Often forgotten over Iraq is the death toll of sanctions. This is estimated at between 1 and 2 million over the 13 years from 1990 to 2013. By 2000, sanctions were killing 5000 infants a month (children under 5)… Two top UN men resigned, calling it genocide… Sanctions were kept in place, indeed tightened, chiefly by the US and UK. When we weren’t killing the children we were killing their parents or grandparents… Deliberate policy.
Greens in Brighton & Hove have worked really hard to avoid major cuts, refused the government bribe, even raising money to do it (through tax). Greens are essentially for people, for services and for taxing major wealth (including what’s hidden abroad).
But like councils everywhere, the minority Greens there are in the invidious position of having to implement government diktats. They’ve worked extremely hard with major and numerous budget consultations to safeguard as much as possible.
However, as the link shows, the local party has had to act as a check over the recent leak of pay proposals. As far as I know these aren’t approved policies (many of the terms are beneficial to workers) so the Green Group would have debated these anyway.
Unfortunately their website is out-of-date and doesn’t cover this major issue and one shouldn’t really judge things by a Twitter feed!
The B&H Green Party recently voted for the Green Group to change direction on this issue. I hope B&H Greens can rescue this situation.
Martin Deane
Stephen Hawking boycotts Israel
Stephen Hawking has decided to boycott Israel in agreement with the pro-Palestinian academic boycott. The two articles (1) (2) both say Hawking decided to back the boycott this time, despite previous visits, and despite Cambridge probably trying to dig themselves out of a hole! I vaguely remember emailing Prof. Hawking a few years ago on the same subject. It’s kind of him to say Israel’s policy would “likely lead to disaster” but then, if one goes, there is some duty to be kind to one’s host. And that’s partly the problem… The issue is not how angry some Israelis may get at some scientist – but the next policy that finds ways to dispossess Palestinians of the remaining 12% of their land… or the next child, woman, man or journalist shot down by a sniper on the Wall… the next death at a checkpoint… the next Israeli military incursion. That’s why the Green Party wants to see a fair solution with fair territories for each people. This includes the evacuation of Israeli settlements and the dismantling of the Apartheid Wall. It’s not rocket science.
Lord Lawson, Thatcher’s chancellor back in the day, is doing the banks’ bidding today. The jobs he refers too aren’t particularly real. Rather he’s trying to strengthen the argument for leaving the EU – because the EU ios going to bring in a Robin Hood Tax – a fractional tax on banking transactions. The banks, recipients of about £1 trillion in the UK alone, couldn’t possibly pay a 0.05% tax… So let’s keep them out of Europe and safeguard the ‘jobs’.
Craig Murray, former ambassador, is less polite. -
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/05/lawson-the-bankers-poison-is-out/
On the news that Big Ben will be silenced for Thatcher’s funeral…
“Maybe the pendulum will swing at the next election. But we need a fairer society than this one.”
Ask not for whom the bell tolls (or not)…
Apparently, Big Ben was last silenced for Churchill, the great war leader, and Tory, who saw us ‘safely’ through World War II, Dunquerque, Operation Overlord and the Battle of Britain notwithstanding!
But maybe he and Thatcher are like bookends…
Churchill ‘saved’ us from the Hun. It should be pointed out here, lest we risk idolisation, that it was the people themselves that fought the enemy, whether in Africa, Europe or other continents, and whether that be squaddies, or airmen, joined by redoubtable Polish fighter pilots, or the land army at home, or the commitment of the war industry, including an army of women for the first time. Various other allies too, especially the Russians, who lost more than anyone else.
But Churchill, through the sheer cost of the war, also lost the British Empire, and with his defeat in the khaki election in 1945 to Attlee’s labour, finally a land fit for heroes could be created (notice the Tories didn’t support that then either, too costly).
Crucial to all this was fairer taxation. Over the years this increased in differnt ways, leading to a peak in the 1970s when the rich paid more than ever before…
But then along comes Thatcher… who stepped in, destroyed union strength, cut taxes, and deregulated finance. A new empire (one that hadn’t really gone away either), a financial empire, was created.
The benefits for the super-rich have been that year after year the richest 1% have paid less and less ever since (including 13 years of Labour).
How rich will we let the super-rich become? What will it take? How many food banks? How many homeless? How many elderly dying in cold winters? How much will we pay for health treatment as the NHS is destroyed?
When will we become a land fit for heroes again?
Maybe the pendulum will swing again at the next election. Maybe it won’t…
But we need a fairer society than this one.
The Green Party was founded in the early 1970s – when Labour was arguably at the height of its power. In fact this year we celebrate our 40th birthday!
The Green Party believes in a nation using the greater portion of its wealth for the benefit of its citizens. Chief among those benefits is a well-functioning health service.
The Green Party is unswerving in its support for the NHS.
Greens have always valued the NHS – and a great many other social policies, such as welfare for everyone who needs it, when they need it – education for free, for all – and all funded by a fair, progressive taxation system – within a country which is the 7th largest economy in the world.
