No PFI or hospital closures in Bristol!

General election campaign:

No PFI or hospital closures in Bristol!

Graeme JonesTHE
SOCIALIST PARTY in Bristol will be standing a candidate in the
forthcoming general election. One of the major issues facing workers in
the city is hospital closures and cuts.
Graeme Jones, Socialist Alternative prospective parliamentary
candidate for Bristol North West, spoke to the socialist about the
Socialist Party’s campaign on these issues.

OVER TEN years ago we warned that health chiefs and politicians in
Bristol wanted to close one of our three remaining hospital casualty
(A&E) units in the city. We were derided for spreading scare stories
but now we have been vindicated as local bigwigs reveal their crazy
plans.

It’s even worse than we thought!

They are proposing a scheme which will mean fewer beds and less
A&E units than the inadequate facilities we have now!

At the moment, Frenchay and Southmead hospitals serve north Bristol.
Attached to the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI) in central Bristol is the
General Hospital which provides geriatric and other specialist services.

Lives will be lost

Southmead’s A&E service is being reduced to a minor injuries unit
on 1 April this year.

The 15,000 people who are rushed there each year with extreme
injuries, will have to be shipped to the BRI or Frenchay.

Lives will be lost, as paramedics have already warned

They also want to downgrade Frenchay to a ‘community hospital’ in
2012, which will impose enormous additional stresses on the remaining
facilities.

They claim that a super-hospital will be built on Southmead’s site by
2012. Headlines scream that £500 million is to be spent.

Nobody would argue against changes if it meant building more modern,
publicly funded hospitals where people need them.

But this is not New Labour’s agenda. Instead, the super-hospital
planned in north Bristol will be financed through the Private Finance
Initiative (PFI), which gives the private sector a huge windfall at our
expense.

Feathering their nests

Feathering the nests of their greedy shareholders, they are
allowed to build, own and manage our NHS.

Like mugs, we then have to pay these private sharks back, with
interest, over many years.

This PFI plan means the chopping of 105 beds, while the closure of
the General Hospital will see another 300 beds disappearing. Nothing has
been learned from other PFI disasters in the NHS. In Swindon, where beds
were cut, the brand new hospital has been forced to display the
"full up" signs on its glossy doors!

Health ‘experts’ try and dress up the announcements of Frenchay’s
downgrading and Southmead losing its A&E unit by claiming they are
necessary in order to avoid a ‘dangerous’ situation for patients. They
say it’s better to centralise but we’re saying that not only should
Southmead be kept open, it should also be expanded. We need proper
investment in both Southmead and Frenchay to create two 21st century
hospitals in north Bristol.

Explanation

No explanation is given for why an expanding population in north
Bristol suddenly needs fewer casualty resources than in the past.

Once again, Blair is cutting services in working-class
communities, under the guise of ‘modernising’ the NHS.

Working people who’ve paid into the NHS all their lives are going to
pay a terrible price if these Tory-style plans go ahead. The outrage
that greeted this bombshell must be turned into a campaign that builds
solid links between all the communities across Bristol.

The discredited New Labour MPs have been an absolute disgrace.
Kingswood’s Roger Berry bleated that it should have been Southmead that
got the chop, while a relieved Doug Naysmith seeks to justify Frenchay’s
butchering on geographical grounds.

Our fight must be to keep both Southmead and Frenchay fully open
and fully operational.

The NHS is ours. We need a real Socialist MP in Bristol North West.

When polling starts, join our campaign in electing one who will defy
the blows that the tweedledee, tweedledum establishment politicians keep
raining down on our communities.


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THE SOCIALIST Party is standing in the following seats in the
general election:

East Midlands

Leicester West

London

Lewisham Deptford

Walthamstow

Manchester

Wythenshawe and Sale East

Merseyside

Bootle

Northern

Newcastle East and Wallsend

South East

Brighton Kemptown

South West

Bristol North West

Wales

Cardiff South and Penarth

Swansea West

West Midlands

Coventry North East

Coventry South

Stoke-on-Trent Central

Yorkshire

Sheffield Heeley

Wakefield


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