Tuesday, March 29, 2011

The Tories Get Sleazier and Sleazier

Having seen the footage from the Guardian, it appears UK Uncut were tricked into being arrested by the police and as the story unfurls like one of Uncut's banners, we are beginning to see why they targeted Fortnum & Mason's.

The Company behind Fortnum and Masons alleged tax problems, actively supports the Conservative party and has donated over 900.000, The company, Garfield Weston was censured for links to  the Conservative party.

The Trustees of the Garfield Weston Foundation (GWF)  were once reprimanded reprimanded by the Charity Commission for allowing an associated company to make political donations to the Conservative Party.

The Commission launched an investigation after Charity Finance revealed in July last year that Wittington Investments Limited (WIL), a company which is 79.2 per cent owned by the Foundation, had made donations totalling £800,000 between 1993 and 1999 and another of £100,000 in 2004.
This Tory-Lib dem government just keeps getting murkier and murkier and sleazier and sleazier, no wonder Nick Clegg wants to completely rebrand his party, they are becoming bogged down in the mire and being seen as complicit with Tory sleaze!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Government Forces Us Into Debt To Pay For Mad George Osborne's Insane Plans!

First a bit on the so-called closures of tax-loopholes. (I could go on to expose all the Tories that get up to this game, but I'll leave this for another day).

In last Wednesday's Budget Conservative chancellor George Osborne muttered something about tax dodgers and tax avoiding, it was hard to understand what he was saying because most of the time he was looking down and muttering and the rest of the time coughing and spluttering.
The chancellor highlighted plans to scrutinise “the taxation of very high value property, where evasion and avoidance are widespread and some of the wealthiest are found not to be paying their fair share”, along with plans to close down three forms of stamp duty land tax avoidance. However, absolutely nothing was done about the avoidance of stamp duty by companies buying residential  property - why has the chancellor not taken this opportunity to close down this tax-loophole? It is a massive loophole which allows these companies to avoid paying their correct taxes. (I am not going to cover why I think this is happening in this blog but it is something I will be exposing very soon!)
So in event of all the bluster and " tough talk" by the chancellor, it turned out as usual to be just that -*talk*, and Britain's 120,000 "non-dom" overseas taxpayers having escaped a full-blown government crackdown on their disingenuous tax affairs all breathed a collective sigh of relief!

In fact all the chancellor has done is promised to collect just £1 billion out of  approximately £120 billion per year of the tax due to the UK Treasury, that means that approximately £119 billion is going uncollected by HMRC. Multi-national companies like Vodafone have personally been allowed off of paying £6 billion in back tax to the UK Treasury by George Osborne. It should be noted that politicians of all colours promise to save this "mythical" £1 billion in tax loopholes, but strangely none of them ever seem to manage it!

George Osborne said that those who are resident in the UK but domiciled elsewhere for tax purposes will have to pay an increased levy after living in Britain for 12 years.Under the current system, non-doms are charged a £30,000 annual levy after living in Britain for seven years, in return for paying tax only on their UK earnings and monies brought into the country. The fee will now increase to £50,000 after a non-dom has been resident for 12 years. However, non-doms will pay no tax on funds remitted to the UK that are then invested in British business. (Another government manufactured tax wheeze in the making)
Not only has Osborne's move done virtually nothing to worry the non-dom status in this country, or the widespread abuse of the tax system by non-doms and multinational companies or wealthy individuals, the move is expected to boost the appeal of London as a place of residence and the new tax relief now offered by the chancellor could open up possible money laundering opportunities! Nice one George! I mean do look after your billionaire Tory financial backing mates, God forbid they ever have to put their hands in their pockets and pay their fair taxes for the good of the country that has made them rich, affluent and all powerful. Why shouldn't their miserly voices be heard in corrupt political circles over and above the ordinary citizen in this country? After all it's true money does talk, especially in rich political Tory party circles, think tanks and lobbying companies!
Whether it is intentional or not and despite announcing a so-called crackdown on tax avoidance abuse, the chancellor looks to be opening up nice comfortable tax avoidance opportunities for mega rich people. Osborne's crackdown which is predicted may raise just £1bn a year (if implemented) is just a fig leaf, really this chancellor has done non doms, tax avoiding companies and individuals a huge favour. George Osborne seems totally lacking in brain power, ability and flair and is simply unable to understand the complexities of the tax system and what his changes may mean, invariably, whenever Osborne tinkers about with something it ends up making things a lot worse, he just doesn't possess the ability o to see or understand the knock-on effect and chain of events he sets off when he messes about with something.

Bizarrely non-doms had a further reason to be cheerful as Osborne confirmed that the 50% top rate of income tax was considered a temporary measure, giving hope that this may be reduced before the end of this parliament. This tax break will be paid for by millions of people being hit hard by VAT increases, fuel increases, utility bill increases and the poorest people having their benefits cut and frozen, from pensioners winter fuel allowances to family's working tax credits, to disabled people's allowances and to the detriment of spending on health and the NHS and education. yet again another Tory chancellor is taxing the poor to pay for the rich. Individuals like Philip Green and his wife pay very little tax in relation to the billions they make in this country. Philip Green once described giving his wife (who resides partly in Monaco)  £1 billion as "a bit of housekeeping", yet Philip Green was personally asked to by David Cameron to advise the government on making cuts!

While Osborne allows his Tory friends the non-doms and leaders of multi-national companies to avoid paying their taxes, he has given a personal directive from the Treasury to all collectors of taxes to pursue relentlessly all the small businesses who are late paying their tax! Now these businesses as Osborne should know virtually all have cash flow problems caused mainly when large multi-national companies (sometimes owned by the chancellor's buddies) are months late in settling their accounts with small and medium sized businesses, it can make or break these businesses and has put many of them out of business causing them to go bankrupt and then the debts are striked. The chancellor could have done something about forcing these companies to pay their bills immediately to the smaller businesses thus easing one of their biggest problems "cash flow" but he did nothing!

In 2009 Barclays bank made billions in the UK but paid just £113 million in corporation tax! Yet a small business with a very small turnover is stung by a £33.000 tax bill, where is the fairness in the UK tax system?
According to 38 degrees George Osborne could have helped claw back some of the taxes owed to the UK by three simple measures.

  1. Transparency - By forcing companies to publish their accounts for every country they operate in. (This is done in the US)
  2. General anti-avoidance principle, forcing people to act withing the spirit of the law and not just the letter of the law.
  3. To close the loophole that allows large UK companies to run their Treasury Functions outside the UK and therefor dodge paying billions of pounds in tax.
The chancellor did none of the above, which shows he is simply uninterested in making these large companies pay - I'll go into why at a later date.
Last week's budget we all saw not for the first time this chancellor practicing sleight of hand and a blog called sturdyblog explains how we are going to be forced into debt to pay for the chancellor's plans to reduce the deficit. I hope they do not mind but this needs to be widely circulated.

Ahead of Osborne’s emergency budget, the forecast of the OBR for household debt (i.e. the money an average UK household owes, incl. secured loans like mortgages) had been:


This showed a predicted decrease of household debt as a percentage of household income, from 150% in 2010 to 143% in 2014. This had to be revised for Osborne’s emergency budget:


The decrease is now less sharp between 2010 (151%) and 2014 (146%)  and actually flat-lines in the last three years of the forecast. Ahead of Osborne’s recent budget, however, as the cuts bite and growth stutters, the OBR had to issue a correction, dramatically revising their forecasts to: 


Not only are they no longer looking at a decrease in household debt. They are looking at a STONKING 14% increase over the next five years. In money terms, almost £500 billion is being added to MINE and YOUR personal debt. And this doesn’t even take into account the inevitable, approaching interest rate hike.
Tax Research UK Says:  "So the government is going to cut its debt. And as I noted they’re going to do that by increasing taxes at way over the rate of inflation, whilst cutting services.
And how is the equation squared? Why, they’re now predicting we’ll go into debt to pay for it.
I guess that’s one way to prepare RBS and Lloyds for privatisation.
But make no mistake - what this really means is that the groundwork for the next crash is being laid out in the government’s  own plans as borrowing becomes the only way people can feed and house themselves and their families. Irresponsible lending will follow, and we all know where that leads.
I am sickened at their sheer gall. So should everyone else. And full marks to Sturdyblog for spotting this. "


Put this in simple terms  we seeing here compelling evidence that the government is relying on large swathes of the population to borrowing money to stay alive to help get the country out of debt. In which case, we in this country are heading helter skelter towards another banking crisis with mad George Osborne at the wheel! Who will he blame that on? Don't tell me Labour!

Britain's Involvement In Libya - Is It "Mission Creep"?

