Tag Archives: DigitalRights

Health and Social Care Bill

Last week, I wrote to my MP, Julian Huppert, asking him to vote against the above bill, both in the motions being proposed in the Lib Dem conference, and the actual Bill itself.

He proceeded to do so, rebelling against the party line to do it. I would like to thank him publicly for doing so, and for representing me in that regard.

A few days later, I received an email from him, which explained his, and the Liberal Democrats position in more detail. As at the time he hadn’t got anything on his website and I thought the email gave a more nuanced view than some of the polarising opinions, I thought it was worth publishing here;

15 March 2012

Dear Mr Constable,

Thank you for contacting me to let me know of your concerns about the
Health and Social Care Bill.
I voted against the Bill last September, when it left the House of
Commons. Although the Bill by then was better than the version
originally proposed by Andrew Lansley, largely through the efforts of
my colleagues, I did not believe it had been improved sufficiently to
get public support and confidence.
In the months since then it has been debated in the House of Lords,
and I acknowledge that much work has been achieved, notably by Liberal
Democrat peers, to make further improvements.

I am proud of Liberal Democrat amendments to the bill that ensure that
competition is not the focus, that there is a duty to reduce health
inequality and that there is a greater priority for medical research.
We will continue to have universal health care that is free at the
point of care. I also welcome the clause in the bill that will ensure
that never again will Governments be allowed to favour private sector
contracts when there are existing NHS providers.

However, I believe that the improvements are still not enough and
crucially the bill is now opposed by the medical professionals who
would have to implement it.

I therefore voted in the House of Commons on 13th March for the
amendment tabled by some of my Liberal Democrat colleagues saying that
the House “declines to support the bill in its current form and calls
for an urgent summit of the Royal Colleges, professional bodies,
patients’ organisations and the Government to plan health reforms
based on the Coalition Agreement”. I also voted for the main motion
calling for the bill to be dropped, when the amendment was defeated,
because I believe that the NHS is too vital for the welfare of every
person in Cambridge to be broken up by unpopular reforms.

Sadly, I was not on the winning side in that debate and vote.

There has also been significant discussion of the NHS Transition Risk
Register, and whether it should be released. I welcome the ruling of
the Information Tribunal that the Government should publish the NHS
Risk Register and wrote immediately on the publication of the report
to the Secretary of State for Health asking that the register be
immediately released. I had previously written in similar terms after
the Information Commissioner’s original ruling, and signed an Early
Day Motion calling for the Risk Register to be released. I hope that
Andrew Lansley will do the right thing on this issue.

I do believe that the NHS needs improvement and reform. Everyone in
this country deserves a first class health service which protects
everyone regardless of ability to pay.

The 1997-2010 Labour government made a number of reforms that
introduced private sector providers into the health service and paid
them more than NHS providers for the same service, including £250
million for operations that were never performed. In addition a
botched computer system that never worked cost £12 billion pounds and
the Health Service was left with a bill for £60 billion from PFI
contracts. Labour’s response to these failures was to employ
management consultants, the number of in the NHS rose by eighty per
cent in the years 2008-2010. The 2010 Labour manifesto also contained
proposals for greater involvement of the private sector.

We should be under no illusion that the previous government’s reforms
left the health service with health outcomes that are below the EU
average and near bankrupt hospitals. I remain convinced that there is
a pressing need for reform.

I believe that the only way to maintain free universal health care is
through bottom-up reforms which are fully supported by clinicians on
the ground.

I hope the Government will be able to improve the NHS over the coming
years, but I believe that the current Bill will not make the changes
needed.

Thank you for writing to me about this important issue.

Yours sincerely,

Julian Huppert
Member of Parliament for Cambridge

Stop Murdoch’s BBC payments

Cribbed from the Azaaz.org site I registered a petition from;

The BBC is being forced to hand over tens of millions of pounds every year to line Murdoch’s pockets. Murdoch’s cronies in government are determined to save this scheme — but together we can stop this outrage.

