British National Party Public Services News Bulletin w/c January 1, 2007
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1. THINK TANK BACKS RETURN TO GRAMMAR SCHOOLS

The BNP is vindicated again! We have been calling for this for some time.

http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?story=PN332602I&
news_headline=think_tank_calls_for_return_to_grammar_schools

Britain will pay a heavy price for failing to educate its brightest young children in selective schools, warns a leading right wing think tank.

The Centre for Policy Studies says politicians have tolerated the comprehensive school system for too long although it is both "academically inferior and socially divisive".

In "Three Cheers for Selection: how grammar schools help the poor", the former head of John Major's policy unit Lord Norman Blackwell says comprehensive schools have not improved education standards or reduced social equality.

Lord Blackwell, chairman of the CPS, says all children – and particularly those from poorer backgrounds – would benefit from a selective system.

His report says research has shown that those few able children from poorer backgrounds who do attend grammar schools today do exceptionally well.

But the vast majority of bright children in the 76% of local education authorities (LEAs) without grammar schools have no or little chance of going to a selective school. Just 36 out of 150 LEAs in England still retain any selective state schools.

Recent studies show social mobility has declined sharply over the last 30 years – with selection by ability replaced by selection by post code.

The Conservative peer also argues that a selective system raises overall standards. In LEAs with a selective system, 32% of children received good grades at GCSE in 2002 compared with 23% in non-selective LEAs.

A survey of 1,006 people by market research company ICM, commissioned by the CPS, found 76% believe that more academic children can maximise their potential at secondary school through streaming or by attending selective schools.

And 73% believe that less academic children can maximise their potential at secondary schools through streaming or by attending selective schools.

Almost four in ten (39%) would choose a selective school for their own child, although the majority (58%)would opt for a mixed ability school. Meanwhile, half (51%) are in favour of allowing schools set their own admissions policy.

Lord Blackwell said: "We are losing out because some of our brightest children are not being stretched to the limit of their ability.

"We will fall behind other countries because we rely on these children to become our captains of industry and professional leaders and they risk falling behind.

"As selective schools have been replaced with comprehensives, the affluence of the catchment area rather than ability has become a primary determinant of the quality of schooling. It has led to selection by postcode.

"Good schools and high house prices have reinforced each other, with children from poorer families being excluded from good comprehensives.

"The concentration of the remaining grammar schools in a small number of mostly higher income areas means that many able children from poor families miss out on the opportunities selective education can provide.

"The return to social selection in the current state system has been further reinforced by the ability of those with higher incomes to opt out of comprehensives by choosing private education – an option not available to the poor, particularly since the abolition of the Assisted Places Scheme.

"The average cost of sending a child to private school has increased by 42% to nearly £10,000 per year over the past five years, whilst average earnings have only increased by 24%.

"Each child sent to a private school charging average fees would now account for only 7% of the annual salary of a senior director or chief executive.

"But an engineer on average earnings would have to part with 28% of his income to cover the fees for a private prep or secondary school, and school fees would eat up nearly 40% of a nurse's annual pay, according to a study by Halifax."

Lord Blackwell recommends the education system should be reformed to give all parents the choice of applying to a free selective academic school but without going back to the old system of a compulsory 11 plus exam.

He proposes six reforms including allowing streaming in all state schools with children able to advance or repeat years where advantageous, enabling state schools to opt to be fully selective without any LEA block and allowing parents to decide whether or not to apply to a selective school.

He also wants free transport to be offered to selective schools so they can serve less well off children from a wide catchment area, the provision of information on selective schools to all parents of children at primary school and transforming all state schools into independent foundation schools to free up both state and independent schools and to allow them to compete in offering state funded places on equal terms.

Lord Blackwell said: "All politicians recognise education is important. Yet for too long they have tolerated a system which is both academically suboptimal and socially divisive. The refocusing of education around selection and streaming is long overdue. It cannot afford to be delayed any longer."

Sir Eric Anderson, who was the Head Master to both Tony Blair and David Cameron, added: "Britain cannot afford to educate its people less well than the best in other countries.

