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The Dirty War on the NHS

Philip Roddis

I saw this film last night at a one-off screening in Derby. It’s all you’d expect of a John Pilger documentary. Polished and professional? Well of course, but more importantly:

Hard hitting, its straight-from-the shoulder interrogations of power a far cry from the posturing of mainstream interviewers who, doubtless in all sincerity – albeit of the self serving kind – mistake Paxmanesque aggression for the real deal.[1]

Comprehensive, its lengthy passages from across the pond showing the deathly realities of an American model to which our leaders, Blair and Milburn absolutely included, have for four decades secretly aspired. (Pilger offers a plethora of smoking guns to leave us in no doubt on the point.) In this they have been driven by a mix brutally familiar to those of us not fully asleep. This blend of evidence-defying fanaticism with revolving door venality is already their political legacy, and will assuredly be their most fitting epitaph.

Joining the dots. Though Dirty War on the NHS remains focused on that iconic institution and its ancillaries in the Beveridge vision of a welfare state, there are clues throughout as to the wider generalisability of what we are seeing, and slowly waking up to in our own lives. Ours is not a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word. Ours is a world in which an elite class pursues its narrow interests through a grotesque but sophisticated parody of the same. To the techno-managerialspeak of our brave new era – war is peace, truth is lies and ignorance is strength – we can add privatising the world is progressive, the end of collectivism the true goal of reform.

As credits rolled to Hubert Parry’s arrangement of William Blake’s Jerusalem, the lights slowly undimmed and a man in the front row stood up, mike in hand. Knowledgeable and a confident speaker – but without that love of his own voice which too often accompanies those qualities – he said a few words then opened the floor for questions.

With a train to catch, I shot up my hand to grab the mike:

I’ve come from Nottingham, where there’s no public screening. I only learned of the film today, from a Facebook friend. We’re some sixty hours from polling stations opening up for the most important general election since 1945.[2]

I could have watched this at home online, strictly between six and ten pm, by purchasing a code allowing access. I thought it more fitting to see it with others. Now I want to alert everyone I know to a powerful film that could hardly be more urgent. But I can’t, can I?

Why was the viewing so restricted?

Other than sympathetic noises from the host, and from the three questioners immediately after me, I received no answer. Nobody knew.

I slipped out as quietly as I could. On the first bitterly cold night of the year one wreck of a man shuffled up to ask for spare change. All I had in my wallet were plastic and my rail ticket.

[1] For an up-to-the-minute account of one small instance of how slavishly ‘our’ media have served to distract us, see Kit Knightly’s piece today in OffGuardian.

[2] Anyone sensing a contradiction between this assertion, and my earlier one that we don’t live in a meaningful democracy, might wish to contact me. I wanted to keep this post short but am happy to discuss that particular aspect of the matter elsewhere.

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Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Dec 15, 2019 1:45 AM

The Great NHS Heist was removed from YouTube (it was made “private” after the election), but I found it elsewhere on YouTube. In case you missed it, here it is:

Vivian J
Vivian J
Dec 12, 2019 2:39 PM

I am surprised that the profound negative health impact of 5G technology rarely gets mentioned on this site (forgive me for shoe-horning the issue into this thread, but it will greatly impact the NHS, under discussion). IMO it is an absolutely massive issue, turning our towns and cities into microwave irradiation zones, with dire health consequences. There is a lot of medical evidence to support these concerns (start with Prof Martin Pall)…

George Mc
George Mc
Dec 11, 2019 8:22 PM

Peter Obourne is going to vote Corbyn:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/11/boris-johnson-destroy-britain-conservative-revolutionary-sect

This bit is curious:

Something horrible has happened. The Conservative party lies. It cheats. It bullies. It’s not the wise, gentle, decent party of the postwar era.

I wonder whether Boris Johnson and his squalid associates are Conservatives at all. The Conservativism I understand is about public duty, generosity, the instinct to conserve what is good in our society; the importance of the rule of law and of institutions; suspicion of leaps in the dark. I am thinking of the Conservatism of Burke, Lord Salisbury, Oakeshott.

To which I can only ask: Where has Oborne been all this time? Didn’t most conservatives figure out a long time ago that Margaret Thatcher wasn’t “a conservative”? But then there has always been a tension, to say the least, between conservatism and capitalism. Indeed “conservatism” has always been a con. Conserve what? They were always happy to change anything they didn’t like and spin that change as a “change back” to some “Golden Age”. Certainly capitalism is the most ANTI-conservative force there’s ever been. It thrives on constant change and cares nothing for tradition, culture, religion, “the family” or any of those other hallowed noises given by conservatives. And all of this was obvious from the Thatcher years onwards. But perhaps things are just getting a bit too …unsporting now.

Vivian J
Vivian J
Dec 12, 2019 7:16 PM
Reply to  George Mc

Oborne was always something of an oddity – a true Blue real-ale supping cricket-loving Tory who yet had an in insight into the true nature of the Middle-East, seeing Iran as a victim of (previous and potential) Western neo-con/lib aggression…

edited by Admin to correct typo

George Mc
George Mc
Dec 11, 2019 7:51 PM

This may be old news. I think Lundiel referred to it:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/11/heal-d11.html

I did think it odd that the WSWS would be turning to Guido Fawkes for an article. Although perhaps the Ashworth conversation is true.

The biggest problem – indeed THE problem behind everything was pointed out by one comment on the WSWS by one “solerso”:

In capitalist societies the notion that capitalists (who else? ) have the “right to profit” – off of anything and anyone they can, without exception – is the unquestioned, unexamined starting point for every allocation of resources.

And that unquestioned, unexamined starting point is the great vampire maw underlying the entire system.

paul
paul
Dec 11, 2019 7:09 PM

18% of US GDP goes on healthcare, $3.7 trillion.
But that includes $5,000 per ambulance journey and $750 for a pill that costs a few cents to produce.
An appendectomy costs $60,000 in the US compared to $125 in Russia.

George Mc
George Mc
Dec 11, 2019 6:52 PM

A work colleague today who had visited America told me of the utter lack of comprehension amongst those raised in the states as to what the NHS is and what it does. So she explained that it means you get treatment for whatever you need and it’s free – and they just stare at her in wonder. And yet all the way through American articles I have read, there is this constantly emphasised horror at “socialised medicine” and how it will “enslave” everyone!

The American health system i.e. “Freedom’s health system” is utterly barbaric. I recall one comparative survey of the health systems of various countries in which the US came out the most expensive – and when you looked at the bill, they charge for everything down to use of the waiting room!

Harry Stotle
Harry Stotle
Dec 11, 2019 8:56 PM
Reply to  George Mc

You can tell a lot about the US health care system by some of the toads defending it.

I’ve posted this before but it crystallises just how grotesque market fundamentalists are.
As an aside Ayan Rand and Freidrich Hayek scored highly in the hypocrite stakes each performing a volte face once confronted by significant illness (claiming social security to assist with medical bills). Both learned the hard way the market does not always provide.

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Dec 11, 2019 11:07 PM
Reply to  Harry Stotle

Ayn (not Ayan) Rand, the psychopathic hero of so many Republicans and Libertarians.

Brian Harry
Brian Harry
Dec 14, 2019 9:26 PM
Reply to  Vierotchka

Ayn Rand may have been the first person to actually have contracted “Mad Cow’s Disease”, leading eventually to Margaret Thatcher who died of it, to the great joy of the British ‘Working Class’.
The Right Wing ‘ruling class’ however, very much miss her…….and are searching for another…….

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Dec 14, 2019 9:45 PM
Reply to  Brian Harry

Nothing to do with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, of course. They both were mad cows, psychopaths.

Brian Harry
Brian Harry
Dec 15, 2019 1:01 AM
Reply to  Vierotchka

“Ding Dong the Witch is dead”…….

