CGTN News published a table this afternoon comparing America’s per capita spending on healthcare with the rest of the world. America tops it with over $12,000. The next most expensive is Germany with over $7,000. Britain is much lower down the list with over $5,000. Down at the bottom was Poland. Obviously, the list was confined to countries in the western, developed world. What is important is that America’s private healthcare system is far more expensive than the continental healthcare systems, which are either state-owned, like Britain’s and Sweden’s, or funded through a mixture of state and private insurance. The idea that somehow private healthcare systems are more efficient and less expensive, promoted by the Tories and swallowed whole by the Blairite right of the Labour party, is frankly a lie. One of my friends trained as a doctor. He told me that many American hospitals are being kept open because of discreet state funding. But you won’t hear that from the Torygraph, GB News, Tory MPs like Daniel Hannan and grubby right-wing internet hosts like Alex Belfield, now enjoying a well-deserved holiday courtesy of His Maj. This will not surprise anyone who’s read any of the great books against the privatisation of the NHS by people like Jack Davis and Ray Tallis.
Reject the lies. Defend the NHS, and stop the Tories.
Indeed, they’re also disgusted and angry. I found this brief video of just over two minutes long on the Byline TV channel on YouTube. It seems Tory MP ‘mad’ Nadine Dorries has got herself a job on the side hosting a programme on Talk TV. This is another internet TV channel even lower in quality and right-wing bias than GB News. The video shows her constituents in Bedfordshire giving their reactions to the news. Many of them don’t like her anyway, and so won’t watch it. They also make the point that she’s paid to be an MP, and very well paid at that, and so shouldn’t go for another job. This doesn’t apply to ex-MPs, of course. And one older man simply gives a puff of dismay, and calls her a ‘disgrace to Bedfordshire’. Later on someone says she’s hoping to leave the Commons for a place in the Lords, which they think is the best place for her. I can think of others, like the dole queue being humiliated by the clerk asking her if she’s got a job yet. But it is hilarious seeing how many people are upset at this move. You’d think she would have got some hint of how unpopular this would be from seeing how many people were annoyed at Matt Hancock going on I’m A Celebrity…. But there, the lure of media stardom and money was too appealing to her purse and ego.
Okay, a few years ago – I was when Cameron was in power – I was so worried about NHS privatisation that I wrote a couple of pieces of literature about it. One was just a pamphlet consisting of a few pieces of A4 folded together giving the main points about NHS privatisation and how it was killing the health service. Another was a short book, Privatisation: Killing the NHS, which I self-published through Lulu, the print on demand service. Since doing so, I’ve had next to zero interest in them. I have a page about them on this blog. Simply go to the relevant bar, and look at ‘pages’ and you’ll find them there, along with other books I’ve self-published. Here’s the pieces about them from that page.
Don’t Let Cameron Privatise the NHS, David Sivier, A5, 10pp.
This is a brief critique of successive government’s gradual privatisation of the NHS, beginning with Margaret Thatcher. Tony Blair’s New Labour were determined to turn as much healthcare as possible over to private companies, on the advice of the consultants McKinsey and the American insurance companies. The Conservatives under David Cameron have continued and extended Blair’s privatisation, so that there is a real danger that the NHS, and the free, universal service it has provided for sixty-five years, will be destroyed. If the NHS is to be saved, we must act soon.
Privatisation: Killing the NHS, by David Sivier, A5, 34 pp. This is a longer pamphlet against the privatisation of the NHS. It traces the gradual privatisation of the Health Service back to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, John Major’s Private Finance Initiative in the 1990s, the Blair and Brown ‘New Labour’ governments, and finally David Cameron and the Conservatives. There is a real, imminent danger that the NHS will be broken up and privatised, as envisioned by Andrew Lansley’s, the author of the Tories’ Health and Social Care Act of 2012. This would return us to the conditions of poor and expensive healthcare that existed before the foundation of the NHS by the Clement Atlee’s Labour government in 1948. Already the Tories have passed legislation permitting ‘healthcare providers’ – which include private companies – to charge for NHS services.
The book is fully referenced, with a list of books for further reading, and organisations campaigning to preserve the NHS and its mission to provide universal, free healthcare.
If you would like one of the pamphlets, please get in touch using the contact form below. All details will of course be kept strictly confidential, and will not be passed on to third parties. If you only want single copies of the above, let me know and I’ll post them free to you.’
Now with the NHS facing a truly devastating crisis and the Tory and hard-right sharks circling and demanding its privatisation, I want to get these out to as many people as possible. And I’d be grateful for any ideas.
Of course, one way would simply be to have multiple copies of these pamphlets printed off and to set up a stall in town, and especially right when there’s a strike. But I only have a very small number of copies of the books around at the moment. Also, the myeloma means that I am not as mobile as I once was, and the council and bus companies in their infinite wisdom have cut the direct route from where I live into the centre of Bristol. But I’m hoping this might still be an option.
