Sweep Ernst and Young out of our hospitals on Saturday 28th November

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On Saturday 28th November, Calderdale and Kirklees 999 Call for the NHS are taking to the street in Halifax, to protest against global management consultancy company EY (aka Ernst and Young) calling the shots over the future of Calderdale Royal Hospital and Huddersfield Royal Infirmary.

999 Call for the NHS activists and supporters are going to sweep EY out of our hospitals between 11am-1pm, on Southgate, Halifax outside Wilkinsons. Or in the arcade side entrance to borough market if it’s raining.

Members of the public will be able to find out to help stop the hijack of the NHS by global management consultancy companies and their health insurance corporate cronies, and to support the NHS Reinstatement Bill. This cross-party Bill has its 2nd reading in the House of Commons in March 2016. Continue reading →

Hunt’s Junior Doctors’ contract paves way for American corporate takeover of the NHS

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GP Dr Bob Gill uncovers the real reason for Hunt’s attack on junior doctors. Junior doctors’ reduced income (through loss of unsocial hours pay) and increased hours performing routine work in evenings and weekends, would increase profitability for the private health care companies that are set to take over the NHS as the Five Year Forward View rolls out.

The government’s latest assault on the NHS involves imposing a new contract for junior doctors that will see their salaries slashed by 30%, with a requirement for evening and Saturday work. The excuse is that this change will provide a 7 day service and improve patient outcomes on weekends.

The reality is that more qualified staff are being driven out, in preparation for the deskilling that is always part of healthcare privatisation and corporate takeover.

This is mapped out in NHS England’s Five Year Forward View – the brainchild of Simon Stevens, previously an executive at the global American health insurance company UnitedHealth and now head of NHS England. Continue reading →

Monitor wants to slash our hospital services – Calderdale NHS commissioners say nowt

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A crucial time for one of the main schemes to cut NHS services is now upon us.

From April 2016, NHS Foundation Trusts will be able to to stop providing certain NHS services, that are currently protected. This is due to changes to hospital licenses,  brought in by the hospitals regulator and competition enforcer, Monitor.

At the Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group meeting on 24th September 2015, Plain Speaker asked questions about how these licence changes are going to affect the range of services that Calderdale and Huddersfield hospitals provide.

Particularly: how this will affect Calderdale people’s access to comprehensive, universal healthcare that is free at the point of delivery and based on patients’ clinical needs. Given that it seems that services that are currently mandatory will fall away. Continue reading →

Huddersfield’s Ahmadiyya Muslim Community condemns terrorist attacks

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Fatihul-haq, President of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Huddersfield South, whom Plain Speaker met at Huddersfield Planet Festival at the end of the summer, has asked us to pass on the word that the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Huddersfield utterly abhors the carnage that was carried out in Paris last Friday.

The people murdered in the Paris atrocity will be remembered at services this Friday, 20th November, when prayers will be said in their memory at Mpsque Baitul Tauhid, Spaines Road, Fartown HD2. Special services will be starting at 12.45 and there will be one minute silence prayers.

The World Head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, the Fifth Caliph Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, has said:

“On behalf of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community worldwide, I express my heartfelt sympathies and condolences to the French nation, its people and government following the heinous terrorist attacks that have taken place in Paris. This brutal and inhumane attack can only be condemned in the strongest possible terms. Continue reading →

Growing Futures are very shocked at what’s happening to the NHS

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As a group working for a fair, healthy, sustainable food system that can help solve the epidemic of obesity and diabetes caused by the current dysfunctional food system, Growing Futures recently took part in the Voluntary Action Calderdale workshop on Understanding how the NHS works in Calderdale.

The  main information at the Workshop was that the NHS in Calderdale now operates just like any marketplace.

The VAC training workshop was part of its 3 year, £750K contract with Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group, for Third Sector Development and Support. Continue reading →

Ernst & Young calling the shots over Right Care Right Place Right Time scheme

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The clinical model for the proposed Right Care Right Place Right Time scheme, that NHS commissioners and the Calderdale and Huddersfield hospitals have finally agreed after arguing about for two years, could be thrown up in the air yet again by a cost-cutting 5 year hospitals financial plan that is being drawn up by Ernst and Young (EY), at a cost of £0.5m to the deficit-ridden hospitals Trust.

Screen shot 2015-11-16 at 10.58.27Our hospitals may be broke, but the global management consultancy company EY had a global income of $US28.7bn in the financial year ending 30 June 2015. This is its fastest growth since 2008, an 11.6% increase over 2014. Obviously clearing up the mess from the 2008 bankers crash of the world economy is good business for EY and its ilk. Continue reading →

American corporate foxes to ransack NHS henhouse in £3bn-£5bn privatisation

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A huge privatisation is underway that will put US health insurance company United Health in a position to bid for contracts to provide NHS clinical services, at the same time as it advises clinical commissioning groups on what clinical services to plan and buy.

NHS England – increasingly looking like a Trojan Horse for United Health (the previous employer of the NHS England CEO, Simon Stevens) – is pushing one of the biggest NHS privatisations to date, worth £3bn-£5bn. Continue reading →

Growing Futures- working for a healthy, affordable, sustainable food system in Calderdale

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Growing Futures (formerly known as Incredible Edible Mytholm) was pleased to be asked to take part in the Calderdale Assembly on Shaping Food Culture in Calderdale on October 8th. This was organised by the Calderdale Health and Wellbeing Board and the Growing Futures Chair and Secretary attended.

The Assembly focussed on the epidemic of obesity and diabetes that has resulted from our current dysfunctional food system. There was discussion of the need for an effective public health programme to tackle this epidemic. There was also a recognition that the current food system is destroying the environment and local food businesses as well as public health, and any solution to problems generated by our current food system will have to be far broader than a public health programme.

Growing Futures is working to help create a fair, affordable, sustainable food system in the Upper Calder Valley that will replace the current dysfunctional food system, although this is obviously a national and international problem as well as a local one. Continue reading →

The death knell of Blairism

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NHSBill2015.1Response by Allyson Pollock and Peter Roderick
to a recent post on the website of the Socialist Health Association
by Irwin Brown on the NHS Reinstatement Bill (5th November 2015)

IB writes:

“The NHS Reinstatement Bill is expected to have its second reading in March 2016. It would replace the current NHS architecture with a return to Regional and District Health Authorities.”

Our response: The Bill does not do this. The Bill replaces clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), transforms NHS England into a Special Health Authority, and abolishes the market structures (NHS Trusts, NHS Foundation Trusts and Monitor). The Bill does not return to regional and district authorities (the first consultation draft put out in August 2014 proposed district authorities and regional committees of NHS England). The Bill replaces CCGs with Health Boards (the bodies in Scotland and Wales) approved by the Secretary of State on the basis of bottom-up proposals. The Bill also proposes regional committees of NHS England (as in the first consultation draft). Continue reading →

Tax Credit Cuts: Calder Valley MP tells People’s Assembly he agrees with Osborne’s ‘direction of travel’

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Calderdale People’s Assembly members and friends braved strong winds and driving rain on Saturday 7th November, to hold a mass lobby of the Calder Valley MP’s open surgery in Elland.

Their demand was for Craig Whittaker to protect low income Calderdale families from cuts to their tax credits. Continue reading →