NHS Reform, the bill "no one voted for"? No, not really.
2012-Oct-16, Tuesday 06:22![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matgbJennie links today to an article on the OpenDemocracy website about the BBC coverage of NHS reforms. I'm afraid I didn't finish reading it. I generally have a little rule, if I'm reading something that claims to be factual and come across something that's egregiously annd blatantly false, I find it hard to take anything else it says seriously, if it gets something wrong that I know to be wrong, how many other things wrong are there that I don't know about?
If the article is headlined
It's a lie. It's not true. Anyone saying it is either willfully distorting the facts or hasn't bothered to check them.
Y'see, Page 45 through 47 of the Tory 2010 manifestopdf includes such things as
Saying "I disagree wtih this" is fine, in 2010 I was out there campaigning heavily against them, but saying "no one voted for it" is a blatant lie. 44% of voters in my constituency voted for a candidate backing these reforms. 39% did nationally.
The Big Lie is beginning to spring to mind about this one.
Wouldn't it be nice if the opponents of measures would actually argue their case? Y'see, I don't know what to think about the Govts NHS reforms, but when those opposed spend more time lying about them, distorting facts, scaring people, and similar than they do actually addressing the substantive issues, it doesn't make me think they've actually got valid arguments. If they did, why lie all the time?
How about you?
If the article is headlined
two years of censorship and distortion, then I expect it itself to not distort facts. That's fair, right? So, here's the the first substantive point the article makes:
1) Legitimacy – the bill no one voted forNote, no citation there; he only actually said that once that I'm aware of, in a speech (a long time before the election as well). But how many times have you heard politicians and activists and campaigners opposed to NHS reform parrot that line out?
In the run up to the 2010 general election, David Cameron frequently pledged that under a Conservative government there would be “no more top-down re-organisations” of the NHS.
It's a lie. It's not true. Anyone saying it is either willfully distorting the facts or hasn't bothered to check them.
Y'see, Page 45 through 47 of the Tory 2010 manifestopdf includes such things as
We have a reform plan to make the changes the NH S needs. We will decentralise power, so that patients have a real choice.Centrepeice of the manifesto. Couldn't be clearer. That article starts with a lie, and then builds on it, therefore I gave up.
...
We need to allow patients to choose the best care available, giving healthcare providers the incentives they need to drive up quality.
So we will give every patient the power to
choose any healthcare provider that meets NH S
standards, within NH S prices. This includes
independent, voluntary and community sector
providers.
...
We will strengthen the power of GPs as
patients’ expert guides through the health
system by:
• giving them the power to hold patients’
budgets and commission care on their behalf;
• linking their pay to the quality of their
results; and,
• putting them in charge of commissioning
local health services.
Saying "I disagree wtih this" is fine, in 2010 I was out there campaigning heavily against them, but saying "no one voted for it" is a blatant lie. 44% of voters in my constituency voted for a candidate backing these reforms. 39% did nationally.
The Big Lie is beginning to spring to mind about this one.
Wouldn't it be nice if the opponents of measures would actually argue their case? Y'see, I don't know what to think about the Govts NHS reforms, but when those opposed spend more time lying about them, distorting facts, scaring people, and similar than they do actually addressing the substantive issues, it doesn't make me think they've actually got valid arguments. If they did, why lie all the time?
How about you?
