This video is about the English NHS which has had 12 Health ministers since 1987 making two a year on average and not a single one has ever worked at the sharp-end of healthcare. Not one. Here in Scotland we've had 3 in 10 years as far as I remember - Sam Galbraith, Andy Kerr and Nicola Sturgeon. Not a much better rate than England really is it, but in Nicola Sturgeon we have a Health Secretary who is highly regarded by the profession and also respected for the grasp she has of her brief. May she stay long enough to continue to improve our NHS for all in Scotland.
Do watch the video because it is interesting even although the comparison is with Tesco.
My thanks to Burning Our Money
Update 8 June: Sam Galbraith was not Health Secretary once Scotland gained devolution, it was Susan Deacon. Thanks to my reader for correcting me.
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14 comments:
Good luck with that! The plan is for a whole lot of us to disappear in the next couple of years...hats off to you if you can make it!
Good morning Yophat. Yes it's the same here. Once you're over a certain age then you come into the 'will we or won't we' bracket.
subrosa,
Good morning, young Rosa,
Sam Galbraith used to be my MP and prior to get elected donated his wages to striking nurses and was regarded as left-wing until elected and catching the Blair Bug inherited from Thatcher.
I recall a meeting with Lord McKay who was then a Social Security Minister when we were trying to keep facilities for the street-sleeping homeless open and Sam, who had previously supported the cause, half-way through the meeting switched sides and began agreeing with the Minister.
Needless to say the facilities were closed.
Subsequently I lost all regard for him as an individual, far less as an MP. It is to be hoped that he was far better at his former employment than he was as a Health Minister.
Good morning my dear brownlie and I hope it's a lovely day with you as it is here - especially after hail showers yesterday.
Thanks for the story about Mr Galbraith.
I didn't know Sam Galbraith but I heard he wasn't effective as health minister and that he tended to use his previous job as a cover for his inadequate performance as a politician. Shame really.
Enforced euthanasia wil be introduced by Jim for everyone one year older, or more, than himself. The only people who know how good life was without a Labour government!
Interesting comparison.
And thus perhaps the lesson is that the NHS isn't so bad after all!
OR it wouldn't surprise me in the least. Already medical care is rationed to us wiser and more mature people. Of course the likes of Brown doesn't want us around because we know too much.
Ah Stuart, as ever the optimist :)
I do think our NHS is in good hands at present and long may it stay that way but, as the Tesco video states, the helmsman (or woman) is the maker or breaker.
Look what happened to the banks not employing bankers.
I watched this 'advertisment' with growing distaste. Did it originate from that neo con shower, the pretendy Tax Payers Alliance? Or had it more sinister connotations from those best value, best practice, fit for purpose beezness folk the New Labour privateers and their carpet bagging pals, the money people.
Whatever, ah'm sure Cameron and his cabal give it their approval too, despite their platitudes of the NHS being safe in their hands.
Tesco eh? Are those the people that build those out of town, sheds for us, as in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary PFI or as in my 'local',center of excellance. An out of town shed that doesn't even belong to us, the local community.
(Arg, ah've just been reminded of that cretin Ainsworth again.)
Recently, plans to build so called joint partnership general practices and super duper health centers in Coventry were announce and thus the practice of asset stripping, of ripping and plundering the heart out of our local community and our public owned essential services continues to gather momentum.
...and that's just for starters. Cameron and cabal will embark on a course of sweeping privatisation of health and social security, pensions ect that will take us back prior to 1947 and the dark ages, nothing surer.
Private insurance companies will be king, judge and jury and private corporations (Tescos et al) will decide what is better suited to our needs and how much we as individuals will pay for it.
Sorry, but that is not my idea of an inclsive, caring society and the likes of Tescos are not a charity, that's that's for sure. Aye, we can learn from their organisational abilities and management but ah'll be d@mned if our baby, belonging to us, of universal health care, social security and health care is allowed to be thrown out with the bath water, by the privateers and carpetbaggers whose single objective is profit ...and profitable it will be, at our expense, naturally.
Years ago, I stood outside our local, community based hospital, soon to be bulldosed, asset stripped and handed over to the privateers in the guise of a super,duper health center.
I was been interviewed by a well known and highly respected investigative journalist, author and TV personality and I said," New Labour has broken many promises and will continue to do so but what they are doing to places like this is an outrageous betrayal of trust and unaccountibility in their he11 bent pursual of their flagship policies in order to reward their supporters and paymasters, the money people.
...and Cameron and cabal will be no different.
For those in Scotland, get down on bended knee and give thanks to the likes of the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon, for without their intervention and the intervention of many other good food folk, including myself. Scotland would have gone down this path of privatisation if New Labour still had the remit in governance to pursue their vendetta against our public services.
...and I'm a fella who perhaps knows more than he should be entitled to about such matters; according to some folk in authority leastways. Aye and I'm dedicated to opposing their plans for same. It's a battle that's being lost in England but in Scotland it's a different matter all together, for now leastways.
...and concerned, wised up folk in Engerland are more than aware of that fact.
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Tom thank you so much for that comment. I do hope others will read it and take on board all you've said.
Yes you're right. If labour were still in power up here we'd be going down the same road as you right now. That was their plan and it kicked off with Andy Kerr insisting hospitals were closed.
I've no time for Tesco, in fact I'd rather drive a 40 mile round trip to other supermarkets, but my point was about how a business operates with efficient and well qualified management.
How can we have people in charge of the NHS for just a couple of years when they don't even bother to get a grip of their brief? Not only the NHS suffers, all departments suffer when incompetent politicians are in charge of government departments.
Sam Galbraith was Health Minister in the old pre-devolution Scottish Office. (And incidentally he did work at the sharp end of the NHS, as a neurosurgeon)
Sam moved on when he was was appointed as Education Minister in the first Scottish Cabinet.
Donald Dewar's first Health Minister was Susan Deacon.
Malcolm Chisholm is the other person who has held the post, in addition to the two you mention.
this is another theory of why it doesn't work.
Forward, thanks for correcting my facts, I had trouble finding out the health ministers since devolution. I'll amend it on the post.
Yes indeed IPP, but don't most people realise that? Perhaps not.
It's all part of Brown's social engineering policies. Will Cameron halt them though?
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