O/T Its surprising how people vote

[animallittle3]

The question you have to ask yourself is whether the country can continue to afford NHS ‘rights’ for employees. Chief among them will be the NHS defined benefits pension. Like most such schemes, it is becoming too expensive for the same reason that the NHS is in trouble, which is that people live longer. Such schemes were fine when a person might only be expected to live for 10 years after retirement, but when that figure extends to 15 or 20 years they become prohibitively expensive. Many company schemes have been closed to new members for that very reason (in the private sector, the problem has been exacerbated by the poor investment performance of the funds themselves).

The agenda is to cut the costs of the NHS in order to be able to maintain the delivery of services. If it was privatisation, the Trusts would simply outsource by ringing up the likes of Serco or Amey or Mitie and inviting them to tender for the work.

And what is your objection to privatisation, if it isn't simply ideological?

Chasing profit at the expense of people's health is my concern .

Neither am I comfortable with people making money out of children with meningitis etc etc .

This isn't a train service or the post office , we are talking about human life here and the quality of it .

We also need to remind ourselves why the NHS was created in the first place , to provide free at the point of service medical attention to anyone who requires it .

I'm hardly convinced the privatisation of former state owned services and industries have delivered any advantages to their end users , Branson's train service ran efficiently and was profitable until he got his hands on it .

Carrillion went bust leaving hospitals un-built , other train network's significantly increase prices every year , don't even get me started on utilities .

The electorate were sold a scam in the 80's and early 90's and fell for it hook , line and sinker which is why the tories dare not privatise the NHS in quite the same way , if it was so popular and an election winner they'd have rolled it out already wouldn't they ? .

Better to go down the back door route isn't it and as type this negotiations are going on to tie any new governments into 15 year contracts that are very expensive to exit from with potential private investors , I'll leave you to figure out who that is aimed at .

Not for me .