What’ll we do next together – vote ready soon

Don’t trust them yet.. this new reform looks very much like the old one BUT new words..

The next thing should be raising awareness of the use of unqualified teachers teaching  across the country. Every child has the right to a qualified teacher for all lessons. Head teachers should stop cutting corners especially when there are so many qualified teachers who can’t get a job or supply due to this. Their qualifications are just going to waste yet nothing is being done about this issue. 

I wonder if any consideration will be given to imposing a limit on the number of patients each GP can manage – or maybe there is one in place already? Seems to be standard at my Local Practise that there is over a 2 week wait to book an appointment to see your own GP for anything we, the patients consider ‘non urgent (extremely dangerous for those who don’t like to make a fuss)So’.
It’s infuriating beyond belief to find there is a 3 week wait between having a blood Test. Week one, wait a week before calling surgery for results, if all clear but the problem persists a further 2 weeks before another consultation. More Blood tests, same wait, all clear results, problem persists, a further 2 weeks before the GP re-opens his schedule? What the heck is going on! Nurses at the same practise giving conflicting advice as to medication needed/not needed to travel. Only the GP could possibly confirm which is right but guess what? not urgent – wait! Whilst this conversation was taking place, the receptionist was heard to give advice to someone on the phone asking to join the practise. Things are out of control. More GP’s per surgery and once the quota is close to being exceeded, recruit another one. In the long run it would save money as illnesses would be caught earlier, less patients going to A&E and less money being spent on the ‘let’s give this a try’ prescriptions that are being written out before you can say Jack Robinson!
Thanks Goodness for 38 Degrees!

YES BUT: original problems of the NHS remain, from democratic deficit / corruption of motivations.

We remain highly vulnerable, as patients, as citizens: care dependent on secret battle outcomes.

Priority for integration may curb worst; will not preclude failures, function and finance, public and private.

Despite all vocations, services will reflect societies: we need universal freedom of conscience.

High-level judgement scewed: on tax and spend, public and private, sensible and hot-money attraction.

By the prevailing logic, to attract the highest foreign investment, we should vote for slavery…!

As an ordinary citizen, I would prefer ‘the democratic gamble’, making our own luck…!

BUT we need to know what kind of ‘democracy’ is sustainable, not to find ourselves in mob-rule chaos.

Look at the fate of democracy, ‘the vote and frail parties’, in countries unable to stave-off desperation.

To be permanently free, for all to exercise freedom of conscience, we need to allow ourselves security.

There is no real freedom if some are ruled by greed, some by fear and greed, and some by just fear.

THINK how different would be an equal income-share, compared to a greasy-pole average income…

We can hope for the best from Cameron’s claim of reversal: ‘doctors to be supported by bureaucrats’.

To avoid disappointment, not just over local healthcare but over global survival, time to choose equality.

No moral basis for the radiation of fear in some families, the risk of corruption in others.

EVERY reason to set example here, to contribute to Global Spring: share, improve, save our one world!

To gain sustainable democracy, to choose secure equality, we have first to understand our choice.

38-degrees might make the difference…

Secure democracy, to secure all else?

Dictatorship, like nuclear disaster, like climate catastrophe, might be low-risk… but given time…

I commend democracy, the preclusion of dictatorship, the visibility of any corruption, the rule of love?

OBSESSION WITH COMPETITION: from ANGUS SIBLEY

I’m sure I am far from alone in being totally fed up with the free-marketeers’ prepostrous obsession with competition. Back in 1995 I published a small essay on this theme in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, and I am afraid it has lost none of its relevance. Here it is (you can also see it and much more on my website http://www.equilibrium-economicum.net).

THE HYPERTHYROID ECONOMY
 
Unlimited competition in the economy is a pathology resembling hormonal imbalance in the body
 
This essay first appeared in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, London
 
Persistent unemployment, increasing poverty, intensifying stresses in working life all reflect a pathological condition in our economic thought and practice. Its primary symptom is acute obsession with competition.
 
Free market economists adore competition and ascribe to it magical powers. Their writings gush with enthusiasm for intense or even ferocious competition. Even the more sober devotees of the cult are convinced that competition ought always and everywhere to be as keen as possible.
 
Not only do they abhor any attempt to restrain the tussle where it might be painfully intense; they also yearn for competitive behaviour in situations where it does not occur naturally, such as the supply of electricity or gas. They conceive the free market as an economic and social system in which all of us are expected, and if necessary compelled, to compete against each other to the utmost.
 
Theirs is a universal panacea, a golden rule to be applied blindly to every situation. The decline to enquire whether, in any particular case, the practical effects of hypercompetitive behaviour are good for those who work in business or the professions; or for those who buy their products or services; or for society in general.
 
