Wes Streeting and co are putting future of NHS as we know it at risk

The electoral aristocracy in the “uniparty” that is English Labour were consorting with those gracious “providers” of care long before they set out their candour-free General Election manifesto. I hear these “care corporations” have kindly offered to invest the princely sum of £1 billion into NHS England

IF they were to be guaranteed long-term” contracts.

This market strategy has no doubt been informed by informal understandings with foolish would-be ministers who have manifestly not, despite the albatross legacy of Blair’s PFIs understood the aphorism that it is not ever advisable to do “a deal with the devil” either morally or economically.

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Perhaps it is a case of there are none so thick as those who will not learn when party and personal funding reps are in the classroom.

Meanwhile, back at home in Scotland, the hamstrung devolved NHS administration, every week presiding over unnecessary, untimely deaths and suffering, are failing to inspire and engage our citizens into taking the care of our own sick into our own hands as a matter of the greatest urgency.

In recent years a plethora of moral irrelevancies has preoccupied the Holyrood elites, most clearly seen in retrospect. In parallel with the constitutional, economic and geopolitical, the people of Scotland themselves must assert their sovereignty.

They must take to the streets and use what elements of the mainstream media that are willing to help to demand an urgent national health convention to deeply scrutinise when and how taxpayers’ money is siphoned off by vested “caring” interests and set about a people-driven “reformation” of both health and social care provision in this land before Big Pharma and Big Starma do their worst.

Direct and participatory democracy and the redemption of representative politicians must be delivered in this decade or our children and grandchildren will inherit an increasingly desolate and dangerous future of which a two-tier NHS will be only one feature.

Dr Andrew Docherty

Selkirk

I READ some English journalist saying that Salmond was divisive and that folk intending to vote No in the referendum put vote Yes posters in their windows to avoid being hassled! That’s the first time I have ever heard that scurrilous claim!

Also, Salmond got a lot of stick for appearing on the RT channel. I personally found his chats on RT very entertaining and at no time was there ever anything that caused me concern about the programme.

Alex was a great man who will be sadly missed.

Steve Cunningham

Aberdeen

WHILE I agree with Stephen Flynn when he exhorts Keir Starmer to overrule Chancellor Reeves and stop the apparently proposed cuts that will herald a much-unwanted Labour-imposed “austerity” – that they assured us wouldn’t occur in order to con us into electing them in our anti-Tory party fervour – I fear Flynn will have scant influence on schemes clearly hatched long before Labour gained power (Flynn tells Starmer to overrule Reeves and stop the cuts, Oct 18).

I’m not sure the much-contested black hole of £22 billion really exists, given that it is already being cranked up, is widely contested and we really only have Starmer and Reeves’s word for it.

It just seems a convenient stick to “justify” their always-intended scheming, which we know about through the unexpected withdrawal of the Winter Fuel Allowance from many despite Starmer’s opposition to it in the House of Commons as recently as May, when he claimed it could kill 4000 pensioners, and it was thought the Tories might introduce it.

So, even after only 14 weeks we already know we can’t trust a single word either Starmer or Reeves says. Yet money needs to be raised to pay for public services, particularly for our health services. So why not use taxation in a progressive way, where the opportunity exists for some good to come from it?

For example, while I disagree with the Scottish Government’s imposition of minimum pricing of alcohol, because it mitigates against the poor and hard-pressed pensioners like me, if the Chancellor were to calculate the percentage increase of tax on alcohol at the 65p per unit base level and apply that increase across the board, at least it would divert money from supermarkets’ profits to the exchequer where it could be ring-fenced to be used by the NHS to defray the expense of dealing with the problems alcohol abuse causes.

It would also be fairer in that all alcohol users would be affected and contributing.

The same is true of sugar and salt abuse in processed foods. By raising tax on sugar, along with other unhealthy ingredients, and introducing a tax on takeaway fast food, a major step forward could be made in reducing the effects of poor diet and obesity.

Again that money could go to the NHS, relieving pressure on other parts of the budget and funding public education. Ultimately pressures would be relieved on health services.

While not eliminating its use immediately, raising the tax on tobacco would have a significant effect on the public health; the money again ring-fenced for cancer treatments, improving access and better outcomes.

Similarly with vaping. This is a problem we are watching being created. It seems absurd that we are not attending to the problem even at this early stage. Shouldn’t we tax it at the same level as tobacco now!

For the environment a takeaway tax would cut down the containers produced that are destined to go straight to landfill, polluting our streets and planet, and passing our problem to future generations. And wouldn’t a direct punitive tax on single-use plastic galvanise the industry to produce competitively priced products for its customers that can reduce use and be used safely; at a stroke removing the need for costly, cumbersome and dubiously effective bottle return schemes?

We get a solution in a simple way by encouraging change. The money raised could be ring-fenced to support waste collection and processing by councils and fund the campaign to make the indiscriminate discarding of all personal waste as socially unacceptable. Wouldn’t our environment be better for it?

The Government could also rein in the wild excesses of the energy pricing by producing and supply companies by taxing energy production at source at a level to return prices for consumers to the lower level previous governments, and now Labour too, have long promised and consistently failed to deliver – and are unlikely to in the future as things stand. Not only would this be a boon for domestic consumers, particularly for low users with reform of the standing charges, but also for the large commercial and industrial energy users, and which would encourage inward investment by making our nation a better place to establish and conduct business.

However, for me taxation is not enough. We need to return energy supply to the public sector, where fuels can compete against each other in a properly regulation market, and are not tied to the Government acquiesced anti-competitive cartel pricing currently imposed on us by the wealth takers through artificially tying electricity prices to fossil fuel market supply fluctuations – excessively stripping money from ordinary folks being ripped off.

Of course these and many other options like them are only in the domain of progressive government that legislates for the people, the environment and not just vested wealth interests. I fear that the political and economic structure of the UK is so entrenched in the privileged and the wealthy few who control society, progressive UK government will likely not be forthcoming any time soon.

Only an independent Scotland, prepared to be brave and work for the benefit of its citizens can deliver the progressive policies to benefit us all.

And that’s why we Scots need to reach for a higher political level, take the British bull by the horns, and demand our release from this failing United Kingdom now!

Jim Taylor

via thenational.scot