Is this the Middle England that’s currently showing 70% approval ratings for the Coalition?

I think that’s the kind of collision course that won’t have Osborne weeping into his Ovaltine.

That’s now. Let’s see where we are in a year’s time.

Is this the Middle England that’s currently showing 70% approval ratings for the Coalition?

I haven’t seen any opinion polls for ‘Middle England’. Maybe you can point us in the right direction?

Problem: the recession did not lead to the ever-longed-for leftward shift.

Solution: pray for a worse recession to come.

Good luck.

Dave,

Your analysis kind of presumes something that might not happen (mass unemployment, falling living standards), and goes from there. And it still misses the fact people are aware the state can’t go on like that so will probably react to most bad situations with resignation.

I love the way you acknowledge the fact that whilst Marxists might consider them working class, these people do not feel that way though. As they generally own their own home and often business, I would be quite surprised if Marx himself thought them working class though (although we are talking the man who said of peasants who supported Napoleon III that they were not proper peasants, so who can tell).

tory troll “Is this the Middle England that’s currently showing 70% approval ratings for the Coalition?”

First off this is a tory govt,, ( it is not a coalition it is a tory govt. The lib dems have not worked that out yet, but many of their supporters will do soon. ) are getting the usual blow job they get from the right wing media. Osborne could have read out the telephone directory and all the tory pundits would have said it was the greatest speech of all time.

Second, none of the shit has hit the fan yet. Vat has yet to go up, and no public sector workers have been thrown out of work……..YET!

so you’re saying the “savage attack on the poor” that was the budget, probably won’t be noticed by the poor?

and you’re “optimistically” hoping that middle-Englanders lose their jobs and rush to the barricades, despite the big rise in unemployment (probably) having already happened?

and speaking of Greece (I gather) you think moving in a radical socialist direction would be good news for Greece right now. Have a read of this. Apply a discount for it being published by the mouthpiece of the military industrial complex, but still is there nothing therein to make you wonder whether “more government” is what Greece needs?

Remember that the normal position of the tories is permanent class war. That is what they live for to inflict maxim suffering on the less well off, and to protect the lazy rich

And as tories are masters of projection, it is the left who are branded as the class warriors,. But it is only class war when the poor fight back. Conservatives are always in class war mode.

Why would any one with a brain read business week.?

It is nothing more than propaganda for the corporate elite. The very people who created this mess with their reckless free market bullshit, and now want use the crises they created to attack the poor just one more time.

It is very easy to see where the flash point will be, if you have been paying attention.

The people who are most likely to vote are middle class and elderly. Yes, I would love there to be a resurgence in radical youth taking control of their future, but I have been hoping for that since my youth 20 years ago, so I guess it ain’t going to happen. We have to look at what will make the grey vote turn away from the Tories.

The grey vote depend on, and love, one public service more than any other: the NHS. To them the NHS is represented by one thing, the nice shiny new hospitals that New Labour have built for us. There is good reason for that because about half the NHS budget funds hospitals (GPs get something like 10%). Lansley wants to change that balance, even swap the two over, with the private businesses of GPs getting the lion’s share of the NHS budget. This will ultimately mean the closure of NHS hospitals, or the take over by private companies.

At the moment NHS hospitals are well loved by Middle England, and we must keep it that way. No MP can dare support the closure of an NHS hospital in their constituency (we saw in the last parliament how even government ministers were opposing government plans to close a hospital in their constituency). Lansley is hoping that his plans will devolve decisions locally (to unaccountable GP commissioners) and that will absolve him from responsibility. What we need to do is to get local MPs (yes Middle England Tory and LibDem MPs) to make public pledges to their local hospital. We need them to pledge to uphold Cameron’s promise to ringfence NHS funding but specifically, ringfence funding for NHS hospitals. This is not Lansley’s plan, he wants to drastically reduce spending on treatments in hospitals, and so getting coalition MPs to pledge to maintain hospital funding will scupper Lansley’s plans. Most MPs will do this because, as I have mentioned, they are keen to be seen as a “friend of the hospital”. (Locally, I have got private assurances from the Tory MPs in my areas to help protect hospital spending, now all I need to do is to get them to make the public announcement that they cannot crawl away from.)

Such a plan will hopefully preserve our NHS from the worst privatisation that Lansley plans, and even better, if he pushes ahead with his right-wing zeal, Middle England will revolt. It does, however, mean that there must be an alternative and I suggest that Labour finds someone competent rather than the clueless Burnham.

So if we correctly explain that Lansley’s plans will force the closure of NHS hospitals, we can get Middle England to re-assess their support for the Tories (and Tory-lite). Then we will have a fighting chance.

