UPDATE on #JR4NHS: urgent legal action for Our NHS prompts launch of Round 3 CrowdJustice fund-driveBy Peter Roderick 29 January 2018 We are delighted to say that the court has granted permission for the judicial review to proceed to a full hearing “as soon as possible” after 14 March 2018. After last week’s concession of a national 12-week public consultation in the spring, Mr Justice Walker has decided that arguments on the need for primary legislation and on transparency “merit a full hearing”. This is fantastic news. We now expect the Secretary of State for Health & Social Care, Jeremy Hunt, not to lay the regulations to facilitate ACOs that he was planning to do in February. He repeatedly refused last week to delay the regulations when questioned by Sarah Wollaston MP, chair of the Health Select Committee. Disappointingly, the judge also decided not to cap the costs that the claimants might have to pay the government and NHS England if the judicial review is lost. In view of the large amounts already spent and claimed by the government and NHS England in opposing the case every inch of the way, we are giving careful consideration to next steps on this at the moment. These developments were covered in The Independent 29 January.  Help fund this key battle for the NHS. Please dig deep into your generosity again so the Famous Five can continue this important legal defenceDonate here |
Fantastic news re judicial review. Fantastic Stephen Hawking. Our country owes him so much.
Anti-NHS-privacy organisations need to do things that will force things to change.
I have called up the organ donor register and asked about removing myself, as a protest to NHS privatisation.
The staff on the phone seemed stunned, and so it looks like an approach not been taken. They wanted to put me through to a manager but couldn’t, as it is a Sunday the management are at home but the call centre is open (with the obligatory kids manning the phones, on minimum wage no doubt). Immediately an example of how privatised services (protected from competition by the ideology of the selfish (“must be private, creaming off profit is efficient, no public alternative in any form”)) are simply terrible.
I know how McKinsey would react to anti-privatisation looking to threaten transplants, using expensive PR to smear anti-privatisation as dangerous for public health. Presenting a simplistic image where the critics are “bad”. A pseudo-moral stance like that is easily countered by saying that McKinsey should choose to fuck-off itself, if public safety is paramount: I’d be straight back on the register once the leeches are removed.
They would make accusations along the lines of terrorism. Terrorism works on politicains and bureaucrats though, look at how post 9/11 civil rights have been decimated, and control of things by the unaccountable is accelerating. Exactly what right-wingers want: from DAESH to neo-labour to Saudi royals to Trump to May…..
Organisations like Keep Our NHS Public need to arrange a coordinated campaign where these sponging private companies stop getting spare parts. If once a month the organ register (and the Vampire service – the for-profit blood taking thing) had a glut of unregistrations then they would think about it. If the gluts are big enough, genuine re-nationalisation might be on the cards!
Mrs Thatcher said Manufacturing did not matter because we could make our living in the World by Services. The Only reason why private health firms want to provide NHS services at the taxpayer’s expense is that, like Mrs Thatcher, they have lost to plot on Manufacturing. We need to increase Manufacturing things the World wants and to export them. Therefore I call upon these private health firms to stop using the taxpayers’ money and to open factories and start Manufacturing things their research had found the World wants and to start exporting them. We have a £90bn Balance of Payments Deficit on the Current Account which it is these private health firms’ responsibility to correct.