The Sunday Telegraph has this lead article this morning (and I apologise for testing your eyesight):
The message from Sunak is unambiguous. After fourteen years in which the Tories have made the social security system mean, cruel, punitive and profoundly unjust, as well as under-claimed, they want to make things worse for those in need.
Some might have noticed that I have some concerns about Labour at present, but they are not, I admit, as cruel, discriminatory and profoundly unjust as the Tories. It is a low bar, but I will note it. I am not a fan of Rachel Reeves' approach to social security, but it is not as bad as this.
Perhaps, more importantly, the question this leads to is important. What did happen to Beveridge's vision of a welfare state? Why is it that we have turned against those in need? Is this simply that the egocentricity and utter selfishness of neoliberal ideology has won? Or have our politicians lost any sense of empathy that might drive their moral compass?
What is certain is that the Tories no longer believe in One Nation.
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Tories have never aspired to one nation. It’s been the us (wealthiest 2%) and “you lot”. Smoke and mirrors the whole time.
Trouble is that the voters suffer collective amnesia when it comes to the ballot box
Forgive me, but no – they don’t suffer from amnesia, save of a wilful kind that seeks the avoidance of responsibility. I will not call that an ‘excuse’, but I do not think it helps a colder, more realistic understanding of an FPTP electorate. This is the politics of illusion.
I see this form of sentimentalism too often in comments here, to be absolutely frank. The world isn’t like that.
“Mr Sunak has pledged to curb benefits and government spending to fund tax cuts”…….on the benefits side this will be accomplished by elminating interest payments to banks for holding government money, on the tax cut side,. this will be focused on those working in the banking sector who are the generators of wealth in this country………
oh hang on, he has just stolen Reform/Tice’s clothes and is taking with one hand and giving with the other.
Obvs, my addition is part fantasy, Sunak would never take money away from his banker friends but the tax cuts (for bankers)? he has form in this area & I have little doubt that this will feature in what he proposes.
As for the “one nation tories” Heath kicked off the erosion in 1970 and Thatcher accelerated it, empathy & a lack thereof is the sine qua non of the modern major politico coupled to a selection process for MPs in both major parties that ensures, in most cases, only the feral/spineless get slected.
I’m staggered.
‘The nobility of work’ – my arse! Sorry, I know its a Sunday……….but really?
A Prime Minister rich boy in charge of a government that was recently pressing rail operators to cut station staff, have drones checking high speed rail lines, making local authorities and NHS haemorrhage staff though poor pay whilst cosying up to those pushing forward artificial intelligence that will reduce the ‘nobility’ of work?
If you’ve fallen for this, there is no hope for you. ‘Gullible’ just does not begin to explain it.
Please report to your nearest abattoir with the rest of sheep and do us all a favour.
Staggered.
This is pure lying.
Vile.
Some conservative voters i know are nice caring people, who support their neighbours, raise money for charities, volunteer in their local foodbanks. This is their idea of one nation. They, the relatively well off, look after the deserving poor. There is a total disconnect between their daily lives, and their political views. When challenged, they are inarticulate, sometimes embarrassed, but never persuadable. They read the Daily Mail, and that gives them their soundbite explanations. I honestly think they are a lost cause.
Just about the worst thing ever is a tory wanting praise for working in or even opening a foodbank. They can never see the irony.
This sort of “caring Conservativism” was part of the deceit of Cameron’s talk about civil society (charities, churches et al) stepping up to fill the gaps not provided by government. There’s a place for that, but only ever on the margin, it manifestly can’t provide core support and corrections for systemically inequitable outcomes.
The Tories, (welfare cost cutting agenda), simply see nearly one million job vacancies & 1.45 million people unemployed, with the Tory aim of forcing the unemployed to take ‘any’ paying job.
