The Battle of the "Swivel-Eyed Loons"!

The farce over the Ukip threat to the Conservative party trundles on, day after day after day, it is now affecting the running of day to day business of this government, exposing the the deep splits within the Tory party and their infighting has almost reached implosion pitch. The row completely overshadowed his recent trip to Washington, where we had the bizarre situation of the President trying to help dig Cameron out of a hole!

David Cameron has not only lost control of his party, he has lost control of the government. The Tories right wing and ultra right wing factions fighting like ferrets in a sack is having a detrimental affect on the running of this country, as well as rendering the UK a complete laughing stock in the face of the rest of the world!

The Tories have become all consumed with fighting each other, yet the one theme runs through them like a stick of  Green Party Brighton Pavilion rock, is their desire to win the the next general election. Never mind that their incompetence and their disgraceful public backbiting and infighting and their obsession with Europe  clearly demonstrates that they are not fit to run a sweet shop, let alone be responsible for this country and our peoples lives!

Nigel Farage doesn't need to be an MP at Westminster,  he is already running the Tory party and dictating government policy. The man who hates the EU so much that  to satisfy his own xenophobic whim he would risk the livelihoods of millions of British citizens by pulling the UK out of the European Union, is bizarrely an MEP in the EU which he professes to hate so much! Farage is also on the EU fisheries committee and would expect him to realise how important this country's fishing industry is, yet out of the last 30 meetings he has been present at only one meeting - so much for representing British interests! The man is a boozing fag smoking joke who Cameron has allowed to all but in name run the Tory party and this country!

The Tory party and the Tory led coalition government has now descended into complete chaos and it is now the Ukip tail wagging the Tory dog and normal government business is being completely overrun by infighting.

Cameron has shown himself to be incredibly weak and ineffectual, by giving in to successive ultra right wing demands. At great risk to inward investment into this country at an exceptionally vital time for our economy and our people, a panicking Cameron promised the right of his party an in or out referendum! This is not the way Government should be, it should be country before party every single time, obviously Cameron couldn't care less about this as since then he has made a string of concessions  which never quietens the Tories for long, as they pocket the latest concession and then ask for the next one and now as the Ukip threat has materialised it has the anti EU, anti gay marriage "swivel-eyed loons"  at each others throats again!

David Cameron has his own special names for people, 'swivel-eyed loons' is apparently what he calls his right wing Euro-sceptics and of course we all know that he refers to Ukip members as as a "bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists" obviously  forgetting that quite a large majority of his right wing MPs and Tory supporters in general are actually "closet Ukippers". Cameron and his 'swivel-eye loons' also have a name for the unemployed and disabled whom he often refers to as "skivers and shirkers" or "benefit cheats" etc. It seems that his right hand man Lord Feldman (who Cameron made a Lord shortly after assuming power in 2010), may share his friend's love of the neologism, as not to be outdone, according to two journalists from the national press he (or someone else) apparently referred to Tory party grass root activists as 'swivel-eyed loons' and is hasn't gone down at all well!

Not content in forcing the Queen to make an unpleasant attack on immigrants by turning the Queens Speech into some kind of Ukip manifesto rant against immigrants, Her Majesty's Government is made up of openly warring right wing Tory MPs, ultra right wing Tory MPs, and ultra, ultra right wing Tory MPs (who wish they were really Ukip MPs) all slugging it out to see who can out right wing each other. If that wasn't enough, the Tory grass root activists ('swivel-eyed loons') and already up in arms about Cameron's leadership etc, are apparently leaving the Tory party in droves and joining Ukip, and those who are left are demanding Cameron pull out of the EU and drop his gay marriage bill!

Meanwhile the country teeters ever closer to falling off the edge of a economic cliff . However, we are supposed to be seeing green shoots of recovery according to the outgoing Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, the man who says the BofE must remain out of politics, but has been regularly climbing into bed with the Tories. The trouble with Merv's forecasts is, that not once has he ever got one right!

Unemployment continues to rise despite the fact that this government have come up with a whole myriad of ways in which to massage the figures down.

The Tory Health & Social Care Act of 2012 is causing mayhem in the NHS and in Accident & Emergency Departments the length and breadth of the land. NHS 111 replacing the perfectly good and extremely efficient NHS Direct is not working and is adding to the pressure. The Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt hasn't a scooby do what he is doing or when he is supposed to be doing it, he is currently running around telling overworked, pressurised staff that we need more nurses, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that it was his government that is responsible for getting rid of 5000 nurses since they came to power!

The education secretary has managed to insult the country's teachers and head teachers and upset them reducing them to tears with threats of bullying and intimidation and the Work and Pensions secretary has introduced the bedroom tax which is unfair and unworkable and is now either forcing people to commit suicide or attend one of the ballooning number of food banks being set up to try and feed the population who now have no money, due to the government's welfare reforms and trying to force them to pay out from money they simply do not have. Others on low wages are being forced to pay council tax for the first time and if they cannot increase their work hours they are seeing their tax credits cut. The disabled are being subjected to immoral unreliable Atos interrogations and having their DLA removed and their cars taken away from them. (Why doesn't Cameron and IDS just order them to be knee capped?)

Cameron has only done one  PMQs out of eight - George Osborne hasn't answered questions in the House for coming up about 3 months now, and has anyone noticed how quiet George is being over #swivelgate? Resident Tory thug, London Mayor Boris [break the ribs of journalists] Johnson, has so many different opinions on the EU that it appears he is doing a one man Hokey-kokey  " are Eu in out, in out, - shake it all about".

All this and so much more (far too much to mention here) and all we see is the continuation of the Tories delusional obsession with their soap opera which is the EU! The PM's answer to his ever growing right wing backbench rebellion is just to let them fight it out in public. After rebuking Gove and the Defence Minister Philip Hammond last week for saying they would vote to withdraw from the EU, Hammond (suitably "chastised" - not) turned around and lobbed a metaphorical hand grenade on Cameron's gay marriage bill causing more explosions in the potent EU mix, and Gove's answer to his leader was to insult the country's teachers live on national TV, for which he was booed and heckled, and all this is being played out on the world stage acutely embarrassing the country's standing abroad (and not just in Europe), very, very damaging.

And the Liberal Democrats answer to it all? Well to do what they have done from day one and just keep backing the Tories, no matter what they say, or what they do or how much they are now endangering the public and embarrassing this country.

I think this is the beginning of the end for the British Conservative party as we know it. It could be that it is about to split not two, but three ways. First the Liberal Democrats will walk and break the coalition up as they realise backing Cameron over a referendum would be just one hypocritical step too much (especially as the general election is fast approaching). Then after huge public fights and blood letting the right wing Tories will split from the ultra right wing Tories and stay with Cameron, the ultra right wing Tories will split from the Tory party and form their own party, and the ultra, ultra right wing Ukip Tories will join Ukip. In any event we will have an early general election as the public lose patience and confidence in this appalling incompetent split asunder Tory Government.

Thank goodness for Ed Miliband the Labour leader, who is the only leader to be actually leading (not following) his party. It would have been very easy for Miliband to try and cash in on the Tory furore by offering a referendum or trying to force the Tories to bring the supposed 2017 referendum forward, but he didn't, his position is clear, he is not going to damage this country for the sake of his own and his party's narrow political interests, he is going to do what he thinks is right for the country at this time. Which is negotiate Britain's terms when the time comes and not threaten vital inward investment at a time when the British economy is flat lining. It took guts and strength to stand in the face of an adverse hostile press, who have done nothing but try to belittle him (even though on all the big questions it has been Miliband who has been correct) and face them down.

What a pity that David Cameron doesn't have the intellect, the integrity, honesty and strength of Ed Miliband.

To coin a phrase "Ed Miliband leads his party, David Cameron follows his"!