For the self-published book, one solution might be to go to see the buyer for my local branch of Waterstone’s and see if they would be interested in stocking it.
I’m also considering writing to my local Labour party and asking if they would be interested in stocking them, as well as contacting my local Labour MP to see if she would also like copies. I’m hesitant to do this, however, as I put the blame firmly where it lies – not just with Thatcher and the Tories, but also with Blair and New Labour. Kier Starmer is a true-blue Thatcherite and devoted follower of Blairism. He has said some ominous things about using the private sector to aid the NHS, even though it’s due to privatisation, as well as underfunding, that is responsible for this crisis. The local MP for south Bristol, Karen Smyth, is very firmly on the side of the health service, but she’s also an admirer of Starmer. Reading her messages about the health service, while she says much about how it’s been run down, she doesn’t condemn outsourcing. I can therefore see the pamphlets being extremely unwelcome in certain right-wing Labour circles.
Beyond this, any suggestions?
I’d be interested to know if there are any left-wing organisations that would be willing to accept copies of the book and pamphlet and/or publicise them. I’ve tried looking on Google for small press associations and organisations that might be suitable, but none have so far turned up. One possibility could be contacting some of the left-wing news and comment sites on YouTube and the Internet, but I’m not sure how willing they’d be to say anything about them. I haven’t had much luck in the past when I sent some of my literature to the Canary and a few others.
If you therefore have any ideas, please let me know in the comments section below.
I got this email today through Megaphone, the internet activism wing of the TUC. There’s an online meeting tomorrow evening about defending the right to strike from Sunak’s and the Tories’ attempts to strangle it with further legislation.
‘David. You and more than 115,000 people have now signed the petition: Protect the right to strike.
It’s an incredible response to these shocking and undemocratic laws, but we must do more.
Tomorrow night at 6pm, the TUC is hosting an online call to outline the urgent action we must take to stop this bill in it’s tracks.
MPs will be voting on these new laws in the coming weeks, and we know that many are undecided about whether they will support these laws or not. We must reach them as soon as we can.
There are forces on both the left and right that are trying to limit and control free speech in this country. The Tories have always used the power of the right-wing press, of course, but this is coupled with laws designed to severely restrict strike and public demonstrations. This is coupled with the strong conservative bias of some internet platforms, which deliberately manipulate the algorithms governing what people searching the internet may see in order to bury left-wing blogs.
‘The great 18th century Whig politician, Charles James Fox, denounced the government’s attempts to close the various societies and clubs that supported the French Revolution and demanded constitutional change over this side of the channel, in a speech made before the house in 1792. This included the following stinging passage.
‘But what, Sir, are the doctrines that they desire to set up by this insinuation of gloom and dejection? That Englishmen are not to dare to have genuine feelings of their own; that they must not rejoice but by rule; that they must not think but by order; that no man shall dare to exercise his faculties in contemplating the objects that surround him, nor give way to the indulgence of his joy or grief in the emotions that they excite, but according to the instructions that they receive. That, in observing the events that happen to surrounding and neutral nations, he shall not dare to think whether they are favourable to the principles that contribute to the happiness of man, or the contrary; and that he must take, not merely his opinions but his sensations from his majesty’s ministers and their satellites for the time being! Sir, whenever the time shall come that the character and spirits of Englishmen are so subdued; when they shall consent to believe that everything which happens around is indifferent both to their understandings and their hearts; and when they shall be brought to rejoice and grieve just as it shall suit the taste, the caprice, or the ends of ministers, then I pronounce the constitution of this country to be extinct.’
In Alan Bullock and Maurice Shock, eds., The Liberal Tradition from Fox to Keynes (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1956) 1.
And I think Starmer could also learn a lesson from this about telling Brits what to think about events in foreign countries.
Brian Aldiss argues in his history of Science Fiction, The Trillion Year Spree, that Mary Shelley is the founder of modern SF, because she based Frankenstein on real science as it was then known in the early 19th century. Nevertheless, there were other women writing works of Science Fiction both before and after Shelley. One 18th century story has four men visiting the Moon, which is a female society ruled by a queen. The queen of the Moon gets fed up with the four and sends them back to Earth, because she’s repulsed by their drinking, swearing and smell. Later in the 19th century there was the feminist utopia of Gilman’s Herland, which imagined a women-only society in the Amazon which enjoyed high technology such as electric cars. One of the early SF stories mentioned in Mike Ashley’s Yesterday’s Tomorrows is The Mummy, published anonymously in 1827 but written by Jane Webb, who was then 19. The book intrigued the horticulturalist John Loudon that he sought out its author, marrying her three years later in 1830.
