So, this evening I was on the steps of Hackney Town Hall, with the local branch of Keep Our NHS Public. We were drawing attention to a meeting of the Council's Health Scrutiny Committee, which was discussing the PCT's decision to put GP services out to tender for possible privatisation.
I've covered this issue in previous posts, so I won't write too much about it in detail now - but I should say that one thing which saddened me was the sight of several Labour councillors passing by, unwilling to say anything to the demonstrators. Shame, perhaps? Or just contempt for grassroots campaigners with whom their party would once have stood, who knows.
To her credit, Diane Abbott released a statement yesterday indicating her concern over the move. Nothing at all from the Lib Dems or Tories, as far as I can tell - and I was the only candidate for any elected office at the rally itself.
I filmed a very brief video at the rally, laying out in simple terms my opposition to these plans.
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
UK Starts Deportations To Baghdad
Hot on the heels of my recent post about the horrific way in which asylum seekers and refugees are treated like a political football in this country, comes the news that the UK is to begin deporting people back to Iraq.
Yes, Baghdad...universally acknowleded by all to be a safe haven of peace and tranquility. Nothing bad could happen there, surely? Well, apparently the UNHCR (the body responsible for the rights of refugees internationally) don't agree - Denmark started deporting people back to Iraq a few months ago, only to be roundly condemned. Not that our Government, bereft of compassion or an ounce of human understanding, cares less, of course.
I'd urge anyone who can't get to the Keep Our NHS Public rally tomorrow to try to attend this demonstration on the deportations outside Communications House instead. While I can't be there at that time, I will continue to be involved in the fight against the unjust and immoral asylum system in this country.
Particularly, I will continue to speak out about the horrific conditions within the UK's system of immigration detention centres. They shouldn't exist in the first place - but even those who disagree with me on that must surely agree that state sanctioned mental health abuse against children is sickening. It must stop.
Yes, Baghdad...universally acknowleded by all to be a safe haven of peace and tranquility. Nothing bad could happen there, surely? Well, apparently the UNHCR (the body responsible for the rights of refugees internationally) don't agree - Denmark started deporting people back to Iraq a few months ago, only to be roundly condemned. Not that our Government, bereft of compassion or an ounce of human understanding, cares less, of course.
I'd urge anyone who can't get to the Keep Our NHS Public rally tomorrow to try to attend this demonstration on the deportations outside Communications House instead. While I can't be there at that time, I will continue to be involved in the fight against the unjust and immoral asylum system in this country.
Particularly, I will continue to speak out about the horrific conditions within the UK's system of immigration detention centres. They shouldn't exist in the first place - but even those who disagree with me on that must surely agree that state sanctioned mental health abuse against children is sickening. It must stop.
Sunday, 11 October 2009
Gordon Brown - He Loves That Privatisation
I thought I would give myself a day before blogging about the recently announced £16 billion sell-off of public assets, which is the Government's latest economic wheeze. I thought it might make it seem more like common sense.
Didn't work.
So, you're facing an annual £175 billion deficit. Frankly, unless you start selling off the entire state, asset sales aren't going to make much of a dent. They particularly aren't going to make much of a dent if you are selling off some services (British Waterways is on the list, for example) which, one presumes, you are then going to have to lease back in various forms, or at least pay to use.
Whichever way I look at it, frankly it seems like a bit of a firesale to private companies - the kind of companies who have already benefited massively from Gordon Brown's reign under PFI contracts, PPP and various other dodgy financial instruments which have been used to channel public money into private pockets. The Lib Dems at least have pointed out that, if you think the sell-off is a good idea (which all three establishment parties seem to) you at least should try to get good value for the assets - i.e. not sell them off at the bottom of the market when you don't actually need to.