Libya
What Next Mr Cameron?
There has been a lot written about Britain’s involvement in Libya, I do not entirely agree that we should be there, however, we are where we are so now I believe questions must be asked about what we do next, especially as the US is handing over control of the mission over to Nato.
I am alarmed by some of the comments emanating from the Tory government. We now seem to be embarking on “mission creep”.  At the beginning of this venture the prime minister, David Cameron said that our only aim in taking part in the implementation of a no-flight zone was to protect the Libyan civilians from the threats of mass slaughter from Libyan leader Col. Gaddafi.  However, the government now seems to have surreptitiously crept from saying we are in Libya to protect the Libyan citizens, to being there to “help the rebels”. This is concerning, how exactly will we be helping the rebels? Who are these so-called “rebels”? What do we know about them? From what I can see at the very best they can be described as a bunch of militia, with very little if any plan for when and if they do depose of Gaddafi. They ride about in trucks with heavy weaponry and seem to shoot off their guns into the air at a moment’s notice and for no particular reason, are our special forces already in Libya on the ground helping these “militia”? If this is so then David Cameron is misleading the country over a grave matter such as war when he told us we would not be entering ground forces in Libya. Are we helping to depose of a leader when there is absolutely no infrastructure of democracy to take his place? If so just what are we condemning the Libyan people to and to whom? Mr Cameron has said how Libya is run is a matter for the Libyan people, of course it is, who in the democratic West could argue with that statement? However, is it right to help rebels depose of a leader when there is absolutely no plan for who takes his place? Libya cannot run itself, our wish to help the Libyan people could turn into the worse of nightmares for them, having helped depose of Gaddafi, can we in all honesty just walk away and leave them to the almost certain continuation of a civil war in a divided Libya?  To stay in Libya would mean occupying another country and we would be in for the long protracted haul and almost certainly we would not be welcomed by the Libyan people as an occupying force, even if it were because we were worried about events post Gaddafi – this is why I thought we should not have become involved in another country’s civil war. Once again I feel we have rushed in to “help” with no exit strategy in place and whether Gaddafi is eventually overthrown, or he stays in Tripoli, our involvement looks to be for the foreseeable future.
Which brings me neatly to the cost of the mission, if we stay for the long haul the cost is open ended, even if we stay for a shorter time the cost of being in Libya is colossal. Perhaps the time to exit gracefully is now we have apparently “helped rebels” push Gaddafi back, before we become to bogged down and get to a point where we are simply unable to walk away?
Regarding the cost, we are constantly being told by this Tory-led government that labour left the country’s finances in a mess, they use dumbing down phrases like “the country’s credit card is maxed out”, however, the government know, as we all know this is totally untrue, again this government are guilty of deliberately misleading the British people in order to make their ideological cuts, they found £10 billion to give to Ireland, they will now find further billions to help bail Portugal out, £10 billion to international aid, £100 million to waste on a voting reform referendum, more millions for Mr Cameron to pay pollsters to ask us all how happy we are etc. and now we are just expected to believe that we have billions kicking around in special reserves to help us fight other people’s civil wars, at present it is costing upwards of £5 million per day to “help unknown gun toting militia rebels” and £900.000 each time we fire off one single missile in Col. Gaddafi’s general whereabouts. How dare this government even imply this country was bankrupt or even near bankrupt when we obviously were not? Once again we have this Tory-led government deliberately misleading the British people, what we do have in Britain however, is a “morally bankrupt” government that thinks nothing of lying to and misleading its own people.
While we are in Libya spending millions per day “helping unknown rebels” to do goodness knows what to the Libyan people in the future, our own people are beginning to suffer back home. We are expected to swallow the medicine of these Tory born ideological cuts as necessary for all our futures, while each and every day our government is firing off missiles into the Libyan night somewhere in the vague direction of Col. Gaddafi at £900.000 per time and zooming over the heads of terrified Libyan women and children in jet fighter planes. If we can find billions of pounds at a moment’s notice to fight someone else’s civil war, then we can find money to fund our children’s Sure Start Centres, pensioners Winter Fuel Allowances and build new school buildings, charge students a fair price for their tuition and STOP the privatisation of our NHS and halt the selloff of all our public services and stop the degrading despicable assault on those unfortunate enough to have to claim disability benefits, stop attacking the unemployed as if they are somehow unclean and stop constantly picking on, demoralising and demonising our public servants.
Yesterday in London the government had a wake-up call when over 500.000 people marched to peacefully demonstrate against the government cuts, the government ignore us at its peril. This government ought now to come clean about what it is actually doing in Libya and what it actually hopes to achieve.

Nailed The Great Tory Lie On Labour's "Cuts".



The Hapless, Hopeless, Clueless British Tory
 "Tax Dodging" Chancellor
On His Ultra Expensive Skiing Holiday
We hear, see and read it several times per day from various "Tory mouthpieces" that Labour's cuts which also would have been due to start next April  are only marginally smaller than the Tories. Does anyone see the obvious here? Once again we are seeing this deeply duplicitous, deeply dishonest Tory-led government intentionally misleading the British public.
If this is so concerning Labour's proposed cuts, then why do the Tories on one hand accuse Labour of having no plan for reducing the deficit while on the other, and in direct contrast, accuse them of planning cuts only marginally smaller than the Tories and Liberals efforts? The actual truth is that of course Labour was going to introduce cuts to tackle the deficit and no doubt there would have been pain, no cuts are painless, no matter what the Tories and their buddies like columnist Stephen Glover in the hysterically right wing Daily Mail will try to convince you about, however Labour's plan was to halve the deficit in 4 years, making for a much smoother less painful deficit reduction. Following labour's plans the deficit would have been reduced by half and we would have seen employment steady. If Labour's plans were followed we could also have expected to see growth  probably at least 3% higher than it will be under the Tories, indeed if we have a further continuation of last quarter when growth under this Tory-led government stalled and went into reverse and contracted by 0.6%. The Tory excuses are coming thick and fast, it's the weather, the wrong kind of snow, the snow was deeper than expected, it was too cold, too wet, too icy (it was winter, what did he expect?) if that is so then why did consumers refuse to put their hands in their pockets well into February? There was no snow then, however, now it is the fault of fuel costs and mainly the fault of col Gaddafi in Libya. this reckless government have not only take the generous support offered by the leader of the Labour opposition, they then turned around and even tried to blame the problems in Libya on the last Labour government!  this Tory-led government has no class, no style, it is brash, ignorant and arrogant and not only are the public beginning to realise this, the British public are now also realising that with this Tory government when things go wrong it is always someone else's fault, but it isn't, the blame for the way the British economy is in decline right now lays firmly at the door of the Conservative party, Cameron, Osborne and Clegg and their certifiably insane policies.

The VAT rise will cost families with children £450 this year alone, how will empty purses, wallets and pockets help to boost the flagging British economy?
Tax credits and child benefit will be frozen from April, this going to have a serious effect on local economies, as people receiving these benefits traditionally spend a larger proportion of their income and that gets spent mainly in their local economy.
Families are also struggling with soaring petrol prices and with the VAT rise adding 3p per litre, people are struggling to move around and more significantly people are struggling to get to work, the cross-over where work becomes totally untenable for many is fast approaching, what does George Osborne have to say about this?
Utility bills are soaring and are set to get higher still and not only is this going to be a struggle for the elderly to keep warm in the coming winter months, so it will for the disabled and chronically sick, as well as having a disastrous effect on families once again.
As consumers reined in their spending our economic growth stalled and contracted by 0.6% last quarter, with world events as they are the UK growth is now under serious threat. Unemployment is rising again it is now at a 17 year high at over 2.5 million and on budget day the chancellor tried to bury bad news when he purposefully omitted to mention that his own supposedly "independent" newly formed Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) released figures that it is expecting a further huge increase in unemployment as all the public workers start losing their jobs as a direct result of this government.  The last time unemployment was this high was in fact when the Tories were last in power. 
Almost one million young people are now out of work and with the cuts to youth services that this government are making, this figure is set to keep rising.

When Labour were still in office in 2010 and the country was just emerging from almost a global depression we were just coming out of certainly the worse recession since the 1930s, coupled with a banking crisis that also affected many other countries, however due to Labour policies things were actually improving. We were following a plan devised by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling and it was working.

The great lie the Tories have been putting out is that  this *GLOBAL* recession and banking crisis is somehow the fault of one man - Gordon Brown and the Labour government. It is not just politics to blatantly lie and put out spurious comments like this, it is deliberately misleading the British people and the Tories and their "friends" like Rupert Murdoch of the rabid right wing press were actively pursuing a programme of disinformation and a personal vendetta against Gordon Brown! However, it turns out that out of the three leaders taking part in those leadership debates prior to the last election, only one man was telling the truth -  Gordon Brown.

At that time:
Growth - was stronger than expected and growing stronger.
Unemployment - overall was falling.
Housing market -  beginning to pick up.
Construction - picking up.
Government borrowing was expected to be £20 billion LESS.

Under Labour the truth is that things were beginning to improve, now barely 10 months into this new Tory-led administration and since Labour's policies and economic measures have been stripped out of the economy by  George Osborne, our economy is in reverse, this should tell the government that their policies are not working and that they should ease up, and ease up quickly, but they are ignoring all the signs, this from the government that made much out of saying they will listen to the people.

