Labour To Go Cap In Hand To Big Business.

Labour have been explaining more fully how they intend to throw in the towel as far as the present disastrous world economic situation is concerned. Milliband's new idea - "predistribution" - is, essentially, a tacit recognition that politicians can't ask big business to pay their fair share of taxes because they will simply refuse. Rather than facing up to this, predistribution is an attempt to avoid the issue and politely ask big business to pay proper wages instead. Of course that is doomed to utter failure since British management are, by and large, a bone-idle bunch of second-raters without the wit or imagination to do what is in the interests of us all. As a case in point what is happening to the NHS in the south-west of England demonstrates why predistribution in Britain simply won't work. There 20 NHS Trusts have banded together to form the South-West Pay, Terms and Conditions Consortium that seeks to bring in "local pay rates" to redress the financial imbalance cause by the Tories starving them of funds. The management of the south-west NHS Trusts, lacking the ability, immagination or the energy to find a better solution, have instinctively reached for the easiest method of lowering costs - cutting wages. The BMA have warned that the south-west of England will become a microcosm of a more general trend in Britain, with good, well trained staff leaving in droves to seek better wages and conditions elsewhere leaving behind only those whose lack of ability prevents them from moving on. Essentially helthcare in the south-west will be de-skilled. And that is how predistribution will fare in a Britain dominated by tax-dodging international big business - it will be strangled at birth leaving the country to continue its steady economic and social decline. The issue of the wealthy and of big business simply refusing to pay their fair share of taxes, aided by their pals in the Tory party, will not be so easily brushed to one side and Ed Milliband needs to face up to that.

Tories Even Lie To Themselves

The Tories have reacted in a very strange way to the idea that Danny Boyle's Olympic Opening extravaganza was a "coded" attack on them. In fact, of course, there was nothing "coded" about it - Danny Boyle stuck it to the Tories in no uncertain terms and left no one in any doubt who the monster threatening the NHS was meant to represent. The Tories immediately did what they always do - they lied through their gritted teeth and pretended that they had no idea what everyone else was talking about. Boris Johnson in feigning surprise that people would think it was all a bit "leftish" put this reporter in mind of Miss Piggy and her famous "Pretentious? Moi?" reply. Now, after the debacle over G4S that showed the lie behind private sector efficiency and Danny Boyle showing two fingers to the Tories, we have the spectacle of Lord Seb Coe pretending that empty seats actually means that the events are "stuffed to the gills" with fans. Which just goes to show that the Tories can't even tell the truth to themselves. The reason for this is twofold - first, they wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the arse and, second, telling the truth to themselves would bring them face to face with the fact that they are really, really stupid. Evidently to the Tories the truth is so unacceptable that it must always be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies. Yet, despite the knee-jerk lie mode the Tories always adopt when caught out, the Olympic Games have done one great service for the British people - it has revealed the Tories once and for all for the incompetent morons they always were.

What Do Tories Actually Think About The NHS?

Just when you think that the Tories can't get any more disgusting they show quite plainly that they can. Below is reproduced an email from John Butcher, Tory Councillor for Surrey and Elmbridge. - "1 Please pass on my apology for absence from the Surrey HOSC meeting on 24 May 2012, but I have a hospital appointment that day, and it has already been postponed once. 2 Because of the economic catastrophe facing the capitalist world, the NHS, that is a Marxist organisation, is bound to fail - like Greece. The government’s efforts to ‘improve’ it are merely a postponement of that failure, which will arise from ever-increasing demand for, and the unit costs of, healthcare and the ever-decreasing national wealth available to afford those demands and costs, through taxation or otherwise. Politicians who support the diversion of increasingly scarce fiscal resources into propping up the NHS, without taking measures to curb demand, not only accelerate its eventual demise but allow more important demands on the public purse to go unmet, with serious adverse consequences to the people. It will be the people who suffer from the collapse of the NHS – but they will have only themselves to blame - for voting in politicians who promise to improve the NHS regardless of other factors. 3 One way of saving the NHS is to encourage patients to take very much more care of themselves, with penalties on those who won’t do that. If the NHS in Surrey were to be run on the basis that patients with self-inflicted morbidity (mainly - smoking, alcohol, narcotics, obesity) and injury (dangerous activities) are, following due warning, placed in a much slower-moving queue for healthcare than ‘other’ patients, this would encourage the self-inflicted to move away from Surrey, to areas where there is no differentiation between patients on the grounds of their contribution towards their condition. And it would deter the self-inflicted from coming to live in Surrey. Over time, that would result in the healthcare for the ‘other’ patients in Surrey being significantly better than the average national level for all patients, as the resources deployed to the self-inflicted would be very much reduced. This factor would attract more ‘other’ patients to come to live in Surrey – and that would push up house prices here – assuming that planning controls remain similar to now. 4 Eventually the self-inflicted patients would end up living in ‘equality’ areas that are dominated by politicians who pander to their needs, thus driving more ‘other’ patients out of those areas, as healthcare there will be badly affected by the over-dominance of the self-inflicted. These ‘other’ patients would move into areas, such as, hopefully, Surrey, where ‘other’ patients are not nearly so adversely affected. Eventually the country will be sharply divided into two types of area: 4.1 the ‘equality’ ones, where the self-inflicted unhealthy are treated the same as all patients, and 4.2 the ‘others’, such as, hopefully, Surrey. Average life expectancy will be substantially lower (by, say, 20 years) in the ‘equality’ areas than in the ‘others’. This may mean that ‘other’ patients moving out of ‘equality’ areas may have to live in a less desirable dwelling, because of house price differentials, but that is a trade-off, that they can choose, with healthcare differentials between the two types of area. Such house price differentials already apply for schooling, with houses on one side of a catchment boundary being worth a lot more than houses on the other side of it. Indeed, the perception that the gap in those prices between those two types of healthcare area will grow substantially will encourage the ‘other’ patients in those ‘equality’ areas to move out of them sooner, lest they see their dwelling there becoming worthless. 5 Thus, any political party that seeks to pander to the needs of the self-inflicted unhealthy, and to win their votes, will suffer twofold: 5.1 mortality will ensure that its voters will be much fewer in number than the ‘others’, and 5.2 by concentrating its voters into particular areas, that party will never be able to win enough seats to dominate Parliament. Regards John Butcher" - Lovely isn't it?

Lansley Pours Salt Into The Wounds.

Andrew Lansley, having effectively privatised the NHS, is now preparing to end national pay scales for NHS staff and force many of them to accept lower pay if they happen to live in "poorer neighbourhoods" (i.e. the North). Apart from a blatant attempt to set the North-South divide in concrete and pauperise those who don't vote Tory, this is simply another example of Lansley slicing up the NHS to make it easier for corporate vultures to gobble it down. It is also hard not to conclude that he is also provoking NHS workers into strike action, something that the Tories failed to do with regards to petrol tanker drivers, so that he can point the finger and label all NHS healthcare workers as irresponsible "reds" under the influence of evil trade unionists. The Tories are spoiling for a fight believing that they can recreate to halcyon days of the 1980's when they persuaded the whole country to cut its own collective throat. That a political party in this country would deliberately seek out such a confrontation for narrow political point-scoring demonstrates that they are not fit to govern. We've stood by and watched this gang of criminals steal our NHS are we now going to stand by as they stand on the necks of those who dedicate their lives to caring for others?