Britain and the war in Afghanistan: the point is? By Robert Cook.
Like many British people I have often wondered what the continued NATO presence there is actually all about. The invasion destroyed the Al Qaeda training camps and removed from power the Taliban regime that sheltered them. The original mission, one of revenge against the architects of 9/11, was accomplished in a matter of weeks.
The increasing death and injury toll of British male soldiers (as far as I know there has only been one female fatality) has recently caused more open questioning of a war to which little see any obvious purpose. Government has, as usual, done little to clear up the confusion. This despite ministers and the army talking about a ‘mission’ that they expect to last for years and one to which some officials see no end.
The most convincing explanation of the farcical occupation, and the ever-changing justification, is that America’s current foreign policy is dominated by oil. The long-term certainty that supplies are almost certain to run out in the future, coupled with increasing competition with China and India for declining natural resources, has forced the USA to act. It cannot be a coincidence that Afghanistan happens to be where a major oil pipeline coming from the Caspian Sea central Asia region will pass through on its way to Pakistan and the oil tankers. Iraq after all is about its oil stocks.
Powerful lobby groups who determine national policy dominate American politics. The oil industry, of which the Bush family is involved with, is one of the biggest and most well connected in Washington. British foreign policy is heavily influenced by
the USA (since World War Two the so-called ‘special relationship’ has dominated) and highly subservient to its aims and ambitions. Britain too faces much uncertainty about future energy sources, as North Sea oil becomes harder and more expensive to locate. Both nations have declining oil reserves but very high demand for it remains.
The ‘War on Terror’ looks more like a series of wars to secure access to current oil reserves ahead of China and India. No wonder other NATO countries, particularly Germany and France, have no interest in supporting war for the Anglo-American interests.
Quite sensibly they are looking after their own national interests.
The fig leaf of national ‘security’, internal and external, used to scare the public into supporting military action abroad and suppression of basic civil liberties at home makes regimes dominated by a social economic elite far more secure. Protest is stifled at birth and democracy greatly reduced. That is particularly true for police state UK.
The average Briton, like the average American, will see very little economic benefit for themselves or their families and friends. What they will see are heavily armed paramilitary police and security personnel making sure that they continue to do what they are told. The threat of Muslim extremism vastly exaggerated and practised by a small radical minority (many of whom are already known to the Anglo-American security services) are the new Communists. These extremists are an easy way to distract people from the harsh realities of their personal situations. They are the enemy, both internally and externally, to be focused on rather than the massive social and economic inequalities increasingly prevalent within countries that make use of the decentralised, private industry social elite dominated, Anglo-Saxon economic model.
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Left,Birmingham July 2009- copyright Robert Cook/ Buckinghamshire Echo.
Below, always smiling House of Commons Speaker John Bercow- copyright Robert Cook/Buckinghamshire Echo.
Who is watching the watchers by Charlie Close- Editor August 30th 2009
We at the Buckinghamshire Echo are concerned that the police-, which we pay for-, is becoming seriously politicised, even in Bucks. We are starting a new column to monitor and comment upon their activities. They appear increasingly involved in social control, serving politicians, inadequate at solving and deterring crime- among other failings. Who is policing them and what happens when they fail to protect us, and appear more interested in protecting themselves? We welcome comments from everyone, especially the police. The new column is called Police Station. It is our view that real crime is out of control and that society is in turmoil. We will look at all aspects of modern policing on a regular basis because we think the watchers should be watched.. The police, like politicians, are our servants- not the other way around. We pay a lot to keep them in uniform or plain clothes.
Public Servants
Opposing official spin is a dangerous job but serious writers have to do it. The law is about protecting entrenched established interests. Lawyer and Justice Secretary Jack Straw agrees there may be "pockets of institutional racism" in the Metropolitan Police. He spoke ahead of the tenth anniversary of a landmark report, which made the claim.
Mr Straw said: "If you are asking me whether I believe the Met as a whole is still institutionally racist, the answer is no. You ask me, do I believe that it's perfect as an institution and that black and Asian people, and indeed women, have the same opportunities in practice as white males, I think the answer is - probably not in some areas. There may still be pockets of institutional racism." What on earth is this top man saying and why?
Either the former New Labour Home Secretary doesn’t understand the concept of institutionalisation or he is telling s something in code. You can’t have a pocket of institutionalised racism that will affect the whole police organisation unless that pocket is at the top.
