April 2013 – Vox Political

Elections: Labour discusses how to help Britain while other parties fight among themselves

April 30, 2013 Mike Sivierausterity, BBC, benefit, benefits, bill, borrow, campaign, Coalition, Conservative, debt, deficit, Democrat, duty, economy, Ed Miliband, election, government, housing, hung, job, Labour, landlord, Lib Dem, Liberal, Martha Kearney, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, negative, Nick Clegg, Parliament, people, politics, rogue, smear, spend, tax, The World At One, Tories, Tory, training, unemployment, Vox Political54 Comments

Say what you like about Ed Miliband, at least he hasn’t descended into the morass of smears, accusations and counter-accusations that typify the Tory and Liberal Democrat election campaigns. Labour’s approach seems to be focused on the national situation, rather than local areas – perhaps Mr Miliband is leaving local campaigning to local representatives, who know exactly what they’re talking about. Good policy. By concentrating on the overarching issues – especially ahead of next week’s launch of the Coalition’s future legislative programme – he’s telling the country what Labour stands…

Is the algorithm method stopping my messages from multiplying?

April 30, 2013 Mike Sivieralert, algorithm, blog, captcha, Coalition, Conservative, conspiracy, defamation, Facebook, filter, government, libel, Lords, mark mcgowan, message, NHS, privatisation, privatise, regulations, snout, spam, theory, Tories, Tory, toy pig, trough, wordpress11 Comments

What is going wrong with the social media giant Facebook? By now, we all know that Facebook took it upon itself to target and attack bloggers – primarily with WordPress, as I understand it – who use the site to publicise their articles, last week. Vox Political was one of those sites. The censorship took the form of an alert message that appeared on readers’ screens when they clicked through from Facebook to an article by the writers who had been targeted. This message stated: “Facebook thinks this site may…

Tory department of dirty deeds swings into pre-election action

April 29, 2013April 29, 2013 Mike SivierBBC, benefit, benefits, central office, clown, Coalition, Conservative, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, DWP, Ed Miliband, Facebook, foreigner, Iain Duncan Smith, Job Centre Plus, Labour, Liam Byrne, Media, michael dugher, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, nasty, Party, protest, sickness, smear, social, Stephen Timms, tom pride, Tony Blair, Tories, Tory, Twitter, UKIP, unemployment, Vox Political, welfare29 Comments

The Nasty Party is at it again, spreading dire warnings about its political foes and trawling opponents’ appearances on the social media for anything it can use against them. Labour and – especially – UKIP candidates had better watch out; these are people who will take any apparently-innocuous off-the-cuff comment and turn it into galloping racism (for example) before your eyes! The Party of Smears kicked off in typical fashion yesterday by attacking UKIP as “a collection of clowns” in a protest party with no positive policies, that was primarily…

What’s wrong with this picture? (Quite a lot, as it happens)

April 28, 2013 Mike SivierConservative, deficit, economy, employment, Facebook, George Osborne, government, interest rate, job, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, people, politics, Tories, Tory, unemployment, Vox Political5 Comments

This is what passes for information among Conservatives nowadays, apparently. I picked up the original image on a brief visit onto the Conservative Party Facebook page, where I passed a few choice comments on it – which appear below. I decided the correct information should not be wasted on the Conservatives alone, so I tried to share it on the Vox Facebook page. There, I discovered that Facebook‘s problem with politics is ongoing, as my attempt to post the, shall we say, altered version of the image was met with…

Massive, hidden gulf in NHS nurse numbers

April 28, 2013 Mike Sivier3 Comments

Long comment from one of my readers follows. It is pertinent to this, though: “I used to be a nurse for many years. I trained under the old system before Project 2000. I’ve never worked as hard, been so tired or enjoyed a job more in my life. After training I went on permanent night duty in a busy A&E department in a smallish hospital. It was a great, friendly place to work and because during the night there were always fewer staff on duty we all supported and relied…

Hoorah for the days when healthcare cost the earth and life expectancy was low!

