Tell us what you think

I am particularly concerned about the creeping privatisation of the NHS even though I live in Scotland. After Brexit I worry that the price of an American (USA) trade deal may mean that the NHS would be opened up to privatisation by commercial healthcare firms from the USA. There is no doubt that these firms would lead to a destruction of the founding ethos of the NHS that it be free at the point of delivery and that treatment be based on the clinical need not the ability to pay. The USA spends about double the UK per capita but anybody who has been sick there knows how hard it is to get appropriate healthcare. This is due to a large slice of the funding being siphoned of to fuel the profits of these firms. Commercial healthcare leads to bad medicine with unnecessary treatment being given on the basis of their ability to pay. I could write about the unnecessary tonsilectomies in the USA and many other examples of the way that commercial medicine corrupts healthcare.

The NHS literally saved my life and continues to support me. I cannot believe that a morally wrong privatised health service would have been willing to spend thousands on a common or garden patient, financially, as me. Services are just that. It is morally repugnant and, frankly, evil that a few monied interests should make life or death decisions dependent on personal profit. Much the same argument, though not quite as emotive or perhaps extreme, could be extended to other threatened services...

The scandal of local councils selling off what does not belong to them has to be stopped. Councils have a very skewed view of what they're actually in office for. They do not seem to understand that they do not actually own anything; they hold public assets in trust for future generations. It is more than time that the creeping privatisation and take-over of public assets is stopped in its tracks. That includes by the way the use of public space for private, money-making ventures, resulting in the exclusion of council tax payers from areas of public parks. It also includes the attempted development on public spaces. We are currently fighting the removal of the last vestiges of the old Selborne Park in Walthamstow - a shopping mall took a huge chunk of it, and now the mall owners want to take even more for more retail space and tower blocks.

Re Water Privatization et al

Like all our other essential utilities and strategic services the General Public should be given the right to own, run, manage and foster these for the betterment of society and future generations. Historical and current evidence proves that the private sector mavericks spivs and our corrupt and inept politicians, are only making the divide in society worse i.e. make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Moreover, as Britain muddles its way in a changing World devoid of its Pink Empire and its politicians who have indeed lost their way, one cannot hide from the fact that a large proportion of them support the ideology of a NWO: Where the UN corrupts the true climate change science, builds its FEMA camps and has Agenda 21 ready to solve the problem of decent from the ranks. Therefore, given the extreme nature of whats really happening the General Public needs to take control.

Re Water Privatization et al

Like all our other essential utilities and strategic services the General Public should be given the right to own, run, manage and foster these for the betterment of society and future generations. Historical and current evidence proves that the private sector mavericks spivs and corrupt and inept politicians, are only making the divide in society worse i.e. make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Moreover, as Britain muddles its way in a changing World devoid of its Pink Empire and its politicians who have indeed lost their way, one cannot hide from the fact that a large proportion of them support the ideology of a NWO: Where the UN corrupts the true science, builds its FEMA camps and has Agenda 21 ready to solve the problem of decent from the ranks. Therefore, given the extreme nature of whats really happening the General Public needs to take control.

Is'nt it funny how nationalised properties i.e water and electricity etc, never made money when it was nationalised yet has made money when it became privately owned.With the correct people running these services money could be made for the country.

I would like democratic public ownership to be the opposite of the old 'nationalisations' - which it could be argued were top down, distant, too bureaucratic and usually had the same bosses in control with the community and staff having little say. So perhaps the regional boards could be elected by the community they serve OMOV and a percentage of board places are set for staff/trade unionist reps which equally should be elected by staff/trade union members OMOV. Each board should rotate the venues of meetings which should be open to members of the public and these should be listening exercises where the community can offer ideas to be explored. Yes we need to end the waste from leaks, help the poor re water bills, and the interesting ideas about having water fountains in town/village/city centres/pubs plus in offering free hot and cold water to the homeless but where possible I would also like to see more areas owned publicly by a water authority to be opened up to the public. Their should be an annual meting of the board and again the public/customers could submit their ideas although in practice we would all be customer/owners. Let loads of ideas flow!

Buses. No mention of electric buses.

