• About Mike Sivier

Mike Sivier's blog

~ by the writer of Vox Political

Tag Archives: monitor

Battle is joined – for the future of your NHS

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by Mike Sivier in Conservative Party, Health, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Politics, UK

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

38 degrees, Andrew Lansley, andy burnham, Bristol, CCG, clinical commissioning group, Coalition, Conservative, Democrat, Haringey, health, Health and Social Care Act, Jeremy Hunt, Labour, lay prayer, Lib Dem, Liberal, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, monitor, National Health Service, negative resolution, NHS, politics, secretary, shadow, Tories, Tory, Vox Political


n4s_nhs1

This week the Labour Party will be launching its formal defence of the National Health Service, after the Coalition government stealthily slipped a “negative resolution” to enforce privatisation onto the books before the Parliamentary recess.

The resolution, as mentioned in a previous Vox article, will force clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in England to introduce competition to provide all services for which it is practical (in other words, almost everything), whether or not they believe it to be in the best interests of all concerned.

Its arrival means either the government lied when it gave the promise that neither the Health Secretary nor Monitor would be allowed to force health commissioners to put services out to competition, or it has decided to break firm, formal promises, written by Andrew Lansley in a letter and spoken on the record in Parliament.

Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, has announced that the party will ‘lay prayers’ against the resolution in both Houses of Parliament, and will fight “tooth and nail” to defeat it.   He has repeated his firm, unambiguous commitment to repeal the 2012 Health and Social Care Act as a priority once Labour is back in government, and to restore the lead on the commissioning of health services to local government.

If Labour win the next General Election, he will reintroduce a preferred provider policy that will allow genuine NHS organisations to be named as the providers of choice, thus ensuring that the NHS remains, at its core, a public institution. This will restore the NHS to leadership of health service provision, alongside local government as the commissioning lead.

But by that time much irrevocable damage will have been done, so concerted interim action is needed – and it is heartening that CCGs in Haringey and Bristol are already leading the way.

In Haringey, the CCG has been persuaded by campaigning organisation 38 Degrees to adopt amendments to its constitution, ensuring that they will only invite competition to buy services where “necessary or appropriate”. Contractors/providers must be “good employers” – be reputable, meet tax and NI obligations and keep to EO legislation. Other amendments exclude companies convicted of offences, and   prohibit companies that use improper tax avoidance and off shore schemes.

That is just the start of the battle for the NHS – but it’s a good one, and an example that can be taken forward.

Haringey has accepted that there is a case for arguing that awarding tenders to private providers will cause genuinely public structures to atrophy as funds are taken out of the public health economy and turned into private profits. This would be to the long-term detriment of the NHS, meaning an award to a private bidder is worse value, even if the headline price is lower.

If you are in England and concerned about the decline that the government’s negative resolution will instigate, why not get in touch with your own local CCG, ask them to examine the actions of their colleagues in Haringey, and politely request that they go and do likewise?

Expect much more on this issue in the future. It will be published here as it becomes available.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Email
  • Print
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

Internet surveillance plan will extend – not create – a communications ‘police state’

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by Mike Sivier in Conservative Party, Crime, Law, Liberal Democrats, People, Police, Politics, UK

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

activist, armed, Coalition, Conservative, criminal, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, DWP, email, Facebook, game, gaming, gang, government, Home Office, Home Secretary, intelligence, internet, internet voice calls, invasion, Liberal, Liberal Democrat, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, monitor, Parliament, people, phone, play-by-mail, police, politics, Pride's Purge, privacy, social media, spies, spy, surveillance, telephone, terrorist, Theresa May, Tories, Tory, Vox Political, webmail


Nobody should be looking forward to having Big Brother watching us through our monitors, but he’s already reading our mail and listening to our phone calls.

Government monitoring of our mail and phone messages has been going on for years, and Theresa May’s plan to monitor every UK citizen’s online activity is merely an extension of this.

It’s still an unwarranted invasion of our privacy, but when has any government ever let that stop it?

According to the BBC, the current government’s plans mean service providers will have to store details of internet use in the UK for a year, to allow police and intelligence services to access it.

It will include for the first time details of messages sent on social media, webmail, voice calls over the internet and gaming in addition to emails and phone calls.