The British Government Is a Total Omnishambles!

They Think the Omnishambles They Have created Is Funny!

What an omnishambles the British government is in and what a complete mess they are causing in the country. From the prime minister down, does any one of this appalling government know what they are doing at any given time? How much longer is this government going to be allowed to limp on fatally wounded before the press start doing their job and actually reporting the truth and informing the public?

Today on the various Sunday politics shows, it was like a short list interview where the candidates were all vying for the the top job of prime minister. If the government's own cabinet ministers have no confidence in David Cameron's ability to run this country how can the public have any?

The whole country from the economy downwards is going to hell in a handcart. The jobless figure jumped by 70,000 last month and we are supposed to be grateful that we missed a triple dip recession by the skin of our teeth as the British economy stagnates and flat-lines? Are we supposed to be grateful that this shockingly deceitful government are cooking the books to cover up their mishandling of the economy, and fiddling the unemployment statistics in order to keep the full and very shocking truth from us?

Construction has fallen off the edge of a cliff , manufacturing is not far behind it and we are supposed to be cock-a-hoop over a few extra cranes being hired in the capital building office blocks that no one wants while not building homes the country desperately needs?

The only sectors keeping us out of recession are the service sector and the financial sector. How long will people keep spending in the service sector as the government austerity measures start to really take hold? The service sector also depends on government spending, but the government are not spending because they are too busy borrowing money to waste on paying their Tory doning companies like Tesco to take people from the unemployment register, pay them nothing and force the taxpayer to pick up the tab, just so the government can keep fiddling the unemployment figures, which would jump by around a million overnight if this practices suddenly stopped!

The Tory doning banks and financial sector that got the country  into this mess with their greed and also helped to ruin the global economy is doing very well, as people take out  and are forced to spend more on their credit cards, no not for luxuries, but to pay the bills. Not one of these financial organisations has been prosecuted and this government continues to allow them to avoid paying their taxes while awarding themselves huge bonuses.

People's standard of living has plummeted and families can no longer afford to feed themselves and thousands are turning to foodbanks for help.

The cost of gas, electricity and water has soared as the government continues to allow these utility companies to make massive profits and charge us what they like. Remember it was a previous Conservative government under Thatcher that privatised the utility companies allowing foreign investors to buy them and charge us what they like!

Rail fares are going through the roof under the Tory privatised Railways, which is adding further strain to household budgets.

The NHS is being privatised.   Accident and Emergency Departments across the country are now failing and people are waiting hours for treatment in waiting rooms and in hospital corridors on trolleys and some are even being treated in tents in hospital grounds.

Private health companies who donate to the Tory party are being awarded multi million pound NHS contracts. Even the Tory cabinet all have links to health companies and will be making money out of the NHS.

The government have allowed private companies to have access to your medical records and are selling off your personal information.

The perfectly good and efficient NHS Direct service was abolished by this government (for absolutely no good reason other than they could if they wanted to) and was replaced with a malfunctioning inferior service called NHS 111, which has already been estimated to have caused at least three deaths and countless other incidents which are now being investigated.

S75 NHS was approved by the House of Lords and the voted through by Tories and Liberal Democrats and is now forcing GPs to offer private companies NHS contracts, even if they do not want to, thus enabling the privatisation of the NHS still further.

The ambulance service is now at a critical stage and people are being forced to wait up to 5 hours for private ambulances sent from 100's of miles away and when they do arrive they have no idea where the local hospital is.

The Fire service is also being slowly privatised and London Fire Brigade  is being cut endangering people in their homes.

The police service is being privatised and now police forces are being sponsored by MacDonalds or Burger King and could turn up with an advert for these companies across their backs!

The government are also selling off the civil service to be run by private companies.

State education is being privatised and the taxpayer is being forced to fund so called "free" schools which are only open to the children of the elite (not little Johnny from the sink estate) who now find they don't have to pay private school fees because the education Secretary Michael Gove is forcing the taxpayer to pay instead.

As Iain Duncan Smith's (IDS) welfare reforms hit the most vulnerable the hardest the much reviled bedroom tax has claimed a death as a grandmother committed suicide because she felt there was nowhere else for her to turn. (Incidentally IDS lives rent free in a Bucks mansion supplied by his wealth father in law, it has a swimming pool and tennis courts in its grounds) IDS also said he could live on £53 per week but refused to take the challenge.

Mrs Bottrill left a note saying that no one else was to blame for her ending her own life except the government. Mrs Bottrill's daughter had moved out of their 3 bedroom house which left her mother struggling to pay £20 per week bedroom tax for under occupancy, she had apparently told neighbours that she was paying the tax but had nothing left to live on after doing so. That means she had no money left to buy food or pay her other bills, like gas, electricity and water etc. Her son has stated that:

“She was fine before this Bedroom Tax. It was dreamt up in London, by people in offices and big houses.“They have no idea the effect it has on people like my mum.” Full story Here. 

This is not the first suicide because of this government's policies there is approximately 1,300 people amopng them nay disabled people, who have committed suicide as a direct result of the effects this government's policies are having on their lives.

Read Here about the couple that committed suicide who were forced to walk miles to a food bank in order to eat.

British people are committing suicide to avoid poverty - read Here.

Unemployed dad commits suicide after his housing benefit was stopped read Here

This government have been repeatedly told, but they will not listen, it is as if they have a mental block about how badly their policies are affecting people. The government obviously do not think of people on benefits as real people, with real needs, they obviously believe that all people on benefits are "scroungers" or "skivers" or "shirkers" and have said as much and also implied much more and worse besides. They have deliberately sought to divide people and turn whole communities against each other and this suicide is a symptom of something which has gone badly wrong in Britain today. I'm also afraid is just the tip of the iceberg. The hostile right wing Tory supporting press are failing in their duty to inform the public about what is truly happening in the country and keep issuing this appalling government with continuous "get out of jail free cards" which enables them to carry on hurting and destroying the lives of real people. Rather than report the 1.300 suicides which have taken place as a direct result of this government's draconian policies, rather than report the fact that millions of people are being driven to the edge of despair, the Tory supporting press would rather publish puerile articles calling Ed Miliband stupid names; and they wonder why the public feel that the press need proper legal regulation?!

How have we allowed ourselves to be so badly lied to and so cowed by a government that we meekly accept that the richest in society (and that includes the present Conservative party cabinet) can be handed a huge tax break by their very own Tory chancellor which results in them each being gifted huge cheques between £100,000 and £140,000 from the taxman and we say and do absolutely nothing about it? Why are we allowing ourselves be fooled into thinking that the poor are lazy, feckless idle shirkers so deserve to have their incomes docked by between 14% and 25% per week in bedroom tax and millions of working families deserve to have their tax credits cut while chancellor George Osborne's millionaires receive a giveaway worth on average £100,000? Why are we allowing  our pensioners to pay more tax in order for the rich to pay less?  "Who wants to bung a millionaire"?

This government are not only inflicting the bedroom tax on people, they are also forcing others to pay council tax for the first time, this is people in work but earning a low wage so they got help in the form of rebates. Ye this government want us to believe they have taken x amount of people out of paying income tax, yes they may have but 1) most of those people already paid no tax..2) they give this small concession but fail to tell people they are taking away tax credits, housing benefits and council tax rebates as well as inflicting the council tax upon people. this the government maintain is making work pay?

What kind of society are we allowing this appalling government turn us into? Where a grandmother feels she has no option but to throw herself under the wheels of a lorry and where we just accept that over 1.300 other people have felt so lost, so alone, so isolated, so belittled, depressed and bullied to the point they feel absolutely worthless that they too have committed suicide?