You should also check out the OBR public sector employment projections.

2010-11 onwards by fiscal year:
-0.1% -1.2% -1.3% -3.0% -3.7% -2.4%

The first three years are projected to be shedding jobs at a much slower rate than the annual rate of retirement. So the public sector will still be hiring for the next three years, just not quite replacing everyone who will be going.

That’s right Sally, I’d much rather read “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” by the best selling author of: ” Shapeshifting: Shamanic Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation; Spirit of the Shuar: Wisdom from the Last Unconquered People of the Amazon; The Stress Free Habit: Powerful Techniques for Health and Longevity from the Andes, Yucatan, and Far East; and Psychonavigation: Techniques for Travel Beyond Time, in which “John Perkins relates his encounters with the Bugis of Indonesia, the Shuar of the Amazon, the Quechua of the Andes, and other psychonavigators around the world. He explains how the people of these tribal cultures navigate to a physical destination or to a source of inner wisdom by means of visions and dream wanderings.”

f*ing loon.

“The more optimistic sections of the far left…”

Since when was their opinion worth listening to? The SWP and their ilk will never hold power.

sally,

Remember that the normal position of the tories is permanent class war. That is what they live for to inflict maxim suffering on the less well off, and to protect the lazy rich

Keep on believeing that then. It makes you about as politically aware as your average tomatoe, but if it makes you happy. Of course, if you’d care to check, even extreme policies such as trickle-down were based on the assumption that everyone would be better-off, but don’t let facts get in the way of blind bigotry will you?

Richard,

I think you may have confused elderly voters and idiots, and probably yourself. Aside from the fact that most old people I’ve met moan about the NHS, perhaps you are confusing the shiny new hospitals with those likely to be closed – but aren’t Labour’s shiny new hospitals the reason local hospitals were closed in the first place? I can’t see this being the battleground you hope for, especially as the frontline NHS budget is not for cutting, so it will only be future new shiny hospitals that may not happen. And how many old middle-class people will rally round some drawings rather than an actual building?

[moderated out]

“if you’d care to check, even extreme policies such as trickle-down were based on the assumption that everyone would be better-off, but don’t let facts get in the way of blind bigotry will you?”

Oh please, don’t come on here spouting trickle down bullsit. The greatest con ever invented. The rich and the right are always coming up with ways to make sure as much of the wealth stays in the hands of the few.

By the way, you should learn to spell tomato before you call others idiots.

Remember that the normal position of the tories is permanent class war. That is what they live for to inflict maxim suffering on the less well off, and to protect the lazy rich……Why would any one with a brain read business week.?

It has to be said, Sally, that your world view has the merit of consistency even if it has only a tangential relationship with reality.

Just as my life often feels like I’m starring in an episode of the Prisoner, do you feel you are mentally trapped in a re-run of Citizen Smith?

Who is Number One?

Oh please, don’t come on here spouting trickle down bullsit…By the way, you should learn to spell tomato before you call others idiots.

Ah Muphry’s law, there’s nothing quite like it.

As to the premise of the post, I’m a bit confused

Maybe they are on 35K, either because they exercise a bit of managerial authority, or they put the graft in when there’s some overtime going. They are two-thirds of the way through the mortgage, and they’ve got a decent set of wheels, thank you.

The changes to their circumstances will be brutal and sudden.

Why? Unemployment is forecast to peak out quite soon and then diminish. At £35k these chaps are pretty well paid; if they’re nearly through their mortgage then they are also well insulated from future interest rate rises – what exactly are you predicting will happen to all these people? In the private sector at least, people have already factored in the damage done to their pensions – and they’re not blaming the Coalition for it.

In the private sector at least, people have already factored in the damage done to their pensions – and they’re not blaming the Coalition for it.

I love it when some internet blowhard presumes to speak for EVERYBODY IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR.

Unemployment is forecast to peak out quite soon and then diminish.

Especially as they usually turn out to be gullible fools.

Rebellion requires some sort of critical mass.
Maybe the emerging economic conditions will take us there – but I suspect that providing enough ordinary families are bogged down by personal debt, student loans or mortgage repayments they will moan rather take a more radical approach?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLcj-R6GVHo&feature=fvw

‘The coalition is on a collision course with Middle England, and just how Mondeo Man, Worcester Woman, the C2s and the Dinkies are going to respond remains to be seen.’

Sounds like the crappest Marvel comic cross-over EVER!

“Unemployment is forecast to peak out quite soon and then diminish.”

If true, only shows how the tories lied about the state of the country. But then they lie all the time, like “we have no plans to raise VAT” and then break that within 1 month of coming to power.

