Yeah But No, But Yeah But Clegg

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, first said he did not know about the sexual harassment claims regarding top Liberal Democrat peer Lord Rennard., then he said he did, then he said he didn't know personally, but his office did.

"I didn't know, but then I did know, but it's OK because I didn't know I knew, but more to the point, I didn't want the public to know that I really did know".

When I did know (before I didn't know that I knew) about the Rennard allegations, I instructed Chief Secretary, Danny Alexander to have a word and then discretely bury the whole business then take action. Danny just cannot remember what action it was that he took and I didn't know that but I know it now. It's no good asking Jo Swinson, because although she knows and has said she knows about the allegations and took action, it must be the same action as Danny Alexander took because they now both don't know what it was and have only just remembered they don't know.

Confused? Well remember Nick Clegg the Deputy Prime Minister is the same man who "forgot he was in charge of the country", what do you expect?

Still Awaiting an Answer on Horsemeat Letters Scandal Mr Paterson!

Last Sunday Owen Paterson, Environment Secretary, promised that he would have "staff" look into when the government was first informed over the horsemeat scandal, after allegations made by John Young former manager of the Meat Hygiene Service which was an executive arm of the FSA, that he wrote two letters one to DEFRA and the other to the FSA and would publish exactly what they said. The staff asked to carry out the task turned out to be Catherine Brown.

Ms Brown took over the post of CEO of the Food Standards Agency in October 2012, before this she was CEO of the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA), which is an executive agency of the government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Owen Paterson's department.

John Young claims to have written to the FSA on behalf of Britain's biggest horsemeat exporter to alert them 22 months ago in April 2011 about a potential scandal  brewing that illicit horsemeat which tested positive with drug residues of banned substances had breached the human food supply chain. Mr Young claims he wrote to the then Minister of State at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Sir Jim Paice and he was totally ignored! Jim Paice's boss at that time would have been former Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman.

The letter from High Peak Meat Exports warned that a horse passport scheme to stop the veterinary drug, phenylbutazone, (bute) getting into the human food chain was a "debacle", with 75 organisations issuing documents.

Mr Young also claims to have written to the FSA on 5th May, 2011, enclosing a copy of an unlawful horse passport and a warning that illegal horsemeat was entering the food chain. A passage in the letter asked FSA and the government; "Are the lunatics in total control of the asylum?"

Then in July 2012, 15 months AFTER they were first notified of the breach, the government's veterinary residues committee sounded the alarm warning that horses treated with bute were not being banned from the food chain. It warned of the risk of "serious adverse effects in consumers".

Mr Paice who left DEFRA in September 2012, said he did not "recall seeing" the warnings from High Peak or the veterinary committee.

It's now been four days since Paterson asked Ms Brown to search for these letters and still no word if they have been found and if they have what they said.

Also we appear to have Ms Brown investigating "herself", she would have been aware of the letter as she was CEO of AHVLA  when they issued their own warning to the government about "serious adverse effects to consumers"! So when she went to the FSA as CEO why didn't she asked what had been done about this problem?

Still waiting for an answer Mr Paterson as to what was in those two letters and why they were ignored and also why the government ignored the warnings from their own veterinary residues committee?

That's three warnings the government has ignored that we know of - any more? (Or are these going to be forced out of you too?)

We have a totally incompetent government, a government that is willing to risk the health and safety of the nation so it doesn't dent their own political popularity and political machinations.

This is not the first time this Conservative controlled coalition government have deliberately put the public at risk, David Cameron and Cabinet Secretary, Francis Maude did it last year when they deliberately caused fuel panic at filling station pumps because they thought they could harm the unions, that time a lady ended fighting for her life with serious burns, this current scandal has the potential to be a lot more serious.

We must have an answer as to why this Government decided to ignore the serious warnings they were given THREE times and knowingly placing the nation's health at risk and also ignoring rampant food fraud which they knew was occurring in the food supply chain and we must have an answer with the utmost urgency and that's now NOT next year or whenever the Government feel they can bury their bad news!

Inconceivable that Government Did Not Know Of Horsemeat Danger To Food Chain

The horsemeat scandal has rumbled on and on and still this government have not got a grip on it. On 9th February, I asked on this blog how long has this government known there was contamination in our food supply chain? I asked this question because it seemed to me that apart from the Labour party and the Daily Mirror, no one in the right wing press or broadcast media was asking this question directly, and it is a serious question to which we need a truthful answer.

So I'll ask again!

"How long has the Tory controlled Coalition Government known of contamination in our food supply chain?

Until we get a truthful answer to this question the government and the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Owen Paterson, have not got a chance of sorting this mess out and neither has the Food Standards Agency (FSA). If we do not have the answer to this question how can we know how far back to go in forms of checking our food, or in what products we need to be checking? Not just for horsemeat, but for phenylbutazone (bute) a drug banned for human use and for other meats such as pork which may have found their way into the food chain and into products sold as "beef", pointing to serious breaches of religious ethics?

Today we learn that a former manager of the FSA, John Young, who had worked at the Meat Hygiene Service, which was then an executive agency of the FSA says he wrote to the Government on behalf of Britain's biggest horsemeat exporter, and alerted them 22 months ago in April 2011 about a potential scandal  brewing that illicit horsemeat which tested positive with drug residues of banned substances had breached the human food supply chain. Mr Young claims he wrote to the then Minister of State at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Sir Jim Paice and he was totally ignored! Did Jim Paice notify his boss Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman?

The letter from High Peak Meat Exports warned that a horse passport scheme to stop the veterinary drug, phenylbutazone, (bute) getting into the human food chain was a "debacle", with 75 organisations issuing documents.

Mr Young also claims to have written to the FSA on 5th May, 2011, enclosing a copy of an unlawful horse passport and a warning that illegal horsemeat was entering the food chain. A passage in the letter asked FSA and the government; "Are the lunatics in total control of the asylum?"

Then in July 2012, 15 months AFTER they were first notified of the breach, the government's veterinary residues committee sounded the alarm warning that horses treated with bute were not being banned from the food chain. It warned of the risk of "serious adverse effects in consumers".

Mr Paice who left DEFRA in September 2012, said he did not "recall seeing" the warnings from High Peak or the veterinary committee.

Note Paice said he did "not recall" seeing the warnings and did not categorically maintain he "did not see" the warnings. In other words Paice may very well have seen the warnings and now the cat is out of the bag he is furiously back peddling and playing semantics with the truth. In my opinion, Paice did see the warnings, he just wants the public to believe he didn't and he knew of the dangers to our food supply and because of the damage this scandal could do to the Tory controlled government he did not act and tried to sweep it all under the carpet!

