Rescuing Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected Dictatorship
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Spin,
not face-to-face confrontations with the voters, is the Government's
chosen method of communication. Ordinary people are dangerous. Ordinary
people might ask a question which throws a politician 'off message';
the Cabinet member might reveal himself or herself to be a human being
like us, and not a programmed android. Worse still, he or she might
tell the truth.
Ann Leslie - Daily Mail, September 16, 2004
Blair wants to leave his
mark on history - looks more like a stain to me.
Peter Thorndyke, Diss,
Norfolk - Daily Mail, May 23, 2005
I know I'm me - why do I
need an ID card?
"Sorry, officers, I
don't have an ID card. I never applied for one. It seemed a bit steep
at 300 quid. I do have my free passport, my driving licence and my
London freedom travel pass, each with my photograph. I have my NHS
medical card, with its lengthy number, given me at birth, my RAF
service book with my Armed Forces number, and a chit authorising me to
wear a few gongs -including a General Service Medal with Malaya bar,
for fighting communist terrorists on behalf of my country, or so they
told me.
"I've also got various credit
cards and store cards, all with my signature on the back, generally
good for buying the everyday requrements for life as well as the odd
luxury. If you decide to arrest me, I suppose I'll have to be
photographed and given another number, besides my PINs.
"I'm afraid I haven't got a
pension book; it was taken away."
"By thieves, sir?"
"No ... well, not exactly. By the
Government. By the way, may I see your warrant cards please, gentlemen?"
Oh dear, they've disappeared. E.
Harry Gumer, Romford, ESSEX - Daily Mail, June 1, 2005
NO means NO
When does NO mean MAYBE?
When it's not the answer the EU wants. With the courageous French
NON resounding in their ears, shabby, undemocratic self-interested
leaders of Europe propose ignoring the part of their precious
constitution that requires ratification by all members and
continuing without one of the biggest founder members to
prevent derailing the gravy train.
As in Ireland,
they refuse to accept any NO votes, ignoring the will of the people,
and re-stage votes until they can engineer the 'correct' answer. Sadly,
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw dances to their tune like a puppet on a
string. With tactics such as these, how can anyone really believe the
EU has our interests at heart. Letter from Steve Penny, Kingsnorth, Kent - Daily
Mail, June1, 2005
Surely
the French result makes the £1million the EU recently spent on a
treaty signing ceremony seem a trifle premature and extravagant. Letter from Keith Wiseman, Bury, Lancs. - Daily Mail,
June1, 2005
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Britain has
traditionally been one of the biggest net contributors to the EU
because we do not get as much money back from Brussels in farm and
regional subsidies as our rivals.
According to
Treasury figures, between 1995-2002, Britain's average contribution
taking the rebate into account, was £2.6billion, or £43.55
per head of population.
The French -
the biggest recipient of farm subsidies - contributed £1billion a
year or £16.08 per head of their population.
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Tony
Blair should know that respect comes by example - from the
top. If a country's leader has no respect for the rule of
international law and no respect for the truth, how can
he expect anyone to have respect. Letter
from P.J.Atkinson, Ashford, Kent - Daily Mail, January 12,
2006
The
Chancellor's single greatest act of vandalism in almost
nine years in office has been his wanton destruction of
Britain's private retirement industry. By slapping a massive
tax on pension funds, now worth
£7.3billion a year, he has helped to turn
the best private retirement industry in Europe into a basket-case
in perpetual crisis. Together with the adoption of European
accounting rules - which make it much riskier to operate
a company pension scheme - hundreds of firms have shut their
final salary plans to new employees and slashed benefits
to existing staff. From
Allister Heath: "I've seen the future and its grey"
in THE SPECTATOR - April 15, 2006
Nine
years ago the British people were sold a fantasy of clean
and competent government of principle and honesty. Its shiny
wrappings stripped away, the product now reveals its true
nature: Personal greed, arrogance, incompetence, shamelessness,
rash warmongering and an inability to accept - as is clear
to almost everyone else - that it is time to go. Editorial
- The Mail on Sunday, May 28, 2006
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June
29, 2006 (1146 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2529 US - 113 UK - >60,000? civilians - 25 media
July
8, 2006 (1155 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 2543 US - 113 UK - >60,000? civilians - 25 media
My
beloved NHS is failing in its basic duty - to care for the most
vulnerable
by
Claire Rayner - Daily Mail, July 11, 2006
The
central purpose of the NHS is to protect the vulnerable and the
sick. Yet it is manifestly failing in this most essential of humanitarian
duties. Instead of providing a safety net, it is actually causing
more suffering to many of the patients it is meant to serve.
