Tories punishing the disabled shouldn't surprise anyone

Don't be shocked by the Tories throwing thousands of disabled people out of Remploy factories.
Whatever gave you the impression that slick Tory millionaires would give a toss about the poor, sick, jobless, disabled, NHS or anything else that matters to real people?
They just want to open the doors so that their greedy rich supporters and providers of funds can exploit and buy up the health service, the police etc and exploit young unemployed by getting them to work for no pay for firms like Tesco.
Idiots who buy the 'Labour spent it all' line don't have the intelligence to ask why countries like the USA are suffering the same problems - or to see the common factor is out of control bankers, hedge funds etc.
Uncontrolled capitalism will always descend into greed and punish those like the disabled who can't fight back.

Time to turn our back on Thatcher's legacy

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IT has become a cliché to blame Margaret Thatcher for the current ills of our society but I am increasingly convinced that we have to turn to the mad old cow (as I like to call her) to explain what is happening to us today.

It was the Thatcher regime that decreed public sector was bad and private good – and then went on to sell off, mostly to Tory supporters, the railways, British Telecom, the electricity and gas companies and the coal and steel industries.

All, we were assured would be much more efficient run for profit in the private sector.

She also brought in what has become a touchstone of national and local government and every public institution from schools to hospitals – the idea that better value comes from contracting out ( or outsourcing as the modern terminology has it) as much as possible. Once again, market forces would be the solution to all our problems.

Thirdly she began the process that removed almost all public oversight and regulation from the banking sector, allowing them to go their own way in the name of ever bigger profits and bonuses.

The results are all around us. As the financial sector collapses from an overdose of greed and stupidity, the UK is left without any substantial manufacturing industry because it has been flogged off and then sold on to foreign buyers before being closed as ‘uneconomical’

Most people are suffering financially because the privatised energy industry is focused on profit and refuses to pass on falls in wholesale prices while it can feather its own nest with increased income.

In the public sector, private contract and private contract either fails to deliver – like the schools payment firm which has just been fired – or costs twice as much as originally planned, as can be seen from virtually every IT contract the government has let.

The result is that we are suffering from an overdose of private greed, disguised as ‘market forces’ and even the Labour Party has been unable, until now, to utter the heresy that market forces are not the answer to every problem.

Thatcher created a demon out of those ordinary people who worked for British Steel, British Rail or cleaned hospitals as employees rather than exploited contractors. She told us it was wasteful to employ people directly and much better to have the flexibility of contractors you could fire when necessary.

Now is the time to question that dogma in every sphere. If we had a regulated financial system we wouldn’t have bought bundles of doubtful debt from America.

If we had nationalised power companies we would not only be able to smooth out the price hikes they have demanded but their profits could have gone into the public purse to pay for the renewable energy development we now need.

Almost every public institution would be better served by direct employees who developed loyalty and understanding as a result of being paid and treated fairly – to say nothing of having a proper pension to look forward to. Who doubts that hospitals were cleaner when the workforce was not provided by dodgy ‘hygiene’ firms?

The mantra of capitalism that private ownership and competition results in the best of all worlds is being proven to be a big lie across the world and in our own back yard. The Labour party under Tony Blair repeated that mantra at every possible occasion to reassure the middle classes but that doesn’t make it right and there is no longer a need to do so.

The Thatcher revolution has ground to a halt amidst debt and bankruptcy because it never took account of the nature of those who ascend to the top of a system based on greed that allows the terminally stupid to control the future of others.

It is time to turn back to the concept of public service, loyalty, fairness and stability that was inherent in our system when the major elements of our economy were owned and controlled by all the people of this country, not just by a few rich individuals, many of them without any real ties or loyalties to Britain.

If it makes you nervous you don’t even have to call it socialism – let’s have a new creed of pragmatism that says never again will we let the greedy bastards take control of our work, health, education, homes and money.

Kick out all religion

HOW would it be if all religions were banned from taking any part in public life – if religion was limited to something done in private between consenting adults?
Don’t get me wrong; I would not want to tell people what to believe or not to believe. Whether you want to put your faith in crystals or Christ, Mohammed or the moon goddess, Wicca or Wesley, Moses or the Moonies, should always be a matter between you and your particular level of gullibility.
What faith should never be able to do is influence public policy, because as soon as that happens decisions cease to be taken that deal with the proven needs of real people and they are, instead, based on the beliefs of those in power.
At its most frightening this is seen in America where a President can say that God told him to invade another country and not only does he escape being certified, he is allowed to remain in power, despite 650,000 civilian casualties in Iraq
Other religious fanatics were equally sure that God told them to fly aircraft into the Twin Towers and those caught up in that particular set of superstitions felt it acceptable to kill more innocents on London and Madrid’s public transport systems.
And all based on nothing more than belief, faith without fact, the breeding ground of the bigot and the bully.
Belief without any proof - other than a wide range of ‘holy’ books and scriptures that also lack any scientific credibility – is what has given us the Christian support of slavery, the Muslim jihads and the Inquisition.
Today we can list other crimes; the Vatican assisting the spread of AIDs in Africa and elsewhere by insisting that condoms did not act to prevent transmission of the disease and the persecution of Muslims in Palestine by a religious government in Israel.
Yet we still allow religion to play a part in public life. Does anyone doubt that even the modest reform of insisting that new faith schools should take a quarter of their intake from no faith members was abandoned because of the private religious beliefs of Tony Blair and his cabinet ministers like the arch Catholic Opus Dei member Ruth Kelly?
Blair puts his faith in faith schools when all the evidence is that they perpetuate division and lack of understanding – and that applies to the all-white rural Church of England primary and the Muslim ghetto secondary.
Why does he do it? Because he is a man with the ability to have faith and apparently keeps a bible by his bed. That is another way of saying he can believe in things that are not proven or provable by science – ranging from Christianity to weapons of mass destruction, apparently.
What would we lose if religion and superstition were banned from public bodies? No faith schools would mean the taxpayer forking out bit more, but the end of religious assemblies and religious education would give more time for real subjects.
It would mean dumping all that ‘defender of the faith(s)’ stuff from the titles of monarchy and probably the loss of Songs of Praise.
There would be no need for blasphemy laws, we would all be able to be as rude about each other’s religions as we liked, and our lawmakers and judges would be able to make and enforce laws without the intrusion of religious belief.
Of course, we might have to get the politicians, teachers and judges to swear an oath that they would not allow their personal belief system to affect their work – and the efficacy of that oath would depend on their level of personal belief and honesty.
On the plus side every cleric or believer who complained about insults to their faith, be it Jerry Springer The Opera, a play set in a mosque, the wearing of religious symbols or clothes or the lack of broadcast time for witches, could all be told the same thing – none of our business.
Squabbles between believers and non-believers should be relegated to those arenas attended by those interested in such superstitions, not given the gravitas of public policies.
In this country the superstitious have even gained a foothold in the science of medicine, where so-called alternative therapies are getting credence in the NHS without the same strict testing that proper medical procedures and drugs have to undergo.
Why? I suspect it is because the politicians are afraid of alienating the crystal gazers and acupuncturists just as they are of upsetting believers in other spheres.
The sad fact for such people is that believing in something doesn’t make it so. In our public life we ought to have a simple motto to deal with such beliefs – Prove it or we will ignore it.