas have what I shall call idiosyncrasies. Variations in treatment for the same conditions and quite different perceptions about causes and how best to treat conditions, and often these are not greatly different in outcomes, but they serve the needs of the people of that region.
Obviously there are huge strides in treatments for once utterly hopeless conditions, but the biggest effect on health has always been from the relatively simple measures. There is a distinct upward lurch in survival rates with such simple measures as the widespread availability of soap.
The point I am making is that the different health systems have deep local roots, and rather organic features which makes planning extremely difficult. it is not straightforward to transplant different ideas, no matter that they seem simple or logical or desirable, across from different systems.
It’s Bastille Day here in France (I’m sure I don’t need to point out what that’s all about), and it’s the biggest national holiday in the French calendar. Down in my local village this morning there were parades and bands playing, and this evening there will be a big firework display.
I’ve lived in France for many years now. I prefer to live here because basically it’s still a human society, as compared to the neo-con nuthouse that my home country, the UK, has become; but don’t get me wrong: I’m as still as much a patriot as I ever was.
In November 2013 a cheesy pop song was released by the American singer and producer, Pharrell Williams, called ‘Happy’. As part of the publicity, Williams put up a web site called 24hoursofhappy.com, which was a continuous loop of the song, with people miming along. It really caught on, particularly in France, and people started putting up their own videos. A huge number of French towns and cities put up their own version of ‘Happy’. This is the one from Angers, which is a couple of hundred miles south west of Paris…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guMfsv_0meA
Terrorist attack in Nice, France on Bastille Day. Truck crashes into crowd, gunshots heard. At least 10 dead. Authorities call it terrorism.
RT: French now saying 50 are dead.
From Le Parisien: Nice : un camion fonce dans la foule, tirs échangés avec la police:
Lysias, why are you saying that this is a terrorist attack?
It may well be so, but this is unconfirmed at present.
Recently, a bin lorry driver fell asleep at the wheel and killed a number of people in Scotland.
This wasn’t reported as terrorism.
I would guess that you’re saying this is a ‘terrorist attack’ because this is how the USUK media are reporting it, which bears no resemblance to reality.
Here’s how Le Monde are reporting it:
http://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2016/07/14/a-nice-un-camion-fonce-dans-la-foule-reunie-pour-les-festivites-du-14-juillet_4969589_1653578.html
No mention of terrorism whatsoever.
But let’s see how the USUK presstitutes spin it.
Maybe we’ve got to deploy nuclear missiles in Nice (which as far as the wording/language goes is quite ironic).
What I was listening to was RT. They were reporting what the French authorities were saying.
Here’s the latest reporting in Le Parisien: EN DIRECT. Attaque à Nice : «des dizaines de morts», un suspect abattu:
Lysias, at the time of writing none of the major French news agencies are reporting this as a mass casualty event. A truck went out of control and killed a large number of people, seems to be the story. This is a tragic event, but hardly the ‘invasion of Muslim extremists’ that many put forth.
Reports that the lorry driver, after crashing his vehicle, came out with all guns blazing is still totally uncorroborated.
It’s all total propaganda bullshit, in my humble opinion.
In the meantime, some of us will enjoy what remains of Bastille Day.
Je suis non cretin.
‘Lysias, why are you saying that this is a terrorist attack?
It may well be so, but this is unconfirmed at present.’
https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/world/french-terrorism-alert-app-condemned-slow-reaction-nice-attack/
A smartphone app designed by the French government to alert its citizens to terrorist activities has been heavily criticised for its slow reaction to last night’s attack in Nice.
Users who had downloaded SAIP (Alert and Information System for the Population) complained that they received an alert around two hours after a truck drove through a crowd in the coastal city, killing more than 80. Locals had gathered to celebrate Bastille Day, a national holiday in France.
Now what is it that bears no resemblance to reality?
RT was reporting the event as a terrorist attack very shortly after it occurred, with live pictures from the scene.
More like civil war. There is a limit to oppression of the minorities and their derision that has become to be a way of life for some inadequate toss pots to indulge in their racism and enjoy the tacit encouragement of the authorities. whence even a quenelle has come to be banned as an expression, the oppressed may find other means to express themselves.
