Whining about the NHS
I wrote recently about the right wing debating tactic of whining that lefties were stifling freedom of speech on subjects such as immigration or the family.
This week, a very right wing Tory MEP called Daniel Hannan went on American telly to slag off and lie about the NHS, in order to try to help the Republican Party stop President Obama from improving America’s dysfunctional health care system. In response, the creator of Father Ted and quite a lot of other people, including the leaders of both the Labour and Tory parties, twittered about how they love the NHS, on the topic ‘#welovethenhs’.
Showing the independence of mind and diversity of opinion which conservatives pride themselves on, the response to ‘#welovethenhs’ from people who don’t support the way that the NHS is currently structured has been to, you’ve guessed it, start whining about how their opinions are being silenced: continue reading… »
Why Hannan is wrong about Singapore too
So, in the last couple of days I think we’ve safely established that Daniel Hannan is a complete and utter twat.
That said, the full extent of Hannan’s outright twattery only becomes fully apparent when you examine the background to his assertion that the NHS should be replaced with a Singapore-style system of personal health accounts because…
The Singapore system produces better outcomes than ours for half the price.
Taken at face value on a comparison of key health indicators and taking into account the relative proportion of GDP spent on healthcare in the UK and Singapore that’s perfectly true but it rather ignores a very important and somewhat unusual feature of the Singaporean system, one that makes it very different from healthcare systems in both Britain and the US.
When it comes to providing healthcare to its citizens, both the supply and the price of healthcare in Singapore is actively regulation by the Singaporean government, in both the public and the private sector in order to control costs and avoid the kind of significant inflationary pressures that pretty much every other healthcare system in the world has had to deal with.
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UK v USA – the basic healthcare facts
It’s worth noting in this US vs the NHS row is that the US has just about the highest healthcare spending in the world – 2nd highest by percentage of GDP, first by overall cost – largely because it’s among the most expensive. Time for some numbers – all freely available via Google.
I hold no brief for the NHS (and unlike most LibCon contributors tend to lean towards part-privatisation of its services), I’m just interested in the facts, so feel free to correct me if I’ve got some of the maths or figures wrong.
Of the c.15% of GDP the US spends on healthcare annually (that’s about $2.2 trillion*), around 50% is spent by the government (around $1.1 trillion). By contrast, the UK spends around 8% of its GDP on healthcare, with the Department of Health’s budget for the NHS (England**) in 2008/9 around £94 billion (about $155 billion).
The English NHS cares for 49 million people (100% of the population of England); US public healthcare currently covers about 83 million (around 28% of the US population).
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Daniel Hannan is a national disgrace
Only the most cold-hearted of cynics could expess disdain for the many extraordinary achievments made in Britain throughout history. Those who have struggled for freedom and justice have shaped a country safe and civilised, without fear of oppression, tyranny, death or disease in which nearly everyone is represented and enfranchised.
The human right to good health and protection from, and provision for, injury and sickness, are all enshrined in the National Health Service. It is an entity admired the world over, and one that many now could not imagine living without.
(image by Beau Bo D’Or)
So to see a British politician roaming the USA, frequenting the most biased, unreasonable and willfully ignorant news outlets in existence, spouting misinformed drivel to screeching hate puffed lummoxes like Glenn Beck about the imaginary horrors of ’socialized’ health care is almost obscene.
Watching Daniel Hannan speaking as a supposed representative for Britain on Fox News, bleating about how our country has been rendered feral and crippled by the NHS is enough to raise a sudden, unexpected swell of patriotism normally reserved for the success of a British icon on the global stage or spectacular sporting defeats.
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The Tories who want to cripple the NHS
Senior people within the Conservative party and conservative ‘movement’ are stepping up their attacks on the NHS. We know at least where this stems from: Obama is trying to extend healthcare coverage to everyone in the United States (a key promise he campaigned and won the election on!), and wingnut Republicans there are using Tories here to bolster their case.
Yesterday Don Paskini pointed to a US magazine claimed: “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.”
Hawking hit back saying: “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS…I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.”
And yet this sort of wing-nuttery has become mainstream within the Conservative party here. Why doesn’t Cameron say anything about it? Why don’t the media hold him to account for his own people’s views?
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The bizarre journalism of psychologist Oliver James
contribution by Zarathustra
The psychologist Oliver James – author of Affluenza, The Selfish Capitalist and innumerable what-does-it-all-mean think-pieces in the press – has recently been churning out a series in the Guardian entitled Family Under the Microscope. Each week James offers a stunning revelation about the psychology of family life.
