Caroline Lucas explains how we are governed by millionaires in the interest of millionaires

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Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion

https://bright-green.org/2023/03/17/caroline-lucas-explains-how-we-are-governed-by-millionaires-in-the-interest-of-millionaires/

On the latest episode of Radio 4‘s Any Questions Green Party MP Caroline Lucas made this exact point. Responding to an audience member who asked, “How have we got a situation where strikes are effecting the majority of public sector services?”, Lucas explained that the government is “made up of millionaires and is running the country for the millionaires”.

She told the audience in Sussex: “Well, we’ve had 13 years of austerity, and a government that frankly is made up of millionaires and is running the country for the millionaires, and doesn’t much care about the rest of us.”

“I think there’s a real concern that they were just hoping they could sit out these strikes weren’t they. They were hoping that there wouldn’t be enough public support for public sector workers and that they would just be able to tough it out.”

“And when you see as well, the government’s priorities – that they will find the money for the richest, but they won’t find the money for some of the poorest.”

https://bright-green.org/2023/03/17/caroline-lucas-explains-how-we-are-governed-by-millionaires-in-the-interest-of-millionaires/

Continue ReadingCaroline Lucas explains how we are governed by millionaires in the interest of millionaires

NHS faces ‘crisis of the government’s making’

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/nhs-faces-crisis-of-the-governments-making

The lying EU bus promoting money for the NHS when all the anti-EU shites are anti-NHS Neo-Liberal shites.
The lying anti-EU bus promoting money for the NHS when all the anti-EU shites are anti-NHS Neo-Liberal shites.

Austerity-hit services are ‘bursting at the seams’ as waiting lists balloon to record high of over seven million

THE NHS is facing a “crisis of the government’s making,” the labour movement stressed yesterday after official figures showed treatment waiting lists have ballooned to a record high of more than seven million people.

Unison slammed the numbers, saying they “paint a bleak picture of the state of the NHS.

“There are too few staff to provide safe patient care, and as more leave for better paid work, so waiting times and delays worsen,” head of health Sara Gorton stressed.

“The government must get a grip and start talking to unions about pay.”

Continue ReadingNHS faces ‘crisis of the government’s making’

Jeremy Corbyn seems to be doing fine …

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My analysis is that the disenfranchised – through being denied the ability to vote for anybody that represented their interests – are no longer disenfranchised. I suggest that the claims that a Corbyn government is unelectable is very seriously challenged. (I’m being polite ;)

 

Corbyn:”It’s not about me. It’s about what we have to do together”

“We’re all going to have to work hard together”

Continue ReadingJeremy Corbyn seems to be doing fine …

NHS in crisis :: Not fair, not safe – 6 reasons junior doctors are preparing to strike

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Not fair, not safe – 6 reasons junior doctors are preparing to strike
by Nick Carpenter

Image of George Osborne asking where is the money to be made in the NHS

The junior doctor contract governs the pay and conditions of work from doctors’ foundation year to registrar level. All doctors who are not consultants or fully qualified GPs are considered ‘junior’ doctors. This contract was scheduled for renegotiation, but the British Medical Association (BMA) – the largest representative body of doctors – walked away because the offer on the table was not fair to doctors and not safe for patients.

The government’s initial response was brazen, and threatened to impose the new terms without consultation – a position it has had to water down since the BMA decided to ballot its members for strike action. Here’s why the BMA has done so the first time in 40 years:

  1. An NHS in crisis: overworked and undervalued.

Britain’s doctors have had enough. In a stretched and underfunded health system which doesn’t train enough doctors and nurses to meet its own needs – or invest in the infrastructure needed for new hospitals and facilities unless aprivate contractor is taking a nice slice of the pie – the solution seems to have been ‘work harder and take up the slack’. According to the Royal College of Physicians, the NHS “remains reliant on doctors working longer than their contracted hours…the amount of ‘goodwill work’ is increasing year-on-year.”

Trusts struggling to pay their tithes to the private owners of NHS hospital buildings have responded by reducing staff salaries, meaning fewer doctors and nurses are covering more patients and expected to do so for free. The situation has reached crisis point and doctors are experiencing enormous burnout, with more doctors applying to live abroad every year. Into this context came the new contract.

  1. It’s not about the money.

The ‘offer’ of the new contract has been condemned first and foremost as fundamentally unsafe. Just as with the recent tube strike, the new contract threatens to force doctors to work longer and later with fewer safeguards.

The BMA approached negotiations acknowledging financial limitations but determined to improve safety: it wanted no doctor to work more than 72 hours in a week; no more than four nights in a week on-call; a rest day either side of nights before starting back on day shifts; and facilities to sleep-in for those who otherwise make a dangerous long drive home.

The government was unwilling to accept these terms, and furthermore wanted to reduce breaks to just one 30 minute break in a ten hour on-call shift. As a recent viral video asked, could you save a life if you’d been up all night?

  1. But it is, also, about the money.

The new contract would mean a 15-40% pay-cut depending on your specialism, with GPs and emergency care doctors being some of the hardest hit. Let that sink in.

With wages starting beneath the national median anddecreasing yearly like all public sector pay, and out of pocket expenditure for licensing, exams and indemnities, junior doctors earn significantly less than the tabloids would have you believe. Their reports often use a cunning sleight of hand: taking the figures for the pay of those doctors doing the most private work – GPs who run a private practice and some consultants who run private clinics – and presenting the data as proof of ‘greedy’ public sector workers.

There are two ways doctors’ starting wages increase: extra pay for unsociable hours, and pay advancement as you progress through the ranks of seniority and responsibility. Both of these are under threat in the new contract.