By contrast the US economy which adopted a similar strategy to the last Labour government grew faster than first thought in the final months of 2010, according to their Commerce Department.
Growth figures for the fourth quarter of 2010 have been revised upward to 3.1% from the 2.8% previously reported.
These are all encouraging and positive signs, although the economy is expected show slower growth in the first quarter of 2011, in part due to higher oil prices.
For the final three months of 2010, consumer spending grew at an annual rate of 4%, the strongest quarter for four years.
Residential construction was growing at an annual rate of 3.3% in the final three months of the year after plunging at a 27.3% rate in the July-September quarter.

Taking the US economy in consideration there is absolutely no reason to believe that labour would not have been successful, after all they did have the recovery underway using their policies before they lost the election and were forced to hand it over to the Tories and their little Liberal orange fig leaves. Now it is indisputable that the British economy is not only faltering it is now in reverse and as usual the Conservative chancellor is trying to blame  labour for his own mistakes, but the facts above show a completely different picture.

Last week city economists said the British economy 1.7% forecast for 2011 looked realistic but warned that the chancellor is relying on a sharp pick-up in growth in future years to bring the public finances into balance. In 2013 and 2014, the OBR is expecting growth of 2.9%. given this chancellors policies and their epic fail, how likely is that to happen?

I have long since been predicting that if Osborne's crazy policies do not work and the deficit is increasing not decreasing, his only plan B will be to come back to the British people and present yet another budget of cuts. Osborne once famously said that he was going to Ireland to "look, listen and learn about their economy", I sincerely hope he has learned the Irish lesson of cutting too much from corporation tax and cutting too far, too deep, because if he tries the same here 9and all the indications are that he will) then our economy will not only be in recession but in danger of slipping into depression.
(I am still puzzled as to why Osborne borrowed £10 billion to loan to Ireland to bail their banks out, but when he was in opposition he opposed the bailing out of British banks?!) Incidentally the UK's likelihood of ever seeing that money returned from Ireland is virtually nil. It now looks as if this government has now pushed us into the position of being forced to help bail Portugal out to the tune of billions as well as fighting a war in Libya which is costing us upwards of £5 million per day and firing missiles at the cost of £900.000 per time, how did our government get us involved in this fiasco which will end up costing Britain billions? Meanwhile our government is taking away up to £100 winter fuel allowance from Britian's pensioners!

Howard Archer, of Global Insight, said that could mean more tax rises or spending cuts in future years if the economy underperforms and there is every sign that the UK economy is not only going to underperform, there are signs of a complete disaster, which this hopeless, hapless chancellor is ignoring, It is almost as if this government is a government of Tory economic failure deniers!

If this government will not listen then it is time we made them listen. They should be reminded they are not a majority government, they are only being propped up by the hapless Liberal Danny Alexander and his Tory mouthpiece leader Nick Clegg. They have forced their MPs into a position where they feel they have no alternative but to back this feckless Tory government. You get the sense that Clegg has done this for his own personal agenda, and last week when he was still wearing his mic after speaking with David Cameron at a Boots somewhere in the Midlands (another secret location) he was overheard saying "keep doing this and we will have nothing to bloody disagree about in the bloody leadership debates", which speaks volumes about how far Clegg has merged with the Tories, add to this the fact that he allowed the orange Liberal bird logo to become blue at the Liberal's spring conference, remaining Liberal Democrats should be very worried indeed which direction their party is now heading.

Thanks to the Tories and the Liberals, the UK is now on a collision course of complete economic disaster to say nothing of fully privatised public services and a privatised NHS - who gave them a mandate to do this?

Time for a general election and if this government are so confident they have the will of the British people then they will stop trying to hide behind the Liberals, stop trying to gerrymander the electoral boundaries and parliament trying to fix themselves a full 5 years in parliament and seek a proper working majority.

There is misery being caused by this  Tory-led government's dogmatism and incompetence and it is completely unnecessary and yesterday hundreds of thousands of people sent a clear unambiguous message to the government.

You Are A Snivelling Coward George Osborne

George Osborne Pay Your Taxes You
Greedy Snivelling Coward!
George Osborne has often been called a "Courageous Chancellor" by David Cameron and the Tories "mates" in the right wing press, but reducing "The Cold Weather Payment" from £250 back to £200 for people aged  60 and reducing by a £100 for those pensioners 80 years and over and hiding it in the small print and not mentioning it in his Budget Speech was the act of a coward. Osborne could not face his own shame, he knows this and is why he coughed and spluttered all the way through his duplicitous and dishonest budget.
Add into the mix that Osborne is introducing all these disastrous cuts that will inflict real pain and devastating change on so many millions of people, while hiring a team of accountants for himself and his siblings in order to find them ways of NOT paying the full inheritance tax due, shows that Osborne is not only a coward but he is a greedy and selfish coward.
When Gordon Brown was chancellor he did not just award 80 year olds £100 extra out of the goodness of his heart, he took advice from age concern groups and geriatricians etc and was told this particular age group is more vulnerable to the perils of hypothermia.

George Osborne should not only pay his taxes to his own UK Treasury department, he should also hang his head in shame - he is a greedy snivelling deceitful coward.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Pensioners Winter Fuel Allowance Docked

George Osborne
Cuts Pensioners Winter Fuel Allowance
Yet FAILS to Pay His Own Taxes!
What George Osborne did not mention in his sleight of hand budget is that he is cutting £100 off of pensioners winter fuel allowance for 80 years old and over. What a great way to thank the people that have worked a life time for this country.

George Osborne you have no shame - pay your taxes!

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Corporation Tax - Raise in Bank Levy - HUGE Con by Conservative Government.

Listening to the chancellor gloating about reducing corporation tax, again have just spotted a huge con. He said that he is reducing corporation tax but is raising the bank's levy to off-set the lower corporation tax. This is a colossal sleight of hand by the chancellor, Barclays bank in 2009 made billions of pounds in profit yet it paid just £113 million pounds corporation tax. So it really does not matter how much corporation tax is lowered, if there remains loopholes in which banks like Barclays can use to pay less corporation tax, it matters NOT what corporation tax is set at!

The Tories "Handy" War

David Cameron
Looking For His "Falklands"
(Just Like Mummy Thatcher!)
David Cameron's star was beginning to slip, almost as fast as the prime minister's grip on reality. Not known for his judgement, it appears he has had another lapse of the same, this time if his "handy" war in Libya fails the prime minister's judgement is likely to be exposed in a spectacular fashion.

With Gaddafi in power and seems to have been at the bottom of some terrorist attacks in Britian spanning over the past 40 years, I ask why now has this suddenly been pushed up the agenda and become all important to mainly France and the UK? On the face it they say (whoever "they" are), it is because it is a humanitarian act to save the Libyan people from certain massacre. However, I think this is just the political spin, it is not much to do with saving Eastern Libyans, it has to do with regime change and of course oil.

So okay, we have implemented a no-fly zone over Libya with the help of the USA, now what? Gaddafi is firmly ensconced in Tripoli with his supporters around him, what happens next? Does anyone actually believe that Gaddafi will just pack his bags like a good little despot and toddle off to exile somewhere? I hope he does, for the sake of the Libyan people I hope with all my heart that he does, but somehow I just do not see it, from what I have learned of Gaddafi, he means it when he says he will die before he leaves Libya and so do his sons, so if this is true what next? A no-fly zone and air strikes will not be able to reach Gaddafi, unless they have a "lucky strike", but that is debatable, he is surrounded by Libyan civilians, so targeting him with missiles is out of the question, whether you believe those civilians are there of their own free will or not, is neither here nor there, the fact is they are there, so what next? Gaddafi has now broken the second cease fire, he is now open flouting all the threats the might of the West and some of the Arab league can throw at him, the coalition may be winning the war of air strikes but Gaddafi is wining the war of words hands down. Yes he may be unbalanced, that does not change that fact that he still has the west of Libya as allies and hundreds of thousands of people as his supporters so he is still winning, so what next?

Do the coalition just pack up and go home saying they have been successful in pushing Gaddafi's forces back? If they do this then just as Christmas comes each year, Gaddafi will advance on the east of Libya before the last coalition jet has touched down back home, before debriefing Gaddafi will again be attacking the east of his country. Death threats and general threats do not scare Gaddafi, he just doesn't fear the loss of his own life, and neither do his sons, so how do you take on someone like Gaddafi and his sons? In his own mind we are wrong, we are the aggressors and we are the ones who once again are poking our collective noses into the affairs of another country, he firmly believes that he has right on his side, so taking on someone who is unafraid of death, unafraid of the consequences of being caught and who undoubtedly believes that he has right on his side, is a very difficult prospect.

