It is Confirmed.

Cameron and Osbourne don't care about ordinary people and their suffering during austerity measures. It's official. Or at least thats the opinion of Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries. Why I am not surprised? Their actions speak much louder than their words. Their consistent ignorance of voices that are coming in thick and fast from every sector of society are saying that their measures are unfair, poorly thought out, unworkable and are hurting real people. All they do is repeat earlier statements that have already made, the last time someone spoke out and accused them of being heartless. It is a zero sum game. They have committed to a severe austerity program, which has caused a double dip recession and they are not backing down. They know that they have another three years in a fixed term to destroy the country and they are going to continue their attack, unfazed by opposition, from charities, economists, business people, voters, back benchers. They know best. They're deaf, dumb and blind, to any criticism or any idea that they are wrong and lots of people including me, have been saying it from the start. And still nothing changes.

People Fall for Government Propaganda

After posting a story on the thisisgloucestershire website, I got a barrage of insulting and mocking comments, ranging from calling me a moaner to being lazy. It confirms quite a lot of what I suspect about the relentless government campaign to scare people off claiming for disability benefits. Firstly, I think the vast majority of working people now believe that most claimants are just scroungers; that they are fit for work, and that they are morally wrong to make a claim for any benefits. Secondly, they also believe that fraud within the system is wide-spread. That a very large proportion of claims are or have been fraudulent. This is a very devious part of the governments propaganda campaign. What the government has done, is to raise the threshold where an illness or disability becomes eligible for benefits. This means that people get turned away who previously would have got the benefit they were claiming. All this proves is that there will be more, less severe sick and disabled people in the jobs market. It doesn't, as the government claims, indicate that there was or is wide spread fraud.

The other thing to note is that 50% of people turned down, appeal the decision and 50% of those who appeal are awarded benefit. This means that a quarter of these so called fraudsters are in fact entitled to what they claim. That's not to say that a lot of those people had given up on work, when in fact work is probably good for them. But this also presumes that the work out there, is a) available, b) worth the effort. A lot of jobs are low paid, with low conditions and poor management that exploit and bully their employees.

Thirdly, it was assumed by the people commenting, that I vote Labour. I have never voted Labour in my life. I always voted Green or Liberal Democrat, but only because I liked our MP in Cheltenham, Nigel Jones (now Lord Jones).

And lastly criticism of this government is widespread, from every sector of society, right and left, in work and out of work. Academics, Unions, business people, blue collar workers and so on. The cuts were and are too deep and too fast. I do not expect any government red, blue or yellow, not to cut the debt and deficit. I do and many others do, expect the government to do it in a sensible and responsible way. This government is blind to its own stupidity, deaf to sensible, well thought out criticism and advice, and dumb to telling the truth about the fact that the style, pace and extent of the cuts ARE IDEOLOGICAL in nature and not merely to bring Britain out of its economic predicament.

Is British Deomcracy Letting Us Down?

People in the Middle East maybe fighting for democracy and losing their lives in the process, but as evidenced by the current and previous governments democracy is not what its cracked up to be. The revolutionaries in all their fervour and passion have stirred these nations into prolonged periods of serious and enduring civil unrest, with Eastern Libya declaring independence, and Syrian woes which are moving ever closer to a nasty civil war with zero guarantees of ending up with a democracy when its all done.

Here it seems that a belligerent, stubborn and stupid Conservative government isn't listening to anyone and is marching on with all their daft, unworkable and unfair legislation despite the fact that there is tons of intelligent opposition to three main pieces of legislation - Welfare, Health and Social Care and changes to the legal aid system. All three are opposed by the upper house of Lords, and yet the Lords are powerless to stop the government doing whatever it wants to do. Really, in a healthy working democracy it should be possible to stop these bills becoming law. But it isn't and we are left with a government that on the one hand is prepared to sell of large parts of the public owned institutions, such as hospitals, Police services, schools and so on, while on the other hand refusing to support British business, by reducing the subsidised solar energy sector budget, virtually scrapping the green bank which was supposed to support green technology companies, and signing over contracts to foreign companies.

The legal aid Bill that is very, very poorly thought through, by that old Conservative dinosaur Ken Clarke, is currently being scrutinised by the Lords. But it won't make a scrap of difference. If Ken Clarke is going remove access to the law for the poor, then there are a whole range of other things he should also do. For instance, he should scrap the barrister system so that any qualified solicitor can represent people in court. Barristers are hugely expensive and that expense is a bar to justice for ordinary folk. Secondly, he should make getting a law degree as easy as it is in the US, where someone at home can do an online course that takes three years then you're done. Third, there should be standardised charges, that solicitors can charge and a huge reduction as well. Solicitors should have to to stick to a schedule of standardised charges, set by the government in the same way that Bailiffs have to attend to a price guide for what they do, with consequences if they don't. And instead of charging £100 an hour for a divorce or custody battle, they should only be allowed to charge £30 per hour or something similar, thereby making it affordable for poorer people to get access to the law. But oh no. Not this government. They want to exclude masses of poorer people from the law and they don't give a shit how they do it.