How many more people will be driven to this point before this public wakes up to the evil bullying disease that this Conservative led coalition government are spreading amongst us? More to the point, how much longer are the Liberal Democrats going to keep supporting this government and actually enabling them to do this? Does power really mean that much to them? How much longer can the press keep giving this shocking incompetent bullying government a free ride?

With all this and so much more going on in this country and with the shocking mess this incompetent self serving lying government are making, you would think they would be doing something to try and put it all right? But no apparently not, so what are they doing?

Well apparently there is nothing more pressing in this country right now than the holding a referendum on whether we should stay in or come out of the EU.

We had the Queens Speech last week and instead of it being about promoting jobs and growth and building houses etc, it has turned into a debate on the European Union. The right wing of the Tory party, aided and abetted by their mates in the right wing press have hijacked parliament and the Queens Speech.

David Cameron is running around like a headless chicken giving a good verbal kicking to any immigrant he sees in a bid to out Ukip, Ukip.

He has thrown the only black working class adviser he had in his inner circle out and replaced him with yet another old Etonian from his Bullingdon Boy school days. His inner circle is now almost primarily made up of his old Etonian school chums.

Cameron has hired the dubious immigrant bashing (allegedly) Lynton Crosby three days a week to help him win the next election (because obviously he has no urgent priorities on his hands) and is paying him an astronomical sum funded taxpayer. Lynton Crosby has also allegedly influenced the Queens Speech as his company has links to the oil, gas, tobacco and drinks industries.

We have got into the bizarre situation where the prime minister is now considering voting against his own Queens Speech because he is so scared of his right wing rebellion and of Ukip.

The Prime Minister is more concerned with getting re elected and with Ukip than he is with what is happening in this country. he would rather place at risk 3 million jobs and further destabilise an already unstable economy just for his own narrow party political interests.

And the Liberal Democrats are allowing all this to happen and the hostile Tory supporting press are not reporting any of it, so vast swathes of the public have no real idea about what is really going on.

The press refuse to report Ed Miliband accurately or fairly, they would rather tell lies about him and print tittle tattle and call him childish names (as does David Cameron and the Tories) than report what sense the man is actually talking. He is the only leader strong enough to stand up and say the last thing this country needs at this present time is a referendum on the EU, which would further damage inward investment at a time when the country needs all the investment it can get. he has said if the conditions change in the EU then we will have a referendum.

Miliband is the only leader outwardly saying our financial system is bust and he is the only leader with a plan to fix it.

He is the only leader to act in the national interest and not in his own party political interest and yet the hostile Tory supporting press see this as a means to ridicule him.

The whole country is now hanging over a precipice and all Cameron can think of is himself! Cameron has totally lost control of his government and the country.

The public can have no confidence in him to run  the country properly, he is displaying an alarming abuse of power and even more alarming incompetence and corruption. The British government under this Tory led coalition is now in total disarray.

I've said it many times Cameron and Osborne are totally incapable of running this country, morally and intellectually, I refer to them, not as the Two Ronnies but more the "Two Wrongies"!

It is time for a General Election!

Government Should Scrap NHS 111 Immediately and restore NHS Direct!

Cameron and Hunt
An Accident waiting To Happen!

Yesterday I blogged about the new NHS 111 service which took the place of NHS Direct being in complete chaos thanks to the Conservative controlled coalition government. No one actually knows why the former Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley and the Prime Minister, David Cameron felt they had to interfere with NHS Direct, especially as Cameron had promised "no more top down reorganisation of the NHS".
NHS Direct was performing efficiently and was also cost effective and saving the NHS around £240 million per year!

Today we learn that 60% of doctors believe that the new NHS 111 helpline is very poor and is putting lives at risk.

In the first official survey, more that 80% of doctors asked said that out of hours care had "seriously deteriorated" since the government had replaced the NHS Direct helpline. And 60% said their experience with the new helpline was "poor" or "very poor".

The survey was carried out in the North East by Dr Ken Megson, of the NHS Medical Committee.
The survey also found that ambulances were overstretched. Previously under NHS Direct, only 50% of people ringing in for advice would go on to see an NHS member of staff, now under NHS 111 it has soared to 80%. This is placing serious pressure on ambulance services, fast responses and Accident and Emergency Departments. One GP has reported that his patient died while being forced to wait 1¾ hours for an ambulance! In another NHS 111 tragedy a lady from Aylesbury, Bucks reported being left on the phone for more than an hour as 111 staff failed to find a qualified nurse who could administer pain relief to her terminally ill husband, she said that she should have d been with her husband but couldn't be as she was on the phone, her husband later died.


The question everyone is now asking is why the government got rid of NHS Direct? For what possible reason did they do this to a service which people acknowledged was an excellent service with qualified nurses giving prompt medical advice and replacing it with an inferior substandard privatised service, run by people with hardly any training and zero medical qualifications? The government is placing telephone operatives in situations that far exceeds their capabilities, it is not fair on these workers who I am sure do their best in terrible stressful situations and it is certainly not fair on the thousands of people who are now being forced to use a substandard service at extremely distressing times!

There are widespread fears about clinical failings and dreadful communication as operatives try to work out if people need to go to a major hospital unit, need an ambulance, need fast response, or an out of hours GP practice by means of using a check list, and often with no qualified person with whom they can consult. People are being told they will be rung back and  in many cases they are kept waiting hours for the phone call or no one phones until the next day and in some cases no one returns the call at all. The situation is now that nervous operatives who are not confident in their own abilities are worried that they are missing important symptoms are sending ambulances to people who do not need them, while the people that do need them urgently are being kept waiting, often with serious consequences.

A child running a high temperature which cannot be controlled would set off alarm bells in the minds of qualified staff. yet a GP reports that a worried mother whose child was displaying such symptoms and who called NHS 111 for advice received no call back from the service!

Another doctor who contributed to the research spoke of fears about "inappropriate" clinical decisions being made by NHS 111 phone line's operators. The medic described how one elderly patient who needed to be taken straight to hospital was instead sent to an urgent care centre and collapsed while being assessed.

Parents of babies who have breathing difficulties are not being advised to seek urgent treatment at hospital and are not being sent an ambulance, instead they are being advised to go to urgent care centres miles away and then are having to be taken under a blue light to Accident and Emergency.

If a qualified nurse takes a call from a someone and runs through a check list of symptoms, often from the answers they are given they will ask further questions that do not appear on that check list, and then they can quickly assess the situation and what action is needed, this comes with training and experience, the kind of training and experience that it is impossible for a telephone operative to garner in just a few days, in fact it takes years to get to this stage and it is this service that the government have withdrawn and c drastically cut down right across the country. The NHS 111 service is not only failing the nation and posing a serious risk to health, it is also undermining the professional medical qualifications and training of qualified nurses.

Three deaths are currently being investigated in connection with NHS 111 and a further 20 untoward

 incidents  have been recorded. How many more deaths and distress and suffering will be caused before this government pulls the plug on this service and restores it to NHS Direct? A service they should never have touched and did not need to touch.

NHS 111 In Complete Chaos Thanks To Conservative Government

Most of the current Conservative Cabinet and other Tory MPs

NHS Direct was launched in 1998 after the former Labour government identified a need for a telephone health advice line staffed by nurses as part of its plans to modernise the NHS. 

NHS Direct's core service was the provision of health advice to the public through the national telephone service or through digital channels including the website 24 hours per day 365 days per year.