Free market theorists, and the politicians who fall under their influence, see any restraint upon or lack of competition as a thrombosis in the economy’s cardiovascular system. They insist upon the prompt and aggressive treatment that such a condition demands. They rebuff any criticism of their approach by citing the dread example of the Communist world, where the suppression of free markets brought industrial ischaemia [constriction of blood flow] and commercial infarction [death of body tissues].
 
Yet a very different view of competition is possible; one that fully recognises its value, while also perceiving its destructive potential when present in excess. If we compare the role of competition in the economy with the role of the thyroid hormones in the human body, we find remarkable parallels. For just as the thyroid hormones regulate the body’s growth and its entire complex of metabolic processes, so the intensity of competition in the economy influences the pace of development and the efficiency of business.
 
The hypothyroid [thyroid-deficient] child is at risk of dwarfism and cretinism; the hypothyroid adult exhibits lethargy, hypothermia [subnormal body temperature], constipation and obesity. Compare these symptoms with the economic performance of the Communist states, where for many years competition was outlawed. Those countries emerged from the Marxist era with their industries and commerce stunted. Lethargy prevailed in the workplace, where the prevailing sentiment was “we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us”. The business climate was chilly. Industry was torpid in its response to consumer demand. The system was choked with stocks of unwanted or unusable products. Payrolls were overweight.
 
The analogy is clear between the body’s metabolism and the normal processes of the economy, in which labour and materials are transformed into useful goods and services. Just as shortage of the thyroid hormones can impede the metabolism, so lack of competition can hamstring the economy. Just as thyroid deficiency stunts the development of the growing child, so the uncompetitive economy is unlikely to make much progress. Before the collapse of Communism, visitors to eastern Europe felt as though they had gone back in time 50 years.
 
So we need have no quarrel with those who insist that competition is essential for a healthy economy, as the thyroid hormones are vital for the growth and survival of the body. Yet those hormones are as dangerous in excesss as in deficiency. The hyperthyroid patient suffers a range of potentially fatal symptoms [over-rapid metabolism, emotional instability, fever, tachycardia, weight loss and diarrhoea] which, as clearly as those of thyroid deficiency, have their counterparts in the economy.
 
With overaccelerated metabolism we may compare the fretful pace of change in our intensely competitive society. Price wars tend to make established business activities unremunerative, so every company is forced to innovate as fast as possible to preserve a profitable edge over its rivals. There results a frenzy of leap-frogging mutations, most of which offer little real benefit to anyone. However, that does not dismay the free market zealots, for whom “progress is movement for movement’s sake”, to quote the economist Friedrich von Hayek. He was Margaret Thatcher’s favorite guru¸ though he held fast to the view expressed in his 1959 essay Why I am not a Conservative.
 
The extreme emotional swings seen in hyperthyroid patients answer to the abrupt reversals of sentiment on our volatile financial markets. One day they are euphoric, the next plunged in neurotic gloom. Tachycardia [over-rapid heatbeat] and hyperactivity, those hallmarks of thyroid excess, too often affect overcompetitive executives. Weight loss may be likened to the fading away of industries rendered unviable by excessive competition. Diarrhoea recalls the liquidation of assets as loss-making concerns are forced into bankruptcy.
 
In the 1970s, economists rightly diagnosed inadequate competition in many Western economies. Their therapy, however, entails injecting as much competition as possible into every branch of industry, commerce, professional practice and public service. It is like treating a hypothyroid patient with carelessly excessive doses of thyroxine. Physicians are well aware of the grave danger of overcorrection in the treatment of hormonal and metabolic imbalances; economists seem never to have heard of this risk.
 
There is another point of which they seem totally unaware. The conversion of thyroxine into the more active hormone tri-iodothyronine (T3) occurs at widely varying rates in the various tissues and organs, implying that while some parts of the body need an abundant supply of T3, others require only a little. This fact too has its counterpart in economics.
 
For while intense competition may be desirable in the development of microprocessors or of antivirals, it does not follow that this is the best route to the effective provision of public services, including health care. We cannot heal the ills of an uncompetitive economy simply by a headlong dash to the opposite extreme. The task is more subtle, akin to that of achieving a healthy balance in the endocrine [hormone-producing] system.
 
   
 
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I think 38 Degrees should run a campaign, in conjunction with other organisations who may have greater expertise, to expose how  Border Agency culture is to turn down 70% of asylum applications, even when there is overwhelming evidence that an applicant has been tortured and then does try to remove them before they can appeal.
38 Degrees has the Potential to ensure the issue reached the wider public and expose some of the abuse going on.  
Potential to ensure the issue reached the wider public and expose some of the abuse going on.  

Campaign on behalf of failed asyulum seekers whose countries are too dangerouse for them to go back to but received no support from the gov and as as result end up on the streets unable to work.
Its wrong.