Link Round-Up

Looking through the news, I saw a surprising number of stories I could write posts on.  Rather than do them all justice, however, I'm just going to through a list of links together with a couple of sentences of commentary.

Privatised Social Service Fails

From the Guardian, we hear of systemic failures with the privatisation of the NHS ambulance service:

Hundreds of patients including people with cancer and kidney failure have missed important appointments for treatment because ambulances did not arrive to take them to hospital, after privatisation of NHS non-urgent transport services in Sussex this month.

Some elderly patients have had to wait more than five hours for ambulances and been stuck at hospital for long periods after their appointments because the transport service, now run by the private firm Coperforma, has proved so unreliable.

Patients, relatives, NHS bodies and local MPs have severely criticised the service’s performance, and a trade union representing ambulance crews said it was an “absolute shambles”. The NHS organisations that awarded the four-year, £63.5m contract have now launched an investigation.

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you to hear that privatising an important public service has lead to a drop in quality.  It's never happened before, except for all those times that it has.