Tories Lash Out In All Directions.

Despite the best efforts of the media to distract our attention by obsessing about Kate Middleton's exposed mammary glands and one overpaid footballer's refusal to shake the hand of another, news continues to leak out about the nasty and spiteful policies of the Tory party. In the last two years the number of people taken to A&E and then forced to wait outside in the ambulance has risen by a staggering 100,000. Not only does this put the lives of those in the ambulances at much higher risk it also means that our towns and cities are being left without adequate ambulance cover as they queue up outside our hospitals. As Andy Burnham points out; "The government's mishandling of the NHS has brought it to the brink...and it risks being overwhelmed". Breakfast clubs at our schools are also closing at an ever faster rate even as the demand for them increases while poor parents find it ever more difficult to feed their children. With the pressure on food banks to supply ordinary people, many of whom are actually working, it is plain that this government is content to stand aside and watch British people starve if that is what is needed to protect the rich from the effects of the recession. Meanwhile Ian Duncan Smith's has been warned by his own advisors that his plan to create a single universal credit is both "unworkable and unfair". His plans to force part-time workers to seek more working hours are plainly idiotic when there is so much unemployment and it is becoming clear that the measure is aimed more at reducing part-time worker's benefits than anything else. What's more the entire system is to be accessible only on the internet which, as IDS knows only too well, is not available to the poorest in our society. IDS is also at going to great lengths to hide the cost of all this from the public with a price tag reported to be so high that even his Tory colleagues are shocked. Meanwhile a nasty, spiteful and well-hidden tax on five-a-side football teams has been stopped by a tax tribunal who recognised how unfair to ordinary people this would be while polo matches and grouse shoots would be entirely unaffected. Not only are we not all in this together, the Tories are inhabiting an entirely different planet.