My love of the NHS
I have been banging a lot abt NHS, TTIP and in general rant abt the coalition govt. In particular- George Osbourne (Mr. That is not my job to chase tax dodger), David Cameron (Mr I can do what I want and wtf are you going to do abt it?) and Mr Jeremy Hunt (Mr homeopathy vs modern medicine and Mr Bully- http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/
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We also don't need fracking. According to best estimates, in order to stay within 2° of global warming by 2100 and prevent widespread ecological problems, we cannot afford to extract all the fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) from the sources that we are already exploiting. We do not have the carbon budget to do that. Opening up new fields now is simply daft, and we need to put all our R&D/exploratory funds towards expanding and improving the efficiency of renewable sources.
Yes, the NHS isn't perfect - any organisation that needs to cater to 70m people is going to make the occasional mistake. And, when it comes to healthcare, any such problems have the potential to be more serious than in other industries. But suggesting that the fix is to move in the direction of a privatised US-style healthcare system, which spends about 3x that of most European nations (incl. UK) per capita, for similar or worse healthcare outcomes (especially for those not in the top 10% of earners) is simply bonkers.
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Labour is accusing ppl who are against TTIP as anti-capitalism. But that treaty is locking in deals not on free market...
On top of that...the contrary pledges the main parties in regards these issues has been conflicting and misleading.
http://nhaspace.com/2015/03/04/dear-andy-labour-need-to-sort-themselves-out/
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"Markets in which we are free to do whatever we want in the search for profits, regardless of the negative effects (externalities) we may inflict on the environment, our workers, our customers, our suppliers, or society at large. Any hindrances to these "freedoms" in the form of government regulations must be bad, because a) they're government regulations and b) they reduce our profits."
And "anti-capitalist" is similarly defined (by big businesses) roughly as "opposing any measures which allow big businesses to amass as much profit as possible"
Unfortunately, regulatory capture, lobbying, and the propensity of governments to listen to "independent think tanks" (read "industry spokesgroups who are allowed to hide their sources of funding") means that all the large policical parties have basically adopted the above definitions. Even if only so much as they've stopped trying to fight those definitions.
Many of the parts of the mass news media that are also owned by large businesses (especially, but not limited to, the Murdoch-owned parts) help to push this narrative. The BBC tends not to, but it doesn't really have much of a chance to fight it and say anything more nuanced or opinionated in its news segments, and the non-news programmes where it might (e.g. Panorama) aren't particularly widely watched. Which leaves the left-wing press, which are dismissed as being "anti-capitalist".
(And "anti-capitalist" sounds a bit like "communist", which sounds a bit like "failure", thanks to the cold war.)
Yes, there does appear to be a lot of circular reasoning there. But despite that, it seems to be working.
See also Charles Stross' essay the beige dictatorship, which captures some facets of this. (Although I am a bit more optimistic than he, while also thinking that he doesn't put quite enough emphasis on the effects of the media organisations and the corporate sector.)
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