I got this message from the pro-nationalisation, pro-NHS organisation yesterday.
‘Dear David,
You’re incredible!
159 of you have signed up for a regular donation and hundreds more have raised £8431 towards the campaign to make reinstating our NHS as a fully public service a major issue in this election.
Now let’s do this.
FIRST we’ll launch our pledge for MPs and prospective parliamentary candidates to sign, with new polling to show that the public want our NHS BACK.
NEXT ON 5th July (the NHS’s 75th birthday) we’ll hold actions to ramp up the pressure on MPs.
THEN we’ll hold reverse town halls (where politicians listen to the people!) online with MPs in key constituencies to push them to sign the pledge.
We’ll be in touch again soon to let you know about actions happening in your local area or online.
You can play a key role in persuading your MP and election candidates to sign the pledge – and praising them if they have.
Waiting lists are in the news all the time. The challenge is to make it clear what the answer is – not more ‘choice’ but an end to cuts and privatisation.
NOW IS THE TIME to get the message out loud and clear – people don’t want a two tier system like America.
We want an NHS that is there for all of us when we need it. There for our children and our grandchildren.
We know political parties are deciding on policies right now. We won’t wait until an election is announced to make our demand.
The dedication of all the kind people like you who are on this list – whether taking action, making donations, helping in so many ways – blows us away!
THANK YOU for making this campaign possible, we couldn’t do this without you.
Cat, Johnbosco, Matthew, Kate and Imogen – the We Own It team
PS Campaigning works! The actions you’ve been taking with us – whether on the NHS, energy, water, rail, buses – it all makes a difference.
Just yesterday, West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin announced that taking buses into public control is her preferred option, bringing the region one step closer to taking back power from private companies. This follows years of campaigning by We Own It supporters like you.
And today four MPs will be joining an action in Liverpool to back public control of buses there.‘
I posted up a petition this afternoon by 38 Degrees against the water companies charging us all extra for them to clean up the mess they’ve made so that they can continue making bloated profits and enriching their senior executives and shareholders. I’ve now received an additional message asking me if I have a personal story about being affected by the water companies. I don’t but I’m posting it up on here in case any of my readers do and want to support them in this.
‘Dear David,
Thank you for adding your name to the petition No bonuses or dividends while you hike our bills to clean up the mess you made.
This is an automatic email to confirm that your action on a 38 Degrees campaign has been registered and let you know of follow up actions you could take to help the campaign succeed. You will only receive further 38 Degrees emails if you have opted in to do so.’
‘SHOCKING: WATER COMPANIES WANT YOU TO PAY MORE TO CLEAN UP THEIR MESS. [1]
Water companies have APOLOGISED for sewage spilling into our rivers and seas, and announced that they would FINALLY proceed with the upgrades we have been demanding – to the tune of £10 billion. [2]
But that’s not the whole story!
It was also revealed that we – their customers – will be footing the bill. [3] Then, to add insult to injury, these same companies are still planning to give out shareholder dividends of £14.7 billion from our increased bills at the same time. [4] It’s an outrage!
Thankfully, this has yet to be approved by Ofwat, the water regulator, and we have some time to show these companies how strongly the public is against these plans. If we get thousands of signatures on a petition demanding no bonuses for CEOs or dividends for shareholders, we can pressure them to put a stop to this unjust system – and take responsibility for cleaning up their mess once and for all.
So, David, if you think water companies should be footing this bill and not us – their customers – add your name to this petition today:click the button below and your name will be added automatically.
No bonuses or dividends while you hike our bills to clean up the mess you made.Why is this important?Although the announcement of investment in our sewer network is welcome – your customers cannot be expected to foot the bill.The lack of investment and funding since water companies went private is not the public’s fault and therefore the onus to fix this should not be on us. And we definitely shouldn’t be paying a penny more for as long as shareholders and executives are still getting bonuses and dividends.SignedThousands of your customers
Our pressure is working but we cannot take our foot off the pedal. Sign the petition below and demand water companies stop this bill hike if shareholders are still being paid.Click the button below and your name will be added automatically.
I’ve signed it, because I strongly believe that it’s outrageous that customers should be charged for cleaning up the mess solely so that the companies can keep their boosted profits for their shareholders and senior staff, and I hope you’ll sign too.
