Archive for the ‘Consumerism’ Category
Why Weed Is Better Than Sex (?)
Or on “high” days and holidays try both at the same time!
Back To The Future Of The NHS
I have grave concerns about the government’s NHS reforms. I feel like it’s Groundhog Day.
I was deeply involved in the last major health service reforms back in the 1990s. I am hearing exactly the same ideas, phrases and promises as we heard then. Haven’t we done this all before?
When the “internal market” was introduced and the first NHS Trusts were “founded”, the idea of marketing was introduced to the NHS for the first time. I saw the opportunity, organised a conference at the QEII conference centre and built a nice business, thank you very much, for several years as an expert in the field. I was an advisor to several health authorities and a number of the new NHS trusts. I undertook marketing and communications audits, ran training courses and I made something of a specialty of designing, writing and producing annual reports. I learned a lot and I felt I contributed a lot. Why is it all being done again?
Marketing is a perfect description of the way the health service should work. It is the management process responsible for anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer needs efficiently. The 1990s NHS model was that “purchasers”, health authorities and GP fundholders, would buy services from “providers”, hospitals and community health services. “Purchasing” was later renamed “commissioning” to reflect how complex the task is. It’s about understanding what services are required and making complex choices as well as actually contracting for them.
Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) were always a redundant tier of bureaucracy in my view. District Health Authorities (DHAs) were to be the principal commissioners but the plan was that GP fundholders would eventually take over most of it with DHAs becoming centres of expertise rather than administration. Then there was a rather messy fudge between GPs and community health services and we ended up with Primary Care Trusts (PCTs).
There is a huge amount of expertise required in commissioning. The complexity of the tasks involved – understanding, assessing, testing, planning, choosing, contracting and much more, is enormous. GPs will have to buy in that expertise which will build a bureaucracy which we will call – what? We will have gone round in a circle.
One of the biggest mistakes made about the NHS is the endless stream of attacks on managers. Almost all the problems that the NHS has and that people complain about are management problems. NHS managers have a hugely demanding and thankless task for which they are regularly pilloried and censured. They are, actually, crucial to an effective NHS, just as much as the clinicians.
So now we are to have “Foundation Trusts” and GP commissioning. It is the same thing, yet again, under a slightly different name. The NHS is not broken. It is, in fact, greatly improved. It doesn’t need fixing.
We do not need more reform. We need some adjustments. There have been great achievements on waiting times. Now, we need to shift the emphasis towards outcomes. We need targets on quality rather than quantity. It’s a tweak rather than a revolution.
Bank Run On “Revenge Wednesday”, 26th January 2011
FROM INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRE UK
On Wednesday 26 January 2011, thousands of people in the UK will try to cause a bank run by withdrawing money from their bank accounts, in person, at high street bank branches.
The hope is that the movement will snowball.
Everyone is welcome. Just print out this article, fill in your details at the bottom, and take it to your bank, preferably around lunchtime, e.g. about 1pm. Even better, print out multiple copies and hand them round. Use email, Twitter, Facebook too.
When the first bank branch says it won’t pay out people’s money, let everyone know, using every means possible. Take photos. Use mobile phones, send tweets, get the journalists in on the picture. This movement is decentralised. It is what you and we make it.
Note that this idea was tried last December, after being suggested by Eric Cantona. Unfortunately it didn’t go very far, mainly because the organisers asked people to “sign up” online. We’re not asking you to sign up to anything. In particular, you do NOT have to give any personal details to anyone. The form below is just for giving to your BANK.
If you can only afford to withdraw 10 pounds, please do it. If you can afford to withdraw thousands of pounds, do that too. EVERY LITTLE HELPS. Banks cannot withstand everyone withdrawing even a tenth of what they’ve got in the bank. LET’S SEND THESE PARASITES A MESSAGE THEY’LL NEVER FORGET. It’s an open secret that they’re holding the country to ransom. Let’s kick ’em where it hurts.
This is the financial system’s MAJOR WEAK SPOT. That’s why the Dutch government is considering making it illegal to call for a bank run. Because they’re SCARED. In 2009 there was a bank run against a Dutch bank. This was considered to be a particularly unpleasant bank, which had been encouraging millions of Dutch people to get into debt who couldn’t afford it. People did a run against it, and it went bankrupt. How sad.
In Britain, you’d be hard pushed to name a bank which DIDN’T try to get people into massive debt they can’t really afford.
Here’s the bottom line: THE BANKS HAVE GOT IT COMING TO THEM.
So please take part. Spread the news. Distribute this article. Print your own. Just do a little bit to help, and we’ll be strong and we’ll blast the damn banks like they’ve never been blasted before.
