In his latest column for the Dorset Echo Richard Drax MP: Streamline the service to ease A&E problems Mr Drax applies the transitive verb ‘streamline’. Everything that is then included in the following piece ignores this headline. Why? No mention of what he means by the term. No consideration of how it could be applied. He eulogises about the ambulance service but tells us nothing of what he is doing to help them as their local MP. Is this just another populist call for votes without any local solutions or support offered from our elected member? It got me wondering whether ‘streamline’ was dropped in to endear the term to what I suspect he really means. The nexus of neo liberal imagery – ‘efficiency’. Let’s do it cheaper but give the impression that as individuals and wider society we have all benefitted as our health service and all other state provision is hived off to the profiteers at home and abroad.
Austerity is treated as the great unwanted when it is fact silently welcomed and celebrated by many who wield the power. Those who have no fear of ever being dispossessed of a roof over their heads or the luxuries they have been conditioned to treat as necessities. Now schools can be sponsored by unethical corporate fast food companies; hospitals by rich entrepreneurs (who have made their cash to the detriment of many of the people who find themselves treated within); local services sold off and slashed and French IT companies brought in to murder the long term sick and disabled…. All this happens under our noses but few respond. The truly alarming fact is those who do are pilloried by the very people who they are seeking to stand up for. ‘Thugs’, ‘troublemakers’ ‘scroungers’ and many more negative terms are fired outwards at those who have the guts to stand up and be countered whilst too many cower behind their ignorance and cynicism.
People like Richard Drax who was only elected because of this ignorance and cynicism. Unable to challenge propaganda dressed up as facts the voters (if they can be bothered) trot in and place their X next to a ‘genie for the day’ and then trot back either totally disconsolate or ready to defend their hoax genie to the death. They call it democracy whilst all the time our A&E is being ‘streamlined’ and the service continues to deteriorate. If you don’t believe me ask yourself are hospital wards safer since the cleaning contacts were sold off? Will Dorset be better off with the pathology service contact sold to a bunch of shareholders? Is the reduction of £20 billion over the next three years going to benefit the care needs of NHS patients? Did the wasting of hundreds of thousands of pounds on joining a care consortium across Dorset (only to be forced out by public opinion) serve anyone but soulless consultants? To quote Mike Sivier
‘…The NHS carve-up signified huge opportunities for firms like Circle Health and Virgin, and Bain Capital (who bought our blood plasma supplies). Care UK, the firm that famously sponsored Andrew Lansley while he was working on the regressive changes to the health service that eventually became the Health and Social Care Act 2012, no doubt also has fingers in the pie.’
All this and more… Where are you when it counts Mr Drax? Oh yes – conditioning the locals to accept yet more ‘streamlining’. Perhaps you will be more honest about your intentions in future?
Flora the Implorer
