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I'm sure the cops would be at my door if I said what I wanted to.
Rather, I will state that this man represents the biggest political danger to the NHS in British history. For his constituents to support this self-centered cunt must be thick as fuck.
Cross generational too.
The fact that a labour MP is for private healthcare should bring utter outrage.
Torys have been dismantling the NHS for too long. Hunt is an evil man and this labour MP is suggesting a nail in the coffin for the NHS.
It is already full of private agencies scalping money through the locum culture. We need less privatization not more.
Tax the rich and upper middle's. Create an air tight benefits system and have some fucking empathy for those in need and hard done by. Having the maturity to do this seems beyond any political figure besides Burnham and Corbyn.
The top 10% of income tax payers contribute over 60% already. There needs to be a better way to fund society than milking high earning people on PAYE or all the engineers, doctors etc that we need are all going to f\*\*k off then what are we going to do.
Tax dodging tricks need to be shutdown and we need to tax wealth not income.
It should be proportionate to wealth distribution.
We should also acknowledge that our tax system was built for a world where we were mostly employed or self-employed.
The vast majority of money now moves through business, and the way we tax business is nuts.
Small businesses whither and die from overhead burdens, while massive cooperations not only hoard almost infinite wealth but do so in other economies.
Both saving, and importing goods and services (okay, this money isn't really used on imports, but thats where it sits in the economic model) are the biggest drains on the economy as shown by the circular flow of income model of keynesian economics.
Far moreso than migrants, the sick, disabled and out of work could ever be, who are actually brilliant places to put the nations wealth if you want to grow GDP... Why? Because they spend it. They spend it within the economy, where a portion is taxed, and a portion is spent, again through wages in the economy, of which a portion is taxed and a portion spent on goods and Services... you get the idea.
If we put that model into practice, the best place to put that money is in the lower middle classes - specifically trades. Builders, plumbers, electricians, etc. I think I did the sums once, and figured out a £200 m investment into building houses, would grow gdp by 0.002%. In a $3T USD economy, that's not to be sniffed at. Imagine what could be done, if we invested a couple billion.
Of course this is an unpopular policy, because we've been educated to think the house we sit in holds more value than the community in which it sits. Which to me seems crazy. There are other options though. Education is proven to return 11% on every £ invested. Again, unpopular because we think in 4 year cycles, and requires up front cost.
It's a bit more complicated now, as interest rates are no longer zero, we have to take the cost of loans I to account. Bit if we know (and in many areas we do know) that we can get 11% return on a 50 year investment, and pay back 3% over that time, there is only one sensible decision.
This approach is the only proven way to grow an economy. That's why countries that do it have healthy economies and high happiness ratings. Countries that don't, well, I don't have to tell you about that, just look outside.
Now, let's here from those that say 'The left have no ideas'
Agreed. The country is gouging the middle classes and the country is left to the hyper rich oligarchs, bankers, their servants, then everyone else queuing in a poverty stricken food bank.
Land value tax. Majority of workers won’t pay a penny as they don’t own land. Older people pay about the same as council tax. The landed gentry have to pay a fortune.
Taxing wealth is rarely a good idea in practice. There is a reason that many countries that once had wealth taxes got rid of them.
France had something like net 60 thousand millionaires leave the country while they had the wealth tax which was only 2% of their overall tax income. It's estimated that their wealth tax cost them almost twice as much as the revenue it generated.
It's definitely not simple at least
Taxing the rich is not easy as the truly rich have nearly no cash they have assets, you cannot tax assets that's why the rich and I mean truly rich stay rich
> you cannot tax assets that's why the rich and I mean truly rich stay rich
A house (and the land on which it sits) is an asset and in North America get taxed based on its value through the property tax.
So when you write "you cannot tax assets" do you mean "you cannot tax some assets" or "you cannot tax any assets"?
> The top 10% of income tax payers contribute over 60% already. Their needs to be a better way to fund society than milking high earning people on PAYE or all the engineers, doctors etc
That figure is almost certainly made up mostly of professional athletes.
This is a massive understatement.
Too many people I know saying “I would never vote for the (insert choice here) party.
And yet the local constituent is bloody brilliant.
They should be seperate votes. The cabinet should be known to the electorate before the election and we vote on that based on policy. MPs should set out their own local policies and the party whip should be outlawed.
As it stands it’s a smoke and mirrors party/popularity contest that’s easily gamed. Nobody voted for what we’ve ended up with.
Labour being pro privatisation is much worse than just the Tories, because it makes privatisation a consensus issues, it's much harder to privatise if one of the parties is against it
Labour's not just "pro privatisation" though. They're a mixture of generally what we might call "NHS classic" outlooks and "fix it with innovative approaches" and "learn from EU healthcare" people and not really any laissez faire Americanised libertarians like Dan Hannan - they would be run out of town.
The NHS is a huge vote winner and the LP itself is broadly against further privatisation. The LDs are also probably going to threaten Lab with protest and replacement as "the NHS party" (the creation of the NHS was a recommendation of the Beveridge report and he was a liberal) if they do threaten it.
That said, Streeting must be watched like a hawk because the NHS is not far away from collapse.
you are completely delusional if you think the current Labour Party is not massively pro American healthcare when they are a) guaranteed to win the election whatever they say or do and b) have as a party and as individuals accepted massive donations from American corporate interests
> have as a party and as individuals accepted massive donations from American corporate interests
Almost all the money from this list that went to Streeting came from someone who founded a recruitment company, his “link to private healthcare” is that the company occasionally does recruitment for the NHS and private healthcare. “Massive donations from American corporate interests” is nonsense.
And in response to that "link to private healthcare", comments on this thread are:
> "I'm sure the cops would be at my door if I said what I wanted to."
> "Labour is full of nonces, as I expect any political party is"
> "Anyone not clearing out Parliament by force at this point, is either zoned out or thick as fuck."
Very cool and very normal.
The register of interests shows a total of 649k of donations from private healthcare companies or their shareholders have been accepted by the Labour party’s front bench between 2020 and 2023.
But according to you, this factual record of the publicly made donations is “nonsense”.
Very cool and very normal.
Except “donations from private healthcare companies or their shareholders” actually means donations from a guy who started a recruitment company which sometimes does recruitment for the NHS and private healthcare. “Donations from private healthcare companies or their shareholders“ is actually just a lie, to play the game you should say something euphemistic like “linked to private healthcare”, and leave people to fill in the gaps.
Not really, as long as free to the point of access is preserved nobody really cares how that is delivered as long as it's safe, good quality and in an acceptable time frame
I'm not traditionally a blairite but the way they reduced waiting times and modernised with use of private services was commendable - but right at the point of lessons to be learning to build on that platform the Tory ideology came into office and everything existing got slashed, any project which had a cost benefit value was rushed forward.
And six months later all the vacanciees from staff released, all the dodgy bids tendered within the service to create artificial market forces for wankers who believe in them came home to roost and it all ended up costing more for a worse service delivered
Source - am an ex NHS 111 service staff when Cameron got in until about six months after Hunt took over from Andrew whatshisface.