The problem is that, in order to be able see and interpret the (apologies for the cliche) big picture, you have to be unusually well informed, spend a ridiculous amount of time keeping at least partly in touch with everything that is going on (helps if you have/had a day job that helps with that), have a very long memory (which also suggests being on the older end of the demographic map), have a considerable capacity for critical thinking and have an underlying set of assumptions and values that structure the way you take in all this information. This leads to seeing connections that most people (across the political spectrum) don’t see, and it isn’t the norm. Hence nice tories – and yes, I know a lot of these as well.
Hence nice Tories?
Surely, hence those of compassionate left of centre persuasion?
Nice Tories? Those people who consider themselves to be caring and compassionate while enabling the suffering of the poor and disabled, without even thinking about it? Stupid is too kind a word for them. Ignorant and selfish would describe them better.
And it does not require a huge intellectual ability to understand the truth. Just very basic common sense and a mind prepared to think.
I have finally lost all patience with the Tory party. They are evil (I choose that word with care). Any decent person who was a member of the party would have resigned the whip by now.
I have previously given them the benefit of the doubt, just being ignorant and incompetent, with perhaps some redeeming features. Not any longer. Some would ask “what took you so long”. But I’m reluctant to condemn anyone.
What pushed me over the edge was their treatment of foreign spouses of British citizens (spousal visas). At first I again thought it was just rushed through in ignorance and incompetence. And, I deed the salary threshold has been reduced, though it is still unconscionably high at nearly £30k. But then there were howls of protests from Tory MP. that this injustice had been (only partially) corrected. That was the final straw.
And then I was further outraged by this headline in the Telegraph (admittedly not written by an MP), “Britain’s CEOs have earned more than the median salary this year. It’s a disgrace it took so long
It is grievously unfair that British executives are paid so little”.
There are no words to express my disgust.
And BBC’s R4 Broadcasting House this morning light heartedly referenced Sunak cutting welfare to fund tax cuts – saying ‘this will be his theme through the year’ – not a flicker of interest in recent findings that welfare benefits have fallen way below living costs and millions destitute already.
The UK has been found to be consistently violating the human rights of the disabled by UN Special Rapporteurs.
Austerity led to 300k excess deaths.
Most in the media seem unaware of these facts, let alone care about them.
It is disgusting.
Less than 20% of those with autism are in paid work. Presumably the other 80% are some of those that Sunak wants to get into work. The strange thing is that many of them want to get a job, but nobody wants to employ them except as volunteers.
Bear in mind that Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is enormously under reported, especially in girls. The BMA reported, in 2020, that 1% of children have a diagnosis for ASD. The real figure, from talking to experienced teachers with a background in diagnosing ASD, is more realistically between 10 and 20%. This really isn’t an exaggeration.
ASD people (and I hate the term ASD because in most cases it is a difference not a “Disorder”) find it difficult to apply for jobs, to fill in applications and write CVs, because these are designed for neuro typicals. I suspect neurotypicals would find it equally difficult to apply for jobs if the process were run by ASD people.
So many ASDs either are not able to find work or find work that does not nearly match their potential. I know many family, friends and colleagues to whom this applies. There is virtually no help available for ASD. Most ASDs are undiagnosed and don’t even realise it themselves.
The economic impact of under utilising these, often talented, people is immense. We need their skills and abilities. They want to work. But the “system” makes it extremely difficult for them to do so.
What a tragic waste 🙁
I wholeheartedly agree with this
To Tim K’s point about ASD; it’s an unlikely source I know but we are fans of Channel 4’s Walter Presents channel, which has a lot of foreign language series. Good for refreshing your language skills.
There has been a French series called Murder in Paris where one of the 2 key characters has, to use the term, ASD. A core theme is how her talents and skills come into play, and it has her and fellow ASDers talking about the strange behaviours of neuro-typicals and their inadequacies as seen from an ASD perspective. She and her (female) police partner start off mutually uncomprehending but gradually come to appreciate each others strengths and attributes. It seemed to us to be wholly unpatronising and the first drama we have ever seen that attempted to be more accurate and empathic. That it is a crime based drama is secondary to the main story about the two of them. We could do with more like it as a way of perhaps educating people.