But I suspect all this cutting in a recession could spark off a global depression. Which the International right wing would not be against as it would open up opportunity to buy things cheap and allow govts to inflict more misery on the poor.

‘Who is Number One?’

Or ‘Who will be Number One?’ to quote Wolfie Smith’s girlfriend, Shirl.

Answer: ‘I, will of course! Power to the people!’

Sally, I am on the right and I like mainly lurking on here to see what the other side think and maybe to see a bit of intellectually stimulating back-and-forth in the comments. Indeed I come on “to hear left wing views” as you put it.

I’m just not convinced that left wing views consist entirely of “Wah wah it’s not fair Tories are in power, they all hate the poor, the Coalition is really just a Tory Government because I just said so, ner nicky ner ner” repeated ad nauseam, but I’m open to be convinced.

When those employed in the private sector who hear about the salaries, hours worked , holiday entitlement, flexi- time working, sickness leave taken, pension and redundancy arrangements enjoyed by many in the state sector.

As I can recall, the middle classes – and uni students in London – turned out in big numbers in 1956 to demonstrate against the Suez invasion on several occasions.

A well-attended demonstration in Trafalgar Square on a Sunday was the one and only time I heard Aneurin Bevan speak in public and very effective he was too.

The fascinating aspect in restrospect, is that what brought that (totally daft) escapade to an abrupt end was when President Eisenhower threatened to pull the plug on the Pound, which was already under speculative pressure in the foreign exchange markets. A few RAF fliers had refused to fly on bombing missions over Egypt from Cyprus and were duly court mashalled. There was a famous row between the government and the BBC over the BBC allowing Gaitskell, as leader of the opposition, to broadcast a speech opposing the invasion. The BBC was branded as unpatriotic.

Within months, Eden, the prime minister, found it necessary to retire on health grounds. Of course, we had the predictable stuff about not appeasing dictators. As with Iraq, issues in international law were also involved – in fact, it was entirely legitimate in international law for the Egyptian government to nationalise the assets of the Suez Canal company within Egypt providing it paid compensation.

With all that, the Conservatives easily won the general election in October 1959 with Macmillan as prime minister.

I love it when some internet blowhard presumes to speak for EVERYBODY IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR.

Tit. I’ll be a little clearer then. Pension provision in the private sector as a whole has, over the course of the last 20 years or more, moved away from defined-benefits salary-linked pensions, towards defined-contribution, investment-linked pensions – making pension provision in the private sector as a whole less generous than in the public sector. Sufficiently uncontentious so far?

These pensions have been badly affected by a whole string of factors, ranging from Nigel Lawson’s pension reforms in the 1980s, to Gordon Brown’s increased taxation on pension funds in the 1990s to, most recently, substantial setbacks in blue-chip equities – BP for example.

Without presuming to speak for every private sector pension holder in the country, I’d be surprised if there are too many people who blame the Government that has been in power for just under two months for the damage done to pensions over the past 20 years.

Understand now? Or shall I speak in capital letters?

Especially as they usually turn out to be gullible fools.

I’m basing this on the OBR and IFS. When do you see unemployment peaking, and what is the analytical basis for your judgement?

Thanks for clarifying your previous nonsense.

I notice you don’t mention the main reason for the pension fund deficits and closures: the whopping pension holidays enjoyed by company directors (including public sector senior managers) in the 80s and 90s. Unfortunately, as is usually the case for the ‘little people’ who have suffered, it’s going to prove pretty difficult to track down those responsible and string them up.

As regards unemployment, I would expect to see it rise slightly in the next year, maybe even drop briefly next year (but probably broadly plateau) then shoot up again after that.

Thanks for clarifying your previous nonsense.

Which bit of ‘In the private sector at least, people have already factored in the damage done to their pensions – and they’re not blaming the Coalition for it’ do you disagree with? As you say, private pensions have been in trouble since the 1980s – are you suggesting that people aren’t aware of this, or that they blame David Cameron for it?

I notice you don’t mention the main reason for the pension fund deficits and closures: the whopping pension holidays enjoyed by company directors (including public sector senior managers) in the 80s and 90s.

You need to read with more attention. The pensions holidays were the direct result of Nigel Lawson’s 5% cap on pension surpluses – one of the main pension reforms he introduced, and utterly disastrous for private pension provision.

http://www.accountancyage.com/accountancyage/news/2261702/election-2010-tories-biggest

Which bit of ‘In the private sector at least, people have already factored in the damage done to their pensions – and they’re not blaming the Coalition for it’ do you disagree with?

The bit where you speak for everyone in the private sector.