April 28, 2013 Mike SivierCoalition, Conservative, debt, deficit, economy, government, health, Liberal, Liberal Democrat, Lords, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, NHS, Parliament, people, politics, sick, Tories, Tory, Vox Political6 Comments

The graph reproduced above is from the Tax Research UK website, where it is being used to show that the Lords agreed to regulations that – in effect – privatised the English NHS last week, because of greed. It shows the difference between OECD countries, based on the amount they spend on healthcare and the average life expectancy. Note that the UK is currently more or less in the middle of the majority group, with average spending and a fairly high life expectancy. By contrast, the USA is out on…

Blockade the Bailiffs – Take On The Sewer Rats Set To Profit From Welfare Reform

April 27, 2013 Mike Sivier4 Comments

Does anybody remember the grotesque Harry Enfield character Loadsamoney? He was a walking, talking satire of the Thatcher era’s obsession with cash. When he first hit our TV screens, he was a plasterer, because they were making cash hand over fist at the time. Then the crash happened in 1987, and what did he become? A bailiff. Taking possessions away from people who were unable to stop it had become the growth industry, so that’s what ‘Loadsamoney’ went into. Now, bailiffs are once again salivating at the chance to get…

ConDem government launches all-out attack on your freedoms (who’ll get your vote next week?)

April 26, 2013 Mike Sivieraccountancy, accounts, aid, Atos, austerity, avoid, avoidance, blog, cancer, CCG, client, clinical, closed court, commissioning, committee, Commons, competition, conceal, corporation, corrupt, David Cameron, Deloitte, Department, embezzlement, Ernst & Young, Facebook, freedom, funds, G8, Group, healthcare, house, hypocrisy, insider, internet, Job Centre, Job Centre Plus, jobcentre, Johnny Void, Justice, KPMG, Labour, law, legal, legislation, loophole, mandate, mark mcgowan, multinational, NHS, Pensions, pig, press, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Pride's Purge, private, privatisation, public, Reynard's, satire, spam, speech, Steve Topley, syndrome, tax, tom pride, toy, Treasury, work, work capability assessment19 Comments

It’s all been about freedom this week – or the lack of it. A couple of days ago, Mark McGowan took an unconventional journey to Downing Street. Mr McGowan, who has bowel cancer, decided to highlight the government’s privatisation of the NHS by pushing a toy pig, with his nose, the 4.1 miles from Kings College Hospital, in Camberwell Green, to 10 Downing Street in protest against regulations being discussed that day in the House of Lords. The new rules force commissioning groups to open all services to commercial competition, unless…

Man Jailed After Comments Made In Atos Assessment

April 26, 2013 Mike Sivier7 Comments

The Atos merry-go-round spins us into Hell again: This story is absolutely chilling. A man with serious medical conditions has been jailed – that’s right, JAILED – after an Atos work capability assessment. Read the story and quake in fear at the totalitarian regime that used to be the World leader in equality, justice and freedom of speech.

Does anybody believe this Conservative claptrap dressed up as information?

April 25, 2013 Mike Sivieraccommodation, adaptation, Atos, average, bankruptcy, Baroness Thatcher, bedroom, bedroom tax, benefit, benefit cap, benefits, borrowing, Brecon, candidate, carer, censor, child, Chris Davies, Cllr, Coalition, Conservative, councillor, cut, death, debt, deficit, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, DWP, Ed Miliband, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, Facebook, fraud, government, health, homeless, housing, housing benefit, Incapacity Benefit, income, insurance, Jobseeker's Allowance, Labour, Liberal, Liberal Democrat, medical, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, pension, people, politics, poverty, Radnorshire, Reform, respite, sick, social, social security, spare, spending, tax, taxpayer, Tony Blair, Tories, Tory, under occupation charge, unemployment, unum, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, work, work capability assessment, working family22 Comments

Once upon a time, if you found an error in an article, a document or (in my case – I’m going back to when I was very young) a teacher’s work, you were congratulated for finding the “deliberate mistake”. The culprit would say something like: “Well done! I put that in there as a deliberate mistake to see if you were alert enough to find it. You’ve passed the test! As a reward, clean the blackboard.” I wonder if the same can be said of a letter in the local…

Month: April 2013

Elections: Labour discusses how to help Britain while other parties fight among themselves

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Is the algorithm method stopping my messages from multiplying?

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What’s wrong with this picture? (Quite a lot, as it happens)

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Massive, hidden gulf in NHS nurse numbers

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Hoorah for the days when healthcare cost the earth and life expectancy was low!

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Blockade the Bailiffs – Take On The Sewer Rats Set To Profit From Welfare Reform

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Man Jailed After Comments Made In Atos Assessment

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