Tories propose end of retirement, scrapping pensions and volunteers to replace NHS doctors | Pride’s Purge
Tom Pride has a stronger stomach than This Writer, if he can stick out ConservativeHome for any length of time.
Still, it seems the effort is worth it, to pick out sordid skulduggery like the following:
If you want to know what’s in store for us in the next wave of Tory ‘reforms’, it’s always handy to take a close look at the Conservative Party’s main activist magazine Conservative Home.
Troublingly, two articles written recently by Conservative Home’s influential assistant editor Henry Hill, have proposed getting rid of retirement:
“The entire concept of ‘a retirement’ is, after all, an artefact of the welfare system.”
“As medical advances help us stay active longer, the expectation in the future must surely be that whilst you can work, you work – unless you can save enough to pay for a period of idleness yourself.”
and replacing GPs and other doctors with untrained volunteers:
“85 per cent of a typical doctor’s work can be done perfectly well by a ‘physician’s assistant’ with a fraction of the training or wages. Volunteers would receive pay, training, and legal rights to take time out of their ‘civilian’ life to work for so many weeks of the year in the NHS.”
I’m not making any of this up. Read it and weep:
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It’s time we stopped treating this government and it’s service providers as gods. We have paid our taxes and contributions, they are ‘our’ public servants and should act as so. Who the hell are they to enslave their opinion on their paymasters. Enough is enough.
How ever did they all con us into believing that once we had cast our vote they had the right to deny our rights.
I know that there are tory voters that read Mike’s blog, is this the kind of thing you thought you were voting for?.
Adding to my previous comment, only the rich get to retire then.
As usual… I doubt any who vote for this or agree with it will be affected. Of course, they won’t want *their* taxes to pay for the plebs to lounge about.
Euthanasia will be next anyone disabled or unable to work for any reason get rid of them.
The sheep in this country need to wake up & rise up against the murderers we have running out Country.
Chequebook euthanasia is already happening.
I have saved up for a period of idleness after working – it is in the National Insurance fund.
If this government is to continue to abdicate all obligations to its citizens, a time must come when we ask: what is the point on having a government at all? By which time, we may well be under a fully-fledged authoritarian feudal system.
Its all part of the Tory plan to take us forward to the 18th and 19th centuries.
I doubt many Conservative MPs would vote for extreme lunacy like that, particularly when the Tories are the party that seeks to bribe retired persons to win their support by uprating pensions in line with inflation, rather than freezing them for four years as they have done with working age benefits. And I can’t imagine anybody, least of all parents, being happy to see their nearest and dearest, or themselves indeed, being seen by non-doctors on medical matters.
Crazy stuff which would be unmarketable to the population of the UK, which seems quite happy to see minorities, e.g., benefit claimants and single parents, treated like dirt but wouldn’t find behaviour like that extended to the general population tolerable, especially if it affected them and theirs.
Just bear in mind that when the Tories have successfully arranged matters so that it is no longer even possible to vote them out of office any more, we will ALL be prey. Even the pensioners.
How about saving for a rainy day? How about being more responsible and put some money in the corner for the day you will not be able to work? Isn’t this a better choice instead of forcing the taxpayer to fund those who don’t work? Why are you socialists such workshy? Work is a virtue, even if it is done for free. Asking everything for nothing is a vice. Get over it. Socialism is over
This is hilarious. And you seriously believe it? Wow.
Nobody asks for everything while giving nothing – apart from rich Tories, of course.
Think about it.
Socialists pay into society in order to receive from it.
Tories expect society to support them while working hard to give back nothing in return.
Get your priorities straight and try to understand what is really going on.
Are you for real kosko?. The majority have paid into a pension most of their lives. It’s an insult to say it is idleness. It is a reward for working. As for putting money aside,well,where from? Most don’t have enough money to last to the next payday,how do you expect them to put a couple of hundred away.i now have to wait an extra six years for a pension I was promised. at 60 . In your mind The rich are allowed their idleness the poor only have death to look forward to. A country is judged on how it treats it old and vulnerable .We are very sadly lacking.
Kosko said: How about saving for a rainy day? How about being more responsible.
I think your absolutely correct Kosko. Putting money aside is the RIGHT THING TO DO. I have been doing this all my life, to make sure that should the worst happen a little is available to see me through. I have also been responsible enough to provide myself with a pension pot to see me out my retirement, through, what it called now, Oh yes, the social contract, in the name of taxes and national insurance contributions. Never, would I expect hard working tax payers to fund this, not when I’ve already paid it to those sniffling gits called the Tory party.
Work is a virtue, even if it is done for free?
