RIP NHS & Great Britain

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-65167520

It is no secret that the Conservative Party have for decades, indeed, since inception, wanted to get rid of the NHS in exchange for a more profitable US style insurance system.

Under this incarnation of the Tories we are seeing it happen at an accelerated rate.

It is my believe that they saw the Covid19 pandemic as an opportunity not to be missed to weaken the service so much as to be near impossible to fix without an unaffordable investment.

The theory is simple, for years use a policy of austerity to freeze the wages of all those working in the NHS. It would take years to kick in but eventually staff would leave so much as to make the service collapse. They likely never considered that they could escalate the process. Then there was Covid!

Staff within the NHS were put under enormous pressure whilst still living on ever shrinking wages. As staff left, as inevitably they would, conditions for the remaining staff became unbearable. Now doing the work intended for several staff members.

Staff, therefore, left even quicker placing even more pressure on the service.

Within the NHS they worked out two key points which are vital to understand to comprehend the current union action. The most important point is knowing that salaries need to be attractive to encourage staff to join the NHS and, the second, not quite as important as the first, compensation for all the current remaining staff for the years they had their salaries cut to fun the government austerity policy.

So, this is not a simply case of already OK paid people demanding an unrealistic salary, it is about the very survival of the NHS so, of course the @Conservative Party want them desperately to lose this fight.

What do the Conservatives hope to gain from destroying the NHS?

Wealth for the UK. The NHS costs a huge amount of money (7% of the entire wealth we produce), money a government could funnel into tax cuts. Tax cuts buy votes, it keeps them in power. Many of the current Conservative MP’s have connections, some direct, others indirect with private health care companies whether it be by directorships or investments. They personally will gain from the uptake of private health care.

With the reduction of the NHS budget they will be able to afford a much less version of the NHS for the very poor only and, they get to define who the very poor are. Many of the elderly and sick will (sadly) die off reducing the burden on the basic health service, social care and benefits. It is an Utopian world where the Government remains in power by tax hand outs and reduces costs on the most needy giving them yet more money to spend on tax handouts.

What can they realistically achieve before a general election?

Division. Division seems to be their entire game plan for the next General Election. Whether it be immigration, crime attributed to race or striking workers crippling the country, it seems to be what they are going with. They have to really as they sure don’t want anyone analysing their 13 year long record of mismanagement!

Could an incoming Labour government repair the NHS?

Simple answer is, no. They won’t have the money to do it with unless they commit to record levels of borrowing. To do that assures they will be a one term government. As debt rises they will need to either radically increase growth, nigh on impossible since leaving the EU else, raise taxes.

Would they rejoin the EU?

Yes, if they have the balls for it! It is the only sensible thing to do. Nothing promised from Brexit, none of the benefits happened. I can tell you that Northampton still sounds just as Eastern European as it did prior to Brexit, there are just as many perceived ‘foreigners’. I added to it by marrying one so, I obviously support migration in both directions.

As has been seen by the utter disinterest of the US to strike a trade deal with the UK, we are just not significant any more on the world stage. Best this government can come with is some weird trade deal with countries like Peru. They cannot even come up with a single guaranteed benefit of that. It is all based on the vague possibility that some of those signed up to it might sort themselves out and offer as maybe 1% of what we lost when we left the EU.

Conclusion is simple. The NHS is near death and the government despite their protestations that they are investing millions extra in it, are letting it die. They are letting the situation of our country get desperate because desperate people go for desperate solutions, accept crazy reasons for why things are the way things are.

If the country comes together and votes in the next general election for whichever party will get this government out of office, the country will be all the better for it, we will all be the better for it.

In my area, only Labour can beat the Conservative MPs. Voting for anyone else leaves those MP’s with the chance of holding onto their seats.

To steal a line for yet another Idiotic ex World Leader, Donald J Trump and, corrupt it.

Let’s Make Britain Great Again … not that MBGA is particularly catchy and won’t look great on a hat.

Making us great again as we used to be and I mean, really used to be. That has nothing to do with immigration, nothing to do with striking workers, unmarried mothers, those on benefits, pensioners and so on. Those things ‘USED’ to be things we supported, encouraged even. We knew that we needed skilled workers and they had to be paid, we knew we needed a growing population to pay tax in later life and grow the economy. We were proud we had a system in place which supported us at some of our lowest times and, most preciously, we valued our elderly, our grandparents, great aunts and uncles. We didn’t treat them as an unaffordable burden on society.

Just think about it, if we start downgrading our elderly like we are, it’s our own future we are damaging. Likely, most of us will some day be elderly, why would we dare to dismantle the safeguard in place now so that there is nothing left when we are old? You think we’re not? You are wrong. When the government went along with the triple lock on pensions and awarded a 10% increase in pensions, there were calls across the country to scrap it, how could we afford such a huge increase when the country is in so much need? Last year, pensioners were left effectively worse off as pensions rose less than inflation. Then the government announces a scheme to get pensioners back to work, they’re retiring too early, they need to work more. Actually, they have more than one scheme for it. They are already pathing the way to abolish the state pension entirely. With the long term wishes of this government clear, there are people born today who will never get a state retirement pension and, if the pension can go, what chance then the NHS?

One final thing just popped up

Doesn’t our Prime Minister just look like a kid sending a pic to his mates saying:

“Hey guys, it’s me, at Madame Tussauds, look who I am meeting” @rishi

26
Oct, 2021

White Privilege

White Privilege – WTF?

