Wow how brilliantly put by a Junior Doctor which you cant blame her saying this:
Isn’t it wonderful when our trade unions and employers can sit around the negotiating table to work out the best term and conditions and ends well with both staff and employers are happy as many would say we all laughing all the way to the bank. Whilst I support the negotiations with the trade unions and employers as it brings harmony in the workplace it’s when it is done properly everybody is happy. Then there is the other side of the coin where it can go horribly wrong where both the employers and trade unions are at stalemate this where the good relationship has broken down then it’s up to ACAS to sort out and it still can’t be sorted out then you know that further action is required. Welcome to the socialist republic of the Soviet Union comes to mind Jeremy Hunt who is the Health Secretary of England and Wales and is imposing unworkable working conditions to put both patents and juniors doctors at risk which compromise their health and safety.
I’m sure like many people including myself who has the passion of our NHS we like to see NHS staff and the organisation working in harmony.
But when there is two vile people like Kate Hopkins and Jeremy want to do damage the prestige of our service no doubt that privatization is on its way they might as well be married to each other. See the two links below:
Like myself and others who are feeling so horrendously and deeply saddened by Jeremy Hunt decision to press ahead with the junior doctor contract. He is one of the most loathed men in Britain. He has sounded the final death blow to the NHS today.
Nye Bevan would be spinning in his grave over this.
Despite 68 years of the NHS the Tories still fail to understand its place in society. Instead of working to improve the service they work to privatize it. They lie about the reasons they seek change, fearful of the reaction of the public if they told the truth.
Jeremy Hunt is known to be a self-confessed hater of the NHS and wanted to see it broken up and sold off to private companies years ago. Yet Cameron put him in place as Health Secretary. So it shows how little regard Cameron has for a public service that everyone needs and relies on.
Mr Hunt is telling porkies to all of us about these contracts, they want to spell out to the private sector who are dying to cherry pick certain weekend services. Conveniently Jeremy Hunt and Co fail to mention to all of us while they will stretch our Junior Doctors to cover more time they are not paying for more nurses, porters, admins or security. So the service you get on the weekdays will still not match the weekend. The reason being Cameron likes the spin of creating 7 days but does not want to pay for it.
If Cameron was really serious about making the weekend like the weekdays in the NHS he would have to provide several extra billion each year. But he is not doing that. No instead what the NHS would be left to do to cover the weekends is to use their budgets from the weekdays to plug the gap. Thus stretching NHS finances and resources even more and putting more pressure on a service already neglected by the Tories.
I support 7 days a week NHS service, but if the Government really did they would pay for it which they are not prepared to do then our Junior Doctors are 100% right to fight these plans because they are unsafe for patient care and fail to respect them and the NHS. The Tories need to rethink because they will lose this battle.
Oh wait a minute have all forgotten that Jeremy Hunt was supposed to have a event A drinks and canapés evening featuring Jeremy Hunt has been cancelled after reports junior doctors might attend and ask him questions about their new contract.
The Health Secretary had been due to mingle with Tory activists on Friday night over nibbles and wine at a party fundraiser, until the event’s open invitation began to circulate on social media.
Some junior doctors and their supporters, who say Mr Hunt has refused to speak to them directly, said it would be worthwhile buying tickets to the evening and engaging him in debate about his new policy. After the invitation began circulating Fareham Conservatives, who organised the event, abruptly posted a message on their website announcing its cancellation.
A local party staffer confirmed that the fundraiser had indeed been cancelled.
Asked why the event was cancelled, the staffer said: “I’ve got no comment on that”.
Asked specifically whether it was cancelled because junior doctors had decided to come, the member of staff said: “I can’t say.” It is not clear how many, if any, junior doctors had been in touch to purchase tickets to the £15 gathering.
Mr Hunt announced on Thursday that he would unilaterally impose a new employment contract on NHS junior doctors without their consent – but doctors have accused him of refusing to face their arguments directly.
A video emerged this week showing Mr Hunt ignoring and walking away from a junior doctor asking him questions about the new policy.
The King’s College registrar could be seen walking briskly after the Health Secretary in the halls of a television studio in central London.
Apparently Mr Hunt was “too scared to come and talk to junior doctors”.
The Government says the new contract will improve patient care at the weekends but junior doctors say it will incentivise unsafe staffing rosters and put patient care at risk.
The British Medical Association, which has been leading negotiations on behalf of junior doctors, said it would look at all options available to it in order to prevent the contract from being implemented.