Some of these revelations are either dubious or just outright wrong. At times the reader is left wondering how much this says about psychology and how much is about Oliver James’ view of the world.
1. For example, James recently announced which demographic in the UK is most at risk of severe mental illness. Guess which it is. Homeless people? Single mums on benefits? Refugees from war zones? Nope. It’s middle-class teenage girls.
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Tories: you can’t have localism without postcode lotteries
If David Cameron’ were serious about localism and an enormous decentralisation of power being his big idea, then he would surely tell his frontbenchers never to throw around the phrase ‘postcode lottery’.
On the other hand, if Conservatives are serious about ending postcode lotteries and ensuring equity of provision across different places, they should admit that this would place significant limits on how far local choices can be allowed to result in any differences on anything that matters.
That latter anti-local variation and pro-equity view appears to be the view of Tory frontbencher Grant Shapps, who is energetically touring the broadcast studios to promote his report on the postcode lottery in IVF treatment.
IVF is just too important an issue for different provision.
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Selling abortion
A revised broadcast advertising code will force anti-abortionists to make their dangerous bias clear:
We pro-choicers were happy to note that the BCAP’s just-closed consultation on a revised advertising code included a proposal to allow abortion providers to advertise abortion services on radio and TV.
Equally cheering was the news that the code would include this new rule (11.11 in the code):
‘Advertisements for post-conception pregnancy advice services must make clear in the advertisement if the service does not refer women directly for abortion.’
BCAP’s argument – rightly – is that there ain’t time to waste if you’re thinking of getting an abortion: the longer you leave it, the riskier the procedure is likely to be (the BCAP reference is the renowned 2004 Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ paper on abortion safety and standards).
In other words – you need to know immediately if the ad you’re seeing is for a provider who offers balanced, accurate, post-conception information and abortion (or a referral for one) if that is what you want, or if you’re about to be drafted by an outfit that hopes to pull one back for Jesus Christ by neglecting to mention safe, legal abortion is available, and pumping you full of romantic notions about the realities of an unwanted child. continue reading… »
Who’s trying to stop psychotherapy being regulated?
article by Zarathustra
Earlier this month the arts therapist Derek Gale was struck off by the Health Professions Council for an appalling litany of misconduct and abuse .
He touched patients inappropriately, discussed his sexual fantasies with them, called a patient a ‘cunt” and breached confidentiality by telling a therapy group about a patient’s self-harm. Despite being struck off, he was able to simply retitle himself as a psychotherapist and carry on practising.
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There are worse things than fiddling expenses…
Thinking back over the last 18 months, few, if any, of the stories and issues I’ve written about either here or over at the Ministry have been prompted by a genuine and deep-seated sense of anger.
There was one story that I did cover, over at the Ministry, that did put me in just that kind of mood, a story that’s resurfaced over the last few days in several newspapers as what Charlotte Gore has dubbed “Too Stupid to Look After Baby” case – a headline that directly echoes The Sunday Times’ “Mother ‘too stupid’ to keep child” headline, which appears to have got the media’s ball rolling again.
continue reading… »
Legalising drugs: lessons from Portugal
Back in 2001, the Portuguese government defied stiff opposition from right-wing groups to decriminalise drug use, making drug laws far more liberal than even the Netherlands.
The right predicted Bad Things: Drug use would explode, tourists would travel from far and wide to get high on the streets of Lisbon, law and order would collapse, and people would start riding around in modified cars and fighting in Thunderdomes. The reality was quite different as two reports published in the last 18 months have demonstrated, the Libertarian Cato Institute have declared the policy an undisputed success on the basis of a report by Glenn Greenwald, and this has been a popular assessment among liberal people.
How correct is it though? Let’s look at the evidence.
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I’m taking a test tonight
I’ve been away from the blogosphere, trying to write a report for Red Pepper on the progress of abortion rights in Ireland and the new reproductive activist wave in London. I’ve also been nauseous, off my food and feeling generally off. It’s probably nothing. It could be stress. It could be coughing pig death. Or, I could be pregnant.
Despite a rigorous contraceptive routine, despite taking every precaution, despite the fact that I’m still bleeding, I could be pregnant. No method is 100% failsafe. Since I started blogging, I’ve had three pregnancy scares, not counting the frisson of gut-knawing panic that precedes the monthly gut-crunching pain.