The book is set in 2126, and forecasts such inventions as weather control, steam-driven robot lawyers and surgeons, and a postal service that sends letters via steam cannon. Many of these new inventions are by the queen, who, along with the ladies at her court, wears trousers. This sounds like the kind of roughly Victorian era SF that would provide much inspiration and material for a steam punk novel. Over in America a steam man featured in one of the magazine stories published slightly later, The Steam Man of the Prairie, while Harry Harrison includes a steam driven robot in one of his Stainless Steel Rat tales. I like the idea of steam-driven robot. It appeals to me as both an artistic and technological project, but as the world cuts down on fossil fuels to combat climate change, I very much doubt if one will ever be built.
Many of the SF stories discussed in Ashley’s book seem fun and thought-provoking, even if they are dated to a greater or lesser extent. It would be great to know if some of them are archived on the internet somewhere so they can still be read and enjoyed without scouring the country for original, published editions sold at exorbitant prices.
Here’s something a bit lighter. I spent part of last week sketching some of my favourite comedy stars. You can probably tell from them that I’m of a certain age, as most of them come from ’70s. ’80s and ’90s. They are of Les Dawson, Victoria Wood, Joyce Grenfell, Dave Allen, Peter Cook, Derek Griffiths and Molly Sugden in war paint as the redoubtable Mrs Slocombe. I’ve drawn Dawson twice, once as himself and then in drag with Roy Barraclough as the two ladies who were a staple of his programme in the 1980s. I know many women find drag offensive, but they were well-constructed characters, and the humour wasn’t malicious. I chose Derek Griffiths as he was on a lot of children’s programmes when I was small, from Play School to Film Fun. This was a history of the Warner Brothers cartoons, set in a cinema with Griffiths playing all the characters, from the cinema manager, the commissionaire, and Doreen the Usherette. He was also in more adult programmes like Terry and June. For all the clowning, he comes across as a very versatile performer. On one programme on the history of children’s TV, he described how he created the theme for Bod on the flute. He’s also done theatre for the deaf, which uses sign language. Joyce Grenfell is in there because I find her dialogues hilarious, especially where she plays a harassed junior schoolteacher telling some little boy called George not to do that. What ‘that’ is, is perhaps wisely never revealed. And I don’t think any list of British comedians could ever be complete without Victoria Wood. As for Molly Sugden, she’s best remembered for Mrs Slocombe, another brilliant British sitcom character. Dave Allen will always be remembered for his wry, and very witty observations on the lunacy of everyday life. But sometimes the real gems are in the sketches. I often wish he were still around to comment on the madness of today’s life. Ditto with the awesome Peter Cook. I’ve tried to draw them as I think they should be remembered – happy, smiling and doing something characteristically funny. But some many of the images I used as source material showed them as solemn and grave, as in this drawing of Peter Cook. And yet he’s probably best remembered looking coolly at an interviewer over a cigarette with the same glint in his eye he had when making Dudley Moore laugh on Not Only But Also. Grenfell, Wood, Dawson, Allen and Cook are no longer with us, but their comedy lives on in DVD. And on the web, where you can particularly enjoy Cook talking to the late, also missed Clive James while a young Victoria Wood looks on completely bemused.
A bit more satirical art here. David Collier is part, or at least associated with, the Gnasherjew troll collective. They scour the internet looking for comments from decent people that are critical of Israel, which they can twist and misrepresent as anti-Semitic in order to get them cancelled or worse. It occurred to me that, spending all that time peering at computer screens, Collier and the rest of them were a bit like the bald surveillance agents in the 1980s version of Flash Gordon, who spend all their time locked at their screens searching for enemies of Ming the Merciless.
I also wonder what is going to happen in the Zionist ranks if the far right party led by Ben Govir (sp?) win the Israeli elections. The Beeb reported the other night that seemed to be set to win, and that Benjamin Netanyahu was trying to make a comeback with them. The reported also stated that Govir explicitly wanted the expulsion of ‘disloyal Arabs’. I thought this was quite courageous from the Beeb, as every time anyone reports or says anything about the Israeli states’ dispossession and slow ethnic cleansing of the Arabs, the Israel lobby over here goes into overdrive denouncing them as anti-Semitic. Even, and especially, if they’re Jewish.I also noted that the Beeb called Ben Govir and his wretched crew ‘far right’, whereas most people faced with that attitude and rhetoric from any other country would call them fascists or Nazis. But the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism says that it might be anti-Semitic under certain circumstances to compare a Jew to Nazis. I can well see the reasoning behind it. But the definition prevents decent, anti-racists from calling the anti-Arab, xenophobic Israeli right what they are: Nazis. It’s also hypocritical because the Israelis themselves will mock certain personalities and politicians by portraying them as friends of Adolf.