FSA Chief Executive, Catherine Brown, who took over her posts as CEO of the FSA last October  has said it would never be known how many consumers had unwittingly eaten horsemeat. "It's shocking" she said. What is also shocking is the fact that a letter had been sent to the FSA which she is in charge of and she has either ignored it (which I find hard to believe) or she has passed it on to Government and they have ignored it.  Which is it? Not withstanding that Catherine Brown was  the Chief Executive of the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA), an executive agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and  in July 2012, it was the Government;s Veterinary Residues Committee that  warned that horsemeat treated with bute was finding its way into the food supply chain and warned of a "serious risk to s consumers".

1)...When was Catherine Brown aware of the two letters that had been sent, one to Jim Paice and the other  to the FSA by John Young?

2)...And if she was aware, did she inform the Government immediately and in some urgency about the seriousness of the situation?

3)...If so who did she inform? Caroline Spelman? Jim Paice? David Cameron? Owen Paterson? All of them?

4)...Was she ever contacted back by Government about this situation? If so who by?


5)...Did Jim Paice tell Prime Minister, David Cameron about the serious problem of the possibility of contaminated horsemeat breaching the human food supply chain?

6)...If not why not? 

I fail to understand that such a serious breach would not have been brought to the prime minister's attention - immediately and as a serious matter of the utmost urgency! The nation's health was clearly being put at risk and it is beginning to look like the government knew all about this and did absolutely nothing for for approximately 22 months.

David Cameron said at the start of this scandal that this was simply a "food labeling" problem:

Did these breaches take place after the Tory led coalition government changed the regulations on food labelling in July 2010, just a few weeks after becoming the government and without the adequate consultation and safety checks such a move would require? 

Owen Paterson wants more checks on meat and less blind faith in paper work - really? Then how is he going to keep a check and does this mean that he has ignored paperwork that categorically told him there was a problem in the food supply chain?

How long ago did Owen Paterson know there was a serious breach in the country's food supply chain?

Did former secretary of State for the Environment, Caroline Spelman know of the two letters sent to the FSA by John Young former manager of the Meat Hygiene Service (an arm of the FSA)?

I categorically do not believe that Paterson who took over from Caroline Spelman, or the PM, indeed or Caroline Spelman and FSA CEO Catherine Brown did not know what was happening. It is absolutely inconceivable that they did not know. It is inconceivable that a letter of the magnitude of seriousness was sent by a former manager of the Meat Hygiene Service (which was then a part of the FSA) and that it was not acted upon, not once but twice! Or that the secretary for state, the PM and Agriculture ministers were not informed and that subsequently Owen Paterson was not informed when he took over as Environment Secretary.

If they all didn't know and "can't recall" (Leveson amnesia strikes again), then this government is not just totally incompetent, it is dangerously incompetent and if they did know, then they are dangerous liars.

Owen Paterson has been interviewed many times this past few weeks and each time he is interviewed all he basically rants about is "food fraud" and how it is "wrong" that description says "beef" when it is really horsemeat. We know all of this, what we now need from Paterson is some direct answers to direct questions, not rants designed to try and conceal what has been going on.

Paterson  is a fool to keep suggesting it is all down to "criminal activity", yes we know this has undoubtedly happened, but the problem is more systemic than that, the problem here is not only that food fraud has taken place, but more seriously, that horsemeat unfit for human consumption which may have been contaminated with bute has breached the food supply chain. The greater problem is that this problem with our food chain was actually known by Jim Paice and the PM before Cameron sacked him last September 2012, and that subsequently Owen Paterson knew of this when he took his new position up last September and that the Food Standards Agency also certainly knew of this.

It is said that the FSA only picked up on this scandal after their Irish counterparts decided to be pro-active and test some beef burgers, well this is obviously untrue as both the FSA and the Government must have been well aware of this breach *before* their Irish counterparts as John Young had written TWO letters bringing this to their attention about 22 months ago, which was ignored! - Why?

In another bizarre rant from Paterson on TV today he tried to blame the previous Labour government, saying he could only work with what he was left when he came into the job, well he didn't take over from the Labour government, he took over from Tory Secretary of State for the Environment, Caroline Spelman.

In the last three years under the Tory led coalition government local authority regulatory services have been slashed by 32%
Budget cuts to the Food Standards Agency have contributed to a halving of the number of meat inspectors since the 1990s, though the number of meat plants has also fallen.

In 2010 the FSA had 2,000 employees and an annual budget of £135m but this was reduced as a result of the coalition government's spending cuts.

A shake-up by the coalition government led to the FSA handing over some of its responsibilities to government departments so it could focus solely on food safety policy and enforcement.

This is now as clear as mud, the government appear to have confused and muddled the responsibilities, creating new bodies.

The FSA is reliant on local authorities’ trading standards departments to monitor meat once it leaves the cutting plant creating a “postcode lottery” of varied funding levels from one area to another.

The Trading Standards Institute which protects the British consumer has seen their funding cut from £247 million to £140 million  which as resulted in the cataclysmic loss of offices, inspectors, services and consumer protection, part of Trading Standards job used to be to work with the Food Standards Agency. The loss of £107m in funding has seriously compromised consumer safety.
The current economic recession had provided rogue traders with opportunities to make money out of desperate consumers who are seeking to manage their restricted finances.
And she added that this was at a time when resources for consumer protection were also being squeezed hard. Nowhere has this been more apparent then in the virtually non regulated meat cutting plants.

Andy Foster from the Trading Standards Institute said some local authority sampling budgets had been cut by 50-70 per cent.

Even if the FSA decided to invest more money, he said, it would be hard to turn the clock back. “There aren’t the labs, and there aren’t the people.”

This is a clear case of the Government placing the public at risk with cuts that have not been properly thought out, just like in so many other areas. The NHS, education, defence, police, the list is endless.

The problem with horsemeat in the supply chain looks to have started around the time that meat inspectors were cut down from two to one and also if horsemeat was being used, the likelihood of a perilously trained inspector picking it up with the naked eye should have been good, as horsemeat differs from beef, it is darker in colour and the fat is more yellow.

This catastrophic scandal is not only the fault of fraudulent operators, it is not only the fault of the supermarkets, (who Cameron tried to blame recently), it is the fault of this government's insane austerity cuts which are now compromising public safety and this is the tip of the iceberg; our safety and that of children  is also being compromised in schools and the NHS, thanks to the ill thought out  ill informed choices of policy that the Tory led coalition government is recklessly pursuing and it would appear that Government have known about this for almost 2 years!

We now need to know exactly what products horsemeat or its derivatives has found its way into.

The blood-sports enthusiast Jim Paice was Minister of State at DEFRA until he lost his job in David Cameron's cabinet reshuffle in September 2012 and in a controversial move he was made a Knight by prime minister David Cameron and became Sir Jim Paice just a few days after being removed from his post in Cameron's "botched" reshuffle! At the time it was said that Cameron was awarding honors to placate sacked  male members of his government and bribing them to keep quiet. At the time it was thought it happened to enable Cameron to keep 5 Lib Dems MPs in his government, however, it was never fully understood why Jim Paice who was a farmer and said to have understood farmers was sacked from his position in Agriculture and replaced with an optician! (Perhaps Cameron thought an optician may have been better able to 'read warning letters' about the scandal which is now engulfing the country's food supply chain?)