Cameron on the other hand seems very pleased with himself having brought the Welfare bill into law. He's proud of this monstrous injustice and he used the Financial Privilege system to force it past the Lords who were deeply unhappy about quite a lot of it. Democracy my arse. I have always been in support of reform for the House of Lords, but only if they have real teeth and can stop aggressive, stupid governments pressing ahead with unpopular and unworkable legislation. If I was Ed Milliband I would be promising to bring private healthcare back into public ownership the minute these private companies slip up. I'd watch them so closely that they will want to return it back into public ownership, just to get the government off its back. And what is so stunningly bad about what Cameron is doing in healthcare is that doctors and other specialist medical groups are so wholly opposed to the changes, that I have never witnessed so much informed opposition in my life - and yet he persists. He persists because his mates in private business stand to make vast fortunes from it. The same with schools. The same with Police services. It is a scandal of the highest order and yet what can anyone do to stop them? Nothing.

Is the New Welfare Reform Bill Just a Poor Law for the 21st Century?

A Tory campaign leaflet arrived through my door a couple of days ago, with hateful messages about getting the Tory cap on benefits through Parliament. Despite the massive coverage in the press this candidate (a Conservative candidate for Cheltenham), thought it necessary to repeat the slurs and rev up the public into a hatred of benefit claimants a little bit more. But are these campaigns really about fairness?

The Whigs and the Tories fought it out for control of Parliament, allegiances to the Church, to the monarchy and vice versa for centuries. Eventually the Whigs died out, being replaced either by Tories or Liberals. However during the 1830’s a new problem with welfare was happening. The ruling elite, whether Whig or Tory had realised that the welfare costs were too high and therefore it was time to reform the system. The system was administered through the Workhouses and other schemes. The workhouses were to be reformed, to cut costs. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 came about, as a response to a Royal Commission report called The Poor Law Commission. It gained its contents from a range of leading philosophers and economists, and the result was that the government must make claiming for support from the state uncomfortable, to drive away claimants (sound familiar yet?) It was felt that life was too easy within the workhouses, and people were entering them rather than supporting themselves through work. They introduced a brutal regime, specifically designed to reduce the numbers of people coming to the workhouses for help. They spilt up families, rationed food to subsistence levels and introduced a regime that was comparable to the worst prisons.

One of the contributing thinkers was Jeremy Bentham, a reformist, writer and philosopher.  Bentham's argument was that people chose pleasant options and would not do what was unpleasant. This provided the basis for the government working from the Poor Law Commission report, to make relief so unpleasant that people would not make a claim, "stigmatising relief so that it became an object of wholesome horror." (http://www2.rgu.ac.uk/publicpolicy/introduction/historyf.htm).

However the plan was a disaster particularly in the industrial north which suffered from cyclical unemployment. The laws sort to remove the poor and workhouses from the country side to the cities where there was more work. However, the cost of moving the poor was too high, particularly as one of the objects of the Poor Law Amendment Act was to move the poor from the country whilst keeping local rates and taxes low.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Law_Amendment_Act_1834#cite_note-BSP16011948-3

So in two distinct areas of modern policy, with Ian Duncan Smith, allegedly having studied the situation prior to pushing forward his reforms, we have a co-operation between the media, the right wing press and various government departments, to make claiming for any kind of benefit a source of great shame and discomfort. Secondly we have removal of poor people from wealthy areas into poorer areas with the severe reduction in housing benefit. But, we also have the disaster that was the Poor Law Amendment Act.  High unemployment, high levels of homelessness and concentrations of poor people in inner cities. The opposition to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was so fierce that the Act had to be changed and once it was changed the opposition to it ebbed away, as the government of the time, had removed the most objectionable parts of it, namely moving the poor into the cities. However, the workhouses continued to be terrible places to live and eventually when a scandal in The Andover Union Workhouse broke, the government was forced into a review of the system.

Oliver Twist published 1838 was written as a direct criticism of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and IDS and his colleagues need not be reminded that such draconian policies always fail in the end. It seems IDS’s ‘study’ of the benefit culture, is no more than a re-enactment of the Poor Laws for the 21^st Century, the question is where is Dickens when you need him?

Has Time Ran Out for Assad?