In 2010 before the Coalition government changed NHS Direct it was there to:

• Make a difference to the lives of people in England, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year
• NHS Direct was used by 27000 people a day and cost £123 million per year to run
• NHS Direct was a service "currently" there for people whenever they had health worries 
• NHS Direct had the knowledge and experience to give the public real help and reassurance.
• NHS Direct's vision was to be the national healthline, providing expert health advice, information and reassurance, using their world class telephone service and website, and to be the NHS’ provider of choice for telephone and digitally delivered health services.
• NHS Direct was NOT  just a telephone healthline. They also offer commissioned services to other parts of the NHS to help them meet their patients’ needs. 
• NHS Direct also offered *out of hours support for GPs and dental services; *telephone support for patients with long-term conditions; *pre and post operative support for patients; *24 hour response to health scares, and *remote clinics via telephone.
• NHS Direct evidence suggests that the expert advice of nurses has kept one and a half million people out of A & E, and saved the NHS £213 million pounds a year. (Dr Peter Carter, RCN Chief Executive & General Secretary)

Now the NHS Direct service has been totally ruined by an incompetent Conservative and Liberal Democrat government who took an efficiently functioning service and for no apparent reason decided to change it (simply because they could). The government has introduced mayhem and the once extremely well functioning NHS Direct service is in chaos with serious risk to life.

Just as the government were warned repeatedly back in 2010, all this has come to pass since the new NHS 111 service went live.

• NHS Direct to be replaced by cut price health service
• BMA writes to NHS 111 Boss (Sir David Nicholson) over NHS 111 concerns
• British Medical Association (BMA) Implore Government to delay NHS 111
• NHS 111 Delayed in 24 regions after BMA warning
• GPs want greater transparency in the way NHS 111 is being run as external review is launched
• BMA Calls to halt NHS 111 (March 2013)
• Health Minister Threatened with ejection from Royal College [for dishonesty]
• Video: NHS 111 Puts patients at risk says BMA (Compulsive viewing)
• 22 NHS 111 serious untoward incidents reported, including three deaths

The Tory government sacked trained nurses and reduced the number of doctors in each call centre replacing them with telephone operators with a maximum of 60 hours training placing them in a position to deal with the nation's health care. That's telephone operators with approximately one week's training who are now currently advising you on your health care, your children's healthcare and your elderly relatives healthcare!

Back in 2010 when this news first broke the immediate questions were:

• How can untrained staff cope with the volume of calls requiring urgent medical advice? 
• How would Accident and Emergency departments cope with sudden influx of people who were not being adequately advised by the government's new NHS 111 service?
• Which private sector companies were going to benefit from the destruction and dismantling of NHS Direct? 
• How much are the contracts worth and crucially are there any Tory backing financial donors among them?

What has actually happened is:

1. Telephone operators who have been unable and not confident to advise people on health problems and have had no qualified medical professional available to ask, have sent people straight to A&E departments
2. People dissatisfied with the new service and have been incorrectly advised by undertrained telephone operators has led to serious risk to health  have also gone to A&E
3. Others generally dissatisfied with their advice have stopped phoning NHS 111 and gone straight to their Accident & Emergency departments.
4. This has put a tremendous strain on hospitals emergency departments across the country and they have been unable to cope with the influx.

The government simply cannot say they were not warned and neither can they try to blame the previous Labour government as the current Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt has tried to do. It will not wash as NHS Direct was working extremely well and waiting times and attendees to A&E Departments were down and completely under control before this current government decided to meddle with the system. To try to blame Labour for this is deeply dishonest. This is solely a problem caused by the current government, who were warned repeatedly what their unnecessary policy changes would cause, but chose to ignore the warnings of health care professionals.


In 2010, the Royal College of  Nursing Union (RCN - not known for militancy) spoke out against the Conservative government's decision to change the NHS Direct service.

RCN comments on NHS Direct
Published: 28 August 2010

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) today commented on media reports that telephone advice service NHS Direct is to be scrapped.
Dr Peter Carter, RCN Chief Executive & General Secretary, said:

“NHS Direct has developed over recent years into a service that many patients really value. Nurses have led the way in making this a service which can offer reassurance and advice as well as identifying when people are in need of urgent care. The evidence suggests that the expert advice of nurses has kept one and a half million people out of A & E, and saved the NHS £213 million pounds a year. It would be shortsighted to cut back on the experts who deliver these long term savings.
“We would be extremely concerned if the expertise it offers is indeed under threat. We urge the government to consult fully and look at all the evidence before enacting changes which could leave people without expert advice from trained nurses.”
Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is the voice of nursing across the UK and is the largest professional union of nursing staff in the world. The RCN promotes the interest of nurses and patients on a wide range of issues and helps shape healthcare policy by working closely with the UK Government and other national and international institutions, trade unions, professional bodies and voluntary organisations.

RCN;                         Royal College Nursing - RCN

The government ignored all warnings about not only NHS Direct/NHS111, they have ignored all warnings about the effects their Health and Special Care reforms Act of 2012 will have on the NHS coming from approximately 98% of  medical professionals.
The problems experienced by NHS 111 will not be confined to that service, they will, and are spreading to other parts of the NHS as profit takes precedence of patient care.

As a former health care professional of many years standing, I warned about these dangers right from the word go, this blog is littered with warnings not just from me but from right across the NHS and have all been ignored and are still being ignored and the right wing Tory supporting press and broadcast media (BBC and Sky News, ITV, Ch 4) are largely allowing these warnings and problems to go unreported in a bid to keep the public from knowing what the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are doing to the NHS and the *fact* that it is being slowly privatised right under the public's noses by a deceitful dishonest lying Tory government and in doing so they are risking the health of this nation, that is YOU and YOUR family.

Media blackout and social network censure of NHS privatisation
Who blocked Mark's pig out?

The NHS is becoming a corporate affair:

• Tories Hidden privatisation Plan revealed
• Private health bosses set to profit from the Tory NHS shake-up are unveiled as party donors
• Section 75: Last Ditch to stop NHS being opened to private contracts fails in House of Lords (goes unreported by BBC, ITV, Sky News, Ch 4)
• Paul Routledge: The NHS is for people NOT for profit!

• NHS Chief Quits, Calls Austerity a Weapon to “Dismantle the State”

• More Links of Interest

Our NHS is being privatised by stealth and the man who said "the NHS was safe in his hands" and "there will be no more reorganisation of the NHS" - prime minister, David Cameron is responsible - he lied to you and now he has blood on his hands - just as we warned!

Footnote: Any Future Labour government has promised to repeal the Conservatives Health and Social Care Reforms Act of 2012.

Lets hope they get the chance before any more lasting and unnecessary damage is done to our NHS!

Dave and George "The Two Wrongies"

David Cameron and George Osborne
"The Two Wrongies"

In the 2010 general election it was extremely important we elected the right calibre of person to lead the country through difficult times.We needed honest people with integrity and experience of economics, we needed people who knew what they were doing and how to do it. With the coalition of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats I seriously question that this is what we got in May 2010. With no overall majority we were lumbered with a hung parliament and ended up with an unelected prime minister leading an unelected coalition government. I really dislike the way Tories and Liberal Democrats treat the electorate like prize plums by condescendingly telling us we voted for them to be in coalition. They started off by misleading the public by telling us that this is what the country voted for, no we did not!  The verdict came back the way it did because voters were unsure about all the main parties, they did not vote for a hung parliament because there was no such provision on the ballot paper to do so.

The public have now had three years in which to make a preliminary assessment of the Tory controlled coalition government, and the government has had three years in which to show us that they are competent, able and know what they are doing and are on the way to doing it, and will achieve most of its promises and objectives by the time of the next general election. Unfortunately, not by any stretch of the imagination could this government or its supporters lay claim to this. The Tory led coalition government are miles away from where they should be at this moment in time, which clearly demonstrates that austerity is not working and we need to find a different way and pretty damned quick.

