One of the things that Dr Rant started out to do was to rail against the pseudoreligeous cultist Free Market Nutjobs who were running around telling everyone that the reason the NHS was shit was not the chronic underfunding and constant revolving political reforms but the lack of a Free Market.
As a result we have had various neo liberal narcissists sitting on the site posting their bullshit since we first set up the blog.
Just give us our money and we'll pay for our health care....
Just let the market work by itself free from interference and we will get better health care....
The NHS is the last bastion of the failed socialist experiment....
Well where the fuck are they now?
Their all running around pissing their pants at the total fucking ballsup that their cult has created.
It turns out the last great bastion of socialism and nationalisation is the British Banking sector. Perhaps everyone just being a selfish bastard who is out for themselves in an unregulated market wasn't the best way to run a civilization after all.
Ho. Fucking. Ho.
Still, at least all these high flying city types being unemployed will mean the whole 'I need to see my own personal GP at 4am even if it means that grannies, babies and all those other losers get a worse service and the NHS should provide it because I'm sooooo important' brigade are going to be hard to find.
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27 comments:
Nice one.
Now anyone following my link back will see that I'm a BNPer. I wasn't always one - once upon a time - and for a long time - I was Labour: member and activist.
Then Labour morphed into a neocon mafia ...
Doc, you probably detest the BNP, but that can only be because you don't know us. I joined it (and became an activist, and even a minor party official) when I realised it was the nearest thing out there to the OLD Labour party.
That was the party that wanted a proper National Health Service, nationalised railway, publicly owned gas, electricity, water, drainage services, a decent education system that was a good vehicle for poor bright kids to better themselves and their country, etc.
I went through the websites of all the political parties, read the manifestos of all the parties ... and what came up as the nearest thing to the old Labour party? Yup, the BNP. Right wing my arse.
I'm also a serious islamophobe, as tracking me back will show. At a personal, non-professional level, I know three medical doctors, one a GP and two psychiatrists, and you couldn't get a cigarette paper between us in this respect. My wife was a darkier darky Asian than most you've ever seen - and she taught me everything I know about Islamophobia (I hate that fake made-up word, but it'll do in this context). Well, until after I'd spent eight years in the Islamic parts of the world that is; then there was nothing left for her to teach me.
Go read the BNP's 2005 election manifesto. Then compare it to what you read about us in the press, and hear from the liblabcon mafia.
The NHS would be far better in our hands than in theirs. At least in ours it would never be privatised.
Enough.
There is an element of enjoyment in seeing the free booting, bonus grabbing, taxed offshore bankers reach their nemesis.
It's clear that an unregulated free market doesn't work perfectly, and that an economy cannot work just by recycling money (financial services). You also need to make some real products.
It's sad that we have basically printed money (or will have to eventually) to fund consumption and assets at inflated prices. It's also sad that we cannot let all the banks collapse without there being unacceptable "collateral damage"
(As an aside it seems that loads of ordinary Iraqis dying was acceptable collateral damage from the removal of Saddam, but westerners losing their savings and mortgages is unconscionable)
I sense the ghost of Milton Friedman wagging his finger at Brown, Greenspan, Clinton, Bush et al.
We will soon see our currency devalued by the huge national debt the country is carrying.
Typical new Labour. Demeaning and destroying our liberties. Devaluing education. Devaluing the currency. Running up debt.
Brown may try and blame "international events" but in the UK at government, corporate and individual levels we have all been fooling ourselves over money and our wealth levels for about the last 11 years.
we might see what really has value now.
these failures are no more the fault of free markets than the shit nhs is the fault of all docs
the markets would work fine if left alone
and yea im still looking for the state to stop taxing me a fucking fortune for a health service which i cannot access in practise
you cunts continue to let those i care about die many years before they would in similar western nations
and you may not like living in this country with a little financial shit but its still a lot better than mao china style communism that you want
so fuck off you useless cunts, you waste of my fucking tax
fantasists the lot of u
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/banks-to-lend-you-your-own-money-200810081308/
no one
In this case the market has failed, and failed massively. Larry Atkinson and Dan Elliott describe it well in the "The Gods that Failed" Private Eye's strip the directors also catches what's happening. The markets do not work fine if left alone, as John Kay describes well in "The Truth about Markets." The perfectly free market is as much an abstraction as the idea of a perfectly regulated market. Markets work to some extent, reasonably well, most of the time somewhere between these two extremes.