"We have to educate everyone well, and our most able brains superbly well, if we are to compete globally with educated people from the rest of the developed world and perhaps particularly from the emerging new economies in the east.

"The 40 year experiment with comprehensive schools has fallen far short of its aims. It was meant to provide, in Harold Wilson's words, 'grammar schools for all' and it was meant to lead to increased social mobility. It has done neither.

"It has not raised the standards of all and, as recent studies show, we now have a less mobile society than we had in the 1950s and 1960s. In effect, selection by ability has been replaced by selection by neighbourhood. That is not sensible, nor is it even egalitarian.

"This publication suggests that we rid ourselves of an outworn dogma, and follow a practical way to make our schools as good as we can make them."

2. BOYS AND GIRLS SHOULD BE TAUGHT DIFFERENTLY - REPORT

Another blow to unisex liberalism.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?
view=BLOGDETAIL&grid=F11&blog=yourview&xml=/news/2007/01/04/ublview04b.xml

A new report by the head of Ofsted, the inspectorate for English schools, advocates adopting different teaching styles for male and female pupils to help close the education gap between boys and girls.

Boys already make up a majority of the 20 per cent of children who cannot read properly by the age of 11. But research shows that they are likely to fall even further behind by the age of 16.

“Research into boys’ and girls’ motivation shows that differences appear from a very early age, with boys placing a greater value on believing themselves to be better at mathematics and science and girls at reading and art,” the so called 2020 Review said.

“Boys are more likely to attribute their successes to internal, stable causes (such as ability) and their failures to external, unstable causes (such as bad luck).”

Do you think different styles of teaching would remedy this state of affairs? What should the different styles be? What about teaching boys and girls separately, in single-sex schools, for example?

Was this always the problem it is now? Is it really getting worse and, if so, why? Does it really matter? Shouldn't boys just be allowed to be boys and girls girls?

Do you think the disparity between boys and girls in their performances at school is particularly bad in England or the UK? If so, why? If you live outside Britain, are boys in your country as far behind their female classmates?

To send a letter to the editor of The Daily Telegraph, email dtletters@telegraph.co.uk

3. CONSULTANT SURPLUS, NURSE SHORTAGE - REPORT

Once again, the BNP is vindicated. We have been saying for ages that the NHS is top-heavy with administrators and management consultants, and that we would cut spending on such persons and put the money into front-line staff like nurses.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2124260.ece

The NHS will be top heavy with highly paid consultants and other specialists by 2011, but short of thousands of nurses, a leaked Department of Health document warns. It predicts a "volatile" four years, with about 37,000 jobs going next year, though numbers are expected to pick up later. It says "sharp reductions" will cut the 1,366,000 NHS workforce by 2.7 per cent.

The strategy document, written by the Department of Health's workforce directorate, also suggests that those still employed by the NHS will have to work harder or be paid less.

It predicts bitter opposition from the British Medical Association as the numbers of consultants and specialists such as physiotherapists, healthcare scientists and technicians are "managed down".

The Conservatives seized on the predicted job cuts yesterday as proof that the Government's health policy is now driven by a financial crisis. Britain's biggest health union vowed to oppose any cuts in nurses' pay.

The document, leaked to the Health Service Journal, forecasts that by 2010-11, the NHS will have 3,200 too many full-time consultants "which we cannot afford to employ", and 16,200 too many allied health professionals, scientists and technicians. At the same time, there will be shortages of 14,000 nurses, 1,200 GPs, and 1,100 junior doctors. It suggests ways to cut the NHS's expanding wage bill, by doing away with national pay bargaining so that regional and local deals can bring down nurses' pay.

It suggests that unemployment will help to "create downward pressure on wages", and that the unions might agree to "cafeteria style" pay awards which trade hours for pay. This would mean that the unions would achieve their goal of a 35-hour week in theory, but "in practice most staff might be expected to cash in extra hours for more pay".

It also calls for a review of doctors' pay structure, and for specialist doctors to be encouraged to retrain as GPs, and urges NHS employers to use a "market model", buying in skills as and when they are needed. Trusts should "concentrate on buying in the skills they need to the standards they require without necessarily seeking to predict, commission or control the supply".