A
shocking study by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), leaked
yesterday, revealed that more than 100 women have been raped,
assaulted or sexually harassed in NHS mental health units over
the past two years.
A
national scandal
Comment
- Daily Mail, July 11, 2006
It
is 12 years since the Mail highlighted the scandal of
mixed-sex wards in NHS hospitals.
Two years later, when he was Opposition leader, Tony Blair
took up our challenge, asking: "Is is really beyond
the collective wits of the government and health administrators
to deal with this problem?"
Now
fast forward to 2000, when Labour Health Minister Lord
Hunt at last made an unequivocal promise: "Mixed
wards are wholly unacceptable. We are committed to ensuring
they disappear by 2002." And today, four
years after that deadline?
Today,
patients are STILL forced to endure the humiliation
and risk of sharing wards with strangers of the opposite
sex. Indeed, the number of patients
in mixed wards may actually be increasing, as hospitals
close wards to cut costs.
Now
comes a horrifying leaked report - suppressed for eight
months - showing what can happen when the sexes are not
properly segregated. It records more than 100 incidents
of rapes and other sexual offences in mental health units
over a two year period.
The
patients in these units are among the most vulnerable
members of our society. How much longer are they to be
betrayed, stripped of their dignity and put in danger
by a Government so long on words, but short on action.
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For
most of us, this is beyond comprehension. How can the NHS, a body
once renowned throughput the world for its compassion and for
the quality of its care, allow the most damaged and vulnerable
in our society to become the victims of such appalling abuse?
There
have been incidents of unwanted pregnancies and systematic sexual
harassment of female patients. One woman, who had been sexually
abused before being admitted to hospital for severe depression,
found that she was confronted by male patients exposing themselves
to her. As a result, she tried to kill herself.
Disgracefully,
the Department of Health sat on this confidential report for eight
months, preferring to hush up the scandal rather than resolve
it. Such an attitude makes a mockery of Tony Blair's much-trumpeted
pledge to ensure safety and personal dignity across the NHS.
Horrendous
Mr
Blair promised to phase out single-sex wards, yet nine years after
Labour came to power - and 11 years after he made that pledge
- the NPSA study reveals that nearly a quarter of patients in
mental health units are still sharing wards with members of the
opposite sex against their will.
Moreover,
as the NPSA shows, vulnerable women are still at risk from aggressive
male patients in non-segregated areas.
And this report follows the findings of an inquiry published last
week into Cornwall Partnership NHS Trust, which showed how patients
had been abused for many years, while members of the trust board
turned a blind eye.
The
horrendous abuse of mental patients is just one example of the
collapse in proper care throughout the NHS. According to an official
report by the Healthcare Commission, which the Government actually
bothered to publish yesterday, a depressing 60% of all NHS trusts
admit they are not achieving basic minimum standards of care.
When
these standards were drawn up by government two years ago, the
then Health Secretary John Reid declared that 'meeting core standards
is not optional. Health Care organisations must comply with them'.
Sadly,
but typically, ministerial rhetoric has not been matched by reality,
with more than half of England's 570 NHS trusts confessing that
they have breached guidelines for quality of care. In a system
that is supposed to be dedicated to the needs of its users,
widespread breaches of guide-lines are shocking. A host of NHS
bodies say they have failed to decontaminate equipment, keep proper
patient records or provide adequate training for staff.
