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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
Striking members of the National Education Union (NEU) on Piccadilly march to a rally in Trafalgar Square, central London, in a long-running dispute over pay. Picture date: Wednesday March 15, 2023.
THE Tories are “waging war on working people,” unions warned today as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Budget coincided with a massive day of strikes by hundreds of thousands of workers nationwide.
Unions slammed the ex-Tory leadership candidate’s “fiscal event” for failing to tackle pay disputes across the country, with teachers, university lecturers, civil servants, junior doctors, London Tube drivers and BBC journalists all downing tools today.
As Mr Hunt delivered his speech, thousands of workers rallied outside.
They gathered as the Office for Budget Responsibility, which the former health secretary praised for predicting Britain would now avoid a technical recession this year, warned that people still face the biggest fall in living standards on record.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt leaves 11 Downing Street, London, with his ministerial box, before delivering his Budget at the Houses of Parliament. Picture date: Wednesday March 15, 2023.
BRITAIN’S biggest strike surge in decades was the elephant in the room, almost ignored in the Chancellor’s Budget speech.
The huge strike march winding through Whitehall wasn’t referenced by either front bench. Yet the demands for proper pay rises and investment in public services it championed speak more directly to people’s concerns than any of Jeremy Hunt’s headline announcements.
Hunt referred vaguely to inflation as the cause of industrial disputes — before dishonestly citing it as the reason the government is denying workers the pay rises they need and deserve.
His dishonesty didn’t end there. The government is doing everything it can to resolve the disputes, the Chancellor claimed.
A DEVASTATING picture of the NHS facing catastrophe has been laid bare in one of the largest workplace surveys in the health service.
Tens of thousands said they would not trust the NHS to treat their own relatives, the poll of more than 600,000 staff found.
Nurses, midwives and other workers expressed their utter despair over pay, staffing shortages, plummeting standards of care, lack of time to do their jobs properly and their own wellbeing.
Almost a quarter said they will probably look for a job outside the NHS in the next 12 months.
MORE than two-thirds of Brits think the NHS in underfunded, including a majority of Tory voters, a damning new poll published today reveals.
The Opinium survey — commissioned by Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) — shows 67 per cent of all voters and 58 per cent of Conservative supporters want austerity-hit health services to receive more cash.
Nearly seven in 10 of the 2,000 adults consulted think the NHS is performing badly, with 55 per cent blaming Downing Street for the deterioration in services, which have also been hit by national strikes since December over plummeting take-home pay and worsening patient safety.
Close to three-quarters — 72 per cent — want the health service to be a “fully or mostly public service,” the poll also shows.
It came ahead of what is expected to be a massive national demonstration in central London on Saturday, when the more than 50 organisations involved in the KONP-founded SOS NHS campaign will gather to demand better.
Members of the National Education Union (NEU) during a rally in Manchester, as teachers in the north of England begin the first of three days of nationwide strike action in a long-running dispute over pay.
TENS of thousands of teachers launched three days of strike action today in their continuing battle for fair pay and funding for schools.
National Education Union (NEU) members mobilised on picket lines and in regional protests and rallies in northern England while Education Institute of Scotland (EIS) and NASUWT members struck in Scotland.
They went ahead despite a government attempt to blackmail education union leaders by telling them talks could take place on pay – but only if the strike action was suspended.
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, whose government has overseen education funding cuts which have seen schools fall into disrepair and unable to replace staff who leave, called the strike action “unforgivable.”
The NEU outright rejected the government’s attempt to bully teachers into suspending the strikes in return for pay talks.