Please complete the details, and hand it to your bank around 1pm on 26 Jan 2011.
**********************************
NAME: __________________________
ADDRESS:_____________________________
________________________________
ACCOUNT NUMBER: ___________________
SORT CODE:______________________
NAME OF BANK:_____________________
To: the Branch Manager
Dear Sir,
I wish to withdraw ____________ pounds from my account in cash, immediately.
Yours sincerely,
__________________ (signed)
Cannabis Embarrassment At The Home Office
The re-scheduling of Sativex, the cannabis tincture marketed by GW Pharmaceuticals is causing huge embarrassment at the Home Office.
Everybody’s been able to go along with the white lie up to now that Sativex is some sort of highly complex, super scientific, super medicine containing cannabinoids. True enough, GW Pharma has put millions into development and testing in order to jump through the hoops the government has demanded. At the end of the day though, all Sativex consists of is a tincture, an alcohol extract of herbal cannabis. It’s made simply by gently heating a blend of herbal cannabis in ethanol and then adding a little peppermint oil to taste.
An Honourable Man?
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved Sativex for the treatment of muscle spasticity in MS. I understand that an approval for the treatment of cancer pain is expected shortly. The problem for the Home Office is that Sativex now has to be re-scheduled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Cannabis is presently in schedule one as having no medicinal value. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) has recommended this week that Sativex be in schedule four, alongside a variety of minor tranquilisers. However, as the ACMD says, “it will not be appropriate to refer to “Sativex”, which is a proprietary name, in any amendment to the misuse of drugs regulations, and that a suitable description of the relevant component(s) of “Sativex” will have to be scheduled.”
This is going to be tough for James Brokenshire to face up to. GW specifies that Sativex contains approximately equal proportions of THC and CBD but that’s not the whole truth. It also contains as many as 400 other chemical compounds which occur naturally in the plant including at least 85 cannabinoids (nobody is exactly sure how many cannabinoids there are or their effects). You see there’s not really any other accurate way of describing Sativex except to call it cannabis. So how can Mr Brokenshire possibly move it to schedule four? He endlessly repeats the propaganda that “there are no medicinal benefits in cannabis”.
Either Mr Brokenshire has to come clean and accept that his past position was incorrect or he has to promote some further deception.
I trust he will prove to be an honourable man.
Reform. Regulate. Realise.
REFORM the law and end prohibition.
REGULATE production and supply based on facts and evidence.
REALISE the huge benefits as medicine and as a new source of £billions in tax revenue.
Banker Robber Gets Away With £4 Million
Stop Thief!
Eric Daniels, chief executive of Lloyds, 41% owned by the taxpayer, is to be given a £2 million cash bonus and receive a further £2 million in shares.
This is nothing short of robbery. No one is entitled to earn that amount of money when the survival of their business has been contingent on taxpayer support. Any incentive scheme or agreement which tries to permit such payments is itself fraudulent. If Daniels takes this money he should be arrested, his assets frozen and he should face trial for conspiracy and deception.
The man is a rogue and a charlatan. Nothing he has done is of any real value and even by the corrupt and perverse standards of the banking system, he is a failure. He is entitled to no credit at all for the recovery of Lloyds.
He is another banker robber. No different from a bank robber. He pilfers old people’s savings and cheats hardworking businessmen. Let’s lock him up before he gets away with it!
A Diamond With No Pearls
“There was a period of remorse and apology for banks. I think that period needs to be over.”
If this is what Bob Diamond regards as wisdom then he is stupid as well as deeply unpleasant.
Spiv
The spectacle of this ostentatious, overpaid and arrogant Yank defending the banker robbers against their richly deserved condemnation is sickening. Almost as sickening as Cameron and his poodle’s capitulation over bonuses. See here for the full story.
We shouldn’t be surprised really. It was too much to expect that integrity and justice should triumph over the greed and corruption of the banks. They are worthless parasites on society which contribute nothing worthwhile at all apart from an administrative process for transferring money.
Diamond also says that banks should be allowed to fail and not be bailed out by the taxpayer. The man is clever. I’ll give him that. As clever as any cheap, wide boy, conman spiv. He says that Barclays took no money from the taxpayer but he knows full well that his own reckless, roulette wheel gambling was only possible because the taxpayer had no option but to stand behind him.
I will not shrink from the truth. Men like Bob Diamond are unfit to be in charge of banks. I would prefer him and his cronies to be in jail but I would be content with lifetime disqualification and, in his case, deportation.
Peter Reynolds 