For the record, I just want to document my ongoing and repeated insistence that we’d all be much better off with an independent NHS structured on the BBC model, with a charter which keeps it separated from government on a day-to-day level. And then what happy headline greets me this morning?
Chancellor Gordon Brown is considering a scheme to create an independent board to take day-to-day control of the NHS, should he become prime minister. (BBC News)
Excellent! It’s obvious that Brown would do this to prove that he can come into leadership with ‘big new ideas’ which are neither Blairite nor anti-Blairite. This fulfils that criteria and gives something important to move forward to, rather than just more of the same. Having said all that, we do face the very real chance that Brown will never be PM, and that Cameron would pounce on the idea and, perhaps, turn it into something rather more Tory… (A cloak to privatise the NHS under not being the idea)
Of course, this would lead to further charges of people from one country (Gordon Brown) dictating for another country (England) and not their own (Scotland) as he would have no power of the NHS in Scotland which is a different entity.
I think, if Brown’s going to be PM, then people would just have to accept that generally anyway? I mean, it applies to his role now!
It might be seperate, but he is still a British citizen, as are people from Scotland.
True? God’s sake don’t introduce anti-scottish racism. We have enough trouble with ‘Muslim’ now seemingly a race.