The privatisation of Health begins to get some substance

Since the start of this blog I have been warning you that the ruling elite in this country are determined to completely privatise the health service  and destroy the institution we call the NHS. Today's papers are carrying reports of the latest report from the think tank Reform calling for everyone in the UK to pay £10 a month through the council tax to pay for the NHS and for overnight stays in hospital to be charged hotel rates. This is the start of the complete Americanisation of the health system in Britain.
Such proposals may not be realised, but what they are intended to do is test the water and begin to plant the seeds for similar proposals that will eventually emerge as 'facts' for which 'there is no alternative.'

The NHS is indeed in difficulty because of funding and lack of staff, but I remind you, this is all quite deliberate. The Westminster parties, and I include them all in this, are quite happily creating a crisis within the health services in Britain to justify ending the service as we know it. This is a good example of how the neoliberals apply the Shock Doctrine in order to destroy something and blame it on the conditions of the thing itself, rather than admit that such conditions were manufactured with the precise intention of causing its destruction. This think tank, Reform, claims that it is an independent non-party charitable organisation, but was founded by two Tory MPs and has a Board staffed with neoliberal politicians and businessmen. It is supported by firms such as G4S and Serco and all the other vultures making fortunes out of the privatisation of our public services. I trust you also note that whilst making fortunes out of privatisation, these firms are also grossly incompetent and totally corrupt.

Make no mistake, unless there is a complete and genuine reform of Westminster, not only of the style of politics practised within it, but a wholesale reform of the personnel we continually vote into it, the NHS is doomed. Such a reform of Westminster is not, of course, going to happen. The only hope we have is a vote for an independent Scotland where such things will no happen. However, there is no question that the NHS in its present form in England and Wales will not survive. Policy-making at Westminster is in the hands of unscrupulous scoundrels with sinister intentions.

This is the 7th richest country in the world and there is plenty of money for health, free at the point of use. What is lacking is the will to provide it. Tax evasion on its own amounts to three times the annual NHS deficit. Bankers bonuses annually pay out more than the NHS deficit which is estimated at £30billion. The costs of illegal and pointless military wars and occupations of foreign countries far outstrip the money needed for an efficient health service. To say that this country can't afford the NHS, even in these times of austerity is simply a barefaced lie, and it is a barefaced lie promoted by the whole Westminster establishment. Your politicians are both liars and fraudsters who all seek to make a lot of money out of the bribery and corruption on offer from the private firms who stand to make fortunes out of the destruction of the NHS and its subsequent privatisation. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Teachers - The source of utter confusion and complete disorder in this poor country.

The hostility towards, and contempt for, ordinary working people in this country has reached a critical level. On Wednesday 26th March, which was yesterday, teachers in England and Wales staged a one day strike. You would have thought the world was going to end by the reaction to this. The news reports were full of people bemoaning the disruption caused by these selfish people and television and radio interviewed an endless supply of parents complaining about the strike. I was in Halifax in Yorkshire, yesterday the 26th, and at 11am I was in a Morrison's supermarket. On the newspaper stand was a paper called the Halifax Courier which announced in large bold type, "Teachers strike causes chaos". However, what was significant was that the word chaos was in letters three inches long that took up the whole breadth of the page, and yes I did measure them. Now this was at 11am on the day of the strike, so this monumental piece of news announcing the chaos caused by the teachers must have been written the previous evening, the day before the strike actually took place.

I was a bit bemused by this headline as I could see no chaos in Morrison's or its surrounding environment, and after wandering around this area of Halifax for about 30 minutes could still not see any sign of any form of disruption to daily life in this grand Yorkshire borough and, fearing that I must be missing something crucial I consulted my Chambers Dictionary and Thesaurus 2000 edition which told me that chaos means complete disorder, utter confusion. This, according to the prophets who published the Halifax Courier a full day before this event took place, was the result of the teachers defending their jobs and their livelihood. I should not need to tell anyone with a scintilla of intelligence that such reporting is not only completely mendacious, but is seriously out of order and betrays a hatred for anyone who works for a living and dares to challenge the terms and conditions they are expected to accept from bullying and dictatorial employers and managers. 

The last time the teachers went on strike, I watched the two most prominent current affairs presenters in the UK (Jon Snow and Jeremy Paxman), on the two most prominent current affairs programmes in the UK (Channel Four News and Newsnight), ask union leaders how they could justify disrupting school pupils education? This is a powerful example of the sick class moral relativism that dominates this sorry nation. In April 2011 all schools in the UK closed for a Royal wedding. No talk of disruption here. This was a celebration. So, closing a school for a royal wedding is good and to be welcomed, but closing it in the defence of people’s livelihoods and their family’s standard of living is bad. Almost all schools in the UK are utilised as polling stations for elections. As a result, schools are regularly closed for local, parliamentary and European elections. That of course is not disruption either, disruption only occurs when teachers close the school for selfish reasons such as attempting to protect their jobs, which is not a justifiable activity.