The British public has every right to know exactly what has happened here and who knew what and when and if the Tory led coalition government has known about this for 22 months and tried to conceal it, then this is such a grievous matter, that the country will have no confidence in its ability to govern and they must call a general election.

It is absolutely inconceivable that the Government did not know about this problem! The government is  either terminally stupidly incompetent, or liars, or both!

Tory Policy Failures: Intended or Unintended?

The Conservative controlled coalition government is a government of u-turns, dithering and incompetence. Cameron, Clegg, Osborne, Duncan-Smith etal seem totally and utterly incapable of understanding that the introduction of ill thought out policies start off a series of events and as it travels the problems just keep mounting up. The problems this government cause they try and explain them away by saying they are "unintended consequences". I have a problem with this explanation, as so many people tell the government what  could occur if they continue to press ahead with so many of their policies they have rushed through, like defence and the Harriers and the economy, for example; George Osborne, David Cameron and Nick Clegg  took over an economy that was growing and because of their inept policies they have killed this growth stone dead, they were warned repeatedly about that this would happen by the Labour party and by virtually every leading economist and they totally ignored the warnings.

This government are now doing the same over Atos assessment for disabled and sick and terminally ill people and because the government refuse to listen we now have people who have been classed as fit to work, dying of their illnesses, weeks sometimes just days later. We also have a situation where the government have deliberately stirred up hatred towards disabled people and now disabled people are being physically and mentally abused in the street and reported incidents of crimes against disabled people are now rising.

The government have been told their policies to restrict benefits to a 1% rise below inflation will result in over 200,000 extra children being pushed into poverty, as their parents struggle to pay utility bills and feed their families.

The government's cap on housing benefit is another area which is going to cause extreme hardship and has been dubbed this government's "poll tax mark 2", it is going to result in homelessness. Even people on low ages and benefits are going to be forced to find 20% of their council tax as local authorities are forced to claw back money because of the severe cuts in government funding.

The government have been warned about their attack on low wage earners and cuts to their tax credits, it is impossible for some to get their employers to give them more than 16 hours work when the work is unavailable and from April if people cannot find more than 16 hours to work, then they are going to face cuts to their family tax credits.

The government have also been warned about their "bedroom tax"where they are going to cut people's housing benefit by 14% for one spare room and 25%  if they have two spare rooms. This will affect those on low wages who receive help with housing costs as well as those on benefits. The government have been warned that there is simply nowhere near enough one bedroom properties to house all those that will be forced to move if they cannot afford the new bedroom tax. The government have been told that this policy  will also force poor people to move house several times and that this is simply economically unsustainable. It is also going to cause people to move into privately rented accommodation which will end up costing the taxpayer thousands of pounds extra per month than if things were just left alone. One family had their private rent capped at £500 per week, they lived in a place which cost £700, they were forced to leave their home and now the local authority has been forced to put them up in a bed and breakfast hotel costing them £700 per night.

As you can see, the people being disproportionately hit by these "unintended consequences" of ill thought out, poorly executed plans are the poor, the disabled, the vulnerable, the unemployed and in some cases the elderly.

How can the government claim these are unknown unintended consequences  when this government have been warned non-stop by charities, economists, policy units, the Labour party and even the general public etc, all these people can see the folly of these dreadful policies.

The government do know, so we can only assume that what hardships their policies are causing to the  poor, disabled, elderly, unemployed etc are actually "intended".

It is not for the government to pick on a certain section of society and make their lives unbearable and try to turn others against these people and to act in a way they are fully aware will bring pain, distress and hardship to people, especially when it is being done to further this government's own personal political agendas.

This is a total abuse of power and as such must surely be arguable in a court of law?

Anyone in any doubt as to what pain, suffering, distress and hardship this government's *intended* consequences is having on people, need only read this distressing letter from Julia, who wrote to David Cameron.

Dear Mr Cameron

I heard you in Prime Minister’s Questions say you would look at individual cases on the bedroom tax.

I am 59 years old, David (my husband) and I have both worked since we were 15, paid taxes, did our bit.

We have never been well off but we both did worthwhile jobs.

Five years ago David got melanoma.

He had excruciating treatment and, although still not well, returned to work as he thought it was his duty.

Four years ago he got bowel cancer; he had an irreversible colostomy.

Six months later he returned to work. Two years ago he got brain cancer. Seven weeks later he died.

Throughout all this I was advised I could get care allowance, but I rejected this: he was my husband, it was my duty to care for him.

We lived off the little savings we had until we could return to work.

When he had the colostomy we were allocated this home as David could not climb stairs any more and I struggled.

His ashes are buried in the garden under the rose bushes that friends gave me instead of wreaths.

Mr Cameron, my husband and I were the hard workers you claim to support, we never asked for anything.

I would give everything if this had not happened to us.

Because we were on benefit and sick, you and your government said hateful words against us.

Words that made acquaintances look at us with contempt.

The most powerful men in the country imply we are scum so we must be scum.

You and your government call us scroungers, next door go to work while our bedroom curtains are still drawn.

My curtains were still drawn at 11am as the light made David scream with pain.

Do you not consider that I would give everything for my husband to be alive, me to not have incapacitating pain and we could both be the hard workers we once were?

I live in small 1 1/2 bed bungalow that was built for older people.

It is supported elderly living so I feel safe. It could not house a family as under 55s are not allowed.

You now want to take my home from me. The home that literally made my fingers bleed cleaning as it had been neglected for 20 years when we moved here.

You want me to leave my husband’s ashes, my neighbours who take me shopping and give me some form of social life? I have no family, we could not have children.

I am living without heating at present so how can I pay what I do not have to stay in my home?

Have you any idea how that affects my fibromyalgia?

I eat one meal a day and am in constant pain which is exacerbated by the cold.

I may get Discretionary Housing Benefit. But we both know that is only for 13 weeks at a time and when the pot is empty, it is empty.

I have considered moving but the only property available is far from shops and bus stops and costs £98 per month more than where I am at present. I would be living in isolation.

You say you are building more social housing, but it is too little too late for many of us.

You may blame the Labour policies, but it was your government who introduced this law so I have to hold you responsible.

Mr Cameron, I do not believe you or your MPs are evil men at heart, I believe this is an ill-thought-out plan and you did not understand the consequence of your action.

I ask you to take a step back and look at this again.

THE ABOVE IS JUST PLAIN CRUEL...I AM ASHAMED TO BE BRITISH.

Yours, Julia Jones

Read more about the bedroom tax HERE

Meanwhile on the same day as all these hardships come in, the government have reduced the tax burden on the wealthiest people in the country, saving them around £40,000 each per year.

Why is this government forcing the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society to pay for the sins of the Tory bankers and hedge funders, who took all our money and gambled it and then both bankers and this Tory government blamed what they did on the Labour government?