What we have seen over last 10 years is:-
Bankers taking risks.
Bankers buying assets they did not understand
Bankers taking huge bonuses out of the business.
Bankers lending recklessly
Bankers encouraging their own and other people's irresponsibility.
Banker's wanting a bail out when consequences of their irresponsibility becomes known (the exact opposite of the doctrine of business failing when their misjudgements catch up with them)
Taxpayers pick up the pieces as the alternative is too awful to contemplate.
The market has not worked in this case. We have had a bubble and a delusion, and the government is trying to let the bubble down slowly. The failure in this case is in the market and its workings.
And the NHS is likely to get worse as a result, not better. We are not Maoist or communist on here. We want an NHS that works for patients and is pleasant to work in.
And the fantasy here is your fantasy that a free market in health care would deliver what you want.
the markets would work fine if left alone
:)
You know I actually wrote that you would come on and say THOSE EXACT WORDS no-one, but then edited it out because I wanted to hear it from you first.
Oh fuck! Maybe I'm secretly No-One. I have been having these strange blackouts from the binge drinking sessions.....
*sigh*
You still don't get it, do you?
I'm not going to even bother to try to hammer home the same points time after time after time because you just won't listen.
DK
"It was the age of credulity. For a decade or more, Britain and America put their faith in a westernised version of a Melanesian cargo cult. It was as though millions of consumers expected to accumulate the riches of dreams through little more than positive thinking and negative saving.
With the aid of "sophisticated" finance – ie, unbridled borrowing – simple folk were able to mimic the lifestyles of higher orders in the hope of becoming like them. Those who proselytised for this hocus-pocus have much explaining to do."
Jeff Randall's strong analysis in today's Telegraph.
DK- You just don't get it do you? Sigh
They told us that the economic seasons had been banished in favour of an eternal summer of prosperity. In mistaking a mountain of debt for a mine of gold, they encouraged a reckless chase of unaffordable gratification.
Hey Doc, have you considered that the market may be performing it's role even as we sit and watch it on Bloomberg? ("Financial colossus"? Prat!) Throwing money at a falling market is just plain dim. You would get more fun out of it if you set fire to it and threw it out the window. It is classic "bad money". It isn't worth anything now and still will have to be paid back in proper good money when the new day comes. They even prattle about Iceland on the telly. But I digress.
You mix up, I think, the market in general and the silly notion of a market in (universal) health care.
The incautious banks are being slaughtered in the streets - or rather that's what should be happening. They are paying the price of their stupidity and excesses - or they should be.
We do not have the same attitude to, say, a smokin' and drinkin', STD-ridden, puking and penniless human being. We don't let them die in a heap of rags on the street. Why? Because we have decided not to put a value on the lives of human beings. We just help them regardless of their stupidity and weakness. This is civilisation. It is nothing to do with markets.
Just enjoy the spectacle if you can and must but stick to your knitting, Sir.
And btw it's my children's pensions too, and possibly their children's.
well its a lot more complex than you seem to realise, but then youre medics
if you want a good high level view of whats going on i would recommend
http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/
as john is explaining much of the current situtation much better than the media
if you can get over your rabid left wingism and just be open minded for a little while, and ignore your prejudices about john for a short while
as for the medical content of your blog the quality has fallen off a cliff face, i think you should just point everyone to my stuff at
http://notdrrant.blogspot.com/
that'll just leave your blog with upitsownbum middleclass leftyism and of course anyone wanting that only has to look at the billy bragg site
so quite where your blogg is heading im not sure
Yes indeed, dr blue. But
Typical new Labour. Demeaning and destroying our liberties. Devaluing education. Devaluing the currency. Running up debt.
