Category: Conservatives

The word “Tories” is an abbreviation of “tall stories”

October 1, 2014December 16, 2016 · 23 Comments ·

“The deficit reduction programme takes precedence over any of the other measures in this agreement” – stated in the Coalition Agreement.

For a government whose raison d’etre is deficit reduction, the coalition really isn’t very good at all.

Of course the truth is that this whole process of prolonged austerity is NOT about deficit-cutting. It’s just the cover for Tory ideology. It is actually about “shrinking the state” and squeezing the public sector until it becomes marginal, then none existent, in an entirely market-driven, competitively individualist society. The banker crisis-generated deficit has been a gift to the Tories in enabling them to launch the scuttlebutt that public expenditure has to be massively cut back, which they would never have been able to get away with without the deficit-reduction excuse in the first place.

And I am still seeing the “inherited debt” LIES that the Tories are still telling, despite official rebuke from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) chief Robert Chote. This is the same Tory-led government that lost our triple A Moody and Fitch credit rating, and that borrowed more in 3 years than Labour did in 13. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that the coalition had borrowed £430.072 billion in just 3 short years, whereas the last Labour government managed to borrow just £429.975 billion in 13 years, and unlike the Tories, Labour invested most of what they borrowed in public services.

After continuously lying that the UK had the biggest debt in the world, George Osborne admitted to the Treasury Select Committee that he did not know the UK under Labour had the lowest debt in the G7. Also, confirmed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Those who have used cash terms (instead of percentages) have done so to scare, mislead and give less than half the story.

The much banded about 2010 deficit of “over 11%” is false. This is the Public Sector Net Borrowing (PSNB – total borrowings) and not the actual budget deficit which was -7.7%. (See OBR Economic and Fiscal Outlook March 2012 page 19, table 1.2.)

Secondly, in 1997 Labour inherited a deficit of 3.9% of GDP (not a balanced budget) and by 2008 it had fallen to 2.1% – a reduction of a near 50% – now that’s impressive. Hence, it’s implausible and ludicrous to claim there was “overspending.”

It’s common sense, in cash terms, that a millionaire’s debt would be greater than most people’s. Therefore, the UK would have a higher debt and deficit than most countries because we are the sixth largest economy. Therefore, its laughable to compare UK’s debt and deficit with Tuvalu’s who only have a GDP/Income of £24 million whilst, the UK’s income is £1.7 trillion.

In 1997, Labour inherited a debt of 42% of GDP. By the start of the global banking crises 2008 the debt had fallen to 35% – almost a 22% reduction (page 6 ONS). Surprisingly, a debt of 42% was not seen as a major problem and yet at 35% you would think the sky was suddenly falling, to hear the Tories acting up.

The deficit was then exacerbated by the global banking crises after 2008. (See HM Treasury archives). The IMF have also concluded the UK experienced an increase in the deficit as result of a large loss in output/GDP caused by the global banking crisis and not even as result of the bank bailouts, fiscal stimulus and bringing forward of capital spending. It’s basic economics: when output falls the deficit increases.

The large loss in output occurred because the UK, like the US, have the biggest financial centres and as this was a global banking crisis we suffered the most, and not as a result of overspending prior to and after 2008 – as the International Money Fund (IMF) concur.

The UK national debt is the total amount of money the British government owes to the private sector and other purchasers of UK gilts. The national debt now stands at £1.5 TRILLION (and rising).

So a further saving of £3 Billion in benefits, as proposed by Osborne, will clear the debt in, say, a mere… 500 YEARS.

Once again, this exposes the nonsense of the “reducing the deficit” excuse as being a genuine motivation behind cutting the incomes of the poorest and the most vulnerable citizens in the UK.

Gosh. Tories in “telling lies” shocker. Here’s a few more:

In October 2010, Cameron said : “But it’s fair that those with broader shoulders should bear a greater load.”

The prime ~~sinister~~ minister talked of “fairness” as he tried to dodge the criticism that the poorest would suffer from the second big announcement of that week: a cap on benefits paid to out-of-work households.

Cameron said his government would: “always look after the sick and the vulnerable”, but said that: “society will have to rethink its approach to fairness.”

It hasn’t been “rethought” : it was the very first austerity cut.

He lied, because:

People in poverty are targeted by the cuts 5 times more than most citizens
Disabled people are targeted 9 times more than most citizens
People needing social care are targeted 19 times more than most citizens.(From: A Fair Society? How the cuts target disabled people )

Cameron also said said : “Too many people thought: ‘I’ve paid my taxes, the state will look after everything.’ But citizenship isn’t a transaction – in which you put your taxes in and get your services out. It’s a relationship – you’re part of something bigger than yourself and it matters what you think and feel and do.”

Well actually, Cameron, your arrogance will be your greatest downfall, because we DO have a right in a so-called democracy to demand transparency and accountability from government, the state IS responsible for maintaining essential public services and provision, AND for upholding our human rights. Citizenship isn’t all about responsibility and giving to the government and an elite of millionaires – there IS something of a contract which we call “democracy”.

Citizenship is a foundational and structural institution of democracy, insofar as it is both a legal status and a societal and political value. As a status, citizenship bestows a collection of rights and a set of responsibilities on individuals who are free and equal in rights.

In a democracy, citizenship is not a privilege that may be granted by the government at their discretion; it is a right.

Someone should remind Cameron that the term democracy comes from the Greek language and translates simply as “rule by the people”. The so-called “democracies” in classical antiquity (Athens and Rome) represent precursors of modern democracies. Like modern democracy, they were created as a reaction to a concentration and abuse of power by the rulers. Yet the theory of modern democracy was not formulated until the Age of Enlightment (17^th/18^th centuries), when philosophers defined the essential elements of democracy: separation of powers, basic civil rights / human rights, religious liberty and separation of church and state.

In order to earn the label democracy, a country needs to fulfill some basic requirements – and they need not only be written down in it’s constitution but must be kept up in everyday life by the government:

Guarantee of basic Human Rights to every individual person (including poor people and sick and disable people) vis-à-vis the state and its authorities as well as vis-à-vis any social groups (especially religious institutions) and vis-à-vis other persons.
Separation of Powers between the institutions of the state:
Government [Executive Power],
Parliament [Legislative Power] and
Courts of Law [Judicative Power]
Freedom of opinion, speech, press and mass media
Religious liberty
General and equal right to vote (one person, one vote)
Good Governance (focus on public interest and the absence of corruption).

I think the Conservatives have spectacularly failed on meeting most of these criteria.

We also have an absolute democratic right to ask: what have you done with OUR money?

This was (allegedly) a liberal democracy before you took office, Cameron, not your “kingdom”.

Democracy isn’t something the government is elected to redefine and “manage”.

—

It’s worth noting that the word “Tory” was originally used as term of abuse. It derives from the Middle Irish word “tóraidhe” which means outlaw, robber or brigand. That explains Conservative policies, then. This Government is certainly robbing the poor to give handouts to the rich.

Further reading

The Great Debt Lie and the Myth of the Structural Deficit

The mess we inherited” – some facts with which to fight the Tory Big Lies

Tory dogma and hypocrisy: the “big state”, bureaucracy, austerity and “freedom” State

A catalogue of official rebukes for Tory lies: Austerity, socio-economic entropy and being conservative with the truth

Pictures courtesy of Robert Livingstone

My letter to PM on whips and child abuse inquiry – Mark Reckless, Tory MP

July 13, 2014January 10, 2017 · 2 Comments ·

Originally posted on Mark Reckless | UKIP:
Update: Mark Reckless’s site, along with his letter, has vanished. Originally I had reblogged it here. There is a VERY interesting letter to Cameron from Conservative MP Mark Reckless. What … Continue reading My letter to PM on whips and child abuse inquiry – Mark Reckless, Tory MP

An email to authoritarian Tory MPs Charlie Elphicke, Priti Patel and Conor Burns

June 13, 2014December 31, 2023 · 17 Comments ·

I sent the following email to Tory MPs Charlie Elphicke, Priti Patel and Conor Burns, with a copy sent to Charities Commission.

The email has evidence hyperlinked throughout in a bid to spare me the standardised Tory bullshit avalanche in response:

Dear Charlie Elphicke, Priti Patel and Conor Burns,

I write to complain about your extremely authoritarian and oppressive treatment of the charity Oxfam.

First of all, I must point out that it is impossible to discuss poverty without reference to its root cause and that invariably involves reference to government policies. I am particularly disgusted by the way you have diverted attention away from the real issue raised – the rise of cases of absolute poverty.

Oxfam are not alone in their concern about the rise of absolute poverty. Medical experts recently wrote an open letter to David Cameron condemning the rise in food poverty under this government, stating that families “are not earning enough money to meet their most basic nutritional needs” and that “the welfare system is increasingly failing to provide a robust line of defence against hunger.”

Many charities have said that the UK government has violated the Human Right to food. Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) recognises the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, clothing and housing. The UK has signed and ratified, and in so doing is legally bound by the ICESCR, in particular, the human right to adequate food.

According to the Just Fair Consortium report, welfare reforms, benefit delays and the cost of living crisis have pushed an unprecedented number of people into a state of hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity in the UK. New research by Oxfam has revealed the extent of poverty amongst British children, with poor families taking drastic measures to survive.

What kind of government is concerned only about stifling critical discussion of its policies and not at all about the plight of the citizens it is meant to serve? This is a government that attempts to discredit and invalidate the accounts of people’s experience of the suffering that is directly caused by this government. By blaming the victims and by trying to smear and dismiss anyone that champions the rights of vulnerable citizens.

Priti Patel said: “With this Tweet they have shown their true colours and are now nothing more than a mouthpiece for left wing propaganda.”

