Voting Lib-Dem and police issues

Spread the love
Cleggeron

The Liberal-Democrats are engaging in allsorts of illiberal and anti-democratic gymnastics to avoid a vote on abolishing the NHS.

I’m sorry to admit that I actually voted(1) Liberal-Democrat at the last general election. I could never vote Tory and I couldn’t bring myself to vote Labour even though it was no longer hijacked by Blair & Co. I’m going to have real problems ever voting Labour. They willingly allowed themselves to be hijacked by a Fascist, psychopathic nutter totally divorced from reality and any concept of truth who quite clearly pursued an alien agenda for so many years. Unison and Unite were so supportive of Him. Is it so important to remain in power that you prostitute all your values? Today, the Liberal Democrats may be following the same path.

Back to voting Liberal-Democat at the last general election. It was a tactical vote but I’m pleased to say that it had no effect since my constituency is certain to return a Labour MP.

As I’m sure that you’re aware – while there was no overall winning party at the General Election the Conservatives and the Liberal-Democrats formed a coalition government, the ConDems. I was pleased that New Labour was eventually defeated and out of power and initially hoped that the Liberal-Democrats would restrain the Tories. No such luck. It turns out that Clegg is a Tory in everything except political party. A European Tory, immensely rich and privilleged and – although exactly the type that are repeatedly appointed – entirely the wrong person to hold any political office. Why oh why did they listen to the press and dump Campbell?

The ConDem coalition – essentially a Tory government – shit on the electorate. Tuition fees, the Education Maintenance Allowance that was so important to poor families and now the NHS. “No top down reorganisation”. What a Blair-faced lie that one was. “We’re not privatisng the NHS”. Well, you’re not selling shares but in every other sense the NHS is getting privatised. Foreign and UK companies running hospitals, the profitable bits getting cherry-picked and a cash-starved shell of an NHS having to pick up the pieces. Health insurance, pay or go without – isn’t that privatisation?. Opposed by all major healthcare associations and yet they continue in destroying the NHS.

“No top-down reorganisation”. There is quite obviously no mandate for change.

The Lib-Dems will and are getting blamed for this. Without them it would not be happening. The toxic comments they get on newspaper articles are instructive. Will it be fatal for them? I expect to be campaigning against the Lib-Dems with anti-Blair vigour unless they change their ways pretty quickly.

(1) To be continued.

19/9/11

DRAFT: to be expanded – particularly murders by police, the role of ACPO.

There are many issues.

I am regarded by oppressive state authorities as an anarchist and potential violent terrorist. This is really quite strange since I consider it important to vote and participate in the democratic process. There is something quite clearly wrong here.

It is clear that I regularly vote as some simple searches will demonstrate. Why then am I regarded as an anarchist? How can the official assessment be so absurdly wrong? Similarly, it is clear that I participate in the democratic process and that I have always participated within the discourse of politics. Why then am I regarded as a potential terrorist – a potential violent extremist? Again, how can the official assessment be so absurdly wrong?

I consider that a huge proportion of it is to do with my perspective and activity. As somebody who rejects fake, manufactured terrorism I have been cast as the enemy. As somebody who recognises and is able to identify the real terrorists, I am the enemy of those terrorists.

Accusations of terrorism used to involve issues such as making bombs and using bombs and the threats of such things. We have seen – particularly over the last decade – that terrorism is used by strong vested interests to promote and pursue a particular agenda. Accusations of terrorism are now cheapened and directed at those that oppose such strong vested interests.

Oppressive state authorities promote the official ideology of fake, manufactured terrorism while the true anti-terrorist is cast as the terrorist. Accusations of terrorism have come to be directed at percieved opponents of some powerful interest group.

The official assessment is so absurdly wrong because the world has been turned on its head. Those that should be concerned with fighting terrorism are the terrorists and those that are accused of being terrorists are the anti-terrorists.

20/9/11 Still in Draft: may be altered and to be expanded

The question remains: Why is the official police assessment of me so absurdly wrong despite clear and obvious evidence to the contrary?

While it is accepted that the police are capable of staggering incompetence, there is more than that. I think that the answer is harassment – it is obvious that suspected terrorists can be violently killed by police with complete impunity at any time. This is a continuation of the harassment I endured from Ian Blair and John Reid. The same bullshit is involved – homegrown terrorists, liquid explosives, etc.

I think that many murders by police that are similar to me are intended to reinforce this point i.e. we can kill people similar to you so we can kill you. The police involved and their superiors are responsible for these murders by police and they are likely to continue until they are held to account.

