If You Care About The NHS, You Have To Watch This James O'Brien Clip
10 January 2017, 13:07 | Updated: 10 January 2017, 14:05
James O'Brien believes the government's desire to privatise the NHS seems ever-more-likely as he looks at the way that other sectors have been treated.
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James started by saying he found it hard to believe that the cynical memes around the internet that the government just want to privatise the NHS are accurate.
But he can't help feeling that the taxi drivers' fight against Uber shows that if there's a way business can make money out of things, they will.
Speaking on his LBC show, he said: "I do find it difficult to believe sometimes that it is quite as cynical as some suggest, that there is a political will to privatise the National Health Service.
"I don't know why I would find it difficult to believe. Look at what they've done something as straightforward in front of us as taxi drivers, black cab drivers.
"Somebody somewhere sitting in a boardroom looks at something that's operating perfectly well thank you very much and wonders how they can get some of that money out of the pockets of ordinary people, in this case taxi drivers.
"So they come up with Uber, which really covered itself in glory yesterday didn't it, during the tube strike. "Ah James, you've got to move with the times mate. You've got to stop sticking up for the cab drivers, especially the horrible ones who are always trolling you on Twitter. Why do you stick up for them?" Because they're having their livelihoods robbed from beneath them. And that's something that all decent people should stand up to protect. "Yeah, but Uber's the future. That's the future." Do you realise they going to charge you for times four times the normal amount in the event of there being industrial action on public transport and cab drivers will have to carry on charging you the same. "What?"
"Everywhere they look they just see people getting on with their lives happily and normally and earning a relatively decent crust and they think how can we get a piece of that action? How can we get even richer?
"And then you look at the NHS and you think well maybe, maybe, this is a stopped-clock moment. Maybe those little memes that fly around on the internet about "De-fund, demoralise, destroy, then privatise", maybe they're true.
"And of course the biggest help for those people doing that? The blame everything on immigration brigade."