We keep hearing about the sad case of Stephen Lawrence, years after his death. The reason we hear so much about this is because New Labour perpetually patronises ethnic minorities whilst not knowing the first thing about them. One wonders what they do know about. Well, for a start they must know that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith knows how to falsify an expenses claim to the extent of £116,000. Presumably this is because her salary of £300,000 is not quite enough. Why hasn’t she been arrested?
She would have been if she were a stressed out unmarried mum fiddling the social security for a few fags and some booze to help her escape her miseries. Smith should have been arrested. After all police arrested the Tory MP Damien Green who was receiving information from an immigration officer which New Labour didn’t want to get into the public domain. This is the police at their political best, serving the master’s who their top cops sup with,
Returning to the matter of the Metropolitan Police’s racism, how else do we explain the strange death of Charles de Mendez? Harping on about Stephen Lawrence, with all the New Labour hand wringing is New Labour and their media cronies distracting us from what is going on now.
Charles was dark skinned. The police were looking for middle aged Pakistani wearing sufficient clothing to hide a bomb. Charles was wearing a tee shirt. He was also young. In his native Brazil there is a lot of public and indiscriminate shooting. It wasn’t surprised that he ran when he saw the thuggish gun toting excuses for police officers.
Incredibly these state murderers shot young Charles nine times. They obviously watch the Bill for training purposes. Were these guys blind and given the job as part of the police’s obsession with equal opportunities? Or was it a case of any one with a dark skin will do, because all blacks are the same and we just need to thin them out a bit. Even more amazing is that the appropriately named Commander Dick got promoted for giving the order to shoot. I wonder who gave the order for the security tape to be destroyed. We are the most watched developed nation in the world. But who is watching the watchers.
Buckinghamshire Echo takes the view that the police are more interested in working as political enforcers for government than in dealing with the bulk of crime. Sex crimes and domestic violence are top of the police priority list, while the bulk of crime is not being dealt with. Violent crime has risen by 97% since New Labour came to power and young white males are the most likely victims.
The honest politician probably does not exist- other than as a Southsea restaiurant (pictured here). John Bercow was found out fiddling expenses. He promised not to do it again. Son of a London taxi driver, Bercow is a career politician married to a New Labour activist.
Bercow is on £140,000 as House of Commons Speaker. He claimed £23,000 to make the Speaker's flat child safe and £7,500 for a sofa, with another £750 for cushions. Another Tory MP wants pay doubled to bring it in line with other professionals. These are the people who wrecked the economy and social fabric. They need no formal qualifications for their jobs and have little experience of the sort of hard lives that most Brits have to live. New Labour realise how important a tame media and police force are to keep people in their place.
Buckinghamshire Echo would like to help people think about what is going on, how they are being misled and ripped off. Natives are emigrating in record numbers-450,000 in the last 12 months- but those who can't afford to do that, or are too old, need to take heed, life is going to get much worse in Britain.
From the archives- and it has got a lot worse since this was
written :Cruel Britannia by Echo reporter
So 90% of the population live on 10% of the land and England is the most densely populated country in Europe- and the population the most dense- according to reports. That’s not surprising, but no doubt if more of the country became available for housing, we’d be even denser and densely populated. One in seven of the population are immigrants and 25% of babies born in Milton Keynes are to immigrants. One disgruntled source close to Prescott’s office also whispered that 80% of new houses for Milton Keynes are for immigrants- that’s twice the official figure. He’s probably lying, but bad energy rubs off. So exactly proportion of the new money coming into Milton Keynes is to help the existing city population, particularly the poorest?
Bucks was once a leafy county and Milton Keynes was to be a city in the fields. All change now though. It’s phase two for growth, though Lord Campbell and his team never spoke of such a phase back in the 1960s. Some of my wishful thinking critics say I am a doom monger. Maybe, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Even the Richardson Inquiry heard Anglia Water tell them that supplying water to a doubled population was outside their business plan, but they would do their best and demand management would be a strategy to help them - keep the profits up! Parts of the southeast are in the grip of the worst drought since 1904. Eleven out of fourteen of the last months have had well below average rainfall. Last year was little better. It’s the complete opposite in rain sodden northeast England, so why not build all the new homes up there- because people don’t like rain maybe.