From
an organisation that is now spending more than £90billion
a year, with a vast increase in resources since 2000, this is
a national scandal. The British public, which pays for the NHS
and relies on it, deserves better.
All
my adult life, as both a nurse and a campaigner with the Patients'
Association, I have been a passionate champion of the NHS<
precisely because its guiding principle is meant to be the provision
of a decent standard of health care regardless of a patients'
individual circumstances.
Before
its creation in 1948, the provision of health care had frequently
been dictated by income. Those who needed support the most were
often those who could least afford it. As a child growing up in
prewar Britain, I saw how the working-class and unemployed lived
in anxiety of ill-health because of expensive medical bills. That
is why I was so enthusiastic about the NHS when it was created
by that great egalitarian, Aneurin Bevan, soon after the war.
The
NHS was part of the wider welfare settlement of Britain, which,
in the famous words of Winston Churchill,, would provide support
to every citizen 'from the cradle to the grave'. As a young nurse,
who went into training in 1950 after working for two years as
a nursing cadet in pre-NHS hospitals, I could feel the tremendous
relief experienced by those who no longer felt under a burden
if they fell ill.
It
was a wonderful time to be starting work in the service, a time
of optimism and hope.
Abuse
But
as the Healthcare Commission report demonstrates, much of that
spirit has evaporated. The NHS we all loved is no longer meeting
even the most basic needs of the population. It is an organisation
mired in crisis, providing only limited, sporadic care, not the
comprehensive service that was envisaged by its founders.
This
abuse, such apparent contempt for patients, is the very opposite
of the traditional ethos of the NHS. But I am afraid to say that
I do not find it very surprising. In my work with the Patients'
Association, I recently came across a case where an individual
with Alzheimer';s disease was tied to a chair for 17 house to
stop him wandering. I have also become increasingly concerned
about the quality of food provided to patients and about the lack
of proper care for those who have difficulty in eating.
It
is a disturbing fact that many NHS users now leave hospital suffering
from malnutrition. The complaint that NHS trusts are failing to
decontaminate reusable medical equipment is some-thing that the
Patients' Association has been concerned about for years.
We
have also been warning about the inadequacy of medical record-keeping
- which surely cannot be beyond the wit of the well-paid managers
in the NHS to institute a proper system.
Tony
Blair announced that the NHS would have some vast, all-singing,
all-dancing computer to resolve all these problems. Well, we are
still waiting - and in the meantime, this huge computer project
has gone way over budget and fall years behind schedule.
Paralysed
Dear
old Nye, whose priority was patient need rather than managerial
convenience, would not have tolerated such nonsense.
From what I can see as a patients' representative, the NHS now
seems paralysed by procedures, box-ticking, form-filling and target-setting.
Officialdom
has triumphed over quality of care. Don't worry if the patient
is suffering, as long as you jump through the correct bureaucratic
hoops. The Labour Government has become obsessed with organisational
tinkering.
If
new structures, new tiers of management, new protocols and new
guidelines were the solution, then the NHS would be the finest
in the world. But they are not. All Labour has succeeded in doing
with the bonanza of bureaucracy has been to demoralise staff,
depress patients and drain resources.
It
is hard for employees to motivate themselves when they are so
obviously treated with contempt by the Government. And in training,
there should be less emphasis on procedures and more on teaching
staff how to treat patients with decency and humanity.
When
I was training as a nurse, I was taught that the most crucial
element was to show a smiling, calm face to the patient, no matter
how difficult or repulsive the task. Indeed, those who are suffering
the indignity of physical of mental problems deserve to be shown
even more compassion.
We
cannot go on as we are. The current NHS is a betrayal of the post-war
settlement - and of the vision that inspired some of us to join
the service.
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