ConDem spin

Tory marginal MPs facing electoral axe because of NHS crises in their patch

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http://www.opendemocracy.net/rachael-maskell/tory-marginal-mps-facing-electoral-axe-because-of-nhs-crises-in-their-patch

by Racheal Maskell

New research from Unite union predicts that the fate of 11 Tory MPs at the 2015 election could be strongly influenced by the rising tide of public concern about the state of the NHS in their areas.

A chill electoral wind is gathering strength. Public anger and revulsion at what the Tories have done to the NHS with their pro-privatisation agenda could end the tenure of David Cameron in Downing Street.

Not one Tory MP voted against the pro-privatisation Health and Social Care Bill. Now, Unite says, the chickens are coming home to roost. Several Tory MPs could lose their marginal seats because of what is happening to the NHS in or near their constituencies.

These include George Eustice, David Cameron’s ex-spin doctor, who has a wafer-thin majority of just 66 in Cambourne and Redruth.

Public health minister Anna Soubry, who was on the committee that scrutinised the bill, is also clinging onto her Nottinghamshire seat of Broxtowe by 389 votes.

New research from Unite union, titled NHS critical in Tory marginals, has highlighted 11 tight marginal seats: Amber Valley, Brighton Kempton, Broxtowe, Cambourne & Redruth, Lancaster & Fleetwood, Lincoln, Morecambe & Lunesdale, North Warwickshire, Sherwood, Thurrock, and Truro & Falmouth.

But don’t just take the word of the country’s largest union.

Tory grandee Lord Ashcroft finances in-depth polling on behalf of the Conservative party.

His latest poll interviewed 12,809 people in the 40 most marginal Tory-held seats between 1 August and 5 September. Interviews were also conducted in seats where Labour and the Liberal Democrats were the runners up in 2010.

The polling revealed that the NHS is the second most important issue for voters after “jobs and the economy.” It’s even more important in the 40 key Tory marginals that Ed Miliband must take back to win a majority.

Labour is ranked twice as likely to improve the NHS as the Tories.

The fact that at least 55,000 people marched through Manchester on the Save our NHS rally at the start of the Conservative party conference on Sunday (29 September) is firm evidence of mounting public concern about the plight of the NHS.

It should not be forgotten that there was no mention of plans for the biggest overhaul of the NHS in the 2010 Tory manifesto. Or that within three months of government the then health secretary, Andrew Lansley, had come up with legislation that is now handing over great swathes of the NHS to the likes of Richard Branson and other private healthcare operators.

The electorate has never wanted to turn over Aneurin Bevan’s 1948 creation – promising universal free healthcare at the point of delivery to all those in need – to the aggressive and predatory instincts of the market.

continues

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Child poverty UK

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http://www.cpag.org.uk/child-poverty-facts-and-figures

Child poverty facts and figures

  • There are 3.5 million children living in poverty in the UK today. That’s 27 per cent of children, or more than one in four.1
  • There are even more serious concentrations of child poverty at a local level: in 100 local wards, for example, between 50 and 70 per cent of children are growing up in poverty.2
  • Work does not provide a guaranteed route out of poverty in the UK. Two-thirds (66 per cent) of children growing up in poverty live in a family where at least one member works.3
  • People are poor for many reasons. But explanations which put poverty down to drug and alcohol dependency, family breakdown, poor parenting, or a culture of worklessness are not supported by the facts.4
  • Child poverty blights childhoods. Growing up in poverty means being cold, going hungry, not being able to join in activities with friends. For example, 61 per cent of families in the bottom income quintile would like, but cannot afford, to take their children on holiday for one week a year.5
  • Child poverty has long-lasting effects. By 16, children receiving free school meals achieve 1.7 grades lower at GCSE than their wealthier peers.6 Leaving school with fewer qualifications translates into lower earnings over the course of a working life.
  • Poverty is also related to more complicated health histories over the course of a lifetime, again influencing earnings as well as the overall quality – and indeed length – of life. Professionals live, on average, eight years longer than unskilled workers.7
  • Child poverty imposes costs on broader society – estimated to be at least £29 billion a year.8 Governments forgo prospective revenues as well as commit themselves to providing services in the future if they fail to address child poverty in the here and now.
  • Child poverty reduced dramatically between 1998/9-2011/12 when 1.1 million children were lifted out of poverty (BHC).9 This reduction is credited in large part to measures that increased the levels of lone parents working, as well as real and often significant increases in the level of benefits paid to families with children.
  • Under current government policies, child poverty is projected to rise from 2012/13 with an expected 600,000 more children living in poverty by 2015/16.10 This upward trend is expected to continue with 4.7 million children projected to be living in poverty by 2020.

