Tag Archives: service

Water boss bonuses show privatisation is a gravy train for the greedy

Rivers of Shit: Boris Johnson couldn’t be bothered to think about the details of his Brexit, and now the UK is suffering shortages of materials including those used to clean sewage. So partially-cleaned and harmful crap is going directly into our rivers.

This is the second half of the privatisation scam.

Back on January 25, This Site explained how privatising governments like the Tories give themselves an excuse to sell national assets like water, electricity and railways into private hands.

They do this by de-funding the service to ensure that it cannot employ the right people, buy the right equipment and/or accommodate demand.

The aim is to make people angry at the public service, so they demand privatisation – or at least accept it when it is proposed.

Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!

But what happens after a service is privatised?

This:

Water company bosses have received over £25m in bonuses and incentives since the last general election, according to analysis by Labour.

The analysis found that nine water chief executives were paid £10m in bonuses, £14m in incentives and £603,580 in benefits since 2019.

It comes amid outrage over illegal sewage dumping, with water firms in England seeking to hike customers’ bills by an extra £156 a year to invest in Britain’s Victorian infrastructure.

The blatant greed is staggering in the flagrancy of the insult to bill-payers.

Instead of using the money paid for the service to provide it, shareholders and executives take it for themselves and then (in the case of water firms, literally) flush that service down the drain.

And then they demand more money, under the pretence that they’ll use it to fix the problems they have created.

You’d have to be a fool to believe that one. So what do you think the Tories are planning to do?

And, come to think of it…

What do you think of the plan by both Tories and Labour to increase privatisation of the health service?

Source: Water bosses have received £25m in bonuses since last election, Labour says | Politics News | Sky News


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.

Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The Livingstone Presumption is 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 ‘less is more’ lies in action: NHS beds, diagnostic centres, jobs

At breaking point: the UK’s National Health Service.

Following on from This Site’s earlier article on how Suella Braverman has recruited fewer than half the police officers the UK needs, here’s some more Tory ‘less is more’ policy information – on NHS beds, diagnostic centres and jobs:

I repeat:

They cut the numbers of a government-funded resource (in this case, the NHS) far below what is needed to provide an adequate service. Then they increase the numbers – but not by enough. And then they hit us with an outrageous lie that the boost is enormous.


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

Squirm, Barclay! Health sec skewered over delay in clearing legionella-hit prison barge

The denial machine: puppet Steve Barclay (front) doesn’t have a brain of his own and can only repeat the nonsense he’s been told by Tory HQ, with his boss Rishi Sunak behind him, pulling his strings.

The absolute state of this.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay squirms as the BBC’s Sally Nugent points out that the Home Office was informed on August 7 that the prison barge for asylum-seekers, Bibby Stockholm, was infected with legionella.

People were sent on board the following day. It wasn’t until August 10 that the decision was made to clear the vessel of human inhabitants and decontaminate it.

Don’t you love the nervous tic that gives Barclay away – his repetition of the word “precaution” or “precautionary”. It’s likely to have been part of a speech he’d been told to rehearse beforehand, and when he was pressed on the subject he had nothing else to say.

As Ms Nugent said, he’s the Health Secretary; he should know how dangerous legionella is and how important it is to act urgently if it is discovered.

Ms Nugent has also won praise after she “eviscerated” the Tory Health Secretary for lying about waiting lists:

Metro published the full exchange:

The politician replied: ‘What really matters is patients waiting for treatment. Commitment to getting waiting times down. We’re making big progress on the longest waits. In England we’ve virtually eliminated waits of over 18 months, whereas in Wales for example, there’s over 70,000 waiting more than 18 months.

‘In fact, many of your listeners will be surprised to learn that there’s four times as many patients waiting over a year for treatment in Wales compared to in England, and that’s despite Keir Starmer saying that Wales is the blueprint for what we would do in England.’

However, as the politician was finishing what he was saying, Sally interjected, stressing that the figures comparing waiting times in England and Wales required further context.

‘Can I just stop you there, because actually those… – can I please just stop you there for a moment, because the figures are actually collated in a different way, so that’s not particularly relevant. We also know that long waiting times are falling every month in Wales. They’ve actually more than halved in the last year,’ she stated.

However, the MP disagreed, adding: ‘No, people waiting more than 18 months in Wales is over 70,000 there. There’s over 30,000 waiting more than two years.’

Yet again, Sally pointed out the difference in the statistics’ relevance, telling the programme’s guest and their viewers: ‘They include more referrals in their statistics than England does, so they’re not really comparable figures, are they?’

The news provider also published reactions from the social media, with one person describing the interview as a “metaphorical evisceration” and another saying Ms Nugent “skewered him”.