The coalition forces know only too well that they will be unable to leave Libya until Gaddafi and his sons have been caught, arrested, charged and sent to the Hague to stand trial for human rights abuses and war crimes etc., so what they are saying about there being no ground forces is just a lie, if there is to be some kind of ending for Gaddafi in Libya, then he has to be caught and regime change forced, that cannot be achieved unless there are forces on the ground in Libya. If the coalition were hoping that after a few air strikes Gaddafi was going to retreat and allow a bunch of hopeful "rebels" to just come in and overthrow him and hand him over for a western type trial, they should think again - hastily, because that is never going to happen. As much as the eastern Libyans may hate Gaddafi, I very much doubt they will want the West getting their hands on him, what they will do if (and it is a huge if, a colossal if) they get hold of him is probably torture and murder him, what then? Do we then go after those rebels and put them on trial for war crimes? Or do we turn a blind eye to their murder and torture of another human being?

Today it has been announced that President Obama is looking to hand control of this mission over to someone else within the next few days, this speaks volumes, obviously Obama does not want to get caught up in a long protracted battle in Libya, he knows this is what is the strong likelihood so he is getting out now while he can. Apparently (so we are told) Nato is the likely recipient of control of this mission, but I have my doubts, for this to happen all countries need to be in agreement, with Germany and France openly bickering, China, Russia etc all dragging their heals and Turkey obviously displeased with what is happening and the Arab league's absolute reluctance to get involved further, for that to happen a minor miracle will have to take place. So where to now? If the Arab league pull out where does this leave Britain and France? Do we stay and police the no-fly zone with Gaddafi flouting it daily? How long is Britain going to stay in Libya? If we go in on the ground we will almost certainly lose the backing of the Libyans in the east who up until now have backed these air strikes. So what then?

If by some miracle Gaddafi is deposed of what then does this mean for Libya? They have no opposition party to take control of their government, they have no democratic infrastructure in place, in a country suddenly deposed of its despotic leader after 42 years, how does Libya in the immediate presence function as a country and let us not forget the other parts of the country. What happens if Gaddafi goes? Who takes over? The rebels? If so then who exactly are the rebels and who exactly have we aligned ourselves with in this fight against Gaddafi? What do we know about these people? Are they capable of taking over the running of a country as huge as Libya? Who is going to impose an interim government on Libya? The Arab League? Countries who are presiding over their human rights abuses. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemin, what is happening to people in these countries who are also trying to rise up against their governments? They are being shot at and killed, yet no one is doing anything about them.

I would like to ask our prime minister David Cameron what exactly has he got us and this country into in Libya and why? Isn't it a striking incidence when the two most gung-ho leaders, President Sarkozy of France and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britian are two leaders whose popularity is slipping along with people's perception of their integrity and their competence? President Sarkozy is up for re-election soon!

Both Sarkozy and Cameron wanted this action in Libya badly, it has served as a distraction for their people and their domestic issues, it has taken attention away from what Cameron is doing to the Welfare state, the NHS, education and police, he is in the process of ripping the guts out of Britain and replacing it with his Tory doning mates private companies, pretty soon Britain will be run by a board of directors all with their snouts in the Tory trough. and the situation in Libya will be worse then when we went rushing in to "help".

Civil war is set to rage in a divided Libya for the foreseeable future, how many people will lose their lives then? And all for what? So David Cameron could use the plight of the eastern Libyan people and try to increase his popularity, just like his "mummy" Thatcher did with the Falklands war. Incidentally David Cameron took  this action without first having the decency to come to the House and explain what was happening, just like Thatcher did with the Falklands. That is another broken promise, before the election Cameron promised he would consult with parliament and the people about such actions again - he lied.

Nick Clegg
Leader of The Liberal Party
(But for how long?)
What about the Liberals (as Clegg now likes them to be called?) Where do  they stand? They opposed the Iraq war which was carried out for much the same reasons but with the added complication that quite possibly Saddam could have blown people to bits, or murdered and maimed people using weapons of mass destruction, be they chemical, bacterial or nuclear, which was always quite possible as he had carried out such an atrocity before with chemical weapons in Halabja, yet the Liberal democrats (the not part of government) voted against action in Iraq, so I am wondering how they can possibly justify sanctioning this action in Libya? It really does seem hypocritical to me, or are we to believe the Liberals in government really are just blatant opportunists hungry for power after so long out of government and would do or say anything to keep themselves in their ministerial cars and other trappings of power?

And no one seems to be addressing if Gaddafi stays in power, or leaves power, that the threat of terrorist attacks on this country have significantly increased!

Monday, March 21, 2011

NHS Reforms and Tory Donors - What Does Liberating the NHS Really Mean?

The information you are about to read has mainly come from research on the internet and is readily available in the public domain and I will list the main sources below, however, some is from direct sources which I cannot list in order to protect them.

 "Liberating the NHS"

Amid other reforms of services crucial to the wellbeing of our people, the Tory-led government are trying to railroad their NHS reforms through parliament, without proper consultation and without the  proper scrutiny of parliament. In fact they have already implemented a lot in the reforms before the bill has even been passed by parliament, showing an arrogant disregard for parliament and the British constitution. Although this arrogant disregard is in itself  alarming enough it is by far not the real cause for concern. It has been an eye opener discovering how the Tories in particular, like to do shady deals with bankers, arms dealers, and hedge "funders" who all incidentally donate to the Tory party, or are connected in some other inexplicable way to the Conservative party, in this report we are going to concentrate on the NHS, and try to show the biggest threat facing the NHS today is coming from the Tories, individual donors with agendas to push and private healthcare providers.

 For this purpose I am going to be using some of the text of a video I came across  to show you the extent of the involvement and connections of our politicians today.  The video is quite the most brilliant piece of investigative work I have come across, but as well as that I am going to include other material I have put together from a variety of sources which I have researched. I aim to keep exposing the Tory party, because I truly believe in my opinion that although no government is whiter than white, this particular Tory government has corruption at its very heart. I will give links throughout the report indicating where I obtained some of the information from.

Anyone writing a blog or any kind of report is absolutely free to use any material shown on this blog, as long as it is to expose the Tories and help rid this country of this kind of bent and twisted government, all I ask is that you provide a link back here, this report has taken considerable effort and research, I don't want thanks, I just want people to be made aware so we can unite and fight for our NHS (and other public services). This coming week is a very important week, George Osborne is set to deliver a budget that will give private firms the right to run just about every single public service apart from our courts and security. Schools, hospitals, the police are sitting targets for privatisation, they call it small government, but what do the Tories actually mean by big and small government?

Have you heard of  "Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein? It is well worth reading and in it we get some sense of what the Tories are actually trying to do to our society, make no mistake, this is no conspiracy, take a look around you, listen to them, really listen to what they are saying, they are manipulating the public into believing something which does not really exist. How else would they be able to get you to accept the most draconian policies? The Tories are trying to get us to accept the dismantling of big government and trying to have us believe that this is a good thing. The Tories hate big government, because big government means taxing the rich to provide services for the majority of people, ie healthcare, education, welfare etc, if none of us paid taxes we simply would not have a welfare state, The Tories have always been looking for ways to get out of looking after people, but they could not come out and say this because if they did they would never have got elected, so they have done it this way, they have used the deficit as a form of shock to get you to accept a whole massive range of measures you would never normally accept. If you think that small government is brilliant and you will have more cash in your pocket that is fine, and you think you can go it alone and buy in all the services your family needs from the cradle to the grave in education, health, welfare etc, good luck to you - the majority cannot afford it. I will show on here that behind the Tories dismantling of the welfare state, education and our NHS etc lies other reasons and these will be exposed as you read through this report, maybe at the end of it and you have seen what is going on out of public view within the Tory party, and how people stand to gain out of your money and your social, mental and physical wellbeing, you may not think that "big government" is such a good thing after all!

What do the the Tories mean when they say they are "Liberating the NHS"?  Simply, "liberating the NHS in Tory terms means unprecedented cuts in quality and quantity of NHS services, job losses and denial of accountability.

How deep does the financial backing of the Conservative party by private healthcare companies really go? I'll provide as much information here in one place and leave you to make your own minds up.

GPs do not want to undertake this work they are not accountants, so they are being encouraged by the government to outsource this accountancy work to outsourcing companies like KPMG.

The NHS is suffering greatly with this government. People don't realise just what is happening. There have been whole departments just closed and in Liverpool alone so many people will lose their jobs on the 31st of March, in fact this will just be the start of it and this is going to have a huge impact on frontline services everywhere, take a good long look at your local accident and emergency department, it may not be there for you to use freely next time you need its services. What is the reason for this? The reason is that the Tories want to get rid of the NHS as part of their parring down of "big government".