Junior doctors have staged two days of strike action as part of negotiations; those who voted were 98 per cent in favour of taking action.
Fareham Conservatives said they would provide a further statement on the event when one was available
Hey folks have a listen to this, this will want you to join the Junior Doctors Strike:
Recently the establishment decided to curb charity organisations from using funds they received in the form of grants whilst I have always highlighted this in the public domain and I agree with the sentiment somehow I can’t help but feel this government has a hidden agenda. Ah do I hear people saying. Yes you are reading correct the establishment has got it partly right they do need to close the loopholes from some charities abusing their funding. How do you distinguish which is private funds from private organisations that is the question.
The Tories are using the Trade Union Bill to try and break our relationship. Hidden in the Trade Union Bill is a clause that is deliberately designed to restrict trade unions supporting the Labour Party financially – while doing nothing to limit the hedge funds and millionaires that support the Tories.
The union activists who set up the Labour Party all those years ago did so to ensure working people had a voice in Parliament. The Tories are trying to silence that voice. The Bill is not just an attack on the relationship between the unions and the Labour Party, but it’s an attack on our democracy.
Just like those activists in 1901, we have to pull together as working people to protect our voice in politics. That’s why we’re asking if you could take two minutes to sign and share the petition against the Bill –
Well it’s not surprising from this government that they want to curb trade union funds which has been on the cards for a long time coming. Even during the Thatcher years there were talks of this happening ever since the miners’ strike which was but on the back burner then it came back to life again from 2010-16 under the Conservative coalition and a Conservative Government does this have a familiar echo within the trade union movement.
Now the establishment wants to subsidised rents for households earning more than £30,000, or £40,000 in London, will be scrapped in April 2017.
Social housing tenants will be asked to pay rent at or near market rates.
Ministers say it “better reflects people’s ability to pay” – but Labour and the Local Government Association say it would hit hard-working families.
The department for communities and local government argues that is “not fair that hard-working people are subsidising the lifestyles of those on higher than average incomes, to the tune of £3,500 per year”.
Housing Minister Brandon Lewis said people who could afford to pay more in rent “should do so” – but it would be graded, so that those on lower incomes would not have to pay full market rates.
“We have always said we would consider carefully how much more people pay as they move through the pay scales, once they get over £30,000,” he told BBC Radio 5 live’s Pienaar’s Politics.
He said the government would “listen to what comes in before we make a final decision in the period ahead of us”.
According to the LGA-commissioned study, almost 60,000 households in England will not be able to afford to pay rents at the market rate or take advantage of the right to buy.
Councillor Peter Box, housing spokesman at the LGA, which represents hundreds of local councils in England, said: “Many social housing tenants across the country will be unable to afford market rents or take up the offer to buy their council home under this policy.
“A couple with three children, earning £15,000 each a year, cannot be defined as high income. Pay to stay needs to be voluntary for councils – as it will be for housing associations.
“This flexibility is essential to allow us to protect social housing tenants and avoid the unintended consequence of hard-working families being penalised, people being disincentivised to work and earn more and key workers, such as nurses, teachers or social workers, having to move out of their local area.”
The LGA figures, compiled by the estate agent Savills, show that almost 215,000 social housing tenants will be affected by the “pay to stay” policy.
The policy is expected to save £245m a year by 2019-20, ending a situation where higher-income social tenants benefit from taxpayer-funded subsidies of up to £3,500 per year.
Former head of the civil service, Lord Kerslake, now a crossbench peer, will attempt to amend the housing bill, which is being scrutinised next week in the House of Lords, to place the scheme at the discretion of local authorities.
The peer, who is now chairman of the Peabody Trust housing association, has warned that the proposals were part of a package that could “threaten the future of social housing”.
“When this was originally discussed in the coalition government, it was intended to deal with the very small number of high earners on over £60,000.
“The current proposals will affect a lot more households with earnings of half that.”
Well it likes the Tories out to get David Cameron between the legs and it seems that Tory MP David Davis said news of the proposed in-work benefits ban could encourage workers to head to the UK.
Sir Eric Pickles, a Eurosceptic who supports Mr Cameron’s reform proposals, said action had to be taken to prevent a “new influx” of migrants.
The ban has to be agreed by all EU nations at a summit on 18 February.
It will be graduated, so that the longer migrant workers stay in the UK, the more in-work benefits, such as tax credits, they will be entitled to, in order to top-up their wages. Mr Cameron says the move will “make a difference” to high levels of immigration by reducing a “pull factor”.
