The NHS 1948- ?
The Beginning, The NHS came into being on the 5th of July 1948, and I followed behind, 59 days later.
The number of mangled people returning from 2 world wars, barely a generation apart, might have added to the collective conscience of the nation too. It was governments and industrialists that started those wars and the public were starting to separate the facts from the fairy stories and post war governments were getting a bumpy ride. The natives were getting restless, and none more so than those unable to work due to war injuries.
The NHS was created from the idea that people had a right to be born alive and kicking and enjoy a healthy and fruitful life, and that a nations government was the most obvious way of producing this.
Obvious because the government is the very manifestation of democracy, and so is a National Health Service. Who else has the power to regulate issues that could have a large impact on the entire nations health?
Your local council isn’t going to legislate for smokeless fuels, or clean rivers and safe working conditions, and nor is any business corporation that I know of.
Who else is in a position to gather and correlate statistical evidence on an entire nation but a nationally run service?
Who else is better placed to feed this information to government departments involved in the relevant areas of expertise?
Who else has the resources to fund all of this?
Any Londoner who lived in the early days of post war Britain will remember the “Pea-soupers” of the 50’s, and in particular 1952, when a 5 day version was said to have killed about 12,000 people in London area alone
Even after all those deaths it still took the government 4 years to pass the Clean Air act of 1956. It would have taken even longer if the NHS hadn’t been there to give them a kick up the backside on behalf of those in danger.
A NATIONAL health service was a very good idea and still is to this day.
The drive to privatise the NHS in the 21st Century
It is possible to trace back the beginning of the drive for privatisation to pretty much the first day that Margaret Thatcher met Ronald Reagan. A whole mess of mischief was created that day, Brexit included.
All things must be monetised under the American model, and that included the health of American citizens.
Never mind the crippling medical bills bankrupting thousands of Americans every month, they were “creating wealth for others dammit!”. And the Brits caught on fast.
And Mrs Thatcher was hooked immediately, and step by step the NHS was nibbled to the bone by people more often than not creating money for themselves…especially the Politicians, as we shall see later.
Noam Chomsky captures the process succinctly. “That’s the standard technique of privatisation: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, hand it over to private capital”
In this “standard version of events” we, the public, seem quite happy to put this down to a simple exercise of greed by the ruling class. After all the ruling class are making shedloads of money in the process, and don’t give a hoot what we think about them anyway.
Accepting this to be true ensures we do not look any deeper into the issue, but it is not all about profiteering and greed, they are just by-products of the process. We will be looking into that in the Conclusions section at the end of this piece
With the meeting “Of Minds” of Reagan and Thatcher, the US philosophy was exported to the UK, bolstered by the arrival of Tony Blair and his Atlantic Council chums and that is where the tyranny begins.
The 2012 Health and Social Security Act
The Scottish Health Service organigram
(possibly the worlds first organigram?)
Since the early days of Margaret Thatcher, the bottom feeders had been circling and nibbling on the peripheral bits of the NHS, like the cleaning services and catering and suchlike.
Most people accepted this, because most governments up to 2012 denied categorically that it was a sell off, when in actual fact it was. I do not recall a single “Hard Hitting” documentary from the BBC during this period and cannot find any evidence of them now.
Cleaning and Catering services in medical institutions are an important part of the safe and efficient healing of sick or injured people. You cannot deliver good health in a dirty unhygienic environment nor when your patients are undernourished. Many of us felt that the loss of these services was the thin end of the wedge at the time. We were right.
The media, including the BBC, still stayed pretty quiet on the subject, until 2012 and the arrival of the Health and Social Care Act.
The bill had been discussed in Parliament for 14 months and there had been considerable unrest about it, but in 2012 the government finally wrestled their bill through Parliament without any blood being spilled. Not so much as a custard pie in the face of a politician.
Of course, the BBC sprang into action to defend this precious institution as they commented on one of their meaningless scrolling taglines that slide across the bottom of your TV News
“Bill which gives power to GP’s passes”, was the message, and then …..Silence again, blissfully disregarding the overwhelming rejection of the bill by the vast majority of GP’s. All but one of the 28 largest National and Royal medical associations were unanimous in their disapproval too. The one exception being the Royal College of Surgeons, although even they noted that the bill “would damage the NHS”
BBC? – Nothing to report..
The only 3 main selling points that the Tory Government came up with: –
Q1 The new bill is not a charter for the privatisation of the NHS.
A1 Oh yes it was! And it still is, and ever since the act was passed the NHS has been fleeced with significant inroads from US investors
Q2 The public will enjoy more choice.
A2 How? – When Virgin Healthcare took over Social Services in Surrey where did people’s choice go then? Virgin was the only choice in town
Q3 Markets and Competition will Improve Healthcare
A3 Wrong, the evidence is clear. Increasing privatisation introduces multiple layers of waste and conflicts of interests, and that improves nothing.
