TRUE NEWS

Susan Boyle's First Audition 'I Dreamed a Dream' | Britain's Got Talent

2020-07-23T01:57:00.001-07:00

Bercow on Corbyn

2019-11-26T07:50:00.001-08:00

TORYFACT CHECKER

2019-11-25T05:39:00.001-08:00

Tories branding their website a fact checker merely compounds the growing assertion they, the selfservatives wouldn't know the truth if they fell into it

the truth abou tory nhs plans outed it's not what they promised

2019-07-21T10:56:00.000-07:00

Private firms given £9.2bn of NHS budget despite Hancock promise

Record 2018 total comes after health secretary pledged no privatisation on his watch

Denis Campbell Health policy editor

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Matt Hancock had promised to roll back private outsourcing of patient care. Photograph: Reuters

The amount of the NHS budget going to private healthcare firms has reached unprecedented levels, despite the health secretary’s pledge to roll back outsourcing of patient care.

The Department of Health and Social Care handed a record total of £9.2bn last year to private providers such as Virgin Care and the Priory mental health group, its annual report shows.

That is an increase of 14% from the £8.1bn that went to profit-driven healthcare companies in 2014-15 and £410m more than the £8.77bn they received in 2017-18.

It comes after Matt Hancock pledged to MPs in January that “there is no privatisation of the NHS on my watch”.

The House of Commons Library has verified the upward trend and sums involved from analysis it undertook at Labour’s request of figures about the DHSC’s purchase of healthcare from organisations outside the NHS contained in the last five years of the ministry’s accounts.

“Tory privatisation of our NHS continues to gather pace with public expenditure on independent providers now at a record high”, said Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health and social care secretary.

“These accounts blow apart Matt Hancock’s claims to parliament there would be no privatisation on his watch.”

The relentless rise in NHS privatisation is occurring even though NHS England has declared its desire to drastically reduce what it says it views as the damaging tendering of services as part of its drive to create much more integrated care, ideally delivered by NHS providers. It has produced detailed proposals – backed by Theresa May – that it hopes will form the basis of legislation to drive private firms out of the provision of NHS care as far as possible.

The DHSC’s accounts also disclose that its total spending on all non-NHS bodies has risen even more sharply than that on private firms, from £10.32bn in 2014-15 to £13.75bn last year – an increase of £3.43bn or 33% over four years. The department stressed that, while the overall amount was going up, the rise in its budget meant that the proportion of that going to private firms had remained constant at 7.3%.

That bigger £13.75bn total includes money handed to both the voluntary and not-for-profit sector, which has risen threefold over that time from £530m to £1.62bn, and also to local councils, which has gone from £1.77bn to £2.9bn. The latter is thought to cover spending on social care, community mental health services and continuing healthcare, in which the NHS pays for medical care for people with a disability, injury or illness who are living at home or in a care home.

Campaigners against NHS privatisation strongly criticised the record £9.2bn spend on private care.

“The extra £415m spent on private providers in the last year is a significant 5% increase and makes a nonsense of Matt Hancock’s pledge of ‘no privatisation on my watch’”, said Dr John Lister, a health policy academic and secretary of the campaign group Keep Our NHS Public.

Private firms receive a far bigger slice of the share of the budget for certain forms of care than the independent sector’s 7.3% average, he pointed out. “Last year, roughly 30% of all mental health spending was in the private sector and 44% of spending on child and adolescent mental health goes to private providers. Private sector domination is most complete in the provision of controversial ‘locked ward rehabilitation’, in which a massive 97% of a £304m market in 2015 was held by private companies”, he said.

“The full picture is much more alarming with the added prospect of a Johnson government putting the NHS ‘on the table’ in any future US trade negotiations.”

Paul Evans, the director of the NHS Support Federation, which monitors privatisation of healthcare, said: “In response to criticism, failures and waste, the health secretary promised no further privatisation. But since then the outsourcing of NHS services has rolled on and more services have become reliant on the private sector to deliver their core services.” For example, a third of all hip replacements on the NHS are now done privately.

Despite the pledge to roll back privatisation, for-profit firms have consistently won contracts to deliver community health, mental health and diagnostics services in the last five years, Evans added.

“Despite the NHS long-term plan calling for an end to the experiment with competition and outsourcing, the government has done nothing to change the rules that force the NHS to advertise its contracts to the private sector. The accounts of the Priory Group, the largest mental health provider, show that 52% of its income of almost £800m comes from the NHS,” he said.

A spokesperson for the DHSC said: “We are committed to a world-class NHS free at the point of use. The proportion of NHS funding going to independent sectors has remained largely stable since 2014-15. The overall funding in the NHS has increased since 2014-15, so while the proportion of spend has not changed, the amount spent has risen in both public and independent sectors.

“We want patients to receive the best quality of care possible and the vast majority is provided by the NHS, supported by independent organisations when a local doctor decides it is in their patients’ best interests.”

Topics

Chomsky BRILLIANTLY Dissects Trump, Democrats

2019-06-02T08:17:00.001-07:00

SO MUCH OWNED BY SO FEW

2019-04-20T06:36:00.000-07:00

Mail4

Half of England owned by less than 1 per cent of population, research finds

Palko Karasz

The Independent20 April 2019

View photos

Half of England owned by less than 1 per cent of population, research finds

Land ownership in England, a source of enormous wealth, is often shielded by a culture of secrecy harking back to the Middle Ages.

But a researcher says that after years of digging, he has an answer.

Less than one percent of the population — including aristocrats, royals and wealthy investors — owns about half the land, according to Who Owns England, a book that is to be published in May.

And many of them inherited the property as members of families that have held it for generations — even centuries.