But it will have to be agreed by member states, as part of a wider package of reforms to Britain’s relationship with the EU, and will only apply for a temporary period as an “emergency brake”.
If Mr Cameron can get a deal on his reform package in two weeks’ time at the Brussels summit he is expected to call a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in June.
David Davis, a former Tory leadership contender and leading Eurosceptic, said eastern European newspapers had carried numerous stories about the plan to terminate in-work benefits for the first four years after a migrant’s arrival in the UK.
At the same time, he said, Brussels has suggested the scheme could take 12 months to implement.
“Under such circumstances the incentive for anybody wishing to come to live in the UK will be to come as quickly as possible to beat the deadline when any such restrictions come into effect,” he said.
“Accordingly we are likely to see a surge in migrants in the next 12 months.”
Mr Cameron has suggested the “emergency brake” could come into effect within three months of the UK applying for it.
Eric Pickles defended Mr Cameron’s reform deal, on the BBC’s Sunday Politics, saying: “What we need to be clear is, we’re not trying to prevent people moving inside the European Union.”
The reforms were instead aimed at preventing people gaining “something for nothing” by claiming UK benefits before contributing anything in tax.
But Sir Eric. a Conservative former cabinet minister, said action was needed to prevent a surge of migrants: “Clearly as part of the negotiations we have to ensure that that doesn’t happen.” Meanwhile, speculation is continuing about whether a big cabinet name will lead the campaign to take Britain out of the EU. Other potential Tory “outers” include Justice Secretary Michael Gove and Employment Minister Priti Patel, who have said they will make their position clear when they have seen the final deal.
The hot potato of the day was on Sunday 7 February 2016 on the BBC Andrew Marr Show I did not know whether to laugh, cry or bang my head on the wall like many of the junior doctors when Jeremy Hunt quote that the British Medical Association(BMA) of being “totally irresponsible” over a lengthy industrial dispute. The doctors union had refused to sit down and talk about improving patient care and had spread “misinformation”.
Okay now that I’ve got this out of the way, I say what a load of poppycock or what a load of pile of manure coming out of his mouth. No doubt he is promoting a great message by using spin doctoring to put patents lives at risk and he think we were all born yesterday thinking we all will believe him when he says that hospitals should be open 24/7. Er we all know that hospitals are open seven days a week all year round. Don’t be taken in by this spin doctoring by Jeremy Hunt.
Well Jeremy Hunt to put it in a nutshell it’s okay to put health workers lives in danger by this he pointed the finger at the BMA for the breakdown in negotiations, sticking to the mantra of blaming patient deaths on NHS “inefficiencies,” rather than on the cuts and the need for more doctors and NHS staff — but at the same time he announced some shiny new baubles.
Hunt has continually misrepresented independent studies to claim that the 11,000 extra deaths per year over weekends compared to weekdays is as a result of a “five-day” service and the existence of “excessive overtime rates.”
On the Andrew Marr show he managed to twice misquote the contents of the report while trying to claim he hadn’t been misrepresenting it.
“If the government want more seven-day services then, quite simply, they need more doctors, nurses and diagnostic staff, and the extra investment needed to deliver it,” the BMA retorted correctly.
“Rather than addressing these issues, Jeremy Hunt is instead ploughing ahead with proposals that are unfair and could see many junior doctors voting with their feet.”
The cornerstone of his new strategy appears to be the announcement of a fresh round of investment into upgrading and “modernising” the NHS’s IT infrastructure.
Workers are well inoculated to “modernisation” programmes being used as cover for a fresh round of public money being forked over to the usual rogues’ gallery of privateers — an alarming number of which have former government ministers on their boards.
But the potential for abuse and massive waste of expenditure without any substantial improvements is rife, particularly if it’s left to the usual PFI which was introduce by the Conservatives in 1992 under John Major or PF2 as the government has now rebranded them contractors to deliver.
When the Labour Government came to power in 1997 it continued with the Tory’s PFI project NHS programme for IT provides a stark example. It took nearly seven years to complete at a cost of an estimated £10 billion most of which was pocketed by IT companies and PFI specialists before finally being abandoned.
But the Tories themselves already have form in this particular area. Under the coalition government, they attempted to introduce their own version of the NHS programme for IT in 2013.
The then health secretary claimed that the goal was to “go paperless across the NHS by 2018.”
The first element of this, the care.data project which aimed at creating a national database of health records that could be shared across the NHS in England, was quietly dropped in the run-up to the last general election after two years of failing to address critical concerns of campaigners and health professionals.