There is a fourth point too, the bill completely removes the obligation of the government of the day to provide health care to its citizens.
The BBC reaction to these arguments? – No meaningful debate.
Everybody could now see what the long-term plan was for the NHS. No more hiding, no more ducking and diving, it was out in the open and written in the 2012 Health and Social Security Act. Both the Conservatives and New Labour had claimed the NHS was safe in their hands while talking directly to the people on camera or through Journalists……….
David Cameron 1996 & repeated in 2006
The BBC Exposed
The BBC has always been a Pro-establishment instrument. Its executives are appointed by the government of the day and from 1979 (Thatcher) to the present date ALL the governments of the UK have been Establishment Governments.
It’s why Jeremy Corbyn was not allowed to win an election; Only establishment governments are permitted in the UK. No People allowed
Britains Labour party under Blair might have been rebranded New Labour but everything it did while in office was rubber stamped by the Establishment. As if to prove it, only the other day the Queen put the final rubber stamp on Tony Blairs credentials by giving him a knighthood (amid loud and angry howls of protest.)
While we are talking about protests, there were plenty of them around the time of the 2012 Health and Social Security Act.
The BBC response to them? Silence.
So naturally anyone out there who relies on the BBC for their daily news was totally in the dark about both the Tory takeover and the publics very loud voice of protest on the matter. Courtesy of the Media Lens book, Propaganda Blitz, we hear from several key witnesses of the time…
Clive Peedell, Deputy Chair of the NHS Consultants Association, with 43,000 followers Tweeted:-
“Englands biggest ever robbery took place today – The NHS was stolen from under the noses of the public by the ~ 2012 Act”
Marcus Chown, author, and consultant for ‘New Scientist’, posted examples of large protests on Twitter, namely:
- ‘Drop the NHS bill’ protest Mothers’ Day in Parliament Square, London.
- Doctors’ ‘Drop the NHS bill’ protest.
- ‘Drop the NHS bill’ sit-down protest that blocked traffic for an hour in Whitehall, London.
- ‘Drop the NHS bill’ candle-lit vigil, St Thomas’ Hospital, London.
All of which were completely ignored by the BBC while on their very doorstep.
Dorothy Bishop, Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology at Oxford University challenged the BBC about its supposed ‘extensive coverage’ of the NHS bill. She described ‘A remarkable disconnect between what was being reported on BBC News outlets and what was concerning many members of the public’.
The BBC responded to Professor Bishop and she published their response too, under the same link above.
There have been lots of comments about the scarcity of balanced BBC coverage of the Bill and it begs the question as to why this was happening (Or not happening in fact)
What the BBC did not tell us about were the numbers of top BBC managers who didn’t need to use the NHS. The Taxpayers Alliance, through Freedom of Information requests, found that £2.3 million was spent between 2008 and 2010 on private healthcare insurance.
The Daily Telegraph reported in 2012 that during 2011, “506 BBC Managers enjoyed the £1,500 a year perk of Private healthcare insurance”
Going higher up the tree, we begin to see direct relationships between BBC executives and private healthcare entities.
Dr Mike Lynch OBE, sat on the Executive Board of the BBC, and was a board member of 2 companies specialising in software with customers in the field of Health Insurance, as well as major pharmaceutical corporations. He also sat on a 3rd advisory board of directors for a private equity investment company with over £2.5 Billion invested in the healthcare field.
The Chairman of the BBC, Lord Patton of Barnes was tied up with many interests worth massive sums of money in the Investment world associated with health services.
I paraphrase Media Lens here, “Are these the resumés of men who would really insist on impartial reporting of controversial ‘Reforms’ of the NHS”?
To answer that question, No! And they would go one better than “Impartial Reporting” and simply do “No reporting of any consequence” instead.
When you have people like this sitting at the top of the food chain in a corporation, they do not need to tell their staff how to behave or what they can or cannot report.
If you work for Rupert Murdoch you know full well where his line in the sand is drawn, without having to be told.
The Parliamentary gravy train exposed
This is a breakdown of how both houses of parliament contained people with documented vested interests in the Health and Care “Industry” of the UK around the time of the 2012 bill being passed.
This is corruption in its purest form. The infiltration of our legislative process by people who have a lot to gain from it.
The data from which this table was drawn was not done by one of the UK’s leading media outlets and certainly not by the BBC. It came from one Andrew Robertson, an investigative reporter, and obviously passionate about the NHS. The story of that data as of March 2014 is still available on the blogsite Social Investigations.
A few months later the Daily Mirror carried a similar story, and so did the Guardian.
It takes time, patience, and hard work to go through all of the ‘Declaration of Members Interests’ for every member of both Houses. In 2012 there were 775 Peers in House of Lords, and 650 MP’s in the House of Commons.
