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

 

WWW silentmajorityspeaks.com

Blair squirms over NHS targets on BBC's Question Time

Blair begs for 5 years more to sort out NHS

"The choice we support is choice open to all on the basis as equal status as citizens, not on the unequal basis of their wealth."

Matron can't do it all on her own

Howard's way to cure the NHS Waiting Lists

"Labour's approach has been tried and it's failed. Labour has spent without reform. It is the very poorest in society who suffer most. If the private sector can drive up standards, let's use it. If it can relieve pressure on the NHS, let's use it. Public and private sectors can achieve more working together than apart. Since 1997, the number of people forced to pay for private operations out of their own savings has trebled. Half of these people are pensioners. Labour said in 1997 that it had 24 hours to save the NHS. Seven years later its approach has been tried, and it has failed. People are dying in Britain who would not die abroad. That is the tragedy."

He added: "Waiting for hospital treatment is not like waiting for a bus. It can often be a matter of life or death. How can a modern, civilised country tolerate a system where somebody with a brain tumour has his operation cancelled six times and waits a year for treatment. Waiting lists don't exist in coujtries such as France and Germany. Waiting lists are a British disease and the right to choose is the cure. Labour offers phoney choice - with people left to wait. Labour's spin machine will try to distort our plans. Over the past few days it has become clear that Labour will lie, lie and lie again about our policy."

"Labour says we will cut spending. In fact, we have set aside substantial spending increases to provide the funds to make our reforms work. Labour says our proposals will be available only to the better off. This, too, is a lie. Our policy is precisely the opposite. It will give everybody the right to choose."

Which Party has the better prescription?

Analysis by Edward Heathcoat Amory, Daily Mail - June 24, 2004

This week, the Tories and Labour are trying to sell us their visions of the future of the Health Service. Both appear to have uncannily similar plans, to the extent that they are bickering over the same slogan, The Right to Choose. So is there clear water, of any colour, between the two parties?

Here we offer a a guide to their battleground over health policy, and how it would change under the next Labour or Tory government.

Choosing your Hospital

NOW: The Government is phasing in its 'choice at six month's' policy, under which any patients who have spent more than six months on a waiting list will be offered an alternative hospital.

LABOUR: By December, 2005, all patients requiring non-emergency surgery will be offered by the GP five hospitals at which to have their operation. The Government may be planning to extend this option to any hospital to match Tory plans.

CONSERVATIVE: Anyone can choose to be treated at any hospital, provided that the hospital itself offers the kind of treatment that the patient needs, and subject of course to each hospital's waiting list. As with Labour, GP's will help patients make their decision.

Opting for the private sector

NOW: The Government has begun to 'bulk buy' certain routine operations - 250,000 a year at present - from the private sector. The NHS still manages the process, but the actual operations are carried out in the private sector hospital. Specialist private hospitals are being built to met this demand.

LABOUR: Bulk buying by the NHS from the private sector would continue and Health Secretary John Reid believes that 10 to 15 percent of NHS operations could take place in a private hospital by 2014 - provided that they can cut costs to NHS levels.

CONSERVATIVE: Individual patients can either go to a private sector hospital which has kept its costs down to NHS rates, in which case the entire cost of their operation will be met by the taxpayer. Or they can choose a more expensive private health provider, and the Government will give them half the money that the Health Service would have spent on the operation (this is likely to meet, on average, 30 to 40 percent of the cost of a private operation).

Andrew Alexander - Daily Mail, November 12, 2004 Labour's passion for targets is a new as well as a tiresome phenomenon. Perhaps it comes from its Marxist past and a lingering admiration for modernisation programmes of the Soviet Union, the first nation to go target mad. All those five-year plans called for a rise to so many million tons of steel and coal, of wheat, heads of cattle, tractors, lorries, pairs of shoes, door knobs and everything else. The supposed success of these targets resulted so much from false returns from plant managers, frightened for their lives, that the mathematicians at the state planning agency, Gosplan, tried to calculate 'a coefficient of lying'. Perphaps we need something similar.

Central Targets

NOW: A massive increase in central control (there are 200 performance indicators for every hospital now and some experts believe that the NHS is subject to as many as 700 targets - has been a disaster for the NHS, with doctors pushed to abandon clinical judgements in favour of box-ticking.

LABOUR: Mr Reid said yesterday that what patients want is 'more targets', and that's what he is giving them. A target that would theoretically limit waiting lists to a maximum of 18 weeks is being considered by the Government.

CONSERVATIVE; The party says it would abolish centrally-set targets.

Foundation Hospitals

NOW: Labour has allowed ten NHS Trusts (out of 249) to gain foundation status, which frees them from some Whitehall bureaucracy and lets them make more manatement decisions.

LABOUR: Over the next five years, Labour has promised that all hopitals will have the opportunity to apply for foundation status. But not all may meet the Government's performance criteria.

CONSERVATIVE: Any hospital wanting foundation status will be allowed it, regardless of performance. They will have more management freedom and be able to borrow money independently ofGovernment.

Paying for it all

NOW: Labour has massively - and largely ineffectively - increased NHS spending, from £33billion in 1997 to £67billion

LABOUR: Plans further big rises, with spending up to £99billion by 2008. Beyond that, the Government will increase spending again, but we won't know by how much until Chancellor Gordon Brown's Comprehensive Spending Review early in July 2004.

CONSERVATIVE: Says it would spend £34billion more than Labour. However, this is in the years after 2008, so it may well be matched or exceeded by the Government's own plans when they are announced.

Who do you believe?