Andrew Lansley NHS Rap - 200k Hits - Now Nurses Anthem

Today's Observer has a story about the much loved anthem of NHS nurses, medics and staff, who are sick of the ill conceived NHS privatisation agenda of the Tory led Coalition.

The campaign against the dismantling of the NHS has got Tories and LibDems running scared and so they should. Focus groups used by the Governmnet show overwhelming opposition to the plans and NHS privatisation is now becoming a major issue in the run up to the May 5th local elections.

UNISON members will be proud to see NxtGen was helped by UNISON to get his much loved NHS rap out.

Nora Pearce UNISON Nursing convenor at Kingston hospital stated "The popularity of the song amongst NHS staff was a credit to NxtGen and UNISON alike - Its just what we needed"

The Andrew Lansley rap has been viewed by over 200,000 people on You Tube, while a copy by medical out side the Department of Health during the 26th March demonstration has another 4,000

Andrew Lansley NHS rap becomes a viral hit

Recording of YouTube sensation by singing binman and doctors' cult hero MC NxtGen was funded by Unison

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Sean Donnelly has now been asked to rap about the royal wedding. Photograph: Fabio De Paola

His musical attack on Andrew Lansley's plans for the NHS has become a viral sensation on the web. But the story behind the rise of Sean Donnelly, aka MC NxtGen, to the status of cult hero among the nation's surgeons, doctors and nurses has remained something of a mystery.

Now the Observer can reveal that the 22-year-old singer was given his helping hand by the health workers' union, Unison. Donnelly and his girlfriend, an occupational therapist and member of the union, contacted officials with the idea three weeks ago.

The union insists that the words to the track are those of Donnelly, who is a binman by day, but admit that they were so impressed by his lyrics that they funded the recording and a film clip.

The result has capitalised on strong opposition to the government's proposed reforms, with David Cameron expected to announce a delay this week in the publication of the health and social care bill until after local elections on 5 May. The prime minister is said to be increasingly worried about public opinion against change, demonstrated by the popularity of Donnelly's rap.

By yesterday, a week since his clip was posted on YouTube, it had received 200,000 hits. Donnelly, from Loughborough, has now been contacted by BBC3 to feature on a forthcoming programme, and Channel 4 has asked him to write a rap on the subject of the royal wedding. "It has been a hectic week," said Donnelly. "I have got a few TV meetings lined up for next week – it's good, really good. I did the rap first and then thought Unison might be able to back me up so I got my girlfriend to put it through to them and they really liked it and got me the place to film it. It took about a day and a half. I don't think it cost much because Tom the video guy doesn't charge much.

"I did the lyrics myself, went on the internet, did some research and put it together like a jigsaw and made it funny. And it has just spread."

Filmed in Ash Field school, a special school for the physically disabled in Leicester, and eschewing the traditional hiphop themes of bling, booty and babes, Donnelly's three-minute rap about the Department of Health's white paper, Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS, is personally dedicated to the secretary of state for health.

"Andrew Lansley, greedy, Andrew Lansley, tosser," runs the rap, over a sample taken from the Animals' House of the Rising Sun. "The NHS is not for sale, you grey-haired manky codger!"

But if Donnelly is far from polite, he has certainly done his research. "So the budget of the PCTs, he wants to hand to the GPs/ Oh please. Dumb geeks are gonna buy from any willing provider,/ Get care from private companies."

Later, he adds: "We'll become more like the US/ and care will be farmed out to private companies,/ who will sell their service to the NHS via the GPs/ who will have more to do with service purchase arrangements than anything to do with seeing their patients." He is now trying to release the track on iTunes.

Lansley was moved to comment. "We will never privatise the National Health Service," he said. "But I'm impressed that he's managed to get lyrics about GP commissioning into a rap ."

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, said: "We want to use every means to let people know about the damage it will cause to the NHS.

Fallon Tory Vice Chair Lies on the NHS Cuts

50,000 NHS jobs could be axed

Michael Fallon MP (Sevenoaks) Conservative Vice chairman has insisted there will be “more frontline staff” in the NHS, stressing that figures from anti-cuts campaigners which suggest 50,000 jobs could go were inaccurate.

He called the figures released by campaign group False Economy as "shameless and deeply irresponsible scaremongering of the worst kind."

