I trust that all you labour party members who are pursuing John Leech so assiduously about Christies will be paying due attention to the BMA conference in Manchester this week - notably the widespread distrust amongst senior doctors nationwide about creeping privatization within the NHS, and the necessary change of emphasis which happens when you introduce the profit motive into Health Care ? Just like with dear old Jamie Oliver trying to improve school meals to improve kids health, only to find that outsourcing kids dinners meant that profit was the driving force behind the turkey twizzler crap being fed to kids by huge companies . You no doubt saw what that did under Thatcher when they privatized cleaners - and introduced the notion of collateral damage (5000 MRSA deaths a year) in pursuit of cost savings. Well expand that. Sit back and think what the NHS Chief Executive , one Nigel Crisp (sic - oh dear me! Just like Rentokil is one of the companies supplying school dinners), means when he says hospital "should adopt the same marketing techniques as Tesco in their bids to win customers in the new choice-based NHS market". What the hell does that mean? Loyalty cards for cancer patients? Do you really trust an NHS being led by some jerk who can make statements like that? Exactly what mindset does that betray to you? "Choice" means two things . Take it or leave it? Who on earth wants choice when they're fighting for their life with Pneumonia? Or do we choose which queue to join trying tro get an NHS dentist? Or do we "choose to go to Wythenshawe" instead of Southern Cemetery? There IS no choice for ordinary people. I hope you all read the reports of the debates coming from the BMA this week. And then try criticising John Leech for doubting Labour Party sincerity towards the NHS. The Labour Party's one great historical contribution to Postwar Britain has been the Welfare State. And they are selling it off bit by bit. Mike Harding at the weekend called New Labour "Old Thatcher". How apt. I look forward to see you expanding the same energies criticizing your own leaders as you do against John Leech.

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