They say it is because there is little money and we have to pay the deficit and national debt down, but due to this government's failing botched policies the debt and the deficit is increasing, and this government will  borrow  more than Labour did in their whole 13 years in government. This government's total incompetence and ill thought out, ill informed policies is costing this country dear, for example; it has cost this country £100 million (and counting) over their botched Harrier and defence decisions and this is just one single botched policy, so far there have been 34 of them! Read HERE how this government have wasted over a £100 million of taxpayers money and have absolutely nothing to show for it.

Read HERE how this government have wasted at least £40 million of taxpayers money on the botched South West rail contract. They were told repeatedly they had got their sums wrong and only listened wen Virgin Rail were taking them to court. It is said that this fiasco will end up costing the taxpayer around £400 million!

Mid Staffs Hospital is NOT Representative of the NHS!

It suits David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt and the Tory-led coalition government to indulge themselves in the findings of the Francis Inquiry, especially at this time when the government's reforms of the NHS are about to be rolled out nationwide. So many Conservative cabinet ministers and Tory MPs have vested interests int e NHS being privatised.

Call me cynical because I am. I am cynical of everything David Cameron does and everything his ministers do and everything both coalition partners do because the whole lot of them have been found lying on so many occasions that it's impossible to believe a single word they say, if they told me the date I would check it out! Everything this hideous government does holds an ulterior political motive, nothing is done for the good of the people, it is all done for the good of the coalition partners and to try and safeguard their position as the government after the 2015 election.

The way in which David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt have been revelling and indulging themselves in the Francis report findings for their own political gratification is quite shocking! There is no doubt in my mind that this prime minister and this health secretary are deliberately using the Mid Staffs hospital as a battering ram to bash down the entire NHS in order to fully privatise it. This is what the Tories have always wanted to do to the NHS right from its conception, they never wanted an NHS and would have aborted it long ago if they could. It is why Thatcher then Major tried to run down the NHS during the 18 years of successive Conservative Governments. The whole Tory government objective was to prove that the NHS wasn't working and then to carve it up and distribute the lucrative parts off to their Conservative supporting  mates in the private health care industry, they almost succeeded, Labour winning the election in 1997 stopped them in their tracks. To their credit the NHS the former Labour governments left was unrecognisable from the dirty filthy crumbling health care system of the 18 years of Tory mismanagement.
The only way the Tories can now get people to accept their privatisation of the NHS is for them to denigrate the whole system and decry the dedicated staff that work in it and this they set about doing in 2010, aided and abetted by the Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrat party and this is where Mid Staffs hospital and the Francis report comes in very "handy".

When David Cameron stood up in the House of Commons last week to give the government's response to the Francis Inquiry findings, when he gushed and told of his "love" for the NHS, it was one of the most gut churning nauseating false political statements I have ever heard in my life.

Mid Staffs hospital is Mid Staffs hospital, it is not representative of the NHS. Mid Staffs has its problems and seems to me to stem from a deep seated managerial problems and if we are going to apportion blame in the same way the PM and health secretary appear to want to, then we must ask the first question which started the whole ball rolling; "who put non medical managers in charge of hospitals to run them like businesses"?
No prizes for guessing it was the Conservative party and just like we are now wreaking the havoc that Thatcher's deregulation whirlwind of the banking industry has caused all these years later resulting in the UK banking crash, some hospitals are now wreaking the havoc of what the Tories did to the NHS back in the 1980's and 1990's.
I urge a caution on the people that Mid Staffs hospital serves, don't be surprised if the Government decides the only thing to be done is close your hospital and merge you with another. This could be the outcome, so "buyer beware" and brace yourself for the full government response to come next month.

The NHS Pre 1997

There is no avoiding the fact that when Labour came to power in 1997, the NHS was in a parlous state it was almost dead in the water. It had suffered from 18 years of chronic underinvestment, filthy slum hospitals, over crowded, understaffed dirty Accident & Emergency departments, ward closures, cottage hospital closures, hospital infection rates rising, a dearth of modern technology, under staffed and over subscribed radiology departments and physio therapy departments. People waiting years in agony with reduced mobility on lists to have joint replacements, people waiting months to see an oncologist when they were suspected of having cancer, people waiting months to see a cardiologist and people waiting on waiting lists to get on waiting lists for out patient appointments and surgical procedures. Hospitals where Thatcher had closed wards and sacked staff were overflowing and couldn't take anymore emergency admissions. Patients were treated in ambulances in car parks and often ferried to other hospitals for treatment. Special Care Baby Units (SCABU) had no cots and desperately ill newborns were driven miles to the nearest available cot. The same thing happened in Intensive Car Units, beds in these units were closed because there were not enough specialist staff to operate them and critically ill patients were sometimes ferried half way across the country for specialised treatment. People on planned surgical procedures who needed an ITU bed had their operations cancelled as did those on the normal list for routine operations. There were a chronic shortage of nurses and doctors as staff were not replaced when they left and training places were cut. the ironical thing is that when nurses complete their training and they applied to the hospitals for a job they were often turned down as the hospital although needing nurses desperately could not afford to hire them. There was equipment and supplies shortages from incontinent supplies to pyjamas and bed linen. Hospitals had leaking roofs and draughty windows and faulty central heating. The Conservative government forced hospitals to put their cleaning contracts out to tender and all too often hospital managers chose the cheapest tenders and the result of this was filthy germ ridden hospitals and cross infection and hospitals born infections began to rise dramatically.
All this is just the tip of the iceberg, people who worked in the NHS between 1979 and 1997 would know exactly what I am talking about. The NHS had deteriorated to such an extent under the Conservatives that the country really did only have a short time to save it. The NHS needed new hospitals, new technology, hundreds of thousands more doctors, nurses and ancillary staff, it needed existing hospitals refurbished along with new A&E departments and maternity units etc. In short it needed a miracle and billions of pounds spending on it.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital Selly Oak Birmingham
One of the 149 Brand New Hospitals the Labour Government had built

The Labour government came in in 1997 and this was the magnitude they were faced with within in the NHS and whereby I do not agree with Private Finance Initiative (remember PFI was a Tory invention), it was impossible to get the money from anywhere else which needed to be spent urgently on the NHS in order to save it from Tory extinction. I wish Labour could have found a different way, but realistically what choice did they have when faced with 4 million unemployed a spiralling benefits bill and an NHS that was terminal, a crumbling education system and a seriously understaffed police service too and no nursery school education and no Sure Start early intervention? The Tories like to harp on about the mess that Labour left in 2010, well, it was nothing compared to the level of debt and mess the Tories left in 1997 and yet the Labour government managed to save the NHS, education, the police and the armed forces and bring down unemployment and provide a nursery place for every 4 years old and provide Sure Start centres for toddlers, without causing distress and hardship to the country's poorest most vulnerable people and build 149 brand new state of the art modern hospitals. and one that isn't that far away from Mid Staffs, the Queen Elizabeth  in Selly Oak, Birmingham which is a huge success story and has its own military hospital unit.

