Months ago I warned about the government’s eugenicist agenda. It was all the way back in early May when the whole, sordid story became clear. The British government didn’t cause Covid but it has certainly been very opportunistic about getting rid of the country’s ‘useless eaters’.
Have a look at my post and video from 6 months ago and compare it with developments since..
https://lefteyeview.com/2020/05/04/sage-ignoring-the-science/
In my head this is the right thing to do. In my gut I’m less certain. I’d appreciate your honest (but not knee-jerk) perspectives.
#mentalhealth
Every time you see your Tory MP, ask them this. Get your friends and neighbours to ask them too… Repeatedly. Don’t let them get away with it!
This weekend I went to Lincoln, a city I first visited during my homeless days back in the 1980s. It gave me a chance to meet some old friends and make a video combining my two main passions… Left wing politics and social/mental health care. What’s not to like?
In 872, when Alfred was only 23 he succeeded his brother, Aethelred as King of Wessex. Shortly after this he embarked upon his famous retreat into the Marshes, complete with implausible stories about burnt cakes. The war with Guthrum’s invading Vikings was brutal and bloody but eventually, a combination of Saxon courage and Alfred’s strategy won the day.
It’s no exaggeration to report that Alfred’s victory really did change the course of history, not just for Wessex and the Saxons but for the whole of Europe and ultimately the world. Without Alfred we’d have lost more than we can count, so great was his influence that it stretches right up into the modern era and will continue to do so far into the future.
Following the defeat of Guthrum, Alfred consolidated and even expanded his Kingdom, establishing around 33 fortified Hide defences, each one within a days’ march of its neighbour and each one capable of accommodating and protecting the local community from future attack. These defences, known collectively as the Burghal Hidage, also served as bases for military strikes against any future invading armies. The fortifications contained permanent garrisons which complemented the equally permanent standing army ‘in the field’. This was a military infrastructure that was both entrenched and responsive!
Alfred even established the first proper Navy (no – it wasn’t Henry VIII – Alfred did it first) to combat Viking marauders who threatened the coastline. But that’s not why Alfred was ‘the Great’. It was his intellectual, legal and administrative influence that earned him his place of honour in word history.
Like Charlemagne before him, Alfred was keen for his people, all of his people, to be educated. There’s an astonishing circularity of influence throughout Medieval Christendom that begins with Gregory the Great and ends with Alfred. The cycle moves from Gregory the Great and Isidore of Seville to Bede of Jarrow, to Alcuin of York, to Charlemagne, to Alfred the Great and then back to Gregory with Alfred’s Anglo- Saxon translation of the famous Pope’s ‘The Pastoral Care’ some 400 years after it was first written down in the original Latin.
Alfred also personally translated Boethius’ ‘Consolations of philosophy’ and was clear that the many Anglo-Saxon translations he created or procured were to be widely taught among the Anglo-Saxon youth. Alfred was the first English authority to understand the value of educating not just the nobility, but everyone. He was the original British champion of what we now call ‘universal education’, a theme of modern socialism which sees education as the most effective and long-lasting means of improving the general standard of living for working people.
Following Boethius’ model of the hierarchy of topics such as the trivium and quadrivium, Alfred intended for Anglo- Saxon literacy to be widespread, for the translated core texts to be widely studied and only then for Latin works to be the focus of further study. He saw literacy as vital to the life of an effective state and language as the glue that would hold the developing nation together.
Just as Charlemagne had focussed on Latin translation of important texts to ensure their wide distribution, Alfred reversed the trend for the exact same reason. Charlemagne had been so successful in creating Latin versions of key texts that few were available in any other languages. That may not have been a problem for the head of the Carolingian empire but for Alfred, the King of a relatively minor region in the South of England it was a very big problem indeed. Almost none of his subjects were able to read Latin and this meant that many of the greatest minds were quite literally closed books so far as England was concerned.
