Tag Archives: cuts

by | Wednesday 9 March 2011 · 11:08 pm

As Nasty As They Wanna Be

Well, they managed it.  Cameron’s Conservatives – no doubt already wearying of the compassionate bit – have their ‘stealing the milk‘ moment.

Since Maggie snatched the white stuff from millions of schoolchildren way back when, condemning them to easily snapped arms and legs when they fell onto the rock-hard concrete in their playgrounds (youth of today, don’t know yer born!) her disciples have been on the lookout for their own really nasty moment.

Closing libraries, flogging forests and cutting benefits will only give you so much of a kick, after all, these are the kinds of things that most of us expect the Conservatives to do.  Where’s the buzz when you do something everyone has been anticipating since the election last May?  Nowhere, that’s where.  So you have to raise your game a little.

This should do it.  Removing benefits from cancer survivors after one year.  Simply put, if you are not on the mend after 12 months, the government thinks we can probably do without you and your weak-assed immune system malingering around.  Although perhaps, following this story, they are betting that the number of people reaching that milestone is going to be dramatically reduced anyway.  I wonder what the cancer survival rates were in the 1930s?  And isn’t it just as well TB isn’t on the rise, eh?  Oh.

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by | Friday 25 February 2011 · 9:42 pm

Get angry

I know, it’s the weekend.  You want to be relaxing, chilling, letting it all go.

But you can’t.

You have to read this.  And then try to find an answer to the question: why is nobody from Wall Street going to jail?

Perhaps someone with superior economics knowledge to mine can explain why pensioners, little kids, the unemployed and disabled people are paying for this crisis with life-supporting services while the architects of the mayhem are pocketing our money,  dancing off with it to the Caymans and setting us up for more of the same the next time they break the casino wheel?

If you weren’t already angry, now is the time to feel the ire.

—

Films found via @hangbitch

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by | Friday 11 February 2011 · 12:49 am

The state of us

It is becoming increasingly clear that the things we need to have happen in order for a fairer, more just society to emerge, from economic reforms to climate change measures, as well as improvements in education, health and social care are further away than ever.  The systems of government hamper more than they help, either by way of elected officials for reasons of ideology or because they are in the thrall of lobbyists or the Sir Humphreys of this world:

Yes, yes, yes, I do see that there is a real dilemma here. In that, while it has been government policy to regard policy as a responsibility of Ministers and administration as a responsibility of Officials, the questions of administrative policy can cause confusion between the policy of administration and the administration of policy, especially when responsibility for the administration of the policy of administration conflicts, or overlaps with, responsibility for the policy of the administration of policy

Quite.

Regaining control will be more of a headache than marking an ‘X’ every five years and expecting that to do.  It requires engagement and understanding and other words which have become sullied by overuse in the kind of overeager council leaflet often used to line kitty litter trays.  But if the last nine months have shown anything, it is that the kind of people who seek elected office can in no way be trusted with the responsibility of it.

On everything from tax kickbacks for the rich to flogging off the forests, our ‘leaders’ are dangerously out of step with what rational thoughts and future generations require.  To justify it they point to a woeful majority of voters who agree with some of their policies, although not many of these were explicitly laid out in the manifesto.  They can ignore scientists, economists and the advice of history as they run amok and seek to dismantle in months what it took our forefathers generations to establish.  The only response we have is to change them for another, similar shower in different coloured rosettes with slightly nuanced policy differences in half a decade.

It’s almost enough to make you turn to drink…

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by | Thursday 2 December 2010 · 10:02 pm

Indirect action

Updates to ten minutes hate have been few and far between lately, for which I am sorry, although in my defence, the situation is as yet nowhere near as bad as it was this time last year when I was studying for the qualification that would see me end up in Japan 12 months later.

That said, with the sheer number of heartening stories around at present, this is no time for a blogger with something to say about our ways of living and how screwed up they have become to be sitting on her hands, especially since recent weeks have seen successes for a couple of causes very close to my heart.

First, the fan’s campaign at Liverpool Football Club saw hated owners Hicks and Gillett finally shown the door following a series of financial mis-steps which made even the bankers despair.  Despite initial wariness, new owners NESV seem to be making all the right noises, with their recognition of the supporters’ role as the true custodians of the Club.  Union Spirit of Shankly remains committed to fan ownership and participation in the running of the club as a future aim.  All to the good.

Then, the sleeping class consciousness of the UK seems to be awakening at last.  Not quite as fond of a riot as our French, Greek or Italian cousins, a slash-and-burn approach to public sector cuts, alongside the retention of the Downing Street stylists and photographers, seems to be pushing even the most placid of British people into taking out poor, defenceless police vans.  Long may it continue.  It is good and healthy for a government to have next to no idea when its population will kick off.

And yet, and yet…

It is with a sometimes heavy heart that I read the blog updates, emails and news stories telling me what you have all been getting up to during this new Winter of Discontent.  Those that follow me on Twitter may have been noticing a higher than usual number of retweets as I am recycling other people’s news.  It is not just the physical distance you notice at a time like this, the time difference also sees my part of the world steaming ahead into the new day while you are all asleep and dreaming of new anti-kettling avoidance tactics.

So, sure, I have clicked on some links, sent my support along the line and written some words.  But is it enough?