However from the outset this government have been obsessed with their own ideological right wing agenda through which they have tried to channel everything. They have been so obsessed that they have led the country to a very dangerous political impasse. This impasse will not get better any time soon because now all the signs are that the Conservative led government will be far too preoccupied with fighting a resurgent Ukip and are once again going to take their eye off running this country properly as they struggle to try and win back lost Tory voters who have defected to Ukip. Prepare for things to get even more ideologically right wing disposed as the Tories and Ukip prepare to do battle to out right wing each other, life in this country is about to get a whole lot worse as the "nasty party" sharpens ups its long knives in preparation to start stabbing each other in the back, unfortunately we the public will be caught in the middle of it all.

The Tories have already sought to divide the country. They have shamelessly exploited situations and events for political gain. I cite two recent occasions; the Mick and Mairead Philpott case and the death of Baroness Thatcher. Both shamelessly used to further the government's own right wing agenda and both shamelessly used as electioneering props for last Thursday's local elections.

When Margaret Thatcher died, Cameron was out of the country on one of his jaunts and donning his most suitable "sad face" he returned to the country immediately. However, cast your mind back to the summer riots of 2011 and Cameron was away on his holidays, it was days before he decided to return home and only begrudgingly returned from his 5th holiday of that year after he was literally coerced into doing so. Images of this country burning in days of rioting, looting and murder were being beamed around the world was not enough for Cameron to return home, yet he did so immediately on the death of Margaret Thatcher? Where is Cameron's judgement and sense of priorities? On returning to Downing Street, David Cameron quick as a flash was up at the lectern outside number 10 cashing in  politically on the death of the former Conservative Prime Minister.

Baroness Thatcher's funeral was held within a week, coincidentally falling on a Wednesday given Cameron yet another excuse to miss Prime Minister Questions. Cameron missed Prime Minister's Questions in the House last Wednesday and he will miss PMQs again next Wednesday, so out of seven weeks the PM has only managed to turn up for one PMQs in, in the House and if that wasn't bad enough,  it has now been almost ELEVEN weeks since George Osborne the chancellor has answered questions in the House. These two men are treating the public with contempt and also showing contempt for parliamentary process and our constitution which they have both sworn to uphold.

With breathtaking arrogance and at a time when their policies are forcing people to accept  austerity measures which are really hurting the poor, disabled and low paid the most and are causing deep seated anxiety and despair, in a blatant abuse of power Cameron and Osborne splashed out over £10 million on an all but in name state funeral for a former Conservative PM  with full military honours, a former prime minister who divided this country and left millions of people bitterly opposing her and all she stood for.

Then there is the alarming government incompetence, every day it seems we have yet another u-turn,  so many u-turns that people have lost count, I think it around 40 so far. 

Every government and every political party makes mistakes, however, not to this extent, these mistakes and u-turns can no longer be written off and laughed at, these are serious errors that are affecting peoples lives and they are a sign of a government that is out of control.

In his Autumn statement of 2012 George Osborne manipulated the borrowing figures to make it look like he was borrowing less he factored in the sales from 4G mobile licenses even though they had not been auctioned and when he actually sold them they brought £1.2 billion LESS than he had factored in. So in his spring 2013 budget to save his embarrassment, he manipulated and moved around figures, factoring in spending from government departments that had not yet been spent, to make his figures look better. He also used figures from QE.

The chancellor has also managed to lose two of the country's triple AAA credit ratings with Fitch and Moody's.

The UK economy is now doing so badly that missing an unprecedented triple dip recession by 0.3% is being hailed as a success in the hostile Tory supporting right wing press! In fact the economy hasn't moved, it's stagnating and just bumping along the bottom.

Unemployment has risen for the second month in a row, this time it rose by a huge 70,000. If the government were prevented from using the various ways they have manufactured to massage the unemployment figures, no doubt unemployment would probably jump by at least a million over night! Here is some previous posts I have made on the unemployment phenomena!

Recent figures show that those out of work for 3 years or more has soared. In June 2010 (when the coalition took power) 147,000 people aged 25 or over were out of work and in December 2012 that number had increased to 218,000.

Yet all of the above and so much more is now being spun in the hostile Tory supporting right wing press that the chancellors spring budget of 2013 was well received? They are allowing him to get away with sleight of hand, deception and even false accounting for which private companies would be prosecuted for.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) which along with the UK's triple a rating, Osborne put so much in store by, have told him that austerity isn't working and that we should change tack

David Cameron once said "the good news just keeps on coming"! If this is his version of good news, then I would surely hate to see his version of bad news!

This government are totally wedded to and obsessed with their ideological right wing agenda, which they believe is going to return them to power in 2015 with a working majority, they wear the badge of hammering innocent people on welfare like it some kind of badge of honour.

Dividing society, scapegoating the poor, forcing the vulnerable and the disabled to pay for the greed of the Tory doning bankers. Forcing people to pay for a spare bedroom in their bed room tax, even though there are absolutely no smaller houses for them to move into  Charging people council tax for the very first time forcing people to pay out money they simply haven't got. taking money from people in work who work for low wages, the policies to attack the poor, the sick, the disabled and vulnerable just keep coming, relentlessly one after the other.

Forcing people to work for nothing or removing their benefits.

Yet David Cameron once said in the House of Commons that "we are through the worse", is through the worse watching the most vulnerable people in society suffering? Pushing up homelessness  Pushing over 200,000 more children into poverty? Forcing women to stay in abusive relationships because the government have cut the aid to domestic abuse charities?

Privatising the NHS and education by stealth, bringing A&E Departments across the country to a standstill, forcing hospitals to treat people in tents in car parks.

Destroying NHS Direct removing doctors and qualified nurses from the organisation and replacing them with people who have only done 3 days training, resulting in several deaths over a few days?


The rich will be OK they can afford private health care and private health cover, the millionaire Tory government will also be OK they have got millions in the bank to fall back on and Osborne has even given them all a nice little windfall and sent all the cabinet and all his multi millionaire mates a nice little cheque for at least £100,000 by reducing their tax burden while the rest of us struggle.

It's getting to the point now where we don't know what is coming next from the pair of blithering idiots, and those of you who think Ukip is the answer need to think again! Farage hasn't got many policies but one he does have is reducing the tax burden of multi millionaires to 31% giving them hundreds of thousands of pounds, while raising the tax burden of the ordinary person up to 31% taking hundreds of pounds off of us to pay for it. Farage may talk the talk, but of course if he was ever put in a position to put all his promises in place he certainly wouldn't be able to walk the walk.


The incompetence of this government just keeps coming, David Cameron and George Osborne have proved without a shadow of a doubt that they are totally and utterly incapable of running this country.

Britain is in a real mess and it is not a mess left by the previous Labour government who had serious challenges to deal with and who actually left this country in recovery and growth with falling borrowing and falling unemployment,  they may have made some mistakes, but at least they knew what they were doing and when to do it. I'm sick of hearing the previous government blamed for something they did not do and blamed by a pair of totally arrogant incapable of comedians that don't know their fat backsides from their elbows is annoying  too! Hearing this government continually playing the blame game is becoming tedious, they've been in power for three years, they took a growing economy and completely stuffed it, this is their fault, it is not the fault of Labour! And another thing which is particularly  irksome from this pair of plonkers, is their total inability to accept responsibility for their own actions. It's they who have made the errors, it's they who have made over 40 u-turns, it's they who gave us a double dip recession and narrowly missed an unprecedented triple dip recession, it's they who have privatised the NHS without a mandate from the people and it is they who are now trying to privatise education and the police service. Its they who are changing things without having the first inkling about what they are doing and it's they who are making all of these changes without even having the decency to ask us first! They are a pair of unelected chancers, leading an unelected government acting without a mandate from the people and treating us all with utter contempt as they abuse the power they have been given. The Liberal Democrats are just as bad because without them propping this pair of comedians up, they would not be able to act like a couple of tyrants! The Lib Dems would walk away if they had a pair of balls between them but obviously they haven't. (Next time you hear their high pitched voices at least you'll know why!)

