Re: The Tories
 

Unfortunately , Margaret , they are an extinct species .

The longest serving Labour leader ( 1935-1955 ) , Clement Attlee , was the greatest Prime Minister ( 1945-1951 ) of my lifetime .

In difficult times he presided over a Government whose achievements were to make this country more just and fairer than at any time in its history .

He wouldn't stand a chance if he were to put up for Labour leader today .

The press would have a field day with this left-wing socialist .

He had no flair . He had no charisma . He was no good at public relations .

But what he did have was a steely determination based on the traditional values of the Labour Party to pursue policies which were unashamedly Socialist . The 1945 Labour manifesto said : " The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain - free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public-spirited, its material resources organised in the service of the British people. "

When the electorate returned a Conservative Government in 1951 , Labour still succeeded in gaining 48.8% of the national vote compared to the 44.3% achieved by the Conservatives .

Ever since Socialism within the Labour Party has been in decline .


Labour Prime Ministers , Harold Wilson , Jim Callaghan , Tony Blair , Gordon Brown , have been more concerned about getting Labour into power with little concern about what to do when in power . The result has been Conservative Labour Governments devoid of traditional Labour Party values and policies .

I see no possibility of the Labour Party being resurrected . New Labour , call it what you will , is here to stay , so we had better get used to it .

I don't like to say that , but it just happens to be the case .

Re: The Tories
 

As I understand it, the NHS has different budgets for agency staff and full time staff, and as stupid as it seems, they can`t/won`t transfer some of the budget for agency staff to the budget for full time staff.

Re: The Tories
 

The PFI was government backed legalised extortion that put money into the pockets of large and influential companies....and it was the New Labour party that thought this was a good idea because it allowed for the building of facilities without them appearing on the 'lending' balance sheet......making it look like there was no debt involved when the debt was undefined.
Would you take on a mortgage that you didn't know how much you were going to required to pay back...and being told that you could only have your house repairs done at extortionate costs by the mortgage lender? No of course you wouldn't.
And that is why Labour should never again hold the purse strings of this country.

Re: The Tories
 

If you think the Blair/Brown government didn't do something similar you're in for a shock.

Re: The Tories
 

If yeh read the thread properly you would be.:rolleyes:

Re: The Tories
 

Interesting fact I picked up a couple of days ago-

A typical NHS Trust Fund employs 4.5 times as many managers, administrators and support staff per nurse as a private Trust Fund does. How's that for efficiency?

Having been in both I know which I'd prefer!

Re: The Tories
 

I've been retired 15 years thus can't comment on current practices. However, my experiences of various NHS Estate Departments, due to our being an approved provider and/or installer of equipment for several decades, it was a sad fact that time management of NHS In-House tradesmen wasn't considered important. For example a scheduled contract issued by senior management would stipulate date of commencement of job to last five days working in conjunction with in-house employees The reality would be that the finish date could take anything up to another two weeks because in-house employees would down tools whenever the NHS foreman/manager was called away; ditto the in-house brickie wouldn't carry on when his labourer went to collect his wages and vice versa. Unbelievably, we had one contract where the NHS in-house workers had only laid a course of seven bricks in one day due to mis-management interruptions !! Not one thought given to the fact that the public were paying for NHS employees to stand idle.