Conservatives to eat the babies of 1m poor people

[OTheHugeManatee]

Not really.

But AIBU to be getting a bit fed up with the scaremongering threads about things the Conservative Party has not proposed to do? Like abolish child benefit or completely privatise the NHS?

It's silly. Stop it

Some up-thread has already mentioned this, here is a link to a policy proposed in 1729.

A MODEST PROPOSAL

For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland,
from being a burden on their parents or country,
and for making them beneficial to the publick.

www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm

I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat

Good old Jonathan. He knew a thing or two about saving money and lighting a barbecue, both at the same time.

sunshield - DLA can be given if you are working. Say you are a solicitor, but paralysed from the waste down. You will get DLA to help with the costs of travel, to have a carer wash you and maybe help you get out of bed, to help you get dressed. DLA does not cover the costs. Without DLA, many disabled people that do work, would not be able to afford to work. Others would end up in full time care.

Why is privatisation of the NHS a bad thing? There is a big difference between privatisation and not being free at the point of use. We already accept our first point of contact with the NHS being through private companies (GP practices) and one of the biggest health spends (drugs) also go direct to private companies. Why shouldn't, for example, patient transport services be provided privately like the SNP do in Scotland?

Bilberry - If you worked in some of the privatised services that provide services previously provided by the NHS, you would understand. In summary, the privatised services are measured against a number of outputs that are monitored, and often trigger different levels of payment. With somethings that is straightforward, such as, so many cervical smears undertaken.

A lot of the time the services are much more complicated and the outputs and the money they trigger, simply distorts the service to trigger the maximum amount of money, and not what the patient actually needs.

morage, I'm sure that's true but would suggest that it is partly because politicians and civil servants are dreadful at negotiating commercial contracts. I have worked in large companies who have successfully outsourced "non-core" activities. I have also sold to central government and been bemused by the awfulness of its procurement processes and outcomes.

OP, YABU. Nothing new there.

morage that happens with any sort of targets - and there are a lot of targets fired at the NHS (e.g. 4 hour A&E waiting times). GPs are very target and money driven but there hasn't been much of an effort to bring them into the NHS because of it. Privatisation or not seems to be very ideologically driven rather than real sense. it is surely a vast oversimplification to say privatisation = a bad thing. Perhaps the biggest concern about privatisation is the inability of governments to effectively negotiate contracts?

Oh yeah, and stay lucky OP.

Privatisation of the NHS would be a disaster. Have a look at the failing private hospitals (Cambridge) and GP practices (Kent) taken over by private providers.

Edit - failed already, not failing.

GP practices are already private providers

grovel - Yes it may be because those running the procurement services are not very good at it. There are also lots of examples in private industry where monitoring outputs have distorted the service.

But in my experience, when private companies buy in private medical care or mental health services for their employees, they don't use the type of monitoring outputs the NHS use, because they don't work.

GPs are already private providers. But at least they are actually delivering the service. What we have in the NHS is companies such as Virgin delivering mental health services.

We saw what a disaster it has been for hospitals outsourcing some of the easiest services to outsource such as catering. It has been even more of a disaster with more complicated services. We don't have to imagine what will happen, it is already happening.

"Privatisation of the NHS would be a disaster. Have a look at the failing private hospitals (Cambridge) and GP practices (Kent) taken over by private providers."

Whether it would be a disaster or not entirely depends on your reasons for doing it.

If you are trying to improve public health / services for users, then of course it would be a disaster.

But if your aim is primarily to create opportunities for big business to turn a profit, then it's the only way that makes sense.

I've given up trying to understand Tory policy in terms of how it's supposed to improve anything for the general population. If you do that it makes no sense at all.

If you look at most tory policy and ask "does this create profit for big business" then it all makes much more sense.

morage so are you saying privatisation does work where the individual business owner is also the direct service provider?

YANBU at all

What a load of nonsense Consent! Whether you like the current government or not they were democratically elected. Whoever started that petition would be better spending their time petitioning for a change to the first past the post voting system.

I barely have any time as DC wanting late dinner but didn't want to read this thread without just adding how much I fucking despise the Tory party.

Just wanted to take the debate forward.

Sign the petition then firstwetakemanhatten :)

Conservatives to eat the babies of 1m poor people

FFS it's only the first borns!

Only the first born indeed

I signed a 38 degrees petition a while ago, probably the only one they've ever done that I agreed with, and then got bombarded on email with all sorts of crap. Never again.

Oh dear, well at least you agreed with it and signed it. Thanks.