In the book, author Guy Shrubsole, an environmental activist and writer, identifies many of the owners and compiles data gathered by peppering public bodies with freedom of information requests and combing through the 25 million title records in the government’s Land Registry.

He reached a striking conclusion — that in a country of around 56 million people, half the country belongs to just 25,000 landowners, some of them corporations.

The findings go to the heart of a potent political issue — economic inequality — that is roiling nations and feeding populist movements on multiple continents.

The Labour Party seized on Shrubsole’s findings, first published this week in The Guardian.

“Don’t let anyone tell you our country doesn’t need radical change,” Jeremy Corbyn wrote on Twitter.

Comparison to other developed countries is difficult, because they do not have national land registries.

Records can only be viewed one at a time through hundreds of local registry officers, they are not fully open to the public and ownership can be obscured through shell corporations.

But Britain has greater wealth inequality than peers like Germany, France, the Low Countries and Scandinavia — though less than the United States.

And the UK has not seen the kinds of wars and revolutions that over centuries wiped away sprawling estates owned by nobility in most of Europe.

Who owns the “green and pleasant land” of the English countryside can be a well-kept secret, in part because a large segment of it does not even figure in public records.

Government efforts to make a public accounting of land ownership date to the 19th century, but according to the Land Registry, about 15 percent of the country’s area, most of it rural, is still unrecorded.

“Much of the land owned by the Crown, the aristocracy, and the Church has not been registered, because it has never been sold, which is one of the main triggers for compulsory registration,” the registry says on its website.

Mr Shrubsole began documenting England’s estates after the Brexit referendum in 2016.

“If Brexit really meant ‘taking back control of our country’ then I’d like at least to know who owns it,” he wrote in an op-ed in The Guardian a year after the vote.

Housing prices in England are among the highest in Europe and have soared during the last generation.

Mr Shrubsole’s book documents ownership, maps unregistered land and argues that the concentration of ownership helps keep available land scarce and expensive.

Houses, stores, office buildings, schools and farms are often held under long-term leases, paying a steady stream of rents — directly or through intermediate leaseholders — to major landowners.

He said that by publishing his research, he wanted to start a conversation.

“It should prompt a proper debate about the need for land reform in England,” Mr Shrubsole said. The issue of land relates to the country’s housing crisis, to economic inequality, to climate change and the intensive use of farmland, he added.

The ancient idea that wealth meant land does not always hold true in modern times.

But, land accounted for half the UK’s net worth in 2016, according to data from the Office of National Statistics — double that of Germany and higher than in countries like France, Canada and Japan.

Britain’s net worth more than tripled between 1995 and 2017, driven primarily by the value of land, which rose much faster than other kinds of assets.

“The main economic challenge and the social justice issue is that for the last 30, 40 years, landowners have enjoyed enormous unearned windfall gains at a faster rate than wages or the economy have grown,” said Josh Ryan-Collins, head of research at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London.

“There is nothing that the landowners have done to earn those incomes,” he said.

He said that even agricultural land has become the object of speculative demand, pushing prices and gains for landowners up further.

But even if land reform has not been on the agenda of the Conservative government, it has had to address the housing crisis and agricultural subsidies.

Recently, Conservatives have focused their criticism on the European Union’s farming and forestry subsidy system, which has put aristocrats, the royal family and wealthy investors among the top recipients of taxpayer-funded aid.

The Queen’s estate in Sandringham, north of London, received £695,000 in aid in 2017, according to a public database of payments.

An agriculture bill in Parliament promises to change farm subsidies after Brexit.

Instead of direct payments based on the total amount of land farmed, payments in the new system would be based on factors such as contributions to the environment, animal welfare and public access to the property.

“As we know, many of the beneficiaries are not even UK or EU citizens, but foreign citizens who happen to have invested in agricultural land,” said environment secretary Michael Gove, during a 2018 debate on the bill in Parliament.

“It is a simple matter of social justice and economic efficiency that we need to change that system.”

Most of the European Union is also grappling with concentrated ownership of farmland, though not to the same degree.

A 2017 report by European Parliament lawmakers said that in 2010, three percent of farms controlled half the agricultural land within the bloc.

“Agricultural land is not an ordinary traded good, as soil is non-renewable and access to it is a human right,” the report said.

“As with the concentration of financial wealth, too high a concentration of agricultural land splits society, destabilises rural areas, threatens food safety and thus jeopardises the environmental and social objectives of Europe.”

Scotland, where land ownership is in the hands of even fewer people and organisations, has enacted a set of land reform laws.

In 2004, it abolished feudal rules that were still in effect, helping many longtime tenants to become outright owners of their land.

Other legislation introduced the right to roam, giving the public access to vast privately held lands.

“The example of successful land reform programmes in other countries, like Scotland, should give us hope,” Mr Shrubsole wrote in his book.

“Get land reform right, and we can go a long way towards ending the housing crisis, restoring nature and making our society more equal.”

the achievements of 21st century conservatism

2018-12-16T02:41:00.002-08:00

1.RECORD NUMBERS OF ROUGH SLEEPERS
RECORD NUMBERS OF AND USERS OF FOODBANKS AMONG WORKING PEOPLE114000 DEATHS OF BENEFIT CLAIMANTS
FIRST UK GOVT. AND PM EVER TO BE FOUND IN CONTEMPT OF PARLIAMENT
SURELY A RESIGNIG ISSUE REAL TERMS CUTS IN BENEFITS FOR
UTTER FAILUREOF EU NEGOTIATIONS AND AN ERRONEOUS SELFISHLY EXPEDIENT DECISION TO HAVE A REFERENDUM IN THE FIRST PLACE
CATASTROPHIC OUTSOURCEING TO THE LIKES OFCAPITA FAILING TO RECRUIT ENOUGH SOLDIERSAND THE LIKES OF SERCO AND GROUPN4 FAILINGH ON PRISONS AND PROBATIONTHE DEALS ARE CORRUPT CABINET MINISTERSHAVE SHARES IN ALL THE OUTSOURCEING COMPANIES
DISABLED PEOPLE DUE TO FREEZE

we've become very nasty little island (my title not the authors)

2018-03-24T06:37:00.003-07:00

ere’s a brutish jingoism afoot in Britain

matthew parris

Brexiteers jumping on the passports bandwagon are playing to a gallery of ill-informed and authoritarian nativists

‘Would we let our coins be made in New York?” Jacob Rees-Mogg was asking himself this question as though it were a rhetorical one — as though the obvious answer were “no”.