Mike Jackson, the deputy head of health for Britain's main public-sector union, said the union would oppose local pay deals, claiming they were "not necessary" because of the flexibility already in the system. He added: "Patient care would be damaged by any attempt to cut nurses pay.

"We've spent years working to get decent pay to make sure enough nurses want to stay in the job. Any cut would undo all that good work. As it is, we face huge demographic challenges - 20 per cent of our nurses are aged between 50 and 59 - and if we start cutting pay, it will make the job of attracting enough nurses even more difficult."

The shadow Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, said: "This latest fiasco in workforce planning is the bleakest possible start to 2007 for the NHS."

He added: "The financial crisis in the NHS is now driving government policy. By cynically using the misery of unemployment to cut pay in the NHS, Labour ministers are making hard-working doctors and nurses pay for governmental incompetence. The effect on morale will be dire.

"NHS resources, and the responsibility for spending them, need to be given to frontline staff so they can build a more effective NHS which responds to the needs of its staff as well as to the needs of patients. We can never again allow such a tragic failure of central planning."

4. BRITONS DIE WHILE NHS WASTES BILLIONS

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article179.html

The UK Labour government came to office in 1997, focused on reinvigorating the National Health Service (NHS), this they did with vigor where the annual NHS budget has grown from £34 billions in 1997 to the present days £96 billion ! A more than 282% increase !!!!

Given the surge in spending, you would expect everything to be happy in the NHS, with ample funds to go around, if so? You would be badly mistaken. NHS trusts up and down the country are reporting budget over-runs and cut backs in beds available to patents as well as on staffing with demands for billions more money to be spent.

So what's gone wrong with the NHS?

In simple terms, the Labour government threw money at the NHS, literally hundreds of billions of extra spending has been thrown at the NHS, and much of it has gone straight into wages to feed the NHS gravy train. The NHS employs well over 1,100,000 workers, right from nurses to GP's to specialists have all enjoyed pay rises in excess of 100%! On top of this, extra bureaucracy & quangos have been created to manage output targets that were supposed to measure the success of the hundreds of billions of extra spending. As years have gone by the output targets have been curtailed to meet those that are 'easiest' to achieve, you could say for political purposes.

The net result of a 285% increase in spending is a meager 30% increase in output in actual health care gain to patients. The rest of the money to all intents and purposes has been wasted. And more importantly continues to be wasted , this in no small part has resulted the current government budget deficit of £40 billions a year. The sensible thing to do would be to realise that the NHS is out of control and to rationalise / privatise it into a more affordable institution that allows the country to balance its budget.

But this is not going to happen, why ? Because of the 1.1 million people on the NHS gravy train, which are predominantly labour supporters. Even Cameron's Conservative party in an attempt to convince this large pool of voters that they will continue the Labour parties programme of out of control NHS spending is declaring that that will not cut NHS spending.

Take General Practitioners (GP's) The average salary today is £106,000, up from £40, 000 in 1997, an increase of exactly 265% ! and indicative of why the NHS has going wrong !. Nearly triple the wages for LESS work, as GP's cut back on actual working hours with more work offloaded to nurses and referrals to hospitals for diagnoses. There is NO justification for such a huge pay rise for less productivity.

Whilst GP's perform less work for nearly triple pay, this has led to an amalgamation of practices into multi-GP practices, patients increasingly complain of poorer care and indifference from part-time GP's as patients are shuffled from one GP to another, its only after several visits spanning several months that a patient can expect their symptoms to be taken seriously. Even then they have to go through the referral bureaucracy and delays, as increasingly cheaper quicker target achieving conditions are first to be referred.

The GP's are increasingly given incentives NOT to refer patients so as to save costs, this has led to sharp drop in the number of consultations over the last year, as it becomes ever harder for patents to make appointments with 'part-time' GP's. Where in the past GP's would have seen patents, now routine inquiries as determined by reception staff are referred to visiting nurses. This leads to further delays in diagnoses as nurses and GP's and reception staff pass the buck between one another with regards why say blood work cannot be taken etc. The cases are numerous of symptoms being ignored by part-time GP's' this includes cases of people with life threatening conditions such as brain tumors being repeated told that all they have is environmental flu, with no attempt at proper diagnoses !