To see what I want to see for the UK and around the world – real political power returned to the people, the space to live a free life, access to education and services for all, an end for those who seek to control and trammel life – is that going to be brought about by a few mouse clicks?  Perhaps not, which is why I am resolving to spend the rest of this year finding more ways to get more involved, if there is a way to do so from 6,000 miles away.

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by | Monday 25 October 2010 · 12:03 am

The art of surprise

The only surprise is that people seem to be surprised.

This is probably the third time in living memory, after all, that the Conservative Party has effectively told the poorer parts of the UK to fuck off and die, preferably quietly and out of sight, yet still some of you seem to be holding on to a belief that it wasn’t meant to be this way and that so-called ‘compassionate Conservatism’ can be brought to bear instead.

Unfortunately not.  Because you may think that you are nicely middle class, with your Ocado deliveries and eco-friendly holidays in Cornwall sans 4×4, but to our Tory overlords, you are as much of a dirt-eating peasant as the be-tracksuited hordes.  The battle-lines are being drawn and if your sole source of income is selling your labour, to them that makes you working class, regardless of whether you swing a hammer or pound a keyboard all day.

And anyone, yes Guardian lead writers I am looking at you, who thinks that the “Labour” Party has an opposing world view to offer clearly can’t have been paying very close attention for the last thirteen years.

Yet the problem doesn’t lie with the political parties, since they are just doing what they have to do in order to suck up to the people who really matter in a democracy: the people with the cash.  The problem is ours, for once again falling for the sweet nothings that they pour into our ears in order to get the necessary (or thereabouts) number of ‘X’s in the box.  When the Tories spoke of tax cuts for hard-working families, you might have thought they meant you, but actually they were referring to their poorer old school pals struggling by on just a few million.

If you re-read or read ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’, you will see that there is a reason why ordinary people like us got together to fight for our rights against the party of the bosses: not to create some idle dinner party chit-chat, but as an essential means of survival. So here we go again, as if reading from the script of the Thirties and the Eighties, they attack the weakest and we fight back, having also read that script and knowing that together we cannot be defeated.

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by | Wednesday 2 June 2010 · 12:50 pm

They still don’t get it

The first scalp of the new government was claimed by the media over the weekend and, surprising all those who were betting on Vince Cable being the first to walk, it was rising star David Laws who got the push.

Despite having enjoyed incredible success in his first career in the City, to the extent of having reached the dizzying heights of millionaire status by 28 – at an age where most of us are fretting over bar bills and student loan repayments – Mr Laws decided it would be a good idea to have the taxpayer pick up his rent tab to the tune of £40,000.  A slight problem being that he wasn’t actually paying rent to a commercial landlord, but instead handed over the readies to his partner.

Commentary has been overwhelmingly gushing about the loss of his talents to the nation, and it is almost possible to believe from reading  Matthew Parris and Tony Grew amongst others, that there is a special torture about all this for a gay man – as if having one’s sex life plastered all over the papers and therefore having your mum know all about it would be a walk in the park for most heterosexuals.  I disagree, because tempting though it is for some to paint it that way, David Laws’ sexuality is not the issue here.

The point being spectacularly missed is that no one really gives a rats ass who Laws is or isn’t sleeping with, with or without the permission of his sweet old mother.  He could have said to the expenses board, ‘do you know, I’ve got simply oodles of money of my own, I really don’t need to claim any additional support, I’ll leave that bit of the form blank, ok?’ and he would have lived to fight another day.  Without the expenses claim, who could really had any appetite for outing him?  The story would have rightly died a death as the majority of people wouldn’t have cared a fig  BECAUSE THIS ISN’T THE 1950s and WE AREN’T IN ALABAMA.

However, attempts to equate his ‘heartbreak’ with those of people who really did suffer, during the dark days of the past when falling in love with the wrong person would put you outside the law, are fatuous and insulting.  Britain is not a country where a Cabinet Member could be forced to resign for being gay but it damn well is and should remain one where a millionaire with his hand in the till does the perp walk.  How many ‘benefit cheats’ get given the opportunity to quietly pay back the money with no further questions asked?  Did the millions of families who were overpaid tax credits get dealt with in such a caring manner?

If Mr Laws was the non-millionaire salesman for any UK company and he had over-claimed on his expenses to the tune of forty grand, the police and HMRC would now be involved.  He would be on the wrong end of a dismissal for gross misconduct with the likelihood that status brings of never working again.  He wouldn’t have sympathetic noises being made from all corners of the British media about what a lovely guy he is, what a crying shame the situation is and how he could be back in the Cabinet by Christmas.

The truth is, as we must all be facing up to now, that things that the ordinary people of the UK like to hold close to their hearts such as old age pensions, hospitals and pre-school nurseries are rapidly becoming luxuries we can’t afford because we bet the farm on supporting our ‘ailing’ (ha!) financial services sector.  We need a political class that understands that the coming cuts must protect the weakest while doing the necessary rebalancing of the books.  It is a delicate line to tread and we must have the utmost faith in those doing the tightrope walk.

Do I want to see talented people hounded out of politics?  No.  Do I want anyone who kisses a boy or girl they like living in fear of it ending up splashed across the papers?  No, of course not.  But do I want our MPs to wake up to the fact that, just as if they worked in any other organisation in the country, their expenses claims must be legitimate, proportionate and fully justifiable?

It would be a nice place to start.

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