Showing posts with label tory party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tory party. Show all posts
Sunday, 4 June 2017
Friday, 2 September 2016
Traingate affects your human rights!
You heard about traingate last week right? Every newspaper, news channel and media outlet was obsessed for several days on whether Jeremy Corbyn could have found a seat on a crowded train or not.
On Wednesday 24th August whilst all this was kicking off something much less important understandably got smothered and went largely unreported among all the fuss. Yes the government decided now was a good time to announce the decision to proceed with plans to scrap the Human Rights Act.
What? Yes I did say "scrap the Human Rights Act", why? problem?
These rights are now set to be scrapped, and replaced by a new pick'n'mix Bill of Rights drafted by Theresa May's Conservative government. Rather than a guaranteed set of rights worked through by human rights champions and lawyers from across Europe, the rights of British people will now be set out by a selected handful of civil servants in Westminster, under the authority of Theresa May. Britain’s new unelected Prime Minister does not have a great record of upholding civil liberties and human rights, she has already pushed forward the Investigatory Powers Bill aka the Snooper’s Charter.
With this in mind, we can expect a bill of rights which protects corporations and government from the public (and the taxpayer), rather than protecting individuals and groups from the threat of overwhelming state and corporate power.
The Human Rights Act of 1998 guarantees every UK citizen the opportunity to defend themselves in domestic courts under rights granted them by the European Convention on Human Rights. As Liberty lays out, these are the rights given by the Act:
I know signing petitions is armchair activism and doesn't usually make a difference but sometimes it does and it's better than doing nothing at all.
So..... https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/125604
On Wednesday 24th August whilst all this was kicking off something much less important understandably got smothered and went largely unreported among all the fuss. Yes the government decided now was a good time to announce the decision to proceed with plans to scrap the Human Rights Act.
What? Yes I did say "scrap the Human Rights Act", why? problem?
These rights are now set to be scrapped, and replaced by a new pick'n'mix Bill of Rights drafted by Theresa May's Conservative government. Rather than a guaranteed set of rights worked through by human rights champions and lawyers from across Europe, the rights of British people will now be set out by a selected handful of civil servants in Westminster, under the authority of Theresa May. Britain’s new unelected Prime Minister does not have a great record of upholding civil liberties and human rights, she has already pushed forward the Investigatory Powers Bill aka the Snooper’s Charter.
With this in mind, we can expect a bill of rights which protects corporations and government from the public (and the taxpayer), rather than protecting individuals and groups from the threat of overwhelming state and corporate power.
The Human Rights Act of 1998 guarantees every UK citizen the opportunity to defend themselves in domestic courts under rights granted them by the European Convention on Human Rights. As Liberty lays out, these are the rights given by the Act:
- The right to life – protects your life, by law. The state is required to investigate suspicious deaths and deaths in custody;
- The prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment – you should never be tortured or treated in an inhuman or degrading way, no matter what the situation;
- Protection against slavery and forced labour – you should not be treated like a slave or subjected to forced labour;
- The right to liberty and freedom – you have the right to be free and the state can only imprison you with very good reason – for example, if you are convicted of a crime;
- The right to a fair trial and no punishment without law – you are innocent until proven guilty. If accused of a crime, you have the right to hear the evidence against you, in a court of law;
- Respect for privacy and family life and the right to marry – protects against unnecessary surveillance or intrusion into your life. You have the right to marry and raise a family;
- Freedom of thought, religion and belief – you can believe what you like and practise your religion or beliefs;
- Free speech and peaceful protest – you have a right to speak freely and join with others peacefully, to express your views;
- No discrimination – everyone’s rights are equal. You should not be treated unfairly – because, for example, of your gender, race, sexuality, religion or age;
- Protection of property, the right to an education and the right to free elections – protects against state interference with your possessions; means that no child can be denied an education and that elections must be free and fair.
I know signing petitions is armchair activism and doesn't usually make a difference but sometimes it does and it's better than doing nothing at all.
So..... https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/125604
Wednesday, 27 April 2016
Boyle on Hunt
An incisively funny and politically astute article in The Guardian today by Frankie Boyle on the situation with the junior doctors strike. As I cycled past the hospital on my way to work this morning I gave a wave and a shout of encouragement to the doctors on the picket line, I hope they continue their fight for as long as it takes against this governments ridiculous contract imposition and the pathetic Hunt called Jeremy.
Here's the article.....
Here's the article.....
Jeremy Hunt doesn’t understand junior doctors. He co-wrote a book on how to dismantle the NHS
One
of the worst things for doctors must be that, after seven years of
study and then another decade of continuing professional exams, patients
come in telling them they’re wrong after spending 20 minutes on Google.
So imagine how doctors must feel about Jeremy Hunt, who hasn’t even had the decency to go on the internet.
