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  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAqyf7a4xFM

    waaaaaay!

    /couldnt happen to a nicer man

  • He slipped on his conscience

    Satire

  • Somebody please photoshop that...

  • That beard in the background is immense.

  • Saw that insufferable item on the news with Dave and Boris caressing their balls back and forth. Just like the Bullingdon days.

    My mum said if she was there, which she'd purposefully avoid anyway, and Cameron tried to shake her hand she'd bite it off.

  • That drunken moose made my day!

    GL repped!

  • superb. that was the one face I had in mind too

  • Brilliant!

  • fucking genius!

  • That facial expression that Cameron is pulling needs a pedo bear

  • you left that one black guy out luci

    /racist

  • He slipped on his conscience

    Satire

    What, trod in dog shit?

  • arf

  • "The report stage debate, which preceded the final vote, epitomised all that is now worst about our democratic system.

    Over 1,000 amendments were added at the eleventh hour, in ways that couldn't possibly be challenged. Ninety minutes of the precious debating time was given over to consideration of an abortion provision tabled by Nadine Dorries. And, if you watched it on TV, you would have seen very few MPs in the chamber, as legislation to radically alter a precious 63 year old institution was waved through in what had become a formality."
    -- Ten things you'll miss when the NHS has been eviscerated

  • It's about the current coalition's assault on the NHS, FFS!

    Tiswas wrote:

    What's the point in being partisan about this?
    So, since the writer is criticising the coming privatisation under the
    current government coalition, that criticism is invalid because she
    doesn't address Labour's marketisation of the NHS via the creation of
    foundation trusts?

    She's hardly going to contest that the NHS is a socialist organisation,
    despite working class activity leading to its inception, it was the ruling class
    which created it and have always controlled it.

    /* From a review by Gill Westcott on CLASS STRUGGLE - THE STATE AND MEDICINE, by Vicente Navarro [1] */
    The Dawson Report of 1920 advocating a regionalised and integrated
    national health service is often seen as a pioneering document. Navarro
    relates it however to the groundswell of working class dissatisfaction
    in the wake of the first World War and the 1917 Soviet Revolution, and
    to a more radical Document published earlier by the State Medical
    Services Association (later the Socialist Medical Association, SMA).It
    was in this period that the Labour Party adopted its most radical
    programme ever, enshrining the famous 'Clause 4' on nationalisation in
    its constitution, and the Dawson report is seen as an attempt to
    forestall the unrest springing from this mood. Navarro also links the
    1926/56 Royal Commission on National Health Insurance to the political
    situation surrounding the General Strike of 1926. The fact that neither
    report was acted upon he attributes to the waning of impetus of the
    Labour Movement due in the latter case to the breaking of the Strike by
    threats to call in the army, and the channelling of discontent by Labour
    leaders into the less effective Parliamentary channels.

    Navarro at this point shows that leading Parliamentary Labour Party
    figures espoused a political viewpoint which they expected to appeal to
    all sections of society, all 'men of good will' on grounds of social
    justice and morality.

    The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the ensuing depression led once more
    to increasing militancy among workers, and to disillusionment with the
    'evolution into socialism' doctrine of the parliamentary leaders. The
    Labour Party programme of 1934 called for nationalisation of key
    industries and a completely integrated (preventive and curative)
    publicly provided national health service. The response of the British
    Medical Association (BMA, the organ of general practioners) was a report
    in 1938 advocating the extension of National Health Insurance to all
    sections of the working classes through subsidising schemes with
    commercial agencies. It was during this period that the very similar
    Blue Shield Scheme was established in the US by the American Medical
    Association. One writer comments that the BMA was more concerned to
    ensure the patients' ability to pay them to insure them against the high
    cost of medical services.

    The Second World War however had a deep radicalising effect on British
    society, partly from the need to plan a better tomorrow to sustain
    wartime solidarity, and partly through the experience of much greater
    effective government control of the economy on the major services.
    Specialists sent to provincial hospitals were appalled at conditions
    there.

    Several blueprints for reform were prepared. The most famous, the
    Beveridge report of 1942, advocated Keynesian full employment policies
    and national free provision of health services and education. Again,
    Navarro sees this report not as a radical departure but strongly tarred
    with the capitalist brush, (due partly to Conservative dominance in the
    Wartime coalition). He finds its proposals on medical services very
    similar to a previous report on the Medical Planning Commission (MPC) in
    which the BMA and the Royal Colleges (the Specialist bodies) were
    represented, the specialists being more numerous. This report accepted
    the central planning and regionalised co-ordination which had occurred
    during the war, though it did not favour total integration of voluntary
    hospitals into the national system. It recommended expansion of National
    Health Insurance to the entire population, except the top 10% (from whom
    the Consultant specialists draw most of their clientele).