 

  • 1. Households Below Average Income, An analysis of the income distribution 1994/95 : 2011/12, Tables 4.1tr and 4.3tr. Department for Work and Pensions, 2013
  • 2. Child Poverty Map of the UK, End Child Poverty, March 2011
  • 3. Households Below Average Income, An analysis of the income distribution 1994/95 : 2011/12, Table 4.3db. Department for Work and Pensions, 2013
  • 4. For example, G Hay and L Bauld, Population estimates of problematic drug users in England who access DWP benefits, Department for Work and Pensions, 2008, suggest that 6.6 per cent of the total number of benefit claimants in England were problem drug users. While drug misuse may prove to be a key reason this group of people finds it hard to escape poverty, it clearly has no explanatory power for the other 93.4 per cent of claimants.
  • 5. Households Below Average Income, An analysis of the income distribution 1994/95 : 2011/12, Table 4.7 db. Department for Work and Pensions, 2012
  • 6. GCSE and Equivalent Attainment by Pupil Characteristics in England 2009/10, Department for Education 2011
  • 7. Life expectancy at birth and at the age of 65 by local areas in the UK, 2004-6 and 2008-10, Office of National Statistics, October 2011
  • 8. D Hirsch, Estimating the costs of child poverty, 2013
  • 9. Households Below Average Income, An analysis of the income distribution 1994/95 – 2011/2, Department for Work and Pensions, 2013
  • 10. J Browne, A Hood and R Joyce, Child and working age poverty in Northern Ireland, Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2103

 

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UK parliament to discuss Syria tomorrow

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The UK Parliament has been recalled to discuss military intervention in Syria tomorrow.

There are strong suggestions that there will be opposition to Cameron, Hague, et al’s obvious determination to go to war for imperialist reasons. There are suggestions that many Conservative MPs are very uneasy and talk of the Labour Party abstaining and promoting their own amendment. The Lib-Dems only ever pretended not to be Tories and they are nowhere to be seen now.

As yet there is no confirmation that chemical weapons have been used or that they were used by Assad’s government. This is a very difficult test since the terrorist ‘rebels’ supported by the West are known to have had possession of chemical weapons when they were arrested in Turkey.

What I would like to see tomorrow is an absolute commitment to international law. That’s respect for human rights – they are universal after all – including respect to the right to life and an absolute commitment to enforce international law. I’m saying that people need to be tried for war crimes. It’s not going to happen since Israel have been bombing Syria. There’s also the absolute hypocrisy of USUK using chemical weapons at Fallujah and Israel’s use of White Phosphorous. It would appear for some reason that Depleted Uranium is not classed as a chemical weapon, probably because it’s used by USUK.

What’s happening is that there is a huge rush to war before the US weapons inspectors have reported. There’s a rush because the UN inspectors are very likely to report that it’s unclear who was responsible, unclear if there was actually any use of chemical weapons and that they were not obstructed by the Syrian government.

Obomber has turned out to be a disappointment breaking many commitments on Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and transparency on drones. Now he wants war. Drones killing people in distant lands is criminal anyway, never mind being transparent about it.

Continue ReadingUK parliament to discuss Syria tomorrow

I don’t want to do this any more

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First revision 13 july 2013

I don’t want to do this any more. I would much prefer to be sailing. I’d like to buy a small boat but then I’d need to be working and earning. I’d like a regular boyfriend. I’d like to drink less and make fewer rather embarrassing remarks.

I don’t want to do this any more. I want to be working and earning so that I can buy a small boat and go sailing. The trouble is that I can’t be working and earning because these bastards get in the way all the time.

I could be working and earning or just working on earning to start with if it wasn’t for these bastards. I’ve got some skill and knowledge with puters – it’s just problem-solving, analysis, understanding systems. I think that I’ve demonstrated that I’m able and bright enough to do that. I am. I have the ability to be a sys admin, network admin, programmer, etc. These bastards will never let me do that.

I know a good crowd who run a social enterprise. Basically it means that they make very little money but at least they are doing some good and improving themselves. I could hang round with them and do some work if it wasn’t for those bastards. Those bastards that interfere all the time spying and prying and breaking networks and things. I’ve tried, I can’t work at the social enterprise that I know.

Looks like I can’t have a boat because of the bastards. [24/07/13 edit: Then earn money doing some different work.]

I don’t want to do this any more. It started years ago around 98 or 99. I was one of the early bloggers. Reality cracking, rejecting the bullshit that they feed us every day, they take us for fools. That’s asking for it.

Ian Blair is quite a pathetic figure really. He’s achieved very little apart from covering up for murder and a big pension. Corrupt and promoted far above his intellect and abilities for political reasons. New Labour to the last he even blamed Boris when he cut the deal with Jacquie. He’s just a useless bastard really, a parasitic tic with the sadim touch.