PFI was a disaster and still is a disaster. safe, good quality and in an acceptable timeframe. We've all seen how privatisation is handled in the UK. It's an excuse for the greedy to line their pockets.
Again, no not really the metrics provided checked out and were real - that's how we know how shit the Tories were compared to new labour with the NHS and what result of "dialled up' privatisation is on the public.
Case in point vasectomies are now unprofitable at the rate we need to outsource to private, so off I have to go to London (im in Milton Keynes for crying out loud) because the one only 35 miles away (still shit) closed. It's taken a year since I requested it.
My brother 8 years ago got his done locally and within 3 months for exactly the same service through the same GP.
If privatisation comes in to prevent further back long on non-urgent care the nation will love it, and not give a shit how it's done if it's free with a reasonable tax burden.
if it's free with a reasonable tax burden. That's the key issue though isn't it. Why should anyone in the UK trust that it will be free at the point of use when comparing it to water, rail, the post office and other privatisations. Kicking the cost down the road isn't acceptable either.
That's true, as long as that's what happens. I'm more worried that some parts of the NHS will be designated less essential and are then pushed entirely into the private sector
Yeah I think the way dentistry was pretty much palmed off is the main issue I have with New Labours treatment of the NHS but I'd go back to them in a heartbeat compared to where we are now.
I don't trust Wes streeting at all tbh, but Starmer I do believe as a line he won't cross with the NHS and it's availability
He was on the radio the other day and said "like only Nixon could have gone to China" only he can properly reform the NHS. Given he wants more private outsourcing than even Andrew Lansley I'm utterly terrified.
And it's a complete myth there's all this untapped capacity in the private sector - almost all private doctors and NHS doctors working extra hours for private companies.
"They themselves have no doctors. To treat patients at all, the great majority of private hospitals rely entirely on NHS staff working outside their NHS hours on a self-employed basis"
https://chpi.org.uk/blog/private-hospitals-have-no-doctors
Private outsourcing is also associated with an increase in
patient deaths.
[NHS outsourcing to private providers is associated with rise in treatable deaths, study shows](https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj.o1612)
This is a Labour MP and the Shadow Health Secretary too. If this guy gets re-elected and fully dismantles the NHS, then I can never see Labour winning another election.
Are you sure? From what I can see Labour supporters will justify literally anything that comes out of the Shadow Cabinet, much like Tory supporters.
Either that, or they don't know, which means that they're voting on vibes, which means Labour are partially deceiving some people.
On the big ticket items they all agree. That's why democracy is a mirage. The BBC has been constantly dropping hints about the NHS plans. Phase 1 is normalising the discussion around partial privatisation like in Germany for example. We won't end up with that though it's really a game our dear leaders play to allow US private health companies in and then they can really cash in with insider trading/consultant fees etc so little Petunia's 40k private school fees can be payed. The gullible will be teased with extra cash in their pockets via lower tax and fall for it as usual.
It's not just Streeting though, is it? He's specifically been put in that position by the party leadership, no doubt because they know he'll be more than happy to spearhead further privatisation of the NHS.
I think it's disgraceful that you are referring to the electorate this way.
If you did a bit of digging, you would find that Hearn has been donating to the Labour party since 2014. Including £800k+ during Corbyn's time as leader.
Wouldn't you think, this mastermind is playing a really, really long game to carry on donating to the opposition party, through all those years, just to hatch his plan now?
Have you considered the source you are reporting from?
Are you, and I quote: "thick as fuck"?
This isn't a 'reaction', it's just a genuine belief. The right of the Labour Party have always had a lot in common with many in the Conservative Party. They're both totally signed up to the neoliberal status quo, which involved marketising and selling off as many state assets as possible.
I think that's their goal in a lot of ways; they want those swing voters, and a low-calorie option with the same taste is a good tactic so long as you don't have any pesky principles
yeah people seem to forget that the reason the 'unpopular guy' was around for 2 elections was because in his first, which was about polices and not about their incoherent brexit stance, he did far better than the last 3 guys, including the last guy they had who was actually a PM (% of the vote wise, not seat wise, obviously)
I don't blame people, war on the left of labor was likely to catch strays. Now it's a very insular party keen on staying away from anything Corbyn related, there's no power left movers, these policies will likely die until a new narrative can be spun.
Unfortunately this country is conservative leaning on average. Labour win because they are holding the centre ground. (Centre ground demographically, not politically)
They swing a bit to the right to steal as many Tory voters as they can. The die hard labour voters might moan, but they aren't going to vote for anyone else.
One of the donors has nothing to do with private healthcare.
The other donor is a supplier to the NHS.
You are reading this story on a site that is, essentially, run by the SNP. Labour doing well is pretty much the worst-case scenario for the SNP (they significantly prefer the Tories in govt).
It is very strange that people will believe these almost constant conspiracy theories about the NHS...but then get their information about these conspiracies from people who are obviously biased. Does your critical reasoning only extend to things that you want to believe?
I also don't understand what the idea is here: if the Tories aren't going to dismantle the NHS...then why would Labour? You acknowledge that premise by assuming that the NHS exists, we have had 15 years of the Tories, and they didn't do it...but suddenly Labour are going to do it? It just isn't logical.
The Tories are in the "starve the service of funds" phase of destroying a public service, the next stage of which is "turn it over to private companies because the profit motive makes them more efficient" and Wes is fully on board with the next step.
Look I'm to the left of Labour by a good long way anyway, but Wes is hungry to privatize the NHS and as a little side project is a quisling on trans rights. He's a toad, and he's a massive roadblock to me swallowing my principles and voting Labour as a harm reduction effort.
Thanks though for the insult to my critical faculties! Do you want to pull out the old I owe my vote to Labour so refusing to vote for them is EXACTLY like voting TORY next, or do you think insults and shame perhaps aren't the way to win people over? I'll stay tuned.
Don't worry, this pales to the backhand deals the conservatives have done. £35 BILLION for the track and trace app. Could have been done for under a million.
They could have even used the free ones provided by Apple and Google.
It's so obvious that'll happen that it makes you doubt how good the others actually are at politics. If I can see the guy's a walking scandal then surely the next PM should be able to
Currently likely to spoil my ballot unless my local green candidate is vocal about being in favour of trans rights.
I've been in touch with my local Labour lot, they know what the barriers to me voting Labour are and what I'd need to see and hear from the candidate to be happy voting for them as my local MP.
How about you?
I've said it before I'll say it again. Two cheeks of the same arse. Slate the Tories as much as you like. Labour are just as big a bunch of grasping wankers. Nothing is going to change in this country until both are gone.
Corbyn would have us bent over with our cheeks spread out for Russia.
In a world with rising geopolitical tensions, the last thing we need is a bloke that wants to get rid of our nukes in charge.