One of the said commentators asked the union leader if there was ever any justification for disrupting a child’s education? The implication in a loaded question like that is that there is not. The union leader answered in terms of the context of the union’s dispute, but as far as Britain’s ruling class and its political and chattering classes are concerned, a royal wedding or an election is obviously justifiable disruption, but protecting your interests and the long term interests of your profession is obviously not. This anti-strike position is moral blackmail, but as we have just discussed, based on very dodgy morals. As David Hume showed, it is morality based on feeling rather than reason. We feel that as one of the participants in the issue is an adult (the teacher) then it is morally wrong to involve the other participant (the pupil) because that participant is a child. Any rational look at the problem may well show that the action by the adult may be in the child’s best interest in both the short and the long term, but that is never addressed because our affective interests take control of our thinking and rationality goes out the window. We must ask the question, if the commentator was correct and it is morally and socially indefensible for teachers to go on strike, what are the teachers to do? Are they simply to accept whatever employers and the government wish to do to them and lay foundations of terms and conditions of work that the child will eventually inherit should it enter the teaching profession? What about the children of the families affected by such attacks on their living standards? Are their parents to sit back and do nothing to protect them? I continually warn you that the ruling elite in Britain will not rest until they have removed all working rights and reduced the working people of this country to modern forms of slavery. You have been warned.

 

Your Servant

Doktor Kommirat

Privatisation - Al Capone would have been proud of it

I have been reading about the latest fiasco involving the outsourcing of public services and the extent to which the private sector firms charged with immigration and border security have been detaining people quite unnecessarily, causing inconvenience, hardship, trauma and even death by their incompetence, bullying and brutality. The latest case involved an 84 year old Canadian gentleman suffering from Alzheimers who was detained quite unlawfully for 5 weeks and died in custody whilst being handcuffed for over 5 hours.

If there is any greater evidence of the failure of the dominant economic ideology that governs this sorry nation it is the experience of privatisation. As I have noted before, I cannot think of a privatisation that has been anything less than a disaster. The justification for this policy is economic, but every privatisation that has occurred so far has been disastrously uneconomic and the experience has been that it is a form of legalised gangsterism whereby unscrupulous business people have made fortunes at the public's expense. In addition, none of the people responsible for the disasters that have resulted from it have been held to account. So, what are the alternatives? Well, there are none according to all of our three major Westminster parties. However, should you cancel all of the privatised contracts and return such services to the public sector, two things would immediately happen. One you would save billions of pounds, and two, you would create millions of jobs.

One of the principal reasons for the failure of privatisation is that it  leads to deregulation and an accompanying lack of accountability. It is also a truism that privatised industries run on a shoestring with the workforce depleted to the point that it is difficult to function. Another source of its inability to provide a proper service is the almost complete absence of investment. All profits are siphoned off for the directors and the shareholders. That is why they can make so much profit, but still claim to be penniless. I think I have said this before, but no public service should be in the private sector, full stop.

I have told you and will continue to tell you, that all of the fundamental premises that support free market neoliberalism are wrong. They are ideological and do not bear up to any decent empirical scrutiny.  If you base a theory on a false hypothesis then your conclusion have to be wrong. This then leads to public policy being devised from incorrect theories about economic phenomena which eventually lead to political and social chaos. There has to be a massive programme of renationalisation and the serious reform of our system of local government. I know it sounds stupid, but I could solve unemployment in a maximum of two years. This would then lead to a solution to the benefits dilemma that our politicians cannot even begin to understand. If you ally such measures to a comprehensive reform of the tax system, you begin to solve the deficit crisis quite quickly. It is not rocket science, but is a definite alternative to the system for which our pathologically lying politicians tell us there is no alternative. There can be no solution under the present Westminster system. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

There is no Alternative - Yes there is!

I have stated in this blog before that the biggest potential employer in the UK is local government. If you truly wish an alternative to the current mess that is British economic and political policy then one of the ways forward is the regeneration of a robust system of local government. No political system can claim to be democratic in the absence of meaningful local government. In his ‘Representative Government’ John Stuart Mill argues that

‘The very object of having a local representation, is in order that those who have any interest in common which they do not share with the general body of their countrymen may manage that joint interest by themselves.’

