Rescuing Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected Dictatorship
|
Spin,
not face-to-face confrontations with the voters, is the Government's
chosen method of communication. Ordinary people are dangerous. Ordinary
people might ask a question which throws a politician 'off message';
the Cabinet member might reveal himself or herself to be a human being
like us, and not a programmed android. Worse still, he or she might
tell the truth.
Ann Leslie - Daily Mail, September 16, 2004
Blair wants to leave his
mark on history - looks more like a stain to me.
Peter Thorndyke, Diss,
Norfolk - Daily Mail, May 23, 2005
I know I'm me - why do I
need an ID card?
"Sorry, officers, I
don't have an ID card. I never applied for one. It seemed a bit steep
at 300 quid. I do have my free passport, my driving licence and my
London freedom travel pass, each with my photograph. I have my NHS
medical card, with its lengthy number, given me at birth, my RAF
service book with my Armed Forces number, and a chit authorising me to
wear a few gongs -including a General Service Medal with Malaya bar,
for fighting communist terrorists on behalf of my country, or so they
told me.
"I've also got various credit
cards and store cards, all with my signature on the back, generally
good for buying the everyday requrements for life as well as the odd
luxury. If you decide to arrest me, I suppose I'll have to be
photographed and given another number, besides my PINs.
"I'm afraid I haven't got a
pension book; it was taken away."
"By thieves, sir?"
"No ... well, not exactly. By the
Government. By the way, may I see your warrant cards please, gentlemen?"
Oh dear, they've disappeared. E.
Harry Gumer, Romford, ESSEX - Daily Mail, June 1, 2005
NO means NO
When does NO mean MAYBE?
When it's not the answer the EU wants. With the courageous French
NON resounding in their ears, shabby, undemocratic self-interested
leaders of Europe propose ignoring the part of their precious
constitution that requires ratification by all members and
continuing without one of the biggest founder members to
prevent derailing the gravy train.
As in Ireland,
they refuse to accept any NO votes, ignoring the will of the people,
and re-stage votes until they can engineer the 'correct' answer. Sadly,
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw dances to their tune like a puppet on a
string. With tactics such as these, how can anyone really believe the
EU has our interests at heart. Letter from Steve Penny, Kingsnorth, Kent - Daily
Mail, June1, 2005
Surely
the French result makes the £1million the EU recently spent on a
treaty signing ceremony seem a trifle premature and extravagant. Letter from Keith Wiseman, Bury, Lancs. - Daily Mail,
June1, 2005
|
Britain has
traditionally been one of the biggest net contributors to the EU
because we do not get as much money back from Brussels in farm and
regional subsidies as our rivals.
According to
Treasury figures, between 1995-2002, Britain's average contribution
taking the rebate into account, was £2.6billion, or £43.55
per head of population.
The French -
the biggest recipient of farm subsidies - contributed £1billion a
year or £16.08 per head of their population.
|
May
28, 2006 (1114 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2464 US - 111 UK - >60,000? civilians - 25 media
|
Tony
Blair should know that respect comes by example - from the
top. If a country's leader has no respect for the rule of
international law and no respect for the truth, how can
he expect anyone to have respect. Letter
from P.J.Atkinson, Ashford, Kent - Daily Mail, January 12,
2006
The
Chancellor's single greatest act of vandalism in almost
nine years in office has been his wanton destruction of
Britain's private retirement industry. By slapping a massive
tax on pension funds, now worth
£7.3billion a year, he has helped to turn
the best private retirement industry in Europe into a basket-case
in perpetual crisis. Together with the adoption of European
accounting rules - which make it much riskier to operate
a company pension scheme - hundreds of firms have shut their
final salary plans to new employees and slashed benefits
to existing staff. From
Allister Heath: "I've seen the future and its grey"
in THE SPECTATOR - April 15, 2006
Nine
years ago the British people were sold a fantasy of clean
and competent government of principle and honesty. Its shiny
wrappings stripped away, the product now reveals its true
nature: Personal greed, arrogance, incompetence, shamelessness,
rash warmongering and an inability to accept - as is clear
to almost everyone else - that it is time to go. Editorial
- The Mail on Sunday, May 28, 2006
|
I'm
quitting the NHS over the tyranny of targets and tick-boxes
Commentary
by David Penman - Consultant Gynaecologist, who resigned yesterday
- Daily Mail, June 8, 2006
The
emptiness of the Government's feel-good rhetoric on the Health
Service is now becoming ever more apparent as the crisis in our
hospitals deepens. Yesterday, in a scathing attack on the Government's
NHS policy, the chairman of the British Medical Association consultants'
committee warned that 'something is going very badly wrong' in
the Health Service.
He
went on to claim that 'care is suffering, jobs are disappearing
and patients and staff are paying the price'. Representatives
at the BMA's annual consultants' conference also accused the Government
yesterday of 'short-sighted' manpower manning and voiced fears
about a 'crisis' in the employment prospects for junior doctors.
As a consultant gynaecologist, I fully agree with the BMA leaders'
indictment of the Government's approach, which he described as
a tale of 'shocking incompetence'. Indeed, I have been so disillusioned
by ministerial mismanagement, empty propaganda and warped political
priorities that I have just handed in my notice.
What
we have now is health rationing, where political instructions
override clinical needs. I never thought that such a moment would
arrive, for throughout my medical career I have had a strong commitment
to the NHS. But I have grown so fed up with the soul-destroying,
manipulative culture of target-setting and managerial interference
that I prefer to resign rather than put up with the bullying,
wasteful politicians and bureaucrats.
I
resigned from my post at the Medway Maritime Hospital in Kent
days before I was due to attend an internal disciplinary hearing,
held to discuss an alleged breach of my employment code of conduct.