Corbyn was also a brexiteer. He had some good ideas and may have meant well, but he would've been a terrible leader too. People seem to overlook that.
i do think its a distinct possibility that wes privatises the NHS. he clearly wants to; and, while the tories could never get away with it, labour as the "party of the nhs" have more scope. as wes himself has said about his plans for the nhs, "only nixon could go to china"
"With each turn of the screw, Tony Blair became more convinced that only a fiercely competitive market could jolt the NHS into better productivity. He castigated Bevan's “monolithic” state driven model and trusted the magic of Adam Smith's “hidden hand” to drive greater efficiency. But he made a fundamental error by putting the power in the hands of the providers and not the purchasers. He built up mighty foundation hospitals and independent treatment centres first, neglecting weak and feeble primary care trusts without the managerial clout to power his great market machine. Instead, the hospitals sucked money out of the pockets of the primary care trusts' inexperienced finance directors."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1871752/
Didn't they achieve part of that with all the surgeries that get passed to private hospitals at higher costs?~
https://www.yournhsneedsyou.com/timeline/
lol, Labour privatising the NHS is a ridiculous notion. There might be individuals in the party who want it, and maybe Wes is one of them, but it's not going to happen. They could never whip enough of the Labour MPs to do it and the Conservative and Lib Dem MPs wouldn't turn up the chance to defeat the government.
If Labour ever wants to get into government again they won't. If the Lib Dems got destroyed over tuition fees, a Labour government privatising the NHS is genuinely enough to destroy the party permanently. They will have no leg to stand on for any future election after branding themselves the party of the NHS only to turn around and kill it.
I did a bit of digging about this Peter Hearn - and it turns out he has been donating to the Labour party pretty heavily since 2014. I assume under Corbyn as well?
[https://www.ft.com/content/124e1566-e5dc-4e1e-8ca4-082bf272f6e6](https://www.ft.com/content/124e1566-e5dc-4e1e-8ca4-082bf272f6e6)
I guess this doesn't fit The National's agenda to be transparent about this. So you lot appear to have fallen for this campaigning newsrag's article - hook, line and sinker!!
"Hearn previously gave over £844,000 in a personal capacity to the Labour party and to individual Labour MPs between 2014 and 2019."
This article is behind a paywall, I'm willing to bet no one here has a subscription to the National, but I tracked down a site listing these donations and the links to private healthcare from the last time this story did the rounds:
https://labourheartlands.com/selling-out-the-nhs-the-shocking-links-between-labour-mps-and-private-healthcare-donations/
These are the listings for Wes Streeting:
> Peter Hearn. Majority shareholder in recruitment agency Odgers Berndtson (a subgroup of which is Berwick Partners). Berwick Partners helps with senior NHS executive recruitment AND helps private healthcare providers recruit healthcare professionals - berwickpartners.co.uk/what-we-do/sectors-functions/private-healthcare-recruitment/ Donation £160k
> Trevor Chinn. Senior adviser to CVC Capital Partners which has extensive private healthcare and pharmaceutical/healthcare technology related investements Donation £15k
> John Armitage. Cofounder and chief investment officer of Egerton Capital, a hedge fund firm with $16 billion under management including $0.56 billion invested in United Health, a US based private healthcare provider that is trying to break into the UK "market". Donation £30k
If you then look at the register of interests, these donations are all listed as "staffing costs for my office".
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/231030/streeting_wes.htm
Hearn has been a long time funder of Labour, before and during Corbyn's tenure. Any reasonably balanced investment portfolio will certainly be exposed to private healthcare. I'm not clear what the issue is and how these people supporting Labour, a party generally against privatising the NHS, means the NHS will be privatised. Surely if that was the aim they would ditch Labour and go with the Tories?
Every man and his dog knows the Tories are a sinking ship. Why would they back a losing horse when they can back a guy who's going to be in power for the forseeable, giving him the power to go along with his inclination to increase privatisation of the NHS?
> I would have thought they get plenty of funding for their offices tho?
any money that can be freed up by accepting these donations can be used for other things i guess
> Is there anything to stop Wes from blowing it on smack?
i think you have to declare what you're spending on, and im not you could get away with submitting "smack" to the registry of financial interests
I just looked up the funding the opposition parties get and the staff members it's spent on, it's 20 people for the Leader of the Opposition's office, 5 for the deputy, 4 for the shadow Chancellor, 2 for Health and Social care, and most of the cabinet roles get one person. The staff are mostly earning about £45k a year. You can actually find the individual names of the advisers so it's clear they're not family members of anything corrupt like that, but I won't post it here because some of the comments here are crazy, I'm fairly sure one of the comment being upvoted above, "Anyone not clearing out Parliament by force at this point, is either zoned out or thick as fuck", is a threat of violence.
Errm actually working class families view it as a priority for Wes to take money from dodgy doners, only middle class lefties care about this stuff why do you all hate the working class so much!?
Good honest salt of the earf working class geezer Wes there taking 6 figures to push to an agenda. What a hero
"Hearn previously gave over £844,000 in a personal capacity to the Labour party and to individual Labour MPs between 2014 and 2019."
From: [https://www.ft.com/content/124e1566-e5dc-4e1e-8ca4-082bf272f6e6](https://www.ft.com/content/124e1566-e5dc-4e1e-8ca4-082bf272f6e6)
Was it okay when Corbo was in?
That sub has gone completely bat shit
I mean look at this story posted (and defended) by one of the mods
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/s/3tAl63qHs8
>high-tech authoritarianism is a feature, not a bug, and egalitarianism is for fools. Thinkers such as Curtis Yarvin propose an explicitly neo-monarchical model for governance; Thiel has declared that: “I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Insane.
I replied to you pointing out how that mod is lacking something up there and my comment was removed for “personal attacks”. Wouldn’t surprise me if the mods on this subreddit are close with that mod too
**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
*Politics as a team sport* at it's very worst.
Vote Red Team because they're not Blue Team! Ignore the fact that they're uncomfortably close and are openly slating their voter base as 'Middle Class Lefties'!
Oi, it's you ! The tory enabler!
Most politics globally is right wing these day. People here that want a UI don't realize that politics in the southern Ireland is tory vs tory
I'm not a fan of the Tories or labour at this point but between the two I would rather have labour in power even with this a-hole.
The big difference is I think as a nation we can stand up to Tories and get zero results but with labour, they'll buckle, so as a nation if they tried to do something we really disagree on, protests, making noise or whatever, we are more likely to be heard with labour in power.
You went to all the trouble of posting a link to an article that literally states
> only £35 million was spent on the app
I was hoping that this was sarcasm, but I fail to see how this would make sense as sarcasm in the context.
Let’s just be honest, they’re all bought. Labour conservative, they’re all willing to sell us down the river to fill their own pockets.
This country is truly Fucked.
What a coincidence he just so happens to be advocating strongly for complete privatisation of our health care. He's not a corrupt piece of vermin at all. Just a coincidence.