This is a key part missing on the buses strategy and that is the use of bus stations, public buildings and multi-storey car parks, owned by councils to provide the solar pv needed to charge electic buses. Charging buses up on cheap overnight electricity for wind and selling much of the solar pv back during peak demand should be a net positive to facilitate a transition to electric transport. ( The use of solar pv in the daytime reduces the exorbitant subsidy paid to gas fired power stations).

Charging council, or other public service owned electric vehicles further reduces the need for individual ownership of cars. (80% of which are on some sort of lease hire / hire purchase model)

That should go a little way to helping councils develop local ownership.

Charge points at bus stations, schools, colleges, hospitals, council buildings and near multistorey car parks would permit husge savings on fuel and reduce air pollution. (How much do the NHS services pay for taxi services to and from hospital?)

The UK government has been taken to the courts three times on their failure to address air pollution. Providing electric buses to take over the school run would help reduce the exposure of children to air pollution.

Staggering school runs for example at 8:30 and 9:00 would ensure more impact could be made on air pollution with fewer buses at least initially.

Air pollution aggravates asthma and causes poor lung development.

In older people air pollution increases the risk of cardio-vascular problems such as hearth attacks and strokes and raises the risk of asthma attacks.

The failure to deal with air pollution is not only a climate and health problem it is also an occupational health problem. In other words it should be very much in the interest of the unions to raise these issues.

Hi...I was wondering if one could buy 'we own it' or 'nationalisation' stickers through yourselves ~ or if you know of other suppliers?

Cheers

The choice is simple; Either keep believing the state propaganda and swallow the crap meted out by our undemocratically elected politicians and their system of corrupt governance; watching our public utilities get worse, become more unaffordable and let our children become poorer. As they will saddle generations for thousands of years to pay for the waste, poisoning, or the fallout from the mass destruction of nuclear fission, in a World stripped of oil, gas, coal and wood. Our stand up, unite and take Public Control of our strategic services and give our children a sustainable World to inherit!

So, count me in to help run our strategic utilities! But I’d suggest we do it on a pro rata basis, i.e. relative to earnings/taxation/ability. I’d lay odds on that within a year the greedy anti socialists will come running in their droves to join us as they desert the mirage of a their God “Dream”! As that’s all it is - unless one’s born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth, or they steel it from the poor, infirmed and the many who are frightened to fight back, albeit for good reason – they won’t divvy out their bullets and WMD’s are a No No too!

Hi. It is important that the NHS, is public, because it belongs to everyone in the UK. It is there, not to be interfered with, to make money, by zelots and capitalists. It is a Social Service, not a money bandwagon.

https://www.ipevents.net/healthinvestorawards/ The Presidents' Ball for those looking to privatise the NHS. This year multiple organisations will be protesting outside this event with news agencies covering the protest

Please note & publicise 2 important effects of the H&SC Act2012.

One is that it TAKES AWAY THE GOVERNMENT'S RESPONSIBILITY for the public's health,

and the other one is that it requires the NHS TO PUT EVERY CONTRACT OUT TO TENDER !

The former enables PRIVATISATION to occur. AND the outcome of that is that some of the money that the NHS would use for clinical work then goes to Private Company Executives and Shareholders, ie the NHS funding is not what we are led to understand.

For example consider an NHS annual budget of £120 billion that is 50% privatised and that the private ‘health’ companies divert 40% of the contract to Executives/Shareholders. The Nett Effect is that £24 billion of NHS annual budget does not go into clinical work! We can then say that the REAL NHS (clinical) annual budget is only £96 billion NOT £120 billion. £96 billion compares very poorly with THE ANNUAL HEALTH BUDGET of equivalent countries !

The latter, ie our NHS tendering for work previously automatically done in-house, has been calculated as causing an admin cost of anything from £4.7bn to £9.7bn. That money is lost from the NHS clinical budget!

No wonder the NHS has problems, apart from top management which seems incompetent & overpaid AND in place to aid the government’s undermining of OUR NHS .

People or profit this government is about profit enough said

Some one needs to explain to me. We own it ? public ownership ? What does that mean in practice? If we all had shares or it was a co-operative I could understand it. But public ownership just seems to mean that government of the day is in charge. And if they suddenly find they don't have the cash for this or that they could close it down and where would we be ? I would not trust the government to organise a bun fight in a bakery How can we expect them to organise hundreds and hundreds of public services and not lose money hand over fist - or seriously lower standards ?

