Category Archives: Strike Action

Tory government is reported to UN over anti-strikes law. So what?

Strike: under the Conservative government’s new law, some of these strikers would probably have to work while their colleagues took industrial action – or lose their jobs legally. It might go against international laws, but does anybody really think the Tories care?

Does anybody really think anything useful will come of the Trades Union Congress reporting the UK’s Tory government to the United Nations’ watchdog on workers’ rights over a new law?

The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act will require some people to work during industrial action – including people in the rail industry and emergency services – or face being sacked.

The TUC reckons this “anti-strikes law” is unworkable and may be illegal.

The government has responded with a claim that the law protects the lives and livelihoods of the general public, ensuring that people can still access vital public service during strikes.

there would be no automatic protection from unfair dismissal for an employee who is told to work through a notice but chooses to strike.

If a strike is not conducted in accordance with the new rules, employers would be also be able to sue unions for losses.

This Writer would like to know how having this reported to the United Nations would make anything better.

The UN is a paper tiger – it can’t force national governments to do anything at all, as we discovered when it found against the Tories over their treatment of disabled people (and, if I remember this correctly, the bedroom tax).

There seems no point in appealing to that organisation.

Even if the UN finds against the Tories, it seems the TUC will do a lot of work for nothing more than a public relations victory. Am I wrong?


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Don’t be misled by media lies: here are the reasons your doctors are on strike

Junior doctors have begun four days of strikes to raise awareness of the way the Tory government is crippling the NHS in England, repeating their call for better pay and more investment in the service. At the moment, Tory policy is killing people who should be getting treatment. Can you stomach that?

This is for anybody who still thinks doctors are harming England’s health service by going on strike: they are striking to stop the harm being inflicted by your Tory government!

This post may be quite long so, for those of you who don’t have much time, I’ll try to summarise it, here at the top:

Tory claims that their pay offer to doctors is fair are not true: it is a crappy real-terms pay cut.

Tory claims that their pay offer was recommended by an independent pay review body are also untrue: everybody on that organisation was employed by the Tory government and was told the exact amount the Tory government would make available for pay, before being told to make a decision on it.

Tory claims that doctors’ pay demands are inflationary are lies: junior doctors’ pay has fallen by 26 per cent, in real terms, since 2008. It is impossible for a decrease in costs to be inflationary. Many NHS doctors are now deeply in debt because of Tory pay cuts.

Tory claims that doctors are refusing to negotiate are lies: it is the Tory government that is refusing to negotiate.

Not only are the Tories refusing to negotiate; they are actually preparing to strip doctors of their right to strike, making it impossible for them ever to regain the fair pay and conditions that everybody working in the UK should have as a matter of course.

The NHS in England is currently under severe strain, with the number of people waiting for treatment now standing at 7.6 million – more than at any time in its 75-year history.

These problems were not caused by doctors but by deliberate Tory government de-funding; Tory ministers have taken money away from the health service in order to make it break down. People are dying because of Tory government policy – that is Steve Barclay’s intention; it is what Rishi Sunak wants.

The Tories have made multiple promises over the years that they have claimed will solve the problems facing the NHS – but it is Tory policy never to follow through on those promises.

Doctors are striking because these Tory policies mean they can no longer do their job.

Many of them are themselves facing mental illness due to the stress of being unable to treat people who desperately need help.

Over the same period of time that waiting lists have been lengthening, Tory government policy has been to privatise increasing numbers of NHS services, claiming that the introduction of private, profit-making corporations into healthcare will somehow make it more efficient, rather than draining funds from an already cash-starved organisation. The result has been catastrophic, with almost all parts of the English health service going from an operating surplus into deep debt. This has created even more stress for doctors.

The effect of this state-sponsored incompetence has been to push people into seeking private health treatment in order to jump the NHS queue – whether they can afford it or not. So not only is the NHS now in debt but so are many people who are suffering with illnesses and other conditions whose treatment should be funded by their National Insurance money and public funding.

Of course, it may be possible to get funding for health treatments via private insurance – if the insurer agrees that the policy you have is intended to pay for the treatment you need. Private insurance firms are salivating at the prospect of taking money from people whose health needs mean they cannot wait for an NHS that has been crippled by Tory de-funding to get round to them.

Those are the headline points. Now let’s put some meat on the bones.