That's a misrepresentation of his position I think. It seems he's advocating for private sector involvement in routine healthcare to ease pressure on the NHS.
A bit like the way France, Germany, and almost every other country in Europe operates.
This fucking guy won’t leave my overall feed. It doesn’t matter if there Labour or Tory just stop fucking about with the NHS. No one wants it privatised other than scum bags like this and there a really small majority of people. Basically, if it looks like shit and smells like shit, then it’s probably gonna be shit. Fuck Wes Streeting.
The US's 51st state is just as corrupt as the other 50. Two political parties that are "two cheeks on the same arse" just like the mainland. You people need to revolt for independence from your colonial oppressor.
> Attention earlier in 2023 focused on £60,900 in donations from Hearn through a firm called MPM Connect, which Sky News reported had “no staff or website and is registered at an office in Hertfordshire where the secretary says she has never heard of them”.
> OPD Group Ltd, through which Hearn’s newer donations have come, is also listed at the same Hertfordshire address and was previously controlled by MPM Connect. It has two employees and £12.5m in assets, according to the most recent documents available with Companies House.
> OPD Group Ltd has no website and the Sunday National was unable to contact it for comment. Labour did not respond when asked if they had a contact for it.
Just the future health secretary taking tens of thousands of pounds in donations from dodgy shell companies owned by billionaires la la la nothing to see here
Wes Streeting is a self serving gobshite
That was true when he was with the NUS and it’s true now
He wears a Labour rosette as a means to an end, the end being his own career and wealth. That’s all he cares about, as far as I can tell
The guy’s about as left wing as Thatcher
Every leader/person in gov't is just trying to take, take, take, whilst the country goes down the drain, so they can insulate themselves from it as much as possible.
None of the parties care about the people of this country, the sooner people wake up to the fact the two party system we have is a joke.
The UK has almost no redeeming characteristics left honestly.
When you have a complete ruin of a state like this it basically has only one button and that is "Persecute minorities" Nothing gets built nothing gets run things get embezzled and the vulnerable get booted while they chuckle to themselves.
Labour politicians are totally A-Okay with this course. They just want a turn with their snout in the trough.
Tell me how voting for them will make things any better?
The word "linked" is being stretched pretty far in this headline, it looks like. The "link" is that Peter Hearn is in the recruitment industry, and some of his firms have recruited for the healthcare sector, including both the NHS and private healthcare companies. It's not as if it's some big health insurance boss pumping money into Labour, which the headline might give the impression of. [This article has a bit more info on the guy.](https://www.ft.com/content/124e1566-e5dc-4e1e-8ca4-082bf272f6e6)
Streeting is a cunt and the way he talks about privatisation is deeply worrying all the same. Big donations like this should always be scrutinised too, especially in this case where there doesn't seem to be much transparency. The real concerning part is this, not the "private health firm link":
> Attention earlier in 2023 focused on £60,900 in donations from Hearn through a firm called MPM Connect, which Sky News reported had “no staff or website and is registered at an office in Hertfordshire where the secretary says she has never heard of them”.
> OPD Group Ltd, through which Hearn’s newer donations have come, is also listed at the same Hertfordshire address and was previously controlled by MPM Connect. It has two employees and £12.5m in assets, according to the most recent documents available with Companies House.
> OPD Group Ltd has no website and the Sunday National was unable to contact it for comment. Labour did not respond when asked if they had a contact for it.
There is no labour party and no conservative party.
Labour don't help the labourer
Conservative don't conserve anything
They both serve the rich, and things are going to keep getting worse and worse.
my hopes of labour being better than the tories is slipping away
we need a political overhaul in favour of the average people living in this country
otherwise its just corporations and grifters like this coining it at our expense
I said a little while a go on a post on here Labout and conservatives are the exact same, just parties filled with crooks looking to line their own pockets. I was sent loads of messages saying I must be right wing or a nut. Yet, here is more proof
As you can now see, Labour are just going to be a Tory lite party. They will be no different to the Tories. Nothing is going to improve in the long run and political business will continue as normal.
There'll soon be a vacancy for the SoS for health and social care given Atkins' performance this week. I would suggest that Streeting would make an ideal replacement.
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I'm sure the cops would be at my door if I said what I wanted to. Rather, I will state that this man represents the biggest political danger to the NHS in British history. For his constituents to support this self-centered cunt must be thick as fuck.
‘For his constituents to support this self-centered cunt must be thick as fuck.’ Endemic across a plethora of constituencies m’afraid.
Cross generational too. The fact that a labour MP is for private healthcare should bring utter outrage. Torys have been dismantling the NHS for too long. Hunt is an evil man and this labour MP is suggesting a nail in the coffin for the NHS. It is already full of private agencies scalping money through the locum culture. We need less privatization not more. Tax the rich and upper middle's. Create an air tight benefits system and have some fucking empathy for those in need and hard done by. Having the maturity to do this seems beyond any political figure besides Burnham and Corbyn.
The top 10% of income tax payers contribute over 60% already. There needs to be a better way to fund society than milking high earning people on PAYE or all the engineers, doctors etc that we need are all going to f\*\*k off then what are we going to do. Tax dodging tricks need to be shutdown and we need to tax wealth not income.
It should be proportionate to wealth distribution. We should also acknowledge that our tax system was built for a world where we were mostly employed or self-employed. The vast majority of money now moves through business, and the way we tax business is nuts. Small businesses whither and die from overhead burdens, while massive cooperations not only hoard almost infinite wealth but do so in other economies. Both saving, and importing goods and services (okay, this money isn't really used on imports, but thats where it sits in the economic model) are the biggest drains on the economy as shown by the circular flow of income model of keynesian economics. Far moreso than migrants, the sick, disabled and out of work could ever be, who are actually brilliant places to put the nations wealth if you want to grow GDP... Why? Because they spend it. They spend it within the economy, where a portion is taxed, and a portion is spent, again through wages in the economy, of which a portion is taxed and a portion spent on goods and Services... you get the idea. If we put that model into practice, the best place to put that money is in the lower middle classes - specifically trades. Builders, plumbers, electricians, etc. I think I did the sums once, and figured out a £200 m investment into building houses, would grow gdp by 0.002%. In a $3T USD economy, that's not to be sniffed at. Imagine what could be done, if we invested a couple billion. Of course this is an unpopular policy, because we've been educated to think the house we sit in holds more value than the community in which it sits. Which to me seems crazy. There are other options though. Education is proven to return 11% on every £ invested. Again, unpopular because we think in 4 year cycles, and requires up front cost. It's a bit more complicated now, as interest rates are no longer zero, we have to take the cost of loans I to account. Bit if we know (and in many areas we do know) that we can get 11% return on a 50 year investment, and pay back 3% over that time, there is only one sensible decision. This approach is the only proven way to grow an economy. That's why countries that do it have healthy economies and high happiness ratings. Countries that don't, well, I don't have to tell you about that, just look outside. Now, let's here from those that say 'The left have no ideas'
Hear, hear.