When did concern for poverty and the welfare of citizens become the sole concern of “the left wing”? I think that casually spiteful and dismissive admission of indifference tells us all we need to know about the current government’s priorities. And no amount of right wing propaganda will hide the fact that poverty and inequality rise under every Tory government.

Mr Burns has written to the Charities Commission requesting an investigation into the “overtly political attack” on “the policies of the current Government.” However, he failed to mention this government’s overtly and cowardly economic attack on the most vulnerable citizens. I believe Oxfam has behaved responsibly, honourably, and with good conscience. It is the Tory-led government that have behaved disgracefully. We have a government that provides disproportionate and growing returns to the already wealthy, whilst imposing austerity cuts on the very poorest people. That is very clearly evidenced in their policies, the aims of which are clear when we examine who is carrying the burden of austerity. It is largely the poorest social groups and especially disabled people.

How can the government possibly claim Oxfam’s observations are “biased” when inequality is so fundamental to their own ideology, and when social inequalities and poverty are extended and perpetuated by all of their policies. The Tories have no right to be indignant about research findings regarding the poverty they have caused, and to complain about the genuine concern Oxfam expressed about those politically damning findings, when those findings are so patently true. I don’t believe that Oxfam have shown “bias” at all. I do believe that punitive Conservative policies are based on traditional class-based Tory prejudices, however.

The truth is the truth, whether conservative MPs like it or not. Tory “facts” are both constructed and seen through a lens of pre-conceptions and ideology. Oxfam and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation choose to study poverty. Cynical Tories, such as Iain Duncan Smith simply change the definition of it. But changing the narrative can never edit people’s experience of grinding poverty and their consequent suffering. Or disguise the causes.

So where is your concern for those vulnerable and increasingly impoverished citizens – the ones you are meant to serve? You didn’t even entertain the idea that there’s a problem, choosing instead to dismiss a respectable charity as “lefties”. Have you any idea how utterly callous, irrelevant AND ludicrous that comment was?

Or how obviously oppressive your actions are for reporting a charity for merely carrying out awareness-raising campaign work?

And before you spin me the poppycock line about inequality being ‘lower’ under this government, I already know about the methodological problems with the measurement method you purposely use, so spare me: https://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/camerons-gini-and-the-hidden-hierarchy-of-worth/

Yours sincerely
Ms S Jones, MA (Hons)

Multiple Cuts for the Poorest Families and Conservative catechisms

April 27, 2014June 29, 2016 · 5 Comments ·

Policy documents are often a useful source for understanding how language and imagery contribute to the construction of society’s assumptions, values and beliefs. They also demonstrate the privileging and “packaging” of a particular ideology. The government’s 2010 Green paper, 21st Century Welfare, and the White Paper, Universal Credit: Welfare that Works, are both good examples of how such documents are instrumental in constructing a discourse about social security that attempts to justify a deepening of Thatcher’s brand of neoliberalisation.

The documents marginalise the structural causes of persistent and inevitable unemployment and of poverty due to government policy by attempting to linguistically transform these causes into individual pathologies of benefit “dependency” and “worklessness.” The conservative response to conservative creations and definitions is a raft of policy measures that are about punitive conditionality and removal of lifeline benefits.

The documents indicate a clear conflation of ideas about (a) simplification of the benefits system, (b) work “incentives” and (c) conditionality and sanctions, that has led many to conclude that the welfare “reforms” amount to an attack on the unemployed, sick and disabled at a time when they are least able to do anything about it. Conservative ideology has been disgracefully portrayed as offering new and innovative “solutions” to address Britain’s supposedly broken society, and as a means of offering restoration of “traditional values” and economic competitiveness. These are, of course, Tory catechisms.

Such Conservative ideological codifications have been translated as high unemployment, an increasingly higher cost of living, increasing and deepening poverty, growing social inequalities and punitive “welfare” cuts. These social events are not a consequence of Tory economic strategy: they ARE the Conservative economic strategy. Tories always create recession – Thatcher did, Major did in the early 90s, (see also Black Wednesday), and Cameron has managed a triple-dip recession. Their economic policies don’t ameliorate the consequences of their economic policies.

It’s a curiosity. Conservatives don’t seem to realise we re-translated their catechisms a long time ago. We know this is a socio-economic and cultural war being waged on the majority of citizens. Tory ideology – it’s a doctrinal manual giving basic instruction, usually by rote or repetition. We spotted a couple of centuries back that Conservatives don’t govern and serve: they rule. They are simply aristocratic remnants of the feudal era. As Andrew Dickie said:

“These new “garagiste/card-sharping/rent-seeking” baronage know the price of everything and the value of nothing, and their only skills are those of rip-off and plunder, and are a universe away from the real economy and real wealth creation, which will be the task of the serfs – as it always was.”

But they’ve been losing this war for a couple of hundred years. More than any other group of people, Conservatives are apparently oblivious to their own ideological history, and those who don’t know their history are doomed to… inflict it. (See That Tory revolution and the rise of neofeudalism.)

Recessions are terrible for ordinary people. They create enormous misery by throwing people out of work and out of their homes. How can a political ideology remain so silent about how to address human needs and alleviate suffering? Even worse, how can a political ideology result in recession and human suffering? And then deepen it? The answer is it enormously benefits a handful of conservative wealthy people.

Recession creates an “incentive” for private companies to exploit a desperate, oppressed and (deliberately) impoverished reserve army of labour. It also “justifies” the Tory ideological drive to dismantle the socialist state provisions and services established in the 1940s. The welfare post-war settlement comprised of essential safeguards to protect the vulnerable from the worst ravages of capitalism, along with a cross-party consensus on Keynesian economics. Those safeguards were fought for – we owe SO very much – our current freedoms – to Chartism, Trade Union pressure, and the sacrifice of thousands of ordinary people in two World Wars – without those, the old feudal set-up would never have changed. But the current conservative-led government has destroyed so much of the foundations of that freedom.

The Tories “care” for the well-being of the general public in the same way that McDonalds care for cattle.

1.75 million households in Great Britain have seen their incomes cut in the last three years as a result of benefit reforms, according to a new report by Oxfam and the New Policy Institute. We have witnessed the return of absolute poverty this past four years – the welfare state had seen an end to such severe deprivation. Until now.

The report – Multiple Cuts for the Poorest Families – delivers a warning that wide-ranging cuts are changing the shape of welfare support at a time when the rising cost of living is making it extremely difficult for families to meet their basic needs. As a result, disabled people, carers, job seekers and single parents are being pushed ever deeper into poverty.

Since last April, 400,000 households have been pushed further into poverty by cuts to housing benefit and/or council tax support – households affected by both of these cuts typically lose around £18 per week. These are costs they were previously deemed too poor to pay. Benefits were calculated originally to ensure people could meet basic living needs – food and fuel costs. This was amount was calculated on the assumption that full housing costs were also covered by benefit, and that people claiming benefit were exempt from rates/council tax. Of these affected families, 480,000 are seeing their benefits being cut twice as they are affected by more than one of the changes.

Whether a family is affected and by how much varies, based on a range
of factors which are largely out of the control of the individual. They
depend on council tax band, the cost of local housing, family size,
property size and of course, “appropriate” housing availability. But the changes apply irrespective of income.

Mark Goldring, Oxfam Chief Executive, said:

“This is the latest evidence of a perfect storm blowing massive holes in the safety net which is supposed to stop people falling further into poverty. We are already seeing people turning to food banks and struggling with rent, council tax, childcare and travel costs to job centres. At a time when the five richest families in the UK have the same wealth as the bottom 20 percent of the population it is unacceptable that the poorest are paying such a heavy price.”

Oxfam is calling on the Government to determine what the absolute minimum level of support should be for households in different circumstances. It must be high enough to mean that those reliant upon it are not forced to go without. People must be able to meet their survival needs. This is supposed to be a “civilised” first world liberal democracy, isn’t it?

When someone is struggling to meet their basic needs, it’s almost impossible to be motivated to do anything else, even if it’s the solution to their problem. And no amount of deplorable cruelty, such as the Tory “new conditionality” and “incentives” – the terrible and target-driven benefit sanction regime, which entails the withholding of lifeline benefits of the very poorest for up to three years, for example – will change that.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a good reference point for discussion about the obstacles many people in poverty face when trying to provide for their families, in addition to themselves. But whether you recognise Maslow’s framework or not, individuals and families on low-income need to be safe, secure in a home or adequate shelter, financially stable, and possess basic emotional and physical health.

The lower the needs in the hierarchy, the more fundamental they are to survival and the more a person will tend to abandon the higher needs in order to pay attention to sufficiently meeting the lower needs.

Conservative policies seem to be designed to distract people from their “higher” needs and potential by threatening their lower, basic survival needs. This restricts growth and development in human beings, destroys human potential and so stifles social evolution. And no amount of dishonest rhetoric will ever justify this intentionally inflicted suffering on a population from a government.

Many thanks to Robert Livingstone for his brilliant pictures

Techniques of neutralisation

The new new poor law

Freedom of Information tribunal on benefit deaths – April 23

April 22, 2014April 22, 2016 · 11 Comments ·

That we live in times when a government can withhold information about the impact of its policies on sick and disabled people, the poorest and the vulnerable is extraordinary, and certainly reflects the fact that we are no longer a democracy.

We knew in 2012 that an average of 73 sick and disabled people were dying after they had their lifeline benefits withdrawn. But now the government refuses to provide us with information about deaths since then. It’s my own belief that this refusal is because the truth will be horrifying and that even those that supported benefit cuts originally will raise their objections when they learn the truth. We cannot claim to be a civilised society when our government policy is killing some of our most vulnerable citizens.

Well done Mike Sivier, for standing up against an increasingly authoritarian government, and good luck from your fellow campaigners.

From Vox Political: Freedom of Information tribunal on benefit deaths – April 23.