These unbelievable regulations cost our public broadcasters up to £100 million a year. Rather than being paid for their great programmes, they actually have to pay BSkyB to show their programmes.

In coming days, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt will decide whether to renew this dreadful deal and Murdoch’s scandals have put him on the back foot. Our pressure can stop this BBC robbery. Click here to send your message to Hunt now:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_murdochs_bbc_robbery_2/?tta

These are our millions — handed over in license fees to fund British programmes, not to boost Murdoch’s profits. But an unfair system of “retransmission fees” designed by Murdoch leaves the BBC and other broadcasters with no choice. They are forced to pay BSkyB to show their channels, even though they add huge value to the satellite platform — accounting for 41% of all shows watched on BSkyB and vastly increasing customer retention.

Amazingly, Murdoch has argued the exact opposite in the US — there, he charges cable TV companies over $250 million a year to show his programmes. With the same deal Murdoch gets in the US, our public service broadcasters would have hundreds of millions of pounds extra every year to invest in great programmes. This money would allow the BBC to reverse its cuts to BB4 and local radio overnight.

Murdoch’s cozy relationship with our politicians has won him this outrageous UK scheme — but his power is starting to crumble, and together we can end it. Labour has already come out against this deal, and Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is about to make his decision in his communications review — send your message now to make sure he stops this outrage.

SOURCES

Re-transmission fees in the UK: the case for change (independent report):
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/pdf/RetransmissionandAccessChargesReview.pdf

How the BBC can stand up to parasitic Sky (The Guardian):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/02/maimed-bbc-parasitic-sky

Broadcasters union backs call for reform (BECTU):
http://www.bectu.org.uk/news/1408

UKUUG Spring 2011 Conference

I was lucky to be able to attend this year, as work had agreed to send me on it, and hadn’t reneged when I’d handed in my notice, although I did end up volunteering to pay for the travel and take holiday, so its only some impact for them..

Most impressed with the trains from Peterborough to Leeds – clean, on time and with free Wifi (for 15 mins, then chargeable), and power sockets at every seat.  Makes me wonder what the hell the cambridge operators are doing when the Leeds line can obviously muster this..  Also most impressed with Google maps/Navigation on my HTC Wildfire.  It directed me walking from the train station to event, and hotel, flawlessly.  Pity the battery didn’t hold out all day, though.  I really should be able to listen to a couple of hours of music, walk for 30 mins with the GPS on and make a couple of phone calls without using up all the juice.

Conference was good and increasingly attracting the DevOps crowd, which is a very good thing – preventing the conference from fading into obscurity and obsolescence.  Inspiring talks from Matthew Macdonald-Wallace and Adrian Kennard in particular, although I enjoyed the talks on Ceph, Git and DNSSEC also, and have some new projects to investigate as a result.

Thanks to Google for the excellent stationary swag, and for paying for dinner at the excellent Leeds Armoury.

Good fun, interesting talks and people and not too much intrusion into work for those attending via that.  Bloody good value.

Regarding BBC’s amendment to the multiplex licence for DTT

To:  Andrew.Dumbreck@ofcom.org.uk

Dear Sir,

As per; http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/tvlicensing/enquiry/ofcom_bbc.pdf

I am unclear as to the public benefit, in particular as to why the BBC should be approaching Offcom “to take steps to ensure that reception equipment will implement the specified content management arrangements”.

It would seem to me that;

a) Since the BBC is publicly funded, the direction should come from the licence fee payers and not the third party content owners – if they wish to lobby, surely they should do so directly?

b) There is no benefit for the licence payer, and potentially considerable cost, as if I read the amendment correctly, the scrambling can only be undone by new boxes, rendering the current crop of set top boxes etc, obsolete and non-functional, requiring new boxes to be purchased – already a sore point for those forced to purchase one by the digital switchover.

I would ask you to refuse this ammendment on these grounds.

Thanks,

John, Licence fee payer.