But you wouldn’t know that from the propaganda clip put out by the Conservatives’ press office, that just regurgitates the lies and cuts out all of Ms Nugent’s contradictions – her only comment in the Tory clip is, “Yes”. Take a look if you can stomach it:

What a rotten liar.

And how sad that there are people who will swallow this pigswill gratefully.


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 rhyming guide to NHS privatisation (from the social media) [VIDEO]


This is terrific:

Of course, if you watch it and just click on to something else – even if you enjoy it, then you’re supporting the destruction of the NHS, the ruination of your health and everybody else’s and ultimately, the early ending of your life.

I’m just mentioning that in passing, to encourage you to share this, at the very least.


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 NHS fail: they want to scrap most cancer treatment targets

Steve Barclay: if there is a problem with cancer in the English NHS, he is the tumour that needs to be removed.

How will Rishi Sunak be able to complain about the Welsh NHS now?

And is this just a shabby bid to boost private cancer treatments?

The Tory government reckons it is being advised by clinicians and cancer charities to scrap six out of nine treatment targets – but two such charities have objected to the plan, just in the BBC’s article announcing it!

The head of the Radiotherapy UK charity said she is “deeply worried”.

Pat Price, who is also an oncologist and visiting professor at Imperial College London, said… “the clear and simple truth is that we are not investing enough in cancer treatment capacity”.

Naser Turabi, Cancer Research UK’s director of evidence and implementation, said… “Despite the best efforts of NHS staff, it’s incredibly worrying that cancer waiting times in England are once again amongst the worst on record.”

He blamed the missed targets on “years of underinvestment” by the government and called for more cancer staff and a clear strategy.

“Without bold action, more people will miss out on lifesaving services,” he said.

We have seen recently that restrictions on NHS services – such as those that are likely to be imposed if treatment targets are scrapped – tend to “nudge”* people into taking private treatment, even if they can’t afford it.

Personally, This Writer thinks Barclay is simply putting more patients between a rock and a hard place: what difference is there between waiting for help that may not arrive in time and putting up with a private ‘specialist’ dancing around you, waving his beads and rattles?

*Remember the Tory “nudge unit” that was attached to 10 Downing Street under David Cameron before it was privatised, and recommended ways of… shall we say “persuading”?… people to do things they would not consider in the normal scheme of things? Clearly, making it impossible for patients to get life-saving treatment in time is a way of “persuading” people to fork out extra cash for private treatment that they would not otherwise have considered and should not need.


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

If the NHS is to be transformed, it shouldn’t be into insurance-based trash

The standard technique of privatisation: we’ve had years of defunding (don’t let Steve Barclay’s lies convince you otherwise) and things aren’t working. Now the agitators are trying to make you angry, and you should be – at them.

It had to happen: the NHS turned 75 so the insurance scammers and privatisation propogators have leapt up to demand that it can’t last much longer and needs to change – words that ignore the fact that they wouldn’t be able to say this if 13 years of Tory de-funding and privatisation hadn’t already changed it for the worse.

And they haven’t been subtle about it, which is a good thing because it allows us to see comments like the following:

Let’s have a case study: Kate Andrews, currently of The Spectator but formerly of think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute and Republicans Overseas UK. You can see what these organisations want to do to the NHS here:

She was on the BBC’s Question Time last Thursday (July 6, 2023), because the BBC gives her a lot of hot air time. She’s also on Politics Live whenever she can manage it. You can see what she had to say in the clip below.

But it isn’t just her words that create trouble for the health service; it’s what she enables other people to say – like Bella Wallersteiner here. Phil Gould provides an opposing voice:

(And let’s remember that the model for the NHS is insurance-based: National Insurance.)

Let’s remember, Ms Andrews speak with forked tongue. The following is an imperfect comparison but it makes the point: in 2017 she was peddling what we now know to be snake oil – a claim that Brexit would make the UK richer. We all know, now, that this was patently untrue.

And now she is saying the NHS is not the wonderful creation that UK citizens mythologise it as being:

Maybe it’s not the envy of the world any more – but that is clearly due to the constant Tory tinkering to make it vulnerable to privatisation.

Go back to the Hector Wetherell McNeill tweet above:

There is an interesting summary table of an international comparative performance of health systems produced by the Commonwealth Fund from 2014, on page 44.

This clearly shows the UK’s nationalised NHS to be the world leader on the basis of most criteria.

The US private system comes out as being one of the worst and costing almost 1.45x that of UK.

It is clear that the UK system placed the US system along with the US med corporations and insurance companies in an embarrassing position so there was a need to undermine the UK system to have any chance for their marketing success.

The Conservative government clearly made this their mission by under-funding the service over the last 13 years so as to create the “case” for privatisation.

And then people like Ms Andrews turn up to put that “case” to the public.