I would be very surprised if anyone was blaming the coalition for the events of the past, wouldn’t you??

34 – What right do you have to speak for EVERYONE? Apparently there are hordes of people who blame Steve Webb and George Osborne for the 1986 budget, and it’s just presumptuous to deny it.

Govts often cop the flak for things which were decided before they took power. Fairly and unfairly. When the shit hits the fan over the next couple of years, many of them won’t be thinking about Nigel Lawson or Gordon Brown when looking for someone to blame.

I would be very surprised if anyone was blaming the coalition for the events of the past, wouldn’t you??

Shurely the coalition is Thatcher’s fault?

“Maybe they are on 35K, either because they exercise a bit of managerial authority, or they put the graft in when there’s some overtime going. They are two-thirds of the way through the mortgage, and they’ve got a decent set of wheels, thank you.”

Yep it’s very easy for privelidged liberals, who’ve never done a days real work in their lives, or lived hand to mouth (except in faux poverty as a student or as some ironic “life experince”) to sneer at modest acheivment isn’t it. Far batter if the working class just knew their place and stayed in it, tugging their forelocks.

I don’t know what you’ve been reading but middle england did *not* do well out of Blairism, their standard of living barely moved in the nu labour decade, compared to the very bottom and very top of the social scale, both of whom saw significant improvment.

@ 31 “These pensions have been badly affected by a whole string of factors, ranging from Nigel Lawson’s pension reforms in the 1980s, to Gordon Brown’s increased taxation on pension funds in the 1990s to, most recently, substantial setbacks in blue-chip equities – BP for example”.

And the massive fees charged by fund managers, and the general inability of the city to deliver a decent return, even though mysteriously they always manage to generate massive bonuses for themselves

How will middle England react?

In time honoured style, by blaming immigrants, long-term benefit claimants and the left.

In fact many of them are doing so already. Go on The Guardian Comment is Free and see how many right wing trolls genuinely think ‘NuLabour’ was “socialist”, that’s how aware they are. You’re not going to get a rational response from this mob.

By the way, ‘the legendary frog gradually boiled to death in a saucepan is just that, a legend. It’s been tried in tests, frogs jump out of the pan when it gets too hot.

“And the massive fees charged by fund managers, and the general inability of the city to deliver a decent return, even though mysteriously they always manage to generate massive bonuses for themselves”

But, but but,,, that is your free market in action……. sucker.

In these times of austerity, can we afford wild extravagance like this?

Pope’s UK visit to cost taxpayers up to £12m
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/05/popes-uk-visit-cost-12m

“By the way, ‘the legendary frog gradually boiled to death in a saucepan is just that, a legend. It’s been tried in tests, frogs jump out of the pan when it gets too hot”

Aha! I’ve always suspected that. It has the whiff of bollocks about it.

Even if it does, I’ve never been sure how frogs’ reaction to temperature change is supposed to somehow shed light on human behaviour. As usual, it’s a convenient metaphor that people have somehow got the idea is a good way of judging reality. A bit like “no smoke without fire”, only without the lynch mob.

“In these times of austerity, can we afford wild extravagance like this?

Pope’s UK visit to cost taxpayers up to £12m
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/05/popes-uk-visit-cost-12m”

Meh. Depends on what we gain from friendly relations with the Vatican (including gentle improvements to the impression we give to strongly Catholic countries).

The real question, as I suspect you would agree, is “Is it ever right to lavish huge amounts of money and resources on an immorally bankrupt man with a silly hat who allegedly thinks it’s ok to cover up rape?”

My feeling is that Middle Englanders dont think like you lefties, when their privelages start to disappear they will get a lot more selfish, they will decide that benefits etc. are too high and that they would rather see the poor get poorer than see themselves lose privelages.

Anybody who wants to be elected will need to make offerings to guarantee the wealth of this ‘group’ and so there will be no uprising, simply the middle will be prepared to give less to support the poor….

Perhaps the reason for the relatively high support for the coalition is that the coalition represents the middle 70% who are quite happy for the poor to get poorer?

My feeling is that Middle Englanders dont think like you lefties, when their privelages start to disappear they will get a lot more selfish, they will decide that benefits etc. are too high and that they would rather see the poor get poorer than see themselves lose privelages.

Anybody who wants to be elected will need to make offerings to guarantee the wealth of this ‘group’ and so there will be no uprising, simply the middle will be prepared to give less to support the poor….

Perhaps the reason for the relatively high support for the coalition is that the coalition represents the middle 70% who are quite happy for the poor to get poorer?