George Mc
George Mc
Dec 12, 2019 8:41 AM
Reply to  Harry Stotle

Rand and Hayek were always the most useful of the useful idiots making excuses for the inexcusable. The real masters above them never had any illusions. They were happy to stuff their insatiable maws while their little eager moron pets yapped around them.

Mucho
Mucho
Dec 11, 2019 3:21 PM

Frank Zappa – The Central Scrutinizer
A visionary in genius mode

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Dec 11, 2019 3:18 PM

John Pilger Calls UK National Health Service a Treasure, Blasts US Healthcare Democracy Now 7/2/09

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Dec 11, 2019 3:14 PM

Facebook Live: The Dirty War on the NHS

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Dec 11, 2019 3:04 PM

Here is another excellent film – long but well-documented and very thorough, a must watch:

ZigZagWanderer
ZigZagWanderer
Dec 11, 2019 8:46 PM
Reply to  Vierotchka

Powerful and essential . Find the time to watch this.

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Dec 15, 2019 1:44 AM
Reply to  Vierotchka

That video was removed, but I found another one which is still on YouTube:

Nils
Nils
Dec 11, 2019 1:26 PM

Why is the NHS always spoken of with the name NHS? I don’t know any other country where they do it. And why does the British health service’s future seem so uncertain unlike in other Western countries? Genuine questions.

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Dec 11, 2019 3:11 PM
Reply to  Nils

Because it is much shorter than saying “National Health Service”.
Its future seems uncertain because it is unlike any other country’s health service, I reckon, and because the USA has long conspired with some right-wing elements in the UK and with some New Labour (a very Thatcherite Labour introduced by Blair) elements in the UK to privatize and take-over the NHS.

Nils
Nils
Dec 11, 2019 11:33 PM
Reply to  Vierotchka

I kind of meant they don’t use a specific name for the health service in any other countries, I think.

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Dec 12, 2019 3:20 AM
Reply to  Nils

Barring the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK (and all countries where English is the language), people and countries don’t talk in acronyms.

Brian Harry
Brian Harry
Dec 14, 2019 9:40 PM
Reply to  Vierotchka

They’ll catch up with us one day…….and, find something worthy to complain about, Vierotchka…..OK??

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Dec 14, 2019 9:46 PM
Reply to  Brian Harry

I think those people are far too intelligent and well educated for that.

Philip Roddis
Philip Roddis
Dec 11, 2019 3:22 PM
Reply to  Nils

To your first question, Nils, NHS is among those institutions so well known that its initials suffice to identify it. Others being CIA, USSR, USA, FBI, KGB and BBC.

To your second, I’m not sufficiently au fait with the health service provision of, say, France or Portugal to give any detailed answer, but of this we can be sure. The drive to privatise and monetise every sphere of the human experience – a drive that takes in the creeping privatisation of the NHS, the fall of the Soviet Union and the wars of aggression on the middle east, to give but a few examples – is not unique to Britain. It is at the heart of capital’s laws of motion.

Born in 1952, all my life has been spent in an atypical bubble within capitalism. Due to the cold war, capitalism in the West was obliged to behave nicely to some degree (a push factor). And because of its exploitation of the global south, it could afford to do so (a pull factor). Hence institutions like the NHS and ‘mixed economies’ of Western Europe in particular.

With the push factor no longer applying, capital is reclaiming the concessions made during that historically unique period. It’s not just Britain. See how France’s ruling class is fighting to make workers pay for its crises, most topically in the pensions battle now raging.

BigB
BigB
Dec 11, 2019 7:12 PM
Reply to  Philip Roddis

Every party in the UK has found the magic money trees. According to the joke: Labour has found the whole forest. Surely that is a push factor? This whole election is an object case study of the Polanyian ‘double movement’ of finance capital protecting its core inner logic of maximised accumulation with state handouts as an inducement to vote. Which further ties us into the ‘market society’ by internalising social reality as a totally contingent function of market forces. Systemically overfinancialised, globally vulnerable, and institutionally fragile market forces – buoyed only by investor overconfidence – to which we are incredibly exposed …particularly as an 80% financial service market society in the UK.

I’ve tried to get people to cross reference with with Klaus Schwab and the WEF: who have been advocating a social inclusivity compact for years. For no other reason than to protect globalisations core logic from populism: of which they are genuinely scared. Rather than capitalise on the golden opportunity: the country looks set to take the contingent handouts in return for another five years of obedience to capital. That deepening of the material dialectic of the market society and green capital finance will be our undoing.

Capital is determined to entrance the electorate in greenwashed ‘stakeholder capitalism’; where even our subjectivity is ever more contingent on and determined by market forces. Social reality is market reality is the green finance climate market economy. The future of capital is actually contingent on this one last push toward the financialisation of natural and scial capital. Especially in a tertiarised and derivative service market sector – on which all socialist contingencies rely in the UK. A service market sector that has grown just 0.2% in 2019. In a market society that has only grown 1.3% this year [ONS]. And if the ONS can only fake that level of ‘growth’: with the three months to October being in decline …we are already in recession.

So we go to the polls tomorrow in probable technical recession: expectant of contingent socialist concessions that may never happen. With our personal and social realist subjectivity at stake. In a contracting global market economy. The overfinancialisation of which looks teetering on the verge of collapse. This one last push of the ‘green’ climate market society should see it go? Then we shall see the pull effect of state capitalism for real.

Philip Roddis
Philip Roddis
Dec 11, 2019 7:44 PM
Reply to  BigB

“So we go to the polls tomorrow …”

Fantastic, BigB. You know, I’d all but given up on you as hopelessly lost to sectarianism!

BigB
BigB
Dec 12, 2019 2:11 PM
Reply to  Philip Roddis

Sectarianism: we are at the polls today to give legal-rational legitimacy to the latest greenwashed iteration of Eurocentric white supremacist racism and ecofascism.

Is there anything more sectarian than that? I think not. Which is why I am taking a relatively solitary stance against it. But come on Phillip: I do not need to tell you about globalised surplus value extraction. Where do you think an 80% financial services market society gets its surplus value from? And how do you think it is going to exponentially extend its expropriation?

Or are we taking the capitalist line that free trade, equally entered into, is no robbery? Because we both know that is a lie.

MASTER OF UNIVE
MASTER OF UNIVE
Dec 12, 2019 1:30 AM
Reply to  BigB

Carbon Based Taxation and the Green Bond buy in is predicted to be approximately a $23 trillion USD enterprise if we are to take Mark Carney at his pronouncement upon departure of BofE and entry to the United Nations.

It’s a good way to cover up Federal Reserve incompetency & overnight REPO problems with institutional liquidity.

MOU

Brian Steere
Brian Steere
Dec 11, 2019 1:15 PM

I wrote to a comment on the same theme yesterday
https://off-guardian.org/2019/12/07/reddit-bans-users-for-telling-the-truth/#comment-105128

Invested illusions taken for a private sense of freedom, seek ‘sustainability’ at cost of truth. Truth is not an idol but a functionality or workability.
The painful burden of dysfunctionality in death and taxes then becomes a source of energy and sustainability for the maintaining of the lie and the father of it as social and scientific consensus.

Hence we have predatory ‘services’ across the whole range of social function, that operate a conflict or sickness management system – that in medical terms operates under the doublethink of ‘Healthcare’ – based in invested identity in the body as a weapon or defence – rather than as a means of communication and communion that is it functional expression.

Medical treatment is the third leading cause of death in UK/US. If honest account were made of treatments for the first two – then medical treatment would likely be the leading cause of death – or more accurately – means by which death occurs because in a sense birth is the total cause of death and the manner of our living and dying is to a large extent a matter of choices within and stemming from what we accept life to be (for).