 A genuine democracy requires a system of limited central government with defined independent centres of power. In the UK prior to Margaret Thatcher, there were two principal independent centres of power, local government and the trades unions. It is not a coincidence that it was these two institutions that Thatcher went to war with first. A genuine democracy requires legitimacy and representation and as wide a dispersal of power as is necessary. The principle of local government is designed to satisfy such requirements as is neatly summed up by Mill. If such local responsibility were to be replaced by centralised administration from London, it is argued that such local individuality of approach would be sacrificed to uniformity, and that the adaptability of local decision-making would give way to rigidity and the centralised imposition of a bureaucratic ‘only one way’ of doing things. As local government enjoys a degree of autonomy from the centre, the power of the state is therefore fragmented and limited. As the political writer John Kingdom notes, the elimination of local government is generally taken as a symptom of totalitarianism. If you add to the continuing elimination of local government in this country, we also suffer from the totalitarian thrust of the 'there is no alternative' argument.

Kingdom notes that local government is found in virtually all developed states as a complement to central government and is generally seen as a sign of a healthy democracy. The diversity of life in a modern state such as Britain requires different approaches to similar problems. For example, consider policing or refuse collection. It is not rocket science to understand that the solutions to both such fundamental requirements of modern life require differing methods of implementation in different locations. Policing and refuse collection in the City of Glasgow will be markedly different in style and implementation from that in Ross and Cromarty. The principles remain the same, but the methodology will differ quite considerably. As a result, direct responsibility for the government of a locality can harness powerful forces on behalf of that community and imaginative and meaningful solutions to local issues.

In carrying out its fundamental functions, local government acts as a powerful and democratic employer in its reaction to the needs of its particular community. As an elected body it is also accountable to that community, in direct contrast to the private firms and agencies that supply such services in modern Britain. We desperately need the reform of our political and economic systems. Here is a way to start, but it will not happen under the present system. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

The Crimea, an object lesson in democracy.

I would like to ask you to consider the British and American attitudes to democracy. The people of the Crimea have voted by 97% to be consolidated into the Russian Federation and our political geniuses tell them that their decision is both undemocratic and illegal. You genuinely could not make it up!

The term democracy comes from the Greek 'demos' and 'kritas' meaning the rule of, or the will of, the people. So, the only proper application of the term democracy is to situations when the people of any political entity express their will. The people of the Crimea politically belong to the Ukraine, but spiritually and ethnically they have just informed the world in a manner that can neither be disputed nor challenged that they are Russian. Never mind say our glorious leaders in the 'democratic' west, your will and opinion matters not a jot and we do not recognise it. In other words, the Crimeans are not entitled to an opinion, never mind a vote.

The West argues that the Crimean referendum is illegitimate because it conflicts with the Ukrainian constitution, but this is a graphic example of where the law is wrong, and not the lawbreakers. It was St Thomas Aquinas, that well-known Marxist revolutionary, who told us that an unjust law is no law at all, and there can be no sense of justice in any political arrangement that denies the wishes of a population who votes 97% in favour of something. No constitutional arrangement can be considered lawful and valid where it seeks to deny such a democratic mandate.

Who is right and who is wrong in the Ukrainian situation becomes irrelevant when a people speak with such a unanimous manner. This must be the one of the biggest democratic mandates in history, gained in a vote that was open and transparent and puts the democratic claims of the British government to shame. We join in the condemnation of the Crimean referendum at our peril as it encourages political gangsters (and Westminster is only composed of political gangsters) to only accept votes and opinions that they approve of, and if you doubt that I simply refer you to the last Labour administration. This is the Westminster clique preparing the grounds for an attack on the result of the Scottish referendum if they do not like it. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Alternatives? There's loads of them!

One of the recurring and persistent themes of government since 1979 is that there is no alternative to the present economic system that dominates our nation. Austerity and cuts are necessary and unavoidable as they present the only remedy to an economic crisis caused by the very economic system that is being presented as the only solution to the crisis that it caused in the first place. Sounds daft doesn't it? That is because it is daft.

The claim that there is no alternative to any form of economic and social policy is the foundations of totalitarianism. If there is no alternative to any given economic and social policy option, then that must be the only option available, and indeed must be the right option. As a result, anyone offering any other course of action must be wrong, by definition. If they are wrong, then they must be prevented from being able to implement their action, they must be prevented from being able to implement that decision as it is the wrong decision and will cause chaos. Thus, the only government must be the government who operates the system for which there is no alternative.