Ninety per cent of GP's have taken advantage of the new GP contract to opt out of the provision of out of hours care, such as in the evening or weekends, leaving primary care trusts to find alternate providers to fill the gaps.

Patients increasingly disillusioned by the poor quality of GP/NHS service are going to the private sector for diagnoses and treatment, which has led to a boom in the private healthcare sector. So patients end up paying twice, once in higher taxes to employ those on the NHS gravy train and then again for proper diagnoses and treatment.

The new contracts for NHS staff also included generous pension arrangements, which is expected to eat up around £13 billion of the total budget by 2007/08 and contributing towards the ever escalating cost of staff pay and the soaring government budget deficit. This whilst the private sector workers are expected to increase contributions towards their pension provision.

So when you next hear news reports of NHS trusts being strapped for cash, demanding ever more funding, remember that throwing more money at the NHS is akin to throwing money into a bottomless pit, where barely 30p is spent on patient care from every extra £1 spent ! Only the other day, it was announced a further £6 billions a year is to be spent on the NHS bottomless pit, with the gravy train passengers crying for even more ! Inline with previous performance it is expected that less than 1/3rd of this extra £6 billion will be plowed into patient care !

The time has come to seriously consider privatizing the NHS, to give the power back to the patient to go to which ever GP / hospital they choose to for diagnoses and treatment. Only then will patients receive the care and consideration they deserve. Until then the NHS will continue to literally KILL Britain as it wastes tens of billions every year !

5. PRIVATE FINANCE INITIATIVE COSTS NHS £45 BILLION

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=10070

The cost to the NHS of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is £45 billion - enough to reverse all the present cuts and lay a secure basis for the future.

The figure was revealed in an answer to a parliamentary question from the Tory shadow health secretary. It showed that the eventual repayments for 83 hospital building projects worth £8 billion would total £53 billion under PFI.

Under PFI, a private company builds a hospital on the basis that it will then receive “unitary payments” from the NHS each year for a period of around 30 years. The unitary costs include the costs of providing maintenance over the lifetime of the contract.

The scheme began under the Conservatives but was stepped up under Labour. Bobby Noyes is the chair of Southampton health branch of the Unison union and president of Southampton TUC.

Speaking in a personal capacity, she told Socialist Worker, “It’s hypocritical and outrageous that the Tories should seek to make capital out of this revelation. They were the architects of this scheme, which has channeled money away from patients, services and health workers into the pockets of shareholders and multinationals.

“But let’s also recognise that Labour has followed absolutely in their footsteps. The unions called for an end to PFI as soon as Labour was elected in 1997, and won the position at Labour’s conference. But the government has accelerated the programme.

“Locally the Lymington hospital is a PFI project. It will be run by a private company from March, not the local Primary Care Trust. But even now the company involved is not finalised. So the hospital opens in December but a full nursing team can’t be recruited because it isn’t known what the hospital will specialise in.

“The new hospital means other services are being cut. But there isn’t room in the new hospital for the maternity unit. So it’s being moved 15 miles and will displace a unit for young disabled people.”

Labour says it is not privatising health, but damning evidence is now available of just how far the process has gone. And it’s far more than PFI.

Alex Nunns, information officer for Keep Our NHS public, is compiling a dossier on the full range of privatisation that is already infecting the NHS. “The government is carrying out the ‘patchwork privatisation’ of the health service,” he says.

“Unlike the Thatcher privatisations of the 1980s, the entire NHS is not being put up for auction. Instead, the health service is being parcelled up into bite-sized pieces, and handed over to private control bit by bit.

“This precludes the possibility of rational planning of care to meet health needs, the organisational principle of the NHS since 1948. It also removes healthcare from democratic control, destroys accountability, fragments the service, and will lead to reduced care with higher costs.”

Alex goes on to draw together the various forms of privatisation that so far make up this patchwork.