In a self-alienated form of mental substitution for the Felt quality of life as an unfolding perspective, we use the body (and its world) to enact private fantasy upon- as well as to dump the toxic consequence of un-owned and unresolved conflict onto – and then seek ’causes’ for dysfunction in the body (and its world) onto which we project narrative identities of our own conflicts and attack, suppress or deny them there.
Sometimes we blame the fireman for the fire, or kill the messenger, or demonise the body’s natural healing process, and sometimes we generate crisis – even painful and debilitating conflict so as NOT to know or face or open denied experience. The way that the mind operates in obfuscation and evasion os essentially tyrannous but masked in rationalised justifications and plausible deniability’s that are backed by a sense of survival or rebelling against a fear of extinction by sacrificial enactment of part-payment by which to mitigate or forfend feared outcomes – including the diversion of ‘sin and consequence’ to pharmakoi or scapegoats – or indeed the usurping of an expected penalty by pre-emptively hurting ourself or dramatising our part to seem to have ‘already paid’.

Bolstering the mind in denial is a priesthood of ‘protections and defences’ that CAN hold for and serve the conditions in which healing, resolution, reconciliation and integration can occur – but whose attempt to usurp or control symptoms becomes an interjection of authoritative ‘control’ into and onto a living relational feedback. As with Economics, ‘control’ is set over lack of confidences or set to undermine confidence by masquerading as experts who KNOW – when the expertise may lie more in acting out the invested and collective identity. Partly because the ‘patient’ projects the need for protective or magical authority onto anyone who is ‘identified’ as ‘being expert or knowing how to make it better or make trouble go away or bolster a sense of isolation in fear.

I could of course fill this with innumerable exceptions and qualifications – but these are known and met and lived. The underlying patterns of self-evasion working collectively as an entanglement of conflicting and competing interests is generally given a very restricted viewing – if allowed voice at all.

Be aware that to (strictly speaking a hijacked) ‘globalist’ thinking you – humans – are the enemy, the sickness and the symptom to be suppressed, denied, controlled, burned out, or cut off.
NO! It is a false thinking that considers itself ‘too big to fail’ and insinuates itself into the living so as to induce them to sacrifice life of wealth and health or wholeness to enable the sustainability of worthless thinking. Worthless because it works to undermine worth while seeming to promise the Earth.

The regulatory CAPTURE of finance, energy supply, science, law, governance, medicine, media, education, has been an inexorable incremental process of a consolidation of ‘control’ that replaces relational being whilst BLIND to it – and arrogantly presuming to usurp or substitute for it.

The idea of putting all our eggs in one basket can seem to have collective power.
But when the foxes run the henhouse – we are then collectively disempowered and regulated or fenced in.

History is rich with consensual beliefs that are no longer considered valid or often comprehensible – but THIS TIME WE ARE DIFFERENT?

I am not against science – but science and a scientific education or training depends on funding. Trained technicians are not trained to think – to observations and explorations that develop clinical experience.
Hence for the ‘masses’ doctoring will be robotised as a pharma outcome from blood tests and a limited option of screen inputs and outputs – all configured to expert algorithm.

So few can question scientific consensus – especially when they are made afraid or diagnosed into fear.
Sun exposure – longer life. High Cholesterol – longer life. Of course you can buck ANY trend as an exception but ‘risk assessments’ are bandied about as scientific FACT – and the whole world set to be rejigged as a result of computer modelling set to serve unproven theories.

Yes, its where the ‘money is’.
Where else is the money? It is invested in shares and pension funds that ‘make money’.
That’s another story – but ‘The Mayfair Set’ by Adam Curtis is still relevant to ‘Banking Nature’.

When there is a need for help – we need to address the need. But we do not need to become helpless or set up sickness as a market to nurture and grow.

A captured market is a monopoly – regardless what system runs within it.

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Dec 11, 2019 2:23 PM
Reply to  Brian Steere

binra,

It is actually even worse than that: “Medical treatment is the third leading cause of death in UK/US. If honest account were made of treatments for the first two – then medical treatment would likely be the leading cause of death”

Whilst the NHS, can still be extremely good for dealing with traumatic injury, if you get lucky, and get to a working A&E quickly enough, I am personally convinced, that visiting your doctor, when you are in otherwise good health, is one of the most dangerous things you can do. They are almost certain to find something wrong with you, particularly if you are over 50.

One of the main reasons for this, is that doctors, are heavily financially incentivised, to prescribe drugs for you, which are very physically harmful, particularly when taken on a long term basis. Whilst I accept that some people have medical conditions, that require on going drug treament, the vast majority of people, who turn up at GP’s surgery do not have an illness that would not be naturally resolved, without any drug treatment.

What is almost always required instead of drugs, is a change of lifestyle, for example more exercise and a better natural diet, together with reduced on-going stress. Most people’s problems, are compounded, by the most awful depressing propaganda, that they are fed every day, through their TV screen. Stress, and depression will actually cause physical illness. Most people think taking pills will fix it, when the long term result, is that they will probably kill you.

I am also convinced, that the vast majority of NHS screening procedures, are also physically and mentally harmful, with a proven very high percentages of miss diagnoses, particularly of cancer. People then end up having traumatic surgery to remove vital organs, when they would otherwise have recovered, with no treatment. Having been told you have cancer, when you otherwise have absolutely no symptoms, can itself be like a death sentence. That knowledge, even if false is highly likely to make you ill. It is a completely different matter if you do have symptoms, and I know of several real cases of cancer that have been successfully treated, and have save the lives of people I know.

Tony

Barovsky
Barovsky
Dec 11, 2019 3:01 PM
Reply to  tonyopmoc

100% with you on this!!! Capitalism is dangerous to your health.

Brian Steere
Brian Steere
Dec 11, 2019 9:18 PM
Reply to  tonyopmoc

Well ‘worse than the leading case of death is quite a claim – but you bring out the side I am most interested in and that is awaking self-responsibilty as part of a shared re-education.

We are being framed, induced, nudged, engineered, propagandised and manipulated at every level – and yet much of this has a negative synergy that can make perfect sense to those who see eugenics by stealth as giving people the rope to hang themselves with – while milking the taxpayer (NHS) for farming the sickness – that as you say may be an invented set of risk markers – ie Cholesterol – whose goalposts can be arbitrarily moved – and which persists despite the theory being unsupported by science.

I vote that A&E should be the primary focus of NHS.
Lifestyle choices that are unsustainable (disease inducing) are a captured revenue stream for Big Ag/Pharma.
As for ‘Cancer’ – you have another hot potato of regulations that are supposed to protect us…

It looks like Lynn Thyer is to be released from jail in France after illegal extradition.
My outgoing MP wrote to ask one of his mates “what is being done to implement GcMAF for cancer sufferers? and “how soon will it be implemented?”. The reply ignored the question.

The dirty war is not being waged on the ‘sacred cow’ of the NHS – though the prospect of parity with the US as part of the breaksit up of Britain and reconfiguring of EU is extremely ugly. It is being waged on the human population at large.

John2o2o
John2o2o
Dec 11, 2019 11:23 PM
Reply to  tonyopmoc

“I am personally convinced, that visiting your doctor, when you are in otherwise good health is one of the most dangerous things you can do.”

Erm, Tony. I’m not sure that your average GP would be too chuffed being confronted by a surgery full of people in good health.

“They are almost certain to find something wrong with you, particularly if you are over 50.”

A lot of people visiting their doctor would be heartened too know that.

John2o2o
John2o2o
Dec 11, 2019 11:24 PM
Reply to  John2o2o

I don’t mean to sound glib, but I only go to my doctor if I feel unwell.

Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
Dec 12, 2019 6:42 AM
Reply to  tonyopmoc

Tony

I proved 30 years ago that 4 months of daily exercise outdoors, three square meals a day and absolute freedom from TV and newspapers cures depression.

Very bad news for pharma, that, but I am only telling the truth.