This pair of chancers, Cameron and Osborne would be funny if things were not so deadly serious. This pair are literally ruining the country and now we are going to be forced to stand back and watch as they battle it out with Ukip at the country's expense they'll be fighting away to out right wing each other while the rest of us go to hell in a handcart! The pair are dangerous and they are also spooked and if they start doing deals with Ukip things will get even worse.

This pair, Cameron and Osborne  in power now are a complete joke, we are being governed by an out of control comedy duo, they should be called; "The Two Wrongies" because never in the history of this country have we had two people running it who are obviously so wrong for the job!

I wish it was; "Goodbye from him and goodbye from him" before they do this country and our people any more irreparable damage!

God help us!

Cameron Has Let Ukip Genie Out Of The Bottle!

Ever since the Tory led coalition came to power they have sought to divide society and pit people against each other for their own political agenda. Wallah they have almost succeeded!

By turning people against each other and indigenous population against immigrants, able bodied people against disabled people; employed against unemployed, private sector against public sector, young against old, couples with children against single parents and turning large sections of society against poor people, and by blaming poor people for being poor, this government deliberately set out to create an uneven unpleasant bigoted narrow minded society. Austerity has very little to do with what the Tories are doing, except it is a useful tool they can use to beat people about the head with and make it appear like they are forcing the "skivers, the malingerers, the benefit cheats, the scroungers" etc etc to pay their "fair share" and to try an garner support from those they are openly deceiving. The Tories have ploughed the land and made it a fertile growing plot for parties like Ukip to grow and flourish.

David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg, Iain Duncan-Smith, in fact the whole cabinet are guilty of deliberately whipping up hatred to suit their own political agendas. Using phrases like "making work pay" except of course they are not, because they are attacking the low paid who are actually IN work and forcing them to pay for the greed of the Tory doning bankers and corporations. This agenda started immediately they assumed unelected power in 2010 in order to win the next election in 2015 outright, it is of course why they decided to fix 5 year terms on parliament, they knew they needed longer to get inside peoples heads. They don't care who or what they have use to achieve this goal, whether it is their useful idiot poodles the Liberal Democrats, or people they have deliberately scared with their scaremongering, the ordinary folk who work the shifts in factories and hospitals and who work in shops and offices, refuse collectors, road sweepers, lollipop men and women etc have all been used by David Cameron and George Osborne to further his and the Tory party's political ambitions and they don't give a damn who they hurt in the process.


Cameron is guilty of pandering to the extreme right wing of his party and has been gradually lurching further and further to the right in order to try and pacify them, promising them referendums on the EU which he has no intention of keeping and he retains the Liberal Democrats solely because they are keeping him and the Conservatives in power.

Cameron and Osborne carelessly and selfishly loaded up the immigration and welfare gun  intending to use it for furtherance of their own right wing ideology and then stupidly allowed Ukip to get hold of it and now Ukip have started to fire it and use it and the Tories have no idea how they are going to stop them! The Conservatives have created a multi headed monster in Ukip, the Genie is well and truly out of the bottle and I doubt it can ever be put back in and the losers in the fight of the right wingers trying to out right wing each other, will be us, the ordinary folk of this country, who will once again be left picking up the pieces of a Tory government's horrendous mess.

How will Cameron react to the Ukip threat which he has stupidly brought down upon his own shoulders? How hard is it going to be for him to get his former voters back, who now see themselves as supporting an established party in Ukip?  Does cameron even realise just how hard that is going to be? Cameron now has to use his judgement and that in itself is worrying as it is well known that David Cameron doesn't have  judgement and will almost certainly lurch even further to the right. Cameron will go down in history as the unelected prime minister of a mongrel coalition government who was  responsible for breeding the underlying racial and social tensions in this country and for succeeding where Hitler failed, by turning working people against each other and also creating a poor socially cleansed underclass. Cameron is slowly driving down peoples standard of living and removing their working and human rights, he is also removing any vehicle they once had in which they could claim against the establishment, soon people will have nothing and have no one who can help fight with them and for them. We are slowly being controlled by a right wing government which  is not a real government it is the political arm of the banking sector and the big corporations, who want to remove any rights their employees have. Why else is Cameron and Osborne doing THIS?  "Here is the final wicked twist: legal aid has been removed for advice on benefits, housing, divorce, debt, education and employment.Last month the budget of Citizens Advice for such cases fell from £22m to £3m. The few emergency cases still covered – families facing instant eviction – can only use a phone service, not face-to-face legal help. Law centres will close. There will be no help on school exclusions, landlord or employer harassment, or failure to pay wages." Guardian

This government is providing a false sense that the cuts are being fairly and evenly spread and nothing could be further from the truth. See Bedroom tax.

How much more of this will people blindly accept before they wake up and realise what this shocking incompetent government is doing to the people of this country?

Famous 1930's German Propaganda Poster

This is a famous poster, produced in the 1930's in Nazi Germany, it was used as a propaganda tool to victimise the disabled. Very loosely translated it says; "60,000 RM [Reich Mark] is the cost of a lifetime hereditary illness and people that is your money". The poster was used to turn the German people against disabled people by encouraging taxpayers to view the disabled as a burden upon the State - Sound familiar? How long will it be before the Tories new election strategist (Lynton Crosby) starts ordering poster campaigns against the disabled, the poor, the unemployed etc in order to feed peoples fears and insecurities?

This is what is happening today in this country, this is  the dangerous game that David Cameron and the British Conservative party are playing and this is the loaded gun they have handed Ukip!

Make no mistake, the reason why Ukip were able to do what they did in last Thursday's local elections was because of the fears that David Cameron and his cohorts in government have deliberately whipped up. Cameron and the Tories have deliberately fanned the flames of right wing ideology for Ukip and now the Tories have lost control of their own right wing agenda because Ukip has stolen it and is running away with it.

You would think that our so-called "free" press would try and accurately report on what the Conservatives are doing but no, the hostile right wing Tory supporting media are actively helping them do it and producing scaremongering banner headlines deliberately thought up to scare people and to mislead them and the BBC and most of the broadcast media have joined in too. Instead of trying to expose what this government are doing, the right wing press and broadcast media who all have their own agendas have actually published and broadcast the hate speeches of Cameron, Osborne and Clegg, Iain Duncan-Smith and other leading Tories, speeches that deliberately set out to distort the truth and deliberately mislead the public.

The reason why the press are not reporting Cameron accurately and are NOT informing the public about what is really going on is the fact that most of them are actually in cahoots with David Cameron and list the PM among their closest friends, so how can they ever hope to report accurately on what this government is doing? See HERE.

The Tories are socially cleansing our towns and cities of disabled people, poor people, unemployed people and immigrants and the elderly and they don't much care where they go or end up, or even if they have a roof over their heads. They are turning the public into a nation of malcontents using a witch hunt engineered in Downing Street. The whole process is being furthered by their mates (the editors) in the right wing press who appear happy to carry out divisive malicious campaigns against vulnerable people who find it extremely difficult to fight back.

Ukip is the party that ex BNP, NF and EDL members find no problem supporting and not one single newspaper has asked why?  Now Ukip have got hold of that mantle hate invented by Cameron and the Tories and goodness knows where it will all end up!

"Well done" David Cameron for taking an extremely dangerous gamble with the psyches of the nation and losing and now you've let the Ukip Genie out of the bottle - what now? What next? Whatever it is, there are those around who will not allow you to get away with it, make no mistake about that. You David Cameron and the Tory party will be found out, for certain you will.

Cameron Misleads Country Over Welsh NHS in PMQs

Last Wednesday in the first Prime Minister Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons for weeks, as Cameron sought to avoid facing the opposition and the country about his government's failings.