Just watched Renegade on RT about the railways, wish you every success in your quest for justice.

I know it's hard to think back all those years to Beaching closing the majority of Railway Stations and Lines, but, is this why we're going through this now, because some toffee nosed privateer is wanting to cash in on our monies again. The smile on Branson's face is obvious to me, he's making it big business. I'm sorry to say, but, I have a virgin media email address and it kills me to have it. He cashed in on our area because we can't receive a decent digital or terrestrial signal for media. So in a way my contact with 'WE OWN IT' is his own doing.. I love it! Stop the money grabber, Please!!

I work for RM and the atmosphere amongst the workforce is toxic.Privatisation has destroyed a brilliant public service.It started with the cut price sell off where the spivs and speculators made millions overnight and continues with the selling off of all the valuable property assets to line the pockets of the wealthy.

The workload imposed on staff now would test an athlete, terms and conditions are under severe attack and the service quality has reduced significantly, Xmas mail failing for the first time in my memory this year.

The few shares we were given in an attempt to pacify us are nothing compared to the loss of job satisfaction and worsening working conditions.

From the first to the most recent the effects of privatisation are the same and I can't think of one which wouldn't be better back in the public sector.

All power to your campaign

D Homer

No one suggests to the Swiss that chopping railways into fragments and selling them to foreign owners will improve them. I wonder why not?

Thank you for an amazing speech last night at the Labour Rally in West Bromwich. It was so great to see a young woman with so much passion and talking complete sense. I just hope we can make the changes

I came across your post about Mike Dwan, the man who was reported to have amassed a personal wealth of over £75 Million from PFI and the many schemes sucking funds from what should be spent on state schools directly, I have come across Mr Dwan around 2007/8 he is a controlling man with the only thought on his mind of what’s in it for him.

I made a grave error and sent my children to the prep school in Windermere before Mr Dwan moved from Manchester to Windermere. He brought his children to the prep school while I was working free of charge to design and delivery the pod classroom project at the prep school to get some publicity for the architectural project , I donated one pod classroom to the school: My regret is I didn’t donate that pod to a state school and not Windermere school, I spent nearly a year offering my services free to get the project off the ground. A few months after the project was due to complete Mr Dwan had wormed his way onto the board of Governors within months of him arriving at the school. He soon had arranged a meeting with myself to inform me he was now in control of the project I designed. Behold within weeks he had his own contractors installing the foundations sucking out funds from the project. I completed the project just; by sticking to my guns and holding Mr Dwan over a barrel with the building Certificate as I had applied for the permission in my name, he had no choice but to allow me to complete the project. Needless to say 2 weeks after the project completed Mr Dwan and his followers made sure my children wouldn’t be able stay at the school as we had purchased items including furniture out of my own pocket and he wouldn’t approved the repayment and we couldn’t afford to stay. The school project featured on Grand designs. My children went on to get a good state school education. I fully intend to recover my time spent on Windermere School project and recover the donated pod building.

Robert Gaukroger

Well done, Cat. The Climb Down on NHS professionals,

and We Own It's part in it, is being celebrated all over the

internet.

Keith

Governments need to understand the public have less and less me,me,me thinking....I recently found out there are over 200 MP's in parliament and more in the House of Lords with their fingers in private/big pharma pies.

public services include public housing, decimated by thatcher's so called right-to-buy, and the evil assured short hold tenancy that allows landlords to evict on 28 day notice. the right to buy should either apply equally in the private sector, or be scrapped. Blair promised its capital receipts would be returned to LAs for housebuilding. PFI projects are the hugest rip-off of which Grenfell is an example, along with countless others, where for example hospital trusts are crippled by 30 year repayment contracts for defective buildings and infrastructure. This is Thatcher's Britain - it is pure evil

I have always been a firm believer that the sale of public services as a bad idea. Engineered by the banks to reduce money going back into the public purse. Which meant the government has to generate more debt by borrowing to shore up the shortfall. Plus, also reaping the benefits of large amounts in share dividends. What better to sell off than services the public cannot do without on a daily basis. It is pretty much bringing America to it's knees, and it will do exactly the same here if nothing is addressed.

People may be interested in the article in The Independent by John McDonell MP on privatisation. It shows just how self serving and poorly managed public services have been run since being privatised. I was going to post a link but the filter would not allow me to.