I also proved the past four months that daily exercise with a mattock clearing an allotment clears up skin infections.

BigB
BigB
Dec 11, 2019 1:02 PM

Radical analysis is dead in this country. Revolutionary politics is dead and taboo. And eco-radical analysis is just a thing in my head: which will never reach actionable polity status.

Whatever happens tomorrow: we will have a new capitalist state on Friday the 13th …which seems to be only a nightmare to a marginalised few: including me. Whoever the operant conditioning lottery, sorry vote, goes for: the capitalist state – as a proxy for green finance neoliberalism – gets in. There is no point saying do not be fooled by the party propagandic rhetoric: because nationally and locally …most people already are taken in.

The NHS is gone: long before any vote was ever cast. Probably from 1982. I know: because my Mum told me so. And she worked in the NHS from its very inception. Radical analysis would show that once the NHS was contingent on market forces: it could not ever survive the contradictions of ideology enforced upon it.

Nearly forty years on: the NHS is still totally in hock to market forces. As a permanent contingency of exponential market expansion. In fact: all the state vote-buying sweeties and capitalist candy on offer now are market contingencies. Anyone who banks on them becoming actualities and acts accordingly must be spectacularly well insulated from the globalised market realities. Whilst no one can set a date: we are at or close to the zenith of investor overconfidence …1929-stylee. The paper mountain of overfinancialisation, the immorality of monetary speculation, and just the sheer weight of debt are supported by a thin cloud of investor overconfidence. Nothing more: unless you include Central Bank intervention and zombie corporation repurchasing of debt …just overconfidence.

And when the confidence bubble burst: the gamblers rapidly leave the tables. They leave the tab behind for us to pick up. Bye Bye NHS. Our inveterate national investment in the capitalist state means our most treasured national asset is at risk of becoming a numbered lot in a firesale. A lot number, or numbers, one of those very gamblers will pick up for pence on the pound. In what Jack Rasmus aptly calls ‘carrion capitalism’. You ruin the economy, you socialise the debt, then you buy the assets with your privatised earnings. And what institution is there to ensure the legal-rational legitimacy of the private property rights to do so? The capitalist state. And who gave it that legal-rational legitimate authority …we did as an electorate?

If that is the Scylla: the First Pillar of Dreams …then the Second: the Charybdis – is the contingency of the globalised neoliberal market economy doing well. Which involves the exponential extractivism of all life from the life-ground and transforming the biosphere into corporately socialised and responsible profit. Life will be transferred to the NHS by the dispossession of life elsewhere. According to UNICEF: 21,000 children will die today from preventable diseases. Many so we can prevent disease and have the bourgeois socialist contingencies of the market economy. We have 14.3 mn in poverty: and children with Victorian diseases of poverty in the shadow of the City. The same City which has approximately $3tn in OTC derivative trades across its virtual desks every day. Enough to end global poverty, famine, malnutrition, underdevelopment, cognitive impairment, and the diseases of poverty many times over. Forever is a long time for universal-emancipatory humanism.

We have the money; we have the resources – for now. What we lack is the social will to distribute these life-giving resources equitably and globally. And we are settling on giving the legal-rational authority for the neoliberal capitalist state to embark upon another round of enhanced extractivism and exponential full-spectrum dominative expropriation from the already weakened and hungry. In return for some empty and hollow promises of socialist sweetener slogans like “We must save the NHS”. At what cost?

The NHS is already lost to the mercenary self-maximasation immorality of the market. And our value-ethics are lost too. Dare I say we no longer deserve an NHS at the cost of extending our bourgeois market imperialism over all life on earth? And stealing our capitalist candy from the mouths of dying babes. Which, if you are not taken in by the stories we tell to exclude ourselves from such vortex dynamics …is exactly the trade-in-investment we plan to make.

The only valid and viable life-affirming ethic is rapid degrowth and radical wealth redistribution – North to South. If we want a viable morally justifiable socialism and healthcare: it cannot be contingent on the pathology of the market economy. Which means developing an emergent truly international solidarity of the socialism of the globally oppressed. We are not the oppressed: we are the oppressors …until we commit to a new life-coherent value-ethics …the very opposite of the actually extant bourgeois socialism we are committing to. The market contingent hyper-expropriation by dehumanisation on offer tomorrow is not socialism at all. It is a ‘mirror-neoliberalism’ wrapped in the markets sugar-coating.

To be clear: the socialism of which I can only dream of in this carnally capitalist country will NEVER be available at the ballot box. The capitalist state is a globalised market neoliberal sweet shop. The sweets and candy are poisoned: but boy …do they taste sweet. Only, do they? Beyond the shores of Albion they do not. But judging by the comments made so far: not many even know there is a beyond to the parochial shores of convenience. We will find out soon enough when the globalised consequences of our decisions come back to haunt us. We too will lament our overconfidence and overinvestment in the capitalist state. And we will lament the NHS we timorously voted away when it is gone.

BigB
BigB
Dec 11, 2019 1:21 PM
Reply to  BigB

Comments made not on this, but other boards: I should add. Particularly the election capitulation board. “I had not thought death had undone so many”.

Dungroanin
Dungroanin
Dec 12, 2019 1:50 AM
Reply to  BigB

Holly shit BB is there any chance you can contain your messages in less eye ball wearing short stories?

“Whatever happens tomorrow: we will have a new capitalist state on Friday the 13th …”

I would point you to what the ‘unlucky Friday the 13 th’ meme refers to – when you refer to a capitalist state.

You’ll have plenty of time to look it up now that it’s all over bar the fiddling as the fat lady enters stage left.

Staying up all night for the results?

Philip Roddis
Philip Roddis
Dec 12, 2019 10:17 AM
Reply to  BigB

This question has preoccupied the Left for a hundred years. Ever since Lenin advised the fledgling Communist Party of Britain to “support the Labour Party as a rope supports a hanged man” (interesting metaphor, that, from one whose brother went to the gallows after a failed ultra-leftist uprising against the Tsar) it has divided those who see parliamentary democracy for the chimera it actually is.

There are those within that minority – anarchists for instance – who couldn’t care less what Lenin thought. And even those who do care fall into two broad camps. Both see a stark choice for humanity: socialism or barbarism. (The latter updated to add environmental meltdown to the list of possibilities.) And both are with Marx in insisting a capitalist ruling class will never allow socialism via the parliamentary route. (That seventies film, A Very British Coup, is excellent on the why and how of this).

Where they differ is on whether Lenin’s advice still holds. Or – forget Lenin – whether the inability of social democracy, including a Labour Party whose ties to trade unionism make it a special case, to deliver socialism means it can never be supported, however conditional and limited that support. This has divided the Left in Britain for a century.

At some point I’ll dedicate a post to this question and its history but now I’ll just say that I see the refusal to back Labour under any circumstances as sectarian. The British section of the international working class is facing, as is the French section to name but one, assault on every front. I focused here on the NHS but let’s take that as a metonym for wider attacks as Capital seeks to make labour (small l) pay for its crises.

Again: I see this as the most vital election since 1945. I urge all socialists to vote Labour today not because Jeremy Corbyn is an honourable man – though he manifestly is that – but because a Labour government, especially one with a civil war between its Tory-lite and socialist wings, will embolden the union movement and the direct protests which sooner or later will be necessary.

I urge all British socialists to vote Labour today because when it betrays, as it will, there’ll be a stronger current prepared to take the fight outside the Westminster Village, to support and if necessary bully Corbyn into not backing down when the pressures for him to do so will of course be immense. He has already conceded ground and this too is what parliamentary socialists – actually an oxymoron – always do, however steely their character and piercing their intelligence. This is not persoanal. There’s a science to it.