    The final NHS scheme, though said to be 'similar', nationalised all
    hospitals and did not accept the exclusion of the top 10% of population.
    A comprehensive free health service was introduced, financed out of
    general taxation and local rates. GP's still provided the bulk of
    primary health care and were paid by the state according to the size of
    their patient lists, receiving considerably improved incomes.
    Consultants, however, were rewarded extravagantly for joining the NHS:
    in Bevan, (the Labour Minister's words), he 'choked their mouths with
    gold' with a secret tax-funded system of rewards and the weighing of
    salaries in favour of consultants working only part time for the NHS.
    Private beds in hospitals were still available; though an insignificant
    proportion of total patients, they allowed consultants to augment their
    income. Moreover the consultants were permitted key positions of control
    on the Regional Hospital Boards. Crossman wrote "what chance is there of
    a shift of money to the community health services or long stay
    hospitals?... (the consultants) are the most ruthlessly egotistical
    administrators I have ever met in my life. They know nothing of what
    goes on outside the hospitals. These vast new palaces are justified for
    the convenience of the consultants" (1971).

    This would have been avoided if, as the SMA had proposed, the health
    services had been controlled by the democratically elected local
    authorities.

    Thus, Navarro argues, the Labour Government responded with far less
    radical measures than the working classes then wanted. (He does not
    comment on the subsequent election of a Tory government for 13 years).
    He blames the Labour leaders' support of the capitalist system, visible
    in their electoral claims in the early '60s.

    Since its inception, Navarro notes that in line with the rest of the
    economy, central management of the health services has been strengthened
    by subsequent reorganisation. Responsibility was shifted yet further to
    ad hoc bodies leaving still fewer (mainly public health) functions to
    the local authorities. Strengthening the regional boards reinforced the
    dominance of hospitals in the system and the increasing proportionate
    allocation to teaching hospitals reflected this. He notes the strong
    class structure in the medical professions, and its legitimation through
    the control of technology and medical knowledge.

    To conclude, Navarro looks at three main areas of debate in health care
    in the UK today:

    i) The rapid growth of expenditure on health care, which he attributes
    to growth in the social demands of labour (complementary to their
    demands for higher direct wages).

    ii) The continuance of regional inequality. Although he regards this as
    something of a diversion from the underlying issue of continued class
    inequality, Navarro discusses the procedures adopted by the Medical
    Practices Committee (made up of doctors) to control the placing of new
    doctors so that underdoctored areas were better served.

    This practice ceased in 1961, leaving only financial incentives to
    operate in these areas. He argues that redistribution of doctors has
    failed partly due to the strengthening of academic medicine under the
    NHS, allowing it more effectively to control the numbers of doctors
    trained. He states that while financial incentives were used to induce
    reallocations, a more democratic production of health resources in the
    NHS was not considered.

    iii) The ineffectiveness of medical expenditure to reduce mortality and
    morbidity. As well as the bias towards curative hospital medicine,
    Navarro notes that three major health problems alienation of workers,
    occupational diseases and cancer - all have origins outside the health
    sector in the working and living environment and are not susceptible to
    control by medicine; they are related to the class control of production
    and consumption.

    While she's at it, perhaps she should also write a critique of political
    power with particular reference to Marx's quest for party hierarchy (the
    dictatorship of the proletariat) and Bakunin's opposition (the invisible
    dictatorship), leading to the latter being ousted from the First
    International?

    She could also get into agriculture, the ability of malnourished farmers
    to overwhelm fitter hunter-gatherers by dint of numbers, attributable to
    an increase in carbs (grain storage), division of labour, standing
    armies, the exploitation of farmers and workers, the rise of the priest
    and ruling class and NATO's regime change contravention of 1973 in
    Libya.

    Would that satisfy you?

    Half of what this person writes is utter bollocks.
    In the context of the article that she actually wrote, which of those ten points is wrong?

    1 - http://www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/webpages/DC/LaMar79.0377.5429.004.009.Mar1979.14/LaMar79.0377.5429.004.009.Mar1979.14.pdf

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