‘Our Leader’ and I went to the meeting Wednesday evening and found a wide variety of representatives there. I enjoyed the input from Wendy Savage – she has done a lot of work to raise awareness of this government’s perverse privitisation agenda.
Dr Singer has been busy at meetings up and down the country and he said he has detected great anger within the various groups. I can say that there was anger expressed at this meeting against some unions which haven’t been seen to be protecting the NHS or their members’ working conditions. Some senior figures were seen as the three monkeys – see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing about the hated Health and Social Care Bill. Indeed a group of 750 doctors, alarmed by the consequences of this huge overhaul, worked night and day to raise awareness of the forthcoming tragedy, while union bosses sat on their hands.
I heard that the group Keep our NHS Public is well organised with cells throughout England and one in Camden is particularly active. I also met a student in law from Cambridge and picked up some interesting statistics from a civil servant. You might say that the meeting was widely representative of society and NOT just of those in the NHS.
Coming Up:
- Camden KONP Meeting 2 April 7pm St Paul’s Church Camden Square NW1
- Protest Circle Health 5 April Welbeck St W1
- Virgin London Marathon 22 April – Runners to wear appropriate motif
There is also a move to gather data on the ramifications of imposing this new regime on the NHS and this has already started with a report of a child’s death in Cornwall under the watch of a company involved in bids for more NHS contracts. In another report, the bill for administration has risen from 6 billion to 14 billion catering for the private contracts already underway.
The future looks bleak unless we move this behemoth piece of legislation back to reflect the NHS that we had. There was general opinion that the new system will be unweildly and will be biased towards lowering costs and contracts will be issued on that criteria alone instead of on experience – vulnerable children’s services was mentioned as a high risk area.
ukgovernmentwatch 
Excellent summation.