Don't let the Tories lie to you and con you out of our NHS. Don't allow them to give our NHS to their mates in the private health industry.

If Mid Staffs hospital trust was responsible for more deaths than need have happened, then how many unnecessary deaths were the Conservative party responsible for in the NHS between the years of 1979 and 1997? Perhaps we should have a full public Inquiry into that and then Jeremy Hunt could also announce that the police should prosecute the entire Conservative cabinets of those times for conspiring to bring about the demise of the NHS for political reasons? I once witnessed a patient die because she arrested and we did not have the right size endotracheal tube to open and clear her airways, why didn't we have this size in our crash trolley? Because the non medical managers decided that it was too small and we wouldn't need it and it was struck from the list of equipment to be present in the crash trolley,  making no provision for a small adult. So when this dear lady arrested at night, we had to send a nurse running right across the other side of the hospital to the paediatric unit for the right size tube, to try and be met by a nurse from paediatrics running half way with the tube to meet somewhere in the middle in the dead of night like some kind of dark bizarre comedy sketch, only it wasn't funny, we were too late and the lady died. I've never forgotten it and I've never forgotten being forced to inform her relatives that she had died and I've never forgotten the white anger of the futile situation we as staff were placed in. So Jeremy Hunt and David Cameron ought to think on before they open this particular Pandora's box, because I for one know of many unnecessary deaths x caused as a direct result of Tory mismanagement of the NHS and this is going to happen again, with these reforms!

I am not for one nano second saying that what happened at Mid Staffs is excusable because it isn't, what I am saying is, do not tar the whole of the NHS with the Mid Staffs brush, because Mid Staffs is not representative of the NHS, but from what I see, hear and read, this is exactly what this hideous government are pushing for and hoping for, they are going to use this situation to fully privatise the NHS.
Before this government came in the health companies (many who support the Tories financially) were circulating like vulchers and since this government have come in, they couldn't wait to get their hands on our NHS, make no mistake, these people want our NHS for themselves and this Tory led government want to give it to them. Why would they want the NHS if it was really as bad as Cameron and Hunt are trying to make it out to be? They want it because they smell huge profits to be made and they want to extricate every single pound of taxpayers money that they can for themselves and their shareholders.

Why else do you think that David Cameron has named five other hospitals? It is all part of his plan to rid the state of the NHS. At least one of these hospitals, Colchester, has hit back at the claims made by the prime minister and local MPs have spoken out in defence and maintain that the hospital has been wrongly singled out.

If Jeremy Hunt wants someone sacked and prosecuted for Mid Staffs then he should start with Sir David Nicholson, but he wont and he wont because Hunt is a disingenuous turd escaped from a sewage plant. Nicholson of the infamous "Nicholson Challenge" is a staunch supporter of this dreadful government's NHS reforms, so he wont be going anywhere in a hurry and he has the full support of David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt.

The NHS chief executive, Sir David Nicholson, enjoys the "rock-solid" support of David Cameron and the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, according to well-placed NHS and Whitehall sources. He is likely to face criticism in the report, following a public inquiry under Robert Francis QC, as he was the local NHS boss when negligent care at Stafford hospital began in 2005. He was then chief executive of the NHS in England when relatives of the 400-1,200 patients estimated to have needlessly died began campaigning. The Guardian

Hunt is being hypocritical in calling for people to be prosecuted while hanging onto Nicholson, but when did being untruthful and hypocritical ever bother Jeremy Hunt? After all he is the man who deliberately lied to and misled Parliament over the BSkyB bid and it is Hunt who fraternises with Murdoch and who was within 2 hours of granting Murdoch permission to take full control of BSkyB giving him the monopoly on the news in this country!

People now have a stark choice, they believe Cameron and his lies over NHS reforms (remembering that he has already blatantly lied to people faces about it -  "there will be no top down reorganisation of the NHS") before he launched the biggest top down reorganisation of the NHS in its 63 year history, and they allow Cameron, Hunt and the Tories destroy and privatise the NHS, or they stand and fight for it now.

If you are ever in doubt about what this hideous government of liars think about our NHS and what they hope to do with it, look at the photo above, it is self explanatory!

Anyone thinking of voting for either the Tory party or the Liberal Democrats in the Eastleigh by-election needs to remember what I've written here and if they value the NHS they will find another party to vote for, one that has promised to repeal the Health and Social care reforms Act which will bring about an end to our NHS this coming year and there is only one party that has promised this and only one party that can do it and that is Labour.

Horsemeat: Another Fine Tory-Led Government Mess?

Horsemeat in UK food chain.

Back in July 2010 when the Tory-led coalition government was just 2 months old, the then Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley was warned that his introduction of the policy of less regulations on the food and drinks industry could carry disastrous consequences, he and this feckless coalition government chose to ignore those warnings.

The government were warned, that "their attitude to food labelling is probably wrong"

On 20 July 2010 the food authenticity programme was transferred from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to Defra along with food labelling and composition policy not related to food safety or nutrition.

Food standards legislation set out specific requirements for the labelling, composition and, in some cases, safety parameters for specific high value foodstuffs which are potentially at risk of being misleadingly substituted with lower quality alternatives.

The legislation makes sure consumers are not mislead as to the nature of food products when it is sold to them.  It also makes the playing field level for food producers, so they have established standards they can work to when producing well known or traditional foodstuffs.Source: DEFRA

On July 20th, 2010 in a "Written Ministerial Statement" the Prime Minister wrote this:

Food Standards Agency in England 

The Government recognises the important role of the Food Standards Agency in England, which will  continue to be responsible for food safety. The Food Standards Agency will remain a non ministerial department reporting to Parliament through Health ministers. In England, nutrition policy will become a responsibility of the Secretary of State for Health. 

Food labelling and food composition policy, where not related to food safety, will become a responsibility of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.  

It says on page 13 of the Coalition Agreement:

We will introduce honesty in food labelling so  that consumers can be confident about where  their food comes from and its environmental  impact

So the government have been playing around with food labelleing? Perhaps they may like to inform the public just how much they have eased up on the regulations and if their changes may have helped influence this situation? I do not have any faith in this government, their track record for competence is utterly abysmal and many times this government have been found wanting and acting in a totally feckless way, bending over backwards to give the food industry (and all industry) exactly what they want. From relaxing of food labelling, to junk food making its way into our schools and the relaxing of health and safety rules in the work place, this government have meddled. (Many companies within the food industry also happen to be Conservative donors)

Many European countries eat horsemeat, but we do not in the UK, or at least we thought we didn't! I don't care how many times the Environmental Secretary, Owen Paterson states that there is no danger from eating horsemeat, with all due respect, this is what former Environment Secretary, Conservative MP John Gummer said about British beef when he was photographed allegedly feeding his daughter a beefburger at the height of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy  (BSE - mad cows disease), telling us there was nothing to worry about then.

