7 Replies to “Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill”
Brilliant and so true.
Tory idealogy: The privatisation of profit. The nationalisation of loss.
I am in favour of a hypothecated tax covering both the NHS and Social Care.
There are good reasons for this.
People need to clearly see how much they are paying for NHS and Social Care each month. It is for political parties to pitch their proposed levels, and for people to then vote on them.
At the moment, NHS funding comes from national Government, but Social Care is paid through Council tax. That leaves levels of Social Care subject to local variability: it should also be funded nationally.
The people should decide how much they want to pay for these services and, therefore, what the levels of service should be.
I have spoken at some length about this to Ken Loach (the Director) in the hope that this idea will get through to Jeremy Corbyn. Ken agreed, and he suggested we do the same for Trident! And I agreed with that, too:-)
As for Carillion, I – more than most – have suffered terribly at the hands of Carillion. It was they – contractors to Network Rail – who worked on the railway line (the supply route for HS2) which will lead to the inevitable destruction of the rare colony of bats. Their industrial malpractices structurally damaged our homes lining the new track, led a resident to try to commit suicide, and once led me to appeal to the Thames Valley Police for protection (who were quite outraged at what was going on to ordinary citizens).
The levels of corruption surrounding that project are eye-popping, and an outspoken statement was made in Parliament by my neighbour Lord Krebs denouncing the bare-faced lies of Network Rail.
The big problem I had was raising the issue of bats and the abuse of lineside residents at the national level: Ian Hislop (a supporter of railway travel) – or whoever at Private Eye received all my documentation and appeals – showed zero interest, even though I had reams of documentary evidence of straight-forward corruption surrounding these railway contracts.
It always requires the dramatic collapse of a national infrastructure contractor, or a terrible fire at a block of flats, before the power of the national press take any interest in ‘local’ corruption:-(
Why did Private Eye, of all papers, ignore those issues beforehand? I was fully prepared to travel to London and spend as much time as necessary to explain the outrageous things which were going on with Natural England, Oxford City Council Officers and Network Rail’s corrupt contractors (Carillion, Buckingham Group, ERM, Atkins etc) and the powerful lawyers they used to defeat us (Eversheds).
Oh, and Arup did not cover themselves in glory, either:-(
Try googling “ERM corruption Keystone Alaska” for a similar taste of what we experienced over the HS2 supply route shenanigans, or this from the Sierra Club:
which marries our situation in Oxfordshire almost perfectly.
Hislop picks most of the cherries but selectively leaves some on the tree. That is the reason I stopped my sub. I do miss reading my comic – but nobody died.
For me, the secret is that there is good private sector and bad private sector – the good brings genuine value added from skill & imagination and actually taking the risk.
The bad is where the business model depends largely on cutting costs – almost invariably by reducing employee’s conditions and reducing the quality of service. There is a whole business ethic built on providing marginal service, not quite bad enough to make it easy to get shot of the supplier. To be fair, it is fuelled by the tendering culture where big firms (and Government) change to show they are making cost savings, almost regardless of the service.
Smaller firms may also be more interested in what they are there to do, not just making money for the shareholders.
During my time in the Forestry Commission we went from 80%+ of our work done by the public sector to the opposite – 80% done by the private sector. As mechanisation came in the businesses doing the harvesting has changed from a guy with chainsaw and a clapped out tractor to highly skilled people running £1m worth of machinery – and the best have done well out of it, generating some serious income, a rareity in much of the rural scene. At the same time, the FC land has become more outward looking & responsive
The NHS is still way under 10% private sector and we are all (rightly) scared rigid of it going higher – because most of the service providers are just in it for the money and we are surrounded by ever growing examples of failure from that sort of company.
And then there is the pure politics – just how much of the NHS crisis is straight down to cuts in social care which will almost invariably be an order of magnitude cheaper in looking after people than Hospital ? Whilst it may vary regionally, the bottom line is the vicious and planned attack on local Government by central Government since 2010.
Hi Roderick,
I agree with you.
My experience being the main carer for my 95-year-old Mother-in-Law, as she declines with dementia, is that the NHS home carers which were eventually employed were not properly trained and had no idea how to deal with patients suffering dementia. It was a chaotic experience which ended in near tragedy…
On the other hand, the NHS A&E staff, who had to retrieve the situation, were brilliant and very upset (if not a little angry) about what had happened to my Mother-in-Law. They ensured we would not be so let down again. Although the whole process took well over one year, with my Mother-in-Law either in hospital or a care home for at least 10 months, we eventually received private care organised through the County Council Social Services, and they were/are absolutely brilliant.
If I had not experienced it I would never have expected private carers to be so much better. As far as I can tell, they are all paid similar amounts. The private carers are so much better motivated, more proactive, more conscientious and better organised. They are all local women, whereas the NHS staff were mostly foreign, with thick accents especially difficult for a 95-year old to communicate, and some with very poor English.
I expect there are bad private care companies too, but that was – and is – my experience.
It is still the NHS – or nationalised social care – even though the sub-contracted providers are from a private company. They were simply better organised.
And the natural environment which we all need is also neglected …. oh sorry, plenty of aspiration which if I were charitable might be described as visionary in Michael Gove / Theresa May’s 25 Year Environment Plan? Short term politics fails planet / environment every time.
May & Gove need to deliver tangible outcomes, not just talk about future aspirations – stop spin bowling, deliver the goods please. That applies to Health, Social Care, Education and Environment (list neither exclusive nor exhaustive).
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Brilliant and so true.