It was their steadfast refusal to drop the selling of this information on to the private sector that killed off this potentially life-saving project.
Lest we forget, the then health secretary in 2013 is the same as the current one — Jeremy Hunt.
But perhaps poor old Jeremy is suffering from a dose of selective amnesia due to the strain he’s been put under over the last few months and forgotten this.
Selected patient information is already made available to certain private medical research companies through the Health and Social Care Information Centre by many NHS trusts, raising questions about data security.
Aggregating of information and data mining have become a booming international market worth billions. And these are far from shadowy companies operating on the fringes of legality. One of the most notorious British-based data miners, Dunnhumby, is owned by Tesco.
The Tories’ unswerving commitment to the neoliberal mantra of “private good, public bad” will ensure that this latest programme is doomed before it begins.
Now that I have got all this my chest i urge all to join the Junior Doctors strike on 10 Feb 2016.
Here is for all to see on youtube and it’s time to make up your own mind over EU referendum:
Hate to say this but David Cameron makes Faulty Towers looks like a saint and you know what the actor who plays Manuel is a dead giveaway at least you know where he is coming from. As for David Cameron he is the sort of person who has no idea of European Union compare to let’s just say Gordon Brown. Gordon Brown stood his grounds and set out the criteria for a Five Economic Test.
There is a saying a promise is a comfort to a fool. Well Hameron has hoodwinked you again by claiming that he has achieved what was in the conservative manifesto but in truth he got bugger all from his trip to the European Union. It’s no wonder he is living in the never, never land which Jeremy Corbyn put it so eloquently.
To top it off the Eurosceptic in the Conservatives are all lining up to put the knife into David Cameron which they hope will bring down their dear leader in a untenable position where a leadership challenge will take place. David Cameron faced a barrage of attacks in Parliament over his EU deal.
Nothing odd about that except a big chunk of it came from behind his back. At least 23 Tory MPs who undermined their Prime Minister’s prize renegotiation in just two hours as part of a full-blooded assault.
Many even wore the garish yellow and black ties of the “Go” campaign to get Britain out of the EU.
What a lark, Hameron and Tusk (European Council President) continues with further talks on EU Reform. I’m sure certain that it will amount to anything if it needs other leaders to back the UK proposal at the summer later this month. This has only come about because Cameron wants to save face.
Why am I not surprised that Scameron fellow EU leaders are not happy with his reform proposals as they stand. Be warned beware of Greeks bearing gifts.
He may get egg in his face after two weeks of difficult negotiations to get all member states to support the deal, I kid you not.
I’m sure that UKIP will take comfort to rub Cameron nose by saying we told you, you not got a dickey-bird and it been a load of cobs wallop of a journey coming out of your gob it’s been nothing more than a waste of your time by going to EU to get a sweetheart deal.
Here are the list of the 23 Conservative rebel MPs:
Sir William Cash
Liam Fox
John Redwood
Peter Lilley
Philip Davies
Sir Edward Leigh
Michael Fabricant
Sir Gerald Howarth
Bernard Jenkin
Steve Baker
Anne Main
Christopher Chope
Jacob Rees-Mogg
John Baron
Peter Bone
Tom Pursglove
David Nuttall
Sarah Wollaston
Richard Drax
Chris Philp
Andrew Brigden
Craig Mackinlay
Martin Vickers
It further transpired that Theresa May has admitted fearing she had created a monster by setting up Police and Crime Commissioners in England and Wales.
The number of incidents had given PCC a bad name.
She also revealed she was planning to expand the powers of PCC after their elections in May. This includes those setting free schools for troubled children.
Well hell yes I have like many others have said the position created by the former Conservatives and Libdems was not value for money.
How many rivers does NHS have to cross before finding out that the Department of Health is to introduce further cuts jobs to reduce running cost.
Non-senior staff numbers will fall from 1,800 to 1,200 – 1,300 by April 2017 and three London offices will move to a single site in Westminister.
Most Whitehall budgets were cut in last November’s spending review and the DoH is trying to make efficiency savings of 30% in the next five years.
The chancellor announced a cut in the budget of DoH although NHS spending was protected. Well not only is this very fishy George Osborne has not said which non-senior staff he is referring to like care staff or cleaners.
It’s been alleged Senior Conservatives are opposed to provisions contained in the government’s Trade Union Bill which could slash funding to Labour Party.
