A crisis of the highest making – British democracy

There have been allegations around the existence of a Westminster paedophile ring for at least thirty years. These allegations have gone hand in hand with suggestions of police corruption and orders from on high to abort  any form of investigation into the existence of a Westminster paedophile ring, armed for good measure with an alleged cover-up by the very authorities on which we depend to investigate and prosecute guilty parties. These allegations concern high ranking members of the highest order, including both current and past MP’s, members of the house of lords, the secret services and high ranking police officers. It was only under duress, that home secretary Theresa May announced a public inquiry into the allegations last year. Two appointed chairpersons of the public enquiry have been forced to stand down due to concerns about their impartiality.

The members of high society are accused of having systematically sexually abused children as young as eight years old, the most vile and disgusting crime imaginable, yet none of this has been properly reported in the so called “free” British press. In fact it took an Australian journalist from the program 60 minutes to investigate and report these allegations to any degree.  This has lead to further allegations against the British “free” press and media channels of coercion in the alleged cover-up. Much of the general public are both disgraced and disgusted that more has not been done to properly investigate these allegations and bring the perpetrators of the alleged crimes to justice. After all, we are all allegedly equal before the law and the law applies equally to all of us, does it not?

Last weekend, NHS staff and their supporters responded to wholly untrue allegations from our Secretary of State for health Jeremy Hunt, that many NHS consultants are currently opting o working weekends and this is leading to a higher likelihood of death for patients admitted to hospital at the weekend. The response was a campaign on social media site twitter using the hashtag #ImInWorkJeremy which achieved widespread support. The campaign has been followed up by a petition on the governments own petition website, that is ultimately calling for the resignation of Jeremy Hunt. The petition received more than the required 100,000 signatures in less than three days, to initiate a potential debate in the house of commons. However, the governments response to the petition, has been to repeat it’s completely untrue rhetoric about a significant number of NHS consultants opting out of working at the weekend and the alleged increased likelihood of death for patients admitted to hospital at the weekend. Clearly our government are not listening to the almost 186,000 people who signed the petition.

This week, all but 48 of our labour MP’s, toed the party line by abstaining from the vote on the second reading of our governments welfare bill, which plans to further reduce the benefits cap to £20,000 per annum for those living outside London, cut tax credits for thousands of working families and abolish housing benefit for those under the age of 21, to name a few. Then on Thursday, Tony Blair made a speech where he said that anyone who has the politics of Jeremy Corbyn in their heart needs a transplant. A vile and disgusting attack on those who support Jeremy Corbyn in his campaign for leader of the labour party. Clearly, the other three Blairite candidates and their supporters are getting worried about the increasing popularity among the public for Corbyn. Growing numbers of people are angry about the politics of the neo-liberalists such as Blair & co, the liberal democrats and the tories. It is neither representing them, nor meeting their needs. Jeremy Corbyn is the only candidate offering an alternative and the neo-liberals are feeling threatened by this. Prepare for more vile and even personal attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters.

Evidently the labour party are in crisis. They have lost their way and forgotten the fundamental principles on which the party was founded. The party no longer represents the vast majority of poorer working people and instead are trying to chase the traditional labour voters who left them at the last two general elections, with a tory lite agenda that supports austerity, cuts to welfare, the selloff of our public assets, all of which disproportionally effect poorer people. Ultimately I think the labour party are finished as a major party in British politics, but if there is anyone who might be able to save them, it is Jeremy Corbyn. I believe though, that even if he is elected, the mammoth task at hand will prove too much even for Corbyn, as there will be no end to the dirty tricks campaign his opposers and others will go to in order to discredit him.

These are all very good examples of why I suggest that democracy in Britain is in crisis, if not dead. They also provide some of the reasons I have decided I cannot sit back and complain from the side lines anymore. Radical action is needed. That is why I have setup a new grassroots group for individuals who are concerned about the crisis our society now faces. The groups purpose is to provide a platform for anyone with UK residency to come together to discuss, debate, design and build a better, fairer and more democratic UK society, where everyone will have an equal chance to prosper.

Group meetings are being held online as webinars and the first meeting of the group is scheduled for this coming Monday 27^th July at 8pm. Anyone who is UK resident and wants to be a part of building something better can join us by sending an email to redesigndemocracy@yahoo.co.uk.