Ed Miliband made all his questions about the NHS and as usual David Cameron avoided answering them, or perhaps more to the point he chose to give answers to questions that he was not asked.

In full arrogant flow, Cameron said "we will not take the advice [on the NHS] of the party opposite" even though Labour, (the party opposite) when in government actually saved the NHS from total destruction. They had the unenviable Herculean task of finding the billions of pounds investment the NHS needed to reverse the 18 years of successive Conservative government chronic underinvestment and virtual terminal decline which began in earnest when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and continued unabated under former Conservative PM John Major.

If Labour had not won the general election of 1997 and helped pulled the NHS up by its boot straps and massivley increase investment and if it was not for the unselfish dedication and unending hard slog of health care professionals and workers between 1997 and 2010, we would have without doubt lost our NHS years ago.

During last Wednesday's PMQs exchanges between Cameron and Miliband, the prime minister made a number of accusations about the NHS in Wales rather than answer the actual questions he was asked, (which were about Accident and Emergency Departments in England) trying instead to divert attention away from the horrendous problems now emerging in the NHS in England by trying to infer that the problems in the NHS in Wales were somehow the fault of Labour.

What David Cameron did not want to tell the public was that if the NHS has been cut in Wales, it is because they had no choice, the Welsh National Assembly can only spend the money it is given by Westminster. Cameron accused the Assembly of cutting the NHS budget by 8%, yet it was  the Coalition government who cut overall funding to Wales by a massive £2bn. Also the prime minister was lying (yet again) as faced with an overall cut in funding the WA cut spending on health by 1% , not 8% as the PM said in the House of Commons. The WA can only deploy the money it is given by central government and faced with spending money on health or education, the Assembly chose to increase spending on education as over the tenure of the previous Labour government Wales had seen spending on health trebled.

There is absolutely no denying that the NHS in Wales is the responsibility of the Welsh government in Cardiff, but nevertheless it still has to work on the funding it is given to it by Westminster, and rather than use the NHS in Wales as a political football, perhaps the prime minister should acknowledge the problems his government are causing to the Welsh NHS with their massive funding cuts, rather than immediately go on the defensive and go to his default position of attack? After all he has been in government for almost three years now and he cannot continue to blame everything on the previous Labour government, especially when Labour increased funding to Wales and the Tories have cut it!

The problems that Wales are having within the NHS today are specifically because the coalition government have cut funding and the prime minister is being deeply dishonest to suggest otherwise. Further, the problems that Wales are having within their NHS are starting to emerge all over England, again as a direct result of the Tory controlled coalition government's policies. People should look to the problems in the Welsh NHS and heed them as a warning and unite and try to stop them happening in England.

Also Cameron has once again been caught out in a blatant lie!

Cameron may like to suggest he is increasing spending on the NHS but the facts are that he and his government are not only responsible for funding cuts in Wales, they are responsible for real term funding cuts in the NHS in England. He and his government have actually cut the NHS budget for two years running and he owes it to patients, staff and the general public to go to the House of Commons and make a statement correcting his misleading statements. He also needs to stop trying to shift the blame about what his government's policies have caused to the NHS and its staff and the NHS in Wales and the Labour Assembly elsewhere, when he knows that these problems are a direct result of his policies.

Cameron Rebuked By Andrew Dilnot over public expenditure on health.

Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Andrew Dilnot CBE

Rt. Hon. Jeremy Hunt MP
Secretary of State for Health
Richmond House
79 Whitehall
LONDON
SW1A 2NS
4 December 2012

Dear Mr Hunt

PUBLIC EXPENDITURE ON HEALTH

The Statistics Authority has been asked to consider, in the light of the published official
statistics, various statements made by the Prime Minister, by yourself, and on the
Conservative Party website. For example, you said in the House of Commons on 23 October
that “real-terms spending on the NHS has increased across the country”
1 and the Conservative Party website states that “we have increased the NHS budget in real terms in
each of the last two years”.
2 We are aware that there are questions of definition here. The year on year changes in real
terms have been small and the different sources, including the Department of Health Annual
Report and Accounts and the public expenditure figures issued by the Treasury, are not
necessarily exactly the same.
The most authoritative source of National Statistics on the subject would seem to be the
Treasury publication Public Spending Statistics, and I note that these figures were used in a
Department of Health Press Release in July 2012. The most recent update to those figures
was published on 31 October but the July 2012 release gives a more detailed breakdown. I
attach a note prepared by staff of the Statistics Authority summarising some of the relevant
figures from the two Public Spending releases.

On the basis of these figures, we would conclude that expenditure on the NHS in real terms
was lower in 2011-12 than it was in 2009-10. Given the small size of the changes and the
uncertainties associated with them, it might also be fair to say that real terms expenditure
had changed little over this period. In light of this, I should be grateful if the Department of
Health could clarify the statements made.

1 HC Deb, 23 October 2012, c815
2 http://www.conservatives.com/Policy/Where_we_stand/Health.aspx

I am copying this to the Cabinet Secretary, to the Permanent Secretary at the Department of
Health and to the National Statistician.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Dilnot CBE

Source: UK Statistics Authority

To date neither the prime minister or the Health Secretary have gone to the House and rectified their misleading statements, in fact the prime minister just keeps on telling the same lies and keeps on deliberately misleading the public and the Speaker allows him to get away with it.

This cut in real terms funding has led to the loss of over 7000 nursing jobs and dangerously full hospitals and over flowing Accident & Emergency Departments and will lead to the problems that Wales is currently experiencing.

Today we learn that the government are going to stop "ring fencing" the NHS, that's a joke because as we can see from the above letter from Dilnot, this government have never ring-fenced the NHS, it was all one massive lie and deliberate deception. It has also been revealed that A&E Departments in England have failed to meet their targets for 30 weeks. The government were warned months ago that the pilot schemes 111 Urgent Care hotline which replace NHS Direct, was resulting in a massive upswing of patients ending up in A & E Departments and placing a huge pressure on ambulance and fast response teams, but they did nothing. In fact I warned about it several times on this blog Here;  Here and Here

Many NHS professionals were worried about the government's intention of replacing trained NHS Direct staff with NHS 111 operators who had little or no medical experience and had often undergone just 60 hours of basic training. Andrew Lansley, the then Health Secretary said these were just pilot schemes, yet these "pilot schemes" were introduced across the country and took place without prior consultation in parliament. Since these so called schemes were introduced reports have been leaked that telephone operators unable to seek timely qualified medical opinion to help their callers have been referring them to Accident & Emergency Departments. The government has also been forced to bail out their new and troubled Urgent 111 Healthcare with £8.4 million in order to keep NHS Direct going while they try to sort out the problems that their reforms have caused in replacing NHS Direct with their confused NHS 111 version.


We are told that the government are now drawing up plans to transfer £1bn from the NHS budget into social care for the elderly, while at the same time this government who promised us faithfully there would be 'no further top down reorganisation of the NHS', before introducing reforms the biggest in the NHS 64 year history, have wasted over £3 billion on an NHS top down reorganisation that no one wanted using money could which could have been used for elderly care, instead it has been wasted and frittered away and has found its way into Tory support groups, Tory lobbying groups, Tory doning private health companies etc, all employed to find ways to privatise our NHS by stealth. Capita the huge outsourcing company who has taken over NHS Direct now known as Urgent Health Care NHS 111 has donated over £1.5 million to the Tories over a period of ten years! See HERE

The NHS is already having to find £20bn of savings, so now they will have to find a further £1bn, which will add to the already immense pressures on the NHS and this could possibly lead to further cuts in the NHS in Wales.

The radical changes introduced at the beginning of April are unlikely to be felt for a few months but when they are felt, then financial chaos could ensue and if the NHS has suddenly to find a further £1bn in costs, the implications for patients using the NHS could be dire.