Where is the Walter Presents cahnnel? I have never heard of it…
I know all that, Tim. Both my grandsons have ASD. The 21 year old has had lots of voluntary work, but nobody willing to pay him. He’s applied for every job going that he can get to and had very little response. He volunteers at two charities including on Saturdays in order to have something to put on his CV. He would also like to work with people his own age rather that people who have lots of time on their hands, although he gets on well with people who work with these charities.
He will probably have his PIP taken away from him this month so will have nothing to live on. His work coach will be five minutes away by car, but an hour by bus. There is a direct bus which takes 20 minutes, but if it’s late from Newcastle it stops at the town and turns round without coming to this village. And you don’t know if this has happened until the bus does not turn up.
24’s Chloe was for many years tv’s most prominent obvious Aspie, despite never being openly identified as such on the show that I can recall. Now that such definitions are considered improper, perhaps tv’s leading character acted as being on the spectrum is starring in The Good Doctor, a drama show about a hugely skilled but openly autistic doctor in an American hospital and all the jolly fun he and all the stereo-typicals on the staff/patients have trying to deal with each other. I found it patronising but I watched it on the recommendation of someone way, way out on the spectrum who was delighted it existed in the first place and watched it avidly. I suppose from that POV, yes, it’s good the show exists but the Chloe character, well-liked and respected by the show’s other characters despite their occasional frustration with her odd behaviour, while at first just a worker (albeit a very techie one) went on to actually run the whole department in later seasons. Now there, I thought, was acceptance and encouragement for spectrum folk.
Jenw,
One big problem is actually getting through the application process which, from an ASD person’s perspective, makes no sense (and I fully sympathise). Having recently been using ChatGPT to help complete my own job application I thought this might be a big help to someone with ASD. You can give it facts about what you have done in a narrative fashion, and it will precis this into something that can be used in a job application. It’s not a silver bullet but it might help.
The other thing is interviews. One young man I was helping after Uni initially struggled with this. But, after being pushed to do quite a few, he began to “understand the game”. After that he said he actually enjoyed the process. He managed to land a great job.
I suppose it helps that he was in a high tech area and many of the techie people round there probably had ASD. The employers were used to them, maybe ASD themselves, were sympathetic and understood.
So, with help, some of these difficulties can be overcome. But it needs support. To my mind this support is an “investment” because the yield is much much greater than the cost. But, sadly, this is not a priority for this government.
Walter Presents is part of Channel 4’s streaming either on the web via a browser or via their app. It has lots of international drama and series from Europe and beyond. Good for reminding your brain of whatever languages you might have!
Refreshingly different to the usual UK or US sourced material
Thanks!
Walter Presents: https://www.channel4.com/collection/walter-presents
Tim Kent, not many people with ASD go to university. Many of them can’t cope with school let alone university.
My grandson was home educated as there were too many people at his secondary school. He has passed exams in functional maths and English, but that won’t get him into university. He knows all the capitals and flags of every country in the world, but it doesn’t get him onto a geography course or help him know which bus to catch. He really enjoyed doing equations, but again, it doesn’t help him in the real world. He has courses every year on self confidence, but every course and situation is different.
The last three months of last year were a waste of time to him as the people running it did not even know if their jobs would exist this month, so were looking for jobs for themselves, not him.
He drives trains all over the country online, and knows where all the stations are, but he couldn’t work on the trains as they are too noisy for him.
Real life is very different for most people with ASD.
Jenw,
Jenw,
I shall not argue with you about who suffers most from ASD. This doubtless what this government would like us to do because it distracts from the real problem, which they willfully fail to address, the lack of support.There is, of course, a spectrum which varies between those who are non-verbal and those who are less strongly affected, but still badly affected, who may be highly intelligent and could potentially go to university (Asperger’s syndrome). They all need support to function effectively in a world that is designed by neuro typicals for neuro typicals.