So – in his late thirties Alfred organised and even participated in the translation of key texts into Anglo Saxon. He had these books distributed throughout his kingdom. Like Charlemagne before him, Alfred instigated a public education programme, a system which in turn facilitated his new administrative system. It’s no exaggeration to say that the idea of modern England was born with Alfred who not only expanded his realm but also educated and cared for those within it.
Alfred organised and in part authored the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, a history of his realm written down for posterity and, perhaps most importantly of all – he produced a written record of codified laws. It was this collection of record-keeping, education, jurisprudence and the creation of national identity that transformed Wessex (and ultimately England). Alfred’s dominion went from a rough collection of allied principalities to a unified state with the foundations that eventually built a nation, an empire, a legal system and even a parliamentary system of government.
Without Alfred it is arguable that the knowledge that facilitated the beginnings of the English state would never have been made available to the masses. It was Alfred’s work that kept the torch of non-clerical education alight throughout the centuries to come when the medieval church tried their best to keep knowledge and literacy to themselves. His translations of foundational texts effectively broke the religious monopoly by enabling and encouraging successive English generations to champion the vernacular and keep secular education alive. Without Alfred’s work there would have been little for them to study anyway. We will meet some of the heroes of this intellectual tradition as the series progresses.
Alfred’s influence stretches far beyond the ninth century world he inhabited. Without Alfred we would live in a very different (I suspect a much poorer), religiously dominated society indeed. He was one of our nation’s most benevolent leaders and he genuinely seems to have understood the value of opportunity for every man (women’s rights still weren’t a thing in Alfred’s day, I’m afraid) to be educated to the limit of his ability and for all to have an opportunity to learn and develop intellectually. That’s one of the many reasons why Alfred is still recognised as ‘The Great’.
Compare that to the words of conservative cabinet minister, Michael Gove who, in 2003 whilst he was secretary of state for education, told The Times…
“Some people will, apparently, be put off applying to our elite institutions by the prospect of taking on a debt of this size. Which as far as I’m concerned is all to the good.”
Mr. Gove, who can say these things whilst simultaneously opposing private schools went on to trivialise the debt burden by comparing it to favourable earnings post-graduation but the underlying divisiveness came across loud and clear. He may just as well have said…
Those people too poor to throw £20 odd grand around without having to think seriously about it first are probably too stupid to be in further education in the first place!
Of course there’s been a surge! Of course more women have entered the workforce! Reductions in access to carers’ allowances or help with childcare mean that single mothers of young children, those who care for disabled or elderly relatives and WASPI women who really ought to be looking forward to retirement, those least likely to have the time and energy to go to work are now also the least able to afford not to.
So they’re flooding into minimum wage, part time or zero-hours contracts just to survive, on top of their considerable informal caring duties. The tories promised to make work pay but what they actually have done is to make any alternative to work unsustainable, no matter what the circumstances. That’s what they’re crowing about – exploitation of desperate people whose personal circumstances are often worse than any privileged tory minister could ever hope to fathom.
That’s what they mean when they boast about their record-high employment. They certainly don’t mean anything that will actually benefit the UK economy in any sustainable way.
“Research from academics at the University of Sussex and Loughborough University shows that the productivity growth slowdown since the 2008 financial crisis is nearly twice as bad as the previous worst decade for efficiency gains, 1971-1981, and is unprecedented in more than two centuries.
Growth in productivity – a measure of economic output per hour of work – has failed to rise in Britain at anywhere near the rates recorded prior to the banking crisis, with severe consequences for living standards. Economists believe productivity growth is vital for lifting GDP and higher wages.”
But there is one positive thing about starving our essential, informal, social workforce into other occupations – big businesses loves it. That’s why, when asked what we’re going to do about the massive post-Brexit workforce deficit, Home secretary Priti Patel’s knee-jerk reaction is to fill their vacancies with 8.5 million ‘economically inactive’ people. According to the ‘tax research’ blog…
“To consider the economics for a moment, of those 8 million a significant number are students. Others are sick. Some are retired. There are non-working parents in that number. And yes, there are also some unemployed.”