So here we have it the Conservative Vice Chairman has stated the NHS will have more nurses and doctors -

But given GP Consortium's plan to reduce commissioning in their local hospitals, coupled with the failure to meet the Tories pledge of 6,000 extra midwives, extra health visitors and cuts in nurse training. This is simply just another Tory lie

Will Fallon resign when hes caught lying ?

Conservative, Zak Goldsmith MP (Richmond) stated he would resign if cuts at his local Kingston hospital went ahead, but he now claims the 250 nurses who will lose their jobs are not cuts, they are efficiency savings so he wont be resigning

George Orwell couldn't have written a better excuse.

You cannot trust the Tories on the NHS

St Georges Nurses vow to Defend the NHS

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St Georges nurses vow to defend the NHS

Nursing and NHS professionals at St Georges, Tooting, South London started 2011 by taking time out at lunch time to protest at the Governments planned NHS reforms and decision to cut £10bn a year from the NHS through so called efficiency savings.

UNISON Nursing staff at St George's have signalled that they will not hesitate to speak out against Government plans for swinging cuts and privatisation of the NHS.

Michael Walker UNISON Regional Officer states

"UNISON will not sit ideally by and watch our NHS services slashed and privatised. Britain did not vote for the introduction of an American health care system, a system which is not comprehensive, bureaucratic, expensive and where increased competition not collaboration costs patients lives".


Jane Pilgrim UNISON Nursing Convenor at St George's Hospital, Tooting states

"Over one hundred nurses at St Georges Hospital have already signalled they will be joining the TUC rally to defend public services on Saturday 26th March 2011 in Central London and we are receiving incredible support from the local community".

Geoff Thorne UNISON Branch Secretary stated
"Be clear, our branch will take any action necessary to defend our members and the future of the NHS".

Tory NHS Reforms - GP's Forced to Privatise the NHS

Even the Tories now foresee chaos in Lansley's NHS

Polly Toynbee

The Guardian

3rd January 2010

The health secretary's reforms will not bring slow and stealthy change, but a radical explosion. Cameron must sack him

In a startlingly forthright article on Comment is free last week, the new Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston challenged the fundamental principles of the coalition government's National Health Service upheaval. As a GP, she knows the significance of what is happening. Wielding a deft scalpel, she has exposed what has only been a whispered understanding within the government. She put her rubber glove on the precise mechanism by which cosy-sounding GP commissioning leads to fierce commercial competition – and privatisation.

As private companies step in to run commissioning for GPs, she warns that they may "turn to private providers at the expense of NHS providers". Some GPs are eager to run the £80bn NHS budget and become the chief rationers but, she says, "most are not". And there are good legal reasons why not.

The government has sold this as a homely notion whereby your well-respected family doctor will commission the services you need – and who better to make those decisions? It seems to make sense that those who spend the money by referring their patients should control those budgets. But as Dr Wollaston sees so clearly, there is a cancer at the heart of the plan that denies them that right.

For the first time the entire NHS has been put under competition law. The financial and clinical safety of NHS foundation trusts used to be the responsibility of the regulator, Monitor. Now its website proclaims: "The first of Monitor's three core functions is to promote competition." That means "enforcing competition law" and "removing anti-competitive behaviour". Few yet understand the nuclear nature of this. It compels every NHS activity to be privately tendered. If the NHS is the preferred provider, that can be challenged in the courts or referred to the Competition Commission. Red-in-tooth-and-claw commercial competition breaks all partnerships.

Europhobic Tory MPs take note: this makes NHS contracts subject to EU competition law. The NHS was exempt as an essentially state-run service, but GP consortiums will no longer be allowed to use a trusted local hospital without tendering first, for fear that a private company could take them to court. Some global companies will happily run loss-leader services for a while, driving NHS services to close, and no doubt raising their own prices later.

This may not be a slow and stealthy change, but an immediate and radical explosion. As I reported last month, it's happening already. Take the huge new Great Western Commissioning Consortium, amalgamating Hounslow, Hillingdon and Ealing primary care trusts – now considerably more distant from patients. GPs there have hired the US company United Healthcare to run their "referral facilitation service", taking over next month. It will guide and arm-twist, if not quite order, local GPs' referral habits. It will even step in where one hospital consultant directly refers a patient to another specialist and the PCT picks up the bill. Wollaston predicts such commercial commissioners may break old NHS ties and bring in fellow private providers; now we shall watch it happen.

