To be angry that every single Lib Dem sat back and allowed the privatisation of the NHS

[Mistlewoeandwhine]

Yellow Tories the lot of them. Sickening. They showed their true colours tonight.

And fence sitters are equally as bad as perpetrators.

@Mistlewoeandwhine And fence sitters are equally as bad as perpetrators

Even worse are those that support the likes of Corbyn that facilitate a Tory government

I support Corbyn. As should everyone who cares about ordinary people’s rights.

I support Corbyn. As should everyone who cares about ordinary people’s rights

Just not Jewish people’s rights.

@Mistlewoeandwhine why do you support a stooge of the Tories?

When you spout rubbish like this then wave the Corbyn flag it doesn't win people over to voting for him. Quite the opposite. Are you Diane Abbott?

Jeremy Corbyn is the greatest gift the Tories have ever had. If Labour had a leader who was perceived by the public as a credible candidate to be PM (eg Yvette Cooper, Keir Starmer), the Tories would have been out of office months ago because the opposition would have tabled and won a vote of confidence while the Tories were tearing themselves apart over Brexit.

Corbyn will never be PM. What he will do is lead Labour to a fourth consecutive election defeat and anyone who understands the first thing about politics knows this.

If a private company can provide services to the NHS to a better standard or cheaper than itself, or other companies I don’t see the problem. The hyperbole trotted out around the “privatisation” of the NHS is laughable.

About to say that @ViaSacra

I suspect this is a ploy to harm. Lib. Dems ahead of any ge vote, they did not vote to privatise nhs and this was a Labour proposal, therefore are you saying that Labour proposed to privatise the NHS?

I thought the same.

I really cannot understand how anyone can support Corbyn, there is no other party I feel more identified with than labour, we have a fantastic labour MP, but there is no way on Earth I could bore for labour again while Corbyn is there assisting with his indecisiveness to keep the toriles in power.

Corbyn is exactly or worse than Boris, they are both there for their own political gain and do not give a shit about people disagreeing with them, what they think or want is the law, regardless of how many are affected by their selfish view of things.

The bill was nothing more than virtue signalling on Labour's part. It did chuff all to actually prevent privatisation. That's why they abstained.

Labour introduced widescale privatisation into the NHS through PFI which has had disastrous effects in places, so bore off with the "only Labour can protect the NHS stuff".

Labour are getting very nervous about the Lib Dems. It's hilarious watching all these sock puppets on social media calling them yellow Tories etc. Shows that they are very worried about the Lib Dems eating their vote.

If Labour really want to defeat the Lib Dems, instead of posting nonsense about them on social media they should get rid of Corbyn and get a leader the public would actually vote for. But they won't, because of the Corbyn cult that can't see the wood for the trees.

If a private company can provide services to the NHS to a better standard or cheaper than itself, or other companies I don’t see the problem

Sadly this has not been our experience. It has been an enormous fucking ballache.

I think it was the Financial Times who evaluated the credibility of the plans for NHS at the last election and stated that the Lib Dems policy of a penny tax was more viable and sustainable than Labour's? Or the Tories.

I must admit that it galls me as a Lib Dem that they get singled out so much about changing policy compared to the others, for whom it seems virtually expected.

I mean, sure, they went into coalition with the Tories. But they got some good things done, kept the Tories away from the worst of it, and just LOOK how bad the Tories are without them.

Corbyn is unelectable. Current labour voters who are not Corbyn fans know this, political pundits know this, the media knows this, the opposition parties know this......just apparently not the membership. It's a bloody shame and you can argue all you like about his policies and how he's been portrayed in the media but it is what it is. Accept it move on. We are in for a Tory majority government and five years of Boris...

What a ridiculously biased article and website.

I’m not a sock puppet. I’m an ordinary mum who wants a decent world for my kids to grow up in. Corbyn is a good guy and has been utterly undermined by the media to stop him implementing policies which would help ordinary people. I wouldn’t vote for Labour before. Labour under Blair and Brown was just vile but Corbyn’s politics are the opposite of theirs and I think they are mainly very good.
I don’t want any privatisation of the NHS. It doesn’t work. Hence, for example, the difference in cleanliness standards between private and public hospitals. Privatisation of any big service has not gone well. Also I disagree with even the ideology behind it. It all gets pushed more and more towards screwing over the poor for the benefit of the rich: look at train tickets or student loans.
Why not get the rich to actually pay their taxes into this country and fund a decent NHS? That’s all it would take.

Do you watch PMQ's Op?

All my opinions of Corbyn come from hearing things from his own mouth at PMQ's and answers he gives at Interviews.

To fair it's not just him who's not palatable to me, it's the whole of the front bench - Macdonall, Thornbury and Abbott. Thornbury is particularly awful at answering anything and I watch and listen a lot!