All in all, very strange...and another example of the way in which the UK's response to the financial crisis seems to be more and more mirroring Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" analysis - the idea that global capitalism now takes advantage of crises - whether financial, social or natural - to privatise everything in sight. Spare a thought in particular for the workers at the Dartford Crossing. Not only did they put in a large amount of work towards a failed attempt at employee ownership earlier in the decade (exactly the kind of thing that any Government supported by the Co-operative Party should be supporting, of course), now even the asset they are working with has been shipped off into private hands.
We have to stop this wave of privatisations - and stop them now. The answer to this crisis lies in public investment and support for greater economic democracy - not cuts and privatisation.
P.S. I haven't even covered the sell-off of the student loan book here - mostly because I am still trying to wrap my head around what that means, what dodgy ways whoever buys it is going to make profit out of it, and how exactly it is going to hurt people like me who still have lots of outstanding student loans....
Didn't work.
So, you're facing an annual £175 billion deficit. Frankly, unless you start selling off the entire state, asset sales aren't going to make much of a dent. They particularly aren't going to make much of a dent if you are selling off some services (British Waterways is on the list, for example) which, one presumes, you are then going to have to lease back in various forms, or at least pay to use.
Whichever way I look at it, frankly it seems like a bit of a firesale to private companies - the kind of companies who have already benefited massively from Gordon Brown's reign under PFI contracts, PPP and various other dodgy financial instruments which have been used to channel public money into private pockets. The Lib Dems at least have pointed out that, if you think the sell-off is a good idea (which all three establishment parties seem to) you at least should try to get good value for the assets - i.e. not sell them off at the bottom of the market when you don't actually need to.
All in all, very strange...and another example of the way in which the UK's response to the financial crisis seems to be more and more mirroring Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" analysis - the idea that global capitalism now takes advantage of crises - whether financial, social or natural - to privatise everything in sight. Spare a thought in particular for the workers at the Dartford Crossing. Not only did they put in a large amount of work towards a failed attempt at employee ownership earlier in the decade (exactly the kind of thing that any Government supported by the Co-operative Party should be supporting, of course), now even the asset they are working with has been shipped off into private hands.
We have to stop this wave of privatisations - and stop them now. The answer to this crisis lies in public investment and support for greater economic democracy - not cuts and privatisation.
P.S. I haven't even covered the sell-off of the student loan book here - mostly because I am still trying to wrap my head around what that means, what dodgy ways whoever buys it is going to make profit out of it, and how exactly it is going to hurt people like me who still have lots of outstanding student loans....
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Another Consensus - On Asylum
I could probably spend the rest of the time from now until the General Election pointing to every way in which the establishment political consensus is dehumanising, immoral and just plain wrong.
Since I'd probably run out of time before I finished, here's just one more example - the continuing attempts to make poverty and deprivation obligatory for asylum seekers. Hot on the heels of the Government's despicable decision to cut asylum seeker benefits to just £5 a day, Rowenna Davis has written this piece on the experiences of one asylum seeker, contrasting it with the view at Conservative Party Conference.
I doubt anyone in the Cabinet, or Shadow Cabinet, has any idea how they would live on £5 a day - but they are happy to proscribe it for others. Disgraceful.
Since I'd probably run out of time before I finished, here's just one more example - the continuing attempts to make poverty and deprivation obligatory for asylum seekers. Hot on the heels of the Government's despicable decision to cut asylum seeker benefits to just £5 a day, Rowenna Davis has written this piece on the experiences of one asylum seeker, contrasting it with the view at Conservative Party Conference.
I doubt anyone in the Cabinet, or Shadow Cabinet, has any idea how they would live on £5 a day - but they are happy to proscribe it for others. Disgraceful.
Monday, 5 October 2009
Mainstream Benefits Consensus Is Sickening
Apparently, the Tories are going to create jobs and opportunity by cutting benefits for disabled people.
Yes, I don't quite see how that one is going to work, either. It seems to me that further reducing the spending power of vulnerable people, dumping them on the JSA, and then forcing them to compete with millions of other unemployed people for dead-end jobs is probably not the solution to our economic ills. Economic ills which, lest we forget, have been brought about in large part by the kind of unregulated, cut throat, free market economics that the Tories have championed for so long.
