This is how to do policy consultation responses

April 4, 2011 8:55 AM

Rap attack: six hundred clause Health and Social Care Bill 2011 eviscerated in three minutes by amateur rapper

22 year old bin man, Sean Donnelly has done a great deal to shine a harsh light on the British Government’s complex proposals for health policy reform. To my ear, there’s probably a but too much coarse abuse but the section at 1.49 is devastating. Cue media shitstorm. Cue Prime Ministerial back pedalling. Via Radio 4.

posted by dmt (29 comments total)

I really really really wish rap was doing more of this. More. More. More. Silver tongued devil, he is.
posted by madred at 9:05 AM on April 4, 2011 [4 favorites]

Recording and video funded by Unison, the public sector union. Nice work.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:19 AM on April 4, 2011 [3 favorites]

Nice to see something a bit more political than the usual rapping about bling and babes and guns. Catchy too.
posted by WalterMitty at 9:23 AM on April 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Holy crap that's... wicked. Teaming a liberal progressive rapper teamed with Unison's credibility and backing is nothing short of PR genius.

Also, that rap is righteous.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:30 AM on April 4, 2011

I'm now going to have 'Andrew Lansley GREEDY Andrew Lansley TOSSER' in my head every time I hear The House of the Rising Sun.
posted by Summer at 9:30 AM on April 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

It's really impressive rap work, but I have a big problem with the production; the House of the Rising Sun is turned up so loud that-- except for the thirty seconds about 70% through where the loop cuts out-- I had difficulty understanding the lyric, and I am not unaccustomed to parsing quick raps.
posted by norm at 9:40 AM on April 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

Cameron is a complete idiot. Seriously, does not have a majority from his party, and he's linked to a party that's half liberal and only joining in because it is the first time it will get a shot at leadership, yet Cameron goes after a third-rail like this.

Fool
posted by Ironmouth at 9:41 AM on April 4, 2011

Interesting related story here by the always great Michael Crick on the black arts of politics
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:46 AM on April 4, 2011

Nice to see something a bit more political than the usual rapping about bling and babes and guns.

I really really really wish rap was doing more of this.

If you think rap hasn't been doing this all along, you haven't been paying attention.
posted by joedan at 9:51 AM on April 4, 2011 [25 favorites]

The track was great and I particularly liked the emphasis in the papers sites on its effect. Another group pushing for change are 38 degrees who have been emailing to let me know about their effectiveness.

They are a not-for-profit organisation "inspired by the impact of groups like MoveOn in the United States, GetUp in Australia and Avaaz around the world" (they tell me).

They have been quite interesting to receive mail from recently, anyway, as they always put references in their mailouts.
posted by fizban at 9:55 AM on April 4, 2011 [3 favorites]

This is folk music at its finest. I mean that as high praise.
posted by ardgedee at 10:02 AM on April 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

I was just thinking that Cameron is an idiot to think of threatening the NHS, everyone loves the NHS. And then looking at the thread below, I realise that these threats aren't just limited to Britain, only in the US there are so many people who are ignorant about how awesome public health care is that they will probably get away with shutting down the public hospitals in Florida.

As for the rap, it's a bit scatological (literally) and too fast through the first section (I much perferred the rhythms in the second solo bit that's slower), but I did love the pensioners mouthing "tosser." A word like that has so much more meaning when it's being said by someone who could by my grandmum.
posted by jb at 10:02 AM on April 4, 2011

Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, has confirmed that the government will temporarily shelve the health bill Result!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:36 AM on April 4, 2011

I'm now going to have 'Andrew Lansley GREEDY Andrew Lansley TOSSER' in my head every time I hear The House of the Rising Sun.

I feel bad for anyone else named Andrew Lansley TOSSER! I mean, that's basically your name from now on TOSSER!
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:40 AM on April 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is terrific. I'm American and don't really know about these politics (though I should learn, certainly... *adds to list*). Does anyone have recommendations of similarly smart, political, excellently-executed rap?
posted by i_am_a_fiesta at 10:47 AM on April 4, 2011

Unfortunately, despite the fact that the majority of medics are against these reforms, (more than 60% of GPs) there is every indication they will be pushed through regardless. The Health & Social Care Bill has caused more unity among medical professionals that I have ever seen in 10 years of working in the field. Quite simply, the majority are scared, not of change, Lord knows the UK health profession has weathered constant change in recent years, Calman reforms, MTAS, MMC, preparation for revalidation...etc.,

It is a fundamentally flawed policy, depending as it does on the accuracy of current NHS data*. So GPs are literally being forced into GPCCs (General Practice Commissioning Consortia) to shadow from April 2012 the management of local health care and take full responsibility for running it by 2013 whether they want to or not.
(Today Mr Cameron said he is now taking charge and they won't be forced...gulp!).

Today's news suggests these reforms have been put on hold and the more naive observers are suggesting that they are being shelved. That view does not hold up to the most minimal scrutiny. Every single strategic health authority in the country is currently developing plans to close their offices and lay off their staff (e.g. SHA Close-down plan was tabled at the board meeting of the South East Coast SHA on the 29th March but is strangely missing from the list of Board documents published here) Since NHS staff have some of the best terms & conditions in the country there is no way these plans would be as developed were there the slightest hint they would not survive the anger being expressed currently.

Get the timeline: - The White Paper is published on 12th July.
Consultation with all the key stakholders closes on 11th October
Pathfinder pilots are announced on October 1st! before the consultation closes.
Dame Barbara Harkin's letter goes to all key parties on 26th October, and the first pathfinder consortia on London & Manchester are announced on 9th November

Anyone familiar with the kind of change management inherent in this White Paper can tell you consultation is an empty PR exercise. All the decisions have already been taken and even this latest hitch occasioned by the Lib Dem conference where delegates voted against the reforms, is a political tactic to get over the local elections on May 6th.

