Thoughts of the day 16 April 2025
It appears that the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) – ultimately, in the final analysis a state broadcaster – is currently forbidden from mentioning Israel’s Gaza genocide. There are local elections approaching on 1st May after all …
I wonder if a DA-notice has been issued – the way to know is probably to watch other corporate media to see if there is a widespread censorship of the Israel Gaza genocide.
Hehe, I remember when the BBC was banned by the Labour government of the day from using the word “deep”. That was fun.
NEU president slams Labour’s renewed austerity
NATIONAL Education Union (NEU) president Sarah Kilpatrick slammed Labour’s renewed austerity today, telling the NEU annual conference that Tory welfare cuts had killed her disabled father.
She accused ministers of “perpetuating and repeating the shameful pattern of punching-down and finger-pointing” by “balancing the books on the backs of the poor.”
On the first day of the conference in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, she described how her father had died at the age of 56 after being stripped of his disability benefits under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.
She said that she had experienced poverty as a working-class child in Newcastle upon Tyne and was his carer for a number of years.
“As Iain Duncan Smith gleefully applauded the welfare cuts, I represented my father in a tribunal against the DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] decision to remove his disability benefits,” she told delegates.
“He’d had his gas cut off. Couldn’t afford groceries. His elderly mother was adding tins of food to her shopping to bulk up what I was buying for him, but he isolated himself further still.
“He lost a lot of weight during that time and never really recovered.”
In 2013, her father became one of an estimated 120,000 people who died as a result of the Tories’ austerity programme, she said.
“When Wes Streeting brags to the Tories across the benches that Labour have done what they never could and slashed the welfare bill, this is what they mean,” said Ms Kilpatrick.
“Let’s be clear. Nearly two decades of economic permacrisis has not been caused by disabled people.”
Nor has it been caused by the elderly, refugees, the trans community or children in poverty, she said.
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/neu-president-slams-labours-renewed-austerity
Thoughts of the Day 14 April 2025 2/2 UK’s Notional Health Service
I’m ill again with overwhelming fatigue which explains in part why I’ve been neglecting this blog. It could be a symptom of something far more serious of course and I wouldn’t be surprised that it is. The UK’s NHS is reduced to little more than a notion where you have to ring at certain times of the day to be ignored by a health-ignorant de-skilled workforce in an attempt to have a 5-minute telephone conversation with and arrogant, dismissive GP a fortnight later.
Under Wes Streeting’s proposals you will be able to discuss your health with a health-ignorant de-skilled NHS employee at your home. There are already health-ignorant people I can discuss it with – neighbours, delivery drivers, postpeople, refuse workers. I can even tell random people in the street or shopworkers.
Ill and disabled people will be made ‘invisible’ by UK benefit cuts, say experts
Hundreds of thousands of seriously ill and disabled people will become “invisible” and cut adrift from local support services as a result of the government’s £5bn programme of disability benefit cuts, experts have warned.
Claimants who do not qualify for personal independence payment (Pip) or incapacity benefits would lose a “marker of need” with local councils and NHS bodies, making it “nearly impossible” for them to access help, said the consultancy Policy in Practice.
This would “effectively erase some of the most vulnerable people” from the system – including those with life-limiting illnesses including cancer, multiple sclerosis and lung conditions – while making it harder for care services to deliver preventive support
More than 230,000 disabled people will lose access to Pip and the incapacity element of universal credit as a result of the changes, losing at least £8,100 a year, Policy in Practice estimates in a briefing. Nearly 600,000 more who do not claim universal credit will lose or not qualify in future for Pip.
On top of the direct financial hit, disabled people will struggle for visibility in local care systems that use disability benefit awards to deploy support and protection, from housing and council tax relief to debt enforcement safeguards.
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Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/08/ill-disabled-people-uk-benefit-cuts-policy-in-practice