A win for Ben Govir should cause people like Collier and Keir ‘100 per cent Zionist’ Starmer moral problems. I think Collier and the rest probably soothe any qualms they might have by telling themselves that they are serving the Jewish people by serving the Jewish state, which is there to protect Jews from persecution by real Nazis. They hide behind the terrible history of the Jewish people’s persecution. But what happens when that state is run by an explicitly persecutory, far right party to the point where the persecution cannot be hidden or denied? Anyone with a decent conscience, in my opinion, would realise that everything was out of the bag now, and that any pretence about the nature of the regime was useless. They’d have to pack it in and get another job. But I suspect these people are so fanatical in their support for Israel, that they’ll carry on even when Govir and his storm troops tip the country into real, undeniable fascism.
I got this email from internet democracy site 38 Degrees earlier this evening.
‘BREAKING: the Government has ripped up their disastrous mini-budget – and now they want us to pick up the pieces. [1] They’ve put our livelihoods, our homes and our futures on the line with their reckless plans, and turned the cost of living crisis into a catastrophe. [2]
But with no sign of the rescue plan we’ve needed all along, we need to show them the price we’re paying. And we’ve got just the thing.
So we’ve just launched a HUGE, ambitious new project: the cost of living catastrophe, mapped.[3]Our interactive map spotlights more than 1,000 stories from across the 38 Degrees community – and the country.These are the real lives behind this catastrophe.
This is what the map looks like
Together, thousands of us have forced the Government into the biggest U-turn we’ve ever seen – but we can go further. [4]If all of us share this map far and wide, we’ll put the stories behind this catastrophe front and centre, so journalists, MPs and the Governmentwill have no doubt that we need a proper rescue plan for the country.
So, David, will you help keep up the pressure on the Government by sharing our cost of living catastrophe map – and show the real price of this crisis?
Twitter is the best way to ensure as many MPs and journalists see this map. Just click below and retweet the 38 Degrees tweet or – if you can – ‘quote tweet’ it and share your own cost of living story. You could even tag your MP!
I’ve absolutely no problem with posting this on social media. The Khazi may be gone, but Liz Truss and her Tory hordes are still in power, and people are still hurting. And they don’t care about the poor – only about the rich, and getting re-elected.
I also got this email from the pro-nationalisation, pro-NHS group We Own It, notifying me that they are holding an online rally on Zoom next Thursday 20th October, at 6.00 pm, and inviting people to register for the event. I’ve done so, as the Tories have brought the NHS damn near close to collapse. Here’s the message:
‘Dear David,
It’s time to put ending NHS privatisation firmly on the agenda of your local NHS leaders.
Thanks to the generosity of hundreds of We Own It supporters, we smashed the our fundraising target.
You’ve made the launch of “End NHS privatisation, save lives” possible – our new campaign to fight back against NHS privatisation in the 42 new NHS England regions as well as in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Join the online campaign launch rally at 6pm on Thursday 20th October.
236 We Own It supporters have set up a new regular donation, which will enable us take the fight against NHS privatisation to local NHS leaders across the UK for the long-term.
328 more of you have made one off donations, totalling almost £8,000.
With these kind and generous donations this campaign is on the strongest footing possible to have the biggest impact.
Now let’s launch the campaign with a bang!
Join campaigners and other special guests at the launch rally – come and be inspired to fight and get wins against the privatisation for our precious NHS.
Can you join the online rally on Thursday 20th October, at 6pm?
557 people – that is the number of people whose preventable deaths were linked to NHS privatisation, according to a new study by the University of Oxford.
One person dying from the impact of outsourcing is already too much.
Our local NHS leaders have a duty of care to our communities. Their job is to make sure we get the care we need and to prevent deaths.
If they are allowing NHS privatisation, they are putting people at risk.
So it is time we firmly put the issue of ending NHS privatisation on their agenda.
We know the public despise NHS privatisation – people don’t want private companies making huge profits from illness and causing deaths.
This campaign will mobilise MASSIVE public pressure in each local area to force our NHS leaders to pledge to end NHS privatisation.
These generous donations will now make it possible for us to:
Ramp up the pressure on every NHS leader in the UK, letting them know about the deaths caused from outsourcing and pushing as many of them as possible to sign our new pledge
Work closely with local NHS campaigners and supporters around the country, providing materials like leaflets and demanding that NHS leaders bring key contracts in house instead of outsourcing them
Bang home the message – make sure NHS leaders and politicians are aware of the evidence showing that privatisation and outsourcing are linked to extra deaths. We’ll get hard-hitting media coverage by organising an event with 557 people outside parliament representing those who have died
Sign up to join our campaign launch rally at 6pm on Thursday 20th October.
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