Our precious NHS: 3 little myths and a REALLY BIG FACT

Myth 1: 

“Let me draw a little contrast between what the Health Secretary is delivering here – real-terms increases in health spending...” David Cameron

Myth 2: 

“Too often, the decisions of frontline doctors and nurses are over-ridden by a top-down system which doesn’t allow professionals the freedom they need.......

Myth 3: 

.........this is the reason that despite spending the European average on health, some of the outcomes are poor in comparison. For example, someone in this country is twice as likely to die from a heart attack as someone in France,” David Cameron

First of all the little FACTS -

FACT 1

According to the Office of Budget Responsibility, by the end of March 2012, inflation will have risen by a cumulative 10% since the Con Dem Government came to power.  Over the same period, NHS spending in England will have risen from £103bn to £105.9bn – that’s a 2.8% increase, a fall in real terms of 7.2%.

FACT 2

A few professionals don’t completely agree with you Dave.....The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) have voted 99 percent in favour of a no confidence motion against the government health reforms – the first time a motion has been carried against a minister in more than 30 years.

A BMA press release on 6^th April stated..... we believe the Bill as it is currently written is taking the NHS in England in the wrong direction.

FACT 3

According to the OECD health indicators 2009, current figures back the common hypothesis that different levels of deaths from heart attacks between countries are explained by underlying risk factors such as diet and lifestyle. 

A year 2000 article in The Lancet has confirmed that, [The lower coronary mortality figures in France compared with other countries] is a consequence of different ways of coding coronary mor­tality.

But you know, you could spend a lifetime's bank holidays challenging the inaccuracies and misinformation pumped out by the government about the NHS - and that's just what they want: argue about the details - miss the big picture.  

1 BIG FACT
“The [Government's Health] Bill relieves the Health Secretary of his existing responsibility for providing a universal and comprehensive health service, and doesn’t allocate it to anyone else.

It leaves it up to unaccountable local GPs grouped in Consortia to decide what services their particular patients will be entitled to, and what they will have to pay for, and how much, and this can vary from one consortium to another – goodbye both comprehensiveness and universality.

It leaves an unaccountable healthcare market regulator (Monitor) to decide what private companies can offer NHS patients, and whether they can underbid NHS hospitals on price, and it mandates Monitor to promote competition –
goodbye free care at the point of delivery.”
 Colin Leys Cameron's rhetoric is wearing thin

ΩΩΩΩΩΩ    OVER AND OUT    ΩΩΩΩΩΩ

SOCIAL MOBILITY? NOT ON YOUR NELLIE!

“The true test of fairness is the distribution of opportunities. That is why improving social mobility is the principal goal of the Coalition Government’s social policy..” 
opening-doors-breaking-barriers.pdf

Spot says:

  Is it a stereotype?  Is it a myth? – Me ‘n’ Ms Mythbuster both fought for this one but as she’s got a busy week ahead busting the “Power to the GPs….er… People” myth, she’s letting me have a gnaw at the old social mobility bone.  Mind you - she didn’t let on it’d involve an 89 page Government document as bedtime reading!

   I tell you, when I started hearing all this stuff about social mobility I nearly lost me temperature! – I mean where are they wanting us to mobilise ourselves from --- and where to?  If you’re saying we should be moving ourselves from down here to up there – you’re saying down here is inferior and up there is superior. 

  I can see the working class stereotype forming in front of my eyes...culturally deprived, poor, living in substandard housing, uneducated, bad health, unambitious, lazy, dependant...

  Hang on a minute!  You cut our social infrastructure – the Arts, benefits, social housing, educational support, the NHS and then tell us the reason we are deprived is because of a lack of social mobility!

  So we’re all supposed to be vying and competing for that wonderful, superior lifestyle in the sky where we can live on a street that’s the same size as my street but 8 houses on it instead of 80, where you don’t have to worry about the state of the NHS because you can afford private healthcare, where you can buy your own personal library and art collection instead of mixing with us lot in the public facilities and you don’t have to engage with state schools because you can pay for your children to be privately educated,  and where,  if you are really lucky – er sorry – if you are really well-educated, ambitious, hard-working, intelligent and culturally enriched, you can earn huge amounts of money and status by doing a job that provides no service to humanity whatsoever........? 

  It’s enough to tempt any self-respecting working class person.........isn’t it?

  Well me ducks, I have a confession to make.  I haven’t always been so on the ball as I am now and for a while I was estranged from Grandma – to my cost!  I once traded in 1,000 green  shield stamps to get our youngest a place in a private school – I know – it were a lot of stamps – I forfeited that car in the green shields catalogue!......and what did she learn there that she couldn’t have learned in a state school?  I’ll tell you what she learned...

  that regional and community accents are
  comical,

  that some jobs are embarrassing (and I’m
  not talking about being a banker),

  that the individual is more important than
  the community,

  that being comfortable is more important
  than being principled,

  that it’s better to be polite than honest,

  not to raise her voice – or laugh too loud....

  I tell you, when we realised what was going on, we took her out of there like a flash -before she got completely educated!  Grandma, a self-educated Marxist herself, never let me forget it.

  Not for me the low expectations of social mobility, we working class people are much more ambitious than that: -  Working class communities all over the world have histories and cultures which have been persistently attacked, belittled, manipulated and exploited and still we keep fighting to hang onto all that is good; a culture of co-operation instead of competition, commonality and camaraderie instead of individuality, fighting together for social justice for all, decent pay for decent jobs, appreciating work - paid and unpaid, appreciating and creating art, mucking in and getting on with it, being connected with (but not owning) nature....

  Hey I’ve changed my mind!  Up with social mobility – you’re all welcome to join us - all classes, all people – it won’t get you special privileges but the company’s great! (Woof woof)

Yours Spot

Keeping the Spotlight on the stereotypes.