“The only way the public can judge whether this has worked, or whether more must be done to prevent unnecessary deaths, is by examining the mortality statistics, but these have been withheld”.

Yes, just like the toxic clause 99 – mandatory review – silences those wishing to appeal, also hiding evidence from the public eye. The Tories are showing form here.

In a so-called democracy, ALL campaigning is both essential and part of an inbuilt safeguard against authoritarianism.

Vox Political: Case proven? Government stays away from benefit deaths tribunal

The poverty of responsibility and the politics of blame – part 2

March 23, 2014March 11, 2016 · 36 Comments ·

Social security came about precisely because we evolved to recognise a need for a social safety net to protect citizens when they encountered economic difficulties, because we learned last century that we are all potentially vulnerable, and that this isn’t anything to do with a person’s characteristics – ordinary people are not to blame for socio-economic circumstances, or for becoming ill and disabled. Unemployment, accident and illness can happen to anyone.

In 1992, Peter Lilley, the somewhat salacious Tory department of social security secretary said he had “got a little list” of people to stereotype as scroungers. Lilley amused the Conservative Party conference with a plan to “close down the something for nothing society”, delivered in the form of a parody of the Lord High Executioner’s “little list” song from The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan:

“I’ve got a little list / Of benefit offenders who I’ll soon be rooting out / And who never would be missed / They never would be missed. / There’s those who make up bogus claims / In half a dozen names / And councillors who draw the dole / To run left-wing campaigns / They never would be missed / They never would be missed. / There’s young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing queue / And dads who won’t support the kids / of ladies they have … kissed / And I haven’t even mentioned all those sponging socialists / I’ve got them on my list / And there’s none of them be missed / There’s none of them be missed….”

I remember that subsequently, Spitting Image portrayed Lilley as a commandant at a Nazi concentration camp and commentator Mark Lawson of The Independent said that if Lilley remained as Secretary of State for Social Security, it would be “equivalent to Mary Whitehouse becoming madam of a brothel.”

The social groups who featured on that hate list are some of the poorest and most disempowered in our society: lone parents, mental health service users, refugees and asylum seekers, the unemployed, and young and homeless people. They have few, if any advocates in parliament on the right, and apparently, few votes are to be lost by attacking them.

Such are the Tory prejudiced, divisive and self-serving attacks on welfare and the purposely devalued social groups it supports. This punitive approach to welfare reform generally has the opposite effect to that promised by Tories such as Lilley, creating additional bureaucratic costs and waste, and setting one group against another. This is a deliberate undermining of social cohesion, cooperation and collective responsibility. It isolates many, who by common consent need support. This approach is also designed to deter those people with legitimate entitlement to support, and to justify an unnecessary and inappropriate harassment, stigmatising and denigrating those it should be helping.

Welfare is the provision of a minimal level of well-being and social support for all citizens. In other words, it was conceived to alleviate absolute poverty and meet basic survival needs. This is based on a model of human developmental psychology focusing on the recognised stages of growth in humans, and is founded on the central idea that the most basic level of needs must be met before the individual may be motivated to fulfil any other needs and betterment. As a minimal condition for making choices and being responsible, people must have all of their basic physiological needs met. For example, a homeless person’s job choices might be constrained by the lack of an address for correspondence or even a place to take a shower. Understanding such humanist concepts was central to the development equality policies and human rights.

The welfare state expands on these concepts to include services such as universal healthcare. In most developed countries welfare is provided by the government. Benefits are based on a compulsory supra-governmental insurance contribution system, the National Insurance system in the UK was established in 1911.

The Beveridge Report in 1942, essentially recommended a national, compulsory, flat rate insurance scheme which would combine health care, unemployment and retirement benefits. After its victory in the United Kingdom general election, 1945 the Labour Party pledged to eradicate the five Giant Evils, and undertook policy measures to provide universal support for the people of the United Kingdom “from the cradle to the grave.”

Social Security policy resulted in the development of what was considered to be a state responsibility towards its citizens, and a citizen responsibility towards each other. Welfare is a social protection that is necessary. There was also an embedded doctrine of fostering equity in the policy.

In addition to the central services of education, health, unemployment and sickness allowances, the welfare state also involved increasing redistributive taxation, increasing regulation of industry, food, and housing, better safety regulations, weights and measures controls. The principle of health care “free at the point of use” became a pivotal idea of the welfare state, which later Conservative governments, who were critical of this, were unable to reverse. Prescription charges were introduced by the Conservative Government in 1952.

The Welfare State period lasted from around 1945 until the Thatcher government began to privatise public institutions in the 1980s, although some features remain today, including compulsory National Insurance contributions, and the provision of old age pensions. It was Conservative governments that introduced constraints to eligibility for benefits via means testing.

The Labour Party won a clear victory in 1945 based on their programme of building provision for citizens with the Welfare State. However, since the 1980s the Conservative government had begun to reduce provisions in England: for example, free eye tests for all were stopped and prescription charges for drugs have constantly risen since they were first introduced by the Conservatives in 1951.

During the Thatcher era, the English High Tory journalist T. E. Utley, wrote that the welfare state was “an arrangement under which we all largely cease to be responsible for our own behaviour and in return become responsible for everyone else’s.” However, even people who erroneously believe that the present welfare system is corrosive to individual responsibility accept the urgency of preventing hunger and destitution. Yet the Tories have persisted with their pre-Victorian rhetoric of the “undeserving, idle poor.”

There is a moral as well as a logical absurdity in this Conservative claim, tied up with notions of citizenship. It’s a continual contradiction of principle within Conservative ideology that small state logic applies to the most vulnerable, who are left to the worst ravages of “market forces” without state protection, but such laissez faire principles don’t extend to the wealthy. Conservatives systematically fail to correct market failures in the interests of the public, but they do intervene to protect the interests of the minority of wealthy citizens. Similarly, replacing state run public services with profit incentivised private providers is an intervention. These partisan interferences distort the “market mechanism,” contrary to Tory claims.

As Ed Miliband noted, when Cameron declared We are raising more money for the rich:

“David Cameron and George Osborne believe the only way to persuade millionaires to work harder is to give them more money.’

‘But they also seem to believe that the only way to make you (ordinary people) work harder is to take money away.”

So “market forces” are adjusted and fixed to benefit the wealthy and penalise the poor.

The sociologist T.H. Marshall wrote in 1965, “it is generally agreed that… the overall responsibility for the welfare of the citizens must remain with the state.” Marshall’s own concept of “social citizenship” – which put forward a new model of citizenship based on economic and social (as well as political) rights – was characteristic of this collective approach to social welfare after 1945. There was a clear and optimistic sense of rebuilding a better Britain.

It’s worth noting that the Universal Declaration on Human Rights recognises socio-economic human rights, such as the right to education, right to housing, right to adequate standard of living, right to health and the right to science and culture. Economic, social and cultural rights are recognised and protected in several international and regional human rights instruments. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) is the primary international legal source of economic, social and cultural rights. All member states have a legal obligation to respect, protect and fulfil economic, social and cultural rights of the public and are expected to take “progressive action” towards their fulfilment. The current government have made it clear that they hold such rights in high contempt, and in terms of socio-economic policy, they are driven by an extremely regressive rather than progressive ideology.

The social citizenship model remained unchallenged until the emergence of Margaret Thatcher as Conservative Party leader (1975) and then Prime Minister (1979). Thatcherism promised low taxes, less state intervention, and lower levels of public spending, Thatcher introduced cuts in spending on housing and stricter eligibility rules for benefits. This was the Conservative beginning of the end of collective provision.

The Tories have steadily eroded our provision for the poorest and the most vulnerable citizens – our collective safety net, and their rhetoric is about erasing our evolved, civilised collective approach from our social memory. We are being steadily de-civilised, our historical, collective learning and social history is being re-written, and the Tories would have us turn into a society of dog eat dog psychopaths if they get their way.

The Tories have a cynical view of human nature, and presume people will always act out of self-interest, and whilst they may well avoid disappointment, Conservatives will never understand people by assuming that is all that motivates them. History has demonstrated that when human beings are given the chance to meet their fundamental needs and express themselves fully, they are, by nature, interested in the well-being of society and all its members.

I don’t believe that we have limited ability in terms of human endeavour to achieve positive change. Conservatives see the traditional order as enduring and sacred: a trust to be passed from generation to generation. They see the hierarchy that they always engineer as the result of “natural merit.” To be a Tory is to believe this “natural order” of things.

Survival of the wealthiest

Yet Conservative ideology directs an openly hierarchical society and promotes social inequalities, both materially and in terms of social esteem. Tories believe that a “good” society is one where people would simply accept their place. And that is wherever the Tories place them – “The rich man at his castle, the poor man at his gate.”

There are strong links between the right wing idea of “competitive individualism,” laissez faire capitalism, Social Darwinism, eugenics, nationalism and fascism/authoritarianism. Social Darwinists generally argue that the “strong” should see their wealth and power increase while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease.

Most of these views emphasise competition between individuals in a laissez-faire capitalism context; but similar concepts have motivated ideas of eugenics, racism, imperialism fascism, Nazism and struggle between national or racial groups. Eugenics is state interference in the engineering of the “survival of the fittest (wealthiest)”. That is happening here in the UK, with Tory policies like the welfare “reforms”, which are extremely punitive towards sick and disabled citizens in particular – all too often denying them the means of meeting basic survival needs. The Tories think that wealth is a measure of virtue, and that poor people deserve poverty.

Welfare isn’t simply a matter of societal rights but also a matter of life and death. People are dying, and are being made homeless, we are seeing a massive increase in food poverty, malnutrition and people are committing suicide because they are so desperate. Yet the Tories continue to present the victim-blame script. It’s a script that is used almost always to reinforce white supremacist and patriarchal power structures.

