Here Come the Cuts

What better week to announce the closure of four A&Es in London (including Charing Cross hospital) than the week that the nasty doctors went on strike? Talk about the doctors' strike all week, put out the announcement of the closures at the weekend and no one will notice. Until they turn up at the hospital with an emergency, that is..

Oh The Jobs You'll Create!

Oh The Jobs (Debt?) You'll Create! from Marketplace on Vimeo.




A salutory warning from the USA?

Is it Just Me?

Last week the BMA finally decided to go on strike. About time too, many would say. And I would have been one of them. I know what the government are trying to do; basically they are trying to raid a money pot that does not belong to them, to plug gaps elsewhere. I understand that this is wrong and that our junior doctors in particular need supported, because they are going to be carrying much bigger debts than previous medical graduates. I understand. And yet..

I feel let down. Let me explain why. For the past fifteen months, we have been fighting the introduction of the Health and Social Care Bill. I have made my own poor contribution to that; writing letters to Lords, blogging on it, explaining it to punters and alerting my own party to the consequences of the bill if it was passed in England. It is a monstrous bill; a clear and deliberate attempt to turn the NHS into a franchise. It has huge implications for students as well; who is going to do training, terms and conditions in different trusts, possible breakup of the deanery system, closure of hospital departments to shore up funding and so on. And you knew this. And you could not pull together to strike on the bill, at a time when it was really, really needed. Now that the Queen's assent has been given and the damage has been done, you're going to strike about pensions? Are you joking? What possible effect do you think that is going to have now, given that the wholesale destruction of the NHS has been bulldozered through? After all of that has gone through, do you think the government is going to be impressed by a strike about pensions? It's a gift to them. See, that's the greedy doctors that only care about themselves and lining their pockets, they'll shout. Your (valid) argument about pensions is going to to be lost in the shouts of those right now who have no jobs or very poor ones, whose pension funds have already been raided. They look on you as fortunate and they will look on your strike as self-serving in a time of austerity. Had you instead struck on defending the NHS from privateers, you might have got some sympathy. And you might have had a chance of changing things. That time, I fear, has now gone.

Then again, maybe it's just me.

Till We Have Faces

It was Draw Mohammed Day the other day. I thought I would do my own take on it. So here's my pictures of Mohammed.

              Here's Mohammed Ali, one of the most famous heavyweight boxers in history.

                                    Here's a  baby called Mohammed, from Saudi Jeans.

          Here's Mohammed Ismail, the child star from Slumdog Millionaire, formerly from a slum himself.

                     Here is Mohammed Bou Azizi, whose self immolation started the Arab Spring.

                   Here is Mohammed Ramadan, a competitor on Star Academy 7 X Factor.


                              

I could go on. But I did this to make a point. I don't like Draw Mohammed day. I understand that its initial point was to counter fundamentalism and make a stand on freedom of the press. But of all the beliefs of Islam that I would have chosen to oppose, it would not have been this one. Muslims do not believe that Mohammed's image is sacred. It is the opposite. To Muslims, it is wrong to draw Mohammed, because they were afraid that he would be worshipped  if they allowed it. It was to prevent Mohammed becoming an icon that it became blasphemous to draw him. They wanted Mohammed to be regarded as a man, not as God and ironically that is what Muslims have in common with those drawing the cartoons.

But that's not my only objection to this day. Draw Mohammed day has turned into a real hate fest as you will find if you google it. I'm not going to reproduce them here; you can find them for yourself. What bothers me is there is a real reducing and dehumanisation of Muslims creeping in just now and those cartoons reflect it. Perhaps I am more sensitive to this because I have an Irish background and we used to be depicted as pigs in cartoons. The face of Islam and Mohammed is as varied as the faces above. It is complex and we are missing this. We are taking the most extreme of Muslims and making them the face of Islam and in doing so we are playing into the fundamentalists' hands. They want their face to be the only face of Islam. They do not want the faces of children, of pop stars, of boxers, of babies to represent them. Ordinary Muslims do want this, but we have turned the camera away from them.

Beware of caricatures that dehumanise, that mask hatred as humour. Click on the links above and have a look at some ordinary Muslims' blogs. And look at their images, because it is the face that forbids us to kill.

                                             
                                                Syakir and Mohammed at Chinese New Year.

Some News

You may or may not (sob) have noticed that I've been quiet for a while. That was because I was running in the local elections as an SNP candidate in Coatbridge. Well, the news is; I got in! For the past couple of weeks I have been attending terrifying sessions on 'how to be a good councillor', I've been juggling more mobile phones than a drugs dealer and trying not to panic at the ability of my doocot to fill up when my back's turned for more than five minutes. But I'm getting there and I'll be returning to blogging shortly. Watch this space..

This is What We're Dealing With

I reproduce, without comment, a reply from Richard Wellings on possible sources of funding in a free market healthcare model. It is a comment from an article he wrote called 'How to Abolish the NHS.'

Firstly, insurance would only be one option once markets had been freed. Charitable organisations could provide treatment for those unable to afford insurance. Indeed many of Britain's most famous hospitals were founded as charitable/religious institutions in the pre-NHS era, often with money donated by generous philanthropists. Moreover, in the late 19th century a large proportion of the population obtained health cover through mutual organisations such as friendly societies. Numerous options would emerge if voluntary solutions were no longer crowded out by coercive state provision.

Secondly, I don't accept the arguments about the limitations of health insurance. Insurers can lay off risk using reinsurance markets. And there is no good reason why elderly people can't be insured - for example through long-term plans that smooth out premiums over time. Equity release schemes could also be used to fund healthcare premiums for the many asset-rich but cash-poor pensioners.

Finally, it's important to point out that funding problems in general would be diminished by the deregulation advocated in the article. Entrepreneurship and innovation would increase productivity in the health sector, making treatment more affordable.

*facepalm*

Defend Max Pemberton - Go Spartacus

I have just received from a reliable source that Richard Branson is spitting teeth about an article printed in the Telegraph on Sunday by Max Pemberton. What Pemberton is saying is fairly unremarkable; it's just what everyone else in health has been saying about what a crock of crap the Health Bill is. What is remarkable is that apparentlyBranson is demanding a half page reply; and that a high court injunction was served on Sunday to try to prevent the article being published. Branson is said to be unhappy too about tweeting on the subject and Max could be facing heavy costs because of this; £90 000 has been mentioned as a ballpark figure.


Now we really can't have this at all. I mean, what has the world come to when we have a potential headline 'Leftie Telegraph in Sue Threat by Branson over NHS'? There's really only one answer to this and that's to go Spartacus on it. Is the battle for the NHS over? No. We have only just begun to fight..