It always strikes me that what is never considered in the debates about Independence or remaining within the UK, is what will be the consequences for Scotland if they vote no. The above is what will be the consequences, permanent government by neoliberals who have caused the financial crash and the inequalities and gross injustices that have resulted from it. I trust you have seen the latest Oxfam Report that shows how 5 British families own more than the poorest 20% of the population. If you support such a system, then you must vote no, and I sincerely hope you do because I do not want to share the same space as you do. Indeed when the Scots vote yes, I will propose that the new Scottish government help you to relocate to a different part of the UK.

To say that there is no alternative is of course not only a lie, but is intellectually bankrupt. There is only no alternative if you believe that there is only one way to govern the country. For every economic and social problem there are a host of alternatives if you want to choose them. To tell people that there are no alternatives is the refuge of the scoundrel, liar and fool. I will propose alternatives and will begin to address this in my next post. Even if we do get a no vote in the coming referendum, we still need to consider a different way as a matter of priority as the UK is heading for an even bigger disaster than it is already in.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

 

 

 

Vote No, vote for the Death of the NHS

I must sincerely apologise for neglecting to post in the past week, but I was otherwise engaged and was concerned that I had not posted recently. I have several issues I wish to comment on, but I feel that I must address the situation in the health service. As you will be aware, the government is denying the recent 1% wage rise to 615,000 non-medical workers in the NHS. Their reason is that they cannot afford it and that, as the Health Secretary Jeremy the Hunt tells us, 'it is the right thing to do' to ignore the NHS pay review body who recommended it.

Now I ask you to remember that this is the government who said that it could not ignore the recommendations of the pay review body for MPs and then proceeded to award themselves 14%. This is the government who told the nation that 'money is no object' when the South of England was flooded. They told us today that the pay rise for these workers would amount to £900 million and that this was unaffordable, just one week after the banks announced a combined £30 billion in bonuses that the government said they were powerless to prevent, even though they are the major shareholders in the two biggest. In addition, whilst the rise may indeed cost £900 million an average of 33% of that will immediately return to the government in the form of national insurance and tax. This is a good example of the old maxim that figures don't lie, but liars figure.

I have repeatedly warned you that the government is quite deliberately trying to wreck the health service so that they can completely privatise it. This is the American policy model that they adopted under Thatcher that the author Naomi Klein labelled 'The Shock Doctrine.' They are pursuing exactly the same strategy towards education. Should the health workers seek to protect their terms and conditions, the government and its lackeys in the press will launch a sustained campaign of hatred and denigration against the workers and their unions and will convince all the worker hating elements in this sorry country (who make up the bulk of the population) that the crisis in the health service is the fault of the workers and their unions. It is classic scapegoating and in line with their inherent fascist approach, taken from Goebbels, that if you are going to tell a lie, then tell a big one and tell it often. 

I repeatedly implore you to never underestimate the Westminster hatred for working people, and that includes all of the parties. Don't forget, this policy of blaming the workers was promoted just as enthusiastically under Labour. Westminster is going to destroy the health service and the education system and completely privatise them. Anyone who cannot see that must be living with their head up their own backside, and those who do see it must support it because no-one is raising their voice to protest or prevent it. This is your future if you just accept it. Never mind whether we keep the pound or not, never mind all these firms warning that they will leave if the Scots vote for Independence. These people are capitalists, they will do whatever is necessary to make profit, and if they leave, then they will be immediately replaced by other capitalists who will see a gap in the market and therefore an opportunity. Scotland will survive and thrive. The destruction of the NHS, the class ridden incompetence and greed of Westminster, the continued pauperisation of working people, the poor, the disabled and the disadvantaged, these are why we must take our own future into our own hands. We must divorce ourselves from these disgusting people. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Grovelling Apology

I have just re read my last post on poverty in Scotland and notice that my maths are something of a disgrace, and for that I truly apologise. As I posted this four days ago, I genuinely cannot remember where I got that 4.68 out of every ten people figure, but I can assure you I was not indulging at that point, despite my usual habit of enjoying a spot of Guinness whilst composing my memorable nonsense. I think it was perhaps meant to read 4.68 out of every hundred, but I will check this out and get back to you. I trust you will forgive my lapse into an episode of presenile dementia (I sincerely hope its presenile).

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Scotland, the Poverty Capital of the Western World!!!

All the polls and all the reports concerning the coming Scottish referendum tell us that what people want is information and facts. All the propaganda that passes for argument and debate from the Better Together campaign, whose title is, I hope you remember, Project Fear, is based on 'maybes' and 'what ifs'. Maybe we wont be admitted to the EU, maybe this company and that company will leave the country, what if we don't get the pound, etc. So, lets look at some facts. First, last month the Joseph Rountree Foundation told us that child poverty had fallen in Scotland at twice the rate of the rest of the UK in the last ten years. That is the result of the Scottish government's policies in Holyrood, and credit has to be given to all parties who supported such policies. Next, the Scottish Outlook Campaign which is an amalgamation of members from McMillan, Shelter Scotland, Oxfam, Alzheimer Scotland, The Children's Hospice Association, Child Poverty Action, The Poverty Alliance and The Scottish Council for Voluntary Associations, has been telling us how the Scots are being 'battered' by welfare reforms.  

