Who can we really trust on the NHS and economy? Well, the answer's staring us all in the face

A recent article by Daniel Wainwright in the Wolverhampton Express & Star produced some interesting points for consideration. He wrote “Mr Miliband is the one telling everyone the cost of living is at crisis point while the figures show record numbers are in work and an economy growing at a rate which makes us the envy of the rest of Europe”. It’s all very well saying there are record numbers in work but how many are on temporary/ zero-hours contracts and in low pay? We now have around ONE MILLION people going to food banks, many of whom are in work. If people are barely getting enough hours or earning enough money to live on that they have to rely on charity to eat, then these ‘jobs’ are not worth celebrating at all.  Also, people don’t want to hear that the economy is “growing at a rate which makes us the envy of the rest of Europe” when they earn so little, they are forced to choose between heating or eating, or, to put it more starkly, choose between suffering from hypothermia or starvation. If you couple these low-paid jobs with gas and electricity bills which continue to rise, then it’s not a case of Ed Miliband “telling everyone the cost of living is at crisis point”, but more the fact that working people feel the cost of living is getting out of hand.  Mr Miliband is aware of this and is letting these people know that Labour will tackle it by cracking down on zero-hours/ temporary contracts, increasing the minimum wage and freezing energy bills, while the Tories are more interested in helping the wealthy few. Also, the cost of living crisis isn’t just affecting those on low incomes but the middle classes as well. Structural reorganisations in private and also in government-funded not-for-profit and public sectors mean people find themselves having to reapply for their jobs. If they are lucky enough to remain in employment, the same jobs pay far less money than they did five years ago, in some cases, up to £15,000 per annum less.

Mr Wainwright also says that “He (Ed Miliband) promises to protect the NHS… Yet polls seem to suggest it is David Cameron which voters trust with the NHS more”. Where has he got this information from? Certainly not from nurses, of which only 4% believe Cameron has done a good job with NHS since coming to power. Since the 2010 General Election campaign, Cameron has vowed to protect and safeguard the NHS, insisting there would be no top-down reorganisation of the service. But the 2012 Health & Social Care Act launched the biggest top-down reorganisation of the NHS since 1948, opening it up to EU competition laws which has led to services at local hospitals being considered for privatisation. In addition, spending cuts have led to A&E departments up and down the country closing, waiting times in A&E increasing, ambulance response times increasing and drivers not knowing which hospital they are supposed to be taking patients to, mass shortages of hospital beds with many other problems besides. How can anybody trust David Cameron and the Conservative Party with the NHS when they promised to protect it and are now in process of completely dismantling it? Labour have said that they will repeal this dangerous and destructive Act of Parliament in order to save the NHS.

Both the cost of living crisis and the NHS/A&E crisis have been created by this Tory-led government and voters need to consider these issues before letting them have another term.

Labour, Tories & Cannock Stadium

As a Cannock resident, I would like to congratulate Cannock Chase’s Labour-run council over their plans for the redevelopment of the site of the old Cannock Festival Stadium. Work on the site is to start in April 2015 and include a full-sized football pitch, five smaller pitches, allotments, children's play areas, outdoor gym and a community centre. This will provide an important facility for all people of Cannock and the plans can be seen to be promoting sporting excellence and positive recreational facilities for young people in the area and also a step towards promoting health and wellbeing at a time when there is concern about diabetes and obesity amongst the young.

For those who aren’t aware, after sixteen years of Labour control, Cannock Chase District Council went into No Overall Control in 2003, which paved the way for a Coalition between the local Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors (yes, that again!). Over the next few years, the new council developed plans to demolish Cannock’s Festival Stadium, which had stood proudly at the Pye Green Road site since 1951, and sell the site off for housing development. The stadium had, for decades, provided not just sporting facilities for the people of Cannock but community facilities too – the nearby Blake High School (now the Staffordshire University Academy), for example, regularly used the stadium for its annual Sports Day. The move to get rid of the stadium was met with hostility and anger from local residents who valued the facilities the stadium brought to the town. Eventually the council got their way and the site was closed in 2008, the stadium itself demolished shortly after. However, the land never was sold off and has been left a derelict mess.

The 2011 local elections saw the end of the Tory-LibDem Coalition’s misrule when, despite remaining in No Overall Control, Labour formed a minority council, gaining a majority twelve months later. Since gaining a majority, the Labour council removed the site from the list of land available for housing and retained it as public open space for leisure and recreation. They then continued to develop plans for regeneration of the neglected stadium site and the final plans were those mentioned above. The plans were put before consultation in early 2013 and were given the go-ahead in November this year, with work to begin this coming April. The redevelopment has been met with a positive response from Cannock residents who are looking forward to the return of their cherished sports hub, albeit in a different form. The local Tories have objected to the plans, their leader whining last year that the consultation process was like “asking a child if they want a lollipop – they’re always going to say yes”. Let’s be honest, Conservatives don’t believe in public services and facilities for ordinary people and would rather line their own pockets by selling the site of for housing. Their sort are alright, Jack, they've got the money to go to private health clubs.