I would like to clarify, for those that do not know, that ASD, is not limited to the worse affected. That is just one extreme. If we try to focus only on those we do a disservice to the very many others with ASD.
In my family several students with ASD went to university, as many do. Two crashed out because they couldn’t cope. One university was supportive and excellent, the other absolutely appalling. In both cases it took years of patient support to help them through their crises. They both eventually managed to return to university and, with much support, completed their studies. I am very painfully aware that is not the case for a great many others with ASD.
This is precisely why we discuss this topic here. The government, with it’s lack of understanding and uncaring approach (as for other aspects of health care), would like us to argue between ourselves. That let’s them off the hook. What they should be doing, and what this government willfully will not do, because it costs money, is to invest in supporting ASD and other groups. With support many more could be helped to have a more productive and fulfilling life to the benefit of all.
I’ve heard this called “Restoration Politics”!
If you’ve read read Jack London’s ‘The people of the Abyss’ you will know what is being restored! If you haven’t…
The social housing secret: how Vienna became the world’s most livable city.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/10/the-social-housing-secret-how-vienna-became-the-worlds-most-livable-city?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Since Economania’s enjoying a brief spell of popularity here, it might be appropriate to pop in this observation on social security and just why it’s called that which we featured in most issues;
“Why is Economania so upset by the cuts in social security? Quite apart from the inhumanity of it, it’s damaging to the economy. If you’re in the UK, that’s your economy, so you should be upset too. When, back in the 1880s, then German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck proposed what his critics called state socialism and we’ve come to know as social security, we understand he did so because, by giving small but regular amounts of money to the unemployed, the sick and disabled, and those too old and infirm to work, those people were turned into economic assets. Necessity dictated they spend the money they were given, increasing the velocity of money in the economy and creating an environment which encouraged corporate investment. Normal taxation, then as now, took care of any potential problems with inflation. This created what’s now known as a virtuous circle, one we should, if we had any education and sense, be emulating. Instead, we’re cutting benefits. This has the effect of reducing the velocity and amount of money in circulation, damaging the economy. Remember, the claimant spends it with the butcher who spends it with the baker who spends it with the candlestick maker. Social security is security for the whole neighbourhood as, when govt’s doing its job, despite the onset of hard times they know there’ll still be money circulating in the economy overall. Further, money that isn’t spent or ‘loaned’ into the economy isn’t ever actually created, so it’s wildly misleading to misrepresent austerity as savings, just as it is to represent savings as something the national economy needs when what we use for money, government IOUs we remind you, can be & are created to order.”
The witless and hopeless Sunak, then, appears to be proudly boasting he’s going to damage the UK’s economy. An unusual pre-election strategy, you might think, and you’d be right except… what a shame this will be applauded by so many instead of being universally derided for the economically illiterate nonsense it really is.
Thank you
“It’s been a tough time for the country” (Rishi Sunak on Kuenssberg).
It’s been a tough time, made far, far worse by Sunak and the Conservative Government; and it isn’t improved by Sunak telling us with a straight face what a good job he is doing; so good, we must all stick to his plan.
I realised, listening to Sunak on Kuenssberg, that he either doesn’t wish to understand, or take responsibility for his job as a politician, and Prime Minister. He wants all of us to think he is a civil servant, or a technical consultant; and the politics is nothing to do with him, even when he makes an obvious, highly political decision.
This was brought out early, over the Rwanda policy issue on Kuenssberg. Asked about the leaked documents showing that as Chancellor he was sceptical of the policy, he became evasive and presented a special defence, that in the Treasury his role was to ask difficult questions, to ensure ‘value for money’; in other words, a technocrat, primarily a civil servant or advisor role. No Sunak, you are first a politician. That is what you are there for; as Chancellor to execute policy in the form at least cost to the Treasury: unless, as a politician you think the policy is a dud, blowing public money for nothing.