At the time, Mr Gummer said: "I can assure the public there is no cause for concern."The Government has taken all the advice it can from the experts. Their conclusion is that beef is perfectly safe."

Shortly before people started dying of the human form of BSE "new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease." 
and British beef was banned for 3 years, in fact, Russia only lifted its ban on British beef in November 2012.

The Government say they are making changes to the food provision programme:

To enable the provisions of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers (‘FIC’)

The consultation started on 7th November 2012 and ended on 30th January 2013.

This consultation seeks views on the Government’s plans to make underpinning domestic legislation to enable the food information to consumers (FIC) (Regulation (EU) No, 1169/2011) to be enforced in the UK.

The aims of FIC are to improve the information provided to consumers so that they are able to make informed choices about the food they buy, and to update legislation to reflect current industry practice and consumers’ changing information needs.

In bringing in legislation in support of FIC, existing regulations will be revoked. Most of the impacts of this is discussed in the Impact Assessment (IA) however there are additional questions related to 

• Alcohol claims and
• Ice cream, and cheese and cream

These are discussed further in Annexes 1 and 2 of the consultation document. Source: DEFRA

In my opinion the public now have a right to view the Impact Assessment and to know who responded.

• How long has the government actually known about possible horsemeat in the UK food chain?
• Why doesn't supermarkets know what's in the food they are selling?
• Why did it take the British Government so long to react to the Irish horsemeat findings?
• When will we know the results of all the tests?
• The government have no idea as yet about food safety & food authenticity, yet they have said the public can go on buying and eating processed food, in the absence of any tests results how can they possibly give advice like this?

How can Owen Paterson possibly make that statement, when he doesn't even know where this horsemeat originated from and the conditions it was slaughtered under and if it was classified fit for human consumption and by whom? How does he know that these horses have not been treated with the painkiller phenylbutazone?  Horses treated with the painkiller phenylbutazone are not allowed in the food chain as the drug is thought to be dangerous in humans. How does Paterson know that this meat has been kept hygienically and slaughtered correctly? The truth is he doesn't know, he can't know because he and this government do not even know where the meat used in some products originated from!

Mr Paterson said: "British food prides itself on scrupulous traceability", well if it does, then why doesn't Mr Paterson know where this meat originated from and what tests it has undergone and when? How come Findus knew that their products were not what they were being sold as 12 days ago, yet took absolutely no action to halt production and withdraw their products from sale?

This government have made poor people so poor that they have no choice but to buy cheap food and it is cheap food that is mainly affected, so once again it is the poor and vulnerable that will pay any price to be paid for this coalition government's total incompetence.

The chancellor has announced that welfare payments will rise more slowly than forecast, saving £3.7bn by 2015/16 for the public purse, but with charities warning that poverty levels will rise.

In his autumn statement George Osborne confirmed that he would be breaking the traditional link between benefits and inflation next April with many parts of social security rising by just 1% a year.

If food prices rise as a result of this fiasco, will the government lift the cap on benefits, or is he content to see even more children than the estimated 200,000 extra that are expected to fall into poverty, be adversely affected as a direct result of his Tory government policies?

Tory Poll Tax Mark 2 - Will It Cause the UK's "Arab Type Spring"?

Cameron is a prime minister who would far rather be out of the country than in it, understandable really given the utter mess, chaos and confusion he, Osborne and Clegg are causing.
Last Wednesday he flew to Algeria , no one really understands why, but most likely he was informed about Algerian oil and gold (don't forget "our Dave" doesn't do detail so he was probably unaware of this beforehand) and hastily went to eat humble pie and apologise in person after insulting the Algerian government and Abdelmalek Sellal, the Algerian prime minister over the recent hostage situation. The Algerian PM has insisted he had to act immediately because of  a rapidly deteriorating situation and the hostages rescued by Algerian forces back that up. It may come as somewhat of a shock to "our Dave", but other PMs really do have a grasp on their own internal affairs and know how to handle them and it is not a good idea to publicise a top secret rescue mission before it is actually carried out! (Walls have ears and all that.)

Dave in Egypt

Of course any normal prime minister would have realised the vastness of Algeria and the immense difficulties of policing and defending such a country and used diplomacy plus plus plus and withheld his "fury" and showed better judgement than to rant and rave at the Algerian government, personally insulting the Algerian PM on national and international airwaves, by telling the whole world and his brother (including al Qaeda no doubt they've now stored that up for future reference) that he hadn't been kept informed and how disgusted and "furious" he was. But that's David Cameron for you, he never knowingly passes up a chance to strut and puff himself up on the world stage and this is one such chance he really didn't want to miss. In my opinion, what really rankled "our Dave" was because he missed the chance to order the SAS in and reap all the glory for himself, brinkmanship is an unpleasant and very dangerous trait but it's one "our Dave  has in spades and he showed this trait when Egypt was going through her uprising. Not to be outdone by the the then French president Sarkozy, "our Dave" took some time off from the ill timed Middle East arms soiree he was on with  all his Tory doning arms dealer mates (who flog arms to small Arab countries) and dropped in unannounced and unscheduled on the then interim government in Egypt just days after the so called "Arab Spring" uprising, completely upstaging former President Sarkozy (and Dave really does wonder why all European countries hate him and us!) "Our Dave" made sure he was the first Western leader to visit Egypt after the uprising! You may remember the time? It was February 2011 and "Our Dave" had just managed to embarrass the country after making that dreadful speech on multiculturalism, where he virtually accused all Muslims of being extremists.

However, in the same vein and not being one to let the grass grow under his feet on the Algeiran visit either, Cameron decided to drop in on Tripoli in Libya, note he has avoided Egypt like the plague this time (after all he doesn't want to be associated with all what's going there at the moment "nuffink to do wiv me guv - honest"), so Egypt will have to wait, after all there are much better photo opportunities and news stories to be had elsewhere. You could almost see the pleasure in Cameron's stance as he basked glowing in the hastily assembled Libyan stage managed adulation emanating from the professional 'rent a crooning crowd' (remember this used to be done for Qaddafi too). It's enough to make one reach for the vomit bowl. Cameron clearly wants us (and the world) to view him as a statesman, while he may have forgotten that his and Foreign Secretary William Hague's disastrous foreign policies and decisions that saw British nationals left to fend for themselves in Libya and  Egypt, we haven't. William Hague making bizarre statements and ordering strange covert missions in the dead of night in helicopters when all they had to do was inform the Libyan's that they were coming and  someone wold have been there to meet them! (And this from the government who berated the Algerian PM for not disclosing details of a top secret rescue mission in case it harmed hostages chances!)

Now we get to the bit where I say "you couldn't really make this stuff up"!

David Cameron actually had the front to chair the UN poverty meeting in Liberia.