And it’s a script that plays off a weakness of our Western worldview, our inclination to assign negative moral value to those who suffer – what psychologists call the “just world fallacy .”

It is often said that you can judge a society on how it treats its weaker members, and in that respect the current government have failed so many. What kind of society is it that allows over a million young people to struggle on the dole, stifling their potential and their creativity, instead of spending the money on helping them to find meaningful work – and then blames them?

What kind of society allows a government to re-brand unemployment and poverty as personal failure, when we know that this government’s policies have caused unemployment to rise, just like every other Tory government. Thatcher at least admitted she had intentionally created high unemployment to keep inflation low, however, that “strategy” failed and we had high inflation and high unemployment. Conservative governments always create a large, disposable army of labour, which they like to keep as desperate as possible to drive down wages, working conditions and to stultify collective bargaining.

Raising unemployment is an extremely effective way of reducing the strength of the working classes, and what is being engineered in Marxist terms is a crisis of capitalism which creates a reserve army of labour and has allowed Tory donors – the capitalist class – to make very high profits.

What kind of society allows sick and disabled people to be harassed – where they are called in for crude, tick-box tests to prove that they are “really” ill or disabled, one where that “assessment” is designed purposefully to remove their lifeline benefits, one where most are found “fit for work” with many dying a few weeks or months later? And when people succeed in appealing wrongful decisions, they are almost immediately sent for a reassessment?

This is happening here in the UK. The Tory welfare “reforms” are extremely punitive towards people who can’t find work and sick and disabled citizens, all too often denying them the means to meet basic survival needs. We urgently need to overturn this by forcefully challenging the Tory myths that poison any attempts at progressive change. Human suffering, loss of dignity and death may have many facets, but all of them are equally unforgiving, and when imposed by humans on fellow humans, all are equally unforgivable.

Some Tory benefit myths addressed:

Mythbuster: Tall tales about welfare reform – Red pepper
Voters ‘brainwashed by Tory welfare myths’, shows new poll – The Independent
Welfare Myth Number One – Benefits Are Expensive – Dr Simon Duffy
Who really benefits from welfare – Dr Simon Duffy
Where the cuts are targeted – Dr Simon Duffy
The myth of the “welfare scrounger” – The New Statesman

Pictures courtesy of Robert Livingstone

The commercialisation and undemocratising of the NHS: the commodification of patients

March 15, 2014April 17, 2016 · 13 Comments ·

Last September, I wrote an article entitled: Jobseekers are being coerced into experimental drug trials dressed up as “job opportunities” .

I reported that David Cameron had announced that it was: “simply a waste to have a health service like the NHS and not use the data it generated. Let me be clear, this does not threaten privacy”, he reassured us, “it doesn’t mean anyone can look at your health records, but it does mean using anonymous data to make new medical breakthroughs”.

Cameron often inadvertently signposts the coming of a diabolical lie with the phrase “let me be clear”, as we know. We also know that so-called anonymisation of data offers no protection at all to identities and personal details. Campaigners described the plan as an”unprecedented threat” to confidentiality, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt says, rather worryingly, that it will be a boon to research.

It’s common knowledge that many Coalition MPs and Peers are heavily financially invested in pharmaceutical and health care companies. Over 200 parliamentarians have recent past or present financial links with, and vested interests in companies involved in healthcare and all were allowed to vote on the Health and Social Care Bill. The Tories have normalised corruption and made it almost entirely legal. Our democracy and civic life are now profoundly compromised as a result of corporate and financial power colonising the State, and vice versa.

The Health and Social Care Bill, 2012, has a telling insert: The Secretary of State’s duty as to research, which is “In exercising functions in relation to the health service, the Secretary of State must promote – (a) research on matters relevant to the health service, and (b) the use in the health service of evidence obtained from research”.

And also very worryingly: (1) The National Patient Safety Agency is abolished. (2) The National Patient Safety Agency (Establishment and Constitution) Order 2001 (S.I. 2001/1743) is revoked. (3) In section 13 of the NHS Redress Act 2006 (scheme authority’s duties of co-operation), omit subsection (2)

So we must ponder just how coincidental it is that Jobseekers are now being coerced into experimental drug trials, or risk benefit sanctions, as the trials are being dressed up as “job opportunities”.

People claiming Jobseekers Allowance while searching for new employment are being forced to accept ever worsening working conditions or join exploitative Government work programmes in desperate attempts to survive, as our civilised social safety nets and lifeline benefits are being torn away by a draconian and authoritarian Government.

The rising number of unemployed and underemployed citizens of the UK are having their desperation to survive exploited, enticed into zero hour contracts, workfare and now, clinical trials. My revulsion at this Government is at an all time absolute.

Jobseekers using the Government’s job website – the Universal JobMatch – have been receiving multiple messages from the service inviting them to apply for jobs, only to find that these “employment opportunities” are actually clinical trials.

Drug companies are also to be given provisional approval to treat the severely ill with new drugs and use the data in later licence applications In other words, our government is permitting pharmaceutical companies to experiment using severely ill people.

Behind the scheme is a Tory concern that the UK is no longer a favourite location for the drug companies to develop and trial new medicines – “Making Britain the best place in the world for science, research and development is a central part of our long-term economic plan,” said Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt.

George Freeman, Conservative MP for Mid-Norfolk, who has long campaigned for the scheme, said: “it would benefit small biotech companies and charities, which may have breakthrough drugs that they cannot afford to take all the way through the long and expensive regulatory process – increasingly the source of innovative medicines which are then bought up by big pharma.

They would get their drugs into NHS patients, hopefully giving them positive data which would attract investors for the large-scale clinical trials.”

So not this is not actually about patient welfare, as Hunt had initially claimed. If it were, then there would have been no need for the abolition of The National Patient Safety Agency, or the revoking of The National Patient Safety Agency.

In 2011, an influential report written by Colin Haslam, Pauline Gleadle and Nick Tsitsianis entitled UK bio-pharma: Innovation, re-invention and capital at risk concludes by presenting the case for innovative short and medium term government-led policy initiatives for the sector and highlights four central areas in which the current bio-pharma business model could evolve. The study concludes by presenting the case for innovative short and medium term government-led policy.

The acknowledgement reads: “in order to complete our research work we have obtained the support of a number of senior executives in private and publicly quoted SME bio-pharma companies and also industry experts in big-pharma. We would like to thank this group for giving up their time to be interviewed for this research project.”

One of the key recommendations of the report is: access to NHS clinical datasets to provide a significant knowledge resource to strategically drive UK drug discovery.

The report is primarily concerned with “the evolution of the bio-pharma business model.”

Reuters reports that the UK is currently one of the only markets in the world in which pharmaceutical companies are free to set prices for their drugs. At the moment, the UK Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS) regulates profits, not prices on sales to the NHS, whilst the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) assesses if drugs are cost effective.

However, this is set to change with the introduction of the “Programme for Government” document indicating that the coalition would “reform NICE and move to a system of value-based pricing”. This would lead to changes in the way that drug prices are determined.

The Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry has stated that it will be keeping an open mind ahead of talks with the government.

“Valued-based pricing is one way of doing it,” said spokesman Richard Ley. “We are not opposed to the principle. It is a question of how it is achieved to get it right.” By that, he means how to make it very profitable, of course.

“The regulatory process is inefficient,” according to one leading biotech investor.From a business side of things these products stop being developed in the UK when they get into later stage because the UK is not a very good market for pharmaceuticals.”

Drug companies have for years strongly criticised the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), the UK pricing regulator, which they believe is blocking new and innovative medicines by complicated approval processes and a heavy emphasis on cost control.

Steve Bates, chief executive of the Biotech Industry Association, said: “It’s fantastic and very important that there is a new designation and an “all hands on deck” approach.

“The Coalition Government is determined to secure and expand the UK’s position as an international hub for innovation, medical science and research and in the last 12 months has generated more than £1 billion industry and private sector investment. The Prime Minister will use his visit to the US to meet with CEOs and senior figures from leading pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson, Baxter, Covance and Pfizer. The meeting will focus on the UK’s life sciences sector and initiatives such a genomics and dementia research”.

A key policy advisory group – The Ministerial Industry Strategy Group – is co-chaired by the Secretary of State for Health and the Chairman of the British Pharma Group, and aims to promote a “strong and profitable UK-based bio-pharmaceutical industry capable of sustained research”.

The Deregulation Bill is wide-ranging in scope. It’s when we look at what it might mean for the NHS that we see why so much of the contents are very worrying.

This Bill imposes a new duty on non-economic regulators to promote economic growth, for example. What exactly would that mean for the Care Quality Commission? How would the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency, which regulates the pharmaceutical industry, promote growth?

The bill also imposes a new “growth duty” on watchdogs as well as regulators. Currently, such bodies exist to monitor particular sectors – like health – and take action in the best interests of the public according to the relevant law.

But Clause 58 of the Deregulation Bill puts a responsibility on regulators in England so that when they take regulatory action it has to be with regard to “promoting economic growth”, and not to promoting the best interests of the public. The Bill was quietly tabled in draft by Ken Clarke and Oliver Letwin, and didn’t Letwin say back in 2004 that the “NHS will not exist within five years of a Conservative election victory”?

Regulation evolved to “help build a more fair society and even save lives”, but regulation is often considered a hindrance by business. So this is all about The Coalition making it easier for big profits to be made out of the NHS by private healthcare multinationals. True to Tory form, it’s another policy which is designed to facilitate the exploitation of the vulnerable by the wealthy.

It’s also worth noting that last week, two of the government’s top health and work advisers stated they believed in the merits of “prioritising NHS treatment for working people”, and this needs to be seriously discussed.

If that isn’t further clear evidence of the relentless Tory drive towards economic reductionism and determinism, I don’t know what is.