Meanwhile down south bluebell groves have disappeared under tarmac. Coppices have been cleared to make room for key workers- why is a public sector worker any more key than the lady who works in Poundland? Let’s face it anyway, it wouldn’t matter how many key teachers we recruited, they wouldn’t be able to make progress in our dumbed down national curriculum obsessed and undisciplined factory schools. No matter how many art, music and drama projects they can boast, feral kids rule. No matter how many key nurses the local hospital recruits, the system will still be riddled with MRSA, because they don’t know how to keep it clean, and the place is not big enough to meet growing demand. No matter how many more police we get, there are too many lawless youngsters and twisted older folk, for them to make much difference. In the offender (unless it’s sex) has their rights put first.
Apropos the police, why waste all that money on investigating the death of Princess Diana? If anyone killed her the establishment did. Since the establishment are doing the investigating, we can hardly expect them to find themselves guilty. Diana stepped out of line. As Buffalo Springfield and Stephen Stills sang in the days of my hippie youth, ‘There’s something happening here, what it is isn’t exactly clear, there’s a man with a gun over there. Step outa line and the man he come and blow you away.’
Now the ex police chief, Lord Stevens, investigating, admits, after a secret witness was brought forward claiming to have seen it all, that the case is much more complex than he thought. Why do you?
Have a secret witness for nearly nine years if you haven’t got something to hide, answer that Lord Steven, please. Well I guarantee they won’t discover she was murdered or even give an open verdict, in spite of the many curious circumstances and unanswered questions surrounding the case. Be warned you don’t argue with global capitalism - as Princess Diana unwittingly did. It goes for the strange death of that weapons expert. His body seemed to have moved position in between paramedics arriving and the official crime scene investigators. But New Labour loves big business. How else can they justify selling our defence laboratories off to big business in the U.S.A? Let’s hear your opinion, even the patronising optimists amongst you. I know the question has nothing to do with the insular and pretentious arty news of some Milton Keynes folk who have no mercy upon the fact that I am barely literate, but at least my alleged illiteracy has nothing to do with me being the product of inbred local moronic carrot crunchers- I’m from Cockney stock, right. An a lot ov us carn’t tork proper, know what I mean? No I’m gonna get right proper disjointed, like and jump ter somfink different, like. Know what I mean, yeh, right, like an all that.
This once great country has fewer public toilets than any other country in the western world- perhaps that’s because it is becoming the biggest public toilet in the western world. A few years ago a delightful little public convenience in Fenny Stratford was sold off with residential potential- it was going to become a proper little cottage, leaving quite a gap in conveniences and make a lot of money for the council to spend on worthy projects. These days everything has to make money. Every day there’s another initiative from Tory Blair rock star and his band- anyone see the idiot trying to play guitar, all that fancy expensive education and he still struggled to play two chords, and we let him run the country? The latest ploy by Patricia Hewitt beggars belief, we are all to get a health MOT, no doubt along with our ID radio implants -I’m not joking, ID cards will be compulsory and have a short range radio ID chip that could be developed for reading at greater distances - is that what you want? If that isn’t hypocrisy given how this government encourages us into debt, drunkenness and gambling, I don’t know what is. And the funniest thing from rocker Tony, this week, is one of the lawyer boy’s latest oppressive laws to ban free speech, failed to make it on to statute because he couldn’t be bothered to vote. Truth is he expected his lackeys to sort it, as he and his sycophants have no respect for Parliament.
England's Green & Pleasant Land- outskirts of Leamington Spa- July 2009. Copyright Robert Cook / www.buckinghamshireecho.com
Centre Point- a sixties icon. The 1960s were the turning point for so called sexual freedom and present day feminist tyranny and politcal correctness- copyright Robert Cook/ www.buckinghamshireecho.com
The BBC recently published the following on their Internet news website
‘Should schools take more responsibility for bullying?
Education lawyers say schools are not taking enough responsibility for extreme bullying of young children. Is it time for a change in the law?
Head teachers are not being held accountable for violent and abusive pupils and anti-bullying guidelines should be strengthened, claim the Children's Legal Centre.
Schools are "too often trying to avoid responsibility" and parents are increasingly seeking legal advice, according to Mike Charles, an education lawyer.
But the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said "hyper-accountability" already existed.
Should anti-bullying laws be strengthened in the UK? If so, what changes are needed to protect children? Should schools be held more accountable for bullying? Have you or your children experienced bullying in school?’
The piece finishes with a quote from the NAHT, as if they know anything about the reality of bullying.
As the parent of a son whose life seems to have been ruined by school bullying and his mother’s blind trust in the system, I feel very strongly about this matter.
School staff rooms are very hierarchical, as are the education authorities that oversee them. All issues, not just bullying, are dealt with according to the staff hierarchy. Front line teachers have to tread carefully.