NHS will be competing with the private sector for every bit of healthcare provided by the NHS.
Liberating the NHS is just another name for a radical assault on the NHS. It really means – unprecedented cuts; job losses; denial of accountability and privatisation. It means liberating the NHS budget to hand it over to the corporate sector.
Groups of for profits companies are circling the NHS wanting a cut of that £100 billion pound budget and thanks to the Tories, prime minister David Cameron, chancellor George Osborne, deputy pm Nick Clegg and the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, these Private Commissioning Companies are pretty close to getting what they want.
These companies hire lobbying agencies and think tanks who they pay to push their agenda with our MPs. Lansley's white paper has been heavily criticized for opening the doors of the NHS to private FOR profit companies. The extent of Andrew Lansley and David Cameron's involvement with such agencies is really quite astonishing.
NHS care has always been provided primarily by NHS providers this means that NHS institutions which by their nature are accountable to the public. Hospitals are NHS institutions and are accountable to the public. Unless the Tories are stopped very soon this is going to change to a system called “any willing provider” this means that anyone who wants to tender to deliver an NHS services can put in a bid and that of course in this context this means the private sector. So the NHS will be competing with the private sector for every single bit of NHS care that is delivered. At the same time another major change in NHS care is GPs are going to be handed the lion share of the NHS budget (approximately £80 billion) to buy or commission services/care for their population, the trouble is that most GPs don’t want to do it, don’t have the time to do it and don’t have the skills to do it, so this is yet again another opportunity for the private health companies, which means another opportunity for private companies to come in and get their hands on lucrative NHS contracts, from accountancy firms, legal firms right through to someone selling pharmaceuticals to GPs. Understandably many GP’s do not want to take over this role of accountancy and searching for the best deal, or service etc, so they are being encouraged by the government to give that work to private commissioning companies and outsourcing companies like Serco, Capita and KPMG and Unitedhealth and they will hold that huge £80 billion budget. AS WELL as this, the Tories are forcing the NHS to CUT services by a further £20 billion. I have been told that this £20 billion will come off of the existing £100 billion health budget, so GPs and hospital trusts may already be looking at a £20 billion cut BEFORE they start! Although the Tories want to talk in terms of "savings" and NOT "cuts", CUTS are exactly what these are, do not allow them to lie to you and fool you.
The majority of these big private healthcare provider companies who are circling our NHS are American and these very same companies who have been spending a billion dollars per day to lobby against President Obama's healthcare reforms, why? Simply because they know they stand to lose money if America adopts a system similar to the British NHS. Who has been helping these companies in their war of words against adopting a British style NHS? No other than British MEP Daniel Hannan, who is a close friend of prime minister David Cameron. Who put Hannan up to this? Has Hannan been taking money from lobbyists? Hannan caused outrage in the UK when he began trashing our NHS on American TV and his mate Dave was forced to go on TV and defend the NHS, but it was allowed to drop there, but this did not stop Hannan, he carried on doing this. What TV new network did Hannan appear on in America? Fox News, which is owned of course by News corporation and Rupert Murdoch, both Rupert and his son James are close friends of David Cameron (Google Andy Coulson Cameron's former chief of communications to see just how close!). It is no secret that Rupert Murdoch does not like big government and his close friendship with Cameron could be the reason why he gave over prime air time to Hannan, who used data pre labour's reforms which was out of date to rubbish the NHS and cause widespread panic in America about our healthcare. However, questions and an investigation should be mounted to see if and if so just how much "in hock" to these healthcare providers Tory MEP Daniel Hannan actually is.
Here is a quote from Andrew Lansley when he was in opposition;

In UK there are many ways that these companies lobby our politicians, they employ lobbyists, they employ their own lobbyists, they pay agencies, they pay think tanks, they lobby through trade associations, but crucially they close to our decision makers by employing political insiders and United Health UK is no exception, its vice president in the UK is someone called Simon Stevens who was health policy advisor to Tony Blair and the architect behind New labour’s NHS reforms. Lobbying is a huge industry and lobbyists are engaged in an attempt to manage the political process, they cannot do this without having contact with people inside politics, with ministers, civil servants, MPs, connections to the House of Lords. This means lobbyists want to get very close to them so what happens is that people will move from working as a Labour party researcher, or as a Tory party spin doctor into a think tank, or a lobbying agency as part of their career progression, they might then move back and become an MP or a special adviser, they may even become a minister and at the end of their ministerial career they may move swiftly off to Europe with a big health care corporation like for example Patricia Hewett did with Boots.
Lets start naming some names.

Westminster Advisers, which is a lobbying agency in London which exists to push their agendas with politicians have been hired by the big five big private hospital companies in the UK. They have formed a lobby group called H5, they employ their own political insiders and the person who works on the H5 account is a former Liberal Democrat speech writer to the former Lib Dem shadow cabinet. Westminster Advisers is literally one of hundreds of lobbying agencies that exist in London most who are within 10 minutes of parliament. The lobbying industry in the UK is a £2 billion industry which is overwhelmingly paid for by huge corporations, a large part of this is health care.  Corporations who want to make money out of providing healthcare services and pharmaceuticals etc. will hire a lobbying agency to push their agendas with politicians on the inside of government decision making. Two billion pounds to these large corporations is virtually nothing, they spend it on lobbying companies to enable them to make larger profits.
Edelman Public Relations and Lobbying Company-  it has 55 employees working in its dedicated health department. It lobbies for amongst others BUPA, AstraZenica and Pfizer.  
According to its entry in Who's Who in Public Affairs 2006, Edelman Public Affairs' “vantage point provides clients with the insights they need to shape policy at the national and global level… We help them to form relationships with legislators, officials, special interest groups and sovereign governments to achieve their economic and political objectives… orchestrating a wide range of strategies and tactics including research, coalition building, stakeholder mobilisation, media relations and grassroots activities.

Edelman Breaching the lobbyists code

In September 2007, The Sunday Times reported that Edelman Public Affairs lobbied the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in July 2006 on behalf of a client, Pelcombe. At the time, Heather Rogers, wife of John Hutton, then secretary of state for DWP, was a director at Edelman. Pelcombe subsequently secured contracts with the DWP. Edelman failed to register its relationship with the firm on the Association of Professional Political Consultants’ (APPC) register – a breach of the APPC’s code of conduct.
The Sunday Times reported: “In a proposal drawn up by Edelman in July last year (2006), the lobbying firm offered to fix meetings for Pelcombe’s managing director with MPs and Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) officials “for the joint purpose of building relationships and gathering intelligence on current and future policy”. It added: “Targets are to be selected from the existing ‘political contact list’ as appropriate.” The Sunday Times reports that it was initially told by a source at Edelman that Pelcombe was “Heather’s client” and that she had introduced the firm to the lobbyists. This was later retracted.
Edelman's failure to register Pelcombe as a client is in breach of the APPC’s code of conduct includes a requirement for member agencies to disclose their clients and consultants.The then chairman of the APPC, Gill Morris, accepted Edelman’s apology for the “oversight” and the remedial action the company agreed to take. Michael Burrell, Edelman’s Europe vice-president is a member of the APPC’s management committee.

 Lobbying can overwhelm the democratic structure of our government, certain interests can dominate by spending lots of money or by being able to populate the area around the decision makers, so of course what our decision makers are constantly hearing is from special interests and not concerns from citizens.
QUILLER CONSULTANTS - Lord Chadlington and David Cameron. Next door to the Queen at Buckingham Gate is a company called Quiller consultants which is own by Lord Chadlington who is a very close ally to David Cameron, it lobbies for among others a private equity firm heavily invested in healthcare and also Capita  which is a huge outsourcing company which is involved in the NHS.  Lord Chadlington admitted priming four private equity leaders before they gave evidence to a highly charged Commons inquiry. Lord Chadlington, who bankrolled Mr Cameron’s leadership bid, helped senior figures from Permira, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, 3i and Carlyle to prepare for an appearance before the Treasury Select Committee on June 20, 2007 Quiller Consultants are the people lobbying on behalf of capita etc. are also incredibly connected to the Conservative party. George Bridges and David Cameron's Band of Etonian Brothers , George Bridges was invited by David Cameron to run his general election campaign, and also employed, is the former chief of staff  of Theresa May and an ex strategist from the department of health, all lobbying for and pushing the agenda of these companies that hire Quiller consultants. Quiller consultants have the ear of the none other than the prime minister through Lord Chadlington. 
CAPITA - On Victoria Street with parliament just down the road is the offices of Capita which is a huge outsourcing company and £3.3 billion of Government (our) money has gone through Capita’s books since the Tories came to power.  Capita is in the running to take over NHS Direct (Now NHS 111)  has donated £1.5m in donations to the Conservatives in the last ten years, it would seem that the odds are stacked in its favour. Although following public outrage at the mere thought of the demise of NHS Direct Andrew Lansley has said it is only the the telephone number that has been changed, that is not quite the truth! There are several pilot schemes of NHS 111 using predominantly untrained staff to man the phones, staff given just 72 hours training as opposed to the years of training and experience of a fully qualified nurse and I am told that already staff are reporting the instances of those being advised to go to their local Accident & Emergency departments is rising rapidly, this will cancel out any savings being made, but nonetheless, it still looks like Lansley is set to ignore that and will award the contract of NHS Direct over to Capita. 
2020health - The idea to scrap NHS Direct was put forward to Andrew Lansley in June 2010 and just barely 2 months later with virtually no consultation he made the announcement, the idea was put forward by a think tank called 2020health who have their offices just up from parliament at 83 Victoria Street. Andrew Lansley has described the think tank 2020health saying; “I have been very impressed with some of the discussions and documents that have emerged from 2020health. They are looking at serious issues and providing valuable impact on future policy”, policies which include giving more NHS work to private sector companies. www.2020health.org describes itself as an independent grass roots think tank, funded by people like you, for people like you. It takes a lot of money from pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Novartis, Lilly, and also companies looking to get into tele-health market like BT and *VODAFONE* and it is in an excellent position to influence Conservative politicians on behalf of all these companies, 2020health chairman is a man called Tom Sackville. (You will recall that recently George Osborne allowed Vodafone OFF of paying a £6 billion tax bill it owed to the British Treasury)
TOM SACKVILLE- who in the 1990’s was a former Tory health minister, he is also the UK CEO of  an international network of private health insurers called the National Federation of Health Plans which has offices in Victoria. Tom Sackville is head of the International Federation of Health Plans, which represents one hundred private health insurance companies in 31 countries. In 2010, 2020Health, the centre right think tank with close links to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley was out in force at the Conservative Party conference. It is chaired by  the CEO of a huge global network of health insurers, at the same time as arguing for a greater role for the NHS in the private health sector.