The answer is plainly “yes”. The Royal Mint makes coins for many foreign countries. De La Rue, which manufactures in Mr Rees-Mogg’s Somerset constituency, makes notes for countries all around the world, and used to make notes for the eurozone. The last thing they or the Royal Mint want is for the Rees-Moggs of Botswana or Qatar to start asking the equivalent question.

Surprising, then, that Rees-Mogg took that stance? Surprising that this fairweather cheerleader for free trade would castigate the award of a contract to manufacture Britain’s new “blue” passports to by far the best bidder, a Franco-Dutch company, Gemalto? No. Utterly unsurprising. And the reason has nothing to do with economic theory or business practice.

I know the reason. Once a Tory MP myself, I know what kind of a Tory Mr Rees-Mogg is, and what kind of opinion in Britain and within his party it serves him to court. Priti Patel does too. She has piled in with some nonsense about “national security”. Even the once-fastidious veteran Eurosceptic, Sir William Cash, joined the bandwagon. These people know which side their electoral bread is buttered on. One popular newspaper, quick to take up Rees-Mogg’s cause, informed its readers (with photographs) that the stepfather of the half-brother of the father of one of the directors of Gemalto had links to Hitler.

Mr Rees-Mogg would never slur people like that. But he knows — oh boy, does he know — where his support is coming from.

Behind the populist politician lies the shadow. The shadow is that part of our country and, yes, that part of ourselves, that responds to this kind of jingoism. Look at those posters from the Vote Leave campaign, velvety smooth with news (technically true) that “Turkey is joining the EU”.

And behind them, the shadow: Leave.EU, with their cruel picture of a queue of non-white immigrants and the message “BREAKING POINT”. Don’t kid yourself there’s a “respectable” movement for Brexit, and a “disreputable” one. No, there is the politician spotlit in the foreground and, behind, the shadow. And it’s all about the shadow.

Look at Boris Johnson, our foreign secretary, strutting around with his rhetoric about “global Britain”, then cutting the funding of our embassies across Africa and Asia. The shadow enjoys Mr Johnson’s burbling about global Britain, but the shadow is not interested in ambassadors and attachés and the boring business of diplomacy.

So I could waste your time discussing the logic, or its lack, behind the stance of those Brexiteers now caterwauling about De La Rue’s having been outbid; or I could waste your time reminding you that a protectionist president, Donald Trump, has found favour principally among Brexiteers who call themselves free-market. But why bother? Because once you understand the shadow, there’s no need to scrutinise the chap at the podium. As Enoch Powell once disgracefully put it in front of an audience of cheering Tory rightwingers when I asked him if he ever felt embarrassed by the racism of some of his supporters: “In politics you take support from wherever it comes.”

I thought of Mr Powell’s chilling reply at an event in London this week. The word “idiot” tends to create a little shockwave at a public meeting. And so it did as I answered questions in a discussion at the Rose and Crown pub in Southwark. The liberal Conservative research institute, Bright Blue, had organised a debate on “Brexit and the Arts” and I was on the panel alongside representatives of a group who call themselves “Artists for Brexit”. The Leave storm-troops had turned up, the room was packed, and it made for a lively debate.

Philistinism, I argued, is an enemy of art. There’s a reason why that bus Boris Johnson so admires promised £350 million a week for the NHS rather than for, say, the Royal Opera House, or our arts councils, or universities. The shadow is not interested in arts councils and universities. It never was, but the shadow believes it is gaining the upper hand in our politics.

So I called the Artists for Brexit “useful idiots”. The expression was supposedly coined by Lenin to describe (particularly) liberals who helped the revolution without being themselves communists, or even properly aware of the ultimate communist goals. But the term as I used it has wider application than just to a group of nice and sincere artists with some idealistic thoughts about sovereignty but no idea of how little time the populist attitudes they root for will have for them and their values.

Something of an “I know what I like and no stuck-up expert is going to tell me otherwise” spirit is abroad in our country today, something brutish, something authoritarian, something mean. This is the shadow. It is not a set of policies, though it waves policies about. It is a set of attitudes.

Attitudes are key. We too often make the mistake of analysing politics in terms of policies, when we should look first at attitudes: to life, to liberty, to mankind, to country, to other countries, to knowledge itself. Noticing these is desperately important for an understanding of why those who seek our votes strike the poses they do.

In domestic affairs the shadow is showing itself as nativism: a nativism of which the Rees-Moggs of our politics are lip-smackingly aware. In foreign affairs it shows itself as jingoism: a jingoism in which it is all right for a defence secretary to tell Russia to go away and shut up. In economics it shows itself as an ideologically incoherent mish-mash of hatred for bankers, distrust of profit and irritable dislike of regulation. I expect this populist ascendancy to have consequences as it advances, right across our national life.

