Healthy choices?

Both Labour and the Tories are advocating choice as the way to improve the health service, the main difference being that the Tories are more overt in subsidising the wealthy and private enterprise at the expense of the rest of us. Perhaps we'll get Tesco's to run a hosiptal that one in eight of the population will all flock to.
Instead of introducing an illusion of choice -- most people will choose their local hospital or the one that specialises in their condition, which is what happens now -- parties ought to focus on improving public health instead of the health secretary telling us it's all right for the poor to smoke.

Now the Labour party is also planning to withdraw control of schools from local authorities, despite the fact that this has failed everywhere it's been implemented, most pointedly where I live in Southwark.
My grandmother used to say that education was the one thing that couldn't be taken away from you -- particularly poignant given that she had so much taken away from her -- but it appears that you can get it taken away if you never get it in the first place.