NHS and health

Two hundred GMB members employed by ISS at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, South London have voted for strikes to end two-tier conditions in NHS. The dispute is for the same pay rates, weekend enhancements and unsocial hours rates as the staff directly employed by the Trust. The GMB members are employed as cleaners, security, ward hostesses, caterers, on the switchboard and as porters. On 23 September GMB organised a protest outside the bondholders meeting of the PFI operator for the hospital. ISS workers, which includes cleaners, security, ward hostesses, caterers, switchboard operators...

On 21 September over 200 NHS campaigners from across the country gathered outside Labour Party conference in Manchester. We lobbied to demand Labour make serious commitments to rebuilding the NHS. Andy Burnham, shadow health secretary, was spotted going into the conference centre and persuaded to come speak to the crowd. Burnham confirmed his support for Clive Efford’s bill to parliament which seeks to remove the parts of the Tory Health and Social Care Act which force private tendering of NHS services. The bill, Burnham assured us, would return NHS run services to the position of being the...

Andy Burnham once again repeated his promise to “repeal the Tory Health and Social Care Act” if Labour win the next election. Burnham was speaking from the platform at the 6 September Trafalgar Square rally of the People’s March for the NHS. It is good that Burnham makes the promise to repeal the Act publicly, but it is not enough. When Burnham was Health Secretary under the last Labour government he backed the recommendations of Sir David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS, to make £20 billion “efficiency savings” by 2015. Burnham’s opposition to Lansley’s plans boils down to not...

Last week’s Solidarity carried an article that argued “a four hour walk out [on 14 October] is a good tactic in the NHS [as a starting point]” and “It is vital that discussions on strike tactics are held at workplace level where union members know what action can be most effective”. I disagree. Unison’s leadership are worried about low turnout and unnecessary deaths on a strike day. They have attempted to solve these problem by proposing a four-hour stoppage. They hope healthworkers will be more likely to strike for half a day and it will be less risky for patients. But the four-hour tactic...

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On Sunday 21 September, we will be lobbying Labour Party conference for a clear commitment on saving the National Health Service. See Facebook event and the blog for the Lobby We'll be taking at least one minibus from London. The price will be £18 waged, £9 unwaged. Times to be confirmed asap but we'll be leaving early Sunday morning and coming back Sunday night. If you'd like to come contact Liam McNulty on liammcnulty24@hotmail.com

Seventy per cent of the £13 billion NHS contracts negotiated last year were given to private providers. This is an unprecedented sell off, of the staff, resources and bricks and mortar that make up our National Health Service. The scale, and pace of the change is staggering. From “111 helpline” to maternity services, diabetes management to stoma care and even sexual assault services and palliative care, little is safe from market forces. And with real-terms cuts to the overall budget and efficiency savings of over £20 billion to be made, the NHS is being cut to the bone. With increasing...

In Milton Keynes and Bedfordshire, a healthcare review led by the Clinical Commissioning Groups in the region is set to conclude that either Milton Keynes Hospital or Bedford Hospital will be downgraded. The capacity of one hospital's accident and emergency will be severely reduced, as well as losing other vital maternity and paediatric services which rely on having the A&E on standby. This will mean a harrowing 20 mile journey to the next hospital for patients, and will put lives at risk. The healthcare review is aiming towards an 'integrated' model of healthcare, in practice, this would mean...

During the Gulf war it was hard to avoid the impression that Britain was a country in the grip of a mass psychosis. From the grey dull Thatcher-made Prime Minister, with his robotic voice and the grey metallic glint round the eyes, by way of no-guts Neil Kinnock translating John Major's pronouncements into a better class of sub-Churchilian rhetoric, all the way down into the sewers of the tabloid press, official society was caught up in a fierce fantasy about fighting a glorious war for freedom and liberty against great odds. The TV pictures of Iraqi cities being flattened might have been...

FOR a portrayal in miniature of the repulsive, tragic lunacy in which capitalist society ensnares humankind, you would be hard put to it to outdo the Mandy Allwood saga. Wonder-working science transforms an infertile woman into a marvel of fecundity. For reasons of her own she ignores medical advice and, by accident or design, becomes pregnant not with one but with eight embryos. She cannot possibly deliver all of her embryos alive. So her doctors tell her. For any of them to survive, six will have to be aborted. She doesn't listen to the medics. She listens instead to some inner voice of...