on DNUK about it

This seems to me unwise, not least because of the Streisand Effect, but also because I must now assume that an absence of comments on something about Systm One arises not because it is good, or its providers reliable, but because anyone raising any matter has been threatened into silence.

They’ve still not shown me the software, so I’m not in a position to say anything good about them.

ReplyTo: Clive Peedell

The letter is about forming a group of doctors to take on Liberal Democrat MPs at the next general election.
Signing the letter does NOT oblige you to run for Parliament. It is a letter of support and a rallying letter.
We can sort out more detailed tactics at a later date.

The key is to get as many names as we can on the letter to put the wind up the Liberal Democrats prior to next week.

Dear Sir,

We believe that the Parliamentary passage of the Health and Social Care Bill has been an embarrassment to our democracy.

Experts in health policy and public, commercial and constitutional law have published evidence in leading peer reviewed medical journals explaining how the Health and Social Care Bill (despite the most recent amendments) will lead to the abolition of the NHS in England. The bill will facilitate the transition from a single payer tax funded system to a mixed funding system, with increasing privatisation of the provision and commissioning of healthcare in England. These drastic changes fundamentally undermine the founding principles of the NHS and have no democratic mandate from the electorate and were not part of the coalition agreement.

As healthcare professionals, we are appalled that the coalition Government has imposed many of the changes before the bill has even been enacted and then tried to use this as “evidence” that the professions support their reform. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Government has systematically failed to make the case for such radical change to the NHS, which has recently been shown to be one of the most cost effective and highly performing healthcare systems in the world, enjoying its highest ever public satisfaction rates. None of the major healthcare representative organisations and professional associations supports the reforms, and the majority of them would like to see the bill withdrawn. From the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health to the British Geriatrics Society, healthcare professionals agree that the reforms will damage and fragment the NHS, widen healthcare inequalities, and worsen patient care in England.

Despite such widespread professional concern and opposition to this hopelessly complex, flawed and potentially dangerous legislation, the coalition government has repeatedly blocked the publication of the NHS risk register and continues to push ahead with the bill, which is likely to be granted Royal Ascent on Tuesday 20th March. It is our view that coalition MPs and Peers have placed the political survival of the coalition Government above professional opinion, patient safety, and the will of the citizens of this country.

The leadership of the Liberal Democrats have ignored the democratic view of their Spring Conference and continue to support a bill, which betrays their proud heritage of Beveridge’s vision of the Welfare State and the NHS. They have colluded with their Conservative coalition partners and utilised all the political dark arts of obfuscation, deceit, and media manipulation to confuse and conceal the bill’s underlying objectives, in order to force the bill through. Liberal Democrat peers have even gone as far as voting against their own amendments.

We are shocked by the failure of the democratic process and the facilitating role played by the Liberal Democrats in the passage of this bill. We have therefore decided to form a coalition of healthcare professionals to take on Liberal Democrat MPs at the next General election, on the non-party independent ticket of defending the NHS and acting in the public interest.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Clive Peedell co-chair NHSCA
Dr John Ashton
Dr Jacky Davis co-chair NHSCA

Not wrong …

And in London, where rather more people assembled, some from Exeter.

The current direction of government is not good.

Our pensions were re-engineered 3 years ago, carefully, and taking time, and the scheme remains in surplus for the future.

Pensions are complicated, and not best fixed by liars or the innumerate.

And we have great sympathy for those whose private sector pensions were stolen by plutocrats, media moguls, fraudsters and the like, or turned out to have been based on wrong arithmetic and prospects, but we suggest fixing yours, not wrecking ours to match.

An egalitarianism where each of us does what he wishes, for about he same hours, and draws the same income and facilities from society while working and while not working has its attractions. But it doesn’t seem likely. As it is, we stash away a lot of our not inconsiderable income for a pension, and we don’t want it turned into a tax, thank you.

And if you think we’d be an exception, you are an optimist.

Via Bevan’s Run

However, rather than simply saying it is bad and should stop, lets consider what it means if I send you a wodge of correspondence, with a comment and over my name.

Do we have reasonable grounds to conclude that if there is some assertion or fact or argument in the mass of text I’ve sent you, that I have not and need not have read it?

I think in some circumstances we do not, and life might be complicated in ways which simply excising all previous commentary except anything I wish to positively bring to your attention, whether by quoting it to you, or by commenting on it.

So chop it out.

Later:
In another place and under the Chatham House Rule (of which there is one, no s), a sage remarked that

There are many pitfalls associated with not trimming the long threads that can build up with top posting.

Scrolling through such screeds often finds things that I’m sure the most recent authors really did not want disclosed and which are sometimes used to great advantage.

Often early material has nothing to do with the current subject but people have just
been lazy using reply-all rather than starting a new thread as this is an easy way to copy to and cc lists which are intended to be *nearly* the same
in a new email. (AKM: This could result in secrets from one conversation being passed on to members of anotehr conversation, which could be very embarrassing. ).

It may also be interesting to observe who has been added to or dropped from the recipients as a thread develops.

AKM: A general principle remains, that sending something out over your signature whch you have not read is amazingly dumb.

Its fundamental principle[2] may[3] be worth adopting. NPfIT started from 0/2 on that basis, and if anything got worse.

So the internet works by providing wires on which sit a load of computers (referred to as “hosts” or “peers”[4] ). Each can talk to each using a simple set of rules. Some vaguely central directories of machines are kept, and anyone may make a list of machines they trust and identifiers for them. This is a task which governments could do well, if they could do it well.

If the computer in the casualty department wants to know something about a patient, then it can send a question to the computer in the patient’s general practice. It could ask around to the Darzi Centre, the Nuffield[5], and the Orthopaedic clinic in Val Thorens[5] as well.

And then the patient should get an account showing what access has been made to their medical record[6], which tends to keep everyone honest, or at least visible.

(Adding a registry and security to this is not as hard as it may seem. Not trivial, and not something to do with secret programs, but the problems are known[8])

[0] After Al Gore steered funding for it through Congress the nerds just got on with making it work.

[1] Correlation does not prove causation

[2] Rough consensus and _running code_

[3] I mean is, but this is supposed to look more tactful

[4] An indication of the attitude which works, and prevails, and is opposite to that favoured in NPfIT thinking, where _our_ machines are regarded as clients of _their_ servers

[5] examples of places excluded by the currentfailed and abandoned approach to NHS sharing of records[6].

[6] whatever a medical record is, something which Accenture, Fujitsu, and CSC turned out to be no more sure about than the DoH, I think. I’m not sure about it either, but I’m quite keen on saying so because I think it is interesting to consider.

[7] refer to note 7 if you want to demonstrate having paid attention

[8] Some people may say understood and solved, but at least the latter group tend to be selling secret source programs that they claim solve them. The former group may be optimistic, but are likely to say that closed source solutions are unreliable, and are correct in that.