Tag Archives: social care

Sunak’s callousness: carer left without a lightbulb and he talks nonsense about investment

Rishi Sunak: his policies left a carer in darkness because she could not afford a lightbulb for her kitchen; meanwhile he has had the National Grid upgraded in his local area so he can heat his private swimming pool.

After a carer was left without enough money to buy a lightbulb for her kitchen, Rishi Sunak – prime minister and richest man in the UK – tried to say he was putting more money into social care, as if that was going to help her:

His claim – that the best thing he can do for Nicky and others like her is to reduce inflation – is pure bunkum bafflegab.

Cutting inflation isn’t cutting prices! They’ll keep climbing but at a slower rate. And he’s absolutely, dig-his-heels-in-the-ground adamant that he isn’t giving carers any more in wages. That money is for billionaires!

Oh – and the amount he’s putting into social care?

He’s halved it (allegedly) before even starting to hand it out:

It’s clear that we can’t trust these politicians to give us the facts.

Every interview like this should be followed by a fact check report, explaining whether the claims made by the politician concerned are correct – or if that person is lying through their teeth.

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Will Liz Truss’s new policies appeal to target voters? Probably not!

The bank holiday weekend may be over, but this article is being produced in the period before everybody goes back to work – so I’m still putting up material that has interested me – and I hope it interests you. Make of it what you will:

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Truss would divert NHS funds to social care as hospitals stop routine Covid tests. Foolhardy?

Truss: open mouth, insert foot.

Tory leader candidate Liz Truss would divert £13 billion earmarked for the NHS to social care, to catch up on delayed Covid treatment there.

Is that a good idea? It’s certainly populist. But isn’t diverting funds away from the NHS when routine asymptomatic Covid testing is about to end – and the disease has this summer caused almost twice as many deaths as last summer – extremely foolhardy?

Nobody expects the ending of tests to last because a surge of new Covid cases is expected in the autumn. But the decision to end asymptomatic testing has alarmed health experts who have cautioned against dismantling the surveillance of Covid while cases remain high.

As it is, the chief executive of health think tank the King’s Fund has said handing the money to social care is “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.

Richard Murray said it was “not a sustainable solution to the health and care crisis”.

In any case, it is unlikely that the money will actually materialise.

It is supposed to come from increased National Insurance contributions announced under Boris Johnson last year – but Truss wants to scrap the rise and find the cash from the general tax take (which is a contradiction in terms; public funding and taxation doesn’t work like that).

So as the NHS faces its worst winter crisis yet, the front-runner to be the new prime minister wants to take the imaginary money that was going to help it, and let it do its nonexistent good in social care. LUNACY!

Source: Liz Truss plan to divert NHS funds to social care is ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’

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Covid-19: Tories admit their own incompetence as ‘test and trace’ app is unlawful

Matt Hancock: he was a Covid-19 super-spreader so it should be no surprise that his employees on the ‘track and trace’ programme have been publicising patients’ confidential information. It is a criminal offence and he should be punished by a judge. What do you think will happen?

Isn’t this criminal stupidity?

The Tories have been telling us their ‘test and trace’ app for finding people who’ve had Covid-19, in order to isolate those they’ve contacted, is vital to prevent the spread of the disease – and therefore stop unnecessary deaths.

But now we learn that it breaches privacy laws, with Sky News reporting that the programme’s staff have been sharing private information about patients on the social media.

What a Hobson’s Choice we’ve had – refuse to use the app and Tory twits like Matt Hancock accuse us of betraying the campaign against the virus; but if we do use it, our intimate personal information goes public!

It turns out that critics of the scheme, the Open Rights Group, were right and the government did not conduct a data privacy impact assessment (DPIA) which is required to ensure that breaches of patients’ information don’t take place.

But a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said there was “no evidence of data being used unlawfully” – and then clammed up when asked if a Sunday Times report that this is exactly what has happened was accurate.

The Open Rights Group reckons it has already seen evidence of confidential track and trace information being shared on social media – and This Writer is certainly more inclined to believe that organisation than a government that has built up a record of relentless incompetence.

Can anybody tell me a single thing the Tories have got right since December 13, 2019?

Of course, breach of Data Protection laws is a criminal offence and the person directly responsible for this one will be the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, one Matt Hancock.

How lucky he must feel, knowing that as a Tory minister he is above the law and the police wouldn’t touch him even if he committee murder on television.