Consider how desperate these doctors are: so desperate that they want to talk to Jeremy Hunt. Surely even Hunt’s wife would rather spend a sleepless 72 hours gazing into a cracked open ribcage than talk to him. Hunt won’t speak to the doctors, even though doctors are the people who know how hospitals work. Hunt’s only other job was founding Hotcourses magazine: his areas of expertise are how to bulletpoint a list and make dog grooming look like a viable career change.
Of course, the strikers are saying this is about safety, not pay, as expecting to be paid a decent wage for a difficult and highly skilled job is now considered selfish. Surely expecting someone to work for free while people all around them are dying of cancer is only appropriate for the early stages of The X Factor. Sadly, Tories don’t understand why someone would stay in a job for decency and love when their mother was never around long enough to find out what language the nanny spoke.
The fact that Hunt co-wrote a book about how to dismantle the NHS makes him feel like a broad stroke in a heavy-handed satire. Even the name Jeremy Hunt is so redolent of upper-class brutality that it feels like he belongs in one of those Martin Amis books where working-class people are called things like Dave Rubbish and Billy Darts (No shade, Martin – I’m just a joke writer: I envy real writers, their metaphors and similes taking off into the imagination sky like big birds or something). Indeed, Jeremy Hunt is so overtly ridiculous that he might be best thought of as a sort of rodeo clown, put there simply there to distract the enraged public.
I sympathise a little with Hunt – he was born into military aristocracy, a cousin of the Queen, went to Charterhouse, then Oxford, then into PR: trying to get him to understand the life of an overworked student nurse is like trying to get an Amazonian tree frog to understand the plot of Blade Runner. Hunt doesn’t understand the need to pay doctors – he’s part of a ruling class that doesn’t understand that the desire to cut someone open and rearrange their internal organs can come from a desire to help others, and not just because of insanity caused by hereditary syphilis.
The government believes that death rates are going up because doctors are lazy, rather than because we’ve started making disabled people work on building sites. Indeed, death rates in the NHS are going up, albeit largely among doctors. From the steel mines where child slaves gather surgical steel, all the way up to senior doctors working 36 hours on no sleep, the most healthy people in the NHS are actually the patients. This is before we get to plans for bursaries to be withdrawn from student nurses, so that we’re now essentially asking them to pay to work. Student nurses are essential; not only are they a vital part of staffing hospitals, they’re usually the only people there able to smile at a dying patient without screaming: “TAKE ME WITH YOU!”
The real reason more people die at weekends is that British people have to be really sick to stay in hospital at the weekend, as hospitals tend not to have a bar. We have a fairly low proportion of people who are doctors, don’t plan to invest in training any more, and are too racist to import them. So we’re shuffling around the doctors we do have to the weekend, when not a lot of people are admitted, from the week, when it’s busy. This is part of a conscious strategy to run the service down to a point where privatisation can be sold to the public as a way of improving things.
Naturally, things won’t actually be improved; they’ll be sold to something like Virgin Health. Virgin can’t get the toilets to work on a train from Glasgow to London, so it’s time we encouraged it to branch out into something less challenging like transplant surgery. With the rate the NHS is being privatised, it won’t be long before consultations will be done via Skype with a doctor in Bangalore. Thank God we’re raising a generation who are so comfortable getting naked online. “I’m afraid it looks like you’ve had a stroke. No, my mistake – you’re just buffering.”
When I was little, I was in hospital for a few days. The boy in the next bed was an officious little guy who took me on a tour of the ward. He’d sort of appointed himself as an auxiliary nurse and would help out around the place, tidying up the toys in the playroom, and giving all the nurses a very formal “Good Morning”, which always made me laugh. I got jelly and ice-cream one evening (I’d had my tonsils out) and they brought him some, too. Afterwards, he threw his spoon triumphantly into his plate and laughed till there were tears in his eyes. Then he tidied up and took our plates back to the trolley. What he meant by all this (we’d sit up at night talking and waiting for trains to go by in the distance) is that this was the first place he’d known any real kindness and he wished to return it. For most of us it will be the last place we know kindness. How sad that we have allowed it to fall into the hands of dreadful people who know no compassion at all, not even for themselves.
Consider how desperate these doctors are: so desperate that they want to talk to Jeremy Hunt. Surely even Hunt’s wife would rather spend a sleepless 72 hours gazing into a cracked open ribcage than talk to him. Hunt won’t speak to the doctors, even though doctors are the people who know how hospitals work. Hunt’s only other job was founding Hotcourses magazine: his areas of expertise are how to bulletpoint a list and make dog grooming look like a viable career change.
