Monthly Archives: November 2013

The Tories attempt to delete all pre-2010 speeches from the internet

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[Related to a later post about the Conservative Party allowing access to historical material on its website.]

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/11/tories-attempt-delete-all-pre-2010-speeches-internet

The party’s commitment to transparency and freedom of information is wearing thin.

George Eaton

Image of David Cameron in front of a Conservative lie on the NHS

How’s David Cameron’s pledge to be the “most transparent” leader ever working out? Not very well judging by an extraordinary story from Computer Weekly. The site reports that the Conservatives have attempted to erase all speeches and press releases issued between 2000 and until May 2010 from the internet. That’s right; not just from their own site but from the Internet Archive, the largest publicly available digital library.

Mark Ballard reports:

“Sometime after 5 October, when Computer Weekly last took a snapshot of a Conservative speech from the Internet Archive, the Tory speech and news archive was eradicated.

Conservatives posted a robot blocker on their website, which told search engines and the Internet Archive they were no longer permitted to keep a record of the Conservative Party web archive…The erasure had the effect of hiding Conservative speeches in a secretive corner of the internet like those that shelter the military, secret services, gangsters and paedophiles.

The Conservative Party HQ was unavailable for comment. A spokesman said he had referred the matter to a “website guy”, who was out of the office.”

And before their words disappear down the memory hole, here’s what Cameron and George Osborne had to say about transparency and freedom of information before 2010.

Cameron told Google’s Zeitgeist Europe Conference on 22 May 2006:

“You’ve begun the process of democratising the world’s information. Democratising is the right word to use because by making more information available to more people, you’re giving them more power. Above all, the power for anyone to hold to account those who in the past might have had a monopoly of power – whether it’s government, big business, or the traditional media.”

On 11 October 2007, he told another Google conference in San Franciso:

“It’s clear to me that political leaders will have to learn to let go. Let go of the information that we’ve guarded so jealously.”

In an article for the Telegraph in 2011, he wrote:

“Information is power. It lets people hold the powerful to account, giving them the tools they need to take on politicians and bureaucrats. It gives people new choices and chances, allowing them to make informed judgments about their future. And it lets our professionals judge themselves against one another, and our entrepreneurs develop new products and services.”

As for Osborne, he declared in a speech on “Open Source Politics” at the Royal Society of Arts on 8 March 2007:

“We need to harness the internet to help us become more accountable, more transparent and more accessible – and so bridge the gap between government and governed.

The democratization of access to information…is eroding traditional power and informational imbalances.

No longer is there an asymmetry of information between the individual and the state, or between the layperson and the expert.”

 

The pre-election pledges that the Tories are trying to wipe from the internet

“No frontline cuts”, “no top-down NHS reorganisations”, “no VAT rise” – why the Conservatives are trying to erase all pre-May 2010 speeches and press releases from the internet.

he Tories have attempted to erase all pre-May 2010 press releases and speeches from the internet, but what could they possibly have to hide? Here are some suggestions.

1. No cuts to front-line services

As remarkable as it may seem, Cameron told Andrew Marr the weekend before the general election that a Conservative government would not cut any front-line services.

“What I can tell you is, any cabinet minister, if I win the election, who comes to me and says: “Here are my plans,” and they involve front-line reductions, they’ll be sent straight back to their department to go away and think again. After 13 years of Labour, there is a lot of wasteful spending, a lot of money that doesn’t reach the front line.”

Since then, 5,870 NHS nurses, 7,968 hospital beds, a third of ambulance stations, 5,362 firefighters and 6,800 frontline police officers have been cut.

2. “We have absolutely no plans to raise VAT”

In an interview with Jeremy Paxman on 23 April 2010, Cameron said: “We have absolutely no plans to raise VAT. Our first Budget is all about recognising we need to get spending under control rather than putting up tax.”

VAT was subsequently raised from 17.5 per cent to a record high of 20 per cent in George Osborne’s emergency Budget.