Additionally, schools lack an understanding of the nature and causes of bullying. What passes for understanding is very influenced by issues of gender and ethnicity. In my experience as a teacher, it is very possible for girls to get away with bullying girls and blacks bullying blacks. I can quote examples. It is also very easy for blacks to bully whites. But it is not very easy for whites to bully blacks. Anyone feeling outraged by these comments, in my view illustrates the truth of what I am saying,
Having said that, I welcome any comments on this issue. As long as they are within in the law and reasoned, I will be happy to publish them.
Robert Cook- editor
How is it that bankers are still getting paid big bonuses? April 26th 2009 Charlie Close.
The answer is because they run the system and are above the law. In fact the laws are made to look after them. New Labour is a government of lawyers out to serve big business. Britain’s G20, last April saw innocent Ian Tomlinson killed in cold blood. The official Parliamentary Inquiry just said the police should be more careful next time. We still don’t officially know the name of the Lakhill Road Riot Squad officer ultimately responsible for Tomlinson’s death.
The only possible explanation for this is that the officer was acting within his brief, to use excessive force and hold the crowd at bay. Whatever one might think of the modern police, it is important to realise that the New Labour generation was the great student protestor. It is they who have redefined the police. They are the ones who are building the police state, not the police.
In Britain, it translates to a police obsession with hounding men for race and sex crimes and the fantasy of Islamic terrorism. The New World Order of economics is inherently unstable, but it is only the little people who are going to get blown up. When people attacked the home of disastrous Royal Bank of Scotland ( RBS) Fred Goodwin, the police arrived very quickly and in droves. Contrast that with a witness statement at the inquest into the deaths of Fiona Pilkington and her disabled daughter Francessca. They died when Fiona set fire to their care after years of abuse by feral youths.
There is no joined up thinking in Britain. It is virtually illegal to connect uncontrolled immigration with impoverishment for working people. It is not allowed to question the effects of Harriet Harman’s poisonous feminism on the self-image of British males, especially the young. It is unthinkable to doubt that Britain’s appalling politically correct education system is anything but wonderful. Non elite people are so overwhelmed by the struggle to survive, they re never going to know what is happening to them. They are puppets. They can’t see the strings and don’t know who is pulling them.
So, back to Francessca and the witness statement at the inquest into hers and her daughter’s deaths. Superintendent Steve Harrod told the inquest that it is now the responsibility of local councils to deal with ‘low level anti social behaviour.’ Exactly how the police and councils decide what is low level anti social behaviour is hard to fathom. One also wonders what effective mechanisms are in place to deal with these problems. An insider with oxford City Council told me that it is a thankless task and her department is more concerned with office politics.
The rot is worldwide. George Bush Snr announced, after the first Gulf War, that he was looking forward to a New World Order. Michael Moore, in his book '‘Stupid White Men'’, made clear what kind of New World order was on the way.
The G20 circus rolls on and it is all about keeping the population down. This month, police in Pittsburgh arrested 14 people as the environmental group Greenpeace began days of protests against the G20 summit.
Nine of those arrested were Greenpeace activists who were suspended from a bridge and unfurling a massive banner in the heart of the Pennsylvanian City, which on Thursday and Friday plays host to world leaders.
The banner bearing the message "Danger: Climate destruction ahead" hung for two hours from the bridge near the baseball stadium in this former steel town, where security was being stepped up ahead of the summit.
Five more activists were arrested for "possession of instruments of a crime, disorderly conduct, conspiracy and obstruction," as they attempted a similar stunt in another part of the city, said police spokeswoman Diane Richard.
"Eight Greenpeace activists scaled the iconic West End Bridge and dropped an 80 foot by 30 foot (24 meter by nine meter) banner off the side at about 10:45 am," Greenpeace campaign co-ordinator Gabe Wisniewski told AFP.
Besides the warning message on the banner, Greenpeace wants President Barack Obama to place the United States firmly in a leading role as the world tackles environmental issues, Wisniewski said. "Our actions in Pittsburgh are a wake-up call from our militants. They're mainly young people who were really inspired by Obama but don't think he's taken a leadership role in climate change."
Police patrolled Pittsburgh's many bridges Wednesday, hours before the leaders of the world's top developed and developing nations were to begin two days of meetings aimed at charting a path out of the global economic crisis.
