Posts Tagged ‘tory’

Conservative health policy

January 23rd, 2010

I’ve been trying to find the time to post an analysis of the Tory draft health manifesto. But the more I’ve thought about it the less I’ve had to say. Not because it’s marvellous but because the essential points are so simple.

Much of the manifesto is contradictory – calling for less government control in some sections and more in others. Their thinking is muddled at best.

I find it astonishing that despite the NHS being clearly a huge Labour achievement the Conservatives several times over claim they are “the party of the NHS”. What an absurd thing to say. As a Green I feel no need to make such claims, just to offer policies that will improve our wellbeing such as more community-based healthcare and abolishing prescription charges.

The absolutely critical parts of this manifesto refer to that old political favourite of ‘choice’:

“We will give everyone the power to choose any healthcare provider that meets NHS standards.”

“To give patients even more choice, we will open up the NHS to include new independent and voluntary sector providers…”

There we have it. The NHS will be broken up and left to compete with other providers. Private providers I would suggest is where they are going. Because for Tories government provided options are ‘bad’ and in their free-market worldview competition is needed to boost the quality of government services.

We already know that marketisation, competition and privatisation in the NHS thus-far has been hugely expensive, resource intensive, problematic and with very mixed quality outcomes. (Read more: On this blog here and here, plus from the NHS Support Federation & Keep our NHS public)

I’m not entirely surprised by a Conservative push for further privatisation of the NHS, destroying public service and end-to-end treatments without changing providers n-times. But the revelation that the shadow health secretary Andew Lansley’s office is being bankrolled by the Chairman of Care UK makes things even clearer. Care UK are a leading private beneficiary of the NHS privatisation work Labour have done already. I’m sure Care UK can see very significant profits to reap from a Conservative-controlled NHS break-up.

I don’t believe that’s what the majority of British people want to happen, I just hope the manifesto’s weasel words will be exposed before people come to vote.

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Back from my Halloween Horror

November 13th, 2009

On the Saturday of Halloween I had an unexpected tour of the Royal Sussex County’s Accident & Emergency department. Not that there is an ideal time, but Halloween night is not a good time to be in A&E, it was busy! My Halloween horror was a nasty concussion and back injury after a garage door came down on my head at speed. It hurt. Through my blurry vision I could see zombie face-painted people in the hospital waiting room, most surreal.

Two weeks of doctor enforced rest and I’m now getting back up to speed. I’m not 100% better, but good enough to get back into the blogosphere. I’ll be relying on my osteopath to get me over the last of the symptoms.

So I’m sorry to disappoint readers like Dan Wilson that I wasn’t able to cover the CityClean strikes, but I was laid up. The strikes are suspended and we’re still awaiting full resolution of the detailed issues at hand. I know Green colleagues were working hard on supporting the unions, but I’m not up to speed on the details.

Meanwhile the selection for the new Tory candidate for Brighton Pavilion continues, with Brighton Politics Blogger stirring up an unprecedented number of Tory comments to his/her blog. Good luck to the candidates, selections are a nerve wracking process. I must flag one issue I have with this process which is still being promoted as an ‘open primary’ when in fact it is an ‘open caucus’. The difference? With a primary anyone in the constituency can register to vote resulting in a larger turnout and so greater representation. A caucus is a meeting where those attending the meeting can vote after presentations from the candidates – it’s a much smaller scale affair and so less inclusive. Regardless, I think open primaries are gimmick which don’t solve fundamental issues with politics.

Attacking other parties for not having selected their candidates in that way is pretty weak in my view. How about having a go at policy differences?!

One of the Tory hopefuls, Scott Digby, has a pop at Greens with the rather tired ‘watermelon’ joke which local Tories having been chortling about for rather too long. But Digby rather misses the point, the joke is that we’re supposed to be ‘Communists’ as Tory cabinet member Cllr Ayas Fallon-Khan likes to allege, not Labour! We couldn’t be more different than Labour, disagreeing on: ID cards, privatisation, education, taxation, wars in Iraq & Afghanistan… I could go on!

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Wrong-headed Tory CEO-Mayor policy

October 10th, 2009
I was astounded and appalled by Monday’s announcement from the Conservatives that they planned to merge council chief executives with directly elected Mayors.
The Guardian:
Twelve cities across the country would hold referendums to get rid of their council chief executives and hand over the powers to an “executive mayor”, who would take over the role of hiring and firing staff, determining council operations, and directing spending, as well as offering political leadership.
Conflating the two posts would help address public concern about the pay of local authority bosses, said Caroline Spelman, the shadow communities secretary.
Firstly, I agree that many chief executives (in local authorities and private companies) are vastly overpaid compared to their hard working staff. But cutting up to 12 CEO salaries and replacing them with new elections for mayors is hardly going to be saving money. It’s a populist measure because most people won’t think of the cost of the elections when hearing the proposal — they’ll just keep in mind losing another expensive bureaucrat.
But what worries much more is that this announcement shows that the Conservatives are ready to abuse the position of the civil service as much as Labour have. Peter Oborne and others have been scathing of how a trend to politicise and misuse the civil service in the political trenches has gone from occasional in the Thatcher years to out of control in the Blair years.
No matter who is in charge politically, a paid head of the civil service is needed to manage the permanent staff of government who remain whatever changes elections bring. YES local government desperately needs serious reform… but going back on hundreds of years of political evolution by merging officer and politician is wrong-headed, fixes nothing and is just cheap populism.
This is a bad policy and I’m disappointed that a major political party could actually announce something so wrongheaded. It doesn’t bode well for the level of political debate ahead…

I was astounded and appalled by Monday’s announcement from the Conservatives that they planned to merge council chief executives with directly elected Mayors.

The Guardian:

Twelve cities across the country would hold referendums to get rid of their council chief executives and hand over the powers to an “executive mayor”, who would take over the role of hiring and firing staff, determining council operations, and directing spending, as well as offering political leadership.

Conflating the two posts would help address public concern about the pay of local authority bosses, said Caroline Spelman, the shadow communities secretary.

(Also see reports in LGCPlus and Planning Resource)

Firstly, I agree that many chief executives (in local authorities and private companies) are vastly overpaid compared to their hard working staff. But cutting up to 12 CEO salaries and replacing them with new elections for mayors is hardly going to be saving money. It’s a populist measure because most people won’t think of the cost of the elections when hearing the proposal — they’ll just keep in mind losing another expensive bureaucrat.

But what worries much more is that this announcement shows that the Conservatives are ready to abuse the position of the civil service as much as Labour have. Peter Oborne and others have been scathing of how a trend to politicise and misuse the civil service in the political trenches has gone from occasional in the Thatcher years to out of control in the Blair years.

No matter who is in charge politically, a paid head of the civil service is needed to manage the permanent staff of government who remain whatever changes elections bring. YES local government desperately needs serious reform… but going back on hundreds of years of political evolution by merging officer and politician is wrong-headed, fixes nothing and is just cheap populism.

This is a bad policy and I’m disappointed that a major political party could actually announce something so wrongheaded. It doesn’t bode well for the level of political debate ahead…

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