On 17 Dec 2016 at 5:39pm Puzzled by privatisation wrote:
Usually when things get privatised the service gets worse, employees and customers get a raw deal, money is siphoned off to a few people at the top. Is there any service that is better for being privatised?
On 17 Dec 2016 at 6:45pm Mark wrote:
There was always a spectrum on this. Private ownership works best where there's evolving technology and scope for innovation and competition. BT was a successful privatisation because of what was evolving in mobile/Internet technology. All of privatisations since then have been idiotic and driven by misguided neo-liberal greed. The trains..
A perfect example... National ownership was vastly better. Also water supply. Vastly better under state control. I shudder to think what our once magnificent NHS will be like once it's carved up and sold off to profiteers. A medical version of Southern Rail, I'd imagine.
On 18 Dec 2016 at 9:16am Newms wrote:
The NHS was a victory fir the far left of the Labour Party during a time when the Nation was still more or less totalitarian in spirit for obvious reasons, it was also a highly class based society hence the ongoing overpayment of Doctors . This has had consequences ever since and true to form it ran out of money almost immediately.
It is a myth that without the NHS people would be dying in the street. The rest of the West set about rationalising health provision at the same time and there was a cross party consensus that it had to be done . In fact it was the war time Conservative Party that first began the discussion. ( See Churchill’s speech ‘ After The War’ ). Other more regional and part Insurance funded schemes have worked better , the French for example . There is absolutely no argument for continuing to over pay at the resource stage and as for opposition to private resources , ask the Doctors , they won`t give up their private status .
Unfortunately the NHS has become an ideological sacred cow. This is the real problem . It is not just that we get poor value for money but that any attempt to reform is opposed by a toxic mix of Unions , socialists and the old voter who has consistently parasistized the working population to pay for their long care/ health for the last two decades .
Still; its not as if its perfect anywhere else. If it could be managed it might yet be the world class service a Western developed country should have, many of us know full well how good it can be , when you need it.
It sums it up for me that NHS front line staff voted in vast numbers for Brexit. I trust the Turkeys enjoy their Christmas. Greed plus ignorance =…about £350m I think .
Truth - Post Brexit the ring fencing of the NHS has been abandoned, which I deplore; the perma- crisis will soon become a reality.
On 18 Dec 2016 at 9:32am Mark wrote:
Google "healthcare costs per capita" Paul, learn some facts.
On 18 Dec 2016 at 11:28am Tom Pain wrote:
Well I never,perhaps it's just Christmas but I was agreeing with Newms up to a point! The front line staff are the people who actually do all the caring work. They are the service, they know what it's like working in a totalitarian type of system. I wonder why they voted out?
On 18 Dec 2016 at 11:45am Mark wrote:
@Tom pain. I'm not entirely sure that nwmans would find it easy to support his claim that loads and loads of frontline NHS staff voted for Brexit. Where's the survey of NHS staff that demonstrates that? He has a well-known habit on this forum of inventing his own truths. A bit of a buffoon, really.
On 18 Dec 2016 at 1:41pm Pedro wrote:
I would also be interested in seeing Newms source for his brexit claim.
On 18 Dec 2016 at 2:23pm Mark wrote:
And a rather more sensible explanation of why he feels that the hard left imposed the NHS on a reluctant nation would be very welcome, misguided idjit.
On 18 Dec 2016 at 3:33pm Jennifer wrote:
My great grandfather was a doctor and he always hated the imposition of the NHS. There was a full health service for the poor through charities and specialists giving their time before the war. The NHS was nothing but propaganda and our family would be far better off without it. He never stopped complaining about how he disliked paying for other people's uneducated lifestyle choices.
On 18 Dec 2016 at 4:56pm Tom Pain wrote:
Newm's sauce is obviously H P. Sorry I couldn't stop myself
On 18 Dec 2016 at 5:32pm Clifford wrote:
Jennifer, we all enjoy satire but if you're going to come on here and pretend to be a stereotypical right-wing buffoon you're going to have to do better than that. Paul Newman can probably give you a few lessons in that area.
On 18 Dec 2016 at 5:53pm Mark wrote:
I did wonder about Jennifer and I (very nearly) argued with her. Thank-you Clifford for spotting the troll.
On 19 Dec 2016 at 8:39am Andymac wrote:
Just keen to understand if there is any substance to Mark's sweeping statement that "national ownership (of railways) was vastly better". I hold no brief for Southern and the current local shambles, but overall, the railways across the UK as a whole (odd as it may seem, there is more to this country than Lewes) seems to have been a success since privatisation, in terms of more people travelling more often and greater usage of the service. And according to the most recent EU study (now 3 years old but is a snapshot of UK customer perceptions after 20-odd years of privatisation), the UK rates of satisfaction with railways were the second highest in the EU. So leaving aside personal irritations/anger/uncontrollable rage with Southern (from which we've all suffered), and also trying to avoid politically motivated generalisations, where's the evidence that publicly-owned British Rail was genuinely better (in terms of service, efficiency, reliability etc etc) than what we have today? I was alive during the 70s and remember what it was like, and I don't see it myself.
On 19 Dec 2016 at 11:01am robp wrote:
The problem with looking at satisfaction on the railways is that the real cost of the ticket is masked by the very large subsidies being paid by the taxpayer. So when you buy a ticket, you need to cost in the tax you've paid for it as well.
Check it out here »
On 19 Dec 2016 at 12:08pm ar10642 wrote:
With Southern rail, things were much better when it was properly privatised as opposed to the pseudo-nationalised situation we have now, purely because a company that wanted to make a profit could afford not have a protracted battle with the unions like the DfT is orchestrating.
On 19 Dec 2016 at 3:02pm Tom Pain wrote:
They've got us from both sides, nationalisation just means that the government's owners own it