Brummievet, I’m sorry to hear about your Mother in Law’s experience. It must have been very worrying & frustrating. I hope she (and your son) are doing Ok.

It’s hard to respond to such a heartfelt post and disagree with your main point about privatising the NHS, I’ll no doubt be branded as uncaring and heartless. So again, you have my sympathies. I’ve lost 3 close family members to cancer and It’s a terrible thing to go through.

However, for every example of poor care, inefficiencies, poor management etc there will be one that shows the opposite. Anecdotal evidence can’t really cut it in a debate about privatising the NHS.

Lots of studies have produced evidence that show that the NHS has good outcomes relative to spending. This is despite receiving less funding, per capita, than most other European countries. The US system costs twice as much per head than the NHS, and if you are poor then the outcomes are not good (they have a child mortality rate similar to some 3rd world countries). That’s what a privatised health care system could be like, especially with the government cosying up to the US for a post Brexit trade deal – and I was hoping to avoid the ‘B’ word (still, in for a penny…..).

As for the private sector taking a bigger hit than the public sector post covid, you’re probably right (initially). The public sector is, to a degree, protected from the turbulence of capitalism at it’s most ruthless as we are essentially employed by the government who aren’t going to go bust (we hope).

When it really starts to bite, people employed by the private sector in low paid, zero hour, insecure jobs may well be amongst the first to suffer. Not to mention the redundancies from more secure employment as the economy falters. There are going to be lots of personal tragedies. But society and the economy needs both the public & private sector.
Both have their role and contribute together to making the country work. It’s not a case of public = bad / private = good which seems to be the tone of a lot of posts on here (and my reason for chipping in in the first place).

So no, I don’t agree that private medicine is the way forward. Proper funding, a reformed tax system (yes, I want to pay more tax – I’d prefer it to clapping my support), less government meddling for the sake of it (from governments of all colours). Something more akin to the Northern European countries. Their types of social democracy seem to serve most of them rather well. It has to be better than this current lot and their vision of some neo liberal fantasy island.

Yes, we need to get kids back to school and schools are preparing. The school I work in are going through the process that it takes to get nearly 1000 people back to some sort of normality. I’m sorry, but that can’t happen overnight. Schools are working towards it as best they can, not to mention all the hub schools that have been open for key workers kids / vulnerable pupils – they were up and running within a week.

And before somebody tells me to ‘go and live somewhere in Northern Europe then’, I quite like it here – I just think it could be a bit better for all of us.