The shadow has its servants in the Conservative Party, and I know them well of old. Some of them — Mr Rees-Mogg, Mr Johnson, for instance — know very well what they are doing. Others (I could name some younger, newer MPs still idealistic about economic liberalism and “global Britain”) are useful idiots: blissfully unaware of how the mood of the Brexit project is set to change from one of outreach to the world to one of angry defensiveness when dreams don’t come true.

After the dream, the shadow. A Britain is coming when Artists for Brexit, Free-Traders for Brexit, Environmentalists for Brexit, Globalists for Brexit will be shoved aside like nuisances. They will have served their purpose. Useful idiots.

NO NEED FOR THE MIDDLECLASS TO FEAR SOCIALISM

2018-02-26T13:14:00.000-08:00

The vast majority stand to gain from a corbyn administration it's not the1970s IT'S A VERY DIFFERENT WORLD
one for which the old order is even less appropriate than it always was the middlethmiddleclass shop at socialist establishments every day when they go to waitrose w part of the john lewis as mutual gropup owned and run by it's empoyees spreading this model to other industies may not suit the few who benefit fromthe stgocks and shares from which the hedgefunds benefit mutuals benefit customers first the motivation to do a good job is not greed it's thed knowlegethat they are bringing success to their own business socialist certainly demonic certainly not the likes of terrys of york worked and thrived through a vision of philanthropy andmutualism cadburys wfor instace built homes for it's work force, weitness th village of bournville pofrt sunlight nothe simila example of company and workforce being one not aone dimensional mon olithdesigned solely to benefita istant un interested share holder or group thereof the stock market has held the nsation to ransom for too long benefitting pension schemes yesbut th opensions chemes of mutuals when run properly are perfectly capabl of benefitting the members in the same way as external mutual societies for life assuranceand building savingssocialist principles at workbenefittingemployees and the businesses they own no threat at all to the super rich but benefitting the manythere is no reason whymany of the principes of mutual business should not be applied tgothe public transport nertwork, the water industry the Energy sector and elsewehere none of which penalyses the swealthy all of swhich benefits the many rebalances the economy to benefit so many more people thn the currntgSOCIALISM NO NEED TO FEAR IT
BEST NOT IT'S COMING SOON

the zero hours contracts social care debacle

2018-02-12T02:22:00.003-08:00

zero hours contracts are in my experience extremely difficult for care agencies to manage that said the carers I have are excellent but there is little continuity as the office staff seem unable to manage the level of business they have taken on my care company is a franchise privately purchased and 'run' locally both carers and clients are treated by inefficient office staff as boxes to be ticked in the case of my firm the individual responsible for arranging rotas has the job on the basis of her experience in a doctors surgery which has no similarity to the care co ordinator roll in the community this leads to late calls frustrated carers who have zero travel time allotted 'sickness is commonplace n as is often the case when management is poor the flakier staff will throw a sickie knowing they'll get away with it because the office is always so desperate to tick the boxes,as customers we have to pay a very significant portion of our meagre benefit income on our care needs.however comments or complaints are met with well find another company then!so zero customer care whatsoever
having had care for over 20 years i have found 90+% of carers are great but i have only had one company(no longer in the domiciliary care business that had an excellent office which knew how to run a rota for both carers and clients the care quality commission is about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike
they announce visits in advance meaning companies can get all their ducks in as row in time for a visit no surprise then that it is impossible to find a care company with a poor rating, though believe me there are plenty which deserve that until the CQC make unannounced visits to care providers both domiciliary and residential quality of care for sick , disabled and elderly people will be at best patchy demand is enormous government attention to

challenging the Grenfell narrative

2018-02-11T14:35:00.000-08:00

allenging the Narrative with Grenfell MediaWatch

Toyin and Angie from Grenfell MediaWatch discuss the misleading stories and PR campaigns surrounding the Grenfell Tower disaster, and what justice would look like to them