The public has been catapulted into a system whereby about 30% of  CCG GPs have shares in private firms that will be bidding against the NHS for contracts. How much of this £1bn that is to be awarded to social care for the elderly is going to end up in the bank accounts of private care providers? Already these private companies have taken over from qualified community nurse teams that gave a much higher quality of care at a fraction of the price, this could lead to a further erosion of this service.The competition rules that the Tories and Lib Dems have introduced into the NHS could lead to lucrative strands of health care being cherry picked by health care companies out to make profits for their shareholders. Taxpayers money will find its way out of the NHS and into the bank accounts of shareholders, leading to further cuts in funding to the NHS as more money is taken out via the back door, the "back door" that this government aided and abetted by Liberal Democrats have opened widely for the profit making of private health companies to walk in and out of with arms full of taxpayers cash!

Yet David Cameron comes to the House of Commons and lies through his back teeth about the NHS and is allowed to get away with it.

The answer to the problems being caused in the NHS is to get this government out and allow Labour to repeal the Health and Social Care bill.

What we should all also be asking, is why our prime minister, David Cameron is consistently lying to us not just about the NHS, but about pretty much everything and why the right wing press and the broadcast media are allowing him such an easy passage!

Thatcher's Dead and The Tories Rewrite History!

I wasn't going to mark the passing of Margaret Thatcher but I had a change of heart due to the great rewriting of history since she died, by the "great and the good" (Tory sycopahnts).

I will not rejoice her death and I will respect that she was someone's mother and grandmother (even if her family couldn't be bothered to rush back to the country to be with their mother in her final hours) because to do anything different would render me a person I am not and "that woman" has already taken so much from me so I categorically refuse to allow her, even in death, to take even more.

When the news of her death broke I felt nothing, it was later that the sense of mourning came.

I mourned the closing of the coal mines, the steelworks, ship building and the loss of manufacturing. I mourned the loss council housing which is the main cause of such pain and distress today suffered by those who cannot afford to buy, cannot afford private rents and who desperately need social housing. I mourn the loss of the time before Thatcher's government started privatising everything that wasn't nailed down. I mourn the era when we had a stricken country after coming through WW2, but still managing to to build homes, the NHS and welfare state, even though rationing was still happening. I mourn the loss of a time when when  we had some sense of community and responsibility and a real want to help others less well off.
I mourn the jobs my husband (and millions like him) lost as a direct result of Thatcher's policies that killed British industry.

I don't mourn the years horrendous strain Thatcher's policies placed upon us until it finally broke our backs. I don't mourn the time when so many people thought their only option when faced with bankruptcy, redundancy, and losing their, businesses, their homes and their dignities was to commit suicide -  lest we forget, because  according to the Office National Statistics (ONS), suicide is once again on the rise and to go with that, we have another Tory government in all but name and this one is even unelected!

Do I pay respects at the loss of this divisive figure? Yes. I pay respects to the thousands of miners Thatcher made redundant and recall with deep sadness the divisions and rifts she caused in families and I hope now with "that bloody woman's" passing those terrible rifts can start to heal.

I never wanted my own children's lives or the lives of my precious precious grandchildren to be blighted like  ours were during the 18 years of Tory hell. When the Tories went out in 1997 I prayed we would never see the like of them again and then along came the - "sons of Thatcher", implementing her failed monetarist policies behaving like Thatcher on speed.

This unelected government ram austerity down the throats of the people who never caused the problems, Cameron and Osborne (like their "mother") are once again dividing society and are blaming people for being poor and are encouraging workers to turn against each other. They continually tell us that as a country we do not have any money. Then Thatcher dies and we are told by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, we can afford to waste spend upwards of £10 million on a state  ceremonial funeral for the most divisive prime minister in British history!

During the miners strike Thatcher stopped social security payments to help with miners funerals. Today people in their darkest hour and need are denied help burying their loved ones, e yet we are forced to pay over £10 million for one divisive woman's funeral?

At a time when people should have been trying to save for old age, they were struggling virtually penniless to pay ever rising bills, the poll tax. They had no hope of saving for today because they had no job, their jobs were cruelly taken away by Thatcher. She did not want to subsidise the national industries, yet like this government today, she thought nothing of subsidising her mates in corporations and financial sector. Now these people are referred to as little more than "benefit cheating scum" and "shirkers" who have never worked. They are the product of Thatcher's policies, yet suddenly the country's ills are all their fault, just as they were once the fault of the working class before under Thatcher.

This funeral today is a final smack in the teeth for the millions whose lives she totally ruined. It is a slap in the face of the workers who actually built this country, who Thatcher referred to as "the enemy within".

What about the closed pits and the derelict communities? What about the decimated shipbuilding and the Sheffield steelworks?The empty spaces in Stoke where potteries once stood? The now gone textile mills of the North West? Why did Thatcher and still her sycophantic followers today believe that having decimated British industry everyone was going to find a job selling each other "financial services"? How did she think this was ever going to happen? And one of the biggest 'hilarities' of this present unelected Tory buffoonery (government) was to come in and say "we are going to manufacture our way out of recession", where? How? yet since they came in the very small amount of manufacturing Britain had left was doing fairly well and since this government came in, that too has fallen off a cliff, it's Thatcherism repeating itself - again!

Now people are told they should show respect for Thatcher because she is someone's mother and she has died! Yes Thatcher is the mother of a daughter that refers to black people as "gollywogs" and an arms dealer son who cost this country millions when he got lost in the desert. Mark Thatcher the now 59-year-old – who was convicted in South Africa in 2005 over his involvement in a failed coup in Equatorial Guinea – has achieved a certain fresh respectability in the eyes of the world, by now being entitled to call himself "Sir" Mark.
Talk about respect, if Mark Thatcher had any kind of respect for the people of his native country he would not have dreamed of calling himself "Sir Mark", what has he ever done that is good for this country that he thinks it is OK for him to call himself this?

The title is a consequence of the bestowal on his father Denis, in Mrs Thatcher's own resignation honours as prime minister, of an unusual hereditary baronetcy. When his father died in 2003, the title passed to Mark: it was thus the last of several favours his mother did for him, thanks to her position.

 I personally would spit in his eye rather than refer to him as "Sir Mark". Just more pointless upper-class twaddle and trash and the politics of the inherited.

I was put off by the celebrations of a M. Thatcher’s death. 

Margaret Thatcher’s policies resulted in a great deal of anguish and poverty for a great many people. She was ruthless: 

“She supported the retention of capital punishment,she destroyed the country’s manufacturing industry,she voted against the relaxation of divorce laws she abolished free milk for schoolchildren, she supported more freedom for business (and look how that turned out), she gained support from the National Front in the 1979 election by pandering to the fears of immigration, she gerrymandered local authorities by forcing through council house sales, at the same time preventing councils from spending the money they got for selling houses on building new houses (spending on social housing dropped by 67% in her premiership), she was responsible for 3.6 million unemployed – the highest figure and the highest proportion of the workforce in history and three times the previous government. Massaging of the figures means that the figure was closer to 5 million….” 

I could add to this list.Her policies actually hurt people .Although I have no wish to celebrate her death I can understand how people feel, especially as we have a Tory government whose policies are mirroring Thatchers. No I do not think its about left wing people celebrating Thatchers death, I think people remember the awful time they had and are simply expressing that. I don’t think you will find anyone celebrating Major’s death. 

Written By  A.Blogger

Respect for Thatcher? Perhaps we will show respect for her in death when she can come back and show respect for what she did to the lives of millions of people and when she can rise and say she is sorry for the pain and suffering and the ruined lives she caused.

I'm not a hypocrite, I loathed everything she stood for and no amount of Sycophantic Tory MPs and Z list celebrities rewriting history will ever make me change my mind.