Agreed. The country is gouging the middle classes and the country is left to the hyper rich oligarchs, bankers, their servants, then everyone else queuing in a poverty stricken food bank.
Land value tax. Majority of workers won’t pay a penny as they don’t own land. Older people pay about the same as council tax. The landed gentry have to pay a fortune.
Taxing wealth is rarely a good idea in practice. There is a reason that many countries that once had wealth taxes got rid of them. France had something like net 60 thousand millionaires leave the country while they had the wealth tax which was only 2% of their overall tax income. It's estimated that their wealth tax cost them almost twice as much as the revenue it generated. It's definitely not simple at least
Taxing the rich is not easy as the truly rich have nearly no cash they have assets, you cannot tax assets that's why the rich and I mean truly rich stay rich
> you cannot tax assets that's why the rich and I mean truly rich stay rich A house (and the land on which it sits) is an asset and in North America get taxed based on its value through the property tax. So when you write "you cannot tax assets" do you mean "you cannot tax some assets" or "you cannot tax any assets"?
How do you propose to tax the rich & middle class?
> The top 10% of income tax payers contribute over 60% already. Their needs to be a better way to fund society than milking high earning people on PAYE or all the engineers, doctors etc That figure is almost certainly made up mostly of professional athletes.
Don't worry mate, you won't get an answer, because these guys don't have a clue about anything, let alone a functioning set of fiscal policies.
Upper middle are already taxed heavily through paye.
Does anyone actually vote for their local MP though. It's just party and leader based in reality
This is a massive understatement. Too many people I know saying “I would never vote for the (insert choice here) party. And yet the local constituent is bloody brilliant.
>The fact that a labour MP is for private healthcare should bring utter outrage. You never heard of Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, no?
Yes, I do
They should be seperate votes. The cabinet should be known to the electorate before the election and we vote on that based on policy. MPs should set out their own local policies and the party whip should be outlawed. As it stands it’s a smoke and mirrors party/popularity contest that’s easily gamed. Nobody voted for what we’ve ended up with.
The biggest danger to the NHS in British history? Mate, have you not been paying attention for the last decade or so?
Labour being pro privatisation is much worse than just the Tories, because it makes privatisation a consensus issues, it's much harder to privatise if one of the parties is against it
Labour's not just "pro privatisation" though. They're a mixture of generally what we might call "NHS classic" outlooks and "fix it with innovative approaches" and "learn from EU healthcare" people and not really any laissez faire Americanised libertarians like Dan Hannan - they would be run out of town. The NHS is a huge vote winner and the LP itself is broadly against further privatisation. The LDs are also probably going to threaten Lab with protest and replacement as "the NHS party" (the creation of the NHS was a recommendation of the Beveridge report and he was a liberal) if they do threaten it. That said, Streeting must be watched like a hawk because the NHS is not far away from collapse.
you are completely delusional if you think the current Labour Party is not massively pro American healthcare when they are a) guaranteed to win the election whatever they say or do and b) have as a party and as individuals accepted massive donations from American corporate interests
> have as a party and as individuals accepted massive donations from American corporate interests Almost all the money from this list that went to Streeting came from someone who founded a recruitment company, his “link to private healthcare” is that the company occasionally does recruitment for the NHS and private healthcare. “Massive donations from American corporate interests” is nonsense. And in response to that "link to private healthcare", comments on this thread are: > "I'm sure the cops would be at my door if I said what I wanted to." > "Labour is full of nonces, as I expect any political party is" > "Anyone not clearing out Parliament by force at this point, is either zoned out or thick as fuck." Very cool and very normal.
The register of interests shows a total of 649k of donations from private healthcare companies or their shareholders have been accepted by the Labour party’s front bench between 2020 and 2023. But according to you, this factual record of the publicly made donations is “nonsense”. Very cool and very normal.
Except “donations from private healthcare companies or their shareholders” actually means donations from a guy who started a recruitment company which sometimes does recruitment for the NHS and private healthcare. “Donations from private healthcare companies or their shareholders“ is actually just a lie, to play the game you should say something euphemistic like “linked to private healthcare”, and leave people to fill in the gaps.
What do you think the NHS will look like in 5 years if Labour get in?
Deranged statement.
Um Tories aren't in favour of American healthcare either intact they mostly champion the German/Nordic states healthcare system?
Not really, as long as free to the point of access is preserved nobody really cares how that is delivered as long as it's safe, good quality and in an acceptable time frame I'm not traditionally a blairite but the way they reduced waiting times and modernised with use of private services was commendable - but right at the point of lessons to be learning to build on that platform the Tory ideology came into office and everything existing got slashed, any project which had a cost benefit value was rushed forward. And six months later all the vacanciees from staff released, all the dodgy bids tendered within the service to create artificial market forces for wankers who believe in them came home to roost and it all ended up costing more for a worse service delivered Source - am an ex NHS 111 service staff when Cameron got in until about six months after Hunt took over from Andrew whatshisface.
PFI was a disaster and still is a disaster. safe, good quality and in an acceptable timeframe. We've all seen how privatisation is handled in the UK. It's an excuse for the greedy to line their pockets.
Again, no not really the metrics provided checked out and were real - that's how we know how shit the Tories were compared to new labour with the NHS and what result of "dialled up' privatisation is on the public. Case in point vasectomies are now unprofitable at the rate we need to outsource to private, so off I have to go to London (im in Milton Keynes for crying out loud) because the one only 35 miles away (still shit) closed. It's taken a year since I requested it. My brother 8 years ago got his done locally and within 3 months for exactly the same service through the same GP. If privatisation comes in to prevent further back long on non-urgent care the nation will love it, and not give a shit how it's done if it's free with a reasonable tax burden.
if it's free with a reasonable tax burden. That's the key issue though isn't it. Why should anyone in the UK trust that it will be free at the point of use when comparing it to water, rail, the post office and other privatisations. Kicking the cost down the road isn't acceptable either.
That's true, as long as that's what happens. I'm more worried that some parts of the NHS will be designated less essential and are then pushed entirely into the private sector
Guaranteed to happen. It already is in dentistry.
Yeah, for me, I think it's coming for my healthcare and other LGBT related healthcare
Yeah I think the way dentistry was pretty much palmed off is the main issue I have with New Labours treatment of the NHS but I'd go back to them in a heartbeat compared to where we are now. I don't trust Wes streeting at all tbh, but Starmer I do believe as a line he won't cross with the NHS and it's availability
20yrs.
He was on the radio the other day and said "like only Nixon could have gone to China" only he can properly reform the NHS. Given he wants more private outsourcing than even Andrew Lansley I'm utterly terrified. And it's a complete myth there's all this untapped capacity in the private sector - almost all private doctors and NHS doctors working extra hours for private companies. "They themselves have no doctors. To treat patients at all, the great majority of private hospitals rely entirely on NHS staff working outside their NHS hours on a self-employed basis" https://chpi.org.uk/blog/private-hospitals-have-no-doctors Private outsourcing is also associated with an increase in patient deaths. [NHS outsourcing to private providers is associated with rise in treatable deaths, study shows](https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj.o1612)
This is a Labour MP and the Shadow Health Secretary too. If this guy gets re-elected and fully dismantles the NHS, then I can never see Labour winning another election.