Compare the cost of the Pope’s passing visit, amounting to £12 million, with this:

Queen hit by squeeze as Civil List is frozen at £7.9million
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/budget/article-1288652/BUDGET-2010-Civil-List-stays-frozen-7-9million.html

One public service that certainly gets the middle classes riled up is the quality of schooling for their children but Gove, the new education secretary, has a ready answer: What’s the problem? Bypass your local council and start your own school with funding from central government.

“Queen hit by squeeze”

Ha ha ha ha ha. I’m sure she wept diamonds.

“One public service that certainly gets the middle classes riled up is the quality of schooling for their children but Gove, the new education secretary, has a ready answer: What’s the problem? Bypass your local council and start your own school with funding from central government.”

What do you mean by “what’s the problem” here? I genuinely don’t know if it’s meant to be rhetorical or a quiz question. Either way: without saving much money, you take control from some people who do their job badly (or well in the face of impossible odds) and hand it to people who have no clue whatsoever what the job even entails, but will nonetheless use the opportunity to brainwash their and other kids even more than they do already.

Creationists and their ilk must LOVE this idea.

#15 Watchman

LOL!

I think you may have confused elderly voters and idiots, and probably yourself. Aside from the fact that most old people I’ve met moan about the NHS,

I guess these are the people you meet at the newstand at the pile of Daily Mails and Telegraphs? That figures. As it happens I have just got back from a meeting at my local hospital about care for the elderly. I won’t go into details, but I am feeling smug about what I wrote above.

perhaps you are confusing the shiny new hospitals with those likely to be closed – but aren’t Labour’s shiny new hospitals the reason local hospitals were closed in the first place?

Clearly you know nothing about healthcare.

I can’t see this being the battleground you hope for, especially as the frontline NHS budget is not for cutting, so it will only be future new shiny hospitals that may not happen. And how many old middle-class people will rally round some drawings rather than an actual building?

Ah yes you have confirmed it. There is no pledge that “frontline NHS budget is not for cutting”. The pledge was to ring fence the NHS budget. There is a huge difference. The point is that there will be money for the new private providers (and an equivalent cut to the budgets of NHS providers). The sole reason for the Department of Health is to create a new “healthcare provider market”. You should read up on some of the Tory health documents and find out what I’m talking about.

“I guess these are the people you meet at the newstand at the pile of Daily Mails and Telegraphs? That figures. As it happens I have just got back from a meeting at my local hospital about care for the elderly. I won’t go into details, but I am feeling smug about what I wrote above.”

Furthermore, there’s a difference between “moan about something” and “disapprove of something”. We all moan about the NHS, but mainly because we think it should be even better than it is.

@48: “What do you mean by ‘what’s the problem’ here? I genuinely don’t know if it’s meant to be rhetorical or a quiz question. Either way: without saving much money, you take control from some people who do their job badly (or well in the face of impossible odds) and hand it to people who have no clue whatsoever what the job even entails, but will nonetheless use the opportunity to brainwash their and other kids even more than they do already.”

I was suggesting that Gove has set up a political escape route from potential complaints about schooling.

The response will be: Set up your own school then with funding from central government and freedom from the interfering intervention by the local council. He has already offered a relaxation of the normal planning restrictions. Presumably, all the familiar stuff about the need for playing fields and sports to instill the competitive imperative has been junked – a position that suits me fine. We shouldn’t underestimate the ability of parents with higher education to run small schools effectively. Quite a few middle class parents with higher education put in time to provide extracurricula tuition for their kids anyway. It would be easy to extend that to small groups of motivated kids.

What Gove has sought to do IMO is to anticipate and diffuse criticism arising from the forthcoming spending squeeze on education. There’s actually little correlation now between per capita spending by local education authorities and the success of their local schools measured by the usual exam benchmarks. The London borough where I live regularly comes at or near the top of the LEA league table for education but the borough is a low spender on schools compared with other London boroughs. And btw the borough does not feature in the Daily Mail’s listing of the 100 most affluent districts in England in 2007:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-477325/League-Wealth-Tables.html

What would it take to make Middle England militant?

Leadership.

If, and I am assuming here, that you mean for them to pick up their picnic baskets and say ‘Oh tosh!’ and start to think that the cuts are going to affect them.

Other than that – it has already been said above. They will not blame the government, they will keep blaming the bloody scroungers for taking all their money. The Guardian had a great piece about the baby boomers and their selfishness. The bastards!

Personally I am loving this – it is fascinating to watch. As you say, Dave, the poor are poor so can cope to some degree. What I want to see – and this is the vicious part of me, is Middle Englanders (middle-class) get a good kicking from this government. It won’t happen, both you and I know that. As soon as the medicine gets too bitter from them the Tories will find a chunk of cash that they didn’t know about and will support their selfishness.