Here’s Peter Stefanovic to explain the broad situation:

Here’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy and the Channel 4 News team to explain why the number of people waiting for help is soaring:

You’ll have noticed that the C4 News piece said strikes are disrupting services, and seen the defence of strikes by a doctor under interview. Here’s Grace Blakeley to further explain why doctors are striking:

Rishi Sunak, during a phone-in on LBC radio, blamed the increase in waiting lists on striking doctors. Here’s just one – factual – reaction to that:

And now let’s listen to a junior doctor named Olivia as she explains the facts of NHS life to a prime minister whose facial expression clearly shows that he couldn’t care less:

Here’s Dr Andrew Meyerson to explain how Tory government policy has crippled the NHS:

Here’s Channel 4 News (again), interviewing a GP on how he and others in his profession have been affected by the Tory-created problems in the NHS:

Here’s Dr Meyerson (again) on the medical debt inflicted on patients by Tory government policy:

Businesses – particularly insurance firms – know an opportunity when they see one. Here’s Axa, explaining why Tory government policy is ushering in an era of insurance-based healthcare, similar to the system in the United States, where health costs are a major cause of bankruptcy:

Now you have the facts. The question is: who do you support – the Tory government, or the striking doctors?


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Royal College of Nursing halts strike action after too few nurses voted on it

A nurse: this person will receive less pay than she needs to live on, after the Royal College of Nursing’s latest ballot on strike action failed to receive the necessary proportion of votes to be considered indicative.

It has just been reported (on the BBC’s Politics Live) that the Royal College of Nursing is giving up its strike action for better pay and conditions – because too few of its members took part in a ballot on whether to go on.

The RCN has a threshold of 50 per cent of its members taking part in a ballot before its result can be taken as indicative and only 43 per cent voted in the latest poll, it seems.

So these nurses must now capitulate to demands from the Tory government that they accept a pay cut (it’s a rise that doesn’t even meet current inflation levels, let alone counter the enormous pay cuts inflicted by the Tories since they came into office in 2010).

For the National Health Service, this means more nurses will quit and find work elsewhere in the UK, or perhaps in other countries (Politics Live is now discussing doctors moving to Australia).

That will create more strain for those who are left and will push the health service closer to the collapse that the Tories want, in order to open the floodgate for a fully-privatised, US-style sickness industry that will keep you as ill as possible in order to make the biggest profits for the “health” companies and their shareholders.

And you can’t expect a Labour government to improve matters; Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting and the other Labour leaders are all in the pockets of the healthcare corps as well.

The best advice This Site can give you now – especially if you life in England, is that offered by Neil Kinnock in the 1980s:

“Don’t get sick.”


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Tory ‘useful idiot’ Helen Whately in new ‘foot in mouth’ crisis

Helen Whately: she’s smiling in the photograph, possibly because she’s just had her foot removed from her mouth. Shortly after it was taken, she would have re-inserted it.

Tory social care minister Helen Whately should spend half her life in hospital, considering how often she gets her own feet lodged in her mouth.

Here she is, discussing the forthcoming three-day junior doctors’ strike, starting on July 13 – saying the Tory government doesn’t habitually accept the recommendations of independent pay review bodies, followed by historical contradictions from the health secretary and prime minister (courtesy of Peter Stefanovic).

We can’t expect better from a minister in the Department of Health and Social Care who lies about the number of doctors and nurses available to the public who pay for them, as we see here:

For the sake of balance, I should add that the Conservatives have succeeded admirably in their ambitions for the National Health Service: they wanted to reduce it to a lower-quality, postcode-lottery system that provides no value for money to the people who pay for it, because their donors in the private health sector wanted to take public money that was formerly used on healthcare and put it in their offshore bank accounts as profit.

The amount of money that is wasted in such a manner is phenomenal – but then, the healthcare firms do spend millions funding ministers and shadow ministers.

As far as those ministers, shadow ministers and healthcare executives are concerned, all the right people are benefiting from this situation.

The only people who don’t are those who rely on the NHS – and who cares about them?


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

The news in tweets: June 18, 2023

Public support for striking nurses higher now than when action began, RCN says

Government quietly awards travel firm £1.6bn contract for asylum barges and accommodation

DWP criticised in parliament for ‘hiding’ information on starvation death

Labour reveals two-candidate shortlist in North East mayoral race

DWP’s ‘shocking’ refusal to allow benefit appeal for woman who was sectioned


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Watch this junior doctor shred Tory claims about strikes

The Tory government’s policy on strike action by junior doctors was shredded into mincemeat when health minister Rachel Maclean tried to argue it out with Dr Robert Laurenson, co-chair of the British Medical Association’s Junior Doctors’ Committee on the BBC’s Politics Live (June 14, 2023).

Challenged over whether junior doctors should begin a strike in a heatwave, he pointed out that the NHS is in crisis whether in a heatwave or not – and specialist staff were in place to handle any respiratory issues (for example).

He pointed out to the government minister, whose salary has remained stable up to the present day, that her government has cut pay for junior doctors, repeatedly, for the past 15 years.

This is in line with overall pay stagnation across the UK since 2005, that has been reported recently. Tories like Ms Maclean have presided over the longest period of pay stagnation since Napoleonic times, while making decisions that made inflation skyrocket. Ms Maclean had claimed that pay is rising and this is not true.