I need not go on to discuss the religion of the Pope or the toilet habits of bears, I suppose.

Further reading:

Profit before human need – “The drug companies will get away with whatever they can get away with within the law to look after the interests of their shareholders. But they couldn’t get away with these things were it not for members of my profession being willing to collude with them and put patients in second place”: unfavourable results from medical trials are being withheld, MPs warn

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The New New Poor Law

October 3, 2013December 5, 2017 · 55 Comments ·

A society with inequalities is and always has been the rational product of Conservative Governments. History shows this to be true. Tory ideology is built upon a very traditional and somewhat feudal vision of a “grand scheme of things”, a “natural order”, which is extremely hierarchical.

The New Poor Law of 1834 was based on the “principle of less eligibility,” which stipulated that the condition of the “able-bodied pauper” on relief be less “eligible” – that is, less desirable, less favourable – than the condition of the very poorest independent labourer. “Less-eligibility” meant not only that “the pauper” receive less by way of relief than the labourer did from his wages but also that he receive it in such a way (in the workhouse) that made pauperism (being in absolute poverty) less respectable than work – to stigmatise it. Thus the labourer would be discouraged from lapsing into a state of “dependency” on poor relief and the pauper would be “encouraged” to work.

The Poor Law “made work pay”, in other words.

The Poor Law Commission report, presented in March 1834, was largely the work of two of the Commissioners, Nassau Senior and Edwin Chadwick. The report took the outline that poverty was essentially caused by the indigence of the character and morality of individuals rather than arising because of inequality and the prevailing political, economic and social conditions. The general view that informed the New Poor Law was that: “Paupers claim relief regardless of his merits: large families get most, which encourages improvident marriages; women claim relief for bastards, which encourages immorality; labourers have no incentive to work; employers keep wages artificially low as workers are subsidised from the poor rate.”

I am sure that the commissioners have descendants that now write for the Daily Mail.

The Victorian era has made a deep impact upon Tory thinking, which had always tended towards nostalgia and tradition. Margaret Thatcher said that during the 1800s, “not only did our country become great internationally, also so much advance was made in this country … As our people prospered so they used their independence and initiative to prosper others, not compulsion by the state”.

There she makes an inference to the twin peaks of callous laissez-faire and the mythical and largely implied “trickle down” effect. Yet history taught us only too well that both ideas were inextricably linked with an unforgivable and catastrophic increase in destitution, poverty and suffering for so many, for the purpose of extending profit for a few.

Writing in the 1840s, Engels observed that Manchester was a source of immense profit for a few capitalists. Yet none of this significantly improved the lives of those who created this wealth. Engels documents the medical and scientific reports that show how human life was stunted and deformed by the repetitive, back breaking work in The Condition Of The Working Class In England. Constantly in his text, we find Engels raging at those responsible for the wretched lives of the workers. He observed the horror of death by starvation, mass alienation, gross exploitation and unbearable, unremitting, grinding poverty.

The great Victorian empire was built while the completely unconscientious, harsh and punitive attitude of the Government further impoverished and caused distress to a great many. It was a Government that created poverty and also made it somehow dishonourable to be poor. While Britain became great, much of the population lived in squalid, disease-ridden and overcrowded slums, and endured the most appalling living conditions. Many poor families lived crammed in single-room accommodations without sanitation and proper ventilation. That’s unless they were unlucky enough to become absolutely destitute and face the horrors of the workhouse. It was a country of startling contrasts. New building and affluent development went hand in hand with so many people living in the worst conditions imaginable.

Michael Gove has written: “For some of us Victorian costume dramas are not merely agreeable ways to while away Sunday evening but enactments of our inner fantasies … I don’t think there has been a better time in our history” in “Alas, I was born far too late for my inner era”.

A better time for what, precisely? Child labour, desperation? Prostitution? Low life expectancy, disease, illiteracy, workhouses? Or was it the deferential protestant work ethic reserved only for the poor, the pre-destiny of the aristocracy, and “the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate”?

In a speech to the Confederarion of British Industry, (CBI) George Osborne argued that both parties in the Coalition had revitalised themselves by revisiting their 19th-century roots. He should have stayed there.

When Liberal Democrat David Laws gave his first speech to the Commons as the secretary to the Treasury, Tory MP Edward Leigh said: “I welcome the return to the Treasury of stern, unbending Gladstonian Liberalism”, and Laws recognised the comparison to the Liberal prime minister, and said: “I hope that this is not only Gladstonian Liberalism, but liberalism tinged with the social liberalism about which my party is so passionate”.

The Coalition may certainly be described as “stern and unbending”, if one is feeling mild and generous. I usually prefer to describe them as “retro-authoritarian”.

We know that the 19th-century Conservative party would have lost the election had it not been rescued by Benjamin Disraeli, a “one-nation” Tory who won working-class votes only because he recognised the need and demand for essential social reform. Laissez-faire, competitive individualism and social Darwinism gave way to an interventionist, collectivist and more redistributive, egalitarian Keynesian paradigm.

There’s something that this Government have completely missed: the welfare state arose precisely because of the social problems and dire living conditions created in the 17th, 18th, 19th and early 20th centuryies The 19th century also saw the beginnings of the Labour Party. By pushing against the oppressions of the Conservative Victorian period, and by demanding reform, they built the welfare state and the public services that the current Government is now so intent on dismantling.

The UK Government’s welfare “reform” programme represents the greatest changes to welfare since its inception. These changes will impact on the poorest and the most vulnerable people in our society. It will further alienate already marginalised social groups. In particular, women rely on state support to a greater extent than men and will be disproportionately and adversely affected by benefit cuts. Disabled people even more so.

Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith (who didn’t manage to lead his party to an election due to losing a motion of no confidence) is largely responsible for this blitzkreig of apparent moral rigour, a right wing permutation of “social justice” rhetoric and harsh Victorian orthodoxy. Work is being conflated with social justice and social mobility. However, people in work are also queuing at food banks because they can’t meet their basic needs. Reducing welfare simply creates a reserve army of labour that also serves to drive the value of wages down. It creates a downward spiral of living standrads for everyone.

The Government asserts that its welfare “reform” strategy is aimed at breaking the cycle of “worklessness” and dependency on the welfare system in the UK’s poorest families. Poor Law rhetoric. There’s no such thing as “worklessness”, it’s simply a blame apportioning word, made up by the Tories to hide the fact that they have destroyed the employment market, as they always do. It’s happened under every Tory government. At least Thatcher’s administration were honest about it. Her government admitted that they were prepared to tolerate high levels of unemployment in order to bring inflation down. Instead the UK ended up with high unemployment, low wages AND high inflation. The end result was recession.

The “reforms” (cuts) consist of 39 individual changes to welfare payments, eligibility, sanctions and timescales for payment and are intended to save the exchequer around £18 billion. How remarkable that the Department for Work and Pensions claim that such cuts to welfare spending will reduce poverty. I have never yet heard of a single case of someone who is poor actually benefitting from someone else reducing an amount from what little money they have. You can’t punish people out of poverty by making them more poor. That idea is simply absurd and cruel.

There’s nothing quite so diabolical as the shock of the abysmally expected: the brisk and brazen Tory lie, grotesquely untrue. Such reckless and Orwellian rhetoric permeates Government placations for the “reforms”.

The “reforms” were hammered through despite widespread protest, and when the House of Lords said “no“, the Tories deployed a rarely used and ancient parliamentary device, claimed “financial privilege” asserting that only the Commons had the right to make decisions on bills that have large financial implications. Determined to get their own way, despite the fact no-one welcomed their policy, the Tories took the rare jackbooted, authoritarian step to direct peers they have no constitutional right to challenge the Commons’ decisions further. Under these circumstances, what could possibly go right?

That marked the start of a very antidemocratic slippery slope.

The punitive approach to poverty didn’t work during the last century, it unfortnately simply stripped disadvanted citizens of their dignity and diverted people, for a while, from recognising the real cause of poverty. It isn’t about individual inadequacies: poor people do not cause poverty, but rather, Conservative Governments do via their hierarchical worldview, ideological incentives, policies and economic decision-making.

Conservative by name and retrogressive by nature.

This was taken from a larger piece of work: welfare reforms and the language of flowers: the Tory gender agenda

The link between Trade Unionism and equality

Follow the Money: Tory Ideology is all about handouts to the wealthy that are funded by the poor

The Poverty of Responsibility and the Politics of Blame

Many thanks to Robert Livingstone

Austerity is a con, the Tories are authoritarians and they conflated the fact-value distinction.

August 4, 2013February 17, 2019 · 42 Comments ·

One of the first things I realised as an undergraduate is that social “sciences” aren’t. My very first essay was on the topic of the “scientific” basis of sociology and its methodology, and my reading took me deep into the labyrinth of history and philosophy of science. I concluded that science itself isn’t as “scientific” as we are led to believe, let alone a discipline that aims at the study of inter-subjectively constructed human behaviours in a social context. I’ve been attempting to rescue anyone that has succumbed to the mythical, positivist, fraudulent chimera called “objectivity” ever since.

As a critical interpretivist, I believe that social reality is not “out there” waiting to be discovered: we are constructing and reconstructing it meaningfully. However, politically, there’s been a marked shift away from understanding the lived experiences of real people in context: a systematic dehumanisation. The Tories have depopulated social policy. This is a characteristic of authoritarianism, and other hallmarks include stigmatisation of social groups, moral disengagement, moral exclusion, impunity, and a societal “bystander apathy”. (See also Allport’s ladder, which is a measure of the manifestation of prejudice and discrimination in a Society. It’s also an explanation of the stages of genocide, and how the Holocaust happened.)

And before anyone invokes Reductio ad Hitlerum or Godwin’s Law, I will point out in advance that it would be unreasonable where such a comparison is appropriate and reasonable, as it is in this case. (For example, in discussions of the dangers involved in eugenics, persecution and stigmatisation of any social group, or tolerance of racist and nationalist political parties, and propaganda campaigns used to promote and justify any of these). In such a context, the dismissal of someone’s proposition on this basis becomes its own form of association fallacy and Ad Hominem attack.

Upwards and onwards then.

Authoritarian legitimacy is often based on emotional appeal, especially the identification of the regime as a “necessary evil” to combat easily recognisable societal problems, such as economic crises.

Authoritarian regimes commonly emerge in times of political, economic, or social instability, and because of this, especially during the initial period of authoritarian rule, such Governments may have broad public support. Many citizens won’t immediately recognise authoritarianism, especially in formerly liberal and democratic countries. In the UK, there has been an incremental process of un-democratising, permeated by a wide variety of deliberative practices which have added to the problem of recognising it for what it is.

Authoritarian leaders typically prefer and encourage a population that is uninformed and apathetic about politics, with no desire to participate in the political process. Authoritarian Governments often work via propaganda to cultivate such public attitudes, by fostering a sense of a deep divide between social groups, society and Government, they tend to generate prejudice between social groups, and repress expressions of dissent, using media control, law amendments or quietly editing existing laws.

Many of us are unaware of the sheer extent to which this is going on. George Lakoff, researcher and cognitive linguist, said: “Conservatives have set up an incredible infrastructure. It’s a vast, unseen communication system and it’s very effective. This has been pointed out over and over to progressives and few seem to recognise the danger. They think it’s just propaganda and so they ignore it.” cognitive linguist. Lakoff is right. The deep and hidden state that the government have created is founded on nudge, ‘strategic communications’, data analytics and psychographic profiling. It includes the use of military grade psyops, aimed at changing people’s perceptions and decision making., with the ultimate aim of maintaining the status quo. This has profoundly perverted our democracy.

Whenever I listen to the Tories in Parliamentary debate, I’m reminded of the fact/value distinction – the alleged difference between descriptive statements (about what is) and prescriptive or normative statements (about what ought to be). Facts are one sort of thing, values another sort of thing, and the former never determine the latter. That’s the idea, anyway. But it isn’t considered to be very clear-cut when it comes to the “social sciences” such as politics and economics (although I would go further and propose that it’s not so clear-cut in the physical sciences, either. (Please see footnote).

The fact/value dichotomy was associated with the doctrine of logical positivism, that arose out of a supreme attempt at concept control. Beginning in the eighteenth century, some of the Enlightenment thinkers had declared that values (such as moral obligations) could not be derived from facts.

The verification principle, which is at the heart of the logical positivist doctrine, is a form of vigorous scientific anti-realism – restricting science to (empirically verifiable) observable aspects of nature. Inductive reasoning makes broad generalisations from specific observations. Such observations can be used to make “probability guesses” based on deductive reasoning.

This applies to many theoretical claims, including the beginning of time, gravity, the existence of matter (one of which is the Big Bang Theory), quantum events, the age of the Universe, the age of the Earth, the origin of the Moon, and the occurrence of other magical events in the past.

But the verification principle is itself unverifiable.

Values are involved in the very identification or determination of what is “fact”. As Einstein once said: “the theory tells you what you may observe.”

Similarly, in social research, the area of study is intentionally selected. There are problems related to the connection between observation and interpretation also. Perhaps every observation is an interpretation, since “facts” are seen through a lens of perceptions, pre-conceptions and ideology. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation choose to study poverty. Cynical Iain Duncan Smith simply changes the definition of it.

Tory values. How else can we explain the flagrantes et virulentes Tory political rhetoric manifested in media-wide chanting for the blood and souls of the poor for the sake of “austerity”? There are no “facts” that can ever justify the persecution of a social group.

All of the knowledge and understanding we possess, whether of “facts”, values, or anything else, is contained within our consciousness, as structured by intentionality. There isn’t an “objective”, mind-independent yardstick – we cannot step outside our consciousness to compare our ideas with anything else “out there” (please see footnote). We cannot experience our consciousness independently of intentionality, and we do have a degree of free-will and moral agency.

This means we have to face our morality, take responsibility for our ethical decisions and own our value-judgements. Rather than disguise them as “facts”, as the pseudo-positivist Tories frequently do.

It’s truly remarkable that Tories loudly attribute the capacity for moral agency to people claiming benefits, for example, formulating sanctions and “assessments” to both shape and question the morality of the poor constantly, yet stand outside of any obligation to morality themselves. It’s always someone else’s responsibility, never theirs.

Any claim to value-freedom in decision-making does not and cannot exempt us from moral responsibility, or justify moral indifference.

The consciousness of each of person is situated, rather than existing independently. A situation is an intentional act (or action) taken in social contexts as we experience them. Our understanding of our situation is embedded in conversational language. We are continually engaged in dialogues with other persons – “discourse”. Dialogue and narrative are how we make sense of the world.

It strikes me that in politics it all comes down to language. Those who can shape a controversial issue in the terms they prefer have the advantage in shaping public opinion. It’s called “framing”. Such concept control is a way of rigging the debate: You must talk about this controversial issue using our categories, terms, and definitions.

As a result, those who have the power to declare the terms of discourse have the power to determine the outcome of the debate, and furthermore, they have the power to determine what is accepted as “true or false”.

Really, for the Tories, it’s nothing more than linguistic bullying. You only need listen to Prime Minister’s Questions to understand this. For the Tories, both facts and values are irrelevant, despite their fake claims to fake empirical statistical data, all that matters is their ideological narrative. As a Society, we really need to pay much more attention to detail.

And we really need to challenge more. In terms of evidence, the Tories have not provided any verification that any of their policies work. There’s a growing body of rich qualitative data that reliably and consistently informs us that those policies do not work as claimed by the Tory-led Coalition, and the sheer volume of those accounts also informs us that this data is both credible and valid. So why are the Government so determined to ignore it?

Value-laden observation: their “theory” tells them what they may observe.

I’m not particularly au fait with economic theory, I just about grasp the differences between Keynes and Hayek, but I do know that after the British depression of the 1920s, Hayek promoted the idea that private investment, rather than Government spending, would promote sustainable growth. However, Keynes proposed that the Government’s job is to increase its own spending to offset the decline in public spending – that is by running a deficit to whatever extent necessary. To cut Government spending is a completely damaging policy in an economic slump. Keynes’s message was: you cannot cut your way out of a slump; you have to grow your way out. Eighty years on and the Tories have still not fully learned the lesson. Well, they probably have, but the fact is they simply don’t care enough to apply it.

I do understand ideology, and the case for austerity is not founded on economic principles, but rests entirely on social conservative ideology, with their wide embrace of neoliberalist principles.

The repetition of a lie ad nauseum is based on the idea Goebbels had – that repeated lies will somehow convince people that they are true. Cameron was busted when he repeatedly told the lie “We are paying down the debt.” Despite being rumbled, the Coalition have stuck with this lie doggedly. The bonus of the lie is that it may be used (and has been, repeatedly) to undermine the Opposition’s economic credibility, and the Tories particularly delight in the lie that it’s all Labour’s fault because they “overspent” as it further justifies austerity measures and starving public services of Government funding, with our paid taxes, as well as stripping our welfare provision and public services away.

The Tories have carefully planned these measures for a long time, and attacks on our human rights and public services can be seen in plans and policies of previous Tory administrations. Such attacks on the most marginalised and vulnerable citizens and the undermining and steady destruction of social programs and services that may offer any support are an integral part of Tory ideological grammar.

A leading British academic concludes that the last Labour Government has been tarnished by spin and propaganda, while the US treasury secretary follows Gordon Brown’s lead. Jack Lew, the relatively new US treasury secretary, wrote recently in the Financial Times: “While long-term fiscal policy requires tough decisions, we knew we could not cut our way to prosperity”.

William Keegan in today’s Guardian says “Lew has now taken up the baton from Gordon Brown when it comes to politicians who understand the nature of the huge deficiency of demand in the world economy. People go on about the need for supply-side policies, but the fact is that there is no shortage of supply, but of demand, which continues to be constrained by the vogue for totally unnecessary and hugely destructive policies of austerity”.

Keegan quotes the economist Simon Wren-Lewis, who is a widely respected in the profession, from the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. It covers the economic record of the 1997-2010 Labour Government in considerable and balanced detail: “The line that the Labour government was responsible for leaving a disastrous fiscal position which requires great national sacrifice to put right is pure spin”.

The austerity movement has damaged recovery from the economic depression, whilst it has also caused a crisis worldwide through its imposition upon many nations. The foundation research that was used to justify the austerity movement came from two Harvard Professors: Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. A University of Massachusetts student Thomas Herndon found that their work was filled with mathematical errors in their research spreadsheets.

Their spreadsheets were their “proofs” that economic austerity promotes economic recovery and were used to “verify” this theory. The powers that be have imposed this fundamentally flawed doctrine, and the ill-effects fall squarely upon 99% of the people, leaving the wealthiest unscathed.Thriving, actually.

It’s is both infuriating and horrific to witness the sheer suffering and destruction that follows in the wake of these now debunked theories. The unemployment in Europe has reached record high levels high levels, Countries like Greece and Spain have widespread rioting in the streets and a new neo Nazi movement is gaining popularity throughout Europe .

The cost in human suffering is incalculable, but those fatuous academic asses supporting austerity are not concerned with people, they are concerned with their reputations and salaries, and with catering for the powerful wealthy. Their theories, rather than being based on informed facts, the result of real research and learning experiences, are NOT science: they are nothing more than by-products of overweening egotism in tandem with uncaring self interest. Such highly prized Tory values.

It gets worse. Huffington Post contributor: Mark Gongloff wrote this article : “Austerity Fanatics Won’t Let Mere Economics Stop Them From Thinking They’re Winning”, in it he writes: “Like Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who hid on an island in the Philippines for 30 years refusing to believe Japan had lost World War II, austerity fanatics are never going to admit their failure. Instead, they are going to keep pushing the policies that are making millions of people in Europe miserable”.

Another example of their denial is a piece by Michael Rosen of the American Enterprise Institute, a Conservative think tank, entitled “Austerity And Its Discontents”. He declares that, far from being shamed by the recent discovery of errors in influential research by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, austerity fans have recently gained “the upper hand in the global argument over austerity”.

We really do need to shout down the public’s passive acceptance of grotesque inequality, social injustice, political justifications for intentionally inflicted and growing poverty and the steady removal of our civil rights. This is now the propaganda of a so-called liberal democracy.

Sure, many news articles circumvent the conspicuous propaganda of pernicious sophist, Conservative policies – manifestations of their socioeconomic Darwinist neoliberalist orthodoxy – which really makes the media complicit in such propaganda: diversions are a silent endorsement, after all.

The column of truth has holes in it, no matter which newspaper you read now.

There is a very conspicuous absence of counter agitprop, let alone any semblance of the grim truth. There is no representation of those with alternative principles, values and norms, the ones that challenge, with the potential to trigger much needed cultural changes. Public attitudes are being micromanaged. Whatever happened to counter-culture? There’s no Beat Generation, only a ‘being beat’ one. And we, the blogging Bohemians, and other underground dissenters, seceded from the conventionalities of an increasingly right wing public.

The wealthy one percent have their own problems, just not on par with ours. The ‘poor me’ rich have to face a modicum f Government regulation, taxes and those darned pesky workers who want fair wages and decent working conditions. The political solution has been to bring many of the 99% to a level slightly above starvation.

This ensures that they will work for any amount that helps them put some food on the table, to meet their basic survival needs. It necessitates that social welfare and support programs be destroyed so the plebs will have no choice but to seek shelter from material devastation at some exploitative, low paying job that keeps them just above subsistence. This adds to the profits of the 1%. The steady erosion of workers rights also a lowers the value of labour further, because there is now a large and pretty desperate, disposable reserve army of labour.

The pay and bonuses of bankers and the tax cuts for the very wealthiest have sunk our country into obscene levels of inequality. When banks receive money, they invest over 90% in assets like property, that does nothing for the economy. The rich benefit as the value of their assets rises, so 12% of the population now own half the country’s wealth.

Wide gaps in income levels, human rights violations, political corruption and authoritarianism. These conditions tend to happen together. Despite the emphasis and value that authoritarian regimes place on social conformity, and a reliance on passive mass acceptance, rather than popular support, history shows us that it cannot be maintained by repressive and coercive strategies.

In Britain, the minority are exceptionally well-housed, have gold-plated pensions, fine art, fine food, luxury yachts, a big say and shrinking taxes. Many of the rest of the population are fighting to survive. There is a chasm opening between them and the majority of society who are mostly in debt, suffering severely reduced welfare and tax benefits, unable to afford a home, increasingly forced to relocate away from their community, breaking kith and kinship bonds and ways of life, routines and many are being forced to travel for hours in order to pick up menial work for the rich to profit from.

Those in a run-down area lucky enough to own a flat pay eight times as much council tax proportionally as the very rich. That beggars belief, but its a social fact, one of many grim facts we are now facing, manifested directly from Tory class prejudice.

Edwardian levels of inequality led to the Great Depression. Austerity measures under Chancellor Hindenburg contributed to the rise of Nazism. The drop in household income in Japan between 1929 and 1931 led to a wave of assassinations of Government officials and bankers. Social policies after World War 2 turned the tables and brought peace, with inequality steadily dropping in Britain until recently. But inequality is now returning to pre-war levels.

In response to the atrocities committed during the War, the International Community sought to define the rights and freedoms necessary to secure the dignity and worth of each individual. Ratified by the United Kingdom, one of the first countries to do so, in 1951, those human rights originally established in the Universal Declaration have been steadily eroded since the Coalition gained Office. There’s a clear link between high levels of inequality and failure of Government’s to recognise human rights, and to implement them in policies.

Authoritarians view the rights of the individual, (including those considered to be human rights by the international community), as subject to the needs of the Government. Of course in democracies, Government’s are elected to represent and serve the needs of the population. Democracy is not only about elections. It is also about distributive and social justice.

The quality of the democratic process, including transparent and accountable Government and equality before the law, is critical. Façade democracy occurs when liberalisation measures are kept under tight rein by elites who fail to generate political inclusion. See Corporate power has turned Britain into a corrupt state and also Huge gap between rich and poor in Britain is the same as Nigeria and worse than Ethiopia, UN report reveals.

In the UK, democracy is very clearly faltering. It’s time to be very worried.

Thanks to Robert Livingstone for his brilliant illustrations.

Footnote

My academic background is in sociology, history and philosophy of science, social policy and social psychology. I tend towards critical (Marxist) Phenomenology when it comes to ontology and epistemology: defining “social reality”. Experience is “evidence”. Existence is fact, which precedes essence.

Max Weber’s principle of Verstehen is a critical approach in all social sciences, and we can see the consequences of its absence in the cold, pseudo-positivist approach of the Coalition in the UK. Their policies clearly demonstrate that they lack the capacity to understand, or meaningfully “walk a mile in the shoes of another”. The Coalition treat the population of the UK as objects and not human subjects of their policies.

My own starting point is that regardless of any claim to value-freedom in social science, we cannot abdicate moral responsibility, and cannot justify moral indifference. We see this positive approach exemplified in our laws, human rights and democratic process. We are also seeing an erosion of this tendency to a globalisation of values, and inclusion of a recognition and account of the full range of human experiences in policy making. Indeed our policy has become an instrument of social exclusion and increasing minoritization.

We are being reduced to little more than economic statements here in the UK. We have a Government that tends to describe vulnerable social groups in terms of costs to the State, and responsibility is attributed to these social groups via media and State rhetoric, whilst those decision-makers actually responsible for the state of the economy have been exempted, legally and morally, and are hidden behind complex and diversionary scapegoating propaganda campaigns.

Sartre once said that oppressors oppress themselves as well as those they oppress. Freedom and autonomy are also reciprocal, and it’s only when we truly recognise our own liberty that we may necessarily acknowledge that of others. Conservatism has always been associated with a capacity to inhibit and control, and never liberate. We need to take responsibility for the Government that we have. In fact we must.

With regard to the philosophical issues raised regarding the physical sciences, to clarify, I believe that there is a mind-independent “reality”, that exists beyond the full grasp of our perception and conception of it: in this respect I am a transcendental realist. My point is that how we choose to perceive reality is very much our own business, and demonstrating a correspondence with reality and our description of it is very problematic. Wittgenstein once said that any attempt to demonstrate such correspondence by theory leads to an infinite regress of descriptions of descriptions of descriptions…

Although it’s fallible, the scientific method is pretty much all we have in terms of validation. My own sidestep criterion for the problems raised with methodology is to recognise the role that values play in determining “facts”, and take responsibility for those values. Identify and declare your interest in an area of research. Although we may have difficulty in proving something to be an ultimate truth, we may at least explore issues and give an increasingly coherent account of them. See Coherence theory of truth

It’s not possible to do full justice to the debate about objectivity and relativism, deduction and induction here, so I’ve posted a couple of links for anyone interested in pursuing it further:

These are reasonable starting points: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Social Science.

Update:

Beastrabban has written an analysis of this article: Kittysjones on the Philosophical and Methodological Errors in the Tories’ Austerity Myth

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Frack off Lord Howell, you greedy, Tory, nasty, NIMBY snob.

July 31, 2013November 13, 2018 · 8 Comments ·

Some views of the “vast uninhabited desolate areas” from around County Durham, in the North East.

“Fracking should be carried out in the North East of England, where there are large, ‘desolate areas'”, a former energy secretary Lord Howell of Guildford has said. He argued there was “‘plenty of room’ for developments and less concern than was the case over ‘beautiful natural areas'”.

That comment reveals an utter ignorant thug. This is someone with traditional Conservative prejudices towards the north, as well as a greedy and hell bent inclination towards environmental vandalism and ecological devastation, and all for nothing more than base greed and profit. The man has never seen County Durham, clearly, or Teesdale, with our spectacular Durham Dales and many other areas of exceptional beauty and remarkable, precious wildlife.

Oh ho! The Land of Prince Bishops, and indeed most of the North East is a long-standing haven of Labour Party voters, and the North/South schism is never more clear and manifest than when we have a Tory (or Tory-led) Government. Well the contempt is reciprocated. Now then, you braying, greedy wolf, go yelp at the moon. And no, there’s no shale gas up there, Mr Howl. Get thee gone, loutish man, and shut thy prattling, greedy, gawping, gormless gob. Or, perish t’ thought, I will go find t’ very angry northern whippets, and let them all loose on you.

Seriously, the Tories, along with their network of unholy business alliances, are selling England by the pound. And the rest of the UK.

Lord Howell is the father-in-law of Chancellor George Osborne, and was also the minister in the Foreign Office responsible for international energy policy between 2010 and 2013. George Osborne’s planned new shale gas allowance will more than halve the tax due on a proportion – which will be determined following consultation – of income from production in order to “encourage” exploration of the unconventional and controversial energy resource in the UK. Howell and his sponsors stand to gain substantially from this enormous tax break for the fracking industry.

Howell’s comments were so crass and churlish that a Government spokesman with a damage limitation mission piped up instantly that: “Lord Howell is not a minister and does not speak for the Government. He has not been a Government adviser since April 2013.” Howell may have “provoked gasps of shock” in the House of Lords when he said the gas production method could be safely carried out in the North East without environmental impact, but his attitude of prejudice towards “the North” is a commonly held one within the current Cabinet, and this was so within the Thatcher Cabinet: he was the energy secretary from 1979 to 1981.

I’ve always known that Tories hold deeply bigoted and vulgar views of me and my friends in the North. Never mind, I’ll let you into a little secret: I’m not so keen on the Tories, either.

Natalie Bennett said of the crude comments Howl made: “His casual Nimbyism is breath-taking – and his view of the North East deeply disturbing.We know that governments have long neglected regional development policy, and allowed a greatly excessive concentration of the economy on the South East, and this is a demonstration of the attitudes behind that”. Environmental campaigners reacted to the Tory peer’s comments with fury.

North Eastern Labour MPs also expressed their shock at Lord Howell’s comments. Chi Onwurah, MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, told the Huffington Post UK: “It is a revealing insight into the attitudes this Government of posh boys from the home counties try to hide – the north east is a long, long way away and not near where our kind of people live”. What a namby pamby NIMBY.

“Shale gas is a resource with huge potential to broaden the UK’s energy mix, we want to create the right conditions for industry to explore and unlock that potential in a way that allows communities to share in the benefits.

This new tax regime, which I want to make the most generous for shale in the world, will contribute to that. I want Britain to be a leader of the shale gas revolution – because it has the potential to create thousands of jobs and keep energy bills low for millions of people”. George Osborne

So if fracking is such a great, risk-free deal that will create employment, keep our energy bills low, meet our demands for fuel for at least the next 25 years, and grace our communities as claimed, why would this “revolution” require the added incentive of a huge tax hand-out to the fracking industry, George?

Some serious concerns about the safety of fracking

Documented widespread groundwater contamination has occurred from seepage of the stored water, from fracking, from unlined surface ponds in America. Water companies in the UK have expressed concern that the fracking process could contaminate drinking water aquifers that lie above shale gas reserves.

UK water companies have warned shale gas fracking should not be allowed to compromise public health as the Chancellor unveiled his plans for the generous handout of a tax relief regime for the industry. There has been a call for a large scale impact assessments from Water UK policy and business adviser Dr Jim Marshall.

Government “advisors”, however, have said that fracking is “safe”, despite the evidence to the contrary, and that it is “essential to making the UK more energy self-sufficient.”

However, the British Geological Survey (BGS), which has played a key role in advising the UK Government, is partly funded by companies involved in the hydraulic fracturing industry, including Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, BG Group and Schlumberger. The BGS’s close financial ties to industry raises some serious concerns about the impartiality of the BGS report commissioned by the UK Government.

It ought to be of major concern that at least two other Conservative Peers, and two crossbenchers in the House of Lords have vested financial interests in fracking – Lord Browne, (the former chief executive of BP and director of Cuadrilla Resource Holdings Ltd, appointed by Frances Maude to the Cabinet Office in 2010) Lord Green (of the HSBC scandal), Lord Howell (of the handouts from the boys scandal) and Baroness Hogg, (a director at BG Group, who expects to earn nearly $300 million from fracking operations in the US this year.) – each have financial interests in the fracking industry, and each holds either ministerial or executive rank at some of Whitehall’s most powerful departments: the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the Treasury and the Cabinet Office.

David Cameron has already come under renewed pressure to sack his party’s elections adviser Lynton Crosby earlier this month, as environmental activists expressed serious concerns about his l inks to the fracking industry.

Crosby’s lobbying firm, Crosby Textor, represents the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, an oil and gas lobby group campaigning aggressively for fracking. The association’s chief operating officer, Stedman Ellis, has made headlines in recent months for his outspoken criticism of anti-fracking campaigners, telling one Australian paper: “The opportunity provided by shale gas is too important to be jeopardised by political scare campaigns run by activist groups.”

One has to wonder how many more of these transparent conflicts of interests is it going to take before Crosby has to step away from his role in Government?

And what a tangled web they weave…

With thanks to Paul Mobbs

Fracking – which is short for “hydraulic fracturing” – involves drilling deep under ground and involves the release of a high-pressure mix of water, sand and hundreds of chemicals to crack rocks and release gas stored inside.

Widespread fracking has not started in the UK yet, but Cuadrilla began exploratory drilling in Lancashire in 2011 and many other possible sites have been identified. The exploratory drilling triggered earth tremors.

The fracking process itself is a “mini-earthquake”, as it involves the breaking of rock strata deep inside of the earth to release gas. Many people, (myself included) are very legitimately opposed to fracking because of the potential for devastating environmental impacts, including contamination of ground water, depletion of fresh water, risks to air quality, the migration of gases and hydraulic fracturing chemicals to the surface, surface contamination from spills and flow-back, and the serious subsequent health effects of these. For these reasons hydraulic fracturing has come under international scrutiny, with some countries suspending or prohibiting it. However, some of those countries, including most notably the United Kingdom, have recently lifted their bans.

Substantial evidence from the States reveals that fracking is an extremely risky process that affects the water we drink, air we breathe, food we eat, our wildlife and climate – a significant air pollutant from fracking is methane, a greenhouse gas that traps 20 to 25 times more heat in the atmosphere than does carbon dioxide, and causes chaotic weather systems through the process of global warming.

While some claim that the cost is worth the benefits if it means we can transition away from fossil fuels, it has been shown that the “footprint” of shale gas is actually 20 percent higher than coal. S tudies reveal that fracking poses a grave risk to public health, researchers examined 353 out of 994 fracking chemicals identified in hydraulic fracking operation, including lethal radioactive contaminants.

They found over 75% of the 353 chemicals affected the skin, eyes, and other sensory organs, 52% affected the nervous system, 40% affected the immune system and kidney system, and 46% affected the cardiocascular system and blood. That’s a serious concern.

Then there is the established link between fracking and earthquakes.

It’s worth seeing the documentary Gasland by Josh Fox, which is about the devastating impact and ill effects of fracking. It won the Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Gasland also provides a wealth of evidence, and records the socio-economic and environmental destruction caused by fracking. Some of the most striking images in the documentary are the clips of people setting fire to their contaminated tap water.

There are also some heartbreaking scenes of animals suffering, and of people’s livelihoods, well-being and health being destroyed by this undemocratically unregulated industry.

So, to Mr Howl, the greedy thug of a man who wants to make a buck from environmental vandalism and ecological devastation, and as ever with the Tories, a profit at the expense of wildlife and human well-being, I have this to say: It is patently clear to us that fracking plans in the UK are being steam-rolled out, on the back of vested interests in Government and lobbying from fossil fuel giants. First came the huge tax breaks for companies involved in shale gas exploration.

Then the announcement of new planning guidance making it harder to protect the environment from drilling.

Fracking is being hailed by the Government as the solution to all of our energy needs, despite evidence to the contrary. We know that although it may well be good for your own bank account, fracking is very bad for people, ecology and the environment. Cuadrilla’s UK operation was put on hold after causing tremors (small earthquakes), but the report by the UK Government’s advisers published in April 2012 gave the green light to fracking, despite acknowledging the link between the process and the earthquakes in Lancashire in 2011.

We know that the Government “advisory report” was funded in part by companies involved in the hydraulic fracturing industry, including Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, BG Group and Schlumberger, and that raises some serious concerns about the impartiality of the report commissioned by the UK Government. (See also Frackademic scandals)

We say NO to fracking here in the North East. So expect a bloody big fight from us.

Further Reading:

Three lords and one Baroness: fracking interests inside the government

The White report: consideration of Radiation in Hazardous Waste Produced from Horizontal Hydrofracking

Global bans on fracking

Osborn accused over gas lobbyist father-in-law

GOVERNMENT ADVISORS SPONSORED BY FRACKING INDUSTRY

Hydraulic Fracturing Poses Substantial Water Pollution Risks, Analysts Say

Taxpayers’ bill of £1million to police West Sussex anti-fracking protests

Resource Efficiency, Harmful Substances and Hazardous Waste: Global Environment Alert Service

E-Petition to make Hydralic fracturing / fracking illegal in the UK

Tom Greatrex, the shadow Energy Minister, is demanding a full-scale government investigation into the controversial “fracking”

List of the harmed

Josh Fox’s Gasland documetary in full

Please Sign Petition To End To Police Aggression When Arresting Peaceful Protesters

Sussex Police arrested peaceful anti-fracking protesters in Balcombe using physical violence and restraint methods, designed to inflict pain and incapacitate people. Sussex Police claim on their website that the arrests were peaceful. There is significant photographic evidence that unnecessary force was used. This isn’t acceptable in a peaceful democracy.

(Take a look at the picture. The Dokko is a specific pressure point, located where the jaw and skull meet. In most people, this point is just under the outer ledge of the earlobe at the base of the ear. Pressure points are specific sensitive areas that may be exploited to cause excruciating pain, and the military and police are increasingly using this technique on peaceful protesters.)

This petition is a call for a formal investigation into the police behaviour and for disciplinary action to be taken against those who used violence against the people they arrested. We need an end to Police aggression when arresting peaceful protesters. Here is some video evidence.

Picture courtesy of Robert Livingstone

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Politics and Insights

Public interest issues, policy, equality, human rights, social science, analysis

Category: Conservatives

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An email to authoritarian Tory MPs Charlie Elphicke, Priti Patel and Conor Burns

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The commercialisation and undemocratising of the NHS: the commodification of patients

The New New Poor Law

Frack off Lord Howell, you greedy, Tory, nasty, NIMBY snob.

Some views of the “vast uninhabited desolate areas” from around County Durham, in the North East.

Some serious concerns about the safety of fracking

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Survival of the wealthiest

Some Tory benefit myths addressed:

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Some views of the “vast uninhabited desolate areas” from around County Durham, in the North East.

Some serious concerns about the safety of fracking

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