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Why are the BBC so reluctant to cover the #NHS299 of ‘hardworking people’ today in Manchester?
Around 60,000 arrived today in Manchester for the first day of the Conservative Party conference to protest against austerity cuts and NHS changes. There was not a single arrest, at the time of publication of this blogpost.
The central accusation is that the executive members of the Conservative Party were able to legislate, with the help of Liberal Democrat votes, in the House of Commons and House of Lords for an act of parliament which made it very easy for contracts to be awarded to the private sector not the NHS or public sector. The cap allowed for income to be generated privately was massively uplifted.
It is specifically proposed that both legislative measures allowed the privatisation of the NHS through effectively outsourcing it. Andy Burnham MP, Shadow Secretary of State, has described this as making the NHS more like the US market, and has promised many times to reverse the marketisation and to repeal the Health and Social Care Act (2012). The ‘National Hospital Sell-Off’ (NHS), as it has now become described, was tweeted today by Burnham today to be “now advancing like a juggernaut. In last year alone, 81 major contracts – worth £4.5 billion – put out to market. #nhs299“.
The march set off at midday and passed through the centre of the city. It will end with speeches at a rally in Whitworth Park. Greater Manchester Police said that the mile long protest was one of the largest they had ever watched over, and that no arrests have been made.
Frances O’Grady, TUC general secretary, said beforehand: “The march and rally will allow thousands of ordinary people to show the government exactly what they think of their policies. Austerity is having a devastating effect on our communities and services, with 21,000 NHS jobs lost over the last three months alone. The NHS is one of Britain’s finest achievements and we will not allow ministers to destroy, through cuts and privatisation, what has taken generations to build.” Burnham has further embellished the central accusation by saying the biggest NHS ‘top down reorganisation’, not democratically called for, put profit before people.
As the march set off at noon, UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis was joined by Andy Burnham MP and health workers from George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton, which is under threat of privatisation. Campaigners ensured that Twitter hashtag #NHS299 was trending right across the UK – emphasising the importance of the news, but getting the message across in the national media was exceptionally difficult due to lack of coverage from the BBC. 90 minutes after the first marchers had moved off, coaches were still reported to be arriving in Manchester, with the official Twitter account for the demonstration reporting that the front section was “holding at Albert Square for a bit to allow people to catch up”.
Let’s be clear about the Conservative position on the #NHS, shall we?
But we don’t just need to improve the health service, friends; we’ve got to rescue it from these Tories. And the Liberals too. Now look, before the election, I remember the speeches by David Cameron. I remember one where he said the three most important letters to him were NHS. Well he has got a funny way of showing it, hasn’t he? And when they came to office, they were still saying how brilliant was in the health service, how the health service was doing great things and the doctors and nurses and so on. Now have you noticed they have changed their tune recently? Suddenly they are saying how bad everything is in the NHS. Now the vast majority of doctors and nurses do a fantastic job. Sometimes things go wrong. And when they do, we should be the first people to say so. But hear me on this. The reason David Cameron is running down the NHS is not because the doctors and nurses aren’t doing as good a job as they were before. It is because they have come to a realisation that the health service is getting worse on their watch and they are desperately thrashing around trying to find someone else to blame. Blame the doctors, blame the nurses, blame the last Labour government. That is what they are doing. Well let me tell you about the record of the last Labour government. When we came to office there were waiting time targets of 18 months that were not being met, when we left office there were waiting time targets of 18 weeks that were being met. When we came to office there was an annual winter A&E crisis, when we left office the people had A&E services they could rely on. When we came to office there were fewer doctors and nurses, we when left office more doctors and nurses than ever before. And when we came to office people said well the health service, it was a good idea in previous generations but I don’t really believe it will be there in the next, and we left office with the highest public satisfaction in the history of the health services. Yes friends, we did rescue the National Health Service. So when you hear David Cameron casting arou nd for someone to blame for what is happening in the NHS just remember it is not complicated, it’s simple, it’s as simple as ABC: when it comes to blame, it is Anyone But Cameron. We know who is responsible, the top-down reorganisation that nobody voted for and nobody wanted, the abolition of NHS Direct, the cuts to social care, the fragmentation of services. We know who is responsible for thousands of fewer nurses, we know who is responsible not just for an annual A&E crisis, but an A&E crisis for all seasons. It is this Prime Minister who is responsible. So friends it is the same old story, we rescue the NHS, they wreck the NHS and we have to rescue it all over again. And that is what the next Labour government will do.
Source: https://twitter.com/Jeremy_Twunt/status/380227698481975296/photo/1
Source: https://twitter.com/TeessidePA/status/382830086476414976
