EU Study Group ~ Monthly Newsletter

Newsletter 35

Southmead
Street Ford
Moretonhampstead
Devon, TQ13 8LN

Tel: 01647 440323

24 April 2008

Dear EU Study Group Member

At our most recent meeting, No. 34, on 14 April, Dr Vivienne Hodges took a broad look at the evolution, trials and continuing over centralisation of the NHS. By 2005 it employed some 1.3 million staff comprising 1.145m frontline staff and 220,000 infrastructure support staff including 39,391 managers and senior managers. There have been repeated changes in management structure and torrents of directives and targets imposed on frontline staff by the over resourced but out of touch central management and ever willing management consultants. We wondered at the succession of spectacular disasters. What then is the point of the DOH?

We looked at the insurance based health services in Germany and France and the central taxation based service in Denmark. We had to recognise that there is likely to be an ever growing demand for a free service leading to some queuing and rationing. We considered possible supplementary funding sources. We ended up with discussion of how to curb the extravagances and miss-management of the command structure. Thank you Vivienne for such an interesting talk.

Present were Joe, Bruce, Jean, Isobel, Pam, Vivienne, Steve and myself.

In the last ten minutes of the meeting we had our customary review of plans for future meetings and wakened up to the recognition that U3A members very often take their holidays in May and June before the school holidays. We therefore quickly decided to break up the EU Study Group term forth with and to resume on 8 September in accordance with the following schedule. All the meetings will start at 10.00am and be planned to finish at 12 noon.

Autumn Meetings

- Meeting No. 35 on 8 September at Southmead. Bruce will take on the subject of corruption in member states (or more widely) and what various authorities are trying to do about it. What do we say to the blunt assertion that if you want the business you have to pay the customary commissions? Are businesses supposed to be making profits for their shareholders or engaged in a crusade for exemplary rectitude? Where would you and I draw the line?

- Meeting No. 36 on 13 October. Ted and Annette will take on Chinese Hegemony and have invited us to Lower Hole Farmhouse

- Meeting No. 37 on 10 November at Southmead. Joe is going to sell his life dearly taking on the sensitive but muddled and perhaps out-dated relationship between the US and the EU in respect of NATO.

- Meeting No. 38 on 8 December at Southmead. I am finally going to produce my long promised second bite at the EU Budget.

EU Study Group Website

I must confess to you that I have been tempted into the folly of creating a website designed to bring our EU sympathies to a wider audience (if that is the right word). It is supposed to be going live on 24 April though it may be a spluttering start. Its address is eustudygroup.org.uk.

Will you give it a try? Can you find your way round it? Does it need any corrections? Should any part of it be cut out? Should the whole shooting match be unplugged? Could you be tempted to go on the Wikitour?

Could we give it a run for six months to see what happens?

Yours sincerely

Bill

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