3. Cameron on child benefit: “I wouldn’t means-test it”

At a pre-election Cameron Direct event, the Tory leader issued this “read my lips” pledge: “I’m not going to flannel you, I’m going to give it to you straight. I like the child benefit, I wouldn’t change child benefit, I wouldn’t means-test it, I don’t think that is a good idea.” The coalition went on to abolish the benefit for higher earners in the Spending Review and froze it for three years.

4. NHS: “no more top-down reorganisations”

Perhaps most infamously, the Conservatives repeatedly promised before the general election that there would be no more “top-down reorganisations” of the NHS (Andrew Lansley, Conservative Party press release, 11 July 2007). In a speech at the Royal College of Pathologists on 2 November 2009, Cameron said: “With the Conservatives there will be no more of the tiresome, meddlesome, top-down re-structures that have dominated the last decade of the NHS.”

The coalition went on to launch the biggest top-down reorganisation of the service in its history.

… (continues)

[Related to a later post about the Conservative Party allowing access to historical material on its website.]

Continue ReadingThe Tories attempt to delete all pre-2010 speeches from the internet

Bad management and cruelty: Iain Duncan Smith and the failures of the Work Programme

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http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2013/11/bad-management-and-cruelty-failures-work-programme

A toxic mixture of policy by soundbite, twisted statistics and a spurious belief in the efficacy of the private sector has created a programme that is going to fail a whole generation.

by Alan White

Image of IDS Iain Duncan Smith

 

 

 

 

Earlier this year, Cait Reilly, a 24-year-old Geology graduate, won a legal battle at the Appeal Court after claiming that her unpaid work placement at Poundland, which she had been required to undertake in return for continued benefits payments, breached laws on forced labour.

Iain Duncan Smith vented his frustration on The Andrew Marr Show:

I’m sorry, but there is a group of people out there who think they’re too good for this kind of stuff […] The next time somebody goes in – those smart people who say there’s something wrong with this – they go into their supermarket, ask themselves this simple question, when they can’t find the food they want on the shelves, who is more important – them, the geologist, or the person who stacked the shelves?
It was despicable, if unsurprising, to watch a cabinet minister smearing a young woman who’d been volunteering in her preferred career field. And the second part of his statement was the kind of populist hokum that carries as much intellectual weight as an X-Factor judge’s comments (“Well when there’s an earthquake and you’re buried under a pile of tinned tomatoes in Tesco ask yourself who’s more important THEN? You, or the geologist, or the shelf stacker? Yeah. I don’t know either. Makes you think.”)

But such rhetoric is indicative of Duncan Smith’s modus operandi: policy by soundbite. To quote Jane Mansour, a policy consultant who has been involved in welfare-to-work in the UK and Australia for the last 15 years:

‘Tough’ is consistently used as a synonym for ‘effective’. They are not the same thing. It is unclear how the complexity of issues that underpin worryingly high levels of youth unemployment will be addressed by benefit removal for under 25s, or how any job churn and negative impacts on wages that occur as a consequence will be mitigated.

A considerable amount of research data, particularly that on the value of specific interventions, has been compiled or commissioned by DWP and funded by the taxpayer. Wasting such a valuable resource should be condemned forthrightly […] It’s like deciding to buy a house, paying for a full structural survey, ignoring the issues it identifies, and then building an extension on walls, that (had you read the report you would know) are not strong enough to hold it up.
So it’ll come as absolutely no surprise to hear that – by the DWP’s own reckoning – mandatory work activity schemes such as the one Cait Reilly was supposed to attend are ineffective. That analysis didn’t even mention the impact on disabled people. And it’ll also come as no surprise that the analysis was published alongside an announcement that the department was, erm, expanding the scheme.

Perhaps part of the floundering’s due to the fact Iain Duncan Smith’s trying to solve an impossible problem. You might see him ranting about a something-for-nothing culture, or alleged job snobs like Reilly – but you won’t hear a peep from him about the long-term political and economic failure that’s left nearly five people chasing every vacancy, that saw 4,300 people apply for 150 jobs at Tesco in Gosport and which has left youth unemployment a ticking economic and social time bomb.