Of course, the strikers are saying this is about safety, not pay, as expecting to be paid a decent wage for a difficult and highly skilled job is now considered selfish. Surely expecting someone to work for free while people all around them are dying of cancer is only appropriate for the early stages of The X Factor. Sadly, Tories don’t understand why someone would stay in a job for decency and love when their mother was never around long enough to find out what language the nanny spoke.
The fact that Hunt co-wrote a book about how to dismantle the NHS makes him feel like a broad stroke in a heavy-handed satire. Even the name Jeremy Hunt is so redolent of upper-class brutality that it feels like he belongs in one of those Martin Amis books where working-class people are called things like Dave Rubbish and Billy Darts (No shade, Martin – I’m just a joke writer: I envy real writers, their metaphors and similes taking off into the imagination sky like big birds or something). Indeed, Jeremy Hunt is so overtly ridiculous that he might be best thought of as a sort of rodeo clown, put there simply there to distract the enraged public.
I sympathise a little with Hunt – he was born into military aristocracy, a cousin of the Queen, went to Charterhouse, then Oxford, then into PR: trying to get him to understand the life of an overworked student nurse is like trying to get an Amazonian tree frog to understand the plot of Blade Runner. Hunt doesn’t understand the need to pay doctors – he’s part of a ruling class that doesn’t understand that the desire to cut someone open and rearrange their internal organs can come from a desire to help others, and not just because of insanity caused by hereditary syphilis.
The government believes that death rates are going up because doctors are lazy, rather than because we’ve started making disabled people work on building sites. Indeed, death rates in the NHS are going up, albeit largely among doctors. From the steel mines where child slaves gather surgical steel, all the way up to senior doctors working 36 hours on no sleep, the most healthy people in the NHS are actually the patients. This is before we get to plans for bursaries to be withdrawn from student nurses, so that we’re now essentially asking them to pay to work. Student nurses are essential; not only are they a vital part of staffing hospitals, they’re usually the only people there able to smile at a dying patient without screaming: “TAKE ME WITH YOU!”
The real reason more people die at weekends is that British people have to be really sick to stay in hospital at the weekend, as hospitals tend not to have a bar. We have a fairly low proportion of people who are doctors, don’t plan to invest in training any more, and are too racist to import them. So we’re shuffling around the doctors we do have to the weekend, when not a lot of people are admitted, from the week, when it’s busy. This is part of a conscious strategy to run the service down to a point where privatisation can be sold to the public as a way of improving things.
Naturally, things won’t actually be improved; they’ll be sold to something like Virgin Health. Virgin can’t get the toilets to work on a train from Glasgow to London, so it’s time we encouraged it to branch out into something less challenging like transplant surgery. With the rate the NHS is being privatised, it won’t be long before consultations will be done via Skype with a doctor in Bangalore. Thank God we’re raising a generation who are so comfortable getting naked online. “I’m afraid it looks like you’ve had a stroke. No, my mistake – you’re just buffering.”
When I was little, I was in hospital for a few days. The boy in the next bed was an officious little guy who took me on a tour of the ward. He’d sort of appointed himself as an auxiliary nurse and would help out around the place, tidying up the toys in the playroom, and giving all the nurses a very formal “Good Morning”, which always made me laugh. I got jelly and ice-cream one evening (I’d had my tonsils out) and they brought him some, too. Afterwards, he threw his spoon triumphantly into his plate and laughed till there were tears in his eyes. Then he tidied up and took our plates back to the trolley. What he meant by all this (we’d sit up at night talking and waiting for trains to go by in the distance) is that this was the first place he’d known any real kindness and he wished to return it. For most of us it will be the last place we know kindness. How sad that we have allowed it to fall into the hands of dreadful people who know no compassion at all, not even for themselves.
Tuesday, 1 March 2016
David Cameron and the one party state dream that is becoming reality
The Guardian reports that “David Cameron is leading a government with a “worryingly authoritarian streak” that is seeking to undermine the Labour party’s funding arrangements through the trade union bill.” It’s a pretty damning statement coming from Baron Kerslake, former Head of the Home Civil Service but its one that is becoming all too familiar in British politics today.
In essence, Kerslake’s furious attack confirms what many believe; that David Cameron, George Osborne & Co are effectively rigging the system to ensure that the balance of power is firmly tipped in their favour.
In early January, a confidential Labour party document affirmed that the party was facing an expected and quite sudden £6m drop in its annual income as a result of the changes to the political levy being introduced in the Conservative’s Trade Union Bill, making it impossible for it to maintain its current structure, staffing or offices. Income from affiliation fees could fall to as low as £1million.
In reality it means that Labour will lose around £35 million in funding over the lifetime of a parliament and the Bill has been described “as the most unfair alteration to political parties’ funding since the second world war and marks an end to a long-standing convention that issues of party funding are agreed on a cross-party basis. In reality it represents the most agregious abuse of power in office as it clearly sets out to stifle competition and create a one party state. Democracy is threatened.