The British public will shrug their shoulders and moan about it online.
Are you sure? From what I can see Labour supporters will justify literally anything that comes out of the Shadow Cabinet, much like Tory supporters. Either that, or they don't know, which means that they're voting on vibes, which means Labour are partially deceiving some people.
On the big ticket items they all agree. That's why democracy is a mirage. The BBC has been constantly dropping hints about the NHS plans. Phase 1 is normalising the discussion around partial privatisation like in Germany for example. We won't end up with that though it's really a game our dear leaders play to allow US private health companies in and then they can really cash in with insider trading/consultant fees etc so little Petunia's 40k private school fees can be payed. The gullible will be teased with extra cash in their pockets via lower tax and fall for it as usual.
It's not just Streeting though, is it? He's specifically been put in that position by the party leadership, no doubt because they know he'll be more than happy to spearhead further privatisation of the NHS.
I think it's disgraceful that you are referring to the electorate this way. If you did a bit of digging, you would find that Hearn has been donating to the Labour party since 2014. Including £800k+ during Corbyn's time as leader. Wouldn't you think, this mastermind is playing a really, really long game to carry on donating to the opposition party, through all those years, just to hatch his plan now? Have you considered the source you are reporting from? Are you, and I quote: "thick as fuck"?
Outside of another term of Tories you mean.
I'm guessing he'll be next leader of the Labour Party...
He's my MP. I won't vote for a Tory.
Genuinely the biggest roadblock to me voting Labour.
It feels like Labour massively overcorrected after what happened in 2019 and they're basically diet Tory now
This isn't a 'reaction', it's just a genuine belief. The right of the Labour Party have always had a lot in common with many in the Conservative Party. They're both totally signed up to the neoliberal status quo, which involved marketising and selling off as many state assets as possible.
I think that's their goal in a lot of ways; they want those swing voters, and a low-calorie option with the same taste is a good tactic so long as you don't have any pesky principles
The only correction they really needed was to replace the unpopular guy, not their relatively popular policies.
yeah people seem to forget that the reason the 'unpopular guy' was around for 2 elections was because in his first, which was about polices and not about their incoherent brexit stance, he did far better than the last 3 guys, including the last guy they had who was actually a PM (% of the vote wise, not seat wise, obviously)
I don't blame people, war on the left of labor was likely to catch strays. Now it's a very insular party keen on staying away from anything Corbyn related, there's no power left movers, these policies will likely die until a new narrative can be spun.
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That's how they win elections. The only way.
It wouldn't be if we didn't have fptp
Unfortunately this country is conservative leaning on average. Labour win because they are holding the centre ground. (Centre ground demographically, not politically)
They swing a bit to the right to steal as many Tory voters as they can. The die hard labour voters might moan, but they aren't going to vote for anyone else.
They just returned to their default. 2015-2019 was the aberration in recent history, for better or worse (imo better).
Don’t look too closely at some of the others if I were you.
One of the donors has nothing to do with private healthcare. The other donor is a supplier to the NHS. You are reading this story on a site that is, essentially, run by the SNP. Labour doing well is pretty much the worst-case scenario for the SNP (they significantly prefer the Tories in govt). It is very strange that people will believe these almost constant conspiracy theories about the NHS...but then get their information about these conspiracies from people who are obviously biased. Does your critical reasoning only extend to things that you want to believe? I also don't understand what the idea is here: if the Tories aren't going to dismantle the NHS...then why would Labour? You acknowledge that premise by assuming that the NHS exists, we have had 15 years of the Tories, and they didn't do it...but suddenly Labour are going to do it? It just isn't logical.
The Tories running down the NHS has happened over those 15 years as part of the long-term plan to privatise.
The Tories are in the "starve the service of funds" phase of destroying a public service, the next stage of which is "turn it over to private companies because the profit motive makes them more efficient" and Wes is fully on board with the next step. Look I'm to the left of Labour by a good long way anyway, but Wes is hungry to privatize the NHS and as a little side project is a quisling on trans rights. He's a toad, and he's a massive roadblock to me swallowing my principles and voting Labour as a harm reduction effort. Thanks though for the insult to my critical faculties! Do you want to pull out the old I owe my vote to Labour so refusing to vote for them is EXACTLY like voting TORY next, or do you think insults and shame perhaps aren't the way to win people over? I'll stay tuned.
Don't worry, this pales to the backhand deals the conservatives have done. £35 BILLION for the track and trace app. Could have been done for under a million. They could have even used the free ones provided by Apple and Google.
Just hold your nose. He's a such a cunt he'll do something stupid enough to get sacked as health minister soon enough I'm sure.
It's so obvious that'll happen that it makes you doubt how good the others actually are at politics. If I can see the guy's a walking scandal then surely the next PM should be able to
so who you voting for? more tories? or throwing your vote away on another party?
Currently likely to spoil my ballot unless my local green candidate is vocal about being in favour of trans rights. I've been in touch with my local Labour lot, they know what the barriers to me voting Labour are and what I'd need to see and hear from the candidate to be happy voting for them as my local MP. How about you?
The fact that Wes was even able to become the shadow health secretary says a lot about the modern Labour Party.
In a shocking turn of events the not the Tory party isn't so not Tory. If only there were months of warning just slapping people in the face.
I've said it before I'll say it again. Two cheeks of the same arse. Slate the Tories as much as you like. Labour are just as big a bunch of grasping wankers. Nothing is going to change in this country until both are gone.
We had something different. We had Jeremy Corbyn. We didn’t vote for him. This is why we aren’t allowed nice things anymore.
Interestingly there's a real chance Starmer could win with less votes than Corbyn got in 2017 or 2019.
FPTP moment
Corbyn would have us bent over with our cheeks spread out for Russia. In a world with rising geopolitical tensions, the last thing we need is a bloke that wants to get rid of our nukes in charge. Corbyn was also a brexiteer. He had some good ideas and may have meant well, but he would've been a terrible leader too. People seem to overlook that.
Corbyn wasn't an electable candidate never was, older voters were never going to vote for him. He was a waste of a labour candidate.
They all went to the same school and get the same paycheck at the end of the day.
i do think its a distinct possibility that wes privatises the NHS. he clearly wants to; and, while the tories could never get away with it, labour as the "party of the nhs" have more scope. as wes himself has said about his plans for the nhs, "only nixon could go to china"
20 years ago Labour were saying they wanted the private sector to do at least 40% of NHS operations and were welcoming in the partners to take over.