The housing minister said strikes must be called off for talks to continue, but Dr Laurenson pointed out that this is not practical for junior doctors – they would be disarming and putting themselves in a position where the government could simply continue to cut pay, year on year.

The government didn’t even recognise the full recommendations of the “supposedly” independent pay review body that said without addressing junior doctor pay there would be a significant impact on patient safety, not because of strikes but because of the effect on productivity and staff retention, said Dr Laurenson.

Challenged over whether it was practical to give junior doctors the 35 per cent rise that would replace all the pay they had lost, he said it’s an increase from £14 per hour to £20 per hour, which is not a huge hike.

And when MPs have managed to keep their own already-high pay at parity with its level in 2010, they don’t have a leg to stand on.


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

The news in brief: Vox Political’s morning round-up for June 1, 2023

Paul Whitehouse, Lee Mack and Steve Coogan at Lake Windermere: here are three protesters who would be criminalised by Suella Braverman for causing “more than minor” disruption to other people’s day-to-day activities.

Right to protest: UK politicians urged to ‘do the right thing’

Peter Stefanovic’s emotional video clip demands that members of all Opposition parties in the House of Lords support Jenny Jones’s ‘fatal motion’ and kill Suella Braverman’s bid to stifle everybody’s right to protest with an undemocratic ‘Ministerial decree’. Let’s give him a moment to explain it:

Government hasn’t spoken to strikers since January

The general secretary of rail union ASLEF says the government hasn’t spoken to its representatives in almost five months because the Tories aren’t interested in ending strike action on the railways:

43 MPs throw support behind justice for WASPI women

From the i:

So far 43 MPs have written to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), calling for a speedy conclusion to its review of how much damage was caused by the way the pension age changes were communicated to women born in the 50s, and for fair compensation.

Among the 43 MPs are Ranil Jayawardena of the Conservatives, former leader of the Liberal Democrats Tim Farron, former Labour Party chair Ian Lavery and Caroline Lucas of the Green Party.

The PHSO could recommend compensation anywhere from £100 to £10,000 or more per person.

Women born in the 50s claim they were not given enough notice that their state pension age would rise from 60 to 65, in line with men. It then moved to 66 for both sexes.

Many women retired early or made life-changing decisions based on getting their pension at 60. The ramifications of the policy change and lack of notice has left them in emotional and financial distress, they say.

Their plight is under review by the PHSO, which has already found the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) guilty of maladministration for failing to sufficiently inform the women about the state pension age changes.

Though the PHSO maintains its investigation is fair and impartial, it decided to take another look at its findings after recognising part of the report was legally flawed. This move has raised hopes of a higher compensation award, although it is not guaranteed.

As Waspi awaits the results of the review, which could come before summer, it is urging supporters to contact their MP to put pressure on the PHSO to “complete the investigation with a sense of urgency” and make “fair” recommendations for compensation.

Latest Universal Credit change will leave parents worse-off

From The Canary:

BBC News reported that the DWP will be rolling out a change to the amount it pays in childcare costs to parents/guardians. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced it in his Spring Budget. Until now, the department has paid £646 a month, per kid, towards childcare costs under Universal Credit. Now, as BBC News wrote:

The government will allow parents on the benefit to claim back £951 for childcare costs for one and £1,630 for two or more children – a 47% increase.

Universal Credit’s increase in childcare costs payments is still nonsense.

The cost of childcare is huge:

  • For full-time childcare, the average cost is £285 a week.
  • For part-time, it’s £148 a week.

The DWP’s £951 maximum for one child is per Universal Credit assessment period. That’s usually a calendar month – running from the same date one month to the next. So, on that basis the department would pay, at the most, £219 a week.

This is £66, or 23%, short of the average costs. Meanwhile, in 2022 parents were already paying out up to two-thirds of their wages on childcare.

DWP secretary of state Mel Stride has trumpeted about the news. Stride said: “These changes will help thousands of parents progress their career without compromising the quality of the care that their children receive. By helping more parents to re-enter and progress in work, we will be able to cut inactivity and help grow the economy.”

Stride’s claim of the DWP ‘helping parents re-enter’ work is based on parents effectively being worse off in work.

Labour policy pledges need a 3p income tax rise

From the i:

Labour’s policy pledges so far would cost the equivalent of a 3p rise in income tax, i analysis reveals.

Sir Keir Starmer has promised not to borrow for day-to-day spending, and to bring down the size of the overall public debt pile as a percentage of GDP.

Analysis by i suggests that Labour’s policies will require an additional £20bn of funding every year – the equivalent of raising the basic rate of income tax by more than 3p – beyond that already promised through small tax increases such as imposing VAT on private school fees and ending non-domiciled tax status.