If there is one good thing that has come out of this is a conference to raise funds from world leaders to make a pledge to help Syrians affected by the five year conflict. As much as I concur that funds are needed in Syria hor humanitarian grounds somehow deep down my heart I feel that some of those so called leaders who pledge to give money will not deliver as some of those leaders believes just by saying that they will make a pledge that will sufficient enough. Yet there is another side of me there is a feeling deep down in me says this play into the likes of the far-right groups which includes UKIP.
They will rightly or wrongly say that we should be looking after our own before giving aid to other countries. Well I’ve got news for the far-right groups and UKIP the amount that UK gives in foreign aid is small and every penny UK gives is worthwhile cause and helps improves the quality of life for others.
Well I have to take a look my crystal ball in front of me now. Oh here it comes it is estimated that 14,000 disabled people who rely on a specialist motoring allowance have their cars taken away from them following government welfare changes and the establishment says the new process is fairer and people can appeal. What a load of manure pile coming from the Conservative government.
The reality is they would be more happy to see that their fatcats are filling their party coffers when they say jump and they are happy to accommodate by saying how high master.
Government contractors Capita and Atos apologised over bungled disability tests.
Grovelling bosses from the heavily-criticised outsourcing giants were hauled before MPs to explain missed targets for carrying out vital assessments. The apologies were forced out as bosses were grilled by the Commons Public Accounts Committee.
Confronting the firms with missed targets and complaints over quality, Tory MP Nigel Mills said: “I thought you might be a little apologetic.
Capita divisional managing director Chris Stroud said: “Let me apologise and acknowledge that our quality has not been acceptable, and there’s no shying away from that.”
Atos David Haley admitted: “Any failure of a quality target is unacceptable and we wouldn’t be happy with that.
“We always stay very focused on making sure that we hit and exceed the service level targets.”
A recent report by Whitehall’s spending watchdog found that Maxius was worse than its predecessor.
One in 10 assessments was not up to scratch more than twice as bad as Atos according to the National Audit Office. The company is being paid £595 million over three years to carry out work capability assessments for people applying for employment and support allowance.
Now this gets very intriguingly for the Conservatives it’s been widely alleged that Iain Duncan Smith has paid consultants £200,000 to draw up secret plans for the possible privatisation of a key welfare service.
The Work and Pensions Secretary hired the advisers to look at putting the Access to Work scheme up for tender.
The Access to Work programme employs more than 600 people and is responsible for helping the disabled and long-term sick find a job.
It is alleged that memo has confirmed any privatisation could be seen to weaken the service and advises ministers not to make a public announcement about the plans.
“This is a sensitive piece of work in which stakeholders may have concerns that this represents a dilution of Government support for disability employment.”
“We recommend that DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) do not make a separate public announcement about the feasibility study at this stage,” the memo says.
It goes on to say that the work by the consultants should not be “widely promoted”.
The document says consultants should look at keeping Access to Work within the department, hiving it off to a charity or not-for-profit organisation or putting it up for tender.
But it adds: “We are open to looking at delivery options both inside and outside of Government, particularly where the latter have the additional capability of raising additional external funds.
“Our primary business objective is to increase customer reach whilst remaining a demand-led scheme, at no additional cost above Government forecast expenditure.”
The unions accused Mr Duncan Smith of trying to “fatten up” the service in preparation for privatisation.
How many times have we all read or heard this excuse A DWP spokeswoman said: “Thousands of people have already benefited from the support of the Access to Work scheme, and we want even more to do so.
“As part of this we are exploring whether there is an opportunity to work with organisations such as charities, but no decisions have yet been made.”
Noticed of lately how under hand the whole electoral register process has changed and people are missing from the register and the imposed boundary changes to give them the edge to win the next general elections in 2020.
This sums up the some of Scameron failures in a nutshell and he and others in the Conservatives still believes in their great leader legacies in the name of Thatcherism
Here is that we all should be reminded by this about this establishment why we should vote them out:
The arrogance of this establishment grows by the day. Welcome to the capitalist party of Tories they would rather trade damn right insults towards refugees and immigrants which plays into the hands of the Far-right elements of EDL, BritainFirst, LionheartGB, Pegida and UKIP oh what hypocrites David Cameron has become since being leader of the nasty party. Well done.
Cameron speaks his entourage pushes further; the media responds; and on the streets, the abuse and attacks kick off. Sadly, Cameron and the Tories seem to believe that the answer to a broken nation is to break it some more. During the last election David Cameron made great headway with his slogan about Labour and the SNP wanting to “break up Britain”. It’s been a theme with him. As leader of the opposition, David Cameron declared Britain is broken under Labour and claims that he will fix it.