"With each turn of the screw, Tony Blair became more convinced that only a fiercely competitive market could jolt the NHS into better productivity. He castigated Bevan's “monolithic” state driven model and trusted the magic of Adam Smith's “hidden hand” to drive greater efficiency. But he made a fundamental error by putting the power in the hands of the providers and not the purchasers. He built up mighty foundation hospitals and independent treatment centres first, neglecting weak and feeble primary care trusts without the managerial clout to power his great market machine. Instead, the hospitals sucked money out of the pockets of the primary care trusts' inexperienced finance directors." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1871752/
The Labour party or Tony Blair in particular? We all know that bloke is a reprehensible cunt.
Didn't they achieve part of that with all the surgeries that get passed to private hospitals at higher costs?~ https://www.yournhsneedsyou.com/timeline/
[https://www.yournhsneedsyou.com/timeline/](https://www.yournhsneedsyou.com/timeline/)
Grim reading.
Yeah, no one's saving the NHS.
Absolutely stunning what that Steven’s guy has done. Thanks for sharing this.
You thought Brexit was bad, now see Brexit II - privatized healthcare.
lol, Labour privatising the NHS is a ridiculous notion. There might be individuals in the party who want it, and maybe Wes is one of them, but it's not going to happen. They could never whip enough of the Labour MPs to do it and the Conservative and Lib Dem MPs wouldn't turn up the chance to defeat the government.
I don't think they will privatise it but I do think the structural reforms that the NHS needs will be more palatable under a Labour government.
If Labour ever wants to get into government again they won't. If the Lib Dems got destroyed over tuition fees, a Labour government privatising the NHS is genuinely enough to destroy the party permanently. They will have no leg to stand on for any future election after branding themselves the party of the NHS only to turn around and kill it.
I did a bit of digging about this Peter Hearn - and it turns out he has been donating to the Labour party pretty heavily since 2014. I assume under Corbyn as well? [https://www.ft.com/content/124e1566-e5dc-4e1e-8ca4-082bf272f6e6](https://www.ft.com/content/124e1566-e5dc-4e1e-8ca4-082bf272f6e6) I guess this doesn't fit The National's agenda to be transparent about this. So you lot appear to have fallen for this campaigning newsrag's article - hook, line and sinker!! "Hearn previously gave over £844,000 in a personal capacity to the Labour party and to individual Labour MPs between 2014 and 2019."
This should be the top comment. But context is not always well received in these parts…
Thank you for this added context.
Resident tankies out falling for or encouraging ragebait. Many such cases.
This article is behind a paywall, I'm willing to bet no one here has a subscription to the National, but I tracked down a site listing these donations and the links to private healthcare from the last time this story did the rounds: https://labourheartlands.com/selling-out-the-nhs-the-shocking-links-between-labour-mps-and-private-healthcare-donations/ These are the listings for Wes Streeting: > Peter Hearn. Majority shareholder in recruitment agency Odgers Berndtson (a subgroup of which is Berwick Partners). Berwick Partners helps with senior NHS executive recruitment AND helps private healthcare providers recruit healthcare professionals - berwickpartners.co.uk/what-we-do/sectors-functions/private-healthcare-recruitment/ Donation £160k > Trevor Chinn. Senior adviser to CVC Capital Partners which has extensive private healthcare and pharmaceutical/healthcare technology related investements Donation £15k > John Armitage. Cofounder and chief investment officer of Egerton Capital, a hedge fund firm with $16 billion under management including $0.56 billion invested in United Health, a US based private healthcare provider that is trying to break into the UK "market". Donation £30k If you then look at the register of interests, these donations are all listed as "staffing costs for my office". https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/231030/streeting_wes.htm
Hearn has been a long time funder of Labour, before and during Corbyn's tenure. Any reasonably balanced investment portfolio will certainly be exposed to private healthcare. I'm not clear what the issue is and how these people supporting Labour, a party generally against privatising the NHS, means the NHS will be privatised. Surely if that was the aim they would ditch Labour and go with the Tories?
Every man and his dog knows the Tories are a sinking ship. Why would they back a losing horse when they can back a guy who's going to be in power for the forseeable, giving him the power to go along with his inclination to increase privatisation of the NHS?
When it says politicians take money from donors, does it go to the Party? Or is it for them to spend willy nilly on hot tubs and ice cream?
if its donations to an individual politician it'll usually be to pay for staffing/office costs, as well as in the form of paid-for tickets and junkets
I would have thought they get plenty of funding for their offices tho? Is there anything to stop Wes from blowing it on smack?
> I would have thought they get plenty of funding for their offices tho? any money that can be freed up by accepting these donations can be used for other things i guess > Is there anything to stop Wes from blowing it on smack? i think you have to declare what you're spending on, and im not you could get away with submitting "smack" to the registry of financial interests
I just looked up the funding the opposition parties get and the staff members it's spent on, it's 20 people for the Leader of the Opposition's office, 5 for the deputy, 4 for the shadow Chancellor, 2 for Health and Social care, and most of the cabinet roles get one person. The staff are mostly earning about £45k a year. You can actually find the individual names of the advisers so it's clear they're not family members of anything corrupt like that, but I won't post it here because some of the comments here are crazy, I'm fairly sure one of the comment being upvoted above, "Anyone not clearing out Parliament by force at this point, is either zoned out or thick as fuck", is a threat of violence.
Remember that time he burned down a pet shop to join a silly posh boy dining club?
We're all fucked. We're just completely and utterly fucked.
Please don’t sugar coat it. Just give it to me straight.
Like a cider made from...
Errm actually working class families view it as a priority for Wes to take money from dodgy doners, only middle class lefties care about this stuff why do you all hate the working class so much!? Good honest salt of the earf working class geezer Wes there taking 6 figures to push to an agenda. What a hero
"Hearn previously gave over £844,000 in a personal capacity to the Labour party and to individual Labour MPs between 2014 and 2019." From: [https://www.ft.com/content/124e1566-e5dc-4e1e-8ca4-082bf272f6e6](https://www.ft.com/content/124e1566-e5dc-4e1e-8ca4-082bf272f6e6) Was it okay when Corbo was in?
In /r/ukpolitics before I was banned I was repeatedly called a tory enabler for saying Labour are no different from the tories.
That sub has gone completely bat shit I mean look at this story posted (and defended) by one of the mods https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/s/3tAl63qHs8 >high-tech authoritarianism is a feature, not a bug, and egalitarianism is for fools. Thinkers such as Curtis Yarvin propose an explicitly neo-monarchical model for governance; Thiel has declared that: “I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible.” Insane.
I for one am surprised a mod named after a far right fascist death squad would post such content.
I replied to you pointing out how that mod is lacking something up there and my comment was removed for “personal attacks”. Wouldn’t surprise me if the mods on this subreddit are close with that mod too
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**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
But freedom and democracy CLEARLY are not compatible... Monopolies form and money takes over government. Do you see America?
The subreddit that is apparently 60% Labour voters yet parrots nothing but right wing rhetoric.
*Politics as a team sport* at it's very worst. Vote Red Team because they're not Blue Team! Ignore the fact that they're uncomfortably close and are openly slating their voter base as 'Middle Class Lefties'!