This accusation is supported by evidence that the BBC was viciously intimidated by Tory officials at the last election, threatening widespread reforms such as radically changing the licence fee funding system. Tom Baldwin – Senior Advisor, Labour Party quite openly said;
“BBC executives and journalists have told me that there were regular, repeated threats from senior Tories during this election campaign about ‘what would happen afterwards’ if they did not fall into line. It is a disturbing suggestion that a democratically elected government would seek to stamp on and silence dissent from an independent broadcaster.” There “has been a long-standing campaign by the Conservative party, fueled by the commercial interests of sections of the press, to attack the world’s most successful state-funded public service broadcaster (the BBC) as a giant leftwing conspiracy”From here things start to get very dark indeed. The scrapping of university maintenance grants that enabled the disadvantaged to get to university is a good example. These individuals coming from poorer backgrounds are not Tory voters and probably never will be, so it’s not worth investing in them.
It’s the same with cutting the schools’ budget and “Pupil Premium”, for children from poor families.
Want the evidence for this. Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg spoke out recently after a long silence about trying to allocate money to build social housing by the coalition government to help tackle the housing crisis. Cynically, the Prime Minister and Chancellor George Osborne rebuffed them with the stark message: “All it does is produce more Labour voters.”
With a mentality and approach to important social issues such as housing, education and social mobility being determined on the basis of votes; morality, integrity and justice within politics has been retired.
Another disgraceful example is how the Conservatives are manipulating the (negative) narrative in the banking industry. The Tories simply put their ‘man’ or woman in this case, in the top seat at the BBC. The Daily Mail even wrote “The woman who leads the BBC is being paid a staggering £10,000 a day by the scandal-hit bank accused of helping millionaires to avoid paying tax.” Appointing people like this is a clear conflict of interest – and that is being very charitable indeed. The Mail’s report is scathing.
Another demonstration of the emerging Conservative authoritarianism is this headline from the The Independent “Banning boycotts of Israel will protect Britain’s national security” – because the practice undermines “community cohesion” and Britain’s “international security”. Public authorities face “severe penalties” for daring to defy the government on ethical grounds. That says it all, the banning of ethical practice by anyone the government controls.
From the second world war the democratically elected representatives of local communities up and down the country have been able to decide how public money should be used. If they choose to take an ethical approach then that is what they have been elected for. Now a blanket directive will be imposed by central government.
Boycotts are vital to democracy and silencing its opposition goes counter to those principles. This is again evidenced by the so-called “Gagging Bill” passed by The Lords a few weeks ago. This is nothing more than the limiting of free speech on the run-up to an election. The government uses tax-payers money to fund certain charities and then threatens them if the same charities have something to say that is not complimentary to the Tory party.
All this comes from the centre. David Cameron said a few months ago “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens ‘as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.” By passing new laws to restrict free speech, even by those we don’t agree with is a very dangerous path. (Read this from The Intercept). Suddenly, Theresa May, the Home Secretary is wielding a de-facto veto over who may appear in British current affairs programmes. Where would this end?
She is planning on granting herself powers to tell places of learning who they may or may not invite to speak. Amid the crisis of free speech on the university campus – both from students themselves and from authorities – the government’s only response is to worsen the situation and join the ranks of those who would limit thought and debate.
More evidence comes from the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa). These were laws designed to apprehend dangerous terrorists from our streets. Anti-terrorism laws brought in by labour 15 years ago are now being used to hunt down unpaid speeding and parking fines, dog fouling and even under age sun-bed use and smoking bans. Where will this end?
The government has been accused of trying to rush through the controversial “snoopers charter” spy powers before the EU referendum campaign with no less than 86 amendments tabled, many rejected, that will lead to even greater surveillance powers over the British people. Again, given the form of the Tories, where will this end?
David Cameron’s internet porn filter seems to have some logic behind it, but in reality it’s just a censorship. Where will this end?
The government is seeking to shut down dissenting voices and this is a huge challenge to democracy itself which should clearly worry us all no matter what political tribe we belong to. One day, the Tories will lose an election and all these powers will be given free to the next government – whoever that may be. And the more extreme this government gets, the more extreme those that topple them will be.
Go back and read the first paragraph of this piece, it makes sense now. It is also a quote by Adolph Hitler.
Graham Vanbergen – truepublica.org.uk
Thursday, 2 October 2014
david cameron rapping at the Tory conference
Here's a video of david cameron doing a rap for his conference speech. He's so cool.
Don't you just love him? He's so fresh and full of new ideas, at last a prime minister who is in touch with the people, understands the younger generation and doesn't want to sell off our future to corporate interests. No more cuts to public services, no more expensive illegal wars, no more privatisation, no more bullshit. what a guy!
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