Shurely the coalition is Thatcher’s fault?

Not 100% – I prefer to call it Blatcherism. 30 odd years of Tory rule.

The post title made me think of Ballard’s Millennium People – the middle classes start revolting, set fire to their volvos, refuse to work or pay their mortgages, and start shoplifting from Safeway.

The government seems to be encouraging extreme anxiety – perhaps so that when most people find they haven’t lost their jobs and aren’t so very much worse off they’ll be too relieved to care about those who are losing jobs/houses/public services.

@ 50 We all moan about the NHS, but mainly because we think it should be even better than it is.

Although I agree that it is sensible to stay out of a hospital if you can, that’s not why I moan about the NHS.

I moan about the cost and the excessive waste.

I moan because it pays GPs hundreds of thousands a year to dole out antibiotics, anti-depressants and pile cream.

I moan because it pays health service administrators six figure salaries to negotiate contracts that pay the doctors even more money for even less work.

I moan about the excessive salaries we pay to beaurocrats who can’t even organise to clean their hospitals properly.

I moan about the vastly overpaid hospital consultants who cancel their afternoon surgeries to play golf.

But most of all I moan about the lack of choice.

The state has taken on the responsibility of looking after our health (whether we wanted them to or not) and, because of this, it has assumed the right to dictate how we must live our lives on the basis that, if we refuse to comply with their edicts, we are unfairly adding to the cost of our NHS treatment.

I do appreciate that I will be in a small minority who are unhappy that the NHS has taken responsibility for their health and control of their lives. Most will be delighted that the state has assumed the right to keep them alive for as long as possible, even when that means a lot of years drooling in a plastic chair. Because it seems most people think that they want immortality and medical science appears to offer an approximation to it.

But I don’t moan about the NHS because it should be better than it is. I moan about it because it exists.

But I don’t moan about the NHS because it should be better than it is. I moan about it because it exists.

Are you fucking serious?

[42] VIP’S do not come cheap nowadays?

Whitehall insiders are becoming increasingly concerned over the security costs as Mr Blair travels the world on lucrative private sector work.

The former Prime Minister is understood to be the most expensive person in the country for the police to guard because of his regular foreign excursions.
More than 20 officers are now understood to be assigned to protecting Mr Blair at a cost of more than £115,000 a week (£6 million per year).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6874145/Tony-Blair-costs-British-taxpayers-6m-a-year-to-protect.html

@15
“Of course, if you’d care to check, even extreme policies such as trickle-down were based on the assumption that everyone would be better-off, but don’t let facts get in the way of blind bigotry will you?”

I think you’ll find that supply-side “trickle-down” economic policies were based on sounding logical enough at a high level that enough of the rubes would believe they would be better off with those policies, while in actual fact the wealthy used those policies to quietly rob them blind.

[10] you may well have seen this, Richard;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/06/nhs-survive-lansley-volcano-ideology

My hunch is that the new system is designed to fail so the tories, sorry, coalition, can finally usher in the kind of market based system they have long craved for (as an antidote to ‘state incompetence’) – Pagar, Bob B & Co, will no doubt be delighted that health will be reduced to a commodity, akin to the budget items found in the isle of any supermarket?

What I want to see – and this is the vicious part of me, is Middle Englanders (middle-class) get a good kicking from this government.

I thought being left-wing meant wanting to see the set of poor people shrink and the set of not-poor people grow, but apparently for some it means wanting to see the set of non-poor people shrink and the set of poor people grow, to teach those not-poor people a lesson.

“What will it take to make Middle England militant?”

The return of Deggsy?

Pagar – the NHS doesn’t have a monopoly on healthcare provision, as BUPA as wont to let us know in horrifyingly patronising adverts. “Are you better than the rest of this scum? Give us money!”

Of course, you still have to pay national insurance to make sure that everyone who can’t afford BUPA can still get access to some form of healthcare – but since National Insurance takes so little of higher-level earnings away, it’s not like you’re paying loads for a service you’ll never use. (OK, so NI doesn’t really go solely for hospitals and pensions, but that’s the general idea of the stupid thing).

Privatising the NHS can only be a bad thing. And it might even make middle england militant – I certainly can’t think of anything else that’d do it. I guess I mostly count as being in that section these days, and I’m reasonably happy with how stuff is turning out for everything but the economy (which is important, of course, but so is everything else).

“But I don’t moan about the NHS because it should be better than it is. I moan about it because it exists.”

Oh yes a brown shirt in all his glory.

