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UK politics news review

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There are a few changes to David Cameron’s cabinet. I was personally surprised that Andrew Lansley is replaced by Jeremy Hunt. It makes me wonder whether Cameron has been reading McCann (or more likely some poor bod in MI5 has been forced to read it and provide a short summary).

Comparatively liberal justice secretary Ken Clarke was replaced by hardliner Chris Grayling, while Caroline Spelman was sacked as environment secretary to be replaced by Owen Paterson, who is pro-fox hunting and a renewable energy sceptic.

Jeremy Hunt was given the job of selling the NHS reforms of outgoing health secretary Andrew Lansley, with Patrick McLoughlin brought in to replace transport secretary Justine Greening, a vocal defender of the government’s commitment not to build a third runway at Heathrow.

But deputy prime minister Nick Clegg rejected claims the reshuffle represented a move to the right, insisting the coalition was ‘anchored in the centre ground’.

‘Right from day one this government was anchored in the centre ground. We’ve got a coalition agreement which is there, which is a tablet of stone setting out what we are going to do,’ said Mr Clegg, who did not make any changes to his quota of five Lib Dem cabinet ministers.

‘That is not going to change. I think the British people want us in the centre ground, they want us where the vast majority of British people are.’ [I think that I notice a repetative theme there.]

 

Andrew Lansley branded one of the worst health ministers since NHS foundation by union

Andrew Lansley was described today as one of the worst health secretaries since the NHS was formed in 1948.

Health workers’ union Unite said the departure of the “disastrous” Mr Lansley gives an opportunity for a “complete rethink” on the future of the health service.

The union’s head of health, Rachael Maskell, said: “The NHS has been pushed to the brink of destruction by Andrew Lansley – a minister who simply would not listen either to the patients or the professionals. Jeremy Hunt must reflect deep and hard on the errors of his predecessor and seek immediate dialogue with the NHS team and their unions.

“He has the power to slam the door on the increasing privatisation of the NHS.

“Andrew Lansley must rank as one of the worst health secretaries since the NHS was formed in 1948.

“He presided over deeply unpopular bungled reforms which heralded rising waiting lists, £20 billion cuts to services, job losses to thousands of nurses and other health workers, installed an expensive, needless bureaucracy and announced an open sesame to the private firms which put profit before patient care.

“He was also responsible for dramatic cuts to pay and pensions, as well as long-established terms and conditions. NHS staff have had their morale crushed by Lansley’s unlistening and steamroller mindset.

“David Cameron may have shunted him elsewhere, but serious work is needed now to repair the dreadful damage wrought by Lansley and his policies.”

 

Pro-Assange protesters hack MI5 and MI6 websites

The websites of intelligence services MI5 and MI6 were brought down for an hour yesterday in protest over attempts by the British government to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden.Between 9am and 11.30am the sis.gov.uk and mi5.gov.uk websites were hit and left inaccessible.

Renowned hacking group Anonymous claimed it brought the sites down using a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, as part of its ongoing #OpFreeAssange (Operation Free Assange) protests.

… 

 

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

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UK politics news review

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  • A Step Towards the Dock

    …

    The offence is known by two names in international law: the crime of aggression and a crime against peace. It is defined by the Nuremberg Principles as the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression”(2). This means a war fought for a purpose other than self-defence: in other words outwith articles 33 and 51 of the UN Charter(3).

    That the invasion of Iraq falls into this category looks indisputable. Blair’s cabinet ministers knew it, and told him so. His Attorney-General warned that there were just three ways in which it could be legally justified: “self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UN Security Council authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case.”(4) Blair tried and failed to obtain the third.

    His foreign secretary, Jack Straw, told Blair that for the war to be legal, “i) There must be an armed attack upon a State or such an attack must be imminent; ii) The use of force must be necessary and other means to reverse/avert the attack must be unavailable; iii) The acts in self-defence must be proportionate and strictly confined to the object of stopping the attack.”(5) None of these conditions were met. The Cabinet Office told him “A legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to Law Officers’ advice, none currently exists.”(6)

    Without legal justification, the attack on Iraq was an act of mass murder. It caused the deaths of between 100,000 and a million people, and ranks among the greatest crimes the world has ever seen. That Blair and his ministers still saunter among us, gathering money wherever they go, is a withering indictment of a one-sided system of international justice: a system whose hypocrisies Tutu has exposed.

    …

  • Law criminalising squatting to be challenged in court by cottage dweller

    A woman who has lived in an abandoned Welsh hillside cottage for 11 years is to challenge legislation that criminalises squatting.

    Irene Gardiner, 49, raised her family in the 500-year-old timber and stone house at Newchapel, near Llanidloes, Powys.

    Backed by lawyers in London, Gardiner is bringing a test case against the police and Crown Prosecution Service seeking assurances she will not be thrown out of the home she has inhabited since 2001.

    Her cottage, which has no electricity or running water, has been occupied by squatters for several decades.

    …

    Gardiner’s case is supported by the law firm Leigh Day & Co. The claim, to be lodged in the high court in London next week, alleges prosecution would breach her rights to personal and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

    Ugo Hayter, of Leigh Day & Co, said: “This legislation will have impacts on the most vulnerable people in society, and will be a further burden on already strained public services.”

    She added: “There is existing criminal and civil law which enables property owners to swiftly evict squatters.

    “Homeowners will derive no further protection from this new legislation. It will simply criminalise the homeless.”