My supposed crime did not relate to any clinical matter or professional
ineptitude. In the eyes of my accuser, I had committed the more
serious offence of daring to speak publicly about the way I was
being prevented from doing my job properly by the ridiculous decisions
of hospital managers.
Essentially,
I had been told that many operations for patients on my waiting
list were postponed until the next financial year in order, it
was claimed, to save money and meet Government targets. I found
this utterly absurd. I had the capacity to carry out the operations,
but, thanks to some bureaucratic diktat, I had to sit around completing
Sudoku puzzles rather than dealing with my patients. This is no
way to run a health service in an advanced, wealthy country.
The
British public, which pays for the NHS through an increasing heavy
burden of taxation, is not receiving the health care it deserves.
Instead, it is subsidising a creaking edifice of statistical fraud,
political dogma and over-mighty officialdom.
The
Soviet Union used to issue annual figures trumpeting remorseless
increases in tractor production. Yet the economy remained mired
in crisis. The same is true of Patricia Hewitt's numbers showing
record falls in waiting lists and record numbers of operations.
Anyone who has worked in the frontline knows the system is failing
badly.
The
best year ever ... for management consultants
By
Benedict Brogan, Kirsty Walker and Emily Cook
Daily
Mail, June 8, 2006
The
NHS squandered an estimated £1billion on management
consultants last year, senior doctors were told yesterday.
At the same time hospitals also paid out huge sums of
money to their own managers - with some spending more
than £1million on director's salaries alone.
In
a devastating attack Dr Paul Miller, leader of Britain's
hospital doctors, mocked Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt's
recent boast that the NHS has had its best year ever.
"This has been the NHS's best year ever .. for management
consultants .. for losing staff ... for wasting money,"
he said.
He
warned ministers that if they continue with present policies
they will destroy the NHS. Dr Millar, chair of the British
Association's Consultants Committee, said that management
consultants charged the public sector an estimated £3billion
in 2005. Of this, he calculated around £1billion
may have been charged to the NHS.
He
told the BMA's annual consultants' conference yesterday:
"It is hard to avoid the conclusion
that we are working in a service which is being broken
by policies which don't work, devised by officials who
have resigned, implemented by managers who don't believe,
on staff in disbelief and patients without a say. Enough
is enough."
A
spokesman for the Department of Health said: "Overall
we are reducing management costs in the NHS and will save
£250million each year following PCT streaming. We
only bring in consultants where they add to management
expertise, not duplicate it."
|
It
will be a huge wrench to leave the Health Service, for it has
been part of my family for decades. It was in December 1997 that
I was appointed as a consultant gynaecologist at the Medway hospital
in Kent., At that time, there were high hopes that the newly elected
Labour Government might embark on a radical programme of improvements
for the NHS, for this had been a central theme of its election
strategy.
For
18 years under Tory rule, the NHS had been muddling along with
limited resources and lukewarm political support. But I gradually
came to see that the new Government was not interested in real
reform. With a vast expansion in tiers
of officialdom, the NHS began to transform itself from a health
service into a centralised system of meeting targets and ticking
boxes.
The
jobs of senior managers depended not on improving patient care
but on adhering to statistical goals laid down by Tony Blair and
whoever happened to be his Health Secretary at the time. This
neurotic obsession with meeting targets, come what may, led to
a host of absurdities. On one hand, a certain sum would have to
be saved on the clinical budget every year. But, on the other,
every patient would have to be treated within a certain timescale,
which could increase costs.
Similarly,
I witnessed the phenomenon of 'hot-bedding' where rapid patient
turnover was encouraged regardless of clinical care. Sometimes,
it could be less than ten minutes between the departure of one
patient from a certain bed and the arrival of the next. With
so little time to clear up, it is no wonder that infections such
as MRSA are increasing so rapidly.
This
statistic-driven culture also meant that any service which did
not have its targets set by central government would not be treated
as a priority. As a result, it would be deprived of resources
and staff. I saw this in my own department, the only specialist
foetal unit in the area. But because we did not have targets,
we were starved of funding and the service was run down.
To
the paper-shuffling managers, our helping women through problem
pregnancies was an irrelevance. My disenchantment came to a head
at the end of last year when I found out that, as a result of
Government guidelines on annual financial targets, the hospital
had decided that all new routine out-patient cases had to wait
a minimum of nine weeks before being seen, while all routine surgical
cases had to wait a minimum of 20 weeks. So
even if we had the capacity, we were still not allowed to treat
patients.
The
situation became even worse when I discovered in February that
managers were shifting my cases into the next financial year so
that the costs of their treatment would not be in the accounts
for 2005-06. The idea that this would save any real money was
ludicrous. All that this statistical manoevring achieved was to
create a backlog for April and May. I'd had a bellyful by this
stage and went public with my anger.
Having
spoken to the media, I was hauled before the chief executive,
and, like some political criminal, asked to explain myself. I
pointed out that, under the terms of my contract, I was free to
publish articles, books, give lectures and make comments to the
media. But still I was threatened with disciplinary action.
So
I have decided to quit. I felt I had no alternative. The NHS,
is seems, is more interested in gagging its staff than in listening
to their genuine complaints. The truth should not be heard. Distortions
and spin must prevail.
From
now on, I shall be working in the private health sector. I shall
miss my NHS patients and many wonderful colleagues in the NHS
- from fellow consultants to nurses to ancillary staff such as
porters and cleaners. I won't miss constant pressure from oppressive
managers and politicians.
If you have
suggestions for additional subjects, or material to include in the
pages linked to the subjects listed, please contact the webmaster.