As most armchair observers watching Assad bomb his citizens, killing them indiscriminately, day after day, it gets very distressing, especially when the world seems powerless to stop it. Assad isn't listening to anyone - not the Russians, the West, the Arab League, his own people or the UN. It is therefore time, I think to put a military intervention firmly on the table, including moving military hardware and personnel into the area, lining up regime assets, such as Palaces, military buildings, government buildings, command and control centres and military hardware for targeted bombing by whoever, whether its the US or the French or us or all three. It is time to begin to punish this regime and send them a clear message that they will not be able to continue this slaughter with a free hand. Assad has had all the time he needs to come to his senses. He's had the diplomatic attention, he's had his friends and neighbours visit the country in the observer mission. He's had the dressing down from the UN secretary general. It is time to move on. Yes it will cost lives, both our own military personnel and civilians, yes the new regime that replaces him might not live up to expectations, but as long as the slaughter stops and the people there given a chance to climb down, to back off from the area, for women and children to leave and for the regime to rethink its diplomatic position before its too late, then it must be all worth it. We all said that we would not allow another Bosnia, another Holocaust, another Rwanda, but here we are again, speaking loudly but doing nothing. These regimes are not interested in diplomacy, sanctions and the rest. And Assad is no different. He and his regime must be bombed into submission and compliance with international and universal calls for him to stop killing his people. If he stops, there needn't be a forced regime change in theory. But my fear is that this opportunity passed him by a while ago and that he will end his career and his life with his head on a spike in Homs town centre, the same way Gadaffi ended up. In this instance he would have brought it on himself and no-one will feel sympathy towards him - not even his Russian allies.

However, ranting about that bastard Assad aside, Russia has a naval base in Syria and its presence there may cause difficulties for any allied attack. And I suspect this is the real reason why the West are reluctant to attack Syria or even threaten to attack Syria. It is just a shame that the Syrian people don't seem to understand the delicate situation. The big question is would Russia attempt to defend the regime should the West and its allies move against Assad? It effectively means that any Western or other force wanting to move against Assad would have to ask Russia if it minded. They will say yes, they do mind and therefore the Syrian government knows they can do what they like, as long as Russia doesn't want to stop them and right now they don't.

China and Russia of course have their own concerns about democratic revolutionary movements. They would look very bad indeed if they allowed Assad to be attacked and possibly removed from power, only to have to carry out a violent and repressive crackdown against their own civilian population. Having said all this, I think the case is there for military intervention and Russia I suspect would simply pull out of Syria and leave the Assad regime to fall.

Are We Going to Let the Cons Destroy Britain?

The Conservatives are currently destroying Britain. In every area of British life, they are busily breaking up what makes Britain what it is. We are a nation who believes in state run schools, hospitals, support for the disabled and the sick and accessible laws, with a free market economy supporting those institutions. What the Conservatives are doing is breaking up those aspects of the British system, in favour of an American system. A system known to fail its citizens. But not only are they doing these things, they are also destroying the economy as well.

The Economy.

The Conservatives are cutting too fast and too deep for the economy to cope with. We are slipping into recession. Why? Because the Conservatives say, to keep the markets happy so we can enjoy lower interest rates when we borrow money from the banks.

The Health Service.

They are breaking up the health service, but bringing in private companies to run hospitals, and selling off GP practices, into private consortia, who will be pitched against each other in competition with each other. Both these things, will lead to a system where the private companies who own the contracts to deliver services, won't be subject to the same scrutiny as NHS services, because the Freedom of Information Act doesn't apply and a lot of the information that the public and regulators could get access to, now becomes private information. Secondly because the Legal Aid Bill currently going through parliament prevents people from suing large institutions when things go wrong there will be zero accountability. Thirdly, once these institutions become private the state cannot bring them back into public ownership unless they break their contract with the Government. So, if a different government in years to come has had enough of private health care providers, they cannot take the institutions back into public ownership. Fourthly, most health experts have witnessed other state run National Health services, improve when a co-operative model is adopted. This is a competitive model that the government is introducing. It will lead to more and permanent failure for Britain's health service. Also a proportion of tax payers money will go towards profits for shareholders, which means less money for patients and a lower level of care for patients, with the cheaper options always chosen, to support that private company's bottom line, rather than the right decision to nurse a patient back to full health. There is no place for private companies in the delivery of health care. There will be scandal, and fraud, and patients not getting the help they need, because it isn't profitable for the company to provide that care. It will be a mess,

Education.

Under the control of Michael Gove, private companies will move into our schools and turn them into shops to sell our kids stuff, advertise their wares and turn the schools into a mall of advertising, vending machines and charges for just about everything. Again once the schools have been sold off, it is very hard to get them back into public ownership. Some of the money from taxes will fund shareholder profits, which means less money spent on the kids education.

The Legal System.

