A GP demonstrates outside St Paul's Way medical centre. Photograph: Jon Enoch
ATOS Again
Also interesting how a difficult practice was given to a private company with no experience of primary healthcare. And how the private company walked out after 3 years. And they want to run the entire NHS in the same way?
According to a whistleblower this is what happens now in the jobcentres:
"Suddenly you're not helping somebody into sustainable employment, which is what you're employed to do," he said. "You're looking for ways to trick your customers into 'not looking for work'. You come up with many ways. I've seen dyslexic customers given written job searches, and when they don't produce them – what a surprise – they're sanctioned. The only target that anyone seems to care about is stopping people's money.
"'Saving the public purse' is the catchphrase that is used in our office … It is drummed home all the time – you're saving the public purse. Feel good about stopping someone's money, you've just saved your own pocket. Its a joke."s
I am very happy for the people involved if their lives have improved because of a campaign run by a newspaper. My question is why there are so many people, with many of them actually working, in poverty in a city like London. Should not they be allowed opportunities and a living wage instead of charity money from their fellow Londoners?
If anyone had any doubt, the snow in the past few weeks has shown us what a mess our privatised railway companies are. BAA has not done particularly well too and it turns out that Gatwick is now part of another company and not always in good terms with Heathrow (and of course it makes sense to have two major airports not really talking to each other during a crisis).
We were promised better train services and more choice as consumers. What we ended up with is the most expensive and worst train service in Europe. When times are good they keep all profit when times are bad they still ask for more money form the government because you know essential services etc. It is a win-win situation for them. They want to play Monopoly but they want to have Park Lane and Mayfair before they start.
And because we like to give more opportunities to fat cats and tax avoiders so much, we need to do the same to the NHS. Break it all up, give it all away, ensure that several dodgy companies make lot of money out of it.