But do we join those sectarians who insist on all or nothing? Regardless of where the most people are at? To do so is to insist that there’s no difference between the utterly unprincipled BoJo and the demonstrably principled Jezza. Or to put it in less personal terms, no difference between the Tory’s plans for the NHS – remember, I use this as metonym, albeit a powerful one – and the collectivist aspirations of Labour as it is currently led.

At the very least the ruling class can proceed with its plans, to make the many pay for its own crises, a good deal more speedily under Boris than under Corbyn.

I think that’s a no-brainer. Especially when those ultra-leftists who advocate abstentionism have nothing to offer. Nada. Zilch. Sweet Fanny Adams.

BigB
BigB
Dec 12, 2019 1:14 PM
Reply to  Philip Roddis

Nothing to offer but life. Life which the neoliberal market economy society has all but rejected. So we have two flavours of market economy society to choose from. Both are completely contingent functions of the globalisation of market forces. And we make the limited self-preservational choice on marginal contingent policies – subject to the global free-enterprise market doing well from its core ‘money multiplier cancer’. So how do you choose a particular brand of metastases? Or between cancer and kidney-failure? On a pantomime unpopularity contest?

I cannot believe we have got to the latest stage of capitalism’s cancerous imperialism over all life without even diagnosing the pathology and etiology of our disease. Have you read McMurtry’s ‘Cancer Stage of Capitalism’? Because it diagnoses the ‘transnational money multiplier sequence’ as being the ’cause of causes’ and ‘pathology of pathologies’. Which has its central accumulation hub in the City of London. And here we go extending its exponential metastatic mandate for another five years.

What happened to radical analysis: because this pathological contradiction with all life on earth was readily identifiable in Marx over 150 years ago? In 150 years: our analysis has been trivialised and sanitised of its global consequentionalism. And stripped of its post-Marx potency: in sociology, Critical Theory and Continental School anti-capitalism. Instead we elect for bad faith bourgeois socialism at home: without even addressing the global consequences of our actions. Since when did neo-Marxism become capitalist? And why has eco-socialism been stillborn?

We are the climate bourgeois: in terms of consumption/pollution and historic emissions. We are both the richest (in terms of per capita consumption) and most polluting market economy society on the planet. And I draw those facts directly from LabourGND’s website so as not to be controversial. Along with the proposition that if everyone lived by our consumption standards – the ecosystems would collapse. From 3.45 planets per capita – around 28,000 tonnes per person mass aggregate consumption (global average 7,000 tonnes) [Hickel]: we are voting to extend our biological footprint many times over. This is not only amoral: it is actually insane. To give credibility to the alleged decency of one man: we commit to destroy the life-ground of the planet …foreclosing the future for extended consumption today.

Of course: this can only be done in denial of what I say. But is it actually untrue? Because I have checked my facts. Or are we just blindsighted to the true globalised effects of our actions and consumption addictions? Because it seems absolutely clear to me to extend our biological footprint on the basis of EV fetishism; planning three EV giga-factories with ‘end-to-end’ UK support networks; a pseudomillion unionised green industrial revolutionary jobs; all powered with a science fiction ‘just transition’ to 90% renewables by 2030-ish is not only contra the Laws of Physics …but a clinically insane hallucinatory episode.
.
Which – if you read Cory Morningstar’s expose – is sponsored by every green finance capitalist on the planet. Something everyone has been avoiding doing since January. So we vote for cancer or kidney-failure on the option of which is more survivable? Because it seems neither is to me. Or do we diagnose the cancer at the heart of all global pathologies by a much more radical analysis than we are seeing today? And identify the cure for the root pathology? Because radical means root of the root analysis. To which I have remained true all my life.

On that point: where is everyone else? I’ve been exposing the GND all year. I exposed the fantasy of perpetual growth many times over. And I exposed Corbyn: from when he began to support the White Helmets and the humanitarian interventionist front the Jo Cox Foundation. It’s not like I started on the eve of the election. If everyone had a modicum of moral fibre: they would have walked away from Labour in 2016. Here we are with no alternative but to vote Labour. How close to actual extinction do we actually have to get before we see the real globalised market forces of perpetual extractivism, expansionism, and expropriation in play and seek healing from the root of the root of cancer? Because it is not about me or you: it is about the global consciousness of survivability. The chances of which everyone will to voting to negate today.

There is science to sustainability and degrowth too. Not that anyone has looked at it. Where is the science of exponential expansionism?

Tish Farrell
Tish Farrell
Dec 11, 2019 12:04 PM

You can share The Great NHS Heist film on YouTube. At 2 hours long it probably covers the same ground:

Harry Stotle
Harry Stotle
Dec 11, 2019 12:22 PM
Reply to  Tish Farrell

Or a precis by Bob Gill (a GP) who explains exactly what is going down – the sections he discusses are;
*The role of the media and government narrative.
*Private Finance Initiative: loans & debt.
*’Sustainability and Transformation Plans’.
*Why isn’t there more fuss?
*TTIP / CETA – role of trade deals.
*Data mining.
*Three elements to the NHS heist (the budget, the land, information: see Google)

Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Dec 11, 2019 3:06 PM
Reply to  Tish Farrell

Oh, I just posted the same thing, didn’t see your post. I came across that video almost accidentally in a comment on YouTube below a different video! Sorry about that. 🙂

Dungroanin
Dungroanin
Dec 11, 2019 12:02 PM

‘Doh – it’s about saving the NHS stoopid!’

As I have been banging on for ages. The final Labour Broadcast is on just that point – smaltzy but I suppose it has to be.

But for ‘some’ its all about their precious HARD brexit.

But the voters are not having it

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/12/the-largest-vote-swings-in-british-general-election-history-censored-out-by-the-bbc-and-mainstream-media/

bob
bob
Dec 11, 2019 3:00 PM
Reply to  Dungroanin

“But the voters are not having it” – you mean the anti-democratic remoaners?

Dungroanin
Dungroanin
Dec 12, 2019 1:30 AM
Reply to  bob

Lol “remoaners” thats’s so …’dementia tax’.

Pack your bags. You’re done.

Philip Roddis
Philip Roddis
Dec 11, 2019 5:33 PM
Reply to  Dungroanin

For personal reasons I’ve been unable to canvass, Dungroanin. But I’m in touch with several who have been door knocking in the marginals: places like Northeast Derbyshire, Mansfield and Penistone.

All have said the same thing: Brexit barely features (and antisemitism never). The media have lied about this as they do about so much else. The last thing our ruling class wants is a clear focus on the central concerns of people shafted by an ‘austerity’ that has provided cover for the rich getting richer, services and job security getting worse and worse, as Capital seeks as ever to make the labour sellers pay for its crises.

As you and my door-knocking pals have said, Brexit is not one of those ‘central concerns’.

bob
bob
Dec 11, 2019 11:47 AM

…. and don’t forget the DWP , the bastion of fairness and competence

https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2019/01/14/the-dwp-has-admitted-21000-people-died-waiting-for-benefits/

Killing people has been normalised to such an extent that nobody cries ‘FOUL’ anymore – maybe we don’t need health care at all – just kill off anybody who doesn’t go with the ‘narrative’

bob
bob
Dec 11, 2019 11:36 AM

It was the terrible twins duo of Bliar & Brown who started the rot by opening up the NHS to the private sector. The introduction of PFIs didn’t help. There is an intricate network of private healthcare in the UK all ready and waiting to be switched on. The NHS as an ideal is still worthy of merit but the state it is in today it could well be closed down, as like most public services, it’s on its last legs in terms of providing worthy services. This is all deliberate … and not in the interests of the population. But hey, we voted to leave the EU but are not going to, what do we know – the ‘experts in government and the health industry have other ideas

Dungroanin
Dungroanin
Dec 11, 2019 12:28 PM
Reply to  bob

The neoconmen Blairites were The Establishments final destruction by internal planted mole takeover of the postwar Labour movement- they had to be the party to destroy what they set up – so that history could show that and Tories would not be blamed.

