Democrats or technocrats?

WITH all the bad news about illegal raves and violence I’m sure we’re all cheered to read of the lowering alert level. Likewise the news of falling local rates shows we are perhaps approaching some relief, though of course this may well bounce back with people becoming complacent.

I’m also cheered by reading of local politicians Andy Burnham and Sir Richard Leese wanting to take over the hitherto commercially-run testing programme if it has been failing to share results adequately.

I’m not up on the details of this, but it sounds like the problems some are saying face us all with the recurrent threat of increased takeover of NHS services by businesses. This may come as a result of sharing out the workload following the pandemic where prioritisation of Covid-19 has seen cancer and other patients’ waiting times frozen.

Or it may come as a result of the introduction of US businesses as part of a post-Brexit quid pro quo deregulation of trade favouring the City of London.

The multi-million pound debacle of the development of a coronavirus app (isn’t there an app for everything nowadays!) shows what may go wrong. As I understand it, it seems this was at least in part caused because Apple and Google sit on the electronic data mountains they have compiled about us all rather than making it freely available to trusted colleagues.

Andy and Richard may not be health or IT gurus, but they live here, are democratically answerable, and can be held responsible by those they serve whereas commercial companies are only responsible for delivering profits to shareholders.

I know which I think will be keener at looking after the interests of my children!

Ferd Alf, Northern Quarter, Manchester