The in-depth interviews with knowledgeable people are a gold mine to those of us with questing minds who are determined to pursue the facts, wherever they may lead. - Jennifer Humiston
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transcript
Toyin: When I think about misinformation that's going around this Grenfell campaign, and I say the Grenfell campaign, youve got to figure there's two sides to it. There's the family survivor side of it, but there's also the state side, the institutions, the governments, the corporations that are involved in profiteering and actually causing this massacre. There's been much misinformation. One of the biggest campaigns that was launched very early in was the buying of property by the Corporation of London for survivors, and so the public had this idea that, "Oh my God, these survivors have landed on their feet. They've got these penthouse apartments and they've got nothing to complain about." So, it kind of diminished the whole idea about the loss of life, loss of property because it looked like actually being burned in your home was actually leading to a windfall.
But of course, even if you take out the morality of asking that stupid argument, what we have is a situation where out of a hundred, over a hundred families only two or three of them have actually being permanently housed. So again, massive misinformation campaign and led from the top because Theresa May came out saying that people are going to be rehoused in I think it was three weeks. She's backtracked now so that there are gonna be temporary, no, offered housing. So again, more misinformation.
The one that's the most troubling at this particular moment in time, though, is the number count. And when I say the number count, of people who are victims, people who have died. Initially you had 8, then 15, then 20 and I think it was at Lily Allen, it was one of these musicians who made this comment about how they're micromanaging the grief of survivors, micromanaging the nation. So, there's been a lot of, I mean, those are just a couple of examples, but there's been a lot of drip, drip, misinformation deliberately trying to kind of kick this into a long curve, recognizing it's not working, so trying different techniques.
The resignations was a fantastic piece of PR. What happened what that the government recognized that the public was begging for blood, they wanted something. So, what they did was that they made calls and they made sure that the heads of these councils and that these DMOs stood down and even if they didn't want to stand down. That made great drama, that was better than a soap opera. But what's happened was that most of those people are still in full pay. Most of them, I mean Nick Paget-Brown is still actually a councilor. So, nothing's happened to his status, nothing's happened. He set up a consultancy firm. I'm not a person that likes to point fingers at individuals. I look at them as a collective body, look at the individuals on a prosecution level. But again, this is mismanagement, this is misinformation, misdirection. It's very frustrating. I can't talk on the misplacement, on the replacements without having more information. I don't have confidence in the replacements, I just don't by looking at their performance. But, I have to give them a chance to see how it works out.
The only way to solve this problem in my eye would be to actually get survivors or get people who have been appointed by survivors in those positions. They can work with others who have got the necessary skills to do all the administrative work, but the core leadership and the direction should come from the survivors and families and those who are affected understand it. Because, let's face it, we've seen nothing but incompetence up to now.
Angie: We have to ask ourselves, what kind of people are we where we are no longer caring about people who live in these communities which are very strong and resilient communities. We have to ask ourselves why we've allowed all the governments, the successive governments from Thatcher to allow us to get into this situation today. There's been all these sort of talks, these sort of hackney terms of lessons learned but will lessons really be learned? Will we be able to look inside ourselves, look inside our consciences and say, "We will genuinely put things in place so that there's better social housing for people who cannot afford to buy all the lots of massive in housing developments that nobody can afford to live in today." Or, are we going to just continue to allow ourselves to be distracted by all other really silly, inconsequential, petty things that we are being distracted by today.
So, we've got to ask ourselves how we can make, really genuinely make sure, that a situation like Grenfell does not happen. Grenfell was 30 years in the making and it's very much tied to the crisis in housing that we're experiencing today. We have this situation where the amount of social housing that's available has shrunk enormously. In addition to that, we've got a very little attention being paid to these buildings, okay? And when they do pay attention to these buildings they're fixing them, as in the case of Grenfell, to make them look more attractive in an area that is a social elite.
I think people are prejudice to a certain degree towards people who are on low incomes, who may not have a real stake, or choose to have a stake in the political process. So, those people, their voices aren't heard and they tend to be ignored. I do think it's cynicism. I think it is breathtaking cynicism on the part of Kensington and Chelsea, and the way that they tried to cover their tracks in terms of the threats that were made to the people who were making these, raising these alarm bells about what was going on in Grenfell. Rather than actually listen to the concerns of the people who lived in that building and in the surrounding buildings, rather than genuinely listen to their concerns, they chose to threaten them instead. To silence them. That is really, in my view, quite shocking.
Toyin: It would be wrong for me to say that survivors are being shut out of process. This government has recognized that the world is looking at them. And because of that, what they've done is try to operate in a level of pseudo-transparency. So, the survivors, families, even local residents are invited into meetings, invited into consultations. But then obviously, what they say is just chucked in the bin straight afterwards. But there is this kind of veneer of inclusiveness. I think we've got to understand that that's actually part of the PR campaign and it's not actually leading to any positive change, or else the families would have been housed by now.
Angie: Nobody could anticipate that this would come to this, but at the very least there would be some structures in place to be able to assist people in this type of situation. In my view, it's just another reminder that perhaps you can't rely on the government. You can't rely on local government or national government to help you in true times of crisis.
Toyin: When a mark's about to meet his role in this and whether it's covering up the situation, if it's pushing the idea after it's been sold, I have to pull back a little bit. Even though we are called Grenfell Media Watch, we're not a propaganda arm. I mean, perhaps we are, but we're down to for the community, for survivors but not in a sense of trying to mislead. One of the things we've got to be honest about is that the media is actually divided on this now. Initially, I would argue that it was all sensationalism, it was just kind of trying to put bums on seats, sell more newspapers, get more coverage, just people getting bigger audience share.
But right now something's happened and we sense that as a team. There are some organizations, independent organizations like yourself, that are coming out and actually are really sincere about getting justice. This isn't just about getting more views or getting more readers or listeners. There was some mainstream organization, Jon Snow's discussion at the annual conference, was another one. Channel 4, who is sometimes a little bit naughty in their reporting, they have been quite fearless on this. Even the BBC. The BBC, unfortunately, are owning the reputation as the state's broadcaster. I hate having to say that but they're being pretty poor on their approach and making documentaries of such. I think that they're crossing a very thin line of actually trying to whitewash this.
Some mainstream media is actually painting a story on the side government because they worry, maybe, because they're not gonna get their funding, or for commercial or political interests. While other media, I think we've talked about this, that it's pricking the conscience of some journalists, some editors. But we are in the minority, let's be clear about that. The Daily Mails of this world, the LBCs of this world, the Fox's, the Sky's, they are still leading the charge and they have the largest audiences, so hence, they are the most influential in actually turning the public against supporting Grenfell families.
When I'm asked how do I feel about the inquiry now that we've had the opening, quite strangely I'm actually quite pleased because I think that what Moore-Bick has done has actually been up front. He's made it very clear that he's not looking for any criminal prosecutions. He's made it very clear that he's gonna ask the suspects for the evidence. He's made it clear that his agenda isn't justice in the sense of how we would see justice, it's pretty much about collaborative, I think he used the word cooperative pursuit for truth amongst those who are responsible for one of the worse atrocities on mainland England.
It's quite refreshing, actually, that we know going in that it's not gonna deliver the results, so it lowers the expectations of most the people. So, when it's published and we see, and we hear those famous lines: "Lessons will be learned and lessons have to be learned," and we have a recommendation list which is a hundred strong, which means absolutely nothing, we knew this going in. I just worry about the waste of time and I worry about those people who don't have access to, maybe, I want to say competent political major, but more grass roots political major who may actually be sucked in by all the fancy words, the media coverage and actually might think that inquiry is actually an important instrument. For me, the inquiry actually obstructs the police investigation, and I don't actually have much confidence in the police investigation, but I have more so in that than I have in the inquiry. The fact that the inquiry actually defers key decisions being made, that's a problem for me.
I think there is a deliberate decision by government to make sure that the inquiry takes precedence over everything, just simply because they don't want themselves to be implicated in some of the decisions that are made because they are implicated in some of the housing bills that are made, that the deregulation that took place. But also, I think they also recognize that when you have an inquiry of this nature, of this size, it serves as a kind of a pseudo-truthful reconciliation exercise. What happens is that you drip, drip people, feed people sound bytes, their emotions dissipate over time. Then after a year or two, you release an interim report here or there, at least 90% of Moore-Bicks team are ex-government officials that have either worked in the treasury or worked in one department as civil servants. There's no one, no one whatsoever from the community working at that level, and this claim about impartiality is complete and utter nonsense.
All the universities across the U.K. should be disbanded because obviously, the knowledge that they're producing is worthless because people know each other. How can we have impartiality in modern research? So, come on, let's be real.
Angie: The questions you should be asking of politicians and powerful people. I want to say, how can you sleep in your beds at night. I mean, if these individuals are truly, truly appalled and shocked by what has happened what do they really plan to do to alleviate the problems, the challenges, that the victims and the families of Grenfell currently face. They're saying a lot of things. For example, they talked about rehousing people in three weeks or finding them accommodation. That hasn't materialized. So, what steps do they plan to take as a consequence of this tragedy from a real, a human perspective? Not from a political perspective. I think that, in times like this, I think yes, it is very political, but sometimes you've got to be human. What would you do if these were people you knew? If you knew these people, if you knew these people and what they're currently facing and experiencing, how are you genuinely going to help them, to help to rebuild their lives?
To me, justice would look like the people responsible for the Grenfell tragedy facing criminal prosecution and going to prison. That's what justice would look like to me. Justice would look like a recognition, a true recognitions of the failings of the local government and the national government in terms of making these decisions not to have an adequate health and safety procedures in place, and to be honest about the true number of people who have lost their lives because I think there's a problem there when you don't say how many people, the true number, because now all kinds of assumptions will come out of that number. This is a true tragedy. People have died in the most horrific way possible and I think we need to keep the people in the people's center, should be centered in this. It's their story, it's their experience, and we should be sympathetic and empathetic of that experience.
Toyin: The people who are interested in Grenfell Media Watch, they can just go to our Facebook page. Log on, share. I think the biggest thing that we need is people. If you like what you see on there, share it. If you hear news or even if you disagree, say something. I think the biggest thing we need is debate comments. We need the topic kept alive and that comes from us exploring ideas, critiquing ourselves, we're not always right. What happens, if something that's online, what happens when we make a mistake? Is everyone gonna turn on us, or are they gonna recognize that we're humans and we're doing it with the right intentions. Get involved in this debate. Get involved in this topic. Don't let it become a Hillsborough, don't let it become something that's like a folk legend that everyone says oh... No, let's deal with it right this time.