The British Medical Association is alarmed. In tomorrow's British Medical Journal Dr Laurence Buckman, who chairs the BMA's GP committee, says: "I am very disappointed that people are coming to financial arrangements with commercial organisations. If you give someone a toehold, they'll take a foothold. I hope this will not be repeated elsewhere" – but he thinks that it will be.

Dr Clare Gerada, who heads the Royal College of General Practitioners, has already voiced her concern, pointing out that only a quarter of GPs are enthusiastic about a system that supposedly puts them at the helm – hardly surprising if they face lawsuits for staying with trusted NHS hospital partners. Don't assume most doctors have yet got their heads around the full implications; most tend not to bother until something impedes their everyday practice – but then they will kick up a huge fuss.

Stirrings around David Cameron suggest that some are taking a closer look at Andrew Lansley's extraordinarily radical revolution. But this stealthy road to privatisation – never spoken of in public – meets the approval of senior Tories like Francis Maude and Oliver Letwin. What suddenly worries them is impending chaos along the route – financial, organisational, clinical and political. The NHS may fall over before Lansley's £3bn reorganisation is in place.

Dissect the Great Western Commissioning Consortium with its new United Healthcare partner. Three shaky PCTs join up, ordered to cut 50% of their staff. With no less a workload, everyone reapplies for half the jobs just as GPs need more help. Hounslow has tens of millions in historic debts. Hillingdon was bailed out by £19m last year, promising to stay in budget, but is already £6m overspent this year. After heroic efforts, Ealing balances its books, but is "incredibly fragile". Like the whole NHS, they must cut 4% a year every year for three years – which the Commons select committee warns was never achieved by any health service in the world: the NHS needs a 3% budget increase to stand still. With only half the managers, they will be even less able to guard outgoings day by day.

The district prided itself on shutting a whole hospital floor, by providing better community services. But with the freeze causing bone breaks, and now the flu, all 60 beds have been re-opened, at huge cost. The cuts mean GPs here, following other areas, will soon be banned from referring anyone for non-emergency surgery until April's new financial year.

That leads to three disasters: it only shunts trust debts to next year; it passes debts this year to hospitals whose surgeons twiddle their thumbs; and waiting lists soar. That's political poison since Labour all but abolished waiting lists for the first time ever. Meanwhile patient "choice" will be carried out on a stretcher. Cameron's personal pledge that the NHS budget was "protected" will be proved false – and privatisation will be unstoppable once the Pandora's box of competition law has been opened.

Labour has a good record on the NHS: the sneers that it spent too much will cut no ice with the public if the coalition causes a meltdown. Cameron has to face a government-shaking NHS crisis – or signal a sharp U-turn with the necessary sacking of Andrew Lansley.

Brilliant Anti Cuts Video - By False Economy

Those who haven’t yet visited the new False Economy website will have missed this excellent video in support of their crowd-sourced anti cuts campaign. Great writing, high production values and eye catching kinetic typography make for compelling viewing:

Directed by Lucian Evans and presented by actor Sam West, we hope this isn’t the last such project from the False Economy team.

It makes most party political broadcasts look like BTEC media studies coursework.

Political Scrapbook

Lib Dem's - Nowhere to Run

Liberal Democrat conference cancelled over protest fears

Friday 03 December 2010

by Adrian Roberts
Morning Star

Fears over student protests have forced the Liberal Democrats to abandon a regional party conference planned for Saturday 4th December 2010.

Demonstrators had planned to target the event to voice their anger over the Lib Dems' ditching of a general election pledge to oppose tuition fee rises.

It had been set to take place at a north London school but party bosses were forced to look for somewhere else when the head teacher raised security concerns.

When the second venue (Royal Horticultural Halls in Vincent Square), said the same thing, the whole thing was pushed back to February.

"It has been postponed because of the venues' fears for security," a party spokesman said.

Fiona Edwards, a spokeswoman for protest organisers the Free Education Campaign, said the Lib Dems were "running scared."

"This reflects the fact that they are feeling the pressure from these student protests. They are running scared but we will keep chasing them down."

Ms Edwards said they had been expecting up to 1,000 people but were not sure whether any protest would go ahead now.

"It is a shame that they won't engage with students on this issue," she added.

MPs will vote on increasing fees 9th December. The Liberal Democrats continue to agonise over whether to vote for the plan.

The party is deeply divided, with some determined to vote against the measure in line with election promises.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the target of much student anger, has refused to say how he plans to vote