The problem here for Sunak, is that with such an obviously political policy, what is the critical measure of ‘value for money’ in the Rwanda policy? How do you do that? What is the comparator? What made the difference? What counts? What threshold turns the decision against the viability of the policy? How do you sell objection that to your political constituency? He doesn’t go there. He can’t; it would find him out.
Politicians cannot evade the politics of their role, however hard they try, and Sunak tries harder than anyone to evade the politics. He appears ideologically committed to the idea that he is a non-political, technocratic politician who has successfully de-politicised politics. He doesn’t realise he is an ideologue, or merely thinks he can persuade the public he isn’t. He seems to believe he can magic away the politics in politics, and reduce it all to a formula; typically a money formula. Ironically, if he actually looked at his performance, both politically and through a technical money valuation; he has failed, comprehensively in both projects.
Then we turn to the Post Office scandal. The Sunak technocrat takes over, dripping concern but saying nothing of substance. They have paid £150m, they are working on it. There are three compensation schemes. He even mentioned that it goes back to the 1990’s. Yes, and your Government, Sunak still hasn’t come close to fixing it. The government owns 100% of the Post Office. The buck stops with you, Rishi Sunak; with you. And you failed to accept it.
Sunak did not do what a real leader would do, faced with such an unforgivable public outrage to the body politic; take full, immediate personal responsibility; promise to remove The Post Office from all involvement; establish a Government controlled system to expedite justice and compensation for all those affected; promise the government would actively and discreetly seek out all the victims and not wait for the most traumatised to come forward; and finally fix a dreadful government scandal that has been allowed to fester with only one outcome, other than the suffering of the victims; the Government has currently saved itself a lot of money, and left the management of the schemes and the victims in the hands of the culprits; the Post Office. Is this what Sunak means by ‘value for money’?
It was left to Lee Castleton (one of the victims portrayed on Mr Bates v. The Post Office) on Kuensbberg, to point out the terrible toll still being inflicted on the victims after 20 plus years of fighting what he called a “war”, to receive justice; and that the government has still left the victims in the hands of the perpetrators, to dispense the compensation. We all need to put the victims first.
Shame on you Rishi Sunak.
I thought Baroness Casey’s response to Sunak was excellent.
Off topic.
Watching Mr Bates vs the Post Office, one thing I did not know was that the Post Office had its own police service. Rather than investigating to see whether a suspect had committed a crime, they just assumed the suspect had, and never investigated whether it was their employer at fault.
I think Richard is not a fan of Freeports, but am I right that they would operate in the same way? They would in effect have their own police force, which in a dispute between an individual and the Freeport would always side with their employer, the Freeport?
Freeports have no reason for such things at present
Who knows where they might go. But this is not an issue at this moment.
I note that the Post Office is wholly owned by the government. What better excuse could there be now, than to sell it off to the private sector, and remove this stain of injustice from the government.
Tyhe saale pice wouold, howver, reflect the cost of settling these claims – so either way the government will pay.
Another aspect of the GPO Horizon scandal which never gets a mention in the UK MSM is the role of Fujitsu. It sold a faulty accounting system, which it clearly hadn’t adequately stress-tested, to the GPO, which in turn failed to stress-test it before implementation. This implies gross incompetence of Project Management functions of both Fujitsu and the GPO. As has been established, the baseless accusations of fraud and malfeasance against GPO staff wrecked the lives of the ‘accused’ and their families, so, not only has a huge miscarriage of justice occurred, but both Fujitsu and the GPO have perpetrated fraud and malfeasance on a significant scale. So far no legal action against Fujitsu has been mentioned, but it has to be hoped that the Police enquiry into the matter will make it inevitable.