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Nurses don’t deserve the abuse they get
This is a guest article by Zarathustra
As a nurse, the Margaret Haywood affair was particularly saddening to me, not just because of the appalling standards of nursing care she exposed in her secret filming for Panorama, but also because of the way she was struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council for doing so.
But whether one agrees with her actions or not, anyone who works in nursing will tell you that what she filmed was not an isolated incident, and can be found elsewhere in hospitals all over the country. So why is nursing care failing so badly?
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Swine flu: the threat is real
My usual response when some sickness hits the news is to roll my eyes and change the channel, telling myself it has little to do with me and will probably amount to nothing and it’s not worth worrying about. Earlier this week I decided to crawl out of my “epidemic scare stories are boring exercises in mass hysteria” hole in the ground and educate myself.
I started paying attention to what people were saying – and by ‘people’, I don’t mean the mainstream media, who as always are screaming loudly for no other reason than that announcing the new apocalypse is more fun than talking about money or whether or not we should prosecute confirmed warcrimes.
continue reading… »
Panic! The big flu is coming!
Collective panic is the one thing society can’t do without. Part of the holy trilogy that also consists of collective mourning (Diana and Jade Goody to mention but two) and collective hysteria (the World Cup on the big fuckoff screen while Carlsberg-Tetleys count the cash), it comes in cycles, regular as clockwork.
We suckle on scaremongering like a baby to a teat, feeding on the notion that The Big Plague is Coming like a periodical reminder of our mortality, which is probably why disaster movies routinely top cinema charts worldwide. So let’s just hope that the current panic surrounding the swine flu is nothing more than cyclical hypochondria like it has been a dozen times before.
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Purnell’s silly plan for alcoholics
I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear a new government proposal for reform of the welfare state, I have to pause for a moment and ask: is this a policy or a headline? For example, when Hazel Blears announced that ‘hit squads’ armed with rubber gloves would be banging on parents’ doors to make sure their kids are ready for school, just about every observer – and probably Blears herself – knew it wasn’t going to happen, but made for a nice headline.
So when James Purnell promises/threatens to make unemployed alcoholics seek treatment or lose their benefits, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask whether this story falls into the same category.
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Make Dan Hannan Tory spokesman!
I’m pleased to see Daniel Hannan, Tory MEP, has become a regular feature on Faux News’ nuttier shows. The Conservatives should make him their spokesperson so he can tell the entire country the NHS is a 60 year mistake. (via LabourHome)
Update: He keeps digging; Sunder exposes his poor grasp of facts.
Killing mosquitos with laser
Star Wars scientists use laser gun to kill mosquitoes in fight against malaria
Yes, that’s the actual headline the Telegraph used, reporting on an article in the Wall Street Journal this week, reporting on work to develop a laser weapon that can shoot individual mosquitoes out of the air. It homes in on the distinctive sound frequency produced by their wingbeats. 1980s Star Wars technology being used in the fight against disease. Excuse my Americanism: That’s awesome.
Well, unless you’re the kind of person who sees a story like this and immediately asks What’s the point?
and Can picking off one mosquito at a time really make a difference?
or an ecology minded person who wonders what kind of effect genus-level genocide would have on an ecology in which Anopheles have been a factor for about 70 million years.
continue reading… »
A Few Facts about Teenage Pregnancy
Right, it’s time to give Derek Draper a lesson in how to do a proper rebuttal.
Yesterday, Don Paskini took Tom Harris MP to task for adopting the time-honoured gutter tactic of picking on teenage mums to curry favour with the Daily Mail crowd – time of post, 9:20am.
Almost exactly one hour later, a trackback arrived from Stuart Sharpe, who accuses the Don of being an ‘apologist for the welfare state’ – yes, it’s that tired old canard, yet again – before going on to offer up this comment on the Don’s post:
If Tony Blair was talking about it 10 years ago, everything must be perfectly fine, and Tom Harris’s points are completely invalid. Never mind that in those ten years the teenage pregnancy rate has continued to climb exponentially. Never mind that Tony Blair talking about something rarely ever amounted to Tony Blair doing anything about it.
All of which makes Stuart wrong on just about every substantive point of his argument. continue reading… »
Help stop family court fees increasing
Last year, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) started its plans to make the courts self-funding. The cost of application fees payable by local authorities in care and adoption proceedings increased by an impressive 3200%, from £150 to £4,825.
Hidden on the website of Her Majesty’s Court Service is a consultation paper on plans to increase fees payable in civil court proceedings including enforcement fees in the family courts. The closing date for consultations is 4th March 2009.
continue reading… »
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