It is worth looking at Ian Blair’s tenure as boss of the Metropolitan police. You’ll see that he did a lot of politicking and very little policing. There’s a lot of very thinly disguised bullshit going on, a definite agenda other than policing being followed. He was Tony Blair’s butler. I’ve lately been having this image of the two Blairs being cheeks of the same arse sharing a mouth. Ugh.

I don’t really want to do this any more because – contrary to some speculation in the past – I have achieved what I set out to achieve. I have cracked reality. I have reached an understanding of what it’s all about. It’s about a lot of things and about the interactions of a lot of things. I’m not likely to be able to explain even if you were accepting and attentive which is unlikely but perhaps I should try explaining some main points.

The concept of parallax. [Thanks Parallax:)

Things look different according to where you’re looking from.

So, being a suspected terrorist of the self-exploding type I can reason that there are no real terrorists. Since I know for a fact that I am not a terrorist but instead labelled as a terrorist I can reasonably conclude that there are many more similar to me. I am in fact aware that there are many others similar to me. For example, in UK whole political groups of non-terrorists have been labelled terrorists.

What’s going on here then? Are there terrorists or not?

There are certainly terrorists.

There is the odd one or two obviously insane terrorists like the failed shoe bomber. This is interesting because labelling people as terrorists as the authorities do is likely to lead to self-fulfilling prophesies in some cases. It is also likely that that is the intention since there is a definite dearth of terrorist terrorists.

Then there are people who hack people to death on crowded streets in daylight. They’re not terrorists. They’re racially-motivated murderers. Incidentally, it’s interesting to see how the press and media were manipulated in such cases.

Then there are the real terrorists. The SAS got caught with bombs in Basra. Terrorists. We know that they’re terrorists because they had bombs, were disguised, didn’t have a reasonable explanation and were broken out of jail by the UK army.

Then there is the modus operandi of the terrorists. They arrange a security drill to make sure they’re all in place to control the act and the press and media. Then they blame Islam and Muslims, even sometimes making false claims on websites. Sometimes they even sneakily change laws just to make sure they will never be held to account for their terrorism. The timing is also often very convenient or accords to some higher (Non-Muslim) reason.

Then there are terrorist acts which are known as military operations like killing hundreds of thousands on innocent Iraqis or war crimes using banned chemical weapons like white phosphorous. Oh FM don’t mention that, that was the Israelis. Somehow these incidents are not recognised as terrorism.

I’ve got it. Terrorists are the people that the Fascist scum criminals in power are opposed to. So political activists and opponents to scum politicians are terrorists except of course that they’re not: they’re political activists and opponents of scum politicians. You get people like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden labelled as terrorists except of course that they’re not. They’re not even traitors – they’re serving their people and opposing scum politicians / real terrorists.

So why does Islam and Muslims get blamed so much?

Islam and Muslims are a hindrance to Capitalism. Capitalism needs to make more profit and expand into Muslim countries. How can Capitalism do that if these people look after each other and indulge in charitable giving and the like? Capitalism needs to burn that oil.

Is that about it?

That’s about it except about scum politicians. Tony Blair and his bunch of shits weren’t socialists. Nick Clegg and his bunch of shits are not liberals. They’re all Neo-Liberal Neo-Conservatives who have hijacked their respective parties. The UK ‘Liberal Democrats’ are doing some awfully illiberal things because Clegg and his crew are huge Tory bastards pretending to be liberals.

I feel a bit better now. I suppose that I have to do it. Nobody else will.

 

13/07/13 7.50am typos corrected

19/07/13 11am added links

 

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UK politics news review

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Since the last UK politics news review the Labour party conference has ended and the Conservative scum conference has started. Towards the end of the Labour party conference there was the unveiling of familiar NHS imagery and the start of a criticism of the Conservative-Liberal-Democrat Con-Dem policy of austerity.

The Conservative scum party came to power illegitimately, having campaigned on many promises of protecting the NHS – “no top-down privatisation”, “I’ll cut the defecit, not the NHS”, etc – and then joining with their Liberal-Democrat-Conservatives to form the coalition government. While there was no clear winner from the 2010 general election, the ConDems have proceeded to pursue policies contrary to their election pledges for which they cannot possibly have any electoral mandate.

The Conservatives are known as the nasty party and follow Blair’s policies and philosophy. It has been noted by several commentators that their conference is a showpiece affair. Slasher Bully-boy Osborne’s speech was certainly of the reciprocal applause every sentence affair. Bully-boy and British prime minister David Cameron is expected to make his “I’m a pretty straight kinda guy” speech today – I feel that it could never be as deceitful as Blair’s on a very fundamental level.

 

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