Julia Manning and David Cameron
JULIA MANNING -  FOUNDER of 2020health and CEO. Julia Manning stood as a Tory party candidate. Don’t believe politicians who try to tell you that think tanks are independent, they are not, they are usually set up by  people who have particular and big agendas usually funded by big business. Julia Manning, director of the 2020Health.org think tank and a close adviser to the Tory leadership, claimed that ending free treatment for minor or “lifestyle” illnesses could save £20 billion a year — about a fifth of the annual budget. Examples of this include varicose veins, acne, short stature, IVF, cosmetic surgery and moderate increases in blood pressure or cholesterol.”
The most controversial proposal is to end IVF on the NHS, which is already heavily rationed by health authorities. And who would gain if the NHS stopped giving these treatments and services? Private Healthcare hospitals of course! No wonder Tory founder of 2020health wanted to do this!

The Stockholm Network -  was actually set up partly by Pfizer the big American pharmaceutical company. There is a whole network of think tanks around about our Houses of Parliament, free market think tanks who also sometimes form into  networks like the Stockholm Network. which is a network of over 120 think tanks, who are engaged in a whole range of lobbying activities across Europe and here in the UK. Think tanks look to be providing the arena for debate and research, but how objective is it when it is funded by all these companies that have a vested interest in the NHS?  Think tanks allows big business to push their own agendas and their own interests and it is in their own interests to get on side with the minister and have the minister address their own conferences. This is a quote from its website  entitled "The Welfare State After The Crisis" ... "Britain has experimented with aspects of market-oriented reform and with ideas from other countries but such reforms are nevertheless still viewed with suspicion. Yet a new government and a new economy makes a revolution in the way public services are provided in the UK unavoidable. No longer just the territory of think tanks, the debate about the role of the state in public services is now leading the news agenda".
Gesundheit! Issue 8
by Stockholm Network (published 2011)

Gesundheit! is the Stockholm Network’s bi-monthly newsletter that highlights developments in contemporary European health and welfare policy. Issue 8 focuses on the debate surrounding the UK Coalition Government’s reforms of the NHS. Early in his term, health secretary Andrew Lansley laid out his plans for a radical shake-up of the NHS and these plans have now been presented to parliament and are undergoing consultation. The prime minster David Cameron has contended that “fundamental changes" are needed to raise standards in Britain to the levels in other systems in Europe, whilst the leader of the opposition Ed Miliband has said that the health policy has "taken the national out of the national health service".

The full contents of this edition, as well as their contributors, are as follows:
  • Commentary: Free Radicals? – Helen Disney, chief executive of the Stockholm Network;
  • NHS Commissioning: A Better Way Forward – James Gubb, director of the Civitas Health Unit;
  • Drug Pricing Reforms: A Switch to Value-Based Pricing – Paul Healy, senior researcher of the Stockholm Network;
  • New Public Health White Paper for England: Lessons for National Public Health Systems, or Things to Avoid? - Dr John Middleton, vice-president of UK Faculty of Public Health;
  • Stockholm Network Publication – Sharing the Burden: Could risk-sharing change the way we pay for healthcare?;
  • Stockholm Network Event – Patient Safety and Comfort: The challenges of switching medicines.
The Policy Exchange Think Tank and David Cameron and Francis Maude - The Policy Exchange is David Cameron's favourite think tank and the one that is closest to parliament, it was co-founded by Cabinet Minister Francis Maude and it has lobbied for more private sector involvement in providing NHS services. Archie Norman, Francis Maude and their allies set up two separate think-tanks as part of their modernisation project. One, XChange Ideas or simply XChange, would be rebranded as Policy Exchange a few months later. A company limited by guarantee, formed in October 2001, became XChange Ideas on 9 November 2001. A separate company Conservatives for Change was also was set up that October, and was branded CChange. The two were presumably kept separate to allow Policy Exchange to apply for charitable status as a non-partisan organisation. Conservatives for Change supplied the initial funding for Policy Exchange, with a loan of £75,000. Policy Exchange applied for charitable status and was registered with the Charity Commission on 3 March 2003. Registering as a charity can provide numerous tax breaks for think-tanks. Charities do not normally have to pay corporation tax, capital gains tax, or stamp duty, and gifts to charities are free of inheritance tax. They can also pay significantly reduced business rates (e.g. council tax) on the buildings they occupy.
The prime minister’s favourite think tank  and several other leading Tories pay NO corporation tax  and lobby to see more work carried out by private companies, work which is currently undertaken by the NHS.
Policy Exchange was investigated by the Charity Commission after an MP complained in February 2007 that it was close to the Conservative Party. The Charity Commission report found no evidence of party political bias but identified a number of issues: One was concerning transparency – The original source of concern was that the Charity was supporting a political party and carrying out political activities. Whilst the Commission determined that there was no evidence of party political bias we determined that there is a need for greater transparency, particularly on Policy Exchange’s website. Information contained on the website following events in 2007 failed to sufficiently highlight or identify the cross-party speakers at events hosted by the Charity
Current and former trustees of Policy Exchange Ltd. as registered with Companies House on 3 January 2010.
Policy Exchange is both a charity and a company limited by guarantee (i.e. without shareholders), meaning that these directors are also the trustees of the charity. Please note that many of these are in fact current financial backers of the Conservative party.
The earliest directors were the Conservative MPs
 David Willetts and Francis Maude who resigned in June 2002 and were replaced by a number of public figures (initially mainly journalists) with less direct connections to the Conservative Party. The most notable of the early trustees was Michael Gove who was appointed Chairman of Policy Exchange. He was then a Times columnist, but would later become a Conservative MP and then a Minister in the Cameron Government Gove resigned in January 2006.

 Other trustees who have since left the board include John Micklethwait, a writer for The Economist, and Iain Dale a right-wing author and blogger who subsequently became a columnist at the Daily Telegraph.

The 13 current trustees are a mixture of right-wing journalists and wealthy businessmen. Theodore Agnew, Richard Briance, Simon Brocklebank-Fowler, George Robinson, Edward Sells and Simon Wolfson are all British businessmen or financiers who have donated to the Conservative Party.

 Robert Rosenkranz, an American multi-millionaire financier would be precluded from donating as a foreigner but has provided funding to Policy Exchange and Localis  (and the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute)

Those trustees who are not drawn from the world of business or finance however are all affiliated to Britain’s conservative press. Virginia Fraser is the widow of Frank Johnson,  a former deputy editor of the The Sunday Telegraph (1995-99) and editor of The Spectator  Alice Thomson is a comment writer at The Times and a former associate editor of the Daily Telegraph  and Charles Moore, Policy Exchange’s Chairman, is a former editor of the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, and The Spectator.

Policy Exchange’s first director was Nick Boles, a former member of Westminster City Council considered part of the ‘Notting Hill Set’ – an informal group of young Conservatives connected to the Prime Minister David Cameron. Before joining Westminster Council Boles ran a DIY business, prior to which he 'worked for a few years in Germany, Russia and Eastern Europe, helping state-owned industries prepare for private ownership.'  Boles is a former flatmate of Michael Gove  who was Chairman of Policy Exchange whilst Boles was director
One of the companies that Policy Exchange  has taken money from is a company called Tribal, which is looking to getting into the GP commissioning process which is of course taking over work from GPs. One of the directors of Tribal has actually described Andrew Lansley’s reforms as being the”denationalisation of health services in England”. 

