Health Care For Sale To Highest Bidder

We own our hospitals in the UK. Except for those built or upgraded by PFI. That's Private Finance Initiative - a way for our corrupt politicians to give huge amounts of money to their rich corporate buddies at the expense of our health service, and therefore our health. Private companies build them, then rent them back to the hospital at a rent greater than their total annual budget. Because of this wonderful money-making (or stealing, depending on your point of view) scheme, a group of local hospitals is bankrupt. And a commissioned report thinks that the way out of it is to close the (brand new) Accident and Emergency and Maternity services at my local hospital, which is not one of the bankrupt group. Then the people who use those services will go to one of the others, even though they are pretty inaccessible to those from my locality, and already too busy to cope with their own workloads. Not to mention there are no spare beds. Tonight there has been a public meeting at the hospital, which I have just attended (and along with a local council meeting yesterday means I have not been around the blogs for a few days) and folks are seething. How can these bastards take away what is ours? It wasn't enough for government to steal our water, gas and electricity supplies, and the oil industry and sell them at knock-down prices to their friends. There is a march on November 24th to join hands around the hospital (which, frankly, is probably too massive to manage such a feat on) but now I get to regret my decision to rejoin my opera group, 'cos we have a concert that afternoon. In an aside, you will probably be totally uninterested in the fact that 1960s pop icon Sandie Shaw with designer Jeff Banks had her first (and for all I know only) child in Lewisham Hospital. Not only was it her local - though there was a private hospital nearer - but it was one of the first to use epidurals.