Mr Cameron told a UN meeting in Liberia that eradicating "extreme poverty" should be the focus of a new set of international development goals.

The PM (call me Dave) was co-chair of the panel, which met on Friday to discuss new targets to replace the millennium development goals which expire in 2015.  

On the day that "call me Dave" was in Libya creating photo opportunities in the hope of increasing his poll status, it was announced that the poor, the unemployed and the low waged will be forced to pay council tax out of money they simply do not have in what has been dubbed as "Tory poll tax mark 2".

On that day the PM also decided to insult British children with this comment:

Cameron then asked what they wanted to be when they became adults and many replied doctors or lawyers. Cameron joked: "That is very impressive. In my country, they all want to be footballers or pop stars," The Guardian.

Cap on Tax Credits and Working Age Benefits

I would suggest Cameron sorts out the poverty he is causing in his own country before he pokes his nose in elsewhere. His policies will result in over 200,000 more children living in Britain today being pushed into poverty. 

The government's assessment of the bill shows that 85% of households with children will be affected by the cap. This means it will affect families from all walks of life – both in and out of work. [The Children's Society] estimate that those who will be affected include around 300,000 nurses and midwives, 150,000 primary school teachers and 40,000 armed services personnel.

And for many families the losses will be large.

The Children's Society found that:

• A lone parent working as a nurse with two children, earning £530 a week would lose £424 a year by 2015.
• A couple with three children, one earner, a corporal in the Army, earning £619 per week would lose £552 a year by 2015.
• A lone parent working as a hairdresser with one child, earning £195 per week would lose £296 a year by 2015.
• A couple, one a childminder earning £240 per week, and the other a postal worker earning £395 per week, with two children would lose £351 a year by 2015.
• A couple with two children with one earner working as a primary school teacher earning £600 per week – would lose £424 a year by 2015.

These cases assume that the households are not receiving housing benefit, either because they own their own home or because their income is too high. The impact on families is likely to be even greater if they are renting their home and receiving housing benefit. This is because in most areas, maximum support with rent will also only be uprated by 1% in 2014 and 2015.

Low-income families face even more risk

The impact of this bill is based on predictions of inflation over the next three years. The government expects prices to rise between 2-3% every year. If prices rise faster than this families could lose a lot more than has been estimated here.  

This is particularly worrying given that the incoming governor of the Bank of England has suggested that central banks consider scrapping inflation targets. The benefit uprating cap transfers much of the risk of high inflation from the exchequer to low-income families.

If a low income family only has a part time job and cannot manage to find another job or persuade their employer to increase their hours to at least 16 hours per week, then these people will also be facing a cut in their working family's tax credit.So not only are the unemployed and the poor being penalised for being poor, so too will those who cannot find work for 16 hours or more per week.

Tory Poll Tax Mark 2

I warned back in 2011 that this was going to happen, I tried and failed to get the national press to take an interest, well now it is almost here, the Tory Poll Tax Mark 2 is just around the corner. Cameron, Osborne, Clegg, Eric Pickles and Iain Duncan-Smith and this appalling mongrel Tory controlled coalition government have this new "poll tax" poised like the "sword of Damocles" and hovering over the heads of the poorest and the lowest paid workers in the country. In April these feckless, reckless ideological idiots are going to allow the sword to drop and sever the lifelines of the poorest, lifelines which once helped them keep their heads just barely above the rough financial waters and the havoc that the Tory doning bankers have wreaked upon this country!

Speaking to the The Sun newspaper on the 7th October 2012 prior to the Conservative party conference, Prime Minister, David Cameron said:

"We are helping with the cost of living by freezing council tax"

The day before on the 6th October the Chancellor, George Osborne told the Mail On Sunday:

"Council tax is to be frozen for a third year in a row – a move worth £80 a year for the average Band D council tax payer"

I wonder if the PM and the Chancellor can explain why they are cutting funding to local authorities thus forcing the leveraging of new council tax bills on the poor and the low paid, despite their pledges in the Tory press and the Tory party conference to freeze council tax and doing it in such a deceitful and underhand way by trying to pin the blame on local authorities for the rise in council tax?

Where is the right wing press on this? Where is the broadcast media? Why are they allowing Cameron and this government to get away with this?We all know that if this were Labour trying to pull a stunt like this the right wing malcontents would be all over them like a rash!

At the very time that David Cameron's unelected government was defending policies back home that will see the introduction of the "Tory poll tax Mark 2" and the country's poorest people and those on benefits and those in work on low wages being forced to pay council tax from money they simply do not have, Dave was strutting around like a peacock trying to bolster his image.  At the very time a lady in Cornwall was shown on TV crying in fear and distress saying that she is not "a scrounger or a shirker" and that she simply does not have the money to pay for an increase in her council tax and she simply doesn't know what to do or where to turn "our Dave" is grandstanding on the world stage telling others about how they need to eradicate poverty, when he and his government are pushing 200,000 more children into poverty in his own country! Cornwall council forces the poorest households to pay rise in council tax.

Of course it's not only Cornwall where this will be happening, it will most likely cover the whole country in many  constituencies, whether they are Labour, Tory, or Lib Dem or even independent. However, the Tory controlled government has cut funding to Labour local authorities more than they have to to Conservative local authorities.


Bedroom Tax

What is the so-called 'bedroom tax'?

• Under controversial plans, those living in social housing who are deemed to have a spare bedroom will be asked to downsize or face a cut in benefits from April.
• Ministers want to cut housing benefit by 14% for those deemed to have one extra bedroom and 25% for claimants with two or more spare bedrooms.

How many people will this affect?

• The 'bedroom tax' will affect around 660,000 social housing tenants across the country.

Who will be affected?

• Separated parents who share the care of their children and who may have been allocated an extra bedroom to reflect this. Benefit rules mean that there must be a designated ‘main carer’ for children (who receives the extra benefit).
• Couples who use their spare bedroom when recovering from an illness or operation.
• Foster carers because foster children are not counted as part of the household for benefit purposes.
• Parents whose children visit but are not part of the household.
• Families with disabled children.
• Disabled people including people living in adapted or specially designed properties.

Source: The National Housing Federation

Lisa and Brett's story. 

This the story of a disabled couple who are so distressed at the situation Cameron and his government have placed them in that they are breaking down and sobbing on national TV they are absolute heartbroken that they may lose their little 2 bedroomed house.
This is not going to tackle the housing shortage, but building MORE houses NOW will and it will also help kick the start the economy, it is what Ed Balls and Labour have been calling for ever since this government came to power when they slashed the house building budget!
This is going to affect all people up to the age of 67. What this government is failing to recognise is that these people are not just losing the place they live in, they are losing their HOMES, where no doubt they have lavished love and attention on.