No, you perhaps misunderstand me. France is by no means a perfect country, but bottom line it still remains a socialist country.
USUK, on the otherhand, are right wing neo-con loons who want war with Russia.
I know what I’d vote for.
Although someone like you might well have a death wish.
Am I correct in inferring that new joined comrades are in disagreement as to which candidate they should support with brother Anon1 pledging Jez and brother Habbs for Owain Smythe?
Everything about Owen Smith — from Pfizer lobbying to the Global Leadership Council — suggests he is Washington’s Labour leader of choice.
Thanks for this article. The more people know about the candidates, the better. Eagle’s voting record will damn her to failure, so they are trying to pass off Owen Smith as an alternative candidate of the left. In reality, he is the latest camouflaged Blairite.
It is almost impossible to camouflage offensive smells: large amounts of perfume do not work, they simply underline the problem.
I agree the underlying stink of Marxist Leninism always come through in the end.
The Guardian gives Owen Smith a plug.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/13/owen-smith-profile-ambitious-politician-labour-soft-left-option
Yesterday I posted the link to the BBC page where what he said in 2006 about his position on Iraq contradicts what he claims now about being against the war. Lots of people then reposted it in their comments.
Today… here’s the Guardian with a plug with no comments allowed and which just says.
“In contrast to Eagle he did not vote for the Iraq war… ”
Well, no… he couldn’t as he wasn’t an MP…. so that’s totally misleading of the Guardian. Its quite clear from what he said in 2006 what he would have done.
Indeed. The first I heard of this Smith character, I smelled a much more threatening rat than Eagle, and the thought did cross my mind that people might actually fall for this left-branded puppet of a man. He seems to have been parachuted in by a strategy-shifting PLP in a last-ditch effort.
I wasn’t aware of the totally unethical connection with Pfizer. People go to prison all the time for crimes much less serious than duping the public, taking bribes and putting self-interest above the greater good. But I suppose that Little England has a warped legal system, which can only get more sinister under May.
Talk is that Eagle is dropping out. I also suspect Smith will blowhard for a while, then disappear back into the inky black depth’s of the neocon Ocean; he also won’t run.
Doesn’t matter. Jezza wins by a Soviet fuck-tonne, against either or both. So, what is the strategy now? Legal challenges have already begun, but they won’t come to anything. No, I think what will occur is that Nu Lab will, ironically, indulge in some permanent revolution, like the Bolsheviks, and just undermine Corbyn till he loses the election. I wish they’d shown the same spirit of change against the Tories. Instead, they just implemented all of their policies, and called it Third Way. I maintain the view that such triangulation was and is the dumbest political strategy ever. Imagine thinking yourself clever for passing Tory policies? Just how thick are these people?
So, it’s several years of this, Corbyn so hopelessy undermined that the Tories walk a victory – at which point the plotters will show glorious front and blame Corbyn for his inability to UNITE THE PARTY.
He’s got to sack them. All of them. Politics is a hard game, but they’ve forgotten there’s a line. Well, they’ve given Corbyn the justification, and he’ll get backed by the members. It could go either way yet.
Doubtless reading this and reposting it on Facebook will be used as grounds for not allowing Labour Party members to vote in the election for party leader.
Here we go, the media whores, without any proper documentation, are pointing to an Islamist extremist attack:
“British security and government officials are monitoring the situation in Nice, as the seriousness of the incident escalated.
The initial details suggest a tactic that jihadist propaganda has suggested for several years, with a vehicle ploughing into a crowd. For instance, Inspire magazine – affiliated with al Qaida – urged the tactic several years ago.
There are two immediate direct consequences for the UK if the attack is confirmed as terrorist. First, is the decision by terrorists to use the tactic. Second, past attacks overseas have led to increase in hate incidents in the UK directed at muslims in Britain.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2016/jul/14/nice-bastille-day-france-attack-promenade-des-anglais-vehicle?page=with:block-57880fe9e4b033b610b6e175#block-57880fe9e4b033b610b6e175
This is all complete, total and utter bollocks.
Notice how the presstitutes immediately wheel out the Islamist terrorist stuff, and get the talking heads in the studios. Notice how the ‘Je suis Nice’ meme rolls seamlessly into action. Anyhows, the event in Nice does not in any way seem to be a terrorist event. More some guy falling asleep at the wheel of his truck. But what you really have to consider is why they constantly pump this kind of stuff at you as ‘terrorist events’?