It’s ironic, then, that few people in the past decade have done more to break apart the bonds that hold Britain together than the Tory party leader. Responding at Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions on 27 Jan 2016 to Jeremy Corbyn’s visit to the refugee camp at Calais last weekend, Cameron joked: they met with a bunch of migrants in Calais. They say that they all can come to Britain.
Fancy this a Conservative Peer says that he could not live a £300:00 day for attending the House of the Lords. A millionaire peer appointed by David Cameron is describing the £300 daily allowance as “inadequate”.
Lord Farmer, a hedge-fund boss and Conservative donor said people would consider the current payment to be “modest and even inadequate” if they knew how hard peers worked.
And he argued that peers deserved higher pay because attending the House of Lords “restricts their earning opportunities elsewhere”.
Lord Farmer – who is also a senior treasurer of the Conservative Party with a reported personal fortune of £150 million – said he, personally, did not claim the £300 allowance when he attends debates, “because I do not need to”.
But he added: “Some depend on the daily allowance to make ends meet because they give so much of their time.
“If this were made clear to the public, who, of course, pay garage and plumbers’ bills per hour, or per day, they might think the daily fee is in fact rather modest, and even inadequate, particularly if they understood there are many peers whose work here restricts their earning opportunities elsewhere.”
The 71-year-old peer, who is reported to have donated £6.5 million to the Conservatives, also backed calls for a beefed-up Lords press office, to trumpet the chamber’s successes.
He said: “Crucially, however, if their [peers] contribution is to be considered worthy of public funding, the public need to value and understand the work we do.
“There is so much to shout about every day that would actually encourage all who pay taxes, whether individuals, or businesses, that they are in fact getting great value for money.
“We might even see public support for higher daily allowances, which I would endorse wholeheartedly.”
In another development the establishment lost their defence on two cases of bedroom tax the Government loses Court of Appeal cases followed legal challenges by a woman who has a panic room in her home, and the grandparents of a 15-year-old who requires overnight care.
The removal in 2013 of what the government calls the spare room subsidy cuts benefits for social housing tenants with a “spare” room.
Ministers have said they will appeal.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) argued that it had given councils money to make discretionary payments to people facing hardship because of the policy change.
The case is now due to be decided in the Supreme Court.
Prime Minister David Cameron said the government would “look very carefully” at the judgement. “But our fundamental position is, it is unfair to subsidise spare rooms in the social sector if we don’t subsidise them in the private sector.”
One of the cases – brought by a woman identified as “A” – concerned the effect of the policy on women living in properties adapted because of risks to their lives. Her home was equipped with a panic room.
The second case – brought by Pembrokeshire couple Paul and Susan Rutherford and their 15-year-old grandson Warren – focused on the impact of the policy on disabled children needing overnight care.
There are believed to be about 300 such victims of domestic violence and thousands of severely disabled children in this situation.
The Court of Appeal ruling comes after a judicial review brought by the Rutherfords was dismissed in the High Court in 2014.
Housing benefit changes – dubbed the “bedroom tax” by Labour – were introduced in April 2013. Since then families claiming housing benefits have been assessed for the number of bedrooms they actually need.
Families deemed by their local authorities to have too much living space have received reduced benefits, with payments being cut by 14% if they have one spare bedroom.
Both “A” and the Rutherfords claimed that the policy change discriminated against them unlawfully.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, Lord Justice Tomlinson and Lord Justice Vos ruled in their favour, saying the “admitted discrimination” in each case “has not been justified by the Secretary of State”.
Mr Rutherford said he was “absolutely delighted” with the ruling, adding: “I couldn’t have had a better start to the day.”
“It was so unfair that somebody had to do something to get the law changed.”
As if this is not bad enough David Cameron dear Buddy Rupert Murdoch has publicly attacked the conservative leader over Google. Remember he was the same person who spat out Tony Blair to the pack of wolves when he no longer wanted Labour in power now he is doing the same to David Cameron as a warning shot Rupert Murdoch is having a laugh at David Cameron expense by accusing the “posh boys in Downing Street” of being too easily awed by Google as the government came under fire over its £130m tax deal with the technology giant.
Murdoch, the multibillionaire executive chairman of News Corp who ultimately controls the Times and the Sun newspapers, sent a series of tweets on Wednesday suggesting Downing Street was too close to Google and accusing the company of “paying token amounts for PR purposes”.
He made the pronouncements after facing accusations over phone hacking scandal that he and his executives were too close to senior politicians in the UK and had too much lobbying power. Murdoch’s company tax affairs have also come under scrutiny in Austria.