One of the most successful ideas ever put in place by govt and the brown shirts hate it because people love it. And there is nothing the brown shirts like more than poor people dying of illness. Only the rich should have good health care is the view of browns hits everywhere.

“But most of all I moan about the lack of choice.”

Oh yes, the old right wing red herring. Lets have a system that gives a few a choice by giving the majority no choice.

[63] “Lets have a system that gives a few a choice by giving the majority no choice” – that would be my fear too, Sally.

In effect I think the extent of choice in health would amount to the same level of choice that exists in most of education (i.e. very little, with the best generally reserved for those with the deepest pockets).

National health systems exist (in one guise or another) in ALL developed countries because the market soon loses interest when profit margins are thin (think of elderly care, mental illness, many chronic diseases, the poor, etc – they may always have enough money to the keep the fat cats happy.

Who would risk jeopardising the health of such groups, and what are their motives?
At the least the likes of Pagar is a harmless ideologue, but the likes of Lansley (who has already been caught with his hand in the till) is no doubt intoxicated by the mouth watering sums of money to be had at the expense of others within Britain’s health system.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1243579/Andrew-Lansley-embroiled-cash-influence-row-accepting-21-000-donation-Care-UK-chairman-John-Nash.html

[64] “they may always have enough money to the keep the fat cats happy” – oops, should say, may NOT always have enough money …………. etc.

Nick @ 61

the NHS doesn’t have a monopoly on healthcare provision

And nor am I in favour of lining the pockets of large insurance companies at state expense. I’ve seen consultants offloading expensive NHS kit in the car parks of private hospitals and it’s not an edifying sight.

Privatising the NHS can only be a bad thing.

Maybe so.

I think one of the problems with any debate on the future of the NHS is that there is very little living memory of what happened before it was created.

Did children die because their parents could not afford medicine?

Did doctors refuse to treat people who couldn’t pay?

Were RTA victims left to bleed to death in the street?

Without the NHS, would such things would be happening in the UK today?

Do those things happen in other European countries where an NHS was never created and where they currently get much better value for the money they spend on health?

What would have happened If Nye Bevan had decided that it was more important to nationalise the production and distribution of food rather than the health service?

His plan was that the government would provide food to all citizens, free at the point of delivery, though of course rationed according to overall resources.

Had he done that, do you think we would be eating more or less well than we are now?

@64 A&E

As a harmless idealogue, can I say that the private sector making money from contracts outsourced by a public beaurocracy gives us the poorest value for money and the worst possible outcome.

And that’s before we get to the political corruption……….

Pagar[66]

Do those things happen in other European countries where an NHS was never created and where they currently get much better value for the money they spend on health?</blockquote.

Europe? What about across the pond in America? Do people die for a lack of an ability to pay for routine treatment? Are people bankrupted trying to keep children alive? Are people turned away at the door through a lack of medical insurance? Are insurance companiesprett merciless when it come to weaseling out of their commitments? Damn right and much worse.

[67] “can I say that the private sector making money from contracts outsourced by a public beaurocracy gives us the poorest value for money and the worst possible outcome” – agreed, Pagar.

Is it not time we looked at how other countries ran their health and welfare systems ?

@70 – apparently not.
For we are the “envy of the world” – so much so that no-one has dared copy us!

You would think no-one had looked at France or Germany…

@ 66 “Do those things happen in other European countries where an NHS was never created and where they currently get much better value for the money they spend on health?”

That is the crunch question. I’m broadly in favour of the NHS, but I do sometimes wonder if the universal/free at point of use model is outmoded. It was conceived in a time when life expectancy was much shorter, many more diseses were fatal (more importantly people died of them more quickly), expectations were far lower and (dare I say it) the population was less diverse. Something like the French model might work better now.

Oh, no doubt the NHS spends far too much money on crap and has nowhere near as much focus on efficiency as it should. But I’m not of the opinion that a publicly-run organisation is, necessarily, overly bureaucratic and inefficient. I know many disagree with that .

One of the real difficulties of comparing NHS times with pre-NHS times is the sheer amount of other forms of welfare and improvements in living standards that have been brought about simultaneously. I wouldn’t want to be the one to try to pick out the relative levels of contributions; so I think it’s more constructive to compare the state of public health in different present-day countries with a similar standard of living, instead. The obvious comparison that springs to mind is UK vs. USA – but I don’t think it’s particularly accurate. I don’t know enough about the state of healthcare on the continent to comment on examples from there, unfortunately.

As for nationalising food – that’d be an interesting one, but I’m not sure how much we’d gain from a direct comparison. Maybe obesity among the poor would be lower, maybe more food would be laced with calcium. Who knows?