The data includes the time, duration, originator and recipient of a communication and the location of the device from which it is made.

Hold on, did I say “for the first time” details of messages on social media?

What about the police who called on a female disability activist last week, in her home at midnight, in relation to comments she’d posted on Facebook about the Department for Work and Pensions’ cuts?

According to her account on the Pride’s Purge blog, “They told me they had come to investigate criminal activity that I was involved in on Facebook… They said complaints had been made about posts I’d made on Facebook about the Jobcentre.”

(All right, I know what you’re going to say – those posts were publicly-accessible. The point is that the police are already using social media to target people – in this case, an innocent woman)

According to Peter Fahy, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, the planned legislation is “absolutely vital” in “proving associations” between criminals, and it was often possible to penetrate the top of a criminal gang by linking “foot soldiers” to those running operations.

Is this in the same way the police were able to use the postal service to target terrorist gangs? Because I’ve got a story about that.

It concerns a young man who was enjoying a play-by-mail game with other like-minded people. A war game, as it happens. They all had codenames, and made their moves by writing letters and putting them in the post (this was, clearly, before the internet).

One day, said young fellow arrived home from work (or wherever) to find his street cordoned off and a ring of armed police around it.

“What’s going on?” he asked a burly uniformed man who was armed to the teeth.

“Oh you can’t come through,” he was told. “We’ve identified a terrorist group in one of these houses and we have to get them out.”

“But I live on this street,” said our hero, innocently. “Which house is it?”

The constable told him.

“But that’s my house!” he said.

And suddenly all the guns were pointing at him.

They had reacted to a message he had sent, innocently, as part of the game. They’d had no reason to open the letter, but had done it anyway and, despite the fact that it was perfectly clear that it was part of a game, over-reacted.

What was the message?

“Ajax to Achilles: Bomb Liverpool!”

Expect further cock-ups of similar nature, pretty much as soon as the current proposals become law.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Email
  • Print
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

Vox Political

Vox Political

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Vox Political

  • RSS - Posts

Blogroll

  • Another Angry Voice
  • Ayes to the Left
  • Diary of a Benefit Scrounger
  • The Green Benches
  • The Void

Recent Posts

  • The Coming of the Sub-Mariner – and the birth of the Marvel Universe (Mike Reads the Marvels: Fantastic Four #4)
  • ‘The Greatest Comic Magazine in the World!’ (Mike reads the Marvels: Fantastic Four #3)
  • Here come the Skrulls! (Mike Reads The Marvels: Fantastic Four #2)
  • Mike Reads The Marvels: Fantastic Four #1
  • Boris Johnson’s Covid-19 u-turns (Pandemic Journal: June 17)

Archives

  • August 2021
  • June 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011

Topics

  • Austerity
  • Banks
  • Bedroom Tax
  • Benefits
  • Business
  • Children
  • Comedy
  • Conservative Party
  • Corruption
  • Cost of living
  • council tax
  • Crime
  • Defence
  • Democracy
  • Disability
  • Discrimination
  • Doctor Who
  • Drugs
  • Economy
  • Education
  • Employment
  • Employment and Support Allowance
  • Environment
  • European Union
  • Flood Defence
  • Food Banks
  • Foreign Affairs
  • Fracking
  • Health
  • Housing
  • Human rights
  • Humour
  • Immigration
  • International Aid
  • Justice
  • Labour Party
  • Law
  • Liberal Democrats
  • Llandrindod Wells
  • Maternity
  • Media
  • Movies
  • Neoliberalism
  • pensions
  • People
  • Police
  • Politics
  • Poverty
  • Powys
  • Privatisation
  • Public services
  • Race
  • Railways
  • Religion
  • Roads
  • Satire
  • Scotland referendum
  • Sport
  • Tax
  • tax credits
  • Television
  • Terrorism
  • Trade Unions
  • Transport
  • UK
  • UKIP
  • Uncategorized
  • unemployment
  • Universal Credit
  • USA
  • Utility firms
  • War
  • Water
  • Workfare
  • Zero hours contracts

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Mike Sivier's blog
    • Join 168 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Mike Sivier's blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: