Recent Articles
‘I don’t like the way Labour have spun that story’
One evening last week I got a call from someone within Labour’s communications team. I was told that Ed Miliband was going to make a speech the following morning about cultural integration and diversity in the UK.
I was then explained the context, why Miliband thinks it’s important to make the speech, and what he means by various policies. The main points were discussed over the phone and later sent to me by email. The story was embargoed for 6am the next morning so I could at least write about it in advance.
I say all this only to give you some context. When people complain about how Labour spins a story in the tabloids, and say they don’t have a problem with the contents of a speech but only with the way it is spun to the media – they are being naive.
After I got the speech in advance, I could pick out whatever segment I wanted and spin it how I wanted. But I’m just a blogger. Most of the people they’re dealing with are seasoned senior editors at national tabloids and broadsheets.
People on the left must think those editors are so gullible they’ll take whatever spin the Labour media operation offers them. It makes no sense. Those editors will always spin stories on immigration to say see, we were right all along!.
Most of the tabloid media support the Conservative party. They dislike Ed Miliband. They have always hated the party’s stance on immigration. It beggars belief to think they’ll take tips from Labour communications team on how to write the story, or spin it any other way than to bash immigrants.
Yes, there is spin and it is fairly easy to spot. Give them a populist hook: twice, Ed Miliband has made Jeremy Clarkson the target of his ire in speeches so the media would pick that up. It can sometimes work.
But it is bit silly to assume that every time the tabloid press report on a speech by Labour leaders on issues such as immigration or housing, the party spin operation is to blame. It just doesn’t work like that. You’re giving the Labour’s communication operations far too much credit.
A grassroots campaign to drop the ‘schizophrenic’ label
by Claudia Tomlison
The term ‘schizophrenia’ is frequently misused in conversation to indicate a divided opinion, or erroneously taken to mean ‘split personality’. E.g.: ‘I feel schizophrenic on that particular point’.
Frequently also, in the public mind it is associated with violence, threat and danger when the evidence is to the contrary.
The experts agree that this diagnosis means different things for different people and that it is poorly understood.
An independent inquiry into the use of schizophrenia as a diagnostic label is under way to investigate its validity, usefulness, and impact on the lives of those to whom it is applied.
The inquiry published its preliminary findings last week, with responses from approximately 500 people, using a range of research methods. Most respondents report that the diagnosis in itself has damaged their lives, impacting relationships, friendships and employment opportunities.
Males of African and Caribbean descent are over-represented in those diagnosed with this condition with little will on the part of the current government to investigate this. The last Labour Governments acknowledged and addressed this issue, which has now been abandoned by the Coalition Government.
The Schizophrenia Commission, led by Professor Sir Robin Murray, made headlines earlier this year when it described the poor care and experience faced by people given this diagnosis.
The independent inquiry into the schizophrenia label goes further and challenges the use of this damaging label when the scientific basis is so poorly understood and controversial.
It seeks to work in partnership with people who experience very individual real life problems, to co-produce meaningful ways of describing their problems, whilst retaining their humanity. The final report from the inquiry will be published early in 2013.
Launch of WOW Petition to end ‘War on Welfare’
by Rick B
Today an ever expanding group of sick and disabled people, carers and families are launching an e-petition that demands an end to the War On Welfare.
We urge you to sign The WOW Petition and convince anyone you can to also sign it. It is spear-headed by the activist, actress and comedian Francesca Martinez.
We need to get 100,000 signatures so we can bring our concerns before the Backbench Business Committee where we can push for concrete action.
Whatever you may wish to believe based on the media you consume, the reality for those affected is a persistently abusive system that is destroying lives. I will say it clearer- people are dying because of government policy. Ask a GP, ask a social worker, ask a legal aid solicitor, ask a benefit rights advisor, the reality on the ground is horrific and worsening abuse and greater loss of life.
So keeping in mind the words of the great Steven Biko: “the most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”.
We have all fought our own battles to survive and now we ask all people of good conscience to join us in turning back this tide of cruel policy. Please sign the #WOWpetition and support all the disabled activist movements.
There are lives in the balance. Get involved.
THE WOW PETITION
We call for a Cumulative Impact Assessment of Welfare Reform, and a New Deal for sick & disabled people based on their needs, abilities and ambitions
We call for:
A Cumulative Impact Assessment of all cuts and changes affecting sick & disabled people, their families and carers, and a free vote on repeal of the Welfare Reform Act.
An immediate end to the Work Capability Assessment, as voted for by the British Medical Association.
Consultation between the Depts of Health & Education to improve support into work for sick & disabled people, and an end to forced work under threat of sanctions for people on disability benefits.
An Independent, Committee-Based Inquiry into Welfare Reform, covering but not limited to:
(1) Care home admission rises, daycare centres, access to education for people with learning difficulties, universal mental health treatments, Remploy closures;
(2) DWP media links, the ATOS contract, IT implementation of Universal Credit;
(3) Human rights abuses against disabled people, excess claimant deaths & the disregard of medical evidence in decision making by ATOS, DWP & the Tribunal Service.
SIGN HERE
Banks ‘too big to fail’ – when will we do something about them?
by Tony Greenham
There has been a lot of talk about banking reform this year. But with all the draft legislation, parliamentary commissions and public outcry one issue has been all but ignored: the too big to fail problem.
Too big to fail is one area of banking reform that most people can get a handle on.
If a bank has a balance sheet that’s bigger than an entire country’s GDP we cannot afford for it to go under. The consequences would be dire –not just for the customers of the bank, but for the economy as a whole.
That’s why British taxpayers own most of RBS and a big chunk of Lloyds: we could not afford for them to go bust.
What not everyone knows is that banks reap big rewards from being too big to fail, even when they aren’t being bailed out. Today nef is publishing figures that find the UK’s biggest four banks benefited from £34 billion of too big to fail subsidies last year–cheaper borrowing rates because markets believe taxpayers will bail them out in the event of them failing. That’s:
· £10 billion for Barclays
· £10.9 billion for RBS
· £4.5 billion for HSBC
· £8.9 billion for Lloyds
Not only does this offer big banks an unfair advantage over their competitors, it also encourages increased risk taking, and incentivises banks to get even bigger, concentrating power within the banking sector, creating even larger TBTF institutions that enjoy even higher subsidies, and further weaken competition.
None of the Government’s policies proposed to reform banks will eliminate the too big to fail problem, including ring-fencing retail banking from investment banking.
This week, the parliamentary commission is due to publish a report that puts a full break-up of the big banks’ retail and investment arms back on the table.
This is a step in the right direction, but it’s time we talked about more radical solutions, such as capping the size of banks.
—
Tony is Head of Finance and Business at the New Economics Foundation
Crackdown on tax dodging a top public priority
YouGov recently carried out a different kind of opinion poll. Instead of asking people whether they supported or opposed particular policies, they offered people the choice of different policies, and asked them to choose which they thought mattered more. Here are some of the results:
The policy which ‘won’ every time it was tested against any other was ‘Cracking down on companies that use accounting ploys to avoid paying profits tax in Britain’.
People backed a crackdown on tax dodging companies over a crackdown on welfare cheats by 52% to 39%.
Reducing unemployment was seen as more important than reducing inflation by 60% to 24%.
Improving the NHS was seen as more important than improving schools by 50% to 37%.
People were equally split on whether they favoured tougher sentences for criminals or tougher regulations on banks.
People preferred ending all immigration to leaving the European Union, but preferred cutting overseas aid to ending immigration.
Cutting overseas aid was seen as a higher priority than improving the NHS by 56% to 36%, but cracking down on tax dodging companies was seen as more important than cutting overseas aid by 57% to 34%.
2012: how the NHS became privatised and the impact that has had
by Alex Nunns
2012 will go down as a cataclysmic date in the history of the English health service. It was the year when the virus of privatisation finally gained control of the cell nucleus of the NHS and began its destruction in earnest.
If you listen to the politicians you wouldn’t know it. According to David Cameron, “we will not be selling off the NHS.” If you believe Nick Clegg, “there will be no privatisation.” They have been able to get away with this deception because the transformation they unleashed is messy. It is happening everywhere, but not uniformly. It is hidden by its very scale and spread.
But take a step back and the patterns are unmistakable. The controversial Health and Social Care Act passed in March 2012 ended the English National Health Service in all but name by abolishing the 60-year duty on the government to provide comprehensive healthcare for all. In its place is not so much a new structure as a process with its own dynamic-that of a snowball tumbling down a hillside.
All across the country treatments that patients used to receive are no longer available to them. Hip and knee replacements, tonsillectomies and cataract operations are among the procedures being restricted, forcing patients to wait longer, suffer in pain, or go private. Surgeries, wards, units and community services have been closed and clinical staff shed as the NHS desperately seeks to make “savings” of £20 billion.
Private GP surgeries near you
With perfect symmetry, the private sector expects to win £20 billion of business from the NHS, according to the corporate finance adviser Catalyst. Huge slices of the health service are being awarded to the highest bidder. With remarkable speed a few gluttonous companies: Virgin Care, Serco, Care UK – have secured dominant positions in the market, gobbling up services from Cornwall to Cumbria. The defenders of the reforms talk about competition driving improvements, but already it is consolidation, not competition, that we are seeing.
There may be a GP surgery near you that is now run by Virgin. Until March 2012 Virgin Care did not exist, although it had been operating under another name since 2010. It now runs at least 358 GP practices. Behind the friendly PR façade of the bearded entrepreneur, patients see a different face, cold and sinister. Take the Kings Heath Practice in Northampton. Since Virgin took it over from the NHS, patients have had to wait up to three weeks for an appointment instead of three days, three GPs have been reduced to one, and three nurses cut to one part-time nurse. And while the company boasts about the surgery’s opening hours, often there are no clinicians present, just an open empty building. Locals complain that Virgin has “brought Third World medical standards to Kings Heath.”
Consolidation is also happening in out-of-hours GP cover. In November Care UK took over out-of-hours services for up to fifteen million people across England by simply buying Harmoni, a company that started as a GP co-operative. The only competition patients see is between their health needs and the profit margin. People in Cornwall know which wins out: an official report in July found the Serco-run out-of-hours service in the county was under-staffed and falsified data to meet targets.
The biggest privatisations are taking place in community health services. The government’s “any qualified provider” policy means whole services must be subject to competition, leading to the demise of NHS-run options. Local NHS bodies have already been instructed to outsource 39 types of service. Dubbed the “39 steps to privatisation,” this covers everything from autism care to wheelchair provision. Even publicly provided vasectomies are for the chop.
The ‘logic’ of privatisation
The logic of privatisation favours a few big winners over the co-ops, charities and social enterprises that act as window dressing for the policy. A prime example came on April Fools’ Day, 2012, when Virgin Care took over a £500 million contract to deliver community services in parts of Surrey. The joke was on Central Surrey Health, a “social enterprise” formed by former NHS staff that was praised by David Cameron and hailed as a model for the Big Society. Central Surrey Health scored the most points in the bidding process, but the contract was given to Virgin because of its financial backing.
Not even hospitals offer shelter from the destructive gale blowing through the NHS. Many Hospital Trusts are being pushed to the financial brink by the disastrous legacy of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), under which new hospital building was financed by a deal that is akin to paying by credit card, leaving Trusts with crippling debts to the banks.
This has led to some Trusts literally going bankrupt, such as the South London Healthcare Trust which serves over a million people in three hospitals. Its PFI debts, like a black hole, have sucked in surrounding hospitals and units, like Lewisham’s A&E department which is now facing closure. Patients are left high and dry. As for the Trust, it is to be carved up and offered piece by piece for privatisation, with the familiar vultures-Virgin, Serco, Care UK and Circle-picking at the remains.
In a first for the private sector, in February 2012 Circle took over an entire general hospital at Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire. The hospital has since fallen 19 places in the patient satisfaction rankings and its finances have worsened, forcing Circle to ask for a bailout after just six months.
Private income at NHS Hospitals
Combine this with another controversial aspect of the Health and Social Care Act-the ability for NHS hospitals to earn half their income from private patients-and the implications are scary. A chilling investigation by ITV’s Exposure program secretly filmed doctors assuring a private patient that her money would buy priority over NHS patients within the same hospital. It revealed a tragic case where a consultant left half way through a dangerous birth to carry out a private caesarean section. The baby later died. A two-tier health system is not on the way; it is already here.
The drive for profit is insatiable, not least because many of the dominant players in the new market are owned by ruthless private equity firms. Similar funding models to that which led to the collapse of the Southern Cross care-home company are now in the NHS. For example, Hospital Corporation of America, which is entering into joint ventures with NHS hospitals, is majority owned by three private equity firms including Mitt Romney’s notorious Bain Capital.
All of this comes before the most high-profile part of the Health and Social Care Act has even been fully implemented-the replacement of PCTs with Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). Sold to the public as “giving power to GPs,” this transfers responsibility for spending £60 billion of public money to largely unaccountable new groups, who will in turn outsource the work to privatised “commissioning support units”-allowing the private sector to decide how taxpayers’ money is spent. If that sounds complicated, it is. David Nicholson, the head of the health service, fears it could end in “misery and failure.”
The Labour party, after its record in government of opening the way for privatisation, has changed tack in opposition, repeatedly pledging to repeal the Act and scrap the market if elected. These are important commitments that it must be held to.
But the quantity of contracts currently being signed may take the NHS over a tipping point, where the “facts on the ground” cannot be reversed. That is why it is crucial to monitor, expose, slow and disrupt the destruction of the NHS now, while there may still be time to save it.
—
Alex Nunns is an NHS campaigner, writer and editor whose blog about a job offer from Care UK went viral in July 2011. This article was sponsored by the NHS Support Federation
The awful state of public opinion on immigration
YouGov did some polling for the Sunday Times on the issue of immigration.
Here is what they found.
.
.
(click to expand)
.
(click to expand)
The full commentary on these polls by YouGov is here.
Nick Clegg’s speech does not deserve to be taken seriously
When a politician says a current item of spending is unsustainable, you can be almost certain that they are lying. Last time round it was public sector pensions, ministers claiming something had to be done, when Lord Hutton’s report was clear that overall costs were due to fall, not rise.
Yesterday Nick Clegg claimed that the welfare system was in danger of becoming unaffordable, with the economy tripling in size since the 1970s while welfare spending has gone up seven-fold. This might well be true, but this ignores two key points: first that spending on unemployment/sickness benefits amount to only 3% of GDP, and second that spending on welfare overall, including pensions, has levelled off in recent years.
Clegg’s entire speech was, as could be expected from someone desperately trying to claim he’s done anything other than prop up a Conservative government for the last two and a half years, filled with arguments along the same lines.
Straw men abounded: there are apparently some on the left who think benefits are an automatic right with no responsibilities, and that it’s oppressive and discriminatory to assume those with health problems or a “difficult background” can “make something of their lives”. To call this rich from a politician who’s gone along with the introduction of a work programme that doesn’t work, and who has done nothing to hold ATOS to account, even when they have offices in buildings with limited disabled access, risks understating the levels of chutzpah of involved.
Even more laughable, which takes some doing, was Clegg’s claim that opposing the 1% rise in benefits for the next three years doesn’t “make rational sense”. As Paul at Though Cowards Flinch points out, it made perfect rational sense last year to George Osborne when he decided benefits should rise at the same rate as inflation; then he wanted to protect those “who are not able to work because of their disabilities and those, who through no fault of their own, have lost jobs and are trying to find work”. What had changed this time?
Simply that Osborne and friends felt they were on safe ground in smearing every benefit claimant as a scrounger, and so could put up a political dividing line between themselves and Labour. Clegg, naturally, went along with it, and much of his speech recycles the exact same language used by the Tories, to the point where he aped Cameron’s “without hope or responsibility/aspiration”.
The one point he made that did have something resembling a kernel of truth was the observation that “[W]hen two-thirds of people think the benefits system is too generous and discourages work then it has to be changed or we risk a total collapse in public support for welfare existing at all”.
This though is based on the misconception that out of work benefits are generous; I don’t think I’ve seen a single columnist or newspaper editorial point out that as Jobseeker’s Allowance for the over 25s is currently £71 a week, if Osborne’s uprating takes place those out of work can look forward to an extra 71 pence a week from next April.
It’s true that when other benefits are taken into consideration alongside JSA or ESA that the picture isn’t quite as bleak; housing benefit, council tax benefit and child benefit for those who have a family alter the picture somewhat, but they don’t change the fact that the system is often very far from generous, and will be even less so once the £26,000 cap comes in, ignoring exceptional individual circumstances.
Much of the rest of the speech was given over to claims of how everything the Lib Dems have done in coalition has been rooted in the centre ground, a sure sign of desperation from a party which gained support at the last election because, err, they were rightly seen as being to the left of centre.
Why the Tory attack on the 1% benefits cap won’t work
The Labour leadership’s decision to oppose Osborne’s benefit cap at 1% has invited a rather frantic response by the Conservative party.
ConservativeHome says Tory chair Grant Shapps is unveiling this attack ad in marginal constituencies.
It’s a hastily put-together ad running generic stock images.
I’m very sceptical the Tories will actually run the ad in large numbers. It’s only being run on a few websites. It’s like the stream of YouTube videos that the Romney and Obama campaigns created throughout the election cycle to attract media interest even if they were never aired on TV.
In the same way, the intention is to create chatter, get some media attention on turf they like (welfare cuts than why the economy isn’t growing), and scare Labour party people into backing off. Nothing more.
I don’t think it will work because ads have to be believable. I.e. the creator has to have some credibility when making a claim. In some cases a claim (‘Labour spent too much money in power’) can be believable because it chimes with earlier prejudices of voters.
But this isn’t always the case. For example, many Republican outfits tried to paint Obama in extreme terms but didn’t work as they only preached to the converted. For ordinary people that view of Obama didn’t chime with their impressions.
Democrats faced similar problems too. They wanted to emphasise during the election campaign that Republican plans on Medicare would drastically cut provision, but voters didn’t believe they could be so evil so it was a difficult line to run with (can’t find the story that pointed this out now).
The problem for the Conservative party is that as majority of voters believe that they are ‘out of touch’ and are only focused on the rich.
Trying to hit them over the head with an ad that pretends they’re on the side of ‘hard working families’ is much too blunt to work with floating voters. They aren’t convinced by Tory motives and are very unlikely to take lessons from them on where Labour stands.
But there is a broader point here for Labour: the Tories are clearly rattled by their opposition to benefit cuts because it threatens to shatter the consensus they’ve been building. It’s time Labour understood that lesson and opposed the benefit caps more clearly and painted the Tories as the party of only the rich.
Nine Labour MPs likely to vote against same-sex marriage
The Telegraph today carries a letter by various MPs opposing same-sex marriage. The letter includes three Labour MPs.
But that isn’t the full list. In fact at least nine Labour MPs are vocally opposed to same-sex marriage and expected to vote against it.
There may be more of course, as not all have said where they stand on the matter.
But here are nine names collected by the C4EM campaign opposed to full civil rights for gays and lesbians.
We’ll post an updated list once we get more names.
| Joe | Benton | Bootle | |
| Jim | Dobbin | Heywood and Middleton | Evidence |
| Brian H | Donohoe | Central Ayrshire | Evidence |
| Mary | Glindon | North Tyneside | |
| Roger | Godsiff | Birmingham | Bizarre letter to constituent |
| Paul | Goggins | Wythenshawe and Sale East | |
| Austin | Mitchell | Great Grimsby | Via LGBT Labour and Twitter |
| Paul | Murphy | Torfaen | Email to constituent. |
| Stephen | Pound | Ealing North | Letter to constituent |
The names are taken from the Campaign 4 Equal Marriage site.
35 Comments
48 Comments
21 Comments
49 Comments
4 Comments14 Comments
27 Comments
16 Comments34 Comments
65 Comments
36 Comments
17 Comments1 Comment
19 Comments
46 Comments
53 Comments
64 Comments
28 Comments
12 Comments5 CommentsNEWS ARTICLES ARCHIVE