Far from work to increase productivity as a way to improve living standards the Tories plan to remove the social infrastructure that this country has always relied upon to sustain its workforce…
Let’s get the grandparents back to work, the disabled and the students (you know, the people whose ability to study is the thing our national future depends upon). Let’s ignore the social and economic benefits the country derives from the veritable army of informal carers and stick them in the fields picking the fruit – now that we’ve sent all the fruit-pickers away.
As John McDonnel points out in The Guardian many more are currently ‘under-employed’ or struggling away with zero-hours contracts or below subsistence wages that will hardly improve as the job market is filled with people who, unlike them, don’t particularly need the money in the first place.
“With wages still below pre-crisis levels and so many people struggling with universal credit, the Tories have singularly failed to deliver the decent wages and strong social security needed to lift people out of poverty,” said John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor.
“The Tories have some cheek to talk about ‘levelling up’ when this report makes clear they have been responsible for levelling down the foundations of a healthy society, including good jobs and social security.”
Smug Tory Home Secretary, Priti Patel claims 8.5 million unemployed and ‘under-employed’ people can fill the gaps in the workforce after Brexit. Yet the gov also claims we have unprecedented levels of employment.
Is the truth about in-work poverty, about people starving because they can’t get better than zero hours contracts finally being acknowledged?
Or is she talking about people who only have time for part time jobs because they’re either studying or acting as unpaid carers for relatives?
If so – how does she propose to fill the gap left by this army of unpaid carers?
Will she pay strangers to care for each-others’ relatives in an endless cycle of care-giving by proxy?
If so, why not just pay existing, family carers what they’re worth to the economy? Few things are as effective in stimulating a failing economy like ours is rapidly to be than the financial emancipation of women. It’s Keynesian, it’s just, especially in the case of care-givers and WASPI women and it’s effective.
Give ordinary women a way to make a reasonable income en masse and they spend it en masse. Money circulates. The economy grows.
Give those who already have more than they can spend a tax break and they stick it in the offshore account with the rest of their pile. Money is removed from circulation. The economy shrinks.
So stop funding tax cuts for the wealthy and start helping those at the bottom of the tree instead.
Oh right, you can’t – that would involve getting billionaires to pay their fair share of tax, wouldn’t it?
Mark Jenkinson MP entered the House of commons as Member of Parliament for Workington on 13th December 2019. He cruised to victory in the 2019 General election, partly because of Brexit and partly on the back of promises and pledges he made. Promises which have been saved for posterity in his election address. Promises which we can refer to when assessing his honesty. Promises which provide a framework to determine just how much he really cares about the circumstances of those people who elected him.
So what were these promises? According to Jenky’s printed election address he was going to…
Support our NHS
Invest in schools
Increase police and support tougher sentencing
Support businesses and jobs
Improve infrastructure
Support town centres
To date Jenky has not voted against the government even once. This seems remarkable enough in itself for anyone who claims to have integrity. The work of this callous government seems so far removed from that of decent, caring human beings that opposition is a duty, not just a choice.
We’ve already noted that Jenky voted against the rights of working people – hardly a positive move on behalf of a working class community like ours.
We know that he voted to abandon unaccompanied refugee children – one of the most callous decisions British politics has seen for decades.
We know that he, along with every other Tory MP, voted to disempower the House of Commons and remove the HoC’s right to scrutinise government proposals. This was the first move in Boris’ increasing journey toward Dictatorship.
Now let’s see what else he’s been up to since he entered Parliament. Use these two links to confirm all that follows…
On the NHS and Social care
It’s no secret that there is a funding crisis in health and social care, largely as a result of Tory and Liberal Democrat underfunding since 2010. Jenky and his tory mates had the chance to vote to change all that by voting to provide adequate funding – funding that currently goes to the most wealthy in tax cuts. Given Jenky’s commitment to support the NHS you’d have thought he’d be happy to be one of the people supporting this motion. Alas, no. On January 16th he voted to deny both services the basic funding they would need to start to rebuild their efficiency. So much for that promise.