Just as the NuLabInc chicken PLooPers were supposed to nail that coffin lid and deliver the Hard Brexit for their Globalised ubberlords.

Not going to happen. All of the people cannot be fooled ALL of the time.

davemass
davemass
Dec 11, 2019 11:11 AM

Saw a headline ’15 billion of NHS contracts gone to private sector since 2015 (Cameron reelected).
Some for equipment, fair enough, but more for ‘services’.
NHS and UK are gone, if Johnson wins tomorrow…

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Dec 11, 2019 11:07 AM

“I could have watched this at home online, strictly between six and ten pm, by purchasing a code allowing access.”

How do I do this? I want to watch it tonight.

I had already decided not to vote, but this might change my mind.

Tony

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Dec 11, 2019 12:16 PM
Reply to  Estaugh

Estaugh, Thanks, but that doesn’t help. It appears to have only been made available for online screening for 5 hours on the 9th December. I appreciate that the film makers, want to be paid for making the film, and I am quite happy to pay a few quid to watch it, but they will not allow it, unless I travel into London tonight and see it a cinema. It will be shown after the election on ITV, which will be too late for it to have any effect whatsoever on how, I or anyone else votes. So I won’t bother as originally intended, as I don’t like any of them. Its just that Labour are probably the least worst, and they stand no chance of getting in where I live, so there is no point in voting.

Dungroanin
Dungroanin
Dec 11, 2019 12:20 PM
Reply to  tonyopmoc

Having deeply considered your posts and replies and your well considered arguments and rigorouness on various topics specifically the need to vote in the MOST important election this century and most of the end of the last …i doubt you will.

But.

If you do an arse about face i suggest vote Corbynites Labour – Y NOT COMPO?

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Dec 11, 2019 12:54 PM
Reply to  Dungroanin

Dungroanin, Blimey you’ve got a good memory. I’m impressed. I have not posted under the handle compo for about 20 years. This was about the same time as Bill Owen (compo) in Last of The Summer Wine died at the age of 85. This was entirely coincidental. Even then I didn’t watch much TV, and had never heard of him.

Tony

Frank Speaker
Frank Speaker
Dec 11, 2019 10:58 AM

Yesterday I read that since 2016, a very detailed study by NHS doctors has proven a DIRECT causal link between increased A&E waiting times and the deaths of patients waiting beyond the required waiting time in their emergency.

In a mere 3 years, it stated that more than 5,400 people have completely needlessly died, thanks to Tory mismanagement. Directly related.

These needlessly dead people are our families, friends, neighbours, co-workers.

Where’s the outrage on the BBC and Sky etc? Oh, here it is…Corbyn may have upset the feelings of a small fraction of 0.5% of the population – what an absolute monster! Let’s make sure he does not become PM! Forget thousands of our own citizens needlessly dying, that’s not nearly as important as Corbyn being an appalling “anti-Semite”, or him being a Commie who will give back water, railways, electricity back to the ownership of the people of this country!

The UK political scene, and the disgusting media is sick, terminally so, in my opinion. It’s an absolute cesspit of immorality, lies, deception. I’m glad I lifted my young family out of it over a decade a ago, but feel desperately sorry for those who have no option but to remain there and suffer the neoliberal, evil onslaught. Thank goodness we have OffG and a few other sites where we can read their “fake news”!
😉

Harry Stotle
Harry Stotle
Dec 11, 2019 11:35 AM
Reply to  Frank Speaker

‘The UK political scene, and the disgusting media is sick, terminally so, in my opinion. It’s an absolute cesspit of immorality, lies, deception.’ – spot on.

Highly paid, entitled individuals who dedicate their existance to supporting the status quo.

Such self-serving individuals are ALWAYs on the wrong side of stories that really matter – war, Assange, Grenfell, the NHS, and most recently the father who felt revulsion at Johnsons cack-handed attempts to exploit his sons murder for cheap political capital.

Contrast this with the dignity of the Hillsborough families: currently trying to process the view of the British establishment that no one is guilty for 96 deaths as opposed to establishment figures like Prince Andrew, a man dealt a fatal blow to his reputation after a TV interview that reeked of duplicity, and self-interest.

Until the children of media figures, or those they suck up to, are eating out of school bins (because they are so hungry) it is unlikely they will wake up to the role they serve as establishment enablers.

Mucho
Mucho
Dec 11, 2019 2:20 PM
Reply to  Frank Speaker

Anyone who wants to bring themselves to a state of uncontrollable, blood-spitting anger, listen to Radio 5. Today I listened to this vile piece of BBC filth, Emma Barnett. I seriously hate this country and everything it has become, the people, the culture, everything stinks of Satan’s rotting shit, because it’s becoming ever-more populated by nauseating, gut-wrenching, deeply unpleasant assholes like this odious excuse for a woman.
Extreme listener caution recommended, only tune in when alone and if you have your own padded room and taped-up lips, so when you start headbutting the wall, lashing out violently, screaming blue-murder and punching things at random, despite your usual calm demeanour, you will at least live to see another day and won’t ruin your own life with an unwanted criminal record.
The BBC is a disgusting organisation, infested with pseudo-corporate, asskissing filthbags like this.
WARNING – EMMA BARNETT’S THOUGHT PROCESSES, QUESTIONING AND PRESENTATION STYLE MAY LEAD YOU TO COMMIT ACTS OF SELF-HARM AND REGRETTABLE VIOLENCE
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c5lc#play

Mucho
Mucho
Dec 11, 2019 2:26 PM
Reply to  Mucho

Not pseudo corporate, just corporate, with all its offensive connotations

paul
paul
Dec 11, 2019 7:25 PM
Reply to  Mucho

At the risk of being sexist, there is an endless supply of these media bimbo wimmin, people like Bay Kurley, who generally adopt the Ali G. style of interviewing and presenting. Sports coverage is getting overrun by them.

Though they are still less obnoxious than Snow, Clarkson, or David Bumblebee.

Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
Dec 11, 2019 10:43 AM

There is nothing the UK undertakers will not sell off, they actually look up to Blackrock, G4S and SERCO.

People have this delusion that reasonable debate will get the puppetmasters to come to heel. Big mistake.

They need to know that their children will be bumped off and then on prime time TV they will be asked the one dynamite question they should have to answer: ‘ WAS IT WORTH IT, losing your bloodline to steal everything?’

That might bring them to the table.

Not much else would….

Note the word PUPPETMASTERS.

You want change, they have to dealt with.

Bors Johnson and Corbyn are utterly expendable, dozens lined up to replace them.

The puppetmasters are the ones that have to go and their potential successors need to know they will go the same way….

lundiel
lundiel
Dec 11, 2019 8:09 AM

Does this ring any bells with anyone: My local hospital now doesn’t have an accident and emergency department, it moved to a hospital about 7 miles away, though, for some, its catchment area makes it a 20-mile+ journey. The front entrance of the hospital has been remodelled, it now has a private patient reception area just inside the main doors and also contains a clothes shop, additional cafes and a beauty salon. You check yourself in on terminals which never seem to work so there is still the same number of admin staff manning the desks in each department. The hospital pharmacy has gone, replaced by a high-street brand.
You don’t actually have to do too much to privatise hospitals and clinical commissioning groups, most of the leg-work is already in place. Whether they sell/give the NHS to American corporates is neither here nor there. The only thing that won’t happen in the near future is, it will still remain free at the ‘point of sale’. They’ll deal with that issue by letting us (the people) make that call when the NHS allegedly becomes to expensive to fund.

Frank Speaker
Frank Speaker
Dec 11, 2019 10:47 AM
Reply to  lundiel

I have a friend who lives in Huddersfield, an industrial town approaching 200,000 residents and its administrative district of Kirkless being 400,000 residents. Its on of the larges towns in the UK. Its football team played recently in the Premier League.

