All I can say is please read this from 'Think Left'.
The NHS is being dismantled.
So is welfare.
And all to make the rich richer.
I could weep.
Instead I'm angry.
And I know I'm not alone.
Through #occupy.
Through other movements.
By our personal acts.
By our collective acts.
We have to claim the right to be the people we can be, and which this government and those it acts for want to deny to at least 99% of us.
That's why I wrote The Courageous State.
It was and is my way of saying we have a right to this country.
But a tiny minority are trying to take it away.
And we have to say no; that will not happen.
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Richard. You describe my sentiments precisely and thank you for helping me to play my part in this fight against the wrong doing. Sue
Richard – very well said.
My generation had the most enviable levels of freedom, security and opportunity for all of our working lives. We were however handed simple duties to carry out on behalf of our parents and grandparents. It is our duty to pass on to subsequent generations 2 of the really great British achievements of the past 100 years which they fought and struggled to set up – a humane and widely available welfare provision and a communal health system for all.
Along come the Bullingdon vandals, wealthy, spoiled and arrogant, so well provided for they have no need for any of this. Their aim; to systematically destroy these achievements, pander to the dogma of free market economics and enable their chums and supporters in private industry to make a fast buck.
There is no electoral mandate for this. As well as destroying the legacies we, the 99%, should be leaving for our children they have also turned the once Great British democracy into a joke.
How dare they destroy all that we have worked for.
How dare they hand it over to faceless unaccountable companies.
We should all be angry – very angry.
The Think Left post is really, really good – I’d not come across that blog before but will be following if from now on.
One of the problems with the Labour party’s current policy stance is that they are happy to go along with the privatisation and emaciation of the UK social security system (I refuse to use the dreadful US imported term “welfare” to describe benefits and tax credits) and indeed, Ed Miliband – whom I have a lot of respect for on many issues – insists on putting the boot into benefit claimants at the same time that he is (rightly) attacking bankers and oligarchs at the top. This is completely unhelpful political triangulation which runs a huge danger of rebounding on the Labour party at the next election. New Labour created the breathing space for the current hard-right ConDem coalition to flourish and if they are not very careful, Neo-Labour’s failure to challenge the right’s lies on social security “scroungers” could play into Cameron and Clegg’s hands at the next election.
Agreed, as ever
I think comparing Unum, a company that make £85m a year in the UK, to Goldmans Sachs is a bit of hysteria. It sells income protection products to employers to offer their employees more protection than just relying on the state. In doing so, the income protection industry is estimated to save the UK govt up to £500m a year in means tested benefits. Surely that is all a good thing reducing the pressure on the welfare system for people that genuinely need the state provided backstop.
Is there no abuse of ordinary people you will not excuse?
This company undermines our social safety net to secure a profit for itself and you applaud?
Read the report
I bet you didn’t
Funny how supporters of privatising the public sector always push the so-called “cost saving” benefits, isn’t it?
That’s probably why the NHS is saddled with billions of pounds more debt through PFI schemes such as hospital building when it would have been significantly cheaper if the NHS was left to do it instead.
Don’t kid yourself about what this is really all about. It is a plan for rentiers to funnel more and more taxpayers money into their own pockets. This is what the new “social impact” bonds intend to do. Jobsearch schemes and eventually they’d like social services will be run in this way. The government ask investors to invest in private companies to run certain public services and then these investors will be paid out on the basis of how much money they save the government.
Like PFI, it is a system ripe for abuse. The government is undermining our social safety net, as Richard says, in order to feed greedy, unnacountable private profiteers.
I’m not conned, mate……neither are many others!
That Diamond and Saez paper I mentioned a few weeks back was (is) discussed by Krugman (November 22, 2011, Taxing Job Creators) – he calls it a ‘tough read’, and I know I didn’t read it when I suggested others might wish to. I know my limitations. Circa 70% higher rate is looking ‘optimal’.
The political parties on the whole compete with each other for the role to serve the international corporations and the rich elites, the public at election vote act as a rubber stamp. If a true leader emerged who served the public he would be removed one way or another, If we are silent when the military wing of the US corporations rapes the middle east what makes you think they will treat you any better than the Palestinians are being treated? Notice how the media covered up the Liam Fox and his association with the zionist war machines political mask called Pargav.