In my mind a national news service on the scale of the BBC, with all of its manpower and research resources should have had just such a list as this on record, and updated with every change of MP or Lord, but it seems not.
It fell upon a single independent investigative journalist, Andrew Robertson to do it, and be the FIRST one to bring this to the publics attention. I take my hat off to him, and to Media Lens for bringing him to my attention.
This glaring profiteering by so called “Right Honourable Men” exposes the simple fact that 229 of them voted to get the bill they were all going to profit from, passed into Law. That is corruption. Morally speaking, none of them had a right to vote at all.
The BBC on the matter? Nothing of any note!
A further damning indictment of the BBC’s total silence on this issue takes the form of a Russia Today broadcast, that has since been taken down from the Internet because the name Russia appears in the title. In the film Andrew Robertson is asked for his opinion.
The broadcast has the strapline “Wealthcare”, which fits the bill so nicely I borrowed it for the title of this piece.
It had quite a large audience, but how much better would it have been for the public if it had been broadcast on BBC news as well?
If this sort of thing was going on in Venezuela or Cuba the BBC and the whole British establishment would be frothing at the mouth, full of self-righteous indignation. [With the US rapidly preparing invasion plans to bring Democracy to these wayward people]
But instead, it is Great Britain, a nation that claims to be the very seat of modern democracy. The whole construct is laughable, and pitiable, in equal measure.
Famous last words
Just a couple of Quotes from the “Right Honourables” themselves
Lord Bell
“My message to the Labour Government is: stop accusing the Conservatives of wanting to privatise the NHS–we do not”
House of Lords debate on the NHS Feb 2000
Andrew Lansley Sec of State for Health
“The NHS is not for sale, there will be no privatisation.”
When confronted at a protest Feb 2012
Sir Richard Ottaway
‘I would like to be very clear: the Government will never privatise the NHS.’
And
‘The changes we want to see are simple ones…where the NHS is left free from political interference.’
Baroness Bottomley
‘I give this Bill an unequivocal and extraordinarily warm welcome.’
‘It is romantic poppycock to think that the Secretary of State should be personally involved
This was a statement made by Baroness Bottomley, Head of BUPA. The Secretary of State for Health at that time was Andrew Lansley. At the end of this piece is an imbedded PDF illustrating Mr Lansleys F3 Circle of Friends, Fans, and Financiers. Obviously romantic poppycock to expect Lansley to break with all his pressing financial wheelings and dealings and run the NHS….the job he was being paid to do
More quotes from people ‘In the Know’ are Here
At this point I will lighten it up a bit with a Nye Bevan Quote
When Health Money takes the place of Health Care.
In 2013 the government sold 80% of the NHS Plasma service – Plasma Resources UK (PR-UK) to US company Bain Capital, (US Vice President Mitt Romney was a founder-1984 and a director in 2013) The price? $200Million.
3 Years later Bain sold it to the Chinese investment company Creat Group for a modest $1.2 billion. Bain had invested $50 million in the meantime and the company was now called BPL
This story was covered by the BBC, with its main focus on Lord Owens, the Crossbencher peer, and his displeasure at the deal. His complaint was primarily about the sale to a private capital company, not a medical specialist. According to Lord Owens, “What they basically do is fatten it up over a few years, invest in order to sell at very high substantial prices.”
Lord Owens was right, a very nice ROI that, a return of $1.2 Billion on a total investment of $250 Million over three years. You wouldn’t get that in the Post Office Savings Bank
Contrast if you will, the BBC story, rather skimpy on substance, with this substantial piece from Open Democracy, written by Lucy Reynolds, an excellent journalist with only fraction of the research and reporting firepower of the BBC
It is a superb in-depth report on what goes on when grubby privateers get hold of crucial Plasma supply chains. Hats off to Lucy and Open Democracy.
This form of wheeling and dealing is not at all unusual in the Wealthcare Industry, and its all being paid for from the public purse, we also get to buy the plasma products back from the Chinese company, a Heads I win Tails you Lose situation.
Great stuff by the BBC too, making so much a fuss about it that it seems to have gone completely unnoticed. 😉
Conclusions
`1 The Long View
The important thing to remember about the destruction of the NHS is that it is not just about the NHS. The end game is the destruction of Democracy and all traces and reminders of what Democracy is all about. The public will soon be asked to give up democracy and forget all about it. I for one am not prepared to do that.
The NHS represented two aspects of a truly united society. The first is unity of the people, which is a serious counterbalance to the ‘Establishment’, and the second, a daily reminder to the establishment that when given a chance democracy really does work.
To the Establishment, peoplepower and democracy are its sworn enemies. Everything democracy does reduces the reach, power and control of the Establishment.