She tells me that the long established hospital that has 400+ beds will be closing its A&E department, that function relocating about 8 miles away to the much smaller Halifax hospital. Anyone knowing the physical and human geography of this area knows how ridiculous this is, especially as the bulk of the Huddersfield population already have to travel across the town to get to the hospital, and now will have much further to travel, especially critical in an emergency.

Both hospitals belong to the same Trust, and Halifax was saddled with a massive amount of PFI debt, it’s unsustainable, hence this ridiculuous scheme to close a large and very busy A&E and move it to Halifax to save their arses. Rumour has it that the whole hospital will be closed and land sold off for development. The short termism of this brainless vandalism is staggering, but to the Blairites and Tories its business as usual.

Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
Dec 11, 2019 10:55 AM
Reply to  lundiel

20 miles for an accident is annoying, not life-threatening.

20 miles for an emergency may kill you.

‘Accidents’ like broken arms will keep for half an hour.

An acute heart problem will not.

You do not have time to negotiate with three potential suppliers when you are about to drop down dead, which makes ‘market solutions’ totally ridiculous for acute medical provision.

Americans campaigning ceaselessly for US takeover of the NHS should have their children murdered. Simple and effective: wipe their bloodlines out. Killing Americans means nothing, Americans do not count, they are not humans. They are fascists who only value money and are the most racist value-free group on earth.

Ooh, have I outraged some self-righteous Americans?

Do you think I care?

The day you care about the rest of the world living as equals and you not being lawless exceptional psychotic genocidal madfolk is the day I will care two hoots whether you all live or die.

Right now, if 150 million Americans died on one day, I would just say ‘Dear me….acceptable collateral damage.’

PROMOTE WORLD PEACE: KILL AN AMERICAN TODAY!

That should be the slogan for 2020s.

bob
bob
Dec 11, 2019 11:39 AM
Reply to  Rhys Jaggar

brill!!

Ash
Ash
Dec 11, 2019 6:26 PM
Reply to  Rhys Jaggar

Do you really think everyone in America likes, supports and wants to export our horrible healthcare “system”? (Hint: it’s a small number of profiteers and their flacks, as always.) Don’t let the veneer of democracy fool you, the citizenry are not in control.

paul
paul
Dec 11, 2019 7:27 PM
Reply to  Rhys Jaggar

I think we should just centralise everything and have one big mega hospital for the whole country in Birmingham.

Harry Stotle
Harry Stotle
Dec 11, 2019 11:16 AM
Reply to  lundiel

Indeed privatisation of health care without calling it privatisation will continue apace.

Expect vilification of the usual groups as the groundwork is laid by Britains rancid right wing media for what is coming.

A Johnson win virtually guarantees calls for charges to curtail the explosion in;
Fatties,
Alcoholics,
Health tourists,
Single mothers,
The feckles and the poor, or indeed any other group that provides the kind of emotional leverage that results in people switching off their critical facilities (and there are a lot of such people around, especially the concern-trolls BTL at the Guardian).

Tony Benn was right: it is far easier to control a frightened, in-debted and politically demoralised population.

It simply amazes me that any socially aware adult would consider going into a voting booth in order to lend support to politicians who are literally killing their fellow country men, or when not plunging the country into feudal misery are complicit in the murder of citizens unfortunate enough to live in a country that America has taken a financial interest in.

Capricornia Man
Capricornia Man
Dec 11, 2019 7:53 AM

This film looks like a graphic and hard hitting defence of the NHS which Pilger would do supremely well. I particularly like his moving reference to what people fought WW2 for – absolutely correct.

A pity it is coming out so late in the election campaign. I understand it is to be shown on television – after the election. Why? Media timidity fueled by false notions of ‘balance’? Since when did such niceties inhibit the MSM from smearing Corbyn?

I hope this film is shown in all countries which have some semblance of a public health system. All are under threat.

austrian peter
austrian peter
Dec 11, 2019 5:52 AM

I was privileged to view this RT Renegade Inc report on Monday evening. It deals with privatisation and the NHS among other things; well worth the 30mins to watch and learn (and the book, Privatised Planet, must be got, I have ordered mine already):
https://www.rt.com/shows/renegade-inc/475353-uk-private-sector-healthcare/

anonymous bosch
anonymous bosch
Dec 11, 2019 8:58 PM
Reply to  austrian peter

RT Channel – I get it on freeview – Channel 234 – and if I couldn’t get it, I would probably get rid of my television set once and for all ! Actually I have been setting up a video cam on a tripod in front of my TV screen and filming many of the informative shows that present material that would be banned by the BBC and its Neo-Liberal broadcasting cohorts. I have already collected a ‘library’ of amazing programmes, documentaries and interviews. Like yourself, Peter, I have discovered books that I just would never have heard of had it not been for the wonderful RT – a portal guiding the viewer into a world of impartial discussion and real news, filmed from ground zero by real journalists and investigative reporters – rather that these corporate bought hacks who never question anything – and do the bidding of their masters by attempting to prevent anyone else getting to the bottom of any issue. One book I would mention here is “The Management of Savagery” by Max Blumenthal – a very powerful indictment of the Deep State – the evil it is, and the evil it perpetrates. Please vote Labour tomorrow, if only to get Julian released from Belmarsh.

austrian peter
austrian peter
Dec 11, 2019 10:17 PM

Thank Anon and all your remarks which I firmly endorse. I have already written to my past MP with whom I have exchanged articles and copied my book (unpublished) manuscript, especially raising the question of Julian Assange. I have arranged a meeting if he gets re-elected in the New Year.

Whilst I have reservations about some extreme policies of Jeremy Corbyn there is no doubt that he is the best of a bad bunch. I do worry a little about national security and conflicts with the deep state in this area as they are extremely powerful and given to tactics not unfamiliar to the Roman empire.

I do support workers’ rights and representation on boards (Co-operatives), nationalisation of essential services and many other policies that will release the pent-up initiative of our wonderful people. I will apply my vote appropriately.

You are welcome to a free PDF copy of my manuscript of ‘The Financial Jigsaw’ due to publish in Q1 2020: https://www.gofundme.com/f/fnahvp-free-book and check out the weekly serialisations at: https://www.theburningplatform.com/2019/12/07/the-financial-jigsaw-issue-no-81/

Thank you for your support and seasons greetings to you and yours.

State Sponsored
State Sponsored
Dec 11, 2019 4:37 AM

Promises and slogans change dramatically before and after voting/elections.
Before voting: “We send the EU 350 million pounds a week

let’s fund our NHS instead. Vote Leave!”
After voting to Leave: Let’s trash the NHS and let’s send our money to Big Pharma in the US and let the population suffer.
Here is the campaign promise: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth#img-2

Martin Usher
Martin Usher
Dec 11, 2019 4:06 AM

I’ve been living in the US for the last 35 years, before that I lived in the UK for 36 so I’m familiar with both systems. Although its not obvious to people who don’t live here there isn’t a US system as such, there are a lot of different ways health care is delivered, it varies from provider to provider, state to state. Many — if not most — Americans are aware of the serious shortcomings in the way that health care is delivered in the US and there have been many initiatives to fix them, the one that people in the UK are likely to know about being “Obamacare” — the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This is only part of the picture, though. Since it would take too long for me to explain everything here (and I’m really not the best person to explain it, anyway) I’ll cut to the chase and say that what the UK government has been trying to do to the NHS does’t mirror the US system as a whole but rather the worst aspects of this system, the least affordable, the one that delivers the least for the most cost (and is responsible for the most middle class bankruptcies). I would accuse the UK government of bad faith and dishonesty because there are many other models that can be borrowed from to improve service and cost effectiveness of the NHS both in the US and from the rest of the world but they’re deliberately choosing one that has at its core the overriding desire for profit, a model that’s essentially obsolete in the US because it can’t deliver healthcare cost effectively.