The legal system won't support the poor. It is a simple as that. If your wife won't let you see your kids - tough. If your baby has brain damage because of a dangerous drug you were given while pregnant - tough. If you've been illegally evicted - tough. If you've been libelled in the press - tough. Because the Justice secretary, has decided that if you want to bring someone into court, you have to pay for their legal fees if you win - with insurance money that won't be offered in the first place. What insurance company in their right mind will insure your court case, when they have to pay out, whether you win or whether you lose? Oh, and no-one but the most serious cases will get legal aid because the Justice Secretary is now going to make it so hard to get, that you'll just have to take someone to court without legal advice and support or not bother.

Social Security.

The government is pressing ahead with its "reform" of the benefit system. I've ranted about this before, so no need to go over it again, except to say that people are suffering Mr Duncan-Smith and its all just another example of bad governance from this stupid and dangerous government.

In summary, if you want your public institutions to be broken up and sold off, if you want your economy to slip into another recession. If you want your child to be educated by the Coca Cola Company. If you want your country to be one where justice is only for the rich elite, then vote Conservative. Good luck with that.

Hatred of People on Benefits.

The hate mongers, moaners, right wingers and Conservatives are winning the battle against those pesky benefit scroungers. I was in Bristol the other day, and in the main street were some manic street preachers, shouting the gospel at passers by. Not too far away were the Socialist Workers Party, protesting and selling their literature to sympathic shoppers, with a petition asking people to stop the governments program of kicking the disabled off benefits. One of the publications was a guide to how the revolution was going to come about - almost a guide for followers. I knew and perhaps they know that there is little chance of a socialist revolution in Britain, because so many of us are apathetic at best about our glorious leaders. But the fact is as much as it is unjust to remove sickness benefits from some our most vulnerable members of society, it is also popular among the workers, the middle classes and the upper crust. If the government continues its onslaught against the ill, the disabled and the vulnerable it may just win them the next election. Albiet with Lib Dems as the junior partner.

Hatred of people claiming benefits is now socially acceptable, as evidenced by the Daily Hate Mail, becoming the most read online newspaper in the world. People love to hate a benefit scrounger, almost more than banker bashing. And Loose Women, the TV talk show demonstrated this by laying into families who are about to be turfed out of their homes with their kids in tow, to a much rougher, cheaper area to live, where no doubt they will hounded day and night by anti-social louts, drinking and getting high. I don't doubt that £100,000 is a lot of money for tax payers to hand over to non-workers, but as I have said before, working in Britain in the 21st Century isn't very attractive, with ruthless bosses and low pay and poor working conditions. It's no wonder the unions are so militant these days.

But it has to be said also, that it is a great shame Britain has turned on its poorest and most vulnerable people. Claimants are now the scapegoats for all our ills. Throw in the Daily Mails other fave target immigrants and then note how many immigrants are claiming benefits and there will be plenty of hot under the collar, red in the face UKIP members to go around. Perhaps the Cons will go into coalition with them next time.

The daily onslaught is convincing everyone else that a life on benefits is a great one. You don't have to work, you don't have to get out of bed in the morning and trudge to work in the cold and wet. And you get as much benefit as a working person. It's no wonder they've turned on the poor. But it seems IDS and his crew are trying change the culture around benefits. He says that benefits are about change, and that someone on benefits should get used to the feeling that they are about to lose their livelihoods, because that's how working people feel everyday. It is a merciless assessment of life on benefits, that doesn't fit in with a tollerant, kind society that Britain is supposed to be. It is not enough that working people in a capitalist free market economy have a constant feeling of instability and uncertainty, but that vulnerable and seriously disabled or ill people should feel like that as well. That is a cruel and unnecssary goal for our Work and Pensions minister to go after and I dread to think what is coming for the all the people who are about to get kicked off sickness benefits, kicked out of their homes and forced into the cruel and merciless working world.

There have been suicides over these reforms and their will be more deaths in the future. But what gets to me more than anything is that it is all a complete waste of time. The people who are conning the system and making false claims are better at getting benefits than the genuine cases. The vulnerable and weaker claimants will not have the strength or resolve to go through appeals and tribunals and reassessments while the con artists who are absolutely determined to get their hands on DLA and the like, will continue to beat the system like they always have.

Here's what you should've done IDS. You should have cut the disability benefit by 10% to save the Treasury some cash (which is the point of it all) and then invested more in fraud detection and better assessment methods. You would have spent less than you are now , you would have saved the lives of those you killed and you would have routed out a few more fraudsters. The reason you are doing what you're doing is because you're vain - you think you know best and you don't. You are reckless with the lives of the vulnerable and the sick and you should retreat from this course of action immediately. You should have listened to your colleague Mr Osbourne who didn't want to redesign the entire system. Shame on you. Shame on the fraudsters, shame on Loose Women, shame on the news media and shame on Cameron and his cronies. And shame on Britain.