I never supported New Labour (I did manage to force myself to vote for them in '97); I am a socialist, after all. But it's a bad idea to forget the way Thatcher deindustrialised the UK, the way her government lashed out at doctors, her privatisation, her dirigisme in education and elsewhere, her squandering of North Sea Oil and gas --and so on and so on. I'll not vote Tory next time (I'll almost certainly vote Labour -- I suppose...)
bubble and a delusion
yes
OMG!
No-One thinks John Redwood is the best source of financial wisdom.
He's even more fucked up than we thought. (Is that even possible?)
Yup- it's fun to watch these scum have their faces rubbed in the dirt. Also means that those of us with some savings will be able to buy another house soon, when prices crash, and then make a nice profit.
Oh, and no-one- you're a cunt.
i did ask u to be open minded for a short while, but youve dismissed johns comments probably without even reading them
wanker
No I read them first.
His comments were largely sensible.
It was more the idea that you were a Redwood fan.
I mean - the guy is nuts.
Actually Redwood isn't nuts.
He's a very intelligent politician, and a good analyst. We may appreciate him only as he gets older.
Menelaus
I think you are right about the death of banks.
Our banks are dying from profligacy, binge lending, and recklessness. You could draw an analagogy with a reckless, persistent, recidivist alcoholic.
We try to save both enterprises but we know neither has a very good prognosis.
And as you say although the spectacle of collapse is some combination of surprise, excitement and horror it is the horror that will be visited unto our generation, and the next and the one after that.
We will be a long time putting this disaster right. These events mark an end of some old ways, and no one knows what the new strategies will be yet.
when did i say i was a fan
i simply pointed you at a site giving a better run down on events than your own or the bbc and mainstream media
glad you like his points
my vote seen the dire economic state of the country is to stop wasting money, now the nhs would be a good place to start...
No-one
we're back on common ground there. Huge sums are wasted in NHS, on pointless projects and staff with meaningless titles etc.
The question comes if when the crunch ripples through public services if we keep the workers and lose the useless supervisors and managers....or if the twaterati close down the main show and go to another meeting.
Dr Blue
To be honest I know of at least one large city general hospital that provides such crap service, top to bottom, where standards are so low, staff are so rude, and patients are treated so badly, that the best thing to do would be to shut the whole fucking place down, shut it
Make it clear all the staff working there have been shit, and give them crap references
And give the patients real money to go somewhere else
Only when the worst hospitals in the NHS are forced to shut, and the staff with cushy jobs are forced onto the dole queue, will some sort of realism appear
In no other business, can you provide such shit service, and still get your salary, promotions, and a nice pension
So yea the twaterati should go, but so should our worst hospitals
And then we move onto the shit GP surgeries, just shut the worst 5 % down, sack em, easier to do than youd think, just fucking do it
Why should people pay 40% + tax to have to put up with one of the worst 1% GP's in the country?
Start some real fucking change
And as Cameron said, sack everyone involved in the complaints system, and put people like me in charge, with real teeth to change the system when complaints obviosuly have merit
"In no other business, can you provide such shit service, and still get your salary, promotions, and a nice pension"
Is this meant to be a joke?
The free market capitalist bastards who you claim could do a better job of health care than doctors have just managed to destroy the global economy ("shit service") whilst being paid millions (far more than NHS staff), being promoted, and getting huge fucking golden goodbyes.
No-one, you are a fundamentalist fuckwit. You and your ilk cause ALL of the world's problems, and the only way we are going to be rid of you is to kill you because you are too fucking stupid to know how fucking stupid you are.