Bombs blow up Athens stock exchange. Is this the beginning of people now taking retribution on the financiers who they believe are responsible for the global financial crisis? Are there going to be more responses around the world to the moneymen who have impoverished billions of people through their outrageous greed. It is a foregone conclusion that this would happen. Assassinations, kidnappings, are going to be commonplace for the rich, and those politicians who have supported them. We are going into an abyss of desperation that will, and already is, driving people to take revenge on those bankers who have sacrificed millions of people's for profit. More and more people are waking up to the reality and corruption of those who are responsible for wars, poverty, enslavement of nations through these bankers control of the world wide money supply. It is inevitable that these financiers’ lives are now in jeopardy, and the near future will reveal more and more of these moneymen being eliminated.
Aylesbury Vale Economic Backwater by Economics Correspondent September 26th 2009-09-26
Aylesbury Vale is stuck in the 1980s, in spite of record house building. The infrastructure is collapsing, the local hospital is appalling and roads are close to gridlock. Still the expansion rolls on. Schools are seriously inadequate, crime is running out of control and racial tensions are an underlying issue in a county town where schools are seriously failing and kept afloat by spin.
So it is absolutely outrageous that all of this has happened when the Urban Renaissance Institute comes up with a report stating that the Vale is seriously lacking in any potential for economic growth.
Britain as a whole is seriously lacking in potential for economic growth. County Council officers and politicians at all levels are mainly concerned with spin and the illusion that Britain is a democracy. Hence we here the usual superficial feel good nonsense from the likes of Graham Grover, highly paid chief executive of the Buckinghamshire Economic and Learning Partnership. He said the report was commissioned to ‘ gain a better understanding of the potential to attract and retain business in Buckinghamshire.’
It is always the same in modern Britain, identify a serious problem and then say why it is all all right right right right really. Aylesbury is in decline, possibly more so than many places. It is where Luton was in the 1970s. But, as the authors of ‘Crap Town’ observed, most of Britain is crap- excepting the expensive rural havens where well paid civil servants, successful politicians, business types and senior council workers live.
Whether they like it or not, the county’s leaders should accept the reality that Bucks is not a good economic performer. Hence it has areas of high social deprivation, juxtaposed with twee suburbs and fake olde Englande villages.
The only part of the old county with anything to boast about is hideous Milton Keynes. It has the advantage of being close to the M1 and having had a lot of taxpayer money to keep it afloat. Even so, it is crime ridden and divided between rich and poor areas- as the Milton Keynes writer Bill Billings told me years ago ‘ Milton Keynes is a metaphor for Britain as a whole.’ Meanwhile, Aylesbury is very much a dormitory town for the prosperous and a haven for feral youth, drug addicts, criminals and one parent chav families.
National Health Scare by Charlie Close.
There is a frightening new orthodoxy in British politics; namely that continually increasing spending on public services is a sign of a moral society. Thus, we are meant to be enthralled that Brown has dedicated another £14 billion to education. We are also supposed to be impressed by Education Secretary Alan Johnson’s plans to keep kids in school until they are 18. There is even talk of custodial responses to those who abscond! Interestingly Johnson left at 15. He said nothing there interested him and the school was glad to see the back of him. Now he argues that the leaving age should rise because there is a lack of unskilled jobs. To some extent this is true because immigrants are filling them.
However, if we have any jobs in abundance it is the unskilled ones - but I suppose it depends on how one defines skilled. Getting education right is about spending wisely. It underestimates young people to assert that they need another two years in school to make them fit for life and work. With so many youngsters leaving primary school barely literate or numerate, more years of the same will just prolong the agony and drive more toward villainy. Such a scheme would certainly have stifled the dyslexic young Richard Branson. More attention should be placed on basic skills – not the PC ones-and discipline in the early stages of education. As with Labour in 1974, the real motive for raising the leaving age could be to conceal the 5 million of working age who are not at work for various reasons.
The average tax burden has risen to 37.5% of income and Brown’s tax system has become increasingly complex. Those earning under £17,000, without children will be hard hit now the 10% tax band is abolished. Many with children will find the tax credit system so complex that they will not get the extra tax back. Tolley’s Yellow Tax Handbook, the accountants’ bible, has grown from 4,555 pages to 9,806 pages since Labour came to power in 1997. The French have a similar population to UK, but their handbook is only 1,300 pages long- Germany’s is 1,700. Brown has introduced myriad new charges and allowances and more strategies to catch dodgers.