Bearing all the above in mind, one is led to agree with Dale Vince, who was also on that edition of Question Time:

(If only it were true that social media gives a voice to everybody. It used to – but then the firms running the main platforms introduced aggressive algorithms to push posts by anybody who could not afford their advertising rates down people’s newsfeeds so they couldn’t be seen. If you’re wondering where Vox Political has been until you saw this article, it hasn’t gone anywhere – you were just denied the chance to read it.)

Rishi Sunak wants you to believe that he has a plan to restore the NHS – but just listen to the analysis of Sunak’s work (and that of the Tory governments since 2010) by Sir Michael Marmot, who has led research groups on health inequalities for nearly 50 years:

Experience tells us that Sir Michael is probably right. After all, this is a Tory government that (we’re told) issued tens of billions of pounds worth of Covid-19-related health contracts to their personal friends who were incapable of honouring those contracts – and then claimed the cost was part of the NHS annual budget.

So tens of billions of pounds was paid out to Tory friends and donors – and absolutely nothing was gained as a result:

The contracts were issued via the so-called “VIP lane” that was later declared illegal:

Why hasn’t all this money been recovered and put to better use?

Carol Vorderman says she could go on, and so could This Writer.

With the record of Sunak’s government laid bare for all to see, it is clear that “sharks” like Kate Andrews are not presenting their case fairly and therefore they should be ignored.

The NHS is not failing because its founding principles don’t work; it is failing because the Tories are deliberately forcing it to fail.

Oh, and they don’t care if your relatives have suffered needlessly or died as a result of their ideologically-motivated selfishness.


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 big debates: Wednesday, July 5, 2023

Labour in denial as Starmer and his allies purge the left

Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has accused current Labour leader Keir Starmer and his allies of purging left-wingers from the party.

It’s a claim that is hotly denied by Starmer’s cronies – Jonathan Ashworth on Politics Live once again raised the hoary old banner of anti-Semitism and claimed this was what Starmer was fighting.

But is that really all Starmer is doing? And is it on the level?

Here’s the debate:

And here are some of the other attacks on Labour members Starmer’s mob have been carrying out:

Will the NHS reach its centenary – and how can that happen?

The 75th anniversary of the NHS was marked with not one but two debates on the BBC’s Politics Live – the first on how it can survive in a changing United Kingdom.

Should government prioritise prevention, improving the nation’s health generally, as championed by Lord Bethell? Should it adopt a European-style health insurance model, according to Melanie Phillips? Should it increase the pay, and widen the membership, of its workforce, as Baroness Kennedy claims? Or should social care be expanded to remove some of the pressure, in line with Ella Whelan’s beliefs?

Should private health firms be allowed to do more NHS work?

The second of the two Politics Live debates on the NHS’s 75th anniversary focused on claims that radical change is needed to safeguard its future.

Some of those claims attack the fundamental principle that the health service should be free at the point of use, with Tony Blair saying some NHS patients should go private and pay for procedures if they’re waiting too long.

But wouldn’t this put the UK on a slippery slope towards a privatised – and highly expensive – health service?

SNP’s Mhairi Black shows that Tory and Labour both want more NHS privatisation

On the 75th anniversary of the UK’s National Health Service, SNP deputy leader Mhairi Black demonstrated that it is in danger from both the Conservative and Labour parties.

Reading out two quotations from politicians calling for more privatisation, she asked – well, watch the clip and you’ll see.


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

NHS in danger on 75th anniversary as politicians compete to attack its founding principle

Tony Blair and his ventriloquist’s dummy Keir Starmer: they’re both demanding that more private companies should be allowed to take money from the National Health Service in profit. These are NOT the natural inheritors of Nye Bevan and Clement Attlee’s legacy.

The UK’s National Health Service is 75 years old today (July 5, 2023) – and the anniversary is being used by profiteers to demand that it be hollowed-out and turned into a vehicle for the sickness industry.

Today’s attack came from former New Labour prime minister Tony Blair. According to The Guardian,

Blair backs the private sector playing an expanded role, including in the provision of high-volume, low-complexity services, such as dermatology.

More people will resort to private healthcare unless the NHS banishes long treatment delays, Blair predicts.

In fairness, the piece quotes Dr John Puntis, the co-chair of the campaign group Keep Our NHS Public, who made it clear:

The Blair years demonstrated that with increased investment, NHS performance and patient satisfaction improved. On the other hand, use of the private sector undermined NHS services, and independent sector treatment centres pushed up costs

So the answer is more investment in NHS treatment and less in the private sector, according to expert opinion.

Sadly, current Labour leader Keir Starmer seems to agree with Blair – he wants to put more investment into private healthcare in a betrayal of his own mother, it seems. You can read his Mirror article here, if you really think it will illuminate you. He doesn’t say anything at all about what Labour would do to restore the health service.