Not only that, on Feb 4th 2020 he voted to scrap government responsibility for targets and monitoring and to prevent further funds being made available to the Health Service. He even voted to let the Health secretary avoid making an annual statement on health funding. That should help hide the Tory party’s appalling under-funding of the NHS from here on in, shouldn’t it?
On police
It was January 29th when Jenky voted to refuse the extra funding necessary to fulfil his pledges about more and better policing. Remember that this is the guy who said the Government’s majority meant they could do everything they want to – and he was right. So why won’t they do what they promised to? Could it be because they didn’t mean it? Could it be that Jenky’s own voting record shows that he doesn’t care about honouring his pledges to his electorate either?
On rights
On January 8th Jenky voted against maintaining protections for working people post Brexit. This is interesting because during the election campaign he stated categorically that EU standards for working peoples’ rights were merely a minimum (which is true), that UK rights provisions exceed them and there is no plan to reduce that provision of rights for workers. Why then did he vote to detach us from the minimum that we apparently plan to exceed anyway? Could it be that there really is a plan to reduce our rights still further? After all, that would be in keeping with the erosion of rights that has already been the hallmark of Tory policy for a decade.
On January 20th Jenky voted against reversing austerity and against clamping down on tax avoidance. On the same day he voted against measures intended to extend full employment rights to all workers, to end in-work poverty and to introduce a real living wage. It’s almost as though he doesn’t care about working class communities or the ‘Workington man’ who voted for him.
On homelessness
Jenky voted against providing the relatively small amount of money needed to end homelessness, a problem that has grown several-fold under the Tories throughout the last 10 years of ideologically driven austerity.
Two weeks later he had the audacity to ask a question in the house about help for veterans, a group disproportionately affected by the very homelessness that he refused to eradicate.
This is the hypocrisy of Mark Jenkinson MP.
A grim future
Jenky and all the other newly elected Tory MPs who now represent the former ‘Red wall’ constituencies may well have been elected on the back of a Brexit promise but British politics is and always has been about much more than just one, single issue. Similar articles (indeed almost exactly the same article) could be written about them all – so slavishly do they tow the party line.
Together they are destroying the working class communities of Britain.
They are destroying the communities they claim to represent.
They are destroying the livelihoods of the voters who trusted them.
It was bad before but it’s even worse now. Boris’ huge majority in the house means he can get away with anything he wants to – or rather his handler, Dominic Cummings can. There’s nothing we can do about that for the moment though – the die is cast and we’ll just have to hang on and weather the ideological storm – a storm that will make Thatcher’s 1980s look like a walk in the park.
So please remember these betrayals, remember the voting records of hypocrites like Jenky and let’s kick them out in 2024.
Let’s take our democracy back from these hypocritical liars and con artists!
Yes, I know – trawling through Hansard can be a pain. So much of a pain that few people ever bother but I promise you, it’s well worth it if you want to know what’s actually going on. It’s one thing to see how an MP votes but if you want to actually catch them in their hypocrisy then Hansard is the place to go.
On Thursday January 16th, the House of Commons debated a motion tabled by Shadow secretary of state of health, Jon Ashworth. It was a proposed amendment to the new Health and Social care legislation proposed in the Queen’s Speech. The amendment would acknowledge that nothing less than a cumulative 4% increase in NHS funding would suffice to repair the damage caused by long-term Tory underfunding since 2010. Mr. Ashworth began…
“I beg to move an amendment, at the end of the Question to add:
‘but respectfully regrets that the Gracious Speech fails to ensure that the National Health Service and social care will be properly funded;
and calls for the Government to bring forward a plan and additional funding to end the crisis in social care and provide for at least a 4 per cent per year real terms increase in health spending.’. “
Yasmin Qureshi Shadow Minister for Justice reported that…
“When Labour came to power in 1997, there were 1.3 million people on a waiting list—the highest number since the NHS was created in 1948. The Labour Government used targeted and sufficient funding to bring all those figures down, to the point where A&E waiting times were down to four hours and waiting lists were down to 18 weeks. It is regrettable that the Government now want to abolish the A&E waiting time target. Is that simply to spare Ministers’ blushes? Since last October, 320,034 people waited more than four hours at A&E, whereas in 2010 the figure was just 41,231.”