Part of the debate about race and racism in Britain today surrounds the poor academic and professional performance of White working class boys.
On average, White working-class children, and particularly boys, defined by those receiving free school meals, perform less well at school than other demographic groups. They’re less like to go to university than Blacks and Asians and less socially mobile. Their lack of achievement contradicts the view that only certain ethnic minorities, principally Blacks and Muslims, suffer from this. It has been used by the Conservative right to suggest that racism is not the reason behind the poor social and economic performance of these ethnic minorities and has led to sharp criticism of racial policies that concentrate on uplifting these groups while ignoring poor Whites suffering from the same deprivation and lack of opportunities.
I found the page on the parliament website giving a precis of the report and links to it, ‘‘Forgotten’ White Working-Class Pupils Let Down by Decades of Neglect, MPs Say’, put up on 22nd June 2021. Going through it, the report’s summary seems eminently sensible. It notes that such children are the victims of an anti-intellectual culture in the working class, as well as strong social prejudices against aspiration and moving upwards out of the class. It also notes that they are particularly affected by deindustrialisation, as for generations there was an expectation in their communities that they would find work in the traditional heavy industries that have now closed down. Like Black families, the parents of such White children say they often don’t know where they are and there is similar pressures to join gangs. Unlike ethnic minorities, however, there is no empowering narrative of coming from overseas and succeeding here despite opposition.
The report and its summary also include a number of recommendations, one of which particularly stood out to me: that was that when it came to issues like social deprivation, White privilege should not be taught in schools. This was recommendation 5, which urged
‘Find a better way to talk about racial disparities. The committee agreed with the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, that the discourse around the term ‘white privilege’ can be divisive, and that disadvantages should be discussed without pitting different groups against each other. Schools should consider whether the promotion of politically controversial terminology, including white privilege, is consistent with their duties under the Equality Act 2010. The Department should issue clear guidance for schools and other department-affiliated organisations receiving grants from the department on how to deliver teaching on these complex issues in an age-appropriate way.
This is a sensible approach. It is clearly nonsensical to teach that Whites enjoy a special social and economic privilege when a section of the White population suffers similar deprivation or worse. And the same recommendation should counteract the Conservative tactic of trying to divide the working class by getting Blacks and Whites to hate each other. Although it has to be said that in the case of Critical Race Theory, much of this racism comes from the left.
Earlier this afternoon I posted a piece about an article by Fraser Nelson, the editor of the Spectator, about how there were too many people off sick when they were tens of thousands of jobs going vacant. Some other politico, I don’t know if it was one of the Tories or Starmer’s crew, has also announced that they intend to retrain those currently off sick to fill those vacancies. I’m certain they were talking about the ill, rather than the unemployed, though the article revealed the same persecutory attitude the Tories have towards them. I’m afraid I really don’t know much about the current official processes governing the long term sick and disabled. I’m therefore grateful to Trev, one of the great commenters on this blog for the information he’s posted about the treatment of the sick and disabled wishing to claim benefits And one of the things that is very clear is that they are expected to look for suitable work. Which shows that, if Nelson really was talking about the sick rather than the unemployed, he’s talking massive nonsense. Even if Nelson was talking about the unemployed, some of my arguments against the policy still stands. And Trev’s comments still show the persecutory and vindictive nature of Tory policy towards the sick and disabled.
Trev writes
‘I didn’t know there still was any Sickness Benefits. There are no Sick Notes anymore because the Tories scrapped them. You have to get a Fit Note that says what you can do not what you can’t do, then apply for ESA (Employment Support Allowance) which replaced Income Support, then once in receipt of ESA you are still required to look for work if placed in the ESA Work Related Activity Group. People are routinely informed that their ESA has been stopped and the DWP have decided they are now fit for work. I have health problems but I think it better to stay on legacy JSA instead of bothering to apply for a Fit Note and ESA because once lost I can never get my JSA back again and the conditions on legacy JSA are more favourable than UC.