This shows a stark difference once again between the Labour Party and the Tories and Liberal Democrats (and I will include UKIP in this as most of their councillors were Conservative councillors at the time) who demolished the old stadium and desperately tried to sell the site off for housing development against the wishes and the interests of the people of Cannock Chase. The fact that the then council did this highlights the indifference and even contempt in which the other parties have shown to the people – young and old – of Cannock Chase.  

In fact, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat presence on Cannock Chase Council has been decimated as of the 2014 local elections with Labour gaining a commanding majority with 25 seats and UKIP now the official opposition with 6. The Tories only have 5 councillors and the Liberal Democrats (the largest party on the council as recently as four years ago) are left with 3 seats. This has been partly down to election results but also the defections of three Tory councillors to UKIP 18 months ago – UKIP became the official opposition this May when Jodie Jones left the Conservative Party to become an Independent in the wake of the party’s handling of her fiancé, local MP Aidan Burley’s stag party antics. The Liberal Democrat vote has been decimated in its traditional Hednesford stronghold (North, South and Green Heath wards) where all the seats are now held by Labour. Labour are also eating into the Lib Dem vote in the Rugeley wards (another area formerly of strong Lib Dem presence), particularly in the Brereton & Ravehill ward; the party paying the price for both their escapades alongside the Conservatives on Cannock Chase Council and for propping up the fundamentally right-wing Tory-led government in Downing Street.

Coming back off the tangent, the people of the Cannock Chase District/Constituency should be aware of the Stadium issue – and the entire saga surrounding it – and bare this in mind when they’re deciding who to vote for in both the local and general elections in May. The Tories (nor UKIP or the Lib Dems, for that matter) should not be allowed to gain control of the council, nor the Parliamentary Seat, ever again.

How Can We Solve The Immigration Issue?

Last Friday, David Cameron made a speech in the West Midlands regarding that well-discussed issue of immigration and, particularly, that of migration from the EU. His main announcement was a deportation of EU migrants who are not working after six months in the country. This, amongst other things, rendered his speech vacuous and disingenuous as he portrayed EU migrants as a feckless drain on the British taxpayer. This couldn’t be further from the truth; the vast majority of migrants from the EU come here to work – often with a job lined up – under the “free movement of labour”, which the Prime Minister stated in his speech that he believes in. These people have often made positive contributions to our society and economy and to label them as ‘scroungers’ is extremely misleading and will not bring immigration down.

Ed Miliband, on the hand, has jumped on a different, and more pertinent, issue regarding immigration from the EU. That is the issue of clothing retailer Next – run by Conservative peer and donor Lord Wolfson – advertising hundreds of jobs in Poland before advertising them to local people. Is it really any wonder that net migration continues to rise when jobs are being advertised in Poland before they are here? This is yet another example of employers hiring cheap labour from EU countries on short-term contracts in order to maximise their profits, which is sending both immigration and unemployment through the roof. Miliband has rightly said he will ban the practice of advertising jobs abroad before advertising locally and, coupled with his plans to introduce a living wage, this will see these jobs become more viable to local people causing immigration and unemployment to fall.

Now, the immigration issue is an incredibly complex one there are no hard and fast answers for how to deal with it. But once again, Miliband and Labour have real plans to improve things for the working people of the United Kingdom whereas all Cameron has is empty rhetoric and no serious answers to the problems of working men and women while leaving in place the structures that are causing these problems but benefit his party’s wealthy donors.

A Few Home Truths About UKIP

Given the rise in popularity of Nigel Farage’s UKIP, it’s about time the British people were made aware of the truth about this populist group.

First, their claim to be some kind of ‘alternative’ to the ‘Westminster Elite’. This cannot be the case when they fully intend to continue, in a more extreme form, the failed neoliberal economic system espoused by Thatcher, Major, Blair and Cameron. And when you consider the fact their first elected MP and second if Mark Reckless wins Rochester & Strood on November 20, are both ex-Conservative MPs then their claim to be an alternative looks ever more false. In fact, the fact that many of their leading MEPs (including Farage, Roger Helmer, Janice Atkinson, Bill Etheridge and many others) were once staunch members of the Conservative Party – not to mention the presence of Neil Hamilton in the party – is further proof that UKIP are not some new hip kids on the block but the Tory Party reincarnated in a much more extreme form.