The Adam Smith Institute -  known as the grandfather of pro-business, free market think tank’s which is a fierce critic of the NHS, it thinks that the government should only regulate healthcare and that healthcare should be privately funded and privately provided by private sector companies. Its president, Madsen Pirie, has said "We propose things which people regard as being on the edge of lunacy. The next thing you know, they're on the edge of policy".
It was the primary intellectual force behind privatisation in the Thatcher era, and, with the Centre for Policy Studies and Institute of Economic Affairs, drove Thatcherite policy on privatisation, taxation, education, and health. The Adam Smith Institute was behind the sales of council house stock and the scrapping of the existing local-government tax in favour of a per-capita charge was later implemented by the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, whose government introduced the poll tax in Scotland in 1989, and in England and Wales in 1990. The poll tax was disastrous for the Thatcher government and is widely seen as a complete failure which precipitated the downfall of her leadership.
More recently The Adam Smith Institute said:  Congratulations to the new Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, for what could be the biggest revolution in the UK's state-run National Health Service for 60 years. We knew that the Conservatives favoured GP budget-holding: at one stage, their leader David Cameron made no bones about it.
One comment on their website said: "Make a charge for hospital food, so much per day, or weekly charge. Be reasonable.
Issue vouchers to benefit claimants."


Dr Eamonn Butler is  author of The Rotten State of Britain. The Adam Smith Institute’s co-founder is  Eamonn Butler who said:
(Taken from the Conservative Home Comment  ) : I can’t decide whether David Cameron’s new Big Society idea could become a Big Disappointment or a Big Bully.
Right now, nobody quite knows if the idea is anything more than a damp Steve Hilton marketing squib. And the idea of letting people run their own post offices, libraries and bus services – in just four trial areas of Liverpool, Eden Valley, Windsor and Sutton – is hardly a ‘revolution’.
But whatever it is, Big Society sounds an awful lot better to me than Big Government – unless Big Bureaucracy tries to run it......

 Eamonn Butler is also on the advisory board of another lobby group called Nurses For Reform.

David Cameron and Dr Helen Evans
Nurses For Reform
Nurses For Reform - Director Dr Helen Evans:  Dr Evans is the director of a right-wing libertarian “think tank” called Nurses for Reform, which, according to its website: "believes that the government should re-cast the NHS as simply a funder of last resort alongside an insurance and self-funder based market. It believes that the state should set free – through a range of full blown for and not-for-profit privatisations – all NHS hospitals and healthcare provision."
Along with the Adam Smith Institute Nurses For Reform is also a fierce critic of the NHS, and once it called the NHS a “Stalinist Nationalised Abhorrent".
Following a meeting in 2008 between Dr Helen Evans and David Cameron Dr Evans said:

"I had been invited by him to discuss NFR’s ideas on the future of health policy and presented a range of ideas. Amongst others, these included the end of national collective pay bargaining for nurses and doctors, the view that the state should not own or have any of its agents manage hospitals, a world of widespread health advertising (to overcome problems of patient ignorance through trusted brands) and a dramatic liberalisation of hospital planning laws. On this latter point, central government should have no say in when and where any hospital is opened or closed."

"If he becomes Prime Minister I have no doubt NFR will meet with him and his policy team again."
So if his party really is committed to the values of the NHS, if he really has distanced himself from the cranks in his ranks who describe the NHS as “a 60-year mistake”, why on earth did he even meet a group that advocates large-scale privatisation of the NHS? An organisation which criticises the American healthcare system for being "a highly planned, regulated and government funded system."

If like Cameron has said on his campaigns in opposition, "there would be no top down re-organisation of the NHS" why was he meeting with all these think tanks and lobbyists all vying for NHS contracts and for the break up of the NHS? Many of which have strong connections to the Tories and many of which actually donate money to the Tories? Cameron must have know all along what he and Lansley were planning to do to the NHS, but instead of informing people he blatantly lied and mislead the British people. Of course he knows that if he had come clean about what the Conservatives were planning for the NHS they would never have got elected. And of Andrew Lansley Interestingly, there is no mention on the NFR website of the presence of Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley at the meeting. Did Cameron take the meeting on his own, and if so, why? Why would Cameron hold a meeting about the future of the NHS and not take along Andrew Lansley, supposedly the architect of the Tories NHS reforms?
Dr Evans expounds her views over at the Adam Smith Institute in an article entitled “The micro-politics of hospital privatisation”, in which she calls for the NHS to be renamed the “National Health SYSTEM” (her capitalisation).
In a classic PR move Nurses For Reform claims to be a grass roots organisation representing the views of ordinary nurses but like the Adam Smith Institute it is completely opaque about its funding. It is very difficult to find out about who funds the think tanks because none of the think tanks are transparent about how much they are paid and for what and by whom. How NFR can claim to represent the views of ordinary nurses is baffling, how can they do this, what research have they carried out?

Reform  - is yet another pro- business free market think tank also set up by a Conservative minister Nick Herbert. Reform has charitable status, it too is pushing for more private company opportunities within the NHS. This means there will be more private companies providing the services that we get and there are Tories behind nearly all of these lobbying companies and think tanks. This is part of reforms Vision statement taken from its website 
"We believe that by liberalising the public sector, breaking monopoly and extending choice, high quality services can be made available for everyone. Reform would remove public services from the escalator of ever-rising costs. It would enable policy makers to aim for a lower level of taxation and public spending which would better suit the UK's current and future economic challenges." Reform’s deputy director is a person called Nick Seddon, who prior to that was actually Head of Communications at a private hospital company called Circle. Nick Seddon was only 31 when he landed this post at the Directory of Social change.

 CIRCLE- has just been awarded the very first contract for a private company to run a whole hospital. The person who replaced Nick Seddon at Circle came straight from Andrew Lansley’s office. He came from the Department of Health to Circle to become their Head of Communications!
Andrew Haw began in operational research for the coal industry and progressed into the Department of Health. Andrew then moved to Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) where he worked primarily on the design and implementation of large-scale systems in the government sector and on healthcare management and IT consultancy. Accenture is the company The company that gave up two failing NHS contracts and then tried to paper over the cracks claiming it had all been a roaring success it is also connected to the Tory party by David T Mowat  who was elected as Conservative MP for Warrington South May 2010. Mr Mowat was a Global partner at AccentureCircle Health Ltd has won the contract to deliver NHS services at Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdonshire, (Previous Tory prime minister John Major's old constituency) which has been previously managed by an NHS management team and is now nearly £39m in debt. Circle will be the first independent provider to manage an entire NHS acute hospital in England. Circle describes itself as a private limited company that describes itself as a social enterprise.
Mark Aichroth joined Circle from Mercury Healthcare where he was the Commercial Director of Mercury Health and helped win an Independent Sector Treatment Contract worth £214 million from the Department of Health.


DOCTORS FOR REFORM- (Reform mentioned above) actually supports Doctors for Reform and not surprisingly, Doctors For Reform are another lobby group who claim to represent the grass roots. The chief spokesman for Doctors For reform is a GP called Dr Paul Charlton, but he also runs a private centre for cosmetic treatment. Dr Charlton is also director of the think tank 2020health and chair of something called the Conservative Medical Society which is affiliated to the Conservative party. Doctors For reform says it is funded by private donations but has actually taken a lot of money off of private healthcare companies eg drug companies, Pru health the health insurer and also the largest private hospital company in the UK called General Healthcare Group. General Healthcare Group funded a reform conference in 2009 which they invited Andrew Lansley to speak and he shared a platform with the CEO of General Healthcare Group as well as Simon Stevens from United health UK.  General Health Care Group is chaired by Sir Peter Gershon who helped the Tories draw up savings (CUTS) in the NHS, this is a direct conflict of interests.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley was interviewed on BBC Radio 2 on March 16th 2011 about GP consortia, hospitals and improving patient care. He spoke to Dr Paul Hobday and Dr Paul Charlton, Dr Anna Dixon from the King’s Fund and Dr Helen Evans from Nurses for Reform.  Note how the names Dr Paul Charlton of Doctors For Reform and Dr Helen Evans  keep popping up? This was taken from the Department of Health website. (You can also listen to the radio interview from here at approximately 1.09 it is a good listen, you really get a sense of exactly what Evans and Charlton are about!) Strangely the Department of Health forgot to mention that Dr Charlton is chief spokesman of Doctors For Reform, it may have looked top heavy and stacking and staging what with Dr Helen Evans also on the programme from Nurses For Reform (Both affiliated to the Adam Smith Institute. (ASI thinks the NHS should be privatised) This radio programme had six people on it and the guests were heavily stacked in favour of Andrew Lansley's reforms, the BBC only invited one doctor and one person from the Kings Trust on who was actually against the reforms. Vine introduced Dr Charlton as a GP, what Vine did not know was that Dr Charlton also runs a private cosemtic surgery clinic and was part of the think tank Doctors For reform who lobby on behalf on private healthcare companies. (DH has Dr Paul charlton down as Charlton, the radio programme introduces him as Charleston, but he is one and the same person)

KPMG has donated at least £500.000 directly into the coffers of the Conservative party.
Recently the KPMG Partnership for Commissioning has won one of the first contracts to support the development of the early waves of pathfinders across NHS London and help them to become commissioners of services in the future.
The partnership, claimed to be the first of its kind, sees KPMG teaming up with UnitedHealth UK, the National Association of Primary Care (NAPC), Healthskills, NHS Primary Care Commissioning and legal firm Morgan Cole.