Revenue staff are under pressure to maximise the tax trawl. Over £2 billion has been lost through fraud and overpayment in the last two years. Only 60% of those eligible to take up the Working Tax Credit do not do so because it is too complicated and poorly administered. Over 40 % of pensioners fail to claim pensions credit because the system is too time consuming, complex and intrusive. New regulations have cost business £50 billion since 1998.
That government is wasting our money on a hideous scale should be obvious to many, though the deviousness of Gordon Brown and his colleagues are a considerable obstacle in the way of the truth. Thus by way of making the sick feel they are getting value for money from the NHS, government have come up with another money wasting exercise. They want us to receive ‘virtual bills’ so that we know how much our use of public services, such as A&E attendance’s, GP visits and education are costing. What they will not be doing is presenting us with ‘virtual accounts’ so that we know that they know how much money we have been paying in for the said public services.
The reality of increased spending on our health service has parallels with hiring a drunkard as your personal shopper. According to a Commons health select committee report’ money was thrown at new staff but nothing was done to ensure they were more productive. MPs on the committee condemned massive pay rises for GPs as ‘ expensive and arguably excessive.’
Committee Chairman Kevin Barron said: ‘Our inquiry has exposed serious shortcomings in the planning and management of the Health Service workforce, particularly when investment in the NHS has been growing so rapidly. He went on to say that ‘because of poor planning, the health service has experienced a boom and bust cycle.’ In its haste to expand, the NHS plundered the emerging Indian economy for trained doctors and nurses, regardless of India’s own needs.
Overall staff numbers accelerated after Brown flooded the NHS with money. New money was so hastily spent that between 1999 and 2005 NHS staff numbers increased from 1.1 million to 1.4 million. Growth was fastest amongst senior managers – up 62% during that period. The NHS plan stated a need for 20,000 extra nurses by 2004, but they employed 68,000- 340% above requirements.
Over the same period GP numbers were increased by 4000-105% above the target. Health secretary Patricia Hewitt, who never actually admits to a serious mistake, went as far as to say that over recruitment had done much to plunge the NHS seriously into the red. Barron explained that: ’overall staff numbers rose rapidly between 2000 and 2005, but are now falling. Posts are being cut, some staff has been made redundant and education and training budgets have been slashed. This has happened because the growth of the workforce was much faster than planned. As a result there is now a serious shortage of jobs for newly qualified health care staff.’ NHS funding rose from £35 billion in 1997, when Blair took office, to £84 billion toadies. It is predicted to increase up to £92 billion in 2008.
New money was hastily spent .The select committee also criticised the government over new contracts for doctors and nurses, with GPs earning an average £100,000 per annum, often for a reduced work load. The committee also drew attention to ‘Poorly thought through and expensive government policies like independent sector treatment centres, PFI hospital projects and dismantling general practice are largely to blame for the current mess the NHS is in, not properly negotiated contracts that aimed to reward both sides and improve patient care.’
It is very worrying that this government, for all its mistakes, cannot admit to them or learn from them. Thus, completely ignoring the select committees detailed and factual observations, Health Minster Andy Burnham said: ‘the reality of workforce disarray in 1997 was that we had historic staff shortages, recruitment difficulties and widespread vacancies. The service suffers as a result- shown in the high waiting lists. We have been able to eliminate these recruitment difficulties and reward hard working professionals with the pay they deserve. Staff is now getting paid more for doing more.’
When so many lives are at stake Burnham’s glib response is not good enough. His government has presided over all manner of schemes for concealing that they are missing their own targets. One bizarre scheme at Stoke Mandeville in Aylesbury involved holding patients in ambulances to meet the time limits waiting for treatment in A & E. Other dodges have been prioritising minor operations just to get waiting list numbers down. Added to this we should remember the 5,500 officially dying from hospital originated MRSA and the tens of thousands where this link is covered up. Much of the problem is down to poor cleaning and staff hygiene. On balance there should have been much bigger pay off for such massive spending and over recruitment. Added to this there is clear evidence that many senior staff are working less. Finally it is mystifying that with such an incredible expansion in senior managers that there was no well thought out planning for NHS development. As we look forward to seeing the results of new spending on Milton Keynes General, we should be very wary of accepting that just spending more money will make the NHS or any public service better,
Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, one of the newest PFI funded
Hospitals. A Channel Island based South African businessman
heads the financing company that funded the building project.
It was built using a high-risk construction work loan. Government
Signed to repay this over 30 years. When the building is complete
The developer converts the high Interest loan to a cheaper one but
Carries on charging the government instalments based on the
High-risk loan, pocketing the difference.