People power - coming together to design the UK society in which we want to live

Disabled people, unemployed people, students, Muslim people, students, elderly people, and the sick have all been the subject of our governments vile and disgusting, demonising attacks and their latest target is our Drs. As a part of our governments campaign for a seven day NHS, which we already have, secretary of state for health Jeremy Hunt announced he would be introducing new contracts for consultants that would force them to work weekends. But the truth is we already have drs, nurses, radiographers, surgeons, anaesthetists, porters, cleaners, healthcare workers and consultants working 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year.  The campaign to deliver a 7 day NHS is nothing more than an insulting attack on our NHS staff. It wants to demonise them in the eyes of the public, in pursuit of it’s ultimate goal to privatise our NHS. This is evidenced by the barely publicised announcement last weekend that a new parliamentary committee has been set up to look into the possibility of privatising our NHS.

Another part of the true agenda is the announcement from NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens that the NHS will need an additional £30billion by 2020 in order to maintain it’s current level of service and that £22billion of this would come from efficiency savings. The truth is that £22billion worth of efficiency savings is unachievable and Mr Simons knows it. The plan is to declare the current model for our NHS unworkable when NHS England fails to make those efficiency savings, at which point it will be handed over to the private sector to run. When Aneurin Bevan set up our NHS, he declared that it would continue for as long as there were people willing to support it. Sixty seven years later our NHS is on a cliff edge and in dire need of people to support it.

There have been a number of demonstrations and other campaigns against the governments plans to privatise our NHS, but the vast majority of the public seemed unconcerned or unmoved by these plans. Our NHS does not belong to the government and they certainly don’t have a mandate from the public for their intentions. Our NHS belongs to us and I suggest it is not for us to give away what has been freely given to us. Our politicians in opposition have proven themselves both unwilling and unable to challenge the governments plans, so that responsibility falls to us the people. I believe that the majority of the public are both unaware of the governments true intentions and of what privatising our NHS would actually mean. They don’t know that a two tier healthcare system would be created, with world class healthcare available for those who can afford it and little or no provision for those who cannot. The majority of the public don’t realise that there will be no more free healthcare. Access to everything from the ability to see a GP to major lifesaving surgery will be dictated by the providers of an individuals health insurance policy.

At the same time, our government is driving a counter productive and ideological program of austerity against our young people, disabled people, poor people and those who are least able to defend themselves, while handing out tax breaks to the rich and multi national corporations. All public sector workers have endured a five year pay freeze and our chancellor has just awarded them a 1% pay increase, while MP’s have been awarded a 9.6% increase, despite 88% of respondents in a public survey objected to the rise. In 2014, an estimated £122billion in tax revenue went unpaid, while our public sector services are being annihilated. Britain has the sixth richest economy in the world, yet 13.7million of it’s citizens are living in poverty and 4million of those are children. In the 2015 general election 33.4% of those eligible to vote felt so disconnected and unrepresented by the candidates, that they did not cast their vote. The election result produced a conservative majority government that only 24.7% of the electorate voted for. Overall, the results were the most disproportionate of any election in our history.

Our politicians are not listening to us and appear to have forgotten to whom they are supposed to serve. In response, a new group is being setup. It’s purpose will be to provide a platform for UK residents who are concerned about the situation to come together to discuss, debate, design & build a better, fairer UK society in which we all want to live and where everyone will be treated equally. Meetings of the new group will take place online as webinars and plans are in place for the first meeting to take place during the last week in July. Anyone may join, by sending an email to redesigndemocracy@yahoo.co.uk in order to be added to the list of invitees.

Although the group will have one facilitator of the meetings, it has been designed so that there are no group leaders. All group members will have an equal voice and an equal opportunity to participate in the groups discussions, debates and activities. Members will make all decisions, from naming the group to deciding it’s ultimate goals and everything in between. The group will not be associated with any other groups or organisations and will raise their own funds on an as needed basis and as it’s members see fit. This will be a mass movement of the people, coming together to decide the role and makeup of the kind of UK society in which we want to live.   

A call for a new British constitution

Once upon a time we had a great British value of looking after each other. There was a real sense of comradeship and some fundamental values like we look after our own. I am involved in a political campaign at the minuite about fair taxes and the attacks, insults and vileness that I have witnessed from those who oppose our campaign has been horrendous. The insults that have been spread about Jeremy Corbyn and those who support him in the current labour leadership campaign are just toxic. What happened to the great British right to freedom of speech? What happened to mutual respect? What happened to each to his/her own opinion? But perhaps most important of all, where did this need to attack, insult and discredit anyone and anything that believes or aspires to something different that what “I” believe? To a great degree, we appear to have lost those great British values we once held and it is to the detriment of us all.