NHS privatisation explained

2018-01-31T11:13:00.001-08:00

UK GETS MORE NAZI BY THE DAY(EVIL PROSPERS WHEN GOOD FOLK DO SOD ALL)

2018-01-31T02:39:00.003-08:00

Last year, a United Nations commissioner blasted the UK government over the cuts, saying they are causing a “human catastrophe” for disabled people in the UK.

And in November, a landmark study accused the Conservatives of “economic murder” after it found a link between cuts to public services introduced seven years ago and hundreds of thousands of deaths. According to joint research between Oxford, Cambridge and University College London, there have been 120,000 deaths linked to austerity policies since the Conservatives gained power – initially in coalition with the Liberal Democrats – in 2010.

Protest group Black Triangle Anti-Defamation Campaign in Defence of Disability Rights wrote on its Facebook page: “If we leave the system unchanged until 2020 then 200,000 people will have died because of Tory policies.

“When are we allowed to mention the Nazis? How do we make them stop if we don’t protest?”

A Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) spokesperson told the Canary: “This case was charged by the police who have now sent us an electronic file. We will review the case in advance of the first appearance at Norwich Magistrates’ Court.”

A Norfolk Constabulary spokesperson added: “A 63-year-old from Norwich was sent a postal requisition on 10/1/2018 for ‘Using threatening/abusive/insulting words/behavior to cause harassment/alarm/distress.’

“The requisition relates to an incident which happened on 29 July 2017, during Norwich City Pride, where a man has been verbally abusive towards a speaker at the event.”

Hardy will make his first appearance at Norwich Magistrates’ Court on February 9.

Source: https://www.rt.com/uk/417357-disabled-tory-nazi-speech/

uk media see blue Peter badge as more important than major international peace prize very questionable values of uk mainstream media

2017-12-16T05:27:00.003-08:00

The BBC tried to defend a media “blackout” on Jeremy Corbyn winning an international peace prize. It didn’t go well.

On 8 December, the Labour leader received the Séan MacBride Peace Prize from the International Peace Bureau (IPB). Founded in 1891, the IPB is one of the world’s oldest peace organisations. But not a single mainstream media outlet seemed to report on Corbyn winning the award, sparking allegations of institutional bias.

Enter the BBC

On BBC Daily Politics, host Jo Coburn was grilling [0.05] Corbyn ally Chris Williamson MP:

Why do you think there is a conspiracy amongst UK mainstream media to suppress positive stories about Jeremy Corbyn?