But we do know what he would do, because he has let it slip in a TV interview. Blair’s words are an echo of Starmer’s new New Labour policy:

The bright idea is that the politicians – Tory and Labour – defund the NHS so it becomes unable to tackle the ever-increasing waiting list of patients that health-reducing political policies are creating (sewage dumping, anybody?) – and this pushes people towards the private, profit-making sickness industry.

The private companies set their prices for particular treatments low, so patients are surprised at not being asked to pay the fortune they expected. They tell their friends, who also go private, until we reach the point at which the government (Labour or Tory, it doesn’t matter which) can say private treatment is the answer and shut down the NHS altogether.

Then healthcare prices skyrocket.

What would Starmer get out of it?

Well, I don’t know.

I do know he’s getting something from private health right now:

Wow: £12,500. That’s more than some people earn every year.

Ironically, this appeared on my Twitter feed at the same time as the Starmer clip:

How sad that This Writer has to link a tweet about MPs pretending to care about the NHS with the current and former leaders of the political party that brought it into being. What a betrayal of the people of the UK!

Thankfully, there are still some in the Labour Party who support the principles on which the NHS was founded. Sadly, Richard Burgon is being kept far from any position of power by Starmer and his cronies. This may be the reason:

Starmer isn’t the only one with a story about how the NHS changed his life. But members of the commenting public are tying theirs to the decline in investment over the last 13 years of Tory and Tory-led rule:

And then there’s the issue of wasted money – raised by this caller to Nicky Campbell’s Radio 5 Live show:

Former Countdown numbers expert – the respectable one – Carol Vorderman has also spoken out about government decisions to give money that should have helped the NHS to their know-nothing friends (via an illegal ‘fast track’ funding lane):

I notice also a clip from an organisation called European Movement UK, reminding us all that we were told Brexit would make £350 million per week available that could be put into the NHS:

Where is that money?

The answer is obvious: it was fictional.

As is the story of private health businesses being of any benefit at all to the National Health Service.


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

Labour links up with the Tories to betray democracy and make UK a police state

Sad: once again, Labour has proved this to be true.

The Labour Party has again proved how harmful it is – and not just by supporting the Tory bid to kill democracy.

But let’s start with thatanyway. On June 13, 2023, the Conservative government ended democratic government in the UK by reversing a change in its Public Order Act that had been approved by Parliament, using secondary legislation – a ‘ministerial decree’ – that is not ratified by a vote.

It means the changes imposed on new laws during their passage through Parliament may now be pointless, because the government may simply – and unilaterally – reverse them all after they gain Royal Assent.

We might as well not bother having a Parliament any more.

The Green Party’s Baroness Jenny Jones tried to safeguard democracy by tabling a ‘fatal motion’ that would have put a stop to the ‘ministerial decree’. This was the only way to force a vote on it.

But she needed support from Labour peers to win that vote – and Labour said it would not help because that would go against some old Parliamentary convention. It’s the flimsiest excuse ever.

Instead, Labour offered up a lame ‘motion of regret’, paying lip service to the idea of opposition by saying the party does not approve but actually doing nothing at all to stop the Tories from trampling all over democracy.

The disappointment – no, the disgust – is huge, especially from one Labour Lord:

He was an exception. Most Labour peers did as Lord Coaker describes in the following video clip which triggered a particularly strong response from the CWU’s Peter Stefanovic:

Peter had campaigned to make people aware of the ‘fatal motion’, and to get us to urge the Labour peers to support it, since Baroness Jones tabled it. You can feel his bitterness and anger welling up in the following tweet and as one of the signatories, This Writer shares it:

But there’s more.

This isn’t even Labour’s only betrayal of the day.

It seems that, in another attempt to claim “fiscal responsibility” from the Tories, Labour has decided to take away support for childcare from millions of parents, making it impractical for them to go out to work for a living. It’s a blow against millions of families and crippling to the UK’s struggling economy, and Keir Starmer’s party has the nerve to claim it’s a sign of responsibility.

Thank goodness Jeremy Corbyn is settling into his new role of pointing out that Keir Starmer and his people are hateful:

Of course it’s yet another u-turn for Starmer:

How many’s that, now?

Still… Out with an old promise; in with a new one. Right?

Here’s the new promise of the day – and a spot opinion on it.

In fact, I think Labour might actually stick with this one because a Labour government wouldn’t have to pay for it.

In spite of all of the above, there is one way – just one – in which Labour can still claim to be of use to the UK population at large…

… that is by flagging up the failures of the Tory government with facts and figures.

But don’t expect a Labour government under Keir Starmer to ever do anything to improve the situation because all he has to offer are missed opportunities and broken promises.


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