But democracy is not about ruling and regulating anybody, and every passing day that our self-appointed rulers woke up to witness the living breathing existence of the National Health Service was a day they spent with a thorn in their side. A constant nagging reminder to the Establishment of the dangers of democracy.
Many cynics would say that an organisation worth £Billions was simply too much of a temptation to the predatory classes. I have no doubt that for quite a lot of people, it was all about money, but it wasn’t that simple.
The concept, strategy and planning of the destruction of the NHS (and democracy) was done by people much higher up the totem pole, and with a much bigger picture in mind and it started many years ago.
It is possible to trace the undermining of the NHS back to the Reagan/Thatcher period, when politics in the UK changed to align with the US model.
Business comes first, Democracy is an impediment to business, so red-tape, rules and regulations affecting business must be torn up, allowing business to run things, not Government.
Oh yes while we are about it Communists and Socialists are mindless Red Baby Eaters and must be destroyed at all cost. THAT is the true American Way.
The UK now embarked on an eradication program, against the diseases and infections of the working class. This required the destruction of their environment, the offices, mines, and factories in which they lived. Along with that habitat went the Chip Shops, Corner Shops and Pubs where they spent their money in their free time.
This was progress we were told, and I for one was too busy paying my bills to even see it happening.
When you are up to your neck in debt, (Mortgages, Student Loans, Credit Cards) and your boss wants you to do something unethical, or against the rules in some way, you have two choices…the Company way or the Highway and the County Court.
2 The Mechanism
The fact that the NHS was more cost effective, efficient, and delivered a healthier population compared to the US model was a major factor in setting the destruction of the NHS as a high priority.
The UK Healthcare system showed America in a very bad light and Uncle Sam doesn’t do embarrassment very well.
What America does do is monetisation, and always in $US, and the figure with the biggest number of zeros behind it is always the winner. Collateral damage to humans, the environment, the atmosphere, and the oceans is just tough. “Let the government (You and I) pick up the tab for that”
To accomplish the mission of breaking up the NHS and selling it off piecemeal it was necessary to be very secretive. Successive UK governments had found out the hard way how the public reacted to folks messing around with their Health Service
The destruction of the NHS has been work of a lifetime for some people, with every step calculated and clinically carried out. It took nearly as long to destroy it as it took to build it in the first place
Throughout the demolition phase the BBC’s modus operandi has been the timeworn strategy of propagandists everywhere, Silence. It is hard to argue with silence.
We have heard all the fake arguments about Free Market Economy, and Neoliberal Economics. The so-called trickle-down economics saw money defy the laws of gravity and trickle up instead.
All of these failures are man-made constructions built to divert us while the undermining of democracy steadily continued. Nothing more than diversionary tactics and they worked very well. The public mind was busy chasing geese. Wild ones.
The idea of breaking up the National Health Service into hundreds of component parts and selling them off piecemeal had nothing to do with efficiency and economy.
Every one of those component parts needed a board of directors and the management team, financial consultants, accountants, and lawyers, adding layers of very expensive management to a system financed by the public purse is certainly not the way to reduce cost.
What is does do though is increase the number of very wealthy men who can make huge contributions to politicians enabling them to stay in power long after their sell by date has been reached.
It was never intended that a privately run service would deliver a healthier and happier population; it was about removing Healthcare from the democratically elected arms of government and turning into Corporate Wealthcare. In that way nobody can be held to account and the whole business of Wealthcare becomes the biggest Gravy Train the UK has ever seen.
Now the business of owning the planet is almost totally in the hands of corporate power, so who needs Government anymore?
Thanks Aunty
The Epilogue
A final word on the abject failure of the BBC in representing the interests of the general public regarding the cold blooded carve up of Britains only existing truly democratic institution comes from an email sent by a BBC insider to author Marcus Chown.
He tweeted it here…in 2012
This is what was attached to the tweet
It appears that all the while the Tories were cramming through the 2012 Bill the BBC had a very well stocked library of Argument and somebody made the deliberate choice not to use it
Links
https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Smog-of-London
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/251349/Cameron-NHS-is-safe-in-our-hands
https://twitter.com/cpeedell/status/184701963823357952
http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2012/04/bbcs-extensive-coverage-of-nhs-bill.html
https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/new_research_bbc_and_s4c_spend_millions_on_private_healthcare
http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.com/2014/03/compilation-of-parliamentary-financial.html
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/selling-nhs-profit-full-list-4646154
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/03/healthcare-companies-links-tories-nhs-contracts
http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.com/p/lords-and-mps-quotes-on-health-and.html
https://www.baincapital.com/news/creat-group-corporation-agrees-acquire-bio-products-laboratory-ltd
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-23372989
Lansley NHS – PDF- Taking Care of Business
TDG Transcript of RT Film on NHS Bill 2012
Another great site by the Dangerous Globe