The Shadow Minister for Fire and Emergency Services responded [0.11]:

Well, you tell me. But it’s pretty clear that there was a media blackout… Let’s remember, when… there was a photograph of Jeremy wearing a tracksuit, it made front-page news. When Theresa May put a star on the top of a Christmas tree, there was wall-to-wall coverage, as there was of William and Kate being awarded a Blue Peter badge. And here we have the leader of the opposition being… awarded a prestigious peace award being completely ignored.

There was indeed wall-to-wall media coverage when royals William and Kate recently won a Blue Peter badge. And as Williamson says, there was apparently nothing on the leader of the UK opposition winning an international peace award.

While Corbyn received the award on 8 December, the IPB announced it in September. With this in mind, Coburn later suggested [2.12] that the media didn’t cover the award because Labour didn’t speak up enough:

None of the official Labour media accounts or even Jeremy Corbyn himself actually publicised it. Do you think that is the problem?

The MP for Derby North pointed out [2.20] that the story went viral on social media:

No. I think the problem is very clearly with the mainstream media who simply ignored it, even when it went viral on social media.

Williamson also noted that even foreign news outlets reported on Corbyn receiving the award.

Enter Channel 4

Meanwhile, Channel 4 FactCheck argues that there was no coverage of Corbyn winning because the media doesn’t generally report on the award. But Dave Webb, vice-chair of the IPB board, points out that the peoplewho win it are rarely mainstream figures. They do tend to be distinguished anti-war and anti-nuclear activists, who the media has a history of marginalising. They do not tend to be among the most high-profile people in Britain.

Still, no mainstream media outlet covered it. So Williamson called out the “blackout” on the BBC. Apparently, we have a media that values a royal couple winning a Blue Peter badge far more than the elected leader of the opposition winning an international peace prize. The topsy turvy coverage would be funny if it didn’t have such far-reaching implications.

Watch the exchange here:

Get Involved!

– Read and support independent news outlets that hold the powerful to account. Here are some we recommend. Please add more that you like in the comments:

The Canary, The Intercept, Media Diversified, Novara Media, Corporate Watch, Common Space, Media Lens, Bella Caledonia, Vox Political, Evolve Politics, Real Media, Reel News, STRIKE! magazine, The Bristol Cable, The Meteor, Salford Star, The Ferret.

Mark Steel talks about the demonisation of the poor

2017-12-15T05:02:00.001-08:00

2017-11-28T06:14:00.000-08:00

the Conservatives and general apathy are killing our deocracy such as it is

2017-09-13T04:16:00.001-07:00

Normal partners in government, the hard-right DUP , are also well-represented on high-profile committees despite only having 10 MPs.

Its members will sit on the transport, international trade, Northern Ireland and defence committees among others.

What are Henry VIII powers?

Since Theresa May launched her Brexit Repeal Bill, there's been furious debate about 'Henry VIII powers'.

So what are they?

It's all to do with the difference between what us geeks call primary and secondary legislation.

Primary laws are Acts of Parliament and go through a long, line-by-line process of approval by MPs and the House of Lords.

But with secondary laws it's 'take it or leave it'. There's no chance to edit them, and in some cases (when they go through 'the negative procedure') they actually become law before MPs get to challenge them. The last time one of these was blocked was 1979.

These big differences mean primary laws are much more powerful. Quite rightly, some secondary laws can be crushed by the courts - primary laws can't.

Yet a Henry VIII power lets the PM make a secondary law that edits a primary law.

The process gets its name from the six-wived Tudor King who 'ruled by proclamation' thanks to the 1539 Statute of Proclamations.

The government claims it needs the power, which ends on 29 March 2021, to correct 'deficiencies' in EU-inspired law after Brexit.

It can't be used to change taxes or criminal offences, make laws retrospectively or change the Human Rights Act.

But even Tory MPs and a House of Lords committee have voiced fears about the powers. Labour's Keir Starmer said: "So much for taking back control."

2017-08-28T14:22:00.000-07:00

The DUP—racist, homophobic, anti-abortion bigots with a history of violence
by Simon Basketter
Former DUP leader Peter Robinson with a gun
Former DUP leader Peter Robinson with a gun

The Tories may hang onto office with the support of the bigots of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in Northern Ireland.

But who are the DUP?

Arch reactionary Ian Paisley set up the DUP in 1971 because the Official Ulster Unionist Party didn’t hate Catholics enough for him. It now has ten of Northern Ireland’s 18 MPs.

The Tories made a great deal of noise about Jeremy Corbyn’s supposed links to terrorists during the election campaign. Now they want to go into coalition with people with a rotten history of backing terrorism.

The terrorist group Ulster Resistance was founded by a collection of people who went on to be prominent DUP politicians.

Former First Minister Peter Robinson, who was DUP leader and Northern Ireland’s first minister until last year, was an active member of Ulster Resistance.

Paisley long toyed with Loyalist death squads to protect the “Union” with Britain.

In 1981 Paisley launched “Third Force”. He led a group of 500 men up a hillside in County Antrim at night, where they were photographed holding firearms certificates above their heads. They were showing that they could easily have been holding weapons.

Racist

When Enoch Powell was expelled from the Tory party for being too racist even for them, he moved to Northern Ireland.

There, his campaign manager was Jeffrey Donaldson. Donaldson said, “I worked alongside two of the greatest names in Unionism in the 20th century.

“Between 1982 and 1984 I worked as Enoch Powell’s constituency agent, successfully spearheading Mr. Powell’s election campaigns of 1983 and 1986.”

Donaldson is the longest serving of the DUP’s MPs.

The Northern Ireland Assembly collapsed in January after DUP leader and first minister Arlene Foster became embroiled in a scandal over a green energy initiative.

The scam cost hundreds of millions of pounds. Businesses could earn more money the more fuel they burned.

But the DUP isn’t just corrupt – it is nasty. The party has described climate change as a con.