Labour’s biggest recurring spending commitment is to extend free childcare to all children aged 11 and under, promised by shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson earlier this year. The IPPR think-tank estimates the cost at almost £18bn, although taking into account the Government’s own childcare plans announced at the last Budget the net cost would be more like £13.6bn. The party said that an expansion of childcare to all children is not its current policy despite Ms Phillipson’s promise.

The pledge to increase the foreign aid spending target to 0.7 per cent of GDP, after Rishi Sunak cut it to 0.5 per cent, would cost around £5.5bn; party sources say this will only be implemented when it is affordable to do so. Labour has promised to set up a £1bn “contingency fund” for the energy industry, and would also have to spend around £1.7bn on GPs’ salaries if it went through with plans by shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting to nationalise the network of family doctors in England – something which the party now says it will not do.

Other current spending commitments which would total less than £1bn each include increasing the number of mental health workers, recruiting more police officers and setting up breakfast clubs in every primary school.

There’s a lot in the i‘s list that Labour now says it won’t do. Doesn’t this suggest that Keir Starmer is really planning just a continuation of the current neoliberal Conservatism that is pushing the UK further towards ruin every day?

Also, considering the Tories gave £800 billion to very rich people for no very good reason, This Writer can’t see why Labour couldn’t produce £20 billion from the same place, and then tax the rich to keep the books in balance and prevent any inflation.


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Junior doctors are to strike again in latest Tory government failure

Junior doctors are to strike again (as they did in 2016 when this image was taken).

This speaks for itself:

Junior doctors in England have announced a new 72-hour walkout in June after the latest round of government pay talks broke down.

The strike will take place between 07:00 on Wednesday 14 June and 07:00 on Saturday 17 June.

The British Medical Association (BMA) union, which represents doctors and medical students, said a government offer of a 5% rise was not “credible”.

Ministers said pay talks could only continue if the strike was called off.

Clearly, junior doctors are refusing to be bullied by the Tories, in the face of the anti-strike Bill that’s going through Parliament right now.

Perhaps they agree with Jeremy Corbyn, who has stated that

Doctors and nurses are striking because patients are dying.

In scapegoating NHS staff, teachers, railway workers, posties and civil servants, the government is forcing ordinary people to pay the price for a crisis caused by decades of austerity, economic mismanagement, and corporate greed.

Good; because the Tories might carp about needing “minimum service levels”, but these strikes are happening because the Tories have made it impossible for any such minimum to be met.

The only way to get “minimum service levels” in the NHS is for these doctors to succeed with their strike action.


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Tory anti-strike Bill fails to understand why workers need to take industrial action

Striking nurses: the only reason these people are taking action is to protect the health service that protects YOU. And the Tories are trying to demonise them for it. Who do you support?

While Keir Starmer talks a lot of nonsense about the NHS – particularly failures by ambulance crews to reach people in time – Jeremy Corbyn highlights the reasons such people are going on strike.

Today (Monday, May 22, 2023), the Tory government’s anti-strike Bill returns to Parliament, with its requirement that industries including the health service, rail, education, fire, and border security provide ‘minimum service levels’.

Mr Corbyn makes what should be the obvious point: people in these industries are striking because their bosses won’t allow them to meet these minimum levels:

Doctors and nurses are striking because patients are dying.

Teachers are striking because children are suffering.

Postal workers are striking because Royal Mail is failing.

If the Tories cared about “minimum service levels”, they would support workers’ demands for fully-funded and fully-staffed public services.

Instead, by overriding the fundamental right to strike, they are preventing people from fighting for the safety of us all.

That’s Mr Corbyn’s main message, but there is another: this attack on strikers is supported by corporate greed.

“In scapegoating NHS staff, teachers, railway workers, posties and civil servants, the government is forcing ordinary people to pay the price for a crisis caused by decades of austerity, economic mismanagement, and corporate greed,” he writes.

“This price is paid through real-terms cuts to their wages. It’s paid through the stress and anxiety of an increased workload. And it’s paid through public bailouts of failing private companies that continue to destroy the services upon which we all rely.”

Put simply: the attack on strikers is an attack on workers’ pay and the quality of the services they provide, purely to make more profit for bosses and shareholders who don’t use those services and don’t care.

Source: Jeremy Corbyn – When our democracy is under attack, it’s up to the labour movement to fight back


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

RMT votes for six months’ more strike action

Mick Lynch: members of his RMT union have voted to continue strike action. Meanwhile, the government has subsidised rail firms with more money than the union’s pay demand.

This took me completely by surprise – I was concentrating on aspects of the local elections.

So I’m going to rely on Professor Tim Wilson for the details.

His comments about education are very interesting, I think.


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook