jeffs post
The day after the EU Referendum, the greatest constitutional upheaval since the Glorious Revolution, the anti-Corbyn faction of the Labour Party abandoned their posts. No matter which side of the Brexit vote you happen to be on the fact remains – this was an act of venal politiking that only served to show how deeply unpatriotic these people really are. Brexiteer or Europhile, regardless of race, creed, colour or religion it is distinctly un-British to abandon your post at a time of National Importance.
In the present day, we have the daily revelations of the #ToryElectionFraud scandal – which might see the Tory parliamentary majority Theresa May inherited from Dodgy David Cameron evaporate. For a government to have its parliamentary majority brought into doubt at such a constitutionally sensitive time as this, the post-Brexit settlement, makes this a time of National & Constitutional Importance like no other.
So, guess what the anti-Corbyn faction of the Labour Party do? Pitch in and hold the Government to the will of the People, and try to unite the 48% and the 52%? Not quite.
Here’s the Timeline: the Police caution & question 2 Tory MPs for #ToryElectionFraud. The political & media narrative switches to how this impacts on the post-Brexit chaos under Theresa Mays reign of Treasonous Mayhem.
The Tories are fined £70,000 for committing Spending Fraud in 3 by elections. 12 more MPs have their cases handed in to the Crime Prosecution Service. Another dozen or so are pending. If enough of these cases result in by elections, Theresa May’s slender majority in parliament will disappear. Her lack of a personal mandate will be increasingly scrutinised. Time for all anti-Tory forces in the country to unite for the greater good of the integrity of the nation’s body politik, right? Wrong.
The Labour Party, instead of attacking the illegitimate Conservative government, decide, once again, to attack their own leader. Alarmingly, the attacks were leaked through the right/far right Mail & the Express, showing the desperation of the New Labour brigade for some limelight. This attention starved desperation was highlighted by the jittery, fidgety performance of Tony Blair on the Andrew Marr show, as he once again poured poison down the throat of the “soft-Brexit” brigade by advocating for their cause. The way the man speaks to the public he lied to is astounding. Why doesn’t Mandelson tell him how cancerous he is to any political cause he advocates for? Has the once feared Prince of Darkness lost his sharpness?
Which brings us to Blair’s bouncing bruiser – Two Jags. His time has passed. In fact, that is a theme – all of these people’s times have passed. In Prescott’s case he gets points for attempting unity, but his efforts would have been better served keeping his New Labourites in line than lecturing the current front bench.
Corbyn is not popular with whole sections of the electorate – but the British Public save a particular sense of hatred for those who abandon their posts at a time of crisis. There is also the fact that this man has been twice returned by the Labour membership, who to this day back him to the hilt and are growing increasingly distraught and angry at the politicking of the frankly deluded & disconnected factions with in the Labour Party. To say Corbyn has been “******* useless” ignores the facts of Parliament:
Electorally speaking, in the last year the disgruntled faction of the Labour Party look to the British voter like traitors to the British People three times over. Once by abandoning their constitutional posts at a time of National Importance, then by betraying British Democratic processes by ignoring the will of the Largest political party in the country, and then some of them betrayed the British State by conspiring with the diplomats of foreign governments in order to receive a £1 million payment to help “take down” a sitting UK Government Minister.
Our Nation is in a Constitutional Crisis – someone needs to tell Tony & Two Jags that no one cares what they, or a soon to be former Brighton MP, thinks. Someone needs to tell the PLP it’s time to respect the Labour Membership & the British People. They had the Purge and the £25 poll tax last Summer. Many people talk of Labour facing a wipe out like the faced before the War, in the 1930s, when the Labour Party got smashed down to 50 or so MPs, having been seen to have abandoned their core voters. Sound familiar? They were accused of selling the working classes out to the banking & political establishment in the aftermath of a massive economic collapse in the Great Depression. Sound familiar?
By March 1938 Nye Bevan was writing in Tribune that Churchill’s warnings about German intentions for Czechoslovakia were “a diapason of majestic harmony” compared to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s “thin, listless trickle”.
Bevan called for a Popular Front against fascism under the leadership of the Labour Party, including even anti-fascist Tories. On 31 March 1939 Bevan was expelled from the Labour Party along with a handful of others for sharing platforms with organisations not affiliated to Labour in his pursuit of a Popular Front. Sound familiar?
There was crushing economic devastation during the war, but after the War Labour still managed to build the welfare state and National Health Service thanks to people like who stayed true to those that put them in Power – like Aneurin Bevan.
To many, Blair & Mandelson are criminals & getting rid of them and their acolytes would positively promote what is beneficial to the party.
One of our founders got wrongly expelled from the party last year because we had the temerity to raise money to help people pay their bills during the leadership election. Many people couldn’t afford to eat that week because of the £25 poll tax they slapped on it.
That’s more than half a week’s worth of benefits to some.
Labour is supposed to be the party for the working class. What’s wrong with wanting to take it back to its core values? Does the Labour Membership need to “Prune the bush and watch it grow”
Posted by jeffrey davies [86.17.83.77] on 20 March 2017
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jeffs post
It’s rapidly becoming clear that Prime Minister Theresa May’s bold pledge to create a Britain that works for everyone should have an asterisk attached to facilitate the addition of “except for those pesky people with disabilities, can’t we pack them off somewhere else?”