These include:

Payment by results (PbR) - the financial system underpinning the new market model of healthcare. In April 2006 it was rolled out to cover over 80 percent of hospital activity. One of the purposes of PbR is to allow the private sector into NHS facilities in nearly every form of care.

Choose and Book - the facility for patients to choose the site of their secondary care from a limited “menu” of providers, including at least one non-NHS facility, acts as a golden stairway for the private sector to raise its business within the NHS.

Independent Sector Treatment Centres. These are stand-alone private sector clinics specialising in a limited range of treatments, such as cataract operations or hip replacements.

Outsourcing the commissioning function of Primary Care Trusts (PCTs).

In late June the Department of Health placed an advert in the Official Journal of the European Union inviting companies to tender for all the management functions of PCTs. The advertisement was withdrawn after Keep Our NHS Public alerted the press. Two-weeks later it reappeared, this time using vague language but to the same end.

lPrivatising GP services. The Alternative Provider of Medical Services contract is the vehicle being used to bring the private sector in to run GP services.

Practice-based commissioning allows the commissioning power for purchasing treatments - including hospital operations - to be transferred from PCTs to consortia of GPs, an increasing number of which will be employed by multinational corporations.

Outsourcing PCT provision. Commissioning a patient-led NHS, published in summer 2005, set out the vision of services delivered by a patchwork of the private sector and social enterprises, not PCTs.

The Private Finance Initiative:

Unbundling of primary care services - primary care services are being broken up into saleable commodities in a process known as unbundling. LIFT - the primary care version of PFI.

LIFT projects cost to eight times more than traditional ways of building. In Newham in east London, two LIFT premises that cater to just 9 percent of the local population are taking up 28 percent of the PCT’s expenditure on accommodation.

Subsidising private sector infrastructure. The department of health has issued advice that service commissioners should be “lowering the barriers for new providers” through “reducing the capital investment required from the provider” - supplying the buildings.

Privatisation of NHS Logistics. This award-winning not for profit organisation has been outsourced to delivery firm DHL and its controversial US contractor, Novation.

Privatisation of oxygen supplies and pathology services, increasing the use of private ambulance services and outsourcing medical secretaries abroad. Connecting for Health. The NHS’s ill-fated IT programme has given corporations a huge slice of public money and unprecedented involvement in shaping the way the NHS will deliver care in future. Latest estimates suggest the cost to the taxpayer could reach £20 billion.

Trade unionists and NHS campaigners were to lobby parliament this week in defence of the health service. “We have to fight the cuts, drive out the privateers, and force a change in government policy,” says Bobby.

6. GOV'T CONSIDERS PAY-AS-YOU-GO DRIVING

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/driving/story.html?id=db687a41-9322-4d56-a7a7-b1c2cf859f96

Some rush-hour commuters in England could be paying $100 a day to use the busy routes to get to work in major urban areas if a controversial road-pricing scheme is adopted by the government.

The pay-as-you-drive recommendation from a new report from transport adviser Sir Rod Eddington is that all roads in Britain carry charges of up to $1.82 per kilometre at peak hours - less for the rest of the day. It's all intended to reduce congestion and battle climate change, but the unintended consequence might be that it also kills off the car industry.

British drivers already pay the most for gas - twice what we pay - and the thought of weekly bills well in excess of $500 will be too much for most ordinary folks.

The central government, which is warm to the idea, promises improved train and bus services as well as new highways. They probably will need only single-lane highways after this.

However, what surprised this observer when the recent announcement was made was the lack of massive public opposition; most criticism came from some commentators in the right-wing media. (Many of them suggest just hiking the gas taxes.)

Maybe people just haven't done the math yet or figured what the potential economic downsides are. Everything there is transported by road. Can you imagine what this would do to the cost of food or any other staple?

It will be a few years before anybody has to consider digging deeper into their already heavily government-picked pockets.

The Big Brother technology required has not been perfected yet. However, it's not far away and already, people driving into the centre of London pay an $18 congestion charge each day, registered by computerized checkpoints.

It's thought that the government would either get billing information from records stored when vehicles travel beneath electronic checkpoints at each gateway or track the movement of individuals via satellite.

The latter collection method really worries civil libertarians.