An Unholy Mess

“The coalition's NHS reforms, the biggest shakeup of the health service in 60 years, are a "damaging … unholy mess" that will need overhauling in five years' time, the editors of three leading healthcare publications claim.

In an editorial published simultaneously by the British Medical Journal, Health Service Journal and Nursing Times, their editors say the NHS "is far too important to be left at the mercy of ideological and incompetent intervention" and argue ,"we must make sure that nothing like this ever happens again". Guardian 31/1/12

How damning is that ‘ideological and incompetent intervention?’ 

Contempt.

Lansley    claims that his plans for the NHS are "well thought out and necessary." So necessary they did not warrant a mention in the Tory Manifesto. So necessary that Cameron made the pledge, “There will be no top-down reorganisation of the NHS," during the same election. 

                                                                 Contempt
So necessary because of pledges made by  Lansley to private health care providers? 

So well thought out we now have chaos and confusion. So well thought out we have one half of the NHS spending money reorganising structures which may well end up being binned. 

Contempt
Lansley is out of his depth and drowning. He needs to be put out of his misery.

Apply more pressure by taking 2 minutes to sign this government e-petition, calling on Cameron's government to drop the Health and Social Care Bill: 

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/22670

David Cameron’s call for ‘responsible capitalism’ provokes public hygiene problem as millions wet themselves.

Thanks to Private Eye for the following. 

“David Cameron’s speech calling for ‘responsible capitalism’, promising to “put the right rules and institutions in place” to “improve markets and make them fair as well as free”, showed that the PM, a former PR man, knows how to say the right thing even when it’s totally at odds with what he actually does.

Last year Cameron asked private equity boss Adrian Beecroft to write a review of employment law. Beecroft proposed letting bosses sack workers more easily, tearing up tribunal and maternity leave rights and generally freeing employers from responsibilities and rules.

The PM can’t have been surprised by Beecroft’s cavalier attitude to responsibility and fairness, given that he is chairman of Dawn Capital, the private equity firm that owns Wonga.com. This payday loan firm pursues poor folk, students and old people with loan rates running from 360 percent up to a staggering 4,000 percent APR.

Cameron accused the last government of being “frightened of challenging vested interests, believing too often that the interests of big business were always one and the same as those of the economy as a whole”. So Dave will presumably now chuck the Beecroft report in the bin - and the fact that he has given the Conservatives £587,000 since 2006 will of course not play on the PM’s mind at all.”    HP Sauce

Those not yet donning the incontinence kit should be prepared...

“There can be few areas more in need of David Cameron’s new moral capitalism than the business of putting companies into administration.

Two years ago Eye 1255 reported how high-street chain Woolworth’s was put into administration by its bankers on the advice of beancounter Deloitte, rejecting management’s plans to save it. The administration contract was duly handed to .....Deloitte. The banks were paid in full, Deloitte trousered more than £9m and 30,000 staff lost their jobs, with no redundancy payments.

Now a tribunal has found that Deloitte failed to consult properly on the redundancies and the workers are due compensation totalling £67m. This of course, will be paid not by Deloitte, but by the taxpayer. We’re all in it together?” Private Eye 27/1/12

RBS, Hester and the Government

Make loads of hardworking people redundant? Check.

Oversee a loss-making bank? Check. 

Run a company 81% owned by the taxpayer? Check.

See the share price plummet? Check.

Enjoy a salary in excess of £1million per year? Check.

Set in place rules which make it harder for small businesses to get a loan? Check.

Take home in 3 days what a soldier serving in Afghanistan earns in a year? Check.

Believe this to be right and proper as you risk being shown up as a greedy bastard or worse, not making as much moolah as your venal colleagues, whereas a squaddy could merely end up being dead, and where is the shame in that? Check.

Be given rewards for all the failures listed above as a bonus of nearly a million? Check.

Can’t believe your luck? Check.

Live in a parallel universe? Check.

Claim that you could earn much more in another bank somewhere else? Check.

Expose the Tory-led Government as a bunch of smug, arrogant, inept and hypocritical bastards? Check.

Show up Nick Clegg for being a piece of useless bloody offal drowning in shark-infested waters? Check.

Embarrass the hell out of New Labour for awarding a crazy contract? Check.

Shoot down any bollocks about us all being in this together? Check.

Annoy the hell out of any decent citizen of the UK? Checkety check check.