    …

  • Crackdown on squatters ‘will put people on streets’

     New squatting laws have sparked fears of a rise in homelessness across Manchester.

    From today, squatting in a residential building becomes illegal – meaning anyone doing it could be jailed or fined.

    Ministers say the move will protect homeowners – and ‘slam shut the door on squatters’.

    But campaigners have told the M.E.N. most squatters are genuinely homeless and will now be left on the streets.

    They argue it is better to use an empty house rather than let it fall into disrepair.

    Currently squatting is initially treated as a civil matter, meaning homeowners must go to court to prove trespass first.

    In future, police will be able to arrest squatters on the spot. They will then face six months in jail and a £5,000 fine.

    But one 38-year-old man, who has lived in squats all over the city for more than 20 years, said: “Everybody doing it is homeless. They don’t live in a flat or anything – they just get their head down wherever they can. We’re going to get more people on the streets, definitely, but at the end of the day people are not going to stop doing it.”

    …

    [edit: Uk prime minister David Cameron is also altering his cabinet today. Small changes are expected.]
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NHS news review

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Conservative election poster 2010

A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat(Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

 

How the Orange Bookers took over the Lib Dems

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What Britain now has is a blue-orange coalition, with the little-knownOrange Book forming the core of current Lib Dem political thinking. To understand how this disreputable arrangement has come about, we need to examine the philosophy laid out in The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism, edited by David Laws (now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury) and Paul Marshall. Particularly interesting are the contributions of the Lib Dems’ present leadership.

Published in 2004, the Orange Book marked the start of the slow decline of progressive values in the Lib Dems and the gradual abandonment of social market values. It also provided the ideological standpoint around which the party’s right wing was able to coalesce and begin their march to power in the Lib Dems. What is remarkable is the failure of former SDP and Labour elements to sound warning bells about the direction the party was taking. Former Labour ministers such as Shirley Williams and Tom McNally should be ashamed of their inaction.

Clegg and his Lib Dem supporters have much in common with David Cameron and his allies in their philosophical approach and with their social liberal solutions to society’s perceived ills. The Orange Book is predicated on an abiding belief in the free market’s ability to address issues such as public healthcare, pensions, environment, globalisation, social and agricultural policy, local government and prisons.

The Lib Dem leadership seems to sit very easily in the Tory-led coalition. This is an arranged marriage between partners of a similar background and belief. Even the Tory-Whig coalition of early 1780s, although its members were from the same class, at least had fundamental political differences. Now we see a Government made up of a single elite that has previously manifested itself as two separate political parties and which is divided more by subtle shades of opinion than any profound ideological difference.
…
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 ReadingNHS news review

UK politics news review

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Labour MP Michael Meacher asks why it is Nick Clegg rather than the Labour Party that is proposing taxing the filthy rich

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The super-rich, roughly 1 per cent of the working population – around 300,000 individuals – with incomes in excess of £3,000 a week, rising to £92,000 a week for the average FTSE 100 chief executive and soaring into the stratosphere beyond that, have contributed virtually nothing additionally since 2008-9 to pay for the costs of the bank bailouts.

The very poorest are being made to pay £18 billion through benefit cuts and are expected to have a further £10bn cut imposed on them shortly because of the current shortfall in debt reduction.

The rest of the population, as well as the poorest, are being made to suffer the effects of £81bn cuts in public expenditure, mainly through 300,000 or more public-sector job losses.

The super-rich meanwhile sail on untroubled by the pains of austerity and, according to the available evidence, are doing very well, thank you.

So why isn’t Labour raising the roof about this? Thirty years ago Labour would have done so, but not in today’s parliamentary party.

I raised this very issue at the last PMQs before the summer recess on July 18.

I asked Cameron: “Since the richest 1,000 persons in the UK have increased their gains by £155bn over the last three years of austerity, why doesn’t he charge capital gains tax on those gains which would raise over £40bn, enough without any increase in public borrowing to fund the creation of 1-1.5 million jobs over the next two to three years – a much better way to cut the deficit than the Chancellor’s failed policies?”

So why isn’t Labour running with the ball instead of letting Clegg get some acclaim?

…

The UNISON union warns about further attacks on benefits by the UK Conservative – Liberal-Democrat Conservative coalition government.

UNISON, the UK’s largest union, has today written to Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, urging them to think again about stopping council tax benefits.

The union is warning that many low earners will be hit hard by the coalition’s decision to replace council tax benefit payments with a postcode lottery of local schemes at the same time as cutting councils’ budgets by 10%.

At a stroke the move will wipe out any gains the low paid would have received from the changes to personal tax allowances next April– a central part of the coalitions’ claims that it is helping working people on low wages.

Dave Prentis, UNISON General Secretary, said:

“It is time for the Government to put its money where its mouth is. We hear a lot from Cameron and Clegg about helping low paid workers, but actions speak louder than words. For many hardworking families the changes to council tax benefits will wipe out any gains from changes to the personal tax allowances next April.

“Only this week, Nick Clegg called for the wealthy to pay more tax. And the coalition has claimed that it has taken real action to help low and middle income earners by changing personal tax allowances. But what the government is giving with one hand, it is taking away with the other. It is also helping to take away the incentive for carrying on working when the financial benefit is being cut.”

…

Some Lib-Dem calls for Lib-Dem Conservative Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to be dumped

Arrests related to Tommy Sheridan’s perjury trial

 

 

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