The government has suggested that working from 7am until 10pm Monday to Saturday are sociable hours – and therefore should not be paid extra – which is funny considering MPs just reduced their own working hours and increased their own pay. As for pay progression with seniority, no actual offer was made.

  1. The changes hit women hardest.

The contract changes penalise those who take time out to start a family and those who work part-time –overwhelmingly affecting women in both cases. Additionally there are concerns that changes to breaks will make work more dangerous for pregnant women. As noted above GPs will be amongst those taking the largest wage cut, one of the few specialisms with more women than men.

  1. No confidence in Jeremy Hunt.

More than 200k people signed the petition to debate a vote of no confidence in Jeremy Hunt. He wrongly and infamously implied that doctors don’t work at night or weekends. After blaming the A&E crisis last winter on people attending inappropriately (rather than, say, the reduction of roughly 13k hospital beds over the last five years), Mr Hunt felt it was appropriate to take his own children to A&E rather than wait for an appointment like, you know, the rest of us commoners.

But most of all:

  1. This was an imposition, not a negotiation.

Hunt and the government have shown a complete disdain for even the barest semblance of actual negotiation. When the BMA walked away from negotiations a year ago, it wasn’t as a strategy to get better terms, it was because the negotiations were a farce. It has taken the threat of industrial action for a pathetic attempt at reconciliation to come from the Department of Health, full of vague, unconvincing rhetoric. It is too little, too late. No fruitful discussions can continue with Hunt as health secretary. We have no reason to believe in his word or his competence.

We deserve more. Doctors do not take strike action lightly. Whilst we will always maintain emergency and essential services, the BMA will be balloting its members to strike against the contract in the next month. We hope to see you on the picket lines.

 

  • About the author: Nick is a junior doctor. He tweets at @ZastaNick.This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

 

Continue ReadingNHS in crisis :: Not fair, not safe – 6 reasons junior doctors are preparing to strike

NHS in crisis :: The billions of wasted NHS cash no-one wants to mention

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England’s Junior doctors held a 24-hour strike from 8am yesterday. It was the first of a planned series of strikes. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party and the Green Party should be commended for their support of the strike. (The strike only applies to England).

[15/1/16 11.10am The Labour Party’s position on the strike is complex, ” … Labour’s health spokeswoman Heidi Alexander had explained to them that the party would stand by its policy of not supporting industrial action.” John McDonnell joined junior doctors despite Labour agreement to not endorse strike]

While it’s very tempting to address the strike, today’s featured article instead addresses a fundamental problem with the NHS which is largely ignored by corporate media – that of the huge bureaucratic overhead of imposing a fake, imaginary ‘market’ so that the private sector can extort it’s ‘tax’. The conclusions to be drawn from this article should be clear.

Image of George Osborne asking where is the money to be made in the NHS

The billions of wasted NHS cash no-one wants to mention

Continue ReadingNHS in crisis :: The billions of wasted NHS cash no-one wants to mention

Jeremy Corbyn videos :: 2

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This blog and my previous blog is about me being a political dissident and a political activist. I am supporting Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership campaign.

I consider that the vast majority of the UK electorate has been denied the opportunity to vote for anybody remotely representing their interests for far too long. Isn’t democracy an absolute farce if your choice is Conservative, Conservative or Conservative? (Conservative, Conservative-Liberal-Democrat or Conservative-Labour).

I will be featuring some videos about Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign. These vids are just within the last day or so.

Comments are monitored. They will be published if relevant regardless of any other consideration. OK, they may be cen***ed if obscene but they are welcome and encouraged.

ed: There are a lot more available. YouTube has a filter Sort by Upload date

 

Continue ReadingJeremy Corbyn videos :: 2

Jeremy Corbyn videos :: 1

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This blog and my previous blog is about me being a political dissident and a political activist. I am supporting Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership campaign.

ed: Let me be clear. I can’t be a registered supporter of the Labour Party. I support him, I can’t vote for him. I can’t bring myself to register my support for the Labour Party … yet.

I consider that the vast majority of the UK electorate has been denied the opportunity to vote for anybody remotely representing their interests for far too long. Isn’t democracy an absolute farce if your choice is Conservative, Conservative or Conservative? (Conservative, Conservative-Liberal-Democrat or Conservative-Labour).

I will be featuring some videos about Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign. These vids are just within the last day or so. He seems really busy – no wonder he looks tired on the night bus.

Comments are monitored. They will be published if relevant regardless of any other consideration. OK, they may be cen***ed if obscene but they are welcome and encouraged.

Continue ReadingJeremy Corbyn videos :: 1

Craig Murray on how the Left can win

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Craig Murray has an excellent article on how the Left can win.

“A Daily Mirror opinion poll following a BBC televised Labour leadership candidates’ debate this week had Jeremy Corbyn as the clear winner, with twice the support of anyone else. The media ridicule level has picked up since. This policy of marginalisation works. I was saddened by readers’ comments under a Guardian report of that debate, in which Labour supporter after Labour supporter posted comment to the effect “I would like to vote for Jeremy Corbyn because he believes in the same things I do, but we need a more right wing leader to have a chance of winning.”

There are two answers to that. The first is no, you don’t need to be right wing to win. Look at the SNP. The second is what the bloody hell are you in politics for anyway? Do you just want your team to win like it was football? Is there any point at all in being elected just so you can carry out the same policies as your opponents? The problem is, of course, that for so many in the Labour Party, especially but not just the MPs, they want to win for personal career advantage not actually to promote particular policies.”

 

Continue ReadingCraig Murray on how the Left can win