It is against gay marriage and LGBT+ rights in general. It is the only political party in parliament that is determinedly anti-choice and pro-forced pregnancy.

Any support from the DUP will further slow attempts to get the 1967 Abortion Act to apply in Northern Ireland.

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What do Celebrities think of Jeremy Corbyn?

2017-07-20T09:35:00.001-07:00

Scared about your human rights after Brexit? You should be

2017-07-15T00:04:00.001-07:00

Scared about your human rights after Brexit? You should be: There was a time, not so long ago, that David Davis was a great fan of the EU charter of fundamental rights. He liked it so much that he used it to take up a legal challenge against the snooper’s charter (brainchild of the-then home secretary Theresa May), which ended up in Luxembourg.

AAV: Labour must stand up for parliamentary sovereignty...

2017-07-09T05:06:00.001-07:00

AAV: Labour must stand up for parliamentary sovereignty...: Next week Theresa May and her three Brexiteers will begin the process of trying to pass an astounding assault on democracy through parl...

remembering thevwise words of ALI

2017-06-10T02:21:00.000-07:00

For a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world. True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.

We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda. They have alienated many from learning about Islam. True Muslims know or should know that it goes against our religion to try and force Islam on anybody.

Speaking as someone who has never been accused of political correctness, I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people's views on what Islam really is.

Ali

Captain SKA - Liar Liar GE2017

2017-06-09T05:51:00.001-07:00

BBC knew American corporate ‘racketeers’ were influencing UK welfare reforms

2017-05-30T13:58:00.000-07:00

BBC News reports exposing how a US firm were influencing UK welfare reforms were inexplicably removed from their archives.

SOCIETY

On May 30, 2017

Campaigners protest against Government welfare changes. Photo credit: via photopin (license)

803SHARES

In November 2007, BBC News exposed the influence of Unum Insurance with the welfare reforms, and now the UK is perilously close to adopting private healthcare insurance to fund welfare as the Welfare State is demolished.

Almost ten years after the BBC News report chronically ill and disabled people, whose financial survival is dependent upon State funded finance, have paid a very high price for the influence of this American corporate giant with successive UK governments since 1992.

“A multinational insurance company accused of racketeering and cheating thousands of Americans out of welfare benefits, is giving advice to the British government on welfare reform. A BBC investigation has found that executives from Unum have held meetings with senior Whitehall officials to discuss changes to the benefit system”…

The above quote was the introduction by BBC News anchor Hew Edwards for an exclusive BBC News report, transmitted on 6th November, 2007.

Fortunately, some very wise researchers and activists downloaded the transcript of the report as, within a few short days, both the transcript and the BBC News video were inexplicably removed from the BBC News archives.

Quite whose authority was used to rapidly remove this BBC News investigation remains a mystery. Presumably, the New Labour government didn’t want reference to Unum Insurance and their many court cases to be permanently available, or the $multi-million fines they paid out in America for refusing to honour their Income Protection Insurance policies.

In reality, Unum (Provident) Insurance worked with the British government from 1992, and were appointed as official government advisers for “welfare claims management” from 1994, to guide the then Conservative John Major government to eventually replace the Welfare State with healthcare insurance policies.

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May 30, 2017

SNP general election manifesto: key points and analysis

May 30, 2017

This official guidance was despite the fact that Unum (Provident) Insurance were regularly exposed for their resistance to funding insurance payments to as many genuine claimants as possible, and there was a parliamentary debate in 1999 which exposed the preventable harm the American corporate giant created for claimants.

During the BBC News report, presenter Mark Daly advised that: “US-based multi-national insurance giant, Unum, has shown a keen interest in UK welfare reform since the mid-1990s…. Unum are the world’s largest disability insurers, with more than 25 million customers in the US alone.

“But in 2002, a series of whistle blowers came forward with damning allegations. Linda Nee was a claims handler for UnumProvident, as it was called then”.

She exposed her experiences when working for Unum, and Linda is quoted as saying: “I was often placed in a position by a consultant, who was my supervisor, of denying a claim. Of telling me to deny a claim, or having a manager tell me to remove documentation from a claim so that an attorney would not have the opportunity to see it”.

Daly advised “It was alleged that UnumProvident cheats tens of thousands of disabled Americans out of their rightful insurance claims”, and he interviewed several claimants who had all challenged the Unum decision in court and had been awarded substantial damages.

Unsurprisingly, less than 12 months following the BBC broadcast, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) stopped the out-of-work disability funding known as Incapacity Benefit and replaced it with the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) in October 2008.

Introduced by New Labour, to access the ESA sick and disabled people who were unfit to work were required to endure the new Work Capability Assessment (WCA), as conducted by unaccountable corporate giants, using a ‘functional assessment’ that disregards diagnosis and prognosis and is a replica of the totally discredited moderated biopsychosocial (BPS) model used by Unum Insurance to resist funding insurance claims.

Almost ten years since the ESA was introduced, the DWP commissioned research used to justify the use of the BPS model for the WCA has been totally discredited by academic excellence, Coroners have identified a link between the WCA and suicides, the DWP have refused to publish updated ESA mortality totals and Professor Sir Mansel Aylward, the academic architect of the discredited and dangerous BPS assessment model used for the WCA admitted as long ago as 2012 that it was “unsatisfactory”.

Yet, the DWP continue to use the WCA to resist funding welfare benefit to as many as possible, regardless of the human and often fatal consequences.

Mo Stewart is an independent researcher and retired healthcare professional. Her book “Cash Not Care: the planned demolition of the UK welfare state” was published in 2016 by New Generation Publishing.

The missing link? EU supply chains after Brexit – BBC Newsnight

2017-05-18T10:09:00.001-07:00