@ 12 B*stard – I’m at work and that post made me laugh so loudly everyones now looking at me. You gotta love sally though, this blog wouldn’t be the same without her.

[71] “Something like the French model might work better now” – as you know Matt, the French have often been lauded for having the best health care system in the world, BUT (and it’s a big but) it has always cost far more than the NHS.
http://www.ohe.org/lib/liDownload/613/Sixty%20years%20of%20NHS%20expenditure%20&%20workforce.pdf?CFID=2194142&CFTOKEN=61724264

Sally

You keep calling ‘Tory trolls’ brownshirts. But Roehm’s Brownshirts were Nazism’s lefties.

Many stormtroopers believed in the socialist promise of National Socialism and expected the Nazi regime to take more radical economic action, such as breaking up the vast landed estates of the aristocracy. That the regime did not take such steps disillusioned those who expected an economic as well as a political revolution. (Wikepedia)

@59

Luis – you will have to forgive me, maybe I am just a bit pissed off with the attacks on the poor/working poor/working-class over the years/decades.

@75
That being the case I’d say they were more the Nazis’ “useful idiots”.

The problem with attempting to adopt a French or German-style system in the UK is that we don’t really have heavily regulated insurers fit for the purpose, and what we’d end up with would be more like the US system, which is widely regarded as a perverse failure for all but the well-off.

The middle class, such as it is in the UK, will only react from the lower-end upwards as more and more get left behind, just as it did in the mid-1990s. How quickly this happens depends entirely on how the right-wing of the coalition are kept in check, or how the media manage expectations.

Middle England? You know there’s no such thing, right? What happened to class?

The new Lib/Con government is implementing savage cuts in public spending and front line public services. The corporate controlled mainstream media have framed the debate stating that this is ‘unavoidable’ to reduce the structural deficit, manufacturing the illusion that public services and social programmes created the current economic crisis.
It is a categorical fact that the unregulated Financial Services Sector, casino style investment bankers, hedge fund managers and the corporate cartels are the route course of our ‘debt crisis’. British taxpayers money was used to prop up the banks and maintain the current economic system. Public spending? Yes. Welfare for the rich? Most definitely. How have the very richest in our society responded to the poorest subsidising their lifestyle? Business as usual. Earnings salaries and bonuses that most of the people who bailed them out wouldn’t dream of earning in a lifetime. It is an open secret that British elections are when groups of corporate investors align to buy the state and the decision making process. The architects of ‘New Labour’ were well aware of this and their strategy of abandoning socialism and continuing the economic policies implemented by Margaret Thatcher secured them the corporate sponsorship they needed to gain power such as the backing of Rupert Murdoch’s News International. These ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies were the catalyst for the current economic crisis. The corporate investors are now backing the current coalition and their lobbying has successfully formulated the policies of the current government’s budget. George Osbourne announced ‘a banking levy’ which will raise £2bn over the next five years for HM Revenue and Customs. The Corporate Banking sector were expecting to get off lightly with a tax of £5bn a year. The budget went further beyond their wildest dreams by announcing a cut in corporation tax every year over the next four years saving them billions of pounds and making Osbourne’s banking levy irrelevant.
Who is going to pay for the structural deficit? The poorest and most vulnerable in our society. FACT. Women and those on the lowest income will be hit the hardest particularly from welfare reform and the VAT rise. Homelessness in the UK is projected to double. There will be mass unemployment and an inevitable ‘lost generation’. Support for extremist politics will rise and communities will be destroyed. Unavoidable? Definitely not.
Money for reducing the deficit could easily be raised through progressive taxation, no longer subsidising the arms industry, scrapping Trident (projected running cost £100bn), abolishing the monarchy,ending the war on drugs,green taxes etc.
Instead of seething with anger and shouting at the tv I want to establish a resistance movement to the state corporate nexus. Any suggestions are welcome. General strike commencing on 4/10/10 is a good start.By joining this group you will be pledging your support.I will be canvassing trade unions, members of parliament and media institutions to build momentum. I ask all of you who voted Liberal Democrat to make amends by emailing a Lib Dem MP and simply stating your disgust at their policies. Proposals for non-violent direct action are welcome. These need to be organised covertly to maintain the effectiveness of their impact. Plans are being formulated to establish a mass ‘Social Justice’ camp in a senior member of the coalition government’s affluent constituency to shelter the victims from this ruthless budget.
I believe in free speech and if you profoundly disagree with any of the claims I have made above please leave a comment. I look forward to the debate.
‘You can’t be neutral on a moving train’ Howard Zinn
sincerely,
J.H.
‘Clusterf**ck the Coalition. Call a General Strike!!!’ group on facebook