How many of us remember Student Grants or student maintains grants defeat and conservatives jumps up and down for joy. Grants designed to support students from the poorest backgrounds through university will be abolished today, but if you plan to tune in to BBC Parliament to watch a fiery political exchange you’ll be sorely disappointed. There will be no Commons debate, no Commons vote and no sign of the mass demonstrations that shook the government that chose to treble university tuition fees five years ago.
Down the corridor and up the stairs, the Third Delegated Legislation Committee will meet in committee room nine. A small group of MPs will gather to consider the innocently titled ‘Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2015 (S.I., 2015, No. 1951)’. The numbers will be stacked in the Tories’ favour and even if the committee did want to quash the proposals, they will have no power to do so.
No doubt clever government whips hoped that using an obscure parliamentary process would minimise the political damage to the Tories’ reputation, but it is scandalous that such a major decision is being taken in this way.
The poorest students will be hit hardest. Currently, eligible students can receive a non-repayable grant of up to £3,387. This money helps with essential costs like rent, foods, bills and study materials. These grants were won as part of a hard-fought deal by previous generations of student leaders and parliamentarians who convinced successive governments that, if they were going to ask graduates to pay more for their university degree, it was only fair to help those from the poorest backgrounds to meet the costs of studying with a grant. When the Coalition government trebled university tuition fees to £9,000, students were told that the increase in maintenance grants for students ‘should ensure that the reforms do not affect individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds disproportionately’. Thanks to David Cameron, George Osborne and Tory MPs meeting in the Third Delegated Legislation Committee today, the poorest students will now be saddled with the highest debts. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that the poorest 40% of students in England will now graduate with debts of up to £53,000 for a three year course, rather than £40,500 at present. Worryingly, another study from the IFS found that a £1,000 increase in grants created a 3.95% increase in university participation, so there are serious questions for the government to answer about the impact that abolishing grants could have on fair access to higher education.
Because the government is ducking the usual parliamentary scrutiny, MPs from all parties will not have the chance to ask ministers difficult and important questions. There has been no proper consultation with those affected and there was no mention of this major policy change in the Conservative Party manifesto.
The government’s behaviour is underhand and undemocratic. The poorest students will lose out as a result, making the policy unfair. Students, and the general public, should not stand for it.
Don’t be hoodwinked by Jeremy hunt and company he is not telling us the full story about our NHS. The Conservatives have allegedly blocked legal documents that may show the impact of a controversial ‘free trade’ agreement on the NHS.
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, known as TTIP, is a US-EU trade deal currently under negotiation, and are avidly supported by the likes of the establishment and Obama. The blocked legal documents, campaigners have cautioned, may contain the extent to which, under TTIP, private NHS contractors could sue the government for introducing policies that negatively impact their profits.
The Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) is the most controversial element of TTIP. It allows corporations to sue governments or public bodies before an arbitral tribunal, for policies that are perceived as harmful to their profits. An ‘arbitral tribunal’ is an international hearing, out of the courts and behind closed doors, which decides how much money these companies should get.
The supposed motive is to encourage foreign investment, despite there being no empirical evidence for this (There is no ISDS in any trade agreements Brazil has, or between the US and China). ISDS is exclusively to foreign investment; US companies gain the right to these international arbitration tribunals, but EU companies must stick to national courts. Thus, ISDS can discriminate in favour of US companies.
Cameron has been in charge of the country for six years. If he hasn’t got it sorted by now, he never will!! It’s not rocket science, The clown is a waste of space and one of the big question is will we all see the return of legal aid which is a hot potato as it is alleged that conservatives about to do a uturn. Justices secretary Michael Gove is to ditch plans to completely overhaul legal aid, reversing yet another policy by his controversial predecessor Chris Grayling.
The minister repealed pledges to create a ‘two-tier’ contract system for cases affecting criminal legal aid in a move described by one journalist as “another humiliation” for Grayling. Legal aid is government money that helps pay for legal advice or representation for those accused of crime.
The coalition government approved plans for a drastic reduction – from 1,600 to 527 – in the number of legal aid contracts for duty solicitors attending magistrates’ courts and providing round-the-clock cover at police stations. Solicitor firms wiped from the duty-cover phonebooks would have been forced to rely only on clients who referred themselves to their practices.
Changes to legal aid under Grayling enraged lawyers, who argued the cuts would limit poorer peoples’ access to justice.
But in a written statement published on Thursday afternoon, Gove said he was scrapping the planned contracts cull.