Its also disingenous to say that the NHS isn’t on the table when talking trade with the US. Its practically the only plum left and its future has already been hinted at by Trump — he talks about dismantling price controls and letting the market decide pharmaceutical prices. The US is the only country that I know of where major health providers like Medicare are prohibited by law from negotiating with suppliers. This is under threat because its untenable but its going to take some work because there’s so much money sloshing around the pharma industry that they can afford to buy representation. There’s no need to allow this rot to spread, though.

Vexarb
Vexarb
Dec 11, 2019 6:13 AM
Reply to  Martin Usher

@Martin Usher: “I would accuse the UK government of bad faith and dishonesty because there are many other models that can be borrowed from to improve service and cost effectiveness of the NHS both in the US and from the rest of the world”.

Heed this well. Every successive UK regime, from Thatcher through Labour Sons of Thatcher (as Roddis states above) till Johnson today, stand accused of bad faith and dishonesty. Conversely, not everything in the U$A is bad; there are many good things in that great country, many examples of good faith and honesty, which could be taken as a model by people of good will in our own government — if only we could get people of good will into government.

Vote Corbyn, the first reasonably decent person to lead Labour in 40 years.

lundiel
lundiel
Dec 11, 2019 7:47 AM
Reply to  Martin Usher

I read a very poignant comment from an American in the Guardian about 10 years ago. It was just before the Lansley reforms of the GP system and the commenter predicted exactly what would happen after introducing clinical commissioning groups. He said that when a similar system was introduced in his state a decade before the practices were bought up by care providers as and when family GPs retired and the only practices to survive were in wealthy rural areas, the first to go were urban practices. He predicted the loss of a family physician, with all the benefits attached to seeing the same person who has an intimate knowledge of you and your family. This he opinioned, would be replaced by ‘harrassed locums’ who would see you for 8 minutes. He also said, the first thing a new commissioning group would do would be to move into a shiny new practice with a state of the art reception area.
The man was spot on. My commissioning group has just moved into such a practice and I’m left wondering why they didn’t use their budget to employ much-needed GPs, given how under-resourced they are. But I suppose Priti Patel will see to that be allowing thousands of Indian locums to immigrate here under the points system.
My point is, we were warned exactly what would happen but we couldn’t/wouldn’t do anything about it.

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Dec 11, 2019 8:40 AM
Reply to  Martin Usher

”Vote Corbyn, the first reasonably decent person to lead Labour in 40 years.” A bit too reasonable for his and his party’s own good. A purge the Blairites and the Labour Friends of Israel, should have been done long ago. The ridiculous idea that you can have Zionists and anti-Zionists in the same organization is patently ludicrous. The British deep state has a strong presence among the PLP how can Labour expect to carry out a reforming programme with the presence of this cancer? Time to start being unreasonable if Labour and Corbyn are serious.

Vexarb
Vexarb
Dec 11, 2019 9:26 AM
Reply to  Francis Lee

Francis, alas too true; but like Aunt Agatha’s present, we choose the last in the window before the shop shuts on Xmas eve. Also, I believe it is the responsibility of Labour voters to clean out known BLiarites at local constituency level: by their voting record shall ye know them.

PS Latest rumour? I’ve just heard a New Labourite complaining darkly about Corbyn the Dictator.

BigB
BigB
Dec 11, 2019 11:08 AM
Reply to  Vexarb

Vex:

It’s been the Leitmotiv of Labour supporters that they are going to purge the Blairites …come the next Conference. Two Conference cycles came and went: nothing happened. Ah, but come the NEXT Conference…

This circular self-defeating causality became unbelievable when there was a move on the ultra-Zionist Blairite Watson …only for Corbyn to personally save him. Of course, he went not long after.

But the party is the party: and with no Corbynite illusion – it is just another AZC neoliberal imperialist party with an uncharismatic leader. Laden with ‘socialist sweeties’ to buy the votes of children.

All those so called socialist vote-buying handouts are totally contingent on the neoliberal globalised market economy doing well. And as I have been trying to make clear: the globalised market is not doing well. Even the BIS is now concerned about the repo situation. If black swans are meant to be the unexpected sight: how come I can see a flock of them flying East and West?

And if the market economy does rally slightly with the GND – which is the ultra-neoliberal hope – then it is at the cost of all else. Including the very life-ground from which we draw our very next breath.

No one likes my analysis: and I can see why. We have limited our options to supporting the least worst option of Labour …whose particular brand of state capitalism is totally reliant on the globalised market economy expanding exponentially. Which in itself: threatens a social and/or metabolic rift. If the market collapses – and it will – it gives the environment a short lease of life …but enters us socially into permanent austerity.

Our subsequent subjective choosing has left us between a rock and a hard place. With most seeming to opt for the ‘one more time’ repetition of the very same set of exponential maximisation behaviours that precipitated the unseen trauma crisis we are already in.

If the market fails: the NHS is gone. If the market limps on: the NHS may be safe in the short-term: but at what cost to all life on earth? If we really want to save the NHS – and we do – it cannot be contingent on market forces. We need fundamental root of the root radical analysis of the market forces at play: and an emergent set of real world radical policies based on degrowth and universal-emancipatory resource redistribution – from North to South. Of the sort no one is willing to contemplate. On y vas. Au revoir NHS. 🙁

Geoff
Geoff
Dec 11, 2019 10:29 AM
Reply to  Francis Lee

Well put I agree 100% , 72 Labour MPs are friends of Israel

Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
Dec 11, 2019 10:36 AM
Reply to  Francis Lee

Simply found a new party which excludes Zionists and has in its Articles of Association thats Jews are welcome but Zionists are not. That is not antisemitic, as non Zionist Jews are semites, so are tens of millions of Arabs. And they would all be welcome. Just no Zionists.

By the arguments of ueberzionists, it would have been racist to ban nazis from joining all major political parties.

We all know how that ended….

I want to vote for a party that will NEVER put Israel before the UK and has that as a non-negotiable starting point. I want similar commitment NOT to kowtow to US globalist fascists and a commitment to oppose all anti-democratic institutions like the EU.

Economics is lower than freedom when push comes to shove in my view.

Trouble is: far too many would turn a blind eye to mass murder for a four bedroom house and a BMW on the drive.

Vexarb
Vexarb
Dec 11, 2019 6:51 PM
Reply to  Rhys Jaggar

Rhys, a good proposal but I suggest the exclusion of Zionazis in particular rather than Zionists in general. Zionazis like Natan Yahoo and his ilk have given Zionism a bad name, just as Christian fascists like Bush and B.Liar have given Christianity a bad name, and bloodsoaked Liberals like Clinton and Lady Clinton have given Liberalism a bad name.

Martin Usher
Martin Usher
Dec 13, 2019 5:45 PM
Reply to  Rhys Jaggar

Trump has done the legwork for you by defining Judaism as racial so that any critique of Israel in particular is taken as racism and so likely to have Federal funding withdrawn. This may not survive a court challenge but more significantly by conflating religion, race and nationality Trump has unwittingly made a move straight out of the Nazi playbook. (The rationale for excluding Jews in Germany from public life was that they were not really Germans but rather illegal immigrants. Since the first actions went primarily against poorer, “Yiddish” and more identifiable Jews the ones that should have kicked up a fuss — the loyal middle class, respectable, professional, patriotic (WW1 veteran) Jews — didn’t because this couldn’t have possibly applied to them. Until it did — and it was too late to do anything about it.)

My take on this is that “Not all Roman Catholics are Italian”. You can then go into an extensive discussion about the Holy Roman Empire, anti-Catholic discrimination in the Reformation era, but its outside this discussion. It was all politics, of course.