The Political Thread

[Modern Panther]

The Nhs is run by civil servants.  Hospitals are run by boards, with non political organisations providing oversight.  Politicians organise the budget after consultation with these bodies.  Politicians only exist because someone has to decide policy and provide oversight of the whole country - that's not asking an outside agency to make the decision, that's deciding that the system of elected democracy, whilst invariably flawed, is better than having no leadership.  Just ask the countries that have tried existing without it.

[Professor Bear]

Lots of cuts to state-run NHS, social security and BBC, but contracts worth half a billion are being doled out to private industry pals of the Conservative party.

[Jim_Campbell]

Leaving aside the basic principle that people (in the majority) voluntarily cede these powers of taxation etc. to government because they believe centralised authority is a useful system, rather than evil government actively 'stealing' them...

In your scenario Sharky, HOW do the local hospitals get together to organise, fund and standardize training, equipment, specialists, large-scale programmes like immunsation etc?  Who decides how these necessarily communal resources get prioritised and distributed? I just can't see how it would work without at least regional structures composed of representatives from the constituent localities, at which point you may as well give in and call it a governing body indistinguishable from a government department.

Just put some gratuitous swearing in the above and pretend I said it, eh?

Cheers

Jim

[JayzusB.Christ]

 

[Proudhuff]

Just put some gratuitous swearing in the above and pretend I said it, eh?

Consider this Stolen!

[The Legendary Shark]

...someone has to decide policy...

.
Like this? "Savile, who died in 2011, was for years a visitor to Highgrove and St James's Palace. He also had the run of Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Leeds General Infirmary and Broadmoor, which "to the Prince made Savile an obvious person to tap for advice on navigating Britain's health authorities".
.
"Mayer recounts an occasion at Highgrove where health officials were "gobsmacked" to arrive for a meeting about the proposed closure of emergency services at a local hospital to find Savile at the table.
.
"He was said to have threatened the health bosses after the Prince left, saying that making them unhappy could cost them a knighthood."
.

[IndigoPrime]

Fortunately, colossal fuck-ups and errors never happen at a local community level!

[The Legendary Shark]

That's not what my parents said...

[Jim_Campbell]

Oh... here's a colossal and ludicrous herring. I wonder what colour it is...

Cheers

Jim

[Modern Panther]

Yes. Exactly like that.  All government policy is exactly like a predatory necrophiliac rapist paedophile.  Well done. 

[JayzusB.Christ]

I wish we had a healthcare system like the NHS here in Ireland.  Despite that Billy-Roll-faced cunt PM and his chums' best efforts to derail it, for the moment it remains far superior to our shambles of a public healthcare system. My Dad always travels across the border to get his blood circulation prescriptions; unpatriotic perhaps but the only way he can realistically manage it on a pension.

Edit: sorry, sharky, but I can't see the Savile case as anything other than an (admittedly horrific and shameful) anomaly and a strawman.

[TordelBack]

I wish we had a healthcare system like the NHS here in Ireland.

Amen to that. As with the BBC, its UK detractors don't realise what they have. Try €60 every time you or your kid visits the GP unless your total household income is below the minimum wage - and that's before you pay for your prescription. What larks.

[IndigoPrime]

Blimey. I'd always assumed Ireland basically had its own equivalent of the NHS, with much the same levels of 'free' use. I had no idea it was so different. (In Iceland, they had a quite-good equivalent, when I lived there. You did pay for GP visits, but the fee was the equivalent of a fiver. Prescriptions were paid for, but subsidised. Interestingly, they weren't fixed-fee, though. I recall some decongestants costing about 50p, but antibiotics being about 20 quid—and that was over ten years ago.)

As for the NHS, I think like a lot of things over here, it's just something Brits take for granted and will be gutted about when it's gone. See also: the BBC; state schooling; a reasonably robust benefits system; EU membership.

[JOE SOAP]

Blimey. I'd always assumed Ireland basically had its own equivalent of the NHS, with much the same levels of 'free' use. I had no idea it was so different.

Effectively we have the equivalent of a 'socialised' (as the Yanks call it) health-system - but it's a chimera: Irish healthcare is somewhere in-between the privatised healthcare of America and the universal state healthcare of UK and Scandinavia. There is public health to cover some basics and private insurance for the better quality treatment.

[Professor Bear]

Christ, I can't believe I didn't know that - I suppose I have been very lucky to never have come a cropper while in the South.
Also WHY DO YOU PUT UP WITH IT?