 

Continue ReadingVoting Lib-Dem and police issues

I support …

Spread the love

Reasonable and fair – who can disagree with that?

Reasonable and fair?

Well, there’s self-determination of course ~ self-determination without those bombs raigning down … +++is’nt that Neo-Liberal bullshit instead of our bullshit?+++

No, it’s your bullshit.

Then there’s being fair about caring for people who are so unfortunate to being ill without bags of money or health insurance (poor people).

He’s your Tory shit total NHS Abolitionist. [edit: Abolutionist]

[BTW I have a fully functioning gearbox]

 

 

Continue ReadingI support …

NHS news review

Spread the love

“Liberals” and “Democrats” to meet with whole-hearted NHS abolitionist and orange-booker (Tory) Nick Clegg.

Conservative election poster 2010

Nick Clegg faces stormy conference as activists vent fury at NHS reform – UK Politics, UK – The Independent

Nick Clegg faces a challenge to his authority at the Liberal Democrats’ annual conference as party activists plan to rebel over four of the Coalition Government’s policies.

by Andrew Grice

When the Birmingham meeting opens tomorrow, grassroots members will challenge a ruling by conference managers to deny delegates a vote on the Government’s controversial NHS reforms. Although Mr Clegg extracted concessions from David Cameron, some Lib Dems believe they did not go far enough.

A conference vote in favour of further amendments to the NHS and Social Care Bill could undermine Mr Clegg’s attempt to convince the public that the Lib Dems are punching above their weight inside the Coalition.

The party is more democratic than the Conservatives or Labour and their conference decides party policy. Some activists fear that the current plan to stage a health debate without a formal vote would mark the first step towards the event becoming a “Conservative-style rally.”

Evan Harris, vice chairman of the party’s federal policy committee, said yesterday: “There is a lot of anxiety among party activists that the conference is being turned into an event where votes are avoided. That’s not our style.” Grassroots revolts are also in prospect over the Government’s plans to cut £350m from the legal aid budget and reduce state benefits for cancer patients and over its response to last month’s riots.

Lawyers plan to confront Mr Clegg over the withdrawal of legal aid from most cases of family breakdown, medical negligence, immigration, debt and welfare benefit, and to make claimants to pay legal fees out of compensation payments. The moves were rejected in a vote at the party’s spring conference.

Alistair Webster, chairman of the Liberal Democrat Lawyers’ Association, said: “I don’t think that, either inside the Government or in the parliamentary party, people have done anything like enough to push the [party’s] agenda. I’m more than disappointed – I’m appalled.”

27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
a. Only a small portion of the original article has been quoted satisfying the fair use criteria, and / or
b. This posting satisfies the requirements of a derivative work.

Please be assured that this blog is a non-commercial blog (weblog) which does not feature advertising and has not ever produced any income.

dizzy

Continue ReadingNHS news review

NHS news review

Spread the love

Colin Leys – co-author of ‘The Plot Against the NHS’ – has an article at Opendemocracy.

The NHS will be privatised – it doesn’t matter what the British people want | openDemocracy

In voting for the third reading of Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill last week MPs voted to replace the NHS as a public service with a system of competing businesses – foundation trusts, social enterprises and for-profit corporations.

The government’s claim that the Bill does not mean privatisation is plainly specious: the truth of the matter is to be found in what Lansley’s health minister, Lord Howe, told a meeting of private health businessmen on the day the Bill was approved. He said it presented ‘huge opportunities’ for the private sector, and noted that commissioners of health care would be barred from favouring NHS providers. The truth is also to be found in the government’s leaked plans to hand over the management of NHS hospitals to private companies, and in the current and promised large-scale opening up of NHS work to ‘any qualified provider’.

Conservative election poster 2010

Lord Howe reiterated Tony Blair’s dictum that it doesn’t matter who provides care, so long as it is free to the patient. What this does is to treat as irrelevant everything that follows from introducing market dynamics. The basic fact about health care is that high quality care depends on a sufficient ratio of skilled staff to patients, whereas in the long run profits can only be made by reducing the skill-mix (to lower the wage bill) and cutting staff ratios. The resulting decline in care quality is already evident in privatised long term care and home care, and is now beginning to be seen in community health services and GP services. Once NHS trusts have to compete with for-profit companies they will be forced to follow suit.

The erosion of quality will be reinforced by two other powerful factors: a) the cuts being imposed in the NHS budget, leading to the withdrawal of some services and the scaling back of others; and b) rising costs due to marketisation.