This toxicity has even become a normal part of our political system. Long gone are the days of having a debate, each putting their point of view across, while respecting that of the others and then coming to a consensus. In the recent election campaign we never got to hear what each party fundamentally stand for, or how they will fix the problems our society face. The majority of the campaigns from the main political parties was about playing the blame game, pointing the finger at someone else, nobody accepting responsibility for anything and discrediting the policies of their opposers. Our government is about to launch phase two of it’s idealistic and completely unnecessary austerity program, despite warnings from within their own party, the IMF and leading economists. A program that will unleash massive suffering on the poor, disabled and most vulnerable on our society. They claim to have a mandate of the people, but only 24% of the electorate voted for them and I doubt many of them even know the effects the governments policies will have.

Our government wonders why young Muslim men and women are leaving Britain to fight for ISIS is Syria, blaming the Muslim communities and our security forces. They do not think to look at how divided our society is and the effects of the toxic messages it spreads, or the sometimes illegal wars it has participated in around the world. Through attempts to attack our fundamental human rights, on disabled people and the vulnerable through cuts to welfare, sustained attempts to privatise our NHS, participation in wars, selling off our public assets and privatising everything we once owned, Great Britain has lost it’s greatness. We have sold off the values we once stood for, like free healthcare, taking care of the sick and elderly, public ownership of our railways and producing British products. Successive governments have sacrificed those Great British institutions and values at the altar of neo-liberalism and a free market economy. They have gone to war, not to protect our values, but to impose them on others who hold different values. Collectively, they have created a society that is not open to new ideas and beliefs, in fact we now systematically attack anyone and anything that opposes, or thinks differently to what we as individuals believe. Having sold off almost everything we own, our government is now turning us against each other through their political game playing and lies.

Our political system is broken. It is no longer fit for purpose and has all but cost us our standing as a democratic state. We need change and our current political system is unable to deliver the vast changes we need, if we want to become Great Britain again. That means we will have to scrap our current system and go back to the drawing board with a blank sheet of paper and redesign for kind of British society I believe we all want. A society that will reinstate those once Great British values of freedom of speech, mutual respect for others, the concept of real communities that share, welcome and learn from those with individual believes other than our own and we look after people, including those who are not able to look after or pay their own way for whatever reason. The kind of society where the people hold the power and make the decisions rather than big multi national corporations. Where all businesses pay their fair share in contributing to society, rather than artificially shifting their profits to an offshore tax haven. A society that upholds and protects it’s citizens fundamental human rights, rather than trying to abolish them. One that will provide jobs for everyone, in whatever sector they want to work in. Adequate housing of a decent standard could also be a basic standard of our new society. As too could a good standard of education for anyone, whatever their age. We could make our politicians truly accountable to us, with the ability to sack any politician found to be breaking the rules. In fact we could have whatever we want, that would enable us to create the kind of society we want to live in.

The way we can have it is through a new British constitution. I suggest it should become the first ever written first British constitution, enshrined in law and unbreakable. A constitution sets the rules by which the state operates and how it relates to the people. In a new constitution we could remake and rebuild the make up of the state. We could build new ones and abolish those that no longer serve our democratic purpose. We could improve or redesign the state, from the monarchy, state administration, including quangos and the bank of England, police, military, justice system, education system, health, to our political system. Britain is one of the few countries in the world that does not have a written constitution, so we could design and produce the first ever written British rule book, which would outline how we want our society to be. It would be a step towards creating a fairer and more democratic society for all.

Parliament has already demonstrated it’s inability and unwillingness to provide the change we need, through it’s refusal to reform our voting system for example. It therefore falls to us the British people to enact a new written British constitution. So I add my voice to people such as John Mc Donnell MP and organisations like Unlock Democracy who have called for a convention on the constitution. This should be a people’s convention, organised by the people, for the people. We could have keynote speakers to talk about what a constitution is, what is might look like and what it could achieve. There might then be break up groups, with each given a topic to discuss and make keynotes on. I would support the idea of one convention for the whole of Britain, where all people would be invited to come and join in the discussion. This would become a huge movement of British people, coming together to debate and discuss how we want to be government and the roles each part of the state will have in a more democratic British society.

