NHS - Enough!

Firstly, let me address some questions to those readers from the private sector.  Public sector employees can think about answers but I doubt you will get it.

So, In the private sector, do you believe that the board of directors or your division's managing director would be calling, year after year for more money to be given to them while offering no guarantees of service?  Let me correct that, while stating that you may not be able to provide a service at all.

Getting specific, do you think it acceptable that the NHS have a ring-fenced budget?  Do you believe that any business in the private sector would be guaranteed that whatever their performance the organization will receive year on year growth in their funding?   Is your business one where efficiency or lack of it has no effect on the salaries or bonuses of the workers?  Where some of the workers are able to bring in private work and carry it out without anyone talking of a conflict of interest.

Of course these questions all relate to the UK's 'envy of the world' - the NHS.

Socialist politicians who are funded by unions (who now mostly represent public sector workers - with a very large contingent from the self-same NHS) have managed to hijack and effectively close-off any debate about the NHS and politicians of all hues are falling over themselves, to throw ever more money at the NHS.

Le's be clear.  People are living longer, so that presents a natural additional burden upon the NHS.  This is also changing the patient 'mix' for the NHS - more elderly patients with geriatric illnesses and longer times, in hospital, to recover.  Further, people are living longer because of advances in medical science.  These advances though, don't come cheap.

Add to that the usual problem of idiots abusing the NHS - attending Accident and Emergency departments because they have a cold or a headache or some minor ailment.  Layer-on also other abuses by non-Britons who receive treatment, for which neither they nor their governments ever pay and you have a classic squeeze.

That would be the time that any other organization would look at how they can re-organize and learn to adjust their methods and spending plans to meet straitened times.  Time to root out system and process inefficiencies.  Time to look at manning levels, especially middle management.  Time to examine contracts and renegotiate with suppliers - be they PFI financiers or drugs suppliers or nursing unions or doctors and consultants.

This though, doesn't happen in the NHS.  Instead, they simply whine about cash constraints, wheel out some bleeding wounded and allow the level of service delivery to fall and fall and then blame this on 'lack of funding'.  In any other organization, heads would roll but instead, we see and hear politicians promising ever and ever higher amounts of funding.  Funding which will not actually go into service delivery but rather into the pockets of NHS staff - think about that when you next see your doctor or visit the local hospital.

The NHS is a classic example of a nationalized industry - it is there for the benefit of the providers and not for the benefit of consumers.

That is a sorry state of affairs, in this day and age, when people have the advantage of seeing the massive benefits that have already accrued from the state getting 'out of business' but what's worse is that there is no politician that has the courage to call-out the NHS and demand that they change - not one.

Ask yourself if we really get value for money, from the more than £100 Billion that is spent on this service, every year.  Ask yourself if you are prepared to pay ever higher taxes to fund the NHS - if yes, how much more?  5%?, 10%?, 15%?   Ask yourself if taxes don't rise, what else will be cut to feed the NHS beast?  Pensions? Defence? Education?

Then ask yourself when is enough, enough?  When can we clear the socialist claptrap from our ears, eyes and minds and see that this 'envy of the world' isn't the envy but rather, is a service that could easily consume ever larger parts of the national economy and yet not improve its service.

Labour's bonking mad!

No this isn't a story about over-sexed socialists (unless you maybe include Rev. Paul Flowers) but please do read on.

Ed Miliband, the figure-head leader of the socialists in the UK, the real leader is union boss, Len McCluskey, has indicated that Labour would try to create two new large banks in the UK, so as to promote 'competition.

Now think about that.  We already have 5 big banks in the UK.  We also have building societies (akin to US savings and loans/credit unions).  Indeed, two of these banks are largely owned by the UK people.  The 'people' own more than 80% of Royal Bank of Scotland.

It is entirely unclear what benefits this extra competition will bring.  We now know that Miliband's words have cost the UK taxpayers more than £ billion from the reduction in share prices seen for RBS and LloydsTSB.

Consider also, what happened last time Labour were in power.  This champion of greater competition, then forced through the takeover of the HBOS banking group by LloydsTSB, thereby reducing the number of banking chains!

Consider also, the Labour party's closest banking ally - the Cooperative Bank.  This bank had Rev. Paul Flowers appointed as its chairman, under Labour's 'light touch' regulatory regime.  This is the same Rev. Paul Flowers that is accused of hiring rent boys and using illegal drugs, including Ketamine.  The same Rev. Paul Flowers who is accused of abusing his position as a church  minister to allegedly defraud a charity.  Oh yes, and the same Rev. Paul Flowers who took the Co-Op bank to the brink of bankruptcy!  In the last action, he perhaps proved that he was as qualified as other leading bankers, at least!