@hazeyjane

This whole privatisation aspect is overblown. There are some aspects of NHS healthcare which have to have private providers and as has already been outlined, in fact always have been under governments of any persuasion.

The problem is using the NHS as a political football. It is about the only one that labour can identify as a possible line of attack as they are so useless as an opposition and anti Semitic that they will never have a chance of getting elected. Hence why this morning it is reported that even if Corbyn agrees to vote for an election, over half his MPs will rebel in fear of losing their seats. Unfortunately the ones that will probably survive will no doubt be the ones that have large majorities and propagate this awful anti semitism.

However, to return to the point, there are some aspects whereby private provision in my view has been wrong, not good value and in some cases as a result of unintended consequences.

For example, PFI. Building hospitals under this scheme is a scandal. Costs multiple times that if it was contracted directly by the government instead of a stupid puffed up lease scheme which then costs millions to implement minor changes to a building. Even changing a lightbulb cost ridiculous amounts.I believe that no new ones are being commissioned under PFI but the legacy will continue for years for which we as taxpayers will foot the bill.

Higher use of private providers for operations. Nice service for patients, but why did it happen? Because George Osborne continued on the Labour scam of screwing in essence public sector pensions. As a result hospital consultants stopped working additional hours due to the tax implications and the ones who could work in the private sector using those additional hours previously used in the NHS set up limited companies and provided their services through private providers...charging the NHS far more than before. Oh and I do speak from an informed view on this

The provision of health care will only really move forward when politicians stop using it for their own selfish means, and stop the constant reorganisations with each change of government

Mistletoeandwhine (how accurate)

The "rich" - I'm not talking companies or Russian billionaires - already pay the heaviest burden.

The top 1% pay 27% of all income tax collected.

Every private hospital I've been in has been vastly cleaner, but that's not the point.

Were you not around in the last Labour government? I ask this because you describe it as 'just vile' which shows you know absolutely nothing of the changes they made. Who do you think put in the public services that the Tories have slashed? Thatcher? Do you have any idea of the state of hospitals and schools pre PFI? And you compare it to Corbyn's plans, which are to retain the punishing cuts the Tories made to the welfare budget. Or that free tuition crap that's often spouted, conveniently forgetting that when it was free there were far fewer places and no, we didn't get the brightest and best at university, we got thick poshos while the incredible genius of the working/lower middle classes - genius that has driven the progress of this country - was wasted.

Corbyn isn't a good man either. He's a liar, just like the rest of them. In fact he's been caught lying so often it'd be more newsworthy if he told the truth once in awhile. He's a racist who's said disgusting racist things, just like Johnson has. He's lazy, which is why he's achieved precisely nothing in over 35 years as an MP and LotO. There's nothing to vote for.

MarieG10
I am speaking about our experience of children's services being contracted out by the NHS to Virgincare - as a parent of a child with complex needs, the experiences of friends with children who have complex needs and as a EY practioner who works with children with complex needs and who works closely with the professionals they see.
My ds's care has been fragmented since the contract went to Virgincare, physio, OT, SALT, community paeds used to be in the same area, now it is split across the county. Where services have to link up to NHS services (e.g. Virgincare Physio and NHS Orthotics service or Virgincare Community Paeds and NHS Acute Health Paeds)...the communication is appalling, we had to wait nearly 14 months for ds to have some form of orthotic to replace splints held together with gaffer tape. Referral times have got longer, we waited 18 months for a community paeds Referral, ds was then discharged from this service and we were then told the medication he needs to help him sleep should come from community paeds, so we would have to wait to be re referred. He has been discharged from 2 services, that other therapists and school say he needs. We waited a year for a physio appointment, because the whole of children's services were down to one physio. They had a lovely big new shiny building...but no therapists to work in it. The quality of reports has gone down, therapists areas have grown larger so that they end up spending less time with the children.

When the contract changed, my ds lost 3 therapists he had known since he was 10 months old, we had to change from a clinic where he knew all the staff. The contract will come up again in the next 2 years....more change? (Virgincare have just list the Devon children's services contract) ....or more of the same poor quality. What a choice hey?

Mistletoe - agree. The lack of understanding about who calls the shots politically in this country is shocking and is due to no relevant education in schools, and a Tory owned media.

If it weren't for Labour, we wouldn't even be having a conversation about privatisation of anything, albeit the conversation is excluded from the mainstream media.

This government has been the most frightening that I have lived under, and I lived through the Thatcher years. People who have never lived in poverty just don't get that we are not in an episode of Game of Thrones. People are dying due to sanctions - how, in a 'civilised' country can we accept that someone who doesn't turn up for a benefit appointment is punished by having no money for weeks, sometimes months? How are they supposed to survive? Or don't we care because it is their fault they are poor? What kind of country are we?

Hello, Jeremy. Don't you have more important things to do than posting on mn?