WARNING: ROBBERY IN PROGRESS!
Today, March 19 2012, is a crucial day for the future health of this nation and my family. At 1.20pm today our daughter, Sarah, finally gets her PET scan after waiting three weeks whilst the competing hospital trusts, Kings Mill in Mansfield and Nottingham City Hospital, argue through the funding paperwork to decide which trust foots the bill for the scan. Meanwhile, her cancer has worsened, and she’s taking huge doses of painkillers every four hours.
It is also an immensely important day because the House of Lords will be debating Andrew Lansley’s despised , hated and unnecessary Bill to privatise the NHS. The questions at this time, 10.45 am, is will Lord David Owen’s representation on behalf of the duped electorate, to force Lansley to publish the Dossier of Risk which has been prepared, setting out the effects of his Bill, be successful? No doubt the Toralition, (forget the LibDems – they’re just castrated Tories) will have whipped every flaccid old Tory peer who can still find their false teeth into their bath chairs to be rushed by ambulance to Westminster to push this disgraceful Bill through. Despite the fact that a tribunal of judges have deliberated over the Risk Dossier, and given their instruction that Parliament should be able to study it before voting on the Bill, Cameron and his gang of political buccaneers remain defiant, and will resort to the same disgusting behaviour as Tony Blair did over the intelligence dossier which was kept from public eyes before the WMD disaster of Iraq – they plan to use a Cabinet Veto to over-ride the tribunal. This would be, in David Owen’s words, “A constitutional outrage”. And for more than one reason – the Toralition are duplicitous liars; they have no mandate for messing with the NHS – Cameron’s pre-election manifesto promised there would be no shake-up, yet all the time behind the scenes the Private Health Pirates have been unfurling their greedy sails and sharpening their cutlasses, ready for a profitable carve-up. Capitalism has triumphed over everything, yet its greedy victory is never enough. There is no area of public life where their clutching tentacles can’t invade and rob.
The NHS is mine – and yours, and yours; it belongs to us. We built it, we paid for it. It may have its problems, but it remains one of the great achievements of British society. It does not belong to bloated bankers, profit-only health barons, or venture capitalists. Yet I fear that, after today, they may well get their way. To those that have, more shall be given. The Tories are back with a vengeance. So here’s what they taught the toffs at Eton: Britain, boys, isn’t a country. It is your toy box, and you, the rich and privileged, the ‘elite’ can take from it those shiny institutions so beloved by the oiks, and play with them as you wish. And all you have to think of, because every good boy deserves favour... is PROFIT.