This is, of course a damning indictment of not only the conservative mishandling of the NHS since 2010 but also of the previous tory government that ran it down in much the same manner prior to 1997.
This is why a minimum, consistent 4% increase is so vital. But it’s not only the opposition that are highlighting such damning figures. The tories themselves are unhappy at the state of the NHS too. That’s why Conservative MP. Desmond Swayne’s words near the beginning of the proceedings were so important…
“This motion is about giving the NHS the funding it needs. It is a motion that will test every newly elected Conservative Member of Parliament on their commitment to the NHS.”
And test them it will!
Every single Conservative MP claimed to support the NHS. My own MP, Mark Jenkinson was extremely clear about his intention to support extra funding for health and social care services of a kind that would make a genuine difference to the level of service available to his working class constituents.
Swayne continued…
“The hon. Gentleman will recall that the Government accepted the Dilnot proposals and even put in place certain legislative provisions for them to be implemented in the next financial year.”
The Dilnot proposal recommended placing a maximum cap on the amount that individuals could be asked to contribute to their care in any circumstance, including issues related to old age or chronic illness. The conservative government scrapped their commitment to it in 2017 leading to the famous ‘Dementia tax’ proposal that lost Theresa May so much ground in the election of that year.
“…I never understood why, during the 2017 election campaign, they departed from that position—but what is the Opposition’s position on Dilnot?”
The commitment to Dilnot has still not been reinstated by the Conservative government despite its popularity within the country at large. Speaking for the labour party Jon Ashworth, Secretary of State for Health responded…
“We have long argued for a cap on care costs, but of course the Government, as the right hon. Gentleman says, dropped their support for this policy.”
He went on to remark that…
“This is a motion about the 4.5 million people on waiting lists… This is a motion about the 34,000 people who wait more than two months for cancer treatment. This is a motion about those constituents, such as mine in Leicester, who had their bladder cancer operations cancelled twice. This is a motion about the 79,000 cancelled operations last year, and the 18,000 children’s cancelled operations. This is a motion about the 110,000 children denied mental health care, even though they are in the most desperate of circumstances. This is a motion about the 98,000 patients who waited on trolleys last month—a 65% increase on the previous year—many of them elderly, many of them in their 80s and 90s, languishing for hours and hours on trolleys in hospital corridors… This is a motion about the 1.5 million people, many of them with dementia, denied the social care support they need after years and years of swingeing cuts.”
Mr. Ashworth later remarked…
“The Secretary of State is proposing a Bill that fails to reverse the £850 million of cuts to public health prevention services… He is asking us to approve a Bill that does not reverse the raids on capital budgets or deal with the £6.5 billion backlog of repairs facing our hospitals… He is proposing a Bill that does not give the NHS the 4% uplift annually that many experts say it needs. That is why Labour has tabled an amendment today to give the NHS a 4% uplift, and every Tory MP who believes in the NHS should support it.”
Every Tory MP who believes in the NHS should support it.
But that’s all very well. The opposition is supposed to call out the government on its plans and claims. What did the Conservative MPs have to say about the NHS after 10 years of their own party’s policies? For example, Caroline Johnson, Conservative MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham pointed again to the ‘creative accounting’ of the Prime Minister’s claims about new nursing staff…
“I want to ask him about the 44,000 vacancies that he talked about. Is it not right that when the Health Committee looked at that, it found that 38,000 of those places were actually occupied by nurses who work on the bank?”
Daniel Poulter MP is a Conservative with grave concerns about the impact of market forces on the NHS…
“There is a particular concern among patients and people who work in the NHS about the fragmentation of services, which has been the result of the sometimes market-driven approach to the delivery of healthcare and the encroachment of the private sector on the delivery of traditional NHS services.
“As a clinician, what matters most to me is that we deliver the right services for patients. We need to recognise that the involvement of private sector provision has sometimes led to greater fragmentation and a lack of joined-up care for patients.”