“I have decided not to go ahead with the introduction of the dual contracting system,” he said.
Gove, who took over the justice brief from Grayling after the election in May last year, also declared he would suspend the second-half of a 17.5% fee cut for those providing legal aid at state expense.
“I have also decided to suspend, for a period of 12 months from 1 April 2016, the second fee cut which was introduced in July last year,” he added.
Explaining the move, Gove wrote: “By not pressing ahead with dual contracting, and suspending the fee cut, at this stage we will, I hope, make it easier in all circumstances for litigators to instruct the best advocates, enhancing the quality of representation in our courts…
“Thanks to economies I have made elsewhere in my department, HM Treasury have given me a settlement which allows me greater flexibility in the allocation of funds for legal aid.”
It signals the fifth serious reversal of Grayling policies by Gove, following the lift of a ban on friends and family sending books to prisoners, dplans for a £100 million youth ‘mega prison being axed, a U-turn on Saudi prison contracts and criminal court charges being scrapped.
This is what happens when ‘cost-saving’ measures are taken – the impacts of ‘efficiency’ in one area often results in another area picking up those costs. So while the police budget may be more protected, it doesn’t mean that austerity for the rest of services doesn’t result in more stress for the police. UK police are spending as much as 40% of their time dealing with incidents triggered by some kind of mental health issue, against a backdrop of severe cuts in social and health services, the Guardian has learned. Research by the Guardian shows that the overall number of incidents recorded in police logs as being related to mental health rose by a third between 2011 and 2014, a trend that looks set to continue.
It comes after warnings that a perfect storm is gathering over already overstretched police forces as they try to cope with the knock-on effects of cuts to mental health services.
Figures for mental health “qualifiers” – identifiers used by the police to mark incidents in which mental health has been a factor – were obtained for the period from 2011 onwards under the Freedom of Information Act. A total of 35 forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland provided complete and consistent data.
The research found that the overall number of incidents with a mental health aspect rose by 33% between 2011 and 2014, the last full year for which data is available. This was despite the overall number of incidents recorded by the police forces falling by 10% in the same period.
The College of Policing estimates 20-40% of police time and vast amounts of money are taken up dealing with incidents involving people with mental health problems. Metropolitan police officers have estimated in the past that mental health issues account for at least 20% of police time.
Joanne McCartney, chair of the London assembly’s police and crime committee, said local authorities and health services had less capacity and staff to deal with mental health issues as they came under pressure from cuts.
“As a measure of last resort the police are going to have to be the ones to respond to incidents,” said McCartney. “They will do their best and do now have training in how to deal with vulnerable people, but they are not best placed to do that. They are not mental health professionals.
Compared with other forces, South Wales and North Wales police recorded particularly large jumps between 2011 and 2014 in the proportion of incidents related to mental health.
Pressures are also particularly high in Suffolk, where police spent a month last year analysing how much police time was spent on responding to mental health incidents. The results were stark: in one month 37% of officers’ time was devoted to dealing with incidents involving some mental health aspect.
“I wasn’t surprised when we saw how high that figure was,” said Ch Supt David Skevington of Suffolk police. “We knew the profile of mental health was being raised significantly through the number of operational incidents we were dealing with where people were suffering from mental health issues, whether it is people suffering from alcohol or substance abuse, or people just struggling in life.
“It could be an angry man who is smashing a place up; it could be concerns for someone wandering around the streets or someone at the top of a multi-storey car park. Mental Health is a key part of policing and we needed to do more to better equip our police officers. We have to look at these people being at a point of crisis in their lives, not being criminals.”
It now transpired that fifty Tory Member of Parliament lining up to defying Scameron over town hall budgets Tory cuts mean that the poorest local councils face cuts 18 times higher than the country’s richest, new analysis.
In an analysis undertaken by the Labour party and seen by the Independent, figures show that between the years 2010 and 2015, when the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government were in power, funding for the 10 most deprived local councils have fallen on average by £681.04 per household.
Of the 10 wealthiest councils in the UK, four saw an increase in their funding, while nine of the most deprived saw cuts of more than £520 per household.
The government looks at several factors such as crime, health, education, living conditions and unemployment, when monitoring whether an area or council is deprived.
Blackpool
Knowsley
Kingston upon Hull
Liverpool
Manchester
Middlesbrough
Birmingham
Nottingham
On the 5 May 2016 well be various elections for Local Government, Police Crime Commissioner, and London Mayoral Elections I would urge all to use all your votes for Labour party Candidates.
gordonlyew.wordpress.com 