Source: Coronavirus: Government admits its Test and Trace programme is unlawful | Science & Tech News | Sky News

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Is NHS England boss’s social care plea just more virtue signalling?

Care: the head of NHS England says he wants change but who can hope that it will be for the better?

I have a doubt about Simon Stevens’s sincerity.

He has come forward to say that the government needs to put an adequate funding system in place for social care within the next year.

This suggests that he supports public funding of this service.

But Simon Stevens, formerly a UnitedHealthcare CEO, has been a major player in privatising huge parts of the National Health Service in England – so I’m not convinced that he’s being straight with us.

Remember the big land sell-off following the Naylor Review? Remember the NHS Long-Term Plan that did nothing to shorten waiting lists or relieve pressure on Accident & Emergency departments and seemed geared towards blaming you if you suffer from poor health?

And now this man wants to sink his claws into the social care system – with the failures of care during the Covid-19 crisis as the perfect excuse.

I do not trust him. I certainly don’t trust the Tories.

They have been de-funding social care for years; they have been allowing poor employment practices that allowed Covid-19 into care homes to kill residents for years.

They aren’t going to change.

Source: Social care reform needed within a year – NHS England boss – BBC News

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Court threat for Matt Hancock over whether ‘test and trace’ system keeps your personal information safe

Matt Hancock: like his boss Boris Johnson, he’s big on gestures but short on substance – and it seems he rushed his Covid-19 ‘test and trace’ system into operation without ensuring that it is entirely legal.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock could be dragged into court after the Tory government failed to show that its Covid-19 ‘test and trace’ system protects people’s personal information.

More than 150,000 people have had their personal information handled by the scheme since it was rushed into service on May 28, but the government has failed to conduct a risk assessment showing how these details will be protected from falling into the wrong hands.

This is required in accordance with a law that the Conservative government passed.

Now Matt Hancock has until July 8 to provide that information – or he will be brought to court:

Source: Matt Hancock faces day in court over NHS Test and Trace privacy failings | WIRED UK

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Court threat over ‘illegal’ coronavirus-related ‘Do Not Revive’ orders on disabled people

Ventilator: if you’re disabled, and you catch Covid-19, a doctor might deny you access to one of these and let you die. If he does so without asking you, he’s abusing your human rights. Matt Hancock is being told to step in and stop this – or be slapped down by the courts.

Remember when This Site reported that doctors were being ordered to deny coronavirus care to people with disabilities?

It went on for a while.

Eventually it seemed the people at the top of the NHS put a stop to the practice, telling hospitals, GPs and NHS managers not to issue such letters.

So why are we being told that medical professionals are still being told not to revive people with disabilities who are suffering from Covid-19?

The issue is that doctors are being told to issue these letters about disabled people, without consulting those people on whether they agree with the decision. That’s an abuse of human rights.

And now it seems Matt Hancock and the Department of Health and Social Care may face a court order to halt the practice.

The problem is that the government is not directly responsible for the issuing of these letters – doctors are.

But law firm Leigh Day, acting for Kate Masters, whose family has already fought a successful legal action against a DNR order, says the government is failing to provide proper guidance on this issue.

So Hancock is facing an ultimatum. Either he honours the following series of requests:

Or, if he fails to respond by May 7 (tomorrow, at the time of writing), then he’ll be dragged into court to face a judicial review that could force him to treat people with disabilities with the same respect as people with money.

I think he’ll take the court option, even though the request is perfectly reasonable.

Tories want to kill people with disabilities.

They’re a little… Nazi in that respect.

Source: Matt Hancock could face court action over the ‘illegal’ treatment of disabled people during lockdown | The Canary

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Thinking of voting Liberal Democrat? Think again – for all our sakes

You may be getting tired of this image, but it adequately describes the Liberal Democrat offer to the electorate.

The Liberal Democrats are apparently enjoying a surge in support in marginal London constituencies – why? In office, they were a disaster for the UK.

Do people really have such short memories that they have forgotten the legacy of the Coalition government? Liberal Democrats helped ruin the UK – especially for young voters such as those who are being targeted by the party now.

As Rhiannon Lucy Coslett points out in The Guardian, the very first thing the Liberal Democrats did in government was renege on their election promises.

Where they had promised to abolish tuition fees, they tripled those fees instead. Current Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson gleefully supported this policy.

The Liberal Democrats also supported the Tory imposition of austerity on people whose income fell below a certain level. Young people most of all.