Actually, NO. Requiring someone to work without payment is theft – The money they should be earning in exchange for their labour is being taken from them as surely as if a burglar or a mugger had taken it from them. It could be argued that forced Labour like this is worse than slavery – slaves at least got fed, had a roof over their head and the means to keep warm.
You are obviously rich, as you have a very limited understanding of what happens to those who are working. They work to pay rent and bills and to buy food. If they do not get paid, they’re thrown out on the street and they don’t eat. Many have dependent children and when the children are made homeless, many end up in care, costing the taxpayer more than supporting their family would have cost – it’s a false economy. Many adults made homeless have died because people like YOU are happy for that to happen and have voted for a party that makes it happen.
If workers are not being paid, then a salaried post which would have been available is not there. The tax that employee would’ve paid is lost to the Treasury. The company who would’ve employed that person do not pay National Insurance for the person who is not being paid, don’t pay any National Insurance for that employee either.
If that company is large, imagine that spread out through all it’s branches: All those wages that they have saved and the National Insurance, while the unpaid worker only draws benefits, paid for by the state (that’s our taxes) if they are lucky. The whole company is getting that benefit. Add to that the fact that many of the larger companies are not paying tax either. It is easy to see why many social commentators have come to the conclusion that major businesses are the REAL scroungers.
Now imagine that throughout the major businesses around the country:
1.4 million on zero hours contracts
1.4 million on sanctions at any one time
Half a million disabled doing “Workfare” or facing sanctions
Millions more doing “self-employed” work, who are really working full-time for a company who has forced them to go “self-employed” so it doesn’t have to pay employee benefits like National Insurance, holidays, sick pay and the new compulsory pension the government has come up with.
There are plenty of jobs around: What is lacking are employers willing to pay someone to do them.
To try to moralise about working for nothing being a virtue in our society is absolutely ridiculous, just as it is absurd to expect them to then be able to save! What planet are you from? If people are not being paid, then how you could expect them to be “saving for a rainy day” or exhort them to be “more responsible and put some money in the corner?”
The British people are hard workers. Even so, they have their limits. The system isn’t working: People are being broken by this situation and many will never recover.
They will cost the government more in medical and benefits than if the government were to just help them when they needed it.
Penny wise and pound stupid – that sums the Tories up.
Saving for a rainy day requires earning sufficient to pay for essentials and have enough left over to put into a savings account. Good luck if you’re on a minimum wage job, zero hours contract or enforced self-employed.
“Work is a virtue, even if it’s done for free” – Arbeit macht dich Frei?
Taxpayers pay for nothing, the system doesn’t work like that. Taxation should about establishing demand for currency, managing purchasing power and fair redistribution, not paying for government spending (since the Government, through their proxy the BoE, are monopoly issuers of Sterling, don’t actually need your taxes for spending – they need your taxes to control your ability to purchase goods and drive prices beyond the means of the poorest). The Government is NOT a household!
As Mike says, Socialism is about paying into a system that supports society, where the most able pay a little more to support the least able. Sadly, Thatcher, Regan and their neoliberal cohorts championed a system where the most privileged and able rip what they can from the least able, in a “survival of the fittest” parody (would have been possible if everyone started from the same position, but we didn’t) which you continue to believe is somehow good!
Kostko the dinosaur wrote:
“Work is a virtue, even if it is done for free.”
“How about saving for a rainy day?”
LOL
“Why are you socialists such workshy?”
What ‘work’?
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/19/robot-based-economy-san-francisco
When I read the headline and saw the author I assumed that this was going to be another of Tom’s great satirical posts. How wrong I was.
Danger….Very rich lunatics are loose.
Work until you die, unless you’re a rich Tory.
*sigh*
Stop posting this crap on facebook.
1. It’s not crap.
2. Why do you think it is?
3. Why should I stop when you haven’t offered any reason to do so?
4. Considering all the above, the answer is no.
No, Ian, that will not happen.
It’s not crap, it’s what is happening.
Get with the program, you twonk.
have you tory voters admitted this to your friends?
None of the above is Conservative policy. It is articles written in a Conservative magazine.
Tom Pride makes that perfectly clear in the article.I fail to understand why you are repeating him.
These right-wing fanatics are so dangerous. This is surely one good reason why we need to stay within the E.U. At least it gives us some protection from these raving tory loonies. They are hell-bent on completely destroying the welfare state. We – the electorate – are the only people who can stop them.
IDS, where are you, we miss you!, we know your hiding until the EU result, in the vain hope you can escape justice through the loss of Human Rights. You have a problem though, because when the vote goes against you, your friends are going to be looking for a scape goat, no prizes for guessing.