Many of the sick or disabled who are claiming Benefits are forced to look for work and apply for jobs, as well as attending Government schemes such as the Health and Work Programme run by Reed in Partnership aka “Better Working Futures”. I’m currently on that scheme and they are always texting you with “Hot Jobs”, which could be virtually anything, a part-time Cleaner 2 hours a week or a full-time factory/warehouse job involving shift work and heavy lifting. Everyone who is sent there is out of work but has some ailment, illness, health condition, physical or mental. One week they sat us down in a classroom and showed us a video of a man born without limbs, then we had to write a list of things in our lives that we feel grateful for. Last week I was in a class being taught how to write a cover letter for a job application. It lasts for 15 months and is compulsory if referred by the Jobcentre.
P. S. If you have a health condition or disability that prevents you from leading a normal daily life such as needing help to get dressed, cook a meal or move around, for example, you can apply for PIP (Personal Independence Payments) of varying levels and amounts, and which replaced DLA (Disability Living Allowance). I don’t know about how that relates to work requirements or jobsearch, might depend on whether you’re also getting ESA and are in the WRAG or not. And the Tories said their Welfare Reforms were intended to simplify the Benefits system! They lied.
Oh and I almost forgot, there’s also the much dreaded WCA (Work Capability Assessments) whereby a private company gets public money to find sick & disabled people capable of working. I’m not sure which particular group it applies to, ESA or PIP. WCA was introduced by New Labour.’
My best wishes to Trev and to everyone else struggling with this vile system designed to humiliate and degrade some of the poorest and most vulnerable in society.
I’ve just found this piece from the I by Chloe Chaplain reporting that Momentum have warned Starmer that he could lose votes from purging his party’s left and pointing to their own electoral successes to show that Labour can still win with left-wing policies. He’s also been warned that he cannot rely on the Tories’ implosion to secure a Labour victory.
‘Purging the left and ditching socialism could see Labour lose voters, Sir Keir Starmer warned
Sir Keir Starmer has been warned he risks alienating core Labour voters who could stay home and not vote if he turns his back on socialism ahead of the general election.
The left of his party are pointing their own local election successes as evidence that a radical agenda can be attractive to voters. And others are warning Sir Keir of the danger of losing out to apathy.
The Labour leader has made a considerable shift to the centre since taking charge, with appeals to former Tory voters who could be tempted to swing to his party. In doing so, he has pulled power away from the vocal left-wing of his party that had dominated under his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.
As the general election draws closer, and with Labour’s final policy agenda being drawn up, left wing campaigners and MPs are pushing to stop the leadership turning its back entirely on pledges they argue are very popular among voters.
It cites the Labour administration in Worthing, West Sussex – where Momentum co-chair Hilary Schan was elected as a councillor – and successes in Broxtow, Nottinghamshire, and Preston, Lancashire as examples of a socialist policy platform winning votes. They argue that, if he continues on his current path of “purging” left-wing candidates and policies he could lose support in areas like these.
Ms Schan said the three authorities were a “a living, breathing demonstration that there is no trade-off between electability and transformative policies”.
“As a general election closes in, the Labour leadership has a chance to lay out a bold programme to fix the Tories’ broken Britain. Choosing to instead pursue yet more purges and division will only weaken our electoral coalition and damage prospects of a Labour majority,” she said.’
I’m glad this is being pointed out to Starmer and that it’s got what appears to be a neutral report in the I. As opposed to the right-wing press, which will probably report this with headlines screaming that it’s another attempt by Corbynite anti-Semitic Trots to keep their hold on Labour. But I have absolutely no doubt that Starmer won’t listen, and will carry on purging the left.
As for New Labour’s right-wing policies appealing to Tory voters, this needs to be qualified. The public ownership campaign group We Own It has cited statistics again and again showing that the British public, including a majority of Tory voters, want the utilities taken back into public ownership. What is stopping this isn’t public opinion but Thatcherite ideology and the media and political establishment, which will seek to demonise and undermine any politician that seeks to press for such policies.
This very short video comes from the Clown Planet channel on YouTube. Clown Planet features various news reports of unusual, and unusually daft incidents. It’s also highly critical of some of the advances in robotics. A recent video was about the driverless bus being tested somewhere, with the explicit statement in the title ‘No Thanks’. I think it’s also put up clips from news coverage of robot dogs and security robots being used by the police in New York and on the city’s metro. This clip is of a robot that’s clearly been designed to act as a mechanised lollipop man. One of the commenters to the video,@sparesomechange8080, pretty much described it accurately thus ‘So this is basically an overly engineered, overly complicated, expensive traffic light?’ Yes, it looks very much like a traffic light on wheels. Another commenter, @ivaniuk123 also remarked, ‘A 100k robot for something that can be done with an unpaid volunteer.’ Which I think is a good assessment of it. And @ukgareth316 said, ‘Speaking as an school crossing patrol officer that has enough of an issue getting traffic to stop at the best of times there is no way that robot will not get run over or drove past and into people crossing the road.’ Another commenter predicted that drivers would deliberately crash into it. They’d be stupid if they did, but I can see that the temptation would be there.
This seems to be a tech company demonstrating that it can do something, rather than actually supplying a machine that answers a real need. And there is a problem with advances in AI and robotics making people redundant. We’ve already seen various companies getting rid of human workers and writers in favour of ChatGPT and there are similar predictions that the computer art programmes like Midjourney will decimate artists. Now it seems the tech companies want to show that they can replace the lollipop people.
I’m going to have to do a bit more digging on this, because I think I might be missing something. Yesterday Starmer and Wes Streeting announced that if Labour is elected, they’ll reform the NHS. Starmer has been saying for a very long time that the health service is in an existential crisis and that radical reform is required in order to save it. I think he’s absolutely right about this, especially as Sunak wants even more of it privatised as he deludedly thinks this has worked so well, and former Health Secretary Sajid Javid wants to introduce a £20 charge for people seeing their doctor. I also remember Lord Warner back in the ‘teens suggesting that there should be some kind of additional private insurance scheme or tax or something levied to support the NHS. This was, of course, another step on the road to full privatisation, as was pointed out to Warner. Who subsequently left the Labour party. Starmer also announced that Labour would demand increased efficiency in the NHS with targets set to reduce waiting times. This is all good stuff, but I don’t recall any mention on the mainstream news about how exactly he was going to do all this. It should be done through re-nationalisation and the statements from my local Labour MP, Karin Smyth, certainly suggests that Labour’s committed to a nationalised NHS. But Labour has also said that in the short term they’ll use private healthcare to clear the waiting list. This sounds good, but I have a feeling that the arguments for privatising the NHS the Tories have been using recently included the same statement that they were going to use private healthcare to cut the backlog created by the Covid crisis. New Labour was as committed to privatisation as the Conservatives and went further in the privatisation of the NHS than the Tories had dared. I’m therefore at a loss how Starmer and Streeting plan to reform the NHS so that it again meets the needs of this country’s great working people, and whether it’ll still be nationalised at the end of it, whatever the impression Starmer wants to give about it now.
I got this message from the internet petitioning organisation yesterday. As you can see, they’re hoping to organise a massive petition against Sajid Javid’s noxious proposal to start charging patients for NHS care. I think they organised a similar petition a little while ago, but they seem particularly alarmed after Gordon Brown denounced it. I’ve signed it, and I’ve put it up here in the hope that others may wish to sign it too. The NHS really is under threat from the Tory goons.
‘David, this is shocking.
Former Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, has suggested patients should be charged a £20 fee if they ask for NHS treatment without seeing a GP first. [1]
David – there’s no sugar coating it. Charging sick people for being sick would end the NHS as we know it. And only this week, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised the alarm – now we’re doing the same. [2]
This isn’t the first time something so dangerous has been floated. Rishi Sunak said patients should be charged £10 for missing appointments, and some Conservative grandees have suggested the same. [3] But, every time, public pressure forced them to back down. [4]
David, this is a dangerous moment – our NHS needs us. We are in a fight to defend its very existence. And it’s going to take our biggest NHS campaign ever. Today, we take the first step of the Great British backlash with a huge petition. Together, we could get ONE MILLION PEOPLE to add their name, to show those in power that the British public will NEVER stand for the sick being charged for being sick.
David, this fight starts with you. Will you add your name to the petition and tell the Government: charging the sick for being sick? Don’t you dare. And then share it with 5 friends? If each of us reading this email added their name, and passed it on, we’d make it to a million. And fast. Clicking the button below will add your name automatically with one click:
Make no mistake, this is an attempt by the same people who have spent a decade underfunding and understaffing the NHS, bringing it to its knees, to make paying for healthcare seem a normal way out of this crisis.
We’re planning this huge campaign right now, but it starts – today – with you.
Just got this through from the pro-democracy groups about an article in the Heil by someone called Charles Dunst. Dunst says, rightly, that Brits, especially young Brits, are losing faith in democracy. They are, but this isn’t the fault of 13 years of authoritarian Tory rule and legislation setting up secret courts and curbing the right to protest and strikes! No! The real threat to democracy comes from authoritarian leftists like Extinction Rebellion. And Liz Truss, a puppet of the free trade NHS privatisation lobbyists at Tufton Street, is just the woman to defend democracy. This is just completely bonkers. It’s on the same level as telling the British public that Judge Dredd is a staunch believer in civil liberties and prison reform. I don’t have much respect for Extinction Rebellion as their stunts of holding up traffic and so on seem designed particularly to annoy the ordinary public. And they have harmed people, as when they prevented an ambulance from taking a woman having a stroke in hospital in time, so that they woman wouldn’t have suffered paralysis down one side of her body. But Dunst’s crazy article does remind me of the advice Private Eye gave about reading the opinions of Rees-Mogg senior. He must be read carefully. Then you turn his ideas through 180 degrees and, vioila! he’s exactly right. Here’s Open Britain’s comment:
‘Dear David,
In 2023, Britain is inundated with flag-toting, vote-suppressing, reality-denying authoritarianism. In times like these, nations rely on journalists to speak truth to power, to challenge the government line and speak for the people when their voices aren’t being heard. In Britain, our media ecosystem is doing the opposite – its supercharging and amplifying our vocal right-wing minority.
You may have seen this Daily Mail headline circulating on Twitter. Charles Dunst’s unbelievable article claims that young people are losing faith in democracy, that they just don’t feel it’s working for them anymore – and that’s true. Our institutions are not adequately reflecting the will of the people, meaning we need to fix those institutions and restore trust (which is exactly what Open Britain is fighting for).
Dunst has other ideas. Instead, he goes on to commend Liz Truss of all people for standing for “liberal values”, while arguing that the reason democracy isn’t working is actually because of China. He claims that climate protestors are the real authoritarians in the UK, despite their almost complete lack of power and the harsh government crackdowns on their right to protest. It’s an incomprehensible distortion of reality – but it still gets into people’s heads.
The mental gymnastics required to write such an article must have required years of rigorous training. But it’s just one example of how the UK media manufactures consent among the public, deploying specific framings and omitting hard truths that change the tone of the story altogether, functioning as unofficial state propaganda. This article is toeing the line of people like Liz Truss, Rees-Mogg, and Boris Johnson, presenting them as a solution to a problem that they caused.
None of this is terribly new. From backing the actual Nazis back in the 1930s to going on xenophobic, anti-muslim tirades in the 2010s, the Mail and its counterparts have long pushed an unpopular agenda. But now, in the age of tabloid articles, social media, and targeted advertising, it’s posing a real threat to democracy itself. A democratic system is only as good as its information environment – and ours is clouded with propaganda and misinformation.
For one thing, we need to support the independent media in the UK. In recent years, a new breed of media companies like Byline Times, Politics JOE, and openDemocracy have started to set a new standard, covering substantial political stories instead of hacking into Harry and Meghan’s phones.
What we really need, however, is meaningful press regulation. At this critical time, we need to start asking questions like “Why does Russian oligarch Evgeny Lebedev get to sit in the House of Lords and own the Evening Standard?” or “Why are we allowing Rupert Murdoch’s media empire to warp public opinion in his favour?”.
It’s just another reason we need a democratic renewal in this country. As much as a broken press is a threat to democracy, democracy is equally the solution to a broken press. In a survey of 24 countries, the UK had the second lowest level of trust in the press (just 13%) – only beating out Egypt and ranking well below Russia, Indonesia, and Mexico. The people want change, and we need real democracy to reflect that.
As Charles Dunst said, the people are losing faith in democracy. But the solution is not more NatC conventions or bringing back Liz Truss. It’s a wholesale revitalisation of the democratic institutions that deliver the will of the people. That’s what Open Britain is all about.
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