The costs of market-based health care – from making and monitoring multiple and complex contracts, to advertising, billing, auditing, legal disputes, multi-million pound executive salaries, dividends, fraud, and numerous layers of regulation – will eventually consume 20 per cent or more of the health budget, as they do in the US. Neither the Care Quality Commission nor NHS Protect (the former NHS Counter-Fraud Unit) is remotely resourced enough, or empowered enough, to prevent the decline of care quality or the scale of financial fraud that the Bill will introduce.

The effect will be that people with limited means will be offered a narrowing range of free services of declining quality, and will once again face lengthening waits for elective care. To get high quality and more comprehensive care people will have to pay for private insurance and private care, if they can afford to. More and more NHS hospital beds will be occupied by private patients, further reducing the resources available for free care. Fixed personal budgets, like those already given to people for social care, are to be introduced for a growing range of chronic conditions, allowing those with resources to top up their allocations while leaving the rest to make do with ‘basic’ NHS provision.

None of this is wild speculation. It is either already happening or announced or readily foreseeable on the basis of current policy. To deny that the Bill means privatisation and the end of the NHS as a comprehensive service equally available to all is like denying that the earth is round.

The fact that MPs have nonetheless endorsed the Bill reveals something more serious than an ideological blind spot. It shows that they don’t really care that they are flouting the wishes of the electorate. Cameron promised categorically that there would be no further top-down reorganisation of the NHS, but is pushing through a reorganisation that amounts to a destruction of it, against the known wishes of a large majority of voters. Governments, we are told, must often take unpopular decisions. But this is not some incidental measure. We are talking about something fundamental to what, for more than half a century, has played a key part in making Britons equal citizens, and Britain a civilised and humane country. If democracy doesn’t mean that governments have to respect public opinion on something as important as this, what does it mean?

It is no less depressing that the Department of Health has been reduced to peddling more and more brazen lies, such as its ‘Department of Health Myth Buster’ document, published to coincide with the Third Reading debate. The principle seems to be that that if an official lie – such as that the Health Bill does not mean privatisation – is repeated often enough, most people will feel it must be true. Democracy depends on voters having trustworthy information. If we cannot trust departments of state, run by public servants, to tell the truth, who can we trust?

Selected excerpts from ‘The Plot Against the NHS’ by Colin Leys and Stewart Player. Chapter One is available here. I highly recommend this book available from Merlin Press for £10.

The Plot Against the NHS #1

The Plot Against the NHS #2

Continue ReadingNHS news review

NHS news review

Spread the love

Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

Save our NHS | The Socialist 14 September 2011

After minimal amendments, and in the face of continued public opposition, Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill has passed through its third and final reading in the House of Commons.

The public sector workers’ union, Unison, has described the bill as causing “huge damage to patient care and [wasting] vast sums of public money. The plans will turn the NHS into a business where our taxes will increasingly pay for profit-driven companies to provide our health care.”

But it is not just the trade unions that are worried about this bill becoming law. The British Medical Association doctors’ organisation has explained that they “believe that the government’s reform plans pose an unacceptably high risk to the NHS, threatening its ability to operate effectively and equitably, now and in the future” due to a continued “inappropriate and misguided reliance on ‘market forces’ to shape services.”

The changes put forward in the bill represent the most fundamental attack on the NHS in its 63-year history. The bill’s implementation would mean there would no longer be a guarantee that necessary services be provided by the NHS, but only that services will be provided by “Any Qualified Provider”.

It would move the legal duty to provide health care away from the Health Secretary to local commissioners. It would mean the complete abolition of Primary Care Trusts. It would push all NHS Trusts into Foundation Trusts, breaking up the very idea of a national health services.

Clearly this bill must continue to be opposed, along with all the cuts and privatisations within the NHS.

BMA could join strikes over public sector pensions | GPonline.com

The BMA has refused to rule out industrial action over pensions after trade unions warned that government cuts could trigger the biggest strikes in a generation.

By Nick Bostock

As many as three million public sector workers could take part in industrial action on 30 November after leading unions announced plans to ballot their members over strikes.

A BMA spokeswoman said: ‘Our preferred way forward is still to reach an agreement with the government through negotiation, and industrial action is a last resort.

‘We’re in close contact with the other health unions, and as a group we’ll be looking at all issues relating to the negotiations, including the possibility of industrial action in the event that talks fail to make progress.

‘It doesn’t necessarily follow that a decision to take action by another NHS union means the BMA will take the same action.

Continue ReadingNHS news review