If/when Fujitsu is charged, my guess is that the case would probably have to be brought by the UK Gov’t given that the GPO conspired with Fujitsu to avoid the truth. It’s hard to see how Fujitsu could hope to win the court case, so a settlement would be more likely. Either way the cost to Fujitsu is bound to be substantial, so there is the possibility that the UK Gov might recover some of the money paid to the victims. Whatever happens re Fujitsu, the GPO and its wrong-doing staff should not escape justice for this egregious matter.
Good points, Ken.
Not against all GPO staff, Ken. Just against those owning sub post offices, not those working in crown post offices. They used the same software but any discrepancies were written off, probably because the main post offices were well unionised and there would have been a big outcry a lot earlier.
On the local radio this morning Kevan Jones, a labour MP, was saying he has been trying to get answers for over ten years as one of his constituents owned a sub post office in Newcastle and lost it and his income, etc., so went to his MP. Unfortunately the man died last month before getting any answers or recompense.
In response to Jenw’s post today at 12:15pm: I hadn’t been aware that Crown PO staff were treated differently from the sub-PO staff. If discrepancies thrown up by Horizon in Crown POs were indeed universally written off and prosecutions of/disciplinary actions against staff didn’t occur, it just makes GPO’s behaviour towards sub-PO staff even more reprehensible. It will be interesting to see how the GPO attempts to play this in the Inquiry: did they know that Horizon was unreliable and threw up false negatives (and presumably also false positives) hence the lack of action in Crown POs? If so, how do they square that with their ruthless pursuit of sub-postmasters who were experiencing the self-same inexplicable irregularities? Any competent barrister would take them apart in court.
It seems to me that senior GPO management were clearly carrying out a vindictive and deliberate campaign against sub-postmasters and, possibly because they suspected that some of these sub-postmasters might be “on the take”, they went after all of them when irregularities were discovered. Senior GPO staff and the people further down the command structure who carried out the actual persecutions must now be open to prosecution. It also leaves Fujitsu even more exposed, not just for selling a faulty and clearly untested system, but Fujitsu must have been aware of the GPO’s actions against sub-postmasters and so colluded in these false accusations.
I think this an incredibly important dimension to this issue.
Reply to Ken Mathieson
Its worse than that- they did run a pilot, but when there were problems instead of accepting its was their system they still persecuted the postmistresses/men !
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/07/post-office-suspected-of-more-wrongful-prosecutions-of-operators-over-horizon?utm_term=659b815bdffdd76171d56180021e0088&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUK&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUK_email
“The Post Office is suspected of wrongly prosecuting dozens more operators who took part in a pilot scheme of the faulty Horizon system, the Guardian has been told.”
In response to AliB’s post at 8:41pm on 8th Jan: Thanks for the info that there was a substantial pilot to test Horizon. I hadn’t seen the Guardian article until now, but it’s now clear that the GPO and Fujitsu must have been aware of the inherent faults in Horizon prior to going live and yet simply disregarded the facts. To go live with a known faulty system takes the issue far beyond lousy Project Management and corporate incompetence into the realms of deliberate conspiracy. The case against both GPO and Fujitsu just got massively stronger.
As a P.S. to my own post at 5:30pm on 8th Jan another issue arises: The fact that the accounting system produced erroneous results for individual sub-POs and Crown POs means that the consolidated data for the whole of the GPO was inaccurate and nobody now is in a position to establish accurate data. This also went on for years and raises more questions: what political decisions (such as funding decisions) were made using erroneous data? How did the warped data affect UK statistics and policies at governmental level?
Cutting welfare forces people to rely on the private sector more: except that they can’t afford it.
The neoliberal ideology is that ALL government intervention is bad, as the private sector will pick up the slack, and competition will make it more efficient. It is ALL nonsense.
That a significant proportion of the public do not, can not, are not able to see this is of concern.
I think it’s only a matter of time until we get a modern day version of the Poor Law and workhouses. It would probably have a lot of support in today’s Tory Party.