Tory idealogy: The privatisation of profit. The nationalisation of loss.
I am in favour of a hypothecated tax covering both the NHS and Social Care.
There are good reasons for this.
People need to clearly see how much they are paying for NHS and Social Care each month. It is for political parties to pitch their proposed levels, and for people to then vote on them.
At the moment, NHS funding comes from national Government, but Social Care is paid through Council tax. That leaves levels of Social Care subject to local variability: it should also be funded nationally.
The people should decide how much they want to pay for these services and, therefore, what the levels of service should be.
I have spoken at some length about this to Ken Loach (the Director) in the hope that this idea will get through to Jeremy Corbyn. Ken agreed, and he suggested we do the same for Trident! And I agreed with that, too:-)
As for Carillion, I – more than most – have suffered terribly at the hands of Carillion. It was they – contractors to Network Rail – who worked on the railway line (the supply route for HS2) which will lead to the inevitable destruction of the rare colony of bats. Their industrial malpractices structurally damaged our homes lining the new track, led a resident to try to commit suicide, and once led me to appeal to the Thames Valley Police for protection (who were quite outraged at what was going on to ordinary citizens).
The levels of corruption surrounding that project are eye-popping, and an outspoken statement was made in Parliament by my neighbour Lord Krebs denouncing the bare-faced lies of Network Rail.
The big problem I had was raising the issue of bats and the abuse of lineside residents at the national level: Ian Hislop (a supporter of railway travel) – or whoever at Private Eye received all my documentation and appeals – showed zero interest, even though I had reams of documentary evidence of straight-forward corruption surrounding these railway contracts.
It always requires the dramatic collapse of a national infrastructure contractor, or a terrible fire at a block of flats, before the power of the national press take any interest in ‘local’ corruption:-(
Why did Private Eye, of all papers, ignore those issues beforehand? I was fully prepared to travel to London and spend as much time as necessary to explain the outrageous things which were going on with Natural England, Oxford City Council Officers and Network Rail’s corrupt contractors (Carillion, Buckingham Group, ERM, Atkins etc) and the powerful lawyers they used to defeat us (Eversheds).
Oh, and Arup did not cover themselves in glory, either:-(
Try googling “ERM corruption Keystone Alaska” for a similar taste of what we experienced over the HS2 supply route shenanigans, or this from the Sierra Club:
https://content.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2014/02/keystone-xl-report-contractor-tied-transcanada-evidence-mounts-ongoing
which marries our situation in Oxfordshire almost perfectly.
Hislop picks most of the cherries but selectively leaves some on the tree. That is the reason I stopped my sub. I do miss reading my comic – but nobody died.
For me, the secret is that there is good private sector and bad private sector – the good brings genuine value added from skill & imagination and actually taking the risk.
The bad is where the business model depends largely on cutting costs – almost invariably by reducing employee’s conditions and reducing the quality of service. There is a whole business ethic built on providing marginal service, not quite bad enough to make it easy to get shot of the supplier. To be fair, it is fuelled by the tendering culture where big firms (and Government) change to show they are making cost savings, almost regardless of the service.
Smaller firms may also be more interested in what they are there to do, not just making money for the shareholders.
During my time in the Forestry Commission we went from 80%+ of our work done by the public sector to the opposite – 80% done by the private sector. As mechanisation came in the businesses doing the harvesting has changed from a guy with chainsaw and a clapped out tractor to highly skilled people running £1m worth of machinery – and the best have done well out of it, generating some serious income, a rareity in much of the rural scene. At the same time, the FC land has become more outward looking & responsive
The NHS is still way under 10% private sector and we are all (rightly) scared rigid of it going higher – because most of the service providers are just in it for the money and we are surrounded by ever growing examples of failure from that sort of company.
And then there is the pure politics – just how much of the NHS crisis is straight down to cuts in social care which will almost invariably be an order of magnitude cheaper in looking after people than Hospital ? Whilst it may vary regionally, the bottom line is the vicious and planned attack on local Government by central Government since 2010.
Hi Roderick,
I agree with you.
My experience being the main carer for my 95-year-old Mother-in-Law, as she declines with dementia, is that the NHS home carers which were eventually employed were not properly trained and had no idea how to deal with patients suffering dementia. It was a chaotic experience which ended in near tragedy…
On the other hand, the NHS A&E staff, who had to retrieve the situation, were brilliant and very upset (if not a little angry) about what had happened to my Mother-in-Law. They ensured we would not be so let down again. Although the whole process took well over one year, with my Mother-in-Law either in hospital or a care home for at least 10 months, we eventually received private care organised through the County Council Social Services, and they were/are absolutely brilliant.
If I had not experienced it I would never have expected private carers to be so much better. As far as I can tell, they are all paid similar amounts. The private carers are so much better motivated, more proactive, more conscientious and better organised. They are all local women, whereas the NHS staff were mostly foreign, with thick accents especially difficult for a 95-year old to communicate, and some with very poor English.
I expect there are bad private care companies too, but that was – and is – my experience.
It is still the NHS – or nationalised social care – even though the sub-contracted providers are from a private company. They were simply better organised.
And the natural environment which we all need is also neglected …. oh sorry, plenty of aspiration which if I were charitable might be described as visionary in Michael Gove / Theresa May’s 25 Year Environment Plan? Short term politics fails planet / environment every time.
May & Gove need to deliver tangible outcomes, not just talk about future aspirations – stop spin bowling, deliver the goods please. That applies to Health, Social Care, Education and Environment (list neither exclusive nor exhaustive).