…

Continue ReadingBad management and cruelty: Iain Duncan Smith and the failures of the Work Programme

Bedroom tax debate

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The Labour party has called an opposition day debate on the subject of the bedroom tax. The bedroom tax has proved hugely disruptive to poor families and the disabled. The debate may be ongoing now or I may have missed it.

Iain Duncan Smith – the architect of the bedroom tax – will avoid the debate.

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/11/12/ids-no-show-for-bedroom-tax-debate

A group of five Liberal Democrat MPs have broken ranks and signed a motion demanding reform of the bedroom tax.

Ahead of an opposition day debate on what the coalition calls the ‘spare room subsidy’, Greg Mulholland, Ian Swales, Adrian Sanders, Roger Williams and John Leech said no-one should be subject to the financial penalty unless they had refused a suitable alternative home.

“I understand what the government is trying to do. They are trying to cut council house waiting lists and equalise rent levels by extending something the last Labour government brought in for private sector homes,” Leech said.

“My main problem with the plans is that, because Labour didn’t build enough social housing, there aren’t enough houses for people to downsize into.”

…

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/11/why-all-mps-should-vote-against-indefensible-bedroom-tax

Today Labour is calling time on David Cameron’s hated Bedroom Tax with a vote in parliament for its immediate repeal. The tenuous case for the policy now lies in tatters, with mounting evidence that it is not only flagrantly unfair but also counterproductive as a way of controlling benefit costs.

The 660,000 families affected include 400,000 disabled people and 375,000 children. Through no fault of their own, some of Britain’s hardest-pressed low-income households are expected to find, on average, an extra £720 a year – or face losing their home.

This punitive penalty presents appalling dilemmas for vulnerable families already struggling to survive at the sharp end of David Cameron’s cost-of-living crisis. The loss of income is equivalent to losing all child benefit paid for a second or subsequent child – or more than the average cost of a daily school meal. The result has been more people resorting to Food Banks, according to the Trussell Trust, as well as expanding opportunities for payday lenders.

Surveys suggest that as many as half of those affected are already behind with their rent – the mounting arrears further destabilising the precarious finances of local housing providers. And the costs of evicting those who can’t pay, and dealing with the resulting homelessness, could be astronomical.

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/12/stop-bedroom-tax-misery-danny-alexander

Danny Alexander is thought to be “embarrassed” after his own father publicly called the bedroom tax – arguably the symbol of the coalition’s welfare cuts – “particularly unfair”. It would be something if embarrassment were sufficient to end seven months of incompetence and pain. Even shame doesn’t seem to work. If it did, stories of a 13-year-old boy, unable to walk or talk, being told to spend his care allowance on his family’s extra rent might have done it. Or a single mother taking an overdose because she couldn’t bear the debt the bedroom tax had put her in.

The systematic hacking of social security from this country’s most vulnerable has been done with barely a whimper of remorse from the most powerful. This government seems to almost revel in the mess it makes, blustering past criticism from experts, committees and courts. The vulnerable are afraid. They have reason to be. Leaders who have no affection for logic, let alone fairness, are quite terrifying.

It was clear before the bedroom tax was even implemented back in April that it was largely going to hurt people with disabilities or illness and people living in poverty; the sections of society who could least afford the charge and who had no way of escaping it. The government either didn’t notice or they didn’t care. Which, I wonder, is worse?

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http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/12/labour-criticises-iain-duncan-smith-missing-bedroom-tax

Labour has criticised Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, for missing a debate on the bedroom tax, which the party will argue is unfair and fails to save the taxpayer money.

The policy will be discussed in an opposition day debate in parliament on Tuesday, giving MPs a vote on whether to repeal the cuts to housing benefit for claimants with a spare bedroom.

Labour argues that the bedroom tax is unworkable as the vast majority of the 660,000 people affected are not able to move to smaller accommodation. However, the coalition describes the move as removing a spare room subsidy and believes it will save the taxpayer around £500m.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said the secretary of state’s absence showed how out of touch the government was on the issue.