For further details of Ms Swinson’s “record of shame”, see:

Result: “Now, there are homeless people everywhere, food bank use has skyrocketed, the housing crisis has worsened, the right is now the far right, zero-hours contracts are common, and just over half the country [actually just over half those who voted] has voted to take away its citizens’ ability to live and work in 27 European countries.

“Racism has become normalised. An MP has been murdered, many others threatened and harassed. Disabled people, migrants and black British citizens face a hostile environment.”

These are consequences of Liberal Democrats in government, made possible by people voting for the Liberal Democrats.

Now, the Lib Dems are promising to revoke Article 50 and put a stop to Brexit. They know they will never take enough Parliamentary seats to make this possible.

But they also know that it will take votes away from Labour – online tactical voting tools are advising people to vote Lib Dem in marginals where Labour has the only candidate that could beat the Conservative, according to the 2017 results.

This means that, in many constituencies, a vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote for a Conservative government.

And we can see that the Lib Dems would support the Tories more than Labour. Jo Swinson loathes Jeremy Corbyn, even though – as Ms Coslett notes – Labour is offering what the Liberal Democrats said they wanted: a second referendum. She adds:

“Her party is not focused on reversing generational injustice; on the contrary, it has enabled it. The Lib Dems – with Swinson as a coalition government minister – were happy to work with the Conservatives to slash benefits, cut social care and play havoc with the health service. Their political conscience only seemed to return when Brexit threatened their world view and their interests. Ideologically, they largely overlap with the vanishing “moderate” wing of the Tories – whose MPs are now defecting to the Lib Dem party.”

The message is clear: If you vote Liberal Democrat, you will get Tory. For young people, that is tantamount to self-harm.

Also: what’s this about new evidence which confirms that the Liberal Democrats sold voter data to the Remain campaign in 2016 for almost £100,000 being withheld from public scrutiny by the Information Commissioner’s Office?

And what’s this about the Liberal Democrats spamming voters with junk mail?

As I write this, the infamous Liberal Democrat policy – of putting bar charts on election literature claiming that their candidate is the only one who can beat the incumbents – is being ridiculed on the BBC’s Politics Live.

It seems they have been printing bar charts showing them as the biggest party in particular constituencies – by omitting the parties that had a higher vote share than them. The example quoted is notable for failing to show the Labour and Brexit Party vote.

So: take the evidence as a whole, rather than just Lib Dem literature, and the accurate picture of the Liberal Democrats is of a party that will promise anything to get into power and then break all those promises without compunction; a party that will lie to the electorate in order to secure votes; a party that will enable the Conservatives to get back into power, even though the majority of its supporters hate the Tories; and a party that will sell all our young people down the river once again – if it gets the opportunity.

You’d have to be crazy to vote Liberal Democrat.

Spread the word.

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Tory visa scheme will cripple social care – and the NHS will suffer knock-on harm

Charming. The Conservatives are openly announcing plans to harm services for people in need.

Tories are demanding a £30,000 salary threshold and tougher visa requirements for overseas workers once the UK has left the EU and free movement has come to an end. They also want migrants to be earning £35,800 after five years.

As care workers receive much less than £30k a year – due to Tory pay restrictions? – this means that the care sector will lose personnel.

Not only will the needs of vulnerable people go undetected, not only will people be forced to go without care, but the NHS will face knock-on effects as elderly patients are taken to A&E as a last resort, or end up stuck on wards unable to go home.

See for yourself:

Source: NHS chiefs warn Johnson’s visa scheme will do nothing to stop post-Brexit staffing crisis | The Independent

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Abrahams demands £2.4 billion dementia fund to help bridge social care gap

Debbie Abrahams: Campaigning for people with dementia – and for improved social care all round.

My own grandmother had dementia. The family looked after her – but many people don’t have that kind of support.

Ms Abrahams said: “Typically, people with dementia spend £100,000 on their care, an astronomical sum, which would take 125 years to save for, well over a lifetime.

“Social care is in a desperate state and in urgent need of a complete overhaul. People with dementia are left struggling with a system that is unfair and unsustainable.

“The injustice of people battling to get care, on top of battling the devastating effects of dementia can’t go on and the Government must act quickly.”

It is more than an injustice. It is uncivilised.

But Tories like to pretend they are civilised. Let’s see what they do about this.

Source: MP Debbie Abrahams calling for £2.4 billion dementia fund | The Oldham Times

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