RT is reporting that the driver of the truck was killed in a shootout with the police.
At the moment I can’t confirm or deny that.
What I can confirm is that the French authorities are saying that this wasn’t any kind of a terrorist attack.
Obama’s calling it a terrorist attack and he should know.
Hollande declared at the start of the NATO meeting: “NATO has no role at all to be saying what Europe’s relations with Russia should be,”
Worth remembering that Bataclan came shortly after he made noises against dropping sanctions against Russia – these sanctions are harming French agriculteurs quite badly.
Google Gladio2…
I don’t understand the logic of a ban on new members voting, from the point of view of ‘anti-Corbyn’ factions. The NEC is effectively ‘freezing’ the voting list at its January status. Does this mean a lot of anti-Corbyn members have (been) signed up before that date to vote him out and the ‘anti-Corbyn’ members of the NEC know of this? Does it mean they are happy that no new anti-Corbyn people can now be signed up to vote him out? Just doesn’t make sense.
It’s a possibility, however, up until yesterday the Blairites were putting a lot of stock into encouraging people to join Labour to vote against Corbyn, they even have a special SavingLabour site set up with Twitter tags, FreindFace page and the lot.
Perhaps returns are poor…
Even Angela Eagle was trying to say that a mere £25 was ‘a good investment’ :/
Recall the words of US Paul Weyrich. He was a very influential consultant to the US right wing political movement, and was quite candid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw
If you’re a right-wing stooge of the investor class opposing a popularist candidate that represents everyone, then the fewer people who get to vote, the better!
Oh look, Bernie now endorses Hillary. What was that Habbabkuk was saying about going a whorin’ after false gods?
What’s he going to do? He took his campaign as far as the MSM allowed. And he held out for La Clinton to commit to as many proposals as he could get, as a price for his endorsement.
That’s just politics, and how it works in an approximation of a democracy.
What do you think he should have done in his position, to promote the greater good (as he saw it)?
Sorry to see that the jihadists have learned that the best way to fight back against the West is just to kill as many people as one can there.
Little wonder that TheDonald is postponing selection of his running mate until he sees the fallout from the Nice massacre.
Democracy is dead in the West as we are just beholden to the new Crusaders.
Thank you, Craig Murray. That is all.
You know it’s total bollocks (CIA bollocks) thesedays when the Guardian gives it top headline:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2016/jul/14/nice-bastille-day-france-attack-promenade-des-anglais-vehicle
I covered this a few posts back, so again here’s a recent Le Monde piece about it…
http://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2016/07/14/a-nice-un-camion-fonce-dans-la-foule-reunie-pour-les-festivites-du-14-juillet_4969589_1653578.html
No mention here of terrorism; nor indeed in any of the other French news reports I’m listening to.
You lot in the UK now live in a very strange world; and you know that I’m being polite when I say that.
I have listened to a live comment of an english tourist on Radio 4 this morning, who saw the terror event from his window after the lorry stopped, He saw the man get out a gun and shoot at a police man. He also saw 15 to 20 victims dead on the floor.
This was collaborated by what an Egyptian tourist saw who tried to reason with the man as there were already many body’s under his truck. He looked nervous and was using a cell phone for a few seconds before shooting at police.
please tell us Rob G., is that a wrong account?
What the hell were these people doing on the Boulevard?
Are you serious? They were there for Bastille Day celebrations. It’s quite an event throughout the country, you should try to attend one sometime.
It’s a reference to Nevermind’s comment after the Tunisia attacks (what the hell were the British tourists doing on the beach, etc.).
AH, ok. I’m still waiting for some, err… cynic is probably the most diplomatic word, to declare the whole thing a “False Flag”. That blasted moron Spivey – beloved by some of our more credulous correspondents here – is sure to come up with one of his famous proofs before the weekend’s out.
Anon 1 is saying that tourists in France are now as endangered than tourists in Libya. There was an FCO warning in pl;ace in the case of Libya, and none for France, afaik.
Tunisia. And there were warnings in place for parts of the country, but not where the attack was carried out.