Gouging on the carcass.

I am beginning to wonder whether the Banking crisis wasn't contrived by the elite and powerful to dismantle some of the main planks of the democratic process. Democracy was supposed to allow the poor and the less powerful a say in how the institutions that effect their lives are run.    "The crisis" has allowed the systematic destruction of these cherished institutions, ranging from access to the legal system for all but the wealthy, to access to good healthcare and general welfare for all but the wealthy, to name but two.
The Bankers got off scot free with the taxpayer footing the bill for the gross mismanagement of monies entrusted to them to invest, whilst subsequently, netting the same earnings and bonus, on revenues from a much lower investment base. In other words they make the same income as in the heated times of the unfettered casino.  

Now is the moment that all Conservatives, worth their salt have dreamt about since the Socialists, under Attlee created the Welfare State.

As you probably know the National Health Service (along with many other National Institutions), is being broken up and privatised.
The ethos is,  private companies are more efficient than public companies. This assertion relies on the need for the private company to compete, (on a monetary basis), since this competition will, streamline the activity and it is assumed, make for a more efficient system.
Of course another way of looking at this is, to achieve cost saving,  simply cuts the service to the proverbial bone.
 
One picks up so much information from listening to Parliamentary Committees. How sad you may think, to spend time listening to these investigatory sessions, even if they are dealing with such fundamental elements of our society

The committees, are made up of back bench MPs and therefore, sometimes critical of the Government (even if they belong to the same party since heaven forbid, they might be of independent thought) and get very hot under the collar as they question the Chief Executives. Today's session focused on the NHS.  They have, over time, questioned the CEs of the big Banks, the Generals of the Defence Force and the teachers and teacher-training sectors of the Education establishment.
The general public, more inclined to read the headlines in the Sun or the Mail, get a very potted version of the information relevant to these bodies and are often uninformed. The argument then follows, "we can't do anything about anything anyway so why bother to try to follow the relevant arguments".

So today when I learn that, irrespective of the good work to make the NHS more transparent and to encourage whistle blowers to inform on bad practice, without fear of reprisal, it seems this is all about to go down the tube.
SERCO who now run the health service in Cornwall have already fired employees for whistle blowing and since they are a private company the options for parliament to win back the good practice won in the NHS  is at the stroke of a pen nullified.

With the privatisation of all the public services, the same names continue to crop up. SERCO, CAPITA, G4S, all outsourcing companies,  each seeming to offer an amazingly wide and varied set of skills to run the whole infrastructure of this country.     
Offering and securing the contract these companies are everywhere. With the right management speak they have seen an opportunity to milk money from the public purse.


Having  captured the health contract for Cornwall (this is only the start, since they also control the telephone line for medical assistance which has been shown to employ poorly trained operators to advise patients of what to do when they fall ill). Doctors who doubled their salaries as public servants don't take calls after 5.30.

The "fat cats" are gouging on the carcass of public expenditure and we are helpless to do anything, if we are ignorant of the facts. With the facts maybe we will also have our Spring uprising ?