The end result would be the first ever written British constitution. Written by the people, for the people.

What ever happened to the great British value of we look after our own?

After the atrocities of the second world war, Britain wrote and became a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In the same period the then labour government set up the welfare state. The ECHR was agreed and signed by the countries of Europe and is a declaration to the world that the horrendous atrocities that had been seen during the war, must never be allowed to happen again. The welfare state was set up in response to the Beveridge report of 1942 to end rampant poverty in Britain and to look after everybody “from the womb to the tomb.” Both acts were an unequivocal statement of declaration that whether rich or poor, Britain looks after it’s own and such atrocities have no place in a modern society.

Fast forward seventy odd years and of course a lot has happened. We have had numerous wars including the Falklands in 1982, the Gulf in 1991, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011. Cars are now seen on our roads everyday, the television was invented, we now have machines to wash and dry our clothes, it is now possible to communicate with people on the other side of the world with just the touch of a few buttons and we have made huge advancements in the development of weapons of mass destruction.

But most damning of all in my opinion is that in one of the most powerful nations of the world, with a population of 60million people we have 4,100,000 children living in poverty. Almost a third, or 32% of British children are living in poverty.       Britain is the 6^th richest nation in the world, with a GDP of more than £1.6trillion and in 2014 we had one of the fastest growing economies in the world, yet in some areas between 50%-70% of children are growing up in poverty, figures from the Child Poverty Action Group show. The figures also show that 66% of children growing up in poverty live in a household where at least one parent works, proving beyond doubt that work does not provide a guaranteed route out of poverty in Britain, despite the tories to the contrary. How did we end up here? What happened to the great British value that we look after our own?

Well despite our best intentions way back in 1945, we never did manage to eradicate child poverty and in 2005/06 there were 3.8million children living in poverty according to the Department of Work and Pensions. This was a rise of 200,000 children since the year before and was described as “a moral disgrace” by children’s’ charity Barnardo’s. Despite numbers falling over the next three years, they had risen again to 3.8million by 2010. In March 2010 the Child Poverty Act was passed, legally binding the government to a commitment to eradicate child poverty in Britain by 2020. For the first time ever, government and local authorities have been set targets to end childhood poverty for good. However almost have way to that target, the figures from the Child Poverty Action Group show that our government is moving backwards instead of forwards.

Given the previous coalition governments’ ruthless commitment to austerity measures, a consequence of the UK banks irresponsible lending and by 2014 had lead to a cost to the British taxpayer of £1.3trillion, it’s no wonder child poverty numbers are rising. The cuts to welfare benefits have seen a cap of £26,000 for any working age adult across all benefits, the introduction of the bedroom tax, a reduction in the child element of working tax credit, cuts to child benefit, cuts in the number of children receiving free school meals, it is no wonder the number of children living in poverty is rising. There is no doubt that by the end of the coalition governments’ reign there were more people in work, the figures speak for themselves. However at least a portion of those new jobs were either low paid, zero hours contracts or self employment. None of which provide any security for Britain’s hard working families that the conservative like to talk about.

Considering their track record in coalition with the liberal democrats, does not speak well for our new conservative majority government, with their plan to cut £30billion from public spending, £12billion of which will come from the welfare budget. Although the government have not yet laid out exactly which benefits will be effected, I fear greatly for our children and those who through no fault of their own, are least able to defend themselves and can least afford further cuts.

People are poor for a great many reasons. But explanations that put poverty down to drug and alcohol dependency, family breakdown, poor parenting, or a culture of worklessness are simply not supported by the facts. Child poverty blights childhoods. Growing up in poverty means being cold, going hungry, not being able to join in activities with friends and it has long lasting effects. By age sixteen, children who receive free school meal achieve 1.7 grades lower than their wealthier peers. Leaving school with lower grades translates into lower earnings, with little prospect of improvement over the course of a working life.

Children have no choice about whether they are born into a rich or a poor family and very few people, if anyone in the history of mankind has ever made a conscious decision to be poor. We have forgotten the commitment we made in 1945 to eradicate child poverty and are well on our way to failing second time around as well. By it’s very definition, in a democratic society there is no such thing as poverty, it simply does not exist. In a democratic society there would not be a scenario where a handful of RBS bankers would receive £484million in bonuses, while 4.1million children did not have their most basic needs met, including enough food, warm clothes and a safe home.

Therefore I submit that Britain clearly is not a democracy.