Run a coach and horses through any notion of fairness? Checkety checkety check.

Help prepare the ground making revolution that little bit more likely? Check.

Bankers take the biscuit - the poor get the blame

An investment banker, a Daily Wail reader and a benefit recipient are sitting round a plate with 12 biscuits on it. The banker takes 11 biscuits, then turns to the Daily Wail reader and says, “Watch out, that scrounger is after your biscuit.”

All the fuss about benefit caps should be seen in the light of this little joke going the rounds. Most of the biggest payments go to claimants in London for their rent. The system is unfair because it transfers money from the taxpayer to landlords who can set the level of rent at a price that suits them. In many major cities in the world there is rent control. It could be re-introduced to London.

Do not hold your breath. As Mark Blackman, writing in the Independent put it, “It won’t happen, because at least one section of the Coalition Government is funded by the likes of wealthy landlords and many MPs earn a tidy sum by renting out properties themselves.”

So MPs blame the poor while pocketing the cash and the Daily Wail looks the other way.

Are there no depths to which these bastards will not sink?

A little article about the way statistics have been abused by this corrupt and self-serving government emerged today. Last weekend, the egregious Grayling and Green pandered to those of our society who like to blame foreigners for all our ills. The fact that 371,000 people who were foreign nationals were claiming benefits was seized upon by the rightwing press. The Daily Wail, the Scum and Torygraph pandered to their fascist readership with their rent-a-guff, ‘Coming over here taking our jobs, taking advantage of the welfare state, robbing us blind’ nonsense. The EDL need little persuasion to use such ‘facts’ to launch racist attacks. Grayling and Green know this. But they still went ahead and peddled the ‘foreigner taking advantage’ line. Bastards.

Now it emerges that the facts do not stack up. It seems that ‘foreigners’ are less likely to claim benefits than British born workers. That will not stop the racist attacks. As Goebels said, “If you are going to lie, then make it a big lie.”

‘Aliens’ (great word) are also more likely to be hardworking and contributing to our society. Unlike our ruling millionaire toffs who would not recognise hardship even if it reared up and bit them in the bum.

Haditha - a ‘Dereliction of Duty’

It is seven years since 24 Iraqi civilians were massacred at Haditha by a US Marine squad.  The sergeant in charge has accepted a plea bargain to admit ‘dereliction of duty’ rather than the more serious charge of manslaughter. Cynics will argue that the ‘man’ should have been left off the ‘manslaughter’ charge. Testimony from other squad members stated that Sgt. Frank Wuterich personally lined up five men as they arrived in a taxi and shot them. He is the only one of the squad to be found guilty. Six squad members had charges dropped or dismissed, including some in exchange for testifying at the trial. Among the 24 civilians were women and children and a man in a wheelchair. 

While the events in Haditha occurred in November 2005, an investigation did not begin until a local human rights activist went public with video footage of the aftermath.

Alistair Leithead, a BBC reporter had this to say from Los Angeles, “The dropping of nine manslaughter charges against Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, 31, and the relative leniency of a maximum three month jail sentence will not be well received by those in Iraq who wanted justice for the death of family members. Especially after all other cases related to the killings have been dropped or acquitted.

The killings severely tainted the reputation of US forces in Iraq, but by 2005, they had already been hit hard by the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. The Haditha massacre is still an emotive issue in the country and prompted calls for US troops to be denied immunity from prosecution in the Iraqi justice system.”

“Will not be well received by those in Iraq who wanted justice” is a bit of an understatement. The plea bargain charge of ‘dereliction of duty’ is deeply insulting. As is a maximum three month sentence. It reflects the US military’s approach to Iraqi casualties. They were never counted. Estimates vary from 150,000 to over a million deaths. US casualties were counted.

Americans make a great deal about being a democracy and observing the rule of law. The outcome of this case undermines that claim. Haditha is indeed a dereliction of duty.

Cable’s crap attack

Just when a gallant knight is needed to sort out all the villains in the city of London up pops Vince. Watch the financiers squeal. Listen to the bankers howl. Enjoy the anguish of the hedgefunders. Then again....dream on. 

Fairness and rigour do not feature in St Vince’s apology for a policy.  Bathetic.

Fat Cats will not lose any sleep. 

It is down to us to boycott the robber baron companies and greedy megacorps. 

Make a start by taking your money out of RBS and putting it into an ethical bank. 

38 degrees - this is a campaign made for you.