I had to laugh at the “help for taxpayers”. Are they the same taxpayers that the Tories robbed from in their previous budgets? The same taxpayers who will still be paying more despite this obvious election bribe? The same taxpayers that will suffer from the reduced, not more efficient, public services? And how is privatisation going, in water, gas, electricity, transport, etc. That’s been a great Tory success, hasn’t it? And all those new houses the Tories have been promising to build, election after election, but never do. There’s no housing crisis, is there? And how do you get a more efficient health service with an 8 million waiting list? Or an eduction system with buildings falling down which they refuse to fund to replace. And all the fraud, and Tory grifters. And so on, and on, and on….
But hold on a minute, they can find a 2p bribe off national insurance, because they believe in reducing taxes (especially in an election year), but they won’t pay Junior doctors. The Tory Party, putting the Great back into Great Britain—I don’t think so.
I’ve been thinking about that return to the poor law and the workhouse ever since Cameron started talking about big society aka minimum/zero public sector intervention. And it also provides opportunities, for those who can afford, it to excercise philanthropy – viz J R-M and his enthusiasm for food banks – a particular low point but also a key indicator of an existing line of thought.
They’d have to build new workhouses, wouldn’t they?
The workhouse in this village has been turned into very nice flats which cost more than the bungalow I live in!
The workhouses at the back of the house I lived in in York now make very well sought after student accommodation for York St John University.
Ely Workhouse is now flats
The workhouses of 2024 would more likely be fields full of portakabins
“Walter Presents”
In the US “Walter Presents” Is available via PBS Passport and BritBox.
And Sunak was on tv this morning lying about numbers again, claiming that the number of people signed off work sick has tripled. Quite apart from the obvious fact that being signed off sick isn’t a welfare claim, he appears not to have noticed that we had (and, to some extent are still in) a pandemic over the last half-decade. Any numbers about people being off work due to sickness are inevitably going to be unreliable for a long time to come.
But his compliant press will froth about skivers and scroungers again without any interest in pointing out his word games or the accuracy or otherwise of those word games.
As I can tell you rught now, Covid remains seriously debilitating. The government actively denies this.
The Tories have no interest in admitting that their slow suffocation of the NHS has lead to increased long term and chronic illnesses, of course, and our media has 0 interest in that either because they’re stenographers for austerity.
Also they all want to pretend that the Pandemic is over.
Since material analysis is disfavoured, they’ll resort to the same old narratives about welfare, of course…
That was what I was thinking, as I read what Sunak said this morning.
I also was thinking that not settling the junior doctors’ pay dispute, in England, would be compounding the problem; there’s a massive backlog of operations (largely due to the pandemic) that hasn’t been tackled; how many of those delayed procedures have compromised peoples’ ability to work?
Who then is they Benefits Scrounger?
I suggest its landlords and employers.
I can expand if you want.
And then we have the latest update on Michael Marmot’s work on health inequalities.
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2024/jan/08/england-deaths-inequality-poverty-austerity-covid-study-public-health?utm_term=659b815bdffdd76171d56180021e0088&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUK&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUK_email
The Tories have been unequivocally fatal for the country, and it has been a conscious choice. It does not take much thought to work out that this also has dreadful economic consequences as well, despite Sunak’s despicable comments.
Perhaps Sunak needs reminding who it was sold off the Remploy factories.
Rather than workhouses or ghettorising (?) social housing as the U.K. has done for decades (herding problem families together into large estates), we could build on the Vienna model:
‘ The roughly 220,000 municipal flats and around 200,000 subsidised dwellings of Vienna make up the cornerstone of social housing in the city. Roughly 50 percent of Vienna’s population live in one of these two housing types. Social housing strives for a more equitable society that involves both the middle class and lower-income groups.’
‘Uniform and transparent allocation criteria allow for a good social mix in social housing estates and make sure that the middle class, too, has access to this large and still growing pool of dwellings. At the same time, affordable rents boost purchasing power. The large share of social housing contributes towards more affordable prices for a major proportion of the entire housing market.’
What are the chances?
I wish….