Lawrie Boxall

Your lack of confidence in the ability of your side to win the argument in a referendum is depressing. Of course if a referendum were to take place and your ideas lost I suppose you would blame it on either the people for being too stupid to understand or on the lies told by the opposition - or both. You need also to consider the other possibility - that the people considered the arguments on both sides and came to the right conclusion at the time.

Your suggestions merely reinforce the status quo which let's face it has completely failed to protect our democratic rights. The great benefit of what I am proposing is that the voters will be directly accountable for the decision and only have themselves to blame - and only have themselves to get it right next time. That way they learn. If we distrust their ability to make rational decisions and so forever deny them the opportunity they will never become the kind of informed adults we need for a properly free and democratic society.

Paul Birch

You miss my point. I am not saying that the argument cannot be won. On the contrary, I said above that I thought that with care it probably could be sold to the electorate at a general election. What I am saying is that if one can't win the argument at a general election, when it is only one of many issues and thus less emotionally charged, there is even less reason to expect to win after a delayed referendum, when the vested interests have been given a chance to marshal their forces and come up with spurious but plausible objections to one's rational analysis. I am saying that the former is easier than the latter, that your idea would unfortunately make improvements harder to achieve not easier.

Hereward the Wake

The market will not deliver cheaper in health. The US spends twice as much on healthcare as we do and has a lower life expectancy.

Subsidising private health insurance will undermine the NHS. We have a shortage of health workers.

The NHS should remain the backbone of our health system, not a substandard safety net for the poor.

I dont mind people going private but they shouldent recive money to do so. The NHS is for everyone not just the poor.


Were UKIP to undermine the NHS I would not be able to remain in the party.

UKIP would cease to be a general eurosceptic party (drawing support from lib dems, labour and moderate conservatives) and instead become dominated by fanatical Tories.

Paul Birch

The US does not have a free-market health system. It has a differently organised largely socialist system, that's all. Once everything is taken INTO phpbb_account, the spending rates, as a proportion of GDP, are quite similar; and most of the figures I've seen indicate a slightly higher life expectancy in the US (though the difference is minor).

C_steam

Private health care is - in my experience - well ran, clean, and - above all - organised. Appointments take place more-or-less on time. Blood tests and X-Rays are done on the spot. I could go on. Why? Because they have to compete, they have to have a product they can sell in competition with other health providers. My local hospital has fixed price operations - on time, to price and - I would bet - probably cheaper in real terms than the NHS.

If I choose to remove the burden from the NHS - why shouldn't I have some kind of rebate from my massive NI payments? We're not talking no NI payments here - just a reduction since the priovate sector does not cover all the full range of health care requirements.

I would love to see the NHS improve - but currently it is a shambles ran by bureaucrats but staffed by heros. We - and the staff - deserve better and if the private sector can help the NHS get back on its feet by providing an alternative and an example then so be it.

Your sentiments are admirable, but when I need my spine sorted again I know where I'm going!

B.A.Ware

The whole idea of the NHS is we all put INTO phpbb_the pot to help those less able than ourselves. It’s okay using private because they don’t have to supply a service for everyone in society. The majority of the sickest people in society come from less well-off backgrounds, stuff em I’m all right jack :cry:

Lawrie Boxall

Paul - I don't believe for a moment that you could "sell" your proposals to the electorate in a general election. All they would achieve is to make UKIP even more unelectable than it is already. If as you suggested earlier a party was to first deceive the electorate and then try to implement such a radical reform programme once in office, that party would not survive a single term. Such a tactic would merely perpetuate the type of practice that got the country INTO phpbb_its current mess which would be bad enough but on a practical level the public sector strikes would quite rightly bring down the government.

No party even New Labour with its huge majority has been able to reform the NHS. A new approach is needed. The last few posts demonstrate how essential it is to get a proper mandate on this before any reform programme is attempted. Far from making it more difficult as you imagine, what I am suggesting is the only way reform can be achieved.

Politically there would be huge advantages for a party to adopt these ideas. Apart from devolving power away from politicians and back to people that I have already mentioned, a proposal from UKIP along these lines would shift the ground under the other parties and would begin the essential processes which are necessary for UKIP to become electable. Firstly a beginning to change the perceptions of media and public away from the belief that Kilroy had a point when he decsribed the party as a load of right wing nutcases. Secondly allowing the party to break out of its self made single issue prison and begin moving it to a new centre ground which it could mark out as its own domain and from where it can achieve its aims.

Paul Birch

I admit it would be difficult, but, for the reasons I have given, it would be even harder to get them through a delayed referendum. This would be true for any radical proposals that run counter to the prejudices that have been built up in the public mind over the last century. You have not been able to deny these reasons or refute this argument; indeed, for the last few posts you seem to have been trying to duck away from them, bringing up irrelevancies (like my personal confidence in my own suggestions) instead of addressing them.

I did not suggest that UKIP should do this. I made an observation concerning how real-politik works. Electorates do forgive or forget such trickery if the reform programme proves itself in operation.

Labour does not want to reform the NHS in any genuine sense. Nor do the Conservatives. Nor the Lib Dems.

Now you're arguing a completely different point. It may well be that a policy of commissioning independent studies to be followed by national referenda would indeed be electorally popular irrespective of whether that policy would be effective in engineering the desired reforms. The referendum part at least should be fairly popular; on the other hand, the public is very cynical about "independent enquiries", "consultation exercises", "national debates" and the like, rightly suspecting them of being mostly window-dressing and delaying tactics.

However, what I have been contending is that if you want reforms, and can't win the argument at a general election, delayed referenda won't deliver them.

Lawrie Boxall

I think we have just about done this to death. Apologies if I have sometimes stated my points in an overly agressive manner. If I did not pick up some of your points the reason is that time just does not permit a comment on every nuance. Maybe on another occassion. I just hope some others have read and enjoyed the discussion not just you and me.
I think your ideas, not just on policy but also on process would chime with those of other senior politicians and political leaders including those in the UKIP, which is really why I had to leave the party because I so profoundly disagree with them.