“This vote gives MPs a chance to show where they stand and vote to repeal this unjust and unworkable policy,” she said. “If Tory and Lib Dem MPs vote against repeal, we won’t let them forget it – and we’ll step up our campaign to elect a Labour government that will.”

The Department for Work and Pensions said Duncan Smith was unable to be at the debate because he would be in Paris for an international summit on youth unemployment, which would be attended by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and François Hollande, the French president.

…

Continue ReadingBedroom tax debate

Atos, G4S paid no corporation tax last year despite carrying out £2billion of taxpayer-funded work

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10442231/Atos-G4S-paid-no-corporation-tax-last-year-despite-carrying-out-2billion-of-taxpayer-funded-work.html

Two of the country’s biggest private contractors paid no corporation tax in Britain last year, despite carrying out billions of pounds of taxpayer funded work for the Government, an official audit finds

Two of the country’s biggest private contractors paid no corporation tax in Britain last year, despite carrying out billions of pounds of taxpayer funded work for the Government, an official audit has found.

A report by the National Audit Office, published today, disclosed for the first time how much Government work is now outsourced to the private sector.

It found that the four biggest suppliers – Atos, Capita, G4S and Serco – carried out £6.6billion-worth of work for the public sector and central Government last year.

Yet two of them – Atos and G4S which carried out £2billion-worth for work for the Government and public sector – paid no corporation tax at all in the UK in 2012. Capita paid between £50million and £56million, while Serco paid £25million in tax.

Atos and G4S were criticised by Margaret Hodge MP, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

She said: “Everyone has a duty to pay their fair share in tax, but there is something particularly galling about the idea of company who gets its income from the public purse not putting its rightful contribution back in.

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Continue ReadingAtos, G4S paid no corporation tax last year despite carrying out £2billion of taxpayer-funded work

Coalition cuts blamed for shortage of 20,000 NHS nurses

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coalitioncuts-blamedfor-shortageof-20000nhs-nurses-8933661.html

FOI requests reveal ‘hidden workforce crisis’ at odds with official statistics

Image reads Accident & Emergency, A & E

Freedom of Information requests submitted by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) to dozens of NHS hospitals in England have exposed a “hidden workforce crisis” that has been missed by government statistics.

While official figures say that just 3,859 full-time nurse, midwife and health visitor posts have been lost since the Coalition came to power in May 2010, the RCN said that thousands more nursing vacancies have been created because hospitals have not been replacing staff that have retired or moved on due to reduced budgets.

Staffing shortages have been highlighted in a number of reports into NHS care. Robert Francis drew attention to understaffed wards at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust in his report into one of the worst care scandals in the health service’s history.

Howard Catton, the RCN’s head of policy, said that Government figures had not been “fully reflecting the shortages [that nurses] are experiencing at ward level”.

The report came as Downing Street confirmed that the Prime Minister is personally overseeing the NHS’s response to what A&E doctors have warned could be “our worst winter yet”. Many trusts missed their A&E targets last winter and there are fears that amid rising demand and reduced resources, the system may struggle to cope with expected spikes in admissions.

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Thousands of patients wait 12 hours in A&E

New figures show 12,000 patients were left lying on trolleys for at least 12 hours in emergency departments last year

Around 12,000 patients spent at least 12 hours lying on trolleys after being admitted to A&E last year, according to new figures.

A further 250 people waited for treatment in casualty wards for 24 hours or more, a Freedom of Information request revealed.

One person was left for 71 hours and 34 minutes, nearly three days, at North West London trust, which runs Northwick Park and Central Middlesex A&E departments.

In another shocking case a patient waited 37 hours at Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen A&E while a third was left for 33 hours at Ashford and St Peter’s in Chertsey, Surrey.

Health campaigners claimed the figures were more evidence of the growing crisis in hospitals’ emergency wards.

The figures came as the government received a warning that the closure of 50 out of 230 NHS walk-in centres in the last three years was putting extra strain on A&E units.

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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 ReadingCoalition cuts blamed for shortage of 20,000 NHS nurses