Earth to UK. Earth to UK. Come in UK, are you receiving us?
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
General Election 2010: Nick Clegg's demand for NHS to be broken up | Mail Online.
Has everyone in Britain been taken over by politically naieve aliens? Here we have an article in a "right wing" newspaper "smearing" a "centre left" politician for (unlike the leader of the allegedly "right wing" "Conservatives) making a sensible suggestion (five years ago) about breaking up the Soviet-style NHS. He suggested replacing it with an insurance-based system (horrors!) just like in Social Democrat Germany, France or Sweden (or pretty much anywhere civilised you would like to name, including some countries still nominally "Communist"). Cuba is one of few places these days to have anything resembling the system that Britain likes to delude itself is "the envy of the world." Such is the scale of that delusion, that the BBC has been known to glorify Cuban healthcare, which isn't even the envy of Cuba.
I don't get it. Nick Clegg has made perhaps the first sensible observation by a Liberal since Gladstone died and he's being attacked from the right? He's still a blithering whatsit and a vote for the LibDems still a bad idea, but credit where it's due. He was right on this one. 100% right.
In "Choice Or No Choice" on Thursday 22 April I suggested that the NHS is now not so much as asset as one of the major liabilities. One thing it is not doing is delivering real health care. It has now almost become at Family Doctor level an agency for distributing medications right or wrong.
Posted by: Demetrius | Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 05:22 PM
Cameron played the 'man of destiny' card, he failed in opposition and he is failing in this election
He has having what we call round here a strop, about not getting his way.
Posted by: Guthrum | Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 11:47 AM
"The comments raise huge question-marks over the Lib Dems' commitment to such a cherished institution as the NHS.
They contrast with the course taken by David Cameron, who has made support for the NHS a key plank of his campaign."
The whole campaign has been surreal, and David Cameron's unquestioning support for the NHS has always seemed bizarre, but this takes the biscuit.
The article goes on to say
"A year earlier, Mr Clegg had contributed to the notorious Orange Book in which those on the right of the party discussed how policies should change"
I've heard of the Orange Book, but haven't read it. Perhaps now's the time. The Lib Dems have certainly harboured some unlikely people, such as Mark Littlewood.
Dare we dream that it will be Clegg, rather than Cameron, who removes his socialist mask on the 7th of May, and helps to set the country back on the course to prosperity and freedom?
None of the possible outcomes in this election are good, but Guido seems to think that a Lib-Con coalition would be the least bad ...
Posted by: Suboptimalplanet.blogspot.com | Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 11:05 AM
What it's all about, Tom, is rosette politics. No matter what the policies are - the image and naked power is everything. Clegg wants one thing - to be PM.
Would you honestly trust any of the three to keep his promises, esp. the one on the NHS?
With minor parties and independents shut out of this election by the MSM, what we have left is sheer farce.
Posted by: jameshigham | Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 10:41 AM