Saturday 29 June 2013

NHS Catering

Anyone who reads the newspapers recently will have noticed that there seems to be quite a few stories knocking the NHS.
The Government know that privatisation of the NHS is the golden goose but there would be riots of they tried to go ahead and sell the thing to the highest bidder wholesale so they are lopping off little bits at a time and selling those, things like catering.
The strategy is to put out frequent stories knocking the NHS and the drip-drip effect of constant bad news means that at some point the public will be satisfactorily buttered up enough to accept the privatisation plan.
Of course, as we find out again and again and again, privatisation doesn't work, it's a often repeated myth that a private company can do better than a public service for the same price and standards and workforce, it can't without putting up prices, reducing standards or sacking employees.
Today's look-how-bad-the-NHS- story is over how 82,000 hospital meals go uneaten and wasted each day due to the terrible quality of hospital meals but the own goal here is that, as Alex Jackson, coordinator of the Campaign for Better Hospital Food, points out: 'The problem is the huge amount of money paid to outside caterers who inflate their costs and use the cheapest ingredients'.
I suppose some people may be shocked to realise that privatising the food in hospitals to the lowest bidder has in many cases resulted in terrible, unhealthy and poor quality meals but that won't derail the Governments scheme.
Instead of returning to in-house catering without half the funds having to be syphoned off to pay profits and dividends and what's left being spent on actually what they are paid to do which is provide meals for hospital patients, it will be ignored as other stories are found to replace it and the process of softening us up for the sell off continues.   
Privatisation doesn't work and should have no place in the NHS especially where the ability to turn a profit should not even be in the equation

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