According to the Guardian (18/7/2008) union leaders have tabled 130 demands for New Labour to look at. Gordo says it’s a return to the seventies, but the list includes the acceptance of changes which were unthinkable then by socialists. For example Academies are accepted as a fact of life when the demand is only that staff receive the same treatment as staff in other schools. The whole idea of Academies undermines socialist thinking, so where are the unions now? A long way from where they should be evidently!
There is something about hospital cleaning being brought back in house. Public services should never be surrendered to the private sector anyway. Look at the catalogue of catastrophe that has resulted. Hospital cleanliness is one, the latest is the failure of an American firm to mark SATs papers on time. Remember a number of railway accident fatalities after Jarvis was let loose?
The New Labour Government hates professionals with some passion having ignored teachers on the raft of poisonous proposals they have introduced, with predictable disastrous consequences for pupils, for staff, for parents. Doctors didn’t jump, and while they as private concerns themselves, weren’t beyond reproach, plans to replace family practices with clinics are not what people want. Run by large unaccountable corporations they require maximum profit. The unions are concerned about the NHS, but the basic Thatcherite philosophies underpinning health, education, prisons – every facet of life, including the conduct of our wars is outsourced. Shareholders are happy, but who else?