In 2010, ahead of the General Election, we made a concerted effort to make sure people understood that we are committed to social justice. We’re famous for environmental justice - in fact it’s almost the only thing the media comes to us for! So you’d be forgiven for thinking that’s all we had to say!
But our slogan that year was “Fair is worth fighting for” … This may sound familiar to some as another party came up with almost identical words … But we know that an unfair society is an unhealthy one. Literally. There are reports to prove it – as if it weren’t obvious! And this growing inequality within society has been going on for a VERY long time.
So it is with great dismay that the Green Party looks at the health policies of successive governments which have brought us to the severe threat that the NHS faces today - as the healthcare that people need is TRADED for some sort of lowest cost repair bay!
For years, politicians have been actively aping American political society – academy schools, from America, workfare, the Clinton Welfare to Work scheme. In healthcare, we face an increasing carve-up, with more and more private companies being involved. A “Tesco Basic” healthcare for Joe Public, and a huge ramping up of insurance schemes for anyone who wants or needs a decent level of care, while the NHS itself will continue to be under-funded and cut back .
On Tuesday, we faced the irony of the Health Secretary lecturing nurses on compassion… and promising an Ofsted for hospitals … as if healthcare had nothing to do with the huge shortage of nurses – or the pressure frontline staff are under – or the regular threats to terms, conditions and jobs – which have been part and parcel of the healthcare profession for years… Things are so bad that a group of doctors have set up a Healthcare Party to fight the next General Election!
Healthcare around the country is undergoing severe cuts. Hull faces £100m in cuts and has lost a cardiac ward and a stroke and neurology ward already. With the best will in the world, we cannot describe Hull as one of the healthiest areas of the country… and to think we have lost two wards, with more wards to be lost – beggars belief! None of these beds are empty! And so-called community provision doesn’t match hospital care and will only be cut back further.
Then there’s the spectre of the EU-USA Free Trade Agreement. MPs and MEPs are certainly not saying anything about it, but top of the list fopr these high-level policy makers, is the need for the so-called “harmonisation” of health provision between America and the EU member states…
The American system, and its insurance model of health, costs between 50,000 and 100,000 LIVES a year. That’s what we’re facing.
And it’s an uphill struggle… Many politicians, MPs or Lords – across the biggest 3 parties – have a business interest in seeing private healthcare take off.
The choice is to fight, to organise, to lobby, to demonstrate… to make the biggest noise we can… OR we face losing the greatest gain brought to us by the spirit of 1945 – under far harsher economic conditions than we have now - the Jewel in the People’s Crown, that is a world-class, national, health service paid for by all and free to all .
Martin Deane
Hull and East Riding Green Party
As reported to the Save Our NHS Hull and East Yorkshire group.
The acute NHS Trust in Hull and East Yorkshire is faced with £99m cuts between 2012 and 2015. One of the first services to be targeted was Cardiology: Ward 6 at Castle Hill Hospital was closed and the staff re-deployed across the Trust’s hospitals (Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital, Cottingham).
We were informed that these measures would improve the Cardiology services to the public, that it would lead to a more focused provision as the other Cardiology wards were in the same locality at the New Cardiology Build (NCB), Castle Hill Hospital. This has not proved to be the case and we have direct evidence that patients who should receive beds in the NCB are in fact dispersed, being located in the various non-speciality wards across both hospitals. Those unlucky enough to be given a bed on a ward at Hull Royal Infirmary are several miles away from the Cardiology doctors and nurses who are trained to treat them. How can the NHS Trust defend this outcome? The decision was taken without consulting lead medical staff, and the outcomes for patients will presumably be worse. How could it be a better service when medical staff are faced with patients who may or may not have heart failure and they do not have the specialist training to find out or treat them if they do have heart failure? Will the NHS Trust be auditing this? It is the case that failing to treat early stage heart failure during a hospital admission will lead to an increased likelihood that the patient will be re-admitted with crushing heart failure and fluid congestion. This would be avoided – along with the unnecessary suffering for patients and their families, and the increased expense (£20000+ per hospital stay) – if early signs are identified and treated.
Cuts are cuts – ideological in nature because leading economists in the UK have said, and reports have appeared in press including the Daily Telegraph – that they are not actually necessary. The reverse is the case – they are driving us deeper in to recession and poverty. The austerity measures have led to a poorer service for the public in areas where services are already stretched. The austerity cuts are being used, we claim, to run down public services by starving them of funding so that the government can claim that they are failing and need privatising. In the case of schools, they are turned into academies.
We believe that that the government is making irreversible changes to the NHS (and other publically funded services) that are ideological and have nothing to to with creating a better NHS. They believe that there is profit to be made that will eventually lead to an insurance led health service where profit comes first, health a poor second.
We need to join together in our campaign to make the public aware of what is happening to their health service before it is too late.
@saveournhshull Public meeting, Ruscadors, Hull March 27, 7pm.
From Mike Lammiman’s blog -
http://michaellammiman.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/impact-of-nhs-cuts-in-east-yorkshire/