So Labour, whose record with banks is, shall we say, patchy, wants to interfere and create competition?

Since when has Labour been so keen on competition?  When did they become the champions of consumer choice?  I ask because there seem to be some areas for which Labour is absolutely opposed to promoting competition.  These are not areas where the incumbents are actually performing well.  Indeed, quite the opposite.

These areas?  Well, the NHS and Education, to name just two.

With the NHS, the UK effectively has a monopoly supplier of health care that is controlled by its provider union personnel.  Can you imagine the uproar that would have followed, if a private health supplier had treated patients the way that the 'envy of the world' NHS treated people at Mid Staffs and other scandal-riddled hospitals?  Does anyone think that Andy Burnham, the Labour minister in charge at the time of these scandals, who tried to hide the truth, would remain in the role, if he were in a private company?  Hundreds of people died unnecessarily and in appalling conditions when their very lives were entrusted to this monopoly provider but, according to Labour, that's okay.

Look also at education, where Labour, again repaying the debts to its union paymasters, consistently opposes any and all reform.  Here the Conservatives have pushed ahead with supporting the establishment of independent schools but much still needs to be done and Labour, and its local authority allies and other members of the payroll electorate, will continue to oppose much needed reform.  As with health, Britain's education system is failing as successive governments have failed to address the core issues because they have focused on 'politically correct' solutions and ignored real world problems.

Apparently, Labour want to see more choice on the high street but I seriously wonder how many people still rely on physical branches and how many use online banking?  When was the last time you went into a bank?

Anyway, usual stuff from Miliband and his socialists.  The 'cost of living crisis' is seen to be being solved, as real wages start to exceed prices and so it is time for another soundbite!  Worryingly, Labour still have a chance that they might be in charge of the UK economy, after the next election.  Miliband the banker - be afraid, very afraid.  Remember who ran the economy alongside the disappeared Gordon Brown?


   

England's schools

I append a link to a sad letter written by a new teacher.  http://t.co/rWQ94M6jeP

I challenge you to read this and not be both moved and scared by the content.

Moved, because this individual is patently not someone who has led a cossetted existence and now been thrown to the wolves.  She,  I believe its a woman, is from this environment but seems to have been absent from the 'front-line'.  During her absence the whole ethos of teaching has moved.  Now it is 'child-centric'.  That is 'Guardian speak' for everything revolving around the child - as if a child knows what or how it wants to learn by some kind of osmotic process that it picks-up from its environment.  Consider that in many cases, these children are from homes where the standard of their parent's education is already low and you can see the kind of downward spiral that looms.

Rant time - Is it any wonder that given, in many cases, the lack of personal discipline exercised by their parents, this isn't the cause of the unwillingness to exercise any discipline on themselves, by children/pupils/students/learners (or however these young people are called).  And yet, this 'child-centric' approach is based on the child being able to 'manage' its own interactions with society and to do so in some kind of 'adult way'.  What absolute tosh!  If a child doesn't know the difference between what is right or wrong and gets no pointers from the home environment, then from where will these values be developed?

Scared?  Well, I strongly suspect that the picture painted by the author, is all too typical of how teaching is practiced today, throughout England (maybe the rest of the UK, as well).  Teachers are not taught to teach but to act as some kind of 'baby-sitter' service.  They are members of a trade union, who having pushed this crazy (and patently failed) approach for years, must now defend it in every irrational way possible rather than admit it is wrong.

Maths without numbers?  English without reading or words or writing?  History without dates? In what sick mind could such teaching methods be considered in any way sensible?

I was educated in an Inner London comprehensive school, in the late 1960s / early 1970s.  It was at this time that student teachers were starting to leave Teacher Training Colleges, with the prevailing education methods being challenged.  I experienced some of this, with teachers telling us to 'call me Ron or Beth or whatever' but fortunately my school still had enough 'traditional' teachers to get me through.  By 'traditional' I include teachers who didn't find it necessary to push the latest left-wing ideology or communistic reading of every act that has ever occurred, down my throat.

History teachers taught history.  They didn't comment in great detail on the iniquities of slavery, they just gave the dates of abolition and details about the 'triangular trade' (look it up!) such that I was armed with sufficient information to go off and develop my own thoughts and opinions on the subject.  It was 'chalk and talk' and it was in a disciplined and respectful environment.  I have been fortunate that my children have been mostly privately educated, abroad and so not been subjected to these English education methods.  It is worth noting that in places like, South Africa, Dubai, Norway and Malaysia, the style of education that I received is still the way it is practiced there and no one gives a thought to changing it to some kind of 'child-centric' utopia.  Do you wonder why?