Then there’s their claim to be a ‘people’s army’ and an apparent voice of the disaffected working class. Contrary to popular belief, Nigel Farage is not an ‘ordinary bloke down the pub’ but the son of a stockbroker, public school-educated (Dulwich College) and, upon leaving school, started work as a city trader. Anyway, what alleged voice of the working class plans to make people pay to see their GP and privatise the NHS (which Deputy Leader Paul Nuttall has stated should happen on numerous occasions)? What voice of the working class plans to remove legislation protecting workers’ rights (the real reason why UKIP wants us to leave the EU)? What voice of the working class would even think of suggesting a 35% flat tax (which was in their 2010 election manifesto)? The truth of the matter is that pretending to represent the working class is exactly that when their policies would hammer working people and be drastically in favour of big business.

Finally, while officially UKIP do not take a racist line, their anti-EU and anti-immigration stance is making racist and xenophobic bigotry more acceptable and, given that Fascist groups Britain First and the EDL have instructed their supporters to vote UKIP, the party is playing a part in the growing hostility among ordinary working people towards immigrants – their fellow human beings – which is heading dangerously towards 1930s Germany levels.

Do the British people really, seriously, want all of the above?

Tories Not on the Side of Working People

We keep hearing from leading Conservatives that ‘even in tough times’, they are on the side of ‘people who work hard and want to get on in life’. Well, they had a good chance to put that into practice recently with regards to a meagre 1% pay-rise for nurses and midwives. This was an opportunity for the party ‘for hardworking people’ to, literally, put its money where its mouth is and reward hardworking nurses and midwives by giving them more money for the excellent job they do. Instead, they refused to contemplate even a 1% rise – at the same time as handing themselves an increase of 11% – claiming that it was unaffordable despite the NHS Pay Review Body stating otherwise.  When the strike took place, the government condemned the industrial action. 

Cameron’s idea of rewarding hardworking people appears to be offering an unrealistic, unfunded and ill-thought out set of tax cuts which in reality would cause a reduction of funds available to the exchequer, resulting in redundancy for thousands of people. This would affect not only public sector workers - including the nurses and midwives on strike on October 13 - but also private sector services commissioned by the government through the public sector, rendering ‘hardworking people’ suddenly unemployed. Surely it would be better to maintain taxation levels and fund a genuine increase in peoples’ wages, no matter how small, to keep the nation working. Indeed, Edwina Currie showed the Tories’ true colours when she branded striking midwives as ‘disgraceful’. The attitude of the Conservative Party regarding this issue is proof, if it were ever needed, that they are not, and cannot be, the ‘party for hardworking people’; they never have been and they never will be. 

The Politics of Class Warfare

Hi readers! Welcome to Paddy's Politics, a blog that discusses politics and current affairs from a Left-Wing Social Democratic perspective. All views published are my own, unless stated otherwise. This is my first article -  Hope you enjoy. Please feel free to comment, whether you are of a Left or Right political persuasion. All endorsements/ arguments welcome. Also, follow me on Twitter: @paddyjpf1992

I don’t think I was the only person dismayed at David Cameron’s speech at the Conservative Party conference. He announced that his party doesn’t do ‘the politics of class warfare’ yet this government is waging class war on overdrive. It certainly feels like Total War to those on the receiving end of their attacks.

Take the alleged ‘deficit reduction’, for example. Apparently, we don’t have enough money for the NHS, Social Security, Public Services and Public Sector Wages so benefits have been slashed, wages have been frozen and the health and public services have either declined, been axed or been sold off, not to mention the rise in VAT. Yet there seemed to be enough money to hand the wealthy a 5% tax cut. To me, that doesn’t add up. If, as is the premise put forward by Cameron and Osborne, that there is an enormous structural deficit which we need to pay down, why are we handing out tax cuts? If you include the blatant diminishing of workers’ rights and the ATOS Work Capability fiasco under this government, working and vulnerable people are under attack from a government of the wealthy for the wealthy by the wealthy – even Nick Clegg and Vince Cable have complained that the Tories are ‘beating up the poor with relish’ while not expecting the wealthy to pay towards deficit reduction.

Voters have a stark choice on May 7, a party hell-bent on power for the wealthy and dehumanisation of the poor, who are also intent on consigning the NHS to the history books, or a party who will work to improve rights and living standards for those at the bottom, whilst ensuring the NHS remains a service that puts patients before profit.  When Conservatives attack the Left over the politics of class warfare, they don’t have a leg to stand on as it is they who have declared class war in the first place. Let’s put an end to this Tory war on the poor.