Not that you'll hear Labour criticising the plans too loudly. Why? Well, because, as this piece by the BBC's Nick Robinson makes plain, there is a cosy consensus when it comes to benefits policy between Labour and the Tories. Neither are interested in supporting vulnerable people or maintaining a strong safety net for those who need society's help, but rather scapegoating easy targets for a quick headline. Little wonder then that Sir David Freud (who famously wrote New Labour's benefits policy in only three weeks, having never been on benefit himself and apparently not bothering to speak to anyone who had been) has so easily jumped from the sinking Labour ship and onto the Tory platform. I guess that is what rats do.
The Green Party's economics spokesperson, Molly Scott-Cato, explains the sheer idiocy of the Tory approach better than I can, while the excellent and still inexplicably Labour Don Paskini gives a short version of the Conservative policy on his blog.
The long and the short of it is - under either Tories or Labour, people on benefits will be treated as electoral punchbags for middle England. By the Greens, they will be treated as human beings who have a valuable contribution to make towards society. If I'm elected as an MP, I'll be campaigning to raise JSA, not lower Incapacity Benefit.
Yes, I don't quite see how that one is going to work, either. It seems to me that further reducing the spending power of vulnerable people, dumping them on the JSA, and then forcing them to compete with millions of other unemployed people for dead-end jobs is probably not the solution to our economic ills. Economic ills which, lest we forget, have been brought about in large part by the kind of unregulated, cut throat, free market economics that the Tories have championed for so long.
Not that you'll hear Labour criticising the plans too loudly. Why? Well, because, as this piece by the BBC's Nick Robinson makes plain, there is a cosy consensus when it comes to benefits policy between Labour and the Tories. Neither are interested in supporting vulnerable people or maintaining a strong safety net for those who need society's help, but rather scapegoating easy targets for a quick headline. Little wonder then that Sir David Freud (who famously wrote New Labour's benefits policy in only three weeks, having never been on benefit himself and apparently not bothering to speak to anyone who had been) has so easily jumped from the sinking Labour ship and onto the Tory platform. I guess that is what rats do.
The Green Party's economics spokesperson, Molly Scott-Cato, explains the sheer idiocy of the Tory approach better than I can, while the excellent and still inexplicably Labour Don Paskini gives a short version of the Conservative policy on his blog.
The long and the short of it is - under either Tories or Labour, people on benefits will be treated as electoral punchbags for middle England. By the Greens, they will be treated as human beings who have a valuable contribution to make towards society. If I'm elected as an MP, I'll be campaigning to raise JSA, not lower Incapacity Benefit.
Sunday, 4 October 2009
More campaign endorsements
I'm very pleased that London's Green MEP, and the Chair of the London Assembly, have both taken time out to endorse my campaign!
Keep Our NHS Public
LOBBY OF HACKNEY'S HEALTH SCRUTINY COMMITTEE
STOP THE SELL-OFF OF GP SURGERIES TO PRIVATE COMPANIES!
CONSULT THE PEOPLE OF HACKNEY!
WEDNESDAY 14TH OCTOBER - 6 PM TO 7 PM - HACKNEY TOWN HALL
I am going to be at this lobby in 10 days time. I hope you will be too. As I've made clear before, I think that the creeping privatisation of the NHS is an ongoing disgrace. Lets make sure it is stopped in its tracks.
STOP THE SELL-OFF OF GP SURGERIES TO PRIVATE COMPANIES!
CONSULT THE PEOPLE OF HACKNEY!
WEDNESDAY 14TH OCTOBER - 6 PM TO 7 PM - HACKNEY TOWN HALL
I am going to be at this lobby in 10 days time. I hope you will be too. As I've made clear before, I think that the creeping privatisation of the NHS is an ongoing disgrace. Lets make sure it is stopped in its tracks.
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