The NAPC maintains it is not political, but it is  political it is almost sycophantic in its adoration of the Tories, read it for yourself, it "warmly" backs the Conservatives.  NAPC stands to gain from winning contracts from the Tories radical reforms, how can it be non political and non biased when it has placed itself in a compromising position? One of its *PRIVATE* GPs Dr Johnny Marshall has publicly backed David Cameron, fair enough, but then we should also know that Dr Johnny Marshall of NAPC has also helped UnitedHealthcare a controversial *PRIVATE* US company, win NHS contracts !

Question 1: - Why specifically, was the contracted awarded to  KPMG?

Question 2: -  Did NHS London run an open tender for this contract *BEFORE* awarding it to KMPG? (This is required by competition law) If they didn't, then this contract is most likely illegal.

Question 3: - Was the problem of conflict of interests with the Conservatives and KMPG taken into account?

Derby City Primary Care Trust has already been put out to tender and has had three expressions of interest;
 1. BUPA; 2. Boots and 3. AN-other.  (The deadline for tenders apparently passed a few weeks ago.)

Andrew Lansley has said that GP Commissioners will have to honour present contracts. However, I am informed that there appears to be a lot of contracts being signed in a "hurry" but with absolutely no clear evidence of tendering.

Lord Blyth - Boots Chemists deputy chairman. Tory Donor. Stands to gain from the break up and privatisation of the NHS wants to buy the Walk in Centres.

UK Pharmaceutical Industry Courting the Conservative party -
The UK pharmaceutical industry has also begun gearing up for a change in government, as drug companies have been reshuffling their public affairs teams and courting the Conservative party. The American Pharmaceutical Group handed public affairs briefs to Hanover Communications, who also represents National Health Service (NHS) cancer screening departments, and in December 2009 hosted a meeting on the Conservatives’ approach to regulating business.

John Nash - Hedge fund boss  is one of the major Conservative donors with close ties to the healthcare industry.
John Nash and wife Caroline gave £203,500 to the party over the past five years.
Andrew Lansley also accepted a £21,000 donation for his private office from John Nash, chairman of Care UK.
Mr Nash STILL continues to work as a consultant to the firm, which provides walk-in centres, GP surgeries and other specialist services, after selling his majority stake to a private equity firm last year.
Lansley has been accused of a direct conflict of interest because Care UK makes 96 per cent of its money from the NHS.
At the time the Lib Dems slammed the payments as a “staggering conflict of interest”.
Now the Liberal Democrats are totally ignoring this and helping the Tories vote the decimation of our NHS through parliament.
MORE than a year after a company chairman’s wife donated £21,000 to the office of Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, the same company has been awarded a £53m NHS prison health contract.
The contract, awarded by the North-East Offender Health Commissioning Unit, has been awarded to Care UK rather than current NHS providers.

Private Health Care -  companies had donated £750,000 to the Tory party, asking: Doesn't  the Prime Minister see the conflict of interest in this?

Sir Peter Gershon - Chair of Healthcare UK and whose company stands to benefit millions from NHS cuts, which Sir Peter himself helped the Tories to draw up! If ever there was a clear cut case of conflict of interests this is it.

Ryan Robson - Major Tory donor who has given the party £252,429.45 his company invests in numerous private healthcare firms including Choice and Christchurch Court, which provide specialist and residential care.
His donations included £50,000 to be a member of the party’s “Leader’s Group”, a secretive cash-for-access club. The would-be MP, who tried but failed to get selected as the election candidate in Bracknell, is managing partner at Sovereign Capital.

Dolar Popat - Nursing and care home tycoon  has given the Conservatives £209,000.
Has amassed an estimated £42million fortune as founder and chief of TLC Group, which provides services for the elderly.
Mr Cameron made the businessman a peer shortly after entering No10 last May, and Lord Popat’s donations include a £25,000 gift registered a week after the Tories’ health reforms were unveiled last July.

Sir Christopher Gent - non-executive chairman of GlaxoSmithKline, (drug company) has given £113,400 to the Conservative Party.

IC Technology- which provides computer services to the NHS, has handed the Tories £70,000 over the past two years.

Philip Scott - chief of the Priory Group, has donated £20,000.
The famous Priory Clinic is private but Mr Scott has revealed in the past most of its income comes from NHS or local council referrals.


The Trichological Clinic Limited - which operates out of Harrods has handed balding David Cameron and the Tories £10,000 last year.

Senior Tories - who helped formulate the party’s health policy in Opposition have had links to private health care and health insurance firms.

Julian Schild -  When in opposition Shadow minister Stephen O’Brien’s office received three payments totalling £40,000 from Julian Schild. Mr Schild’s family made £184million in 2006 by selling hospital bed-makers Huntleigh Technology.

BUPA - Mark Simmonds MP - A second shadow health minister Mark Simmonds accepted a US trip to Boston worth £4,512 from private health provider BUPA.

Lord McColl of Dulwich - Tory health spokesman in the Lords, is a consultant of Endeavour Healthcare. David cameron has previously defended Lord McColl of Dulwich, after it emerged that the peer is a paid consultant to a new private healthcare company that provides a paid-for rival to the NHS's GP service.

Dr Mark Lloyd-Davies - Defeated Prospective Tory MP for Bristol South.
Would have made a valuable addition to the Conservatives’ pharma-friendly team. According to the Conservative website: “Mark is the UK head of the pharmaceutical government affairs and communications team in the world's largest healthcare company [Sanofi-Aventis], so he’s already familiar with the workings of Westminster.”

Mr Heathcoat-Amory- FORMER Tory MP for Wells and a former Treasury minister, registered a payment of "£1,671.08 and health benefit to the value of £86.17" in July from Western Provident Association, which provides private medical insurance policies.
The former  MP also worked as a non-executive director for the firm, which pays him around £20,000 a year, as well as his former duties as a constituency MP.
Helen Whately - Former Conservative parliamentary candidate has shrugged off any suggestion of a conflict of interest, after it emerged she works for the same consultants helping draw up plans which could see the A+E or maternity unit at Kingston Hospital removed.
Her website states she works as a management consultant specialising in healthcare, mainly in the NHS but does not mention her employer McKinsey.
Aventis Pharma -
Andrew Lansley and Simon Burns  attended an oncology conference in the US paid for by Aventis Pharma.

Norbrook Pharmaceuticals - Millions of pounds donated to the Tories by Norbrook Pharmaceuticals, which boasts its mission is to "aggressively expand" its healthcare business.

Johnson & Johnson - Tory register reveals donations from a lobbying group that works for Johnson & Johnson, the US multi-national health and hygiene corporation.

London Secure Services - Mr Lansley has also registered a donation from London Secure Services, a care firm that sparked outrage after it ran up  £1.24million in debts and made its staff redundant with two hours notice.
It is almost impossible to untangle all the connections and interconnections between these think tanks, lobbying companies, Tory donors and the Conservative party, however what has become clear is that there is certainly room for corruption. If Andrew Lansley goes ahead with his NHS reforms, not only will the Tories cause major disruption and probably deaths in the NHS, it is not only going to introduce the private sector, but it will almost certainly introduce corruption at all levels.
Dr Jacky Davis, the BMA Council member who proposed a motion calling for outright opposition, had earlier received two standing ovations after she warned representatives the Government's reforms could 'destroy the NHS'.
Dr Davis said: ‘If you think the Government will listen to us you’ve probably got fairies at the bottom of your garden.’
‘If we don’t reject this bill it will be a long term disaster. The association will have no future if we have a privatised NHS.’
She added: ’All we’ve got from being inside the tent is a close up view of Mr Lansley’s bulldozer.’

There is a long way to go for this bill and a lot to fight for, we CAN and we MUST STOP this privatisation of our NHS. The privatisation of the NHS should be decided by the people in a referendum, it should not be left up to corrupt politicians, involved with lobbyists, think tanks and health companies, and big Tory donors. The government lied to the people and totally mislead us, they never once mentioned these reforms, they have no mandate for them and they MUST listen to us and STOP this certifiable insane reforms.

I hope I have shown you what is going on behind the scenes with this Tory government, however remember this is but a small snapshot of what I have managed to research.
I believe our government is "institutionally corrupt" and is far too involved with with big financial backers. Cameron, Osborne, Lansley, Gove, and Maude have been totally and utterly dishonest and have mislead us, and as the Liberal Democrats keep telling us they support this government and are part of this government, then they must also be complicit, remember if the all the Liberal Democrats voted against this government, they would NOT be able to bring these NHS Reforms in. Remember this when you vote in the coming May elections!