The damage caused by this fragmentation is plain to see thanks to the targets and metrics set up by the last Labour government. And they make very telling reading.
What is the Tories’ answer to the worst A&E performance figures on record? It is to scrap the four-hour A&E target. Abolishing the target will not magic away the problems in A&E. It will not suddenly fix a system that saw 100,000 people waiting on trolleys last December.
Perhaps most bizarrely, Mike Penning is the tory MP from Hemel Hempstead. Despite knowing full well the problems resulting from the last 10 years of tory governance he still intends to vote against the amendment…
“We have got into a situation where the only way we can fight this, believe it or not, is to take the trust to court. There is a lack of accountability—I have called for debates in this House on that for years now. The only way we can fight the fact that the trust has only put in a bid for refurbishment of the Watford site is to take it to court and challenge it under judicial review. I have a fantastic community. We have raised the money. We will go to court. But is it not crazy that here I am praising, and I will be voting for, the Queen’s Speech and against Labour’s amendment, when I am saying that the £400 million being offered by the Government is going to the wrong place?”
Those voters local to me might be interested to know that despite assurances to support our health and care services, Mark Jenkinson MP also voted not to increase funding for the NHS and Social care last week.
James Davies MP is a Conservative. He’s also a doctor. He seems less than confident that the concerns of his profession will be met sympathetically by the Secretary of State for Health.…
“I have outlined not only interesting statistics, but sadly an indication of unnecessary loss of life and of harm to real patients. At the very least, there is a need for UK-wide patient safety mechanisms and rigorous inspection regimes, underpinned by comparable statistical data on performance and outcomes. I urge the Secretary of State seriously to consider that when progressing the initiatives outlined in the Queen’s Speech.”
Barbara Keeley, Shadow Minister for Mental Health and Social Care may have made the most direct appeal, whilst calling out Boris on his lies about a ‘clear plan’ before the General election…
“Proposing a solution to the crisis in care should be the Government’s top priority, as we have heard in many of the speeches this afternoon. However, despite the Prime Minister’s earlier pledge to fix the crisis in social care once and for all, and with a clear plan we have prepared, he now says only that he will do something ‘in this Parliament’. After 10 years of inaction, is that the best the Prime Minister can say, alongside a vague offer of cross-party talks?”
But for me it was the many Conservative voices highlighting the inadequacy of their own government’s funding strategy that resonated the most. If only these people would vote with their consciences. But hey ho – they are Tories, after all!
Saffron Cordery is the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, the membership organisation for NHS hospitals, mental health, community and ambulance services. These guys really do know what they’re talking about.
According to Cordery, writing in The Independent just after the general election, Boris’ government, for all its fine words is setting the NHS and Social care up to fail, not least in respect of older people.
Not that this comes as any great surprise to those of us who’ve been watching developments since 2010. The Tories, with the help of their LibDem enablers, have been stitching up our NHS, ready to sell it off to the highest bidder for years.
“Although quality of care once you’re in the system has held up remarkably well, timely access to treatment in the NHS has been slipping for years, despite frontline staff working harder than ever – so hard, in fact, that they’re in danger of burning out. Demand has been steadily outstripping supply; gaps in the workforce have widened substantially; our assets have deteriorated; and financial investment has been lower in the past decade than at any point in the NHS’s 70-year history.”
For all his fine words, Mr. Johnson is well aware that his promise of funding falls way short of the amount currently provided to our country’s flagship health service. Even if he restored funding to previous levels the backlog of neglect and decay, of equipment and buildings upgrades would mean a significant cut in comparative terms.
Last July Boris promised the nation that he had “a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity they deserve“.
The tories may be promising money but they’re hardly making much of an effort.
Of course, they can’t make too big an effort because the money’s already earmarked for tax cuts and perks for big corporations. Which is why the health, mental health and social care sectors are to be left to pick up the slack.
If you thought the last 10 years were bad, just watch this space. There’s far worse to come.
Left eye view 