Monday, March 12, 2007
New Labour and the Great Sell Off
I read Catch 22 a number of years ago, there was a character called Milo Minderbender who had managed to privatise an entire airbase along with its equipment. At the time I thought this quite bizarre and surreal, something that was woven into the tapestry of this fantastic novel. A couple of decades on, Milo Minderbender has become quite real, he is alive and kicking in the UK, his name is Blair. Yes this man is selling everything in sight, he will even sell your identity as well as your arse. This road-pricing thingy on the agenda is not really about congestion but yet another wheeze to help his bloated big business to make more fast bucks - it will no doubt lead to the privatisation of the motorways.
One of the most salient symptoms of this administration has been the closure of hospitals, schools and police stations and flogging off the property to greedy property developers. Greenwich District Hospital was closed and the Queen Mary Military Hospital lost its military specialism to become the local hospital. The result has been many service personnel have lost the right to specialist treatment - they have to make do with NHS provision. Military medicine is such a specialised area of treatment that a civilian friend of mine had to be admitted to a military hospital because he had burns so severe that a General Hospital was unable to deal with them. In fact military medicine has informed general medicine throughout the years - Florence Nightingale and nursing comes to mind in this instance. Sadly, we seem to have lost the medical arm of the armed forces.
If my memory serves me right, I can recall Yossarian looking in the first aid box bandages etc, only to find a receipt that he is now a happy shareholder of the proceeds of the sale of the contents of the said box.
New Labour has become quite adept at doing things like that.
One of the most salient symptoms of this administration has been the closure of hospitals, schools and police stations and flogging off the property to greedy property developers. Greenwich District Hospital was closed and the Queen Mary Military Hospital lost its military specialism to become the local hospital. The result has been many service personnel have lost the right to specialist treatment - they have to make do with NHS provision. Military medicine is such a specialised area of treatment that a civilian friend of mine had to be admitted to a military hospital because he had burns so severe that a General Hospital was unable to deal with them. In fact military medicine has informed general medicine throughout the years - Florence Nightingale and nursing comes to mind in this instance. Sadly, we seem to have lost the medical arm of the armed forces.
If my memory serves me right, I can recall Yossarian looking in the first aid box bandages etc, only to find a receipt that he is now a happy shareholder of the proceeds of the sale of the contents of the said box.
New Labour has become quite adept at doing things like that.
Labels: British Politics, Catch 22, Joseph Heller, Milo Minderbender, PFI