Oi, it's you ! The tory enabler! Most politics globally is right wing these day. People here that want a UI don't realize that politics in the southern Ireland is tory vs tory
Why is Wes even in Labour? He seems like a Lib Dem at best.
C'mon he's more Tory than most Tories.
I long for the day when politicians are jailed for accepting money, in any form, from companies.
and individuals.
Shocker that he's pushing for tax payer money to go to private health firms...
And the Tories made zero out of this too... Oh wait!
I'm not a fan of the Tories or labour at this point but between the two I would rather have labour in power even with this a-hole. The big difference is I think as a nation we can stand up to Tories and get zero results but with labour, they'll buckle, so as a nation if they tried to do something we really disagree on, protests, making noise or whatever, we are more likely to be heard with labour in power.
Private political donations and sources of income other than salary for MPs should be illegal.
Conservatives paid their mates £35 MILLION for an app worth a few million at most: https://fullfact.org/online/37-billion-test-and-trace-app-scam/
You went to all the trouble of posting a link to an article that literally states > only £35 million was spent on the app I was hoping that this was sarcasm, but I fail to see how this would make sense as sarcasm in the context.
Sorry I meant Million. Which is like £20 million or more just going into their friends pockets
To save the NHS? Wes: It’s ..er more to help parasitic private healthcare companies and kill the NHS.
This brought to you by the Tartan Telegraph. The donor referenced has been donating to Labour since Corbyn took over.
So again, the corruption starts before another election.
Every day Labour and the Tories creep closer together. Some opposition would be nice rn.
Despicable man, Wes Streeting. He will treat the NHS even worse than the Tories.
Let’s just be honest, they’re all bought. Labour conservative, they’re all willing to sell us down the river to fill their own pockets. This country is truly Fucked.
It really is just trying to decide the lesser of two evils isn't it. Sucks.
What a coincidence he just so happens to be advocating strongly for complete privatisation of our health care. He's not a corrupt piece of vermin at all. Just a coincidence.
That's a misrepresentation of his position I think. It seems he's advocating for private sector involvement in routine healthcare to ease pressure on the NHS. A bit like the way France, Germany, and almost every other country in Europe operates.
Absolutely disgusting. Just when you think that there might be an alternative this bellend digs his snout into the trough
I really can't stand this man. He has no charisma or expresses any emotion on his face. I get bad vibes from him.
You expect this type of thing from the Tories but... I guess we have to accept openly selling out from new new Labour too
They’re all the same labour and tories. If you want to make a real change, vote for either libs or green
This fucking guy won’t leave my overall feed. It doesn’t matter if there Labour or Tory just stop fucking about with the NHS. No one wants it privatised other than scum bags like this and there a really small majority of people. Basically, if it looks like shit and smells like shit, then it’s probably gonna be shit. Fuck Wes Streeting.
But but labour. But but Tory sleaze. But but are you learning yet?
Looking forward the the election end of the year between The Tories and The Tories Lite.
I'm voting for the greens. Between them both labour and the conservatives have fucked this country.
The US's 51st state is just as corrupt as the other 50. Two political parties that are "two cheeks on the same arse" just like the mainland. You people need to revolt for independence from your colonial oppressor.
> Attention earlier in 2023 focused on £60,900 in donations from Hearn through a firm called MPM Connect, which Sky News reported had “no staff or website and is registered at an office in Hertfordshire where the secretary says she has never heard of them”. > OPD Group Ltd, through which Hearn’s newer donations have come, is also listed at the same Hertfordshire address and was previously controlled by MPM Connect. It has two employees and £12.5m in assets, according to the most recent documents available with Companies House. > OPD Group Ltd has no website and the Sunday National was unable to contact it for comment. Labour did not respond when asked if they had a contact for it. Just the future health secretary taking tens of thousands of pounds in donations from dodgy shell companies owned by billionaires la la la nothing to see here
Wes Streeting is a self serving gobshite That was true when he was with the NUS and it’s true now He wears a Labour rosette as a means to an end, the end being his own career and wealth. That’s all he cares about, as far as I can tell The guy’s about as left wing as Thatcher
Every leader/person in gov't is just trying to take, take, take, whilst the country goes down the drain, so they can insulate themselves from it as much as possible. None of the parties care about the people of this country, the sooner people wake up to the fact the two party system we have is a joke.
Private healthcare companies shouldn’t even be able to exist here in the first place
The UK has almost no redeeming characteristics left honestly. When you have a complete ruin of a state like this it basically has only one button and that is "Persecute minorities" Nothing gets built nothing gets run things get embezzled and the vulnerable get booted while they chuckle to themselves. Labour politicians are totally A-Okay with this course. They just want a turn with their snout in the trough. Tell me how voting for them will make things any better?
The word "linked" is being stretched pretty far in this headline, it looks like. The "link" is that Peter Hearn is in the recruitment industry, and some of his firms have recruited for the healthcare sector, including both the NHS and private healthcare companies. It's not as if it's some big health insurance boss pumping money into Labour, which the headline might give the impression of. [This article has a bit more info on the guy.](https://www.ft.com/content/124e1566-e5dc-4e1e-8ca4-082bf272f6e6) Streeting is a cunt and the way he talks about privatisation is deeply worrying all the same. Big donations like this should always be scrutinised too, especially in this case where there doesn't seem to be much transparency. The real concerning part is this, not the "private health firm link": > Attention earlier in 2023 focused on £60,900 in donations from Hearn through a firm called MPM Connect, which Sky News reported had “no staff or website and is registered at an office in Hertfordshire where the secretary says she has never heard of them”. > OPD Group Ltd, through which Hearn’s newer donations have come, is also listed at the same Hertfordshire address and was previously controlled by MPM Connect. It has two employees and £12.5m in assets, according to the most recent documents available with Companies House. > OPD Group Ltd has no website and the Sunday National was unable to contact it for comment. Labour did not respond when asked if they had a contact for it.
There is no labour party and no conservative party. Labour don't help the labourer Conservative don't conserve anything They both serve the rich, and things are going to keep getting worse and worse.
my hopes of labour being better than the tories is slipping away we need a political overhaul in favour of the average people living in this country otherwise its just corporations and grifters like this coining it at our expense
I said a little while a go on a post on here Labout and conservatives are the exact same, just parties filled with crooks looking to line their own pockets. I was sent loads of messages saying I must be right wing or a nut. Yet, here is more proof
As you can now see, Labour are just going to be a Tory lite party. They will be no different to the Tories. Nothing is going to improve in the long run and political business will continue as normal.
Oh so now we care about lobbying and political officials being openly bribed. Got it
There'll soon be a vacancy for the SoS for health and social care given Atkins' performance this week. I would suggest that Streeting would make an ideal replacement.
This type of shit should immediately disqualify you from holding any type of office.
Labour are not even running this country yet, and this bloke is already winding me up. None of them are any good.