Privately most GPs I've spoken to say that the first wave of pathfinders are of the Harvard MBA/OCD/Private practice wave of GPs and the fact that the majority of GPs are being forced to take on these incredibly complicated management functions has them losing control of sphincter function.

* so let me go back to NHS data. Outcomes will be the new currency and that's no bad thing. Cardiac surgeons published their data on outcomes and significant improvements happened as a result. But that was driven by the specialists, the actual clinicians wanting to improve on their results.
The majority of data in the NHS is Hospital Episode Statistics (H.E.S.) which depend for their accurracy on whom is doing the coding. So it is not unusual for example to find the no emergency appendicetomies were carried out in 2009 in Kent on Under-16s. Now, before you go thinking that Kent has such a high roughage diet or lack of under-16s, please be aware that the person doing the operations was very junior and didn't apply the right code.
Another surgeon told me his Head & Neck -ectomies, (complex radical larygectomy for Ca) which frequently need more than one specialist surgeon (ENT, Max-Fax and and/or vascular) a whole theatre team, upwards of 6-8 hours OR time, have sometimes been coded as lumpectomy (you can see the problem) which takes 30min-1hr of a consultant nurse time and costs £25,000 less. National Audits and registries of data (where the clinicians take this basic info, clean it up and apply their records to the mix) are still being developed here and increasingly clinicans are being told they will not be given time in their job plan to do this crucial work. So the management of the NHS, one of the best systems of health care in the world is being handed over to people who currently do not have the skills, do not want to manage it, and will be given crap data.

One would almost imagine the GPs were being set-up to fail....Hmm....now there's a thought....imagine a world where the closure of the local maternity unit because its births have dropped under a certain number can be blamed on the GP consortium and not on the government....

It will however solve the UK pension crisis in 1 feel swoop as the NHS, the largest employer in the world after the Chinese army & the Indian railroad, moves most of it's staff via voluntary redundnacies, (the national Mutually agreed resignation scheme, MARS) TUPEs into other employing organisations.

Private healthcare Providers will have a field day and will cherry-pick the best parts of the NHS. What's left will wither and die. Hospitals will close and services will be curtailed to the most needy members of society.

I hope I'm wrong.
posted by Wilder at 10:47 AM on April 4, 2011 [8 favorites]

Yo G, that's whacked!

That's how the kids today say it right? Oh bother, I'm getting too old for this.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:07 AM on April 4, 2011

I was unconvinced until Your face looks like a sugared-up ballsack. That and the withering, accurate critique of the bill, obviously.
posted by jack_mo at 11:11 AM on April 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Nice to see something a bit more political than the usual rapping about bling and babes and guns.

Rap > gangsta rap.
posted by dhartung at 11:47 AM on April 4, 2011

Does anyone have recommendations of similarly smart, political, excellently-executed rap?

Immortal Technique.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 12:06 PM on April 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

If you think rap hasn't been doing this all along, you haven't been paying attention.

Maybe it is, but those types of rappers certainly don't get enough attention (e.g. rap billboard charts). That's an aside though, this rap is spectacular.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 12:42 PM on April 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

It is thought Mr Lansley has enlisted the help of Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb - whose son Archie is a respected grime producer - to create a similar rap in support of the reforms.

Senior civil servants claim Mr Lansley was recently seen ‘sheepishly dancing in a gold tracksuit’ with a small film crew outside his parliamentary office.

:D
posted by Abiezer at 1:05 PM on April 4, 2011

Wilder - are you telling me that these very important databases are not coded by some kind of double data-entry (DDE)? I mean, I don't DDE my own research because a) I have to do it all myself, and b) it's early modern, so everything's a little fuzzy anyways -- but even crappy, not-validated market research does double data-entry. Surely paying one extra data-entry person as a backup would have been cheaper than mis-coding a £25,000+ surgery.
posted by jb at 1:12 PM on April 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hip hop is the perfect genre to deliver this sort of message. Being American I really wish there was a US version geared towards the deplorable state of our healthcare system. Awesome stuff.
posted by jnnla at 2:26 PM on April 4, 2011

Re: Immortal Technique

Check this one out. A classic.
posted by splice at 3:27 PM on April 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

Being American I really wish there was a US version geared towards the deplorable state of our healthcare system.

Deplorable? I have awesome healthcare. The problem is that there are massive holes in the system, and roughly half of Americans think that's the way it should be.

So... about that elephant in the room. bruh laced up his hat.
posted by eddydamascene at 9:06 PM on April 4, 2011

that's no amateur
posted by past at 9:19 PM on April 4, 2011

deplorable state of our healthcare system.

Deplorable? I have awesome healthcare. The problem is that there are massive holes in the system

I'm not sure what the disagreement is. A system with massive holes in it is a system in a deplorable state, no matter if it delivers well to some people.

Also, how much do you pay for your care? When people talk about UK healthcare reform, it's usually worth pointing out that our current system offers fairly decent value for money. It's an extremely long way from perfect, but the argument for radical reform would need to be made out much more strongly than it has been, if it is to persuade an unbiased observer. The argument for US healthcare reform has been made out pretty much irrefutably, the problem, as eddydamascene, suggests, is that a lot of people aren't interested in that argument.

The arguments on either side of the Atlantic seem almost like mirror-images of each other.
posted by howfar at 3:28 AM on April 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wait, you linked Immortal Technique, and not 'Bin Laden'?
posted by FatherDagon at 9:55 AM on April 5, 2011 [1 favorite]