This is a spiteful vindictive move by this government, who clearly believe that if people are poor then they do not deserve to have a comfortable home with a spare room and they are going to make it impossible for them to stay in their homes. So in effect they are being punished simply for being poor, if they have no money then Cameron, Iain Duncan-Smith and Osborne are going to be drive them out of their homes. It's horrendous and once again with the exception of ITV, the right wing press and the broadcast media are hardly even publishing it. When I remember the fuss that the Sun newspaper made because the PM Gordon Brown who is partially sighted wrote a handwritten note to a fallen soldier's mother and he had got the surname muddled up between Janes and James, the terrible headlines about it day in and day out, yet they apparently do not class this government driving people out of their homes important enough to make it headline news! It's staggering we have a government causing terrible pain and distress to people and the right wing press are taking no notice because the PM promised a referendum on the EU which is going to take place sometime never! They've all been had and they cannot see it.

Combined Effect of These Cuts

The combined effect of these benefits cuts may mean that many council tenants and housing association tenants and also tenants of private landlords will suddenly be unable to pay their rent. There is a huge potential for thousands of families being forced into poverty, unable to pay for their hating, food and rent, they will find themselves homeless and their children taken into care. I've been warning that this is coming, but I'm pretty sure people do not think that these rule changes apply to them, they are soon to have a very rude awakening. Also with the universal payment, people will be given their own rent and rate rebates to pay their own bills, these benefits will no longer be paid to the relevant local authority departments. People short of money facing a choice v between paying their rent or feeding their child are going to feed their child and keep that child warm, this is another huge propensity for people to find themselves homeless.

Food-Banks 

Again we see the incompetence and the inability to grasp the fundamentals of change from Cameron, Duncan-Smith and Osborne, they don't appear to have the wit to realise that their policies will have a catastrophic effect and cause pressure on other parts of the benefits system. This is like a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. Cameron completely fails to understand that it is not a good idea to tell others how to eradicate poverty elsewhere in the world, when in Britain of all places, in 2013 he is causing extreme anxiety and poverty in his very own country! Where he has presided over a government that has caused the use of food-banks to quadruple over the past 2 years, as people struggle to pay bills and feed and clothe their families. Food banks, which "call me Dave" describes as a "good thing" and an example of his "Big Society" in action, (See what did I say about "our Dave" never knowingly passes up a chance to grab a headline and make it all about himself?!) It passes completely over his head that the people using these food-banks are in dire and desperate need and have gone hungry for days before being given vouchers to collect food parcels. I doubt too that Cameron actually knows that people can only use these food-banks up to 3 times, so what they do after the third time is anyone's guess.

What an indictment on this country's reputation that the poor, the vulnerable, the employed, the unemployed and the disabled feel they need to go on national TV to defend themselves against their very own government and feel they need to convince others that they "deserve" to be helped!  It is a travesty against our once civilised country's way of life and the once inherent decency of the British people.

This is where the incompetent PM's ill thought out, ill informed, child like government and their ill advised ideological policies have led us - right to the brink of an uncaring dog eat dog society.

Britain has more than 10 million adults living on between £12,000 and £30,000 gross, the majority in work, it's these people too that are being branded and insulted by this government and who are going to be badly affected.

For too many, social mobility has begun to slide backwards. A small but growing band of global pirates – billionaires all, without allegiance to community or country, devoid of civic responsibility – accrue wealth from the continued immiseration of the squeezed majority. These hugely rich are fawned over and subsidised by governments even as inequality widens to a chasm that may yet produce social unrest.

The Tory controlled government, is a government that is waging a war upon the poor and forcing them to shoulder the lions share of cuts, while they have given their mates the Tory 1% a tax cut, which means that millionaires will each receive around £40,000 per year tax rebate! £40,000 is more than most working class people actually earn in a year.

It's estimated that a one earner family could lose around £530 per year, however, I estimate it could be far higher than this, when all the lost benefits are accrued, it could be nearer £700, that's around £58 per month and this is not calculating the new bedroom tax. I

If people are forced to start paying for a spare bedroom, this is an extra 14% on top for one spare bedroom and 25% for two spare rooms, As a rough guide if your rent is now £400 per month, this is going to cost you another £56 per month for one bedroom or £100 per month for 2 spare rooms. This will be charged regardless if you work or not!

If you are a low wage earner, you could lose out in tax credits, housing benefit and may also see your rates rise, as mentioned above in the Tory poll tax mk 2 and on top of this, you could also be charged extra if you have a spare bedroom.

The so called bedroom tax is being mooted by this government that it will help the housing shortage, it will do no such thing. Most people who require to move into larger or smaller properties are already living in social housing, so this is a move within the system, how is it going to create more homes? It amounts to a tax being forced on the poorest most vulnerable people in society to pay for what the greedy Tory bankers did to this country.

If people cannot manage now, how are they going to manage when all these cuts start in April? I'm afraid we are going to see evictions, children taken into care and mass homelessness on a scale never seen before. This is also assuming that the government computers get the switch over to universal credit right, and IT experts have already warned the government that its IT systems cannot cope.

Will private landlords wait for their rent if the government's computers cannot cope, in an environment where they can easily rent out their property to someone else as rented property is now at a premium? Also will private landlords reduce their rent when the government cap housing benefits and people can no longer afford their rents? Again we see the propensity for a massive problem entirely of this government's making.

This Tory controlled government led by David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg and IDS are in the process of causing massive problems they have changed things for the sake of changing them, they are deliberately making the poor pay for what the rich did to the country and to try and divert attention away from them, they are causing rifts between workers and unemployed, private sector workers and public sector workers, enabled against disabled, working classes against working classes. What this government is doing is not just morally wrong and heinous, it is also extremely dangerous!

However, now we all have to face it, our country is now one huge mess thanks to the Tories and their insane austerity which isn't working and which is dangerous harming the economy.

The UK is an non-functioning total mess caused by inexperienced ideological politicians, playing at running the government. Cameron, Osborne and Clegg took the British economy over in May 2010 after the general election when the previous Labour government had got it back into recovery and on an even keel returning the economy to 2.7% growth. This feckless mongrel Tory controlled coalition government were warned repeatedly by the Labour party and by the vast majority of the world's leading economists that the course of austerity they intended to embark on was too much for our fragile recovery to withstand, that they were "cutting too far, too fast, and too deep", they chose to ignore those warnings and have ignored those warnings ever since and now we are in this truly dreadful mess entirely of this government's making. We came out of the double dip recession made in Downing Street, only because of the Olympics, now those affects are fast dwindling the economy is rapidly shrinking again and shrunk in Q4 by a terrible -0.3%, and the UK is on the road to an unprecedented triple dip recession - made once again in Downing Street!

I can see there being riots come April and May and we needn't think the police will be able to sort them out, cameron has sacked half of them, and the other half he has working on his mates plebgate affair, where Andrew Mitchell swore at police. The army wont be much help either as their numbers are being cut drastically and the ones that aren't have now been sent into Mali by Cameron who is hoping to get a poll bounce from them!

You honestly cannot make this stuff up!