For some reason this keeps cropping up and people keep rising to it like it’s the latest thing to hold onto. A government minister, no less, recently instructed schools not to teach is as being ‘fact’ but as a talking point, as purely a consideration.

Look, white people, out and about, where ever, it doesn’t matter, can and sometimes do get preferred treatment over non white people. This is a truth but it is also a non changeable reality. It is a fact of life.

Let me give some other examples, many gay men, in particular, in many public places outside of the huge cities, cannot walk hand in hand with their partner, it’s just not safe. Is that ‘straight’ privilege? Many disabled people who look disabled (stuff off with the politically correct term argument), they are going to experience ‘able bodied privilege). White guy walks into a bar in a majority black neighbourhood, likely he will be victim of black privilege.

Sure, this should never happen, live and let live, equality for all and that’s a great way of thinking but, it’s not real!

Many thought that after the push throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s to eradicate racism in the UK that the majority of the country finally ‘got it’. No, that never happened. The reality was that rather than being public about their opinion, all those people were more careful where they voice it.

Want any proof of that? OK then, Brexit, a campaign the major selling point of which was to ‘get our country back’. How can that line even be said without it being racist and, the majority (albeit, only just) went for it. We committed trade suicide to satisfy the racist beliefs of those around us, get rid of Jonny Foreigner and get good old Blighty back … now we actually did get rid of rather a lot of them those same people are complaining the country is falling apart and blaming the EU … don’t go blaming them, we’re not part of that any more, we got our country back.

No, I didn’t digress (not much anyway), I am trying to say that, in order to live here we have to accept that our culture is rooted in privilege. There is no such thing and never will be as an interview without privileged bias. I’ve done it myself, interview door opens, someone who doesn’t meet my requirements physically and  they’ve no chance. It is both wrong and right. Do we force people to go against their nature and give equal consideration to everyone else and pretend they actually do not have a bias?

How many male interviewers pick attractive ladies? I’ve known gay interviewers pick attractive boys. It doesn’t mean they are not able to do the job, it just demonstrates the preference of the interviewer, what they want to see each day.

So think about it, in many situations there is, indeed, white privilege. I sometimes do it. I see a black guy sagging across the street, get the whiff of weed and think to my white privileged self, he’s up to no good. He could be a lovely guy, I don’t know but he’s not ‘my’ sort of person so I instantly consign him a pigeon hole.

If I see a group of guys walking toward me, white guys, young adults, hands down the front of their Adidas tracksuit bottoms, I don’t automatically think that there are a good trustworthy group of lads because they are white, I actually think, best watch out for this lot because of the way they carry themselves.

We just have to accept that each of us in any given location or situation has privilege. How much we want it to work against us depends entirely on our choices of where we go.

As a white, gay, disabled man who is overweight and very short, am I going to get the same or worse treatment going for an interview as a straight, fit tall black man? No, I think not. I’ve been turned down for jobs because of my circumstances. It is obvious why, I can see what the people who work there look like and they don’t look like me.

Is this ever something we can change? If you say ‘yes’ then, you are deluded.

1
Oct, 2021

Equality

Equality is not equality when one side feels they have to put down the other in the process.

I’ll give two examples, though there are many, where women feel the need to exclude men, who suffer equally on an individual basis, in order to bring attention to their own suffering.

Abuse

Breast Cancer

Both men and women are victims of physical, emotional and sexual abuse which includes rape and murder. 1 in 3 victims of abuse is male.

Men are raped, murdered for their sexuality, attacked at home and work and for every male abused, it’s just as serious as when it is a women except men have the added stigma of men supposedly  being too strong to be abused.

Men can also get breast cancer. The disease doesn’t discriminate so, why do women sufferers? 

1% of all cases are men and for each one of those men, it’s equally as devastating as for women, perhaps more so as it is universally accepted as a women only disease.

Many women are surprised to discover men in a breast cancer clinic, some actually discriminate and demand to know why.

Things only women can get away with

  • Women only Gyms
  • Women only swimming sessions
  • Female sexual harassment of men and, before you argue that the law applies to both. Remember that soft drink advert where the ‘fit’ guy is cleaning the windows and all the women are staring? If that was gender reversed it would have been banned
  • ‘Mum’s gone to Iceland’. That overly sexist banner add from the frozen food retailer though I am not sure if it is worse for the women or the men
  • Women who claim that men get enough their way so all the above is just totally justified
  • 90% of every clothes store
  • Mothers day gifts made at schools for mums yet, nothing for father’s day.
  • Cubicles at swimming pools whilst men just get one room.
  • Preference in parenting from so many sources. In a divorce the assumption and often reality is that the mother gets residency of the children. When children are at school, all letters are sent home to the mother even when there is no mother.
  • The assumption that women are natural parents whereas ‘men’ have no natural bond with their child.
  • Multitasking … the myth that only women can multitask, it is simply untrue and if the gender assignment were switched, there would be complaints from women.
  • Women presenting themselves as the weaker sex in order to get a man to do the heavier work and proudly saying to the man ‘that’s the only reason we have you here’. Let’s reverse that and have a group of men tell a women to do the dishes because, that’s the only reason they let her be there.

There are so many inequalities which both genders persist in repeating and we need to stop this now.

It’s not funny, it’s a form of abuse

When we set someone apart because of their gender we insult them as individuals. All of us have the right to be respect equally to those around us, men, women and those yet to make up their mind.

Equality is exactly that, it is not a war where one side needs to win over the other. In this, we all should come out winners 

One last thing …. yes, of course men had it their own way for years and that isn’t right either but, is it equality or revenge being sought here?