In recent days the Government’s plan to cut people with serious mental health conditions out of eligibility for personal independent payments has justifiably come under sustained fire.
However, the attitude problem displayed by both May’s administration, and that of her predecessor David Cameron, goes beyond that, as a delve into the latest statistics demonstrates.
What they show is that the number of appeals against decisions made by the DWP on the basis of assessments made by the private, profit driven contractors working on its behalf is increasing at a similar speed to that at which Lewis Hamilton exits Silverstone corners.
They show that there were 60,600 Social Security & Child Support appeals between October and December 2016, an increase of 47 per cent. Even Lewis might think twice about acceleration like that.
Some 85 per cent of those appeals were accounted for by the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and the Employment & Support Allowance (ESA).
The rate at which the decisions made by the DWP on the basis of information supplied by the Government’s contractors - Capita and Atos - are overturned is also increasing.
People started taking notice when it was running at 50 per cent. Now close to two thirds of appeals the case of the PIP (65 per cent) are successful. The figure is higher still when it comes to ESA (68 per cent).
I’m given to understand that the people who sit on tribunals have been asked to keep June clear, in an attempt to reduce a growing backlog. So forget about an early summer holiday.
Needless to say, these people have to be paid, which puts extra cost into the system at a time when the Government says it’s trying to save money.
Simply applying for either benefit causes a great deal of stress to people with disabilities. Having to go to appeal only exacerbates that. Applicants find themselves in the middle of a process that is humiliating and dehumanising.
That process also seems to throw up scandals with alarming regularity. Channel Four, for example, infamously filmed a Capita assessor saying a claimant had a “disability known as being fat”. Another claimed to have filled out forms before even seeing clients amid pressure to get as many done as quickly as possible.
Other scandals have involved people with weeks or months to live being told they’re fit for work in the case of ESA, which is paid to people whose fitness to do so is impacted by medical conditions and disabilities.
Set against that backdrop, is it any wonder that there has been so much criticism of the process, and so many successful appeals?
If the assessment process worked effectively, and as it should, the number should be limited, and you wouldn’t expect such a large majority to be successful.
Ken Butler, welfare rights advisor at Disability Rights UK, says he is “very worried for all those disabled people who get turned down for benefits and don't have the time or energy to challenge poor decisions made by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)”.
He adds: “We’d advise all claimants to get benefits advice and, if they are turned down, to use the independent appeals process.”
Butler says that the high success rate of appeals clearly demonstrates that there is something wrong with the system.
Unless, of course, the system, also savagely criticised by the United Nations, was deliberately set up to be this way.
Before you suggest that is me indulging in a conspiracy theory, take a moment to think about this. If you make something difficult, stressful and painful, if you litter it with traps, and take the view that everyone getting involved in it is a dirty scrounger until proven otherwise, a lot of people will get put off and won’t apply. Still more won’t appeal when turned down, saving the Government money it can use for things like millionaires tax cuts.
Dealing with a disability presents enough of a challenge as it is, without having to get to grips with a state that operates in a manner that would have impressed some of George Orwell’s darker characters. Would anyone be terribly surprised to find O’Brien working as a civil servant in the DWP?
The cynicism on display is breathtaking, if my assessment is correct. Alternatively, the situation I’ve discussed could simply have been created by a toxic mix of bureaucratic callousness and incompetence.
The net effect is the same regardless, which is why there will be peals of bitter laughter emanating from Britain’s disabled community every time those words of Theresa May’s are trotted out.
You’d be able to hear them if it weren’t for the fact that so many people with disabilities are now trapped in their own homes
Posted by jeffrey davies on 20 March 2017
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Tory government has forced budget crisis on NHS services and is doing nothing to end it
19
Sunday
Mar 2017
Posted by Mike Sivier in Uncategorized
≈ Leave a comment
NHS Providers has warned that the health service ‘can no longer deliver what the NHS constitution requires of it’ [Image: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images].
See the headline above? That’s the fact of the matter. Don’t let your local or national newspaper avoid the issue by avoiding mention of the government, as the Graun has.
It isn’t ‘NHS services face impossible budget crisis’ – because that makes it seem the NHS is at fault. The NHS isn’t at fault.
The Tory government is at fault for failing to fund the NHS properly, and for allowing private companies to asset-strip the service, making it less able to manage itself.
Put the blame where it is due: Tories messed up the NHS – nobody else.
Frontline NHS services face “mission impossible” in meeting next year’s targets, health trusts have said.
Longer waiting lists for operations and delays at accident and emergency departments in England loom under the present financial constraints, said NHS Providers, a trade association that represents acute, ambulance, community and mental health services.
Chief executive Chris Hopson said the government needed to “sit up and listen”, the BBC reported. “NHS trusts will strain every sinew to deliver the commitments made for the health service. But we now have a body of evidence showing that, with resources available, the NHS can no longer deliver what the NHS constitution requires of it.
“We fear that patient safety is increasingly at risk.”
NHS Providers predicted its members would receive £89.1bn in funding in 2017-18, an annual rise of 2.6% but less than the 5.2% demand is expected to grow by.
It warned the number of people waiting more than four hours in A&E would increase by 40% next year to 1.8 million, and the number waiting more than 18 weeks for routine operations would rise 150% to about 100,000.
Posted by jeffrey davies on 19 March 2017
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