Now the aforementioned groups represent the people who are able to provide us with the most accurate empirical data available on the subject of poverty, welfare, disabilities and health in the country. These are the people in direct day-to-day contact with all the fundamental problems of disadvantage and exclusion. Such people deal with facts, not propaganda. According to the Outlook Campaign, approximately 900,000 people in Scotland are living in poverty. Now, according to the National Records Office, Scotland has a population of 5.2million, so, just under 20% of the Scottish population is living in poverty, around 4.68 out of every 10 people, in the 7th richest country on earth. That is the empirical reality of the Scottish situation under Westminster rule. Never mind emotion, never mind nostalgia, forget patriotism, that is where we are in the year 2014. Indeed, if you do subscribe to the odious notion of patriotism, then it is your patriotic duty to free the Scots from this situation.

The Outlook Campaign tell us that the Scots are being battered by "welfare reforms, stagnant wages, rising utility bills, higher living costs and job insecurity", and calls this situation a 'humanitarian crisis'. They also highlight how there are 155,100 households on council waiting lists and how Scotland has 40,000 homeless, whilst highlighting the exponential rise in food banks as people can no longer afford food if they wish to pay their rent and mortgage, heat their homes and clothe themselves. This situation is a genuine national scandal for which the Better Together people can offer no solution as they are the cause.  

I sincerely hope that the people in the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties who tell us that we are Better Together and sustain a prolonged campaign of propaganda based on fear are proud of themselves and can sleep comfortably at night. What have these people to offer us if we stay within the United Kingdom other than more of the same, I await a response? The other reality is that all three major Westminster parties are committed to the dominant neoliberal economic order and that the differences between them is an argument about who can mange the neoliberal programme of cuts and austerity the best. None of them offer any real solutions. None of them offer to unleash the power of the state, the power of local government, the power of a truly national effort to solve the problems. There is another way, there are alternatives, but there are none on offer. Better Together? The people who argue this nonsense quite genuinely do not understand the problems, let alone the solutions. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Britain a Democracy? Aye Right

Can I draw your attention to one of the most obvious symptoms of the deep and chronic sickness that is the Westminster system of politics in this sorry country. One of the current top stories is the question of whether the mayor of London, the semi-fascist Boris Johnson, will stand for Parliament in 2015, or whether he will continue in his present post. Now it should be obvious to anyone with a scintilla of intelligence that this man is slightly more stupid than an imbecile, and, because of his extreme right-wing views, extremely dangerous. So, we have an extremely stupid and extremely arrogant upper-class clown being seriously considered as a leader of the Conservative Party and therefore a potential Prime Minister. Now we add into this toxic brew the fact that we quite calmly accept that, should this person wish to be a member of the British parliament, it will happen because he wants it. That it not a criticism of Mr Johnson, it is a criticism of the British system of politics and the British electorate.

We are supposed to be a representative liberal democracy, or that's what the textbooks would have us believe. Members of parliament are supposed to be chosen by the people to represent them and to propose public policy and legislation for the representative good of their constituents. What we have is that the Conservative Party will simply parachute this person into a constituency that votes mindlessly for their chosen candidate and that person will then take their seat and do whatever they want for the rest of their parliamentary life, and it has ever been so for MPs from both our major parties. That anyone could quite seriously proclaim that Britain even remotely resembles a democratic system renders them unfit to cast a vote. The only resemblance to democracy in this country is the fact that people do have a vote. Now that is not to be taken lightly or dismissed, but our democracy is rendered farcical by political reality and practice.

There is no short or medium term solution to the British sickness. The only way out of this morass is to vote for Independence in September. Should the Scots get their independence then they can start to repair the democratic deficit by electing a representative parliament by proportional representation and by holding that parliament and its representatives to account. The key to success is that the parliament must be truly representative and it will be for the Scots to ensure that the parties offer a truly representative cross section of candidates, and that the Scots will have the courage and the intelligence to vote, not only for party candidates, but also for outstanding individuals who challenge then party system. We must ensure that we have the offer of a balance of gender, ethnic minorities, working people, a regional mix and a goodly range of different talents. Only a parliament that is truly representative of a nation can call itself democratic and that is what Westminster is most certainly not, either representative or democratic. Your future is in your hands, you have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.