Daily Mail - Help Please

[brendaward]

The ones for the NHS I hope have been individually checked for imperfections under the scope. If not a lot of pensioners would be collapsing in the street when their bionic parts gave way. B&Q screws! you can't screw them in without them breaking the heads off, the mind boggles.

[Paul mabbott]

What goes around ....

I would doubt the factual accuracy of this piece but can see that it's just part of the Daily Heil's war with the public services. Facts have little to do with it.

Anyone familiar with the organisation of the NHS fifty years ago will know that its finances wre very efficient: purchases would be made at an appropriate scale: cooking on a hospital basis, laundry and CSSD (syringes, scalpels &c) was done on a group basis (several hospitals), whereas blood replacements, medicines, laboratory reagents were bought (often made) on a regional basis, some other things on a national scale. If someone wanted a big machine, they had to go through a process of consultation whereas if someone needed a new screwdriver they brought it from the corner shop!

Unfortunately, the monetarists didn't like the system - "public bad, private good" - and the whole system was undermined - jobs going to outside contractors who (a) knew very little about the health service, (b) added a new financial layer to health bills and (c) were more expensive than in-house provision. Costs have continued to rise, accountability is negligible but privatisation continues ....