I know you are just a sad cunt at some computer screen somewhere, but really?
Dr Blue... "Our banks are dying from profligacy, binge lending, and recklessness. You could draw an analagogy with a reckless, persistent, recidivist alcoholic.
We try to save both enterprises but we know neither has a very good prognosis."
Indeed. But forget about the recklessness. That is sin. Leave that stuff to Cranmer and his OT rantings. (Entertaining and erudite, as they are.) We are interested merely in fixing the patient.
Now, the poor bugger is riddled with the Big C and the end is certain. No extraordinary measures will do anything except hoover up holpelessly large amounts of money. Not a penny of public money should there have been until they had signed up to a fully-formed, your-ass-is-mine deal.
And when it is done, then we remember sin and it is each Chief Exec and each Finance Director be out onto the street with their junk in a bin-liner.
im not a fundamentalist
i am not a raving right wing nutter
i believe in looking after the poor
and i believe in state support for some sectors of the economy
i just dont believe in allowing shit service to continue whatever the way its supposed to be organised
dr rant (the raving middle class up your own bum one) you really do talk bollocks, you are living in a nice house, driving a nice car, BECAUSE of the free market economy
but its not an ideological battle that is as important as routing out the shit service however its organised
Actually, my car is a pile of shite.
It's done 120k miles and I had to paint it with Hammerite and a roller this year because of all the rust.
My house is nice though.
Menelaus
A paediatrician once commented that the first twenty four hours of life were the most risky. A geriatrician gently reminded him that the last twenty fours were also rather risky.
If you look at our disease spending in NHS we do spend a huge amount of NHS cash on end stage hopeless cases/in the last six months of life. You could argue this is right- the money's going on the illest patients.
In this economic crisis it seems as if the banks have to be kept alive, like President Tito, for fear of what will be unleashed if they die.
Doc, I agree with all that. I make no comment about where doctors spend their money - fixing the sick and easing the end of the dying is your job. I know nothing about medicine. However I do know a wee bit about business - and a bit less about money theory.
None of us is perfect. I could usefully go and see my GP - get cholestrerol measured, get shouted at about the beer drinking, one of my ears seems not to work... But, heck, I'm busy. I am another twat middle-aged fool waiting until bits start dropping off before I bother to come and see you. Mad.
And guess what? I have almost always been self-employed. When I took out my mortgage all those years ago it was self-certified. I am that sub-prime chav.
Likewise, although I sympathise a lot with you guys and what you put up with, not all of what all of you say on here is 100% without need of counsel. A bit of outside expertise and advice is useful, you know. That is as long as it is advice and not some mad, Stalinist measuring bureaucracy or some other sundry political bullshit. But I make no comment about all that normally because of what you say here 90-odd percent is spot on. I merely say that medical people should do medical things and business people should do business things. Where these things join the business supports the medicine; the medicine should not be controlled by the business. (Rule 1 of 1: Wasters of either expertise should be fired asap.)
The banks do indeed have to be kept alive. More accurately a system of banking needs to exist. It need not be the one we have. For instance, investment banking - as we knew it, three weeks ago anyway - has ceased to exist. I have a boring and technical answer about the structure of money and what sort of paper instruments should be allowed to be traded. eg The securitising of shit risk and the flogging of it down a chain so long has gone so far that the the end buyer just cannot know whether he's bought the Ritz or a rat-hole. This is mad and morally wrong. It's all but thieving from widows and orphans. I will not trouble you with the detail. Just let it be said that all bets are off. What next week will bring will curl your toes, Sir. Bloomberg is better than the Horror Channel at the moment.
Money lenders. Temple?
I've got this feeling that I've heard something similar before.
It seems that this whole 'boom and bust' stuff might be two thousand years old.
Gordon never had a chance.
Stupid boy.
There's only one JC!
(See - I do listen in church! It's not just a quiet place for hangover recovery on a Sunday is it?)
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