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Saturday, September 12, 2009

POLITICS: Meet the new boss

As tou know, we have been keeping a weather eye on the government's proposals to axe various disability benefits and RichardFreeman, in particular, has become very involved with the campaign. He recently wrote to David Cameron on the subject, and received this reply:

Dear Mr Freeman,

I
am writing on behalf of David Cameron to thank you for your recent e-mail. I was sorry to hear about your recent illnesses. [Here we should point out that Richard is in robust health, and has never claimed to have been ill]

David receives many hundreds of e-mails each week and, sadly, he is unable to reply personally to everyone. However, I would like to assure you that all correspondence is carefully read and noted, and David is most grateful to you for taking the time and trouble to get in touch with him.
As you may know, the Social Care Green Paper, is currently subject to consultation, and no firm decisions have yet been made. The following link contains the consultation on the Department of Health website -
We were disappointed at the proposals in the recently published Green Paper. We don't need to start another debate. We need a decision, and we need serious, costed proposals to be the basis of that decision.

While Conservative policy for the next election is not yet finalised, please rest assured that we are paying very close attention to this issue. We are clear that there must be a partnership between central government, local government and individuals to provide a coherent social care framework that can meet the needs of an ageing population.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to write.
Yours sincerely,
David Beal
Office of the Leader of the Opposition

Is it just us or does that email reply from Mr Beal say absolutely nothing at all? We can see no semantic content whatsoever. It is just another piece of 21st Century administrative doubletalk and means nothing. And we are supposed to be pleased that Cameron will be our next Prime Minister?
"Meet the new boss. The same as the old boss"

Does anyone wonder why I am an anarchist?

4 comments:

Oll Lewis said...

I have no idea why people are fawning over DC so much, he'll simply be another Blair and given the choice I'd rather have Brown, at least he has done something to try to sort out the global recession (which actually seems to be on the way to working as all the graphs are pointing up now) Cammeron did and said nothing and just benefited from the fact that the press were looking for somebody to blame.

The only way to be sure of protecting benefits for the disabled in this country is to vote Lib Dem but many people won't even consider that as they will either be voting tory because a stupid newspaper told them too or because they think everyone else will vote tory so they want to vote for 'the winning side' as if they were placing a bet at a bookies rather than actually voicing their opinion on how they think the country should be run. Then there are the countless idiots who will vote for party X because their family has always voted for part X or because they think voting for part X will keep party Y out of power.

I'm not saying that if everyone voted for what they believed in for a change it would give a us some sort of utopian government or a government I would like but it would at least be a govenment that represented the will of the people rather than one that represented the will of Rupert Murdock's current whims, and the second anyone tried to pull something like getting rid disability benefits they would have to fear a backlash from the voters rather than a mild grumble that would be forgotten about come the elections because people find it more important to vote for a party because the leader has a nice smile.

Anonymous said...

With respect, Oll, the current recession has been exacerbated by the foolish actions of the current Government and Gordon Brown, since the damage was done under his Chancellorship. To be specific, Gordon Brown permitted a credit bubble to grow by allowing Bank of England interest rates to remain too low for too long (altering the measure of inflation to exclude mortgage payments was to blame here) and also by using his power in the Treasury to stymie the Welfare State reforms proposed by Frank Field.

After that point a lot of the initial dynamism and power of the Blair regime slowly petered out. Blair decided to help out his friend George in a foreign military adventure, and Brown continued to plot and intrigue in the Treasury, scotching a lot of reform simply to consolidate his power base; such an awful lot of the current mess is caused by personality politics and Blair not having the force of personality needed to collapse Brown's power structure and impose some authority on Government.

The position at the moment is this: Britain is borrowing money to pay for the State, at a rate of tens of millions of pounds per day. The current blip was caused by this incredible injection of money that the Bank of England is printing right now; this is not a sustainable policy since everyone with a brain knows that there are only two possible futures under these policies: if we stop then we're looking at a decades-long stasis like Japan had, and if we carry on then we end up like Zimbabwe with banknotes worth less than squares of toilet paper.

So, let us make this clear now: Gordon Brown is nobody's friend right now, not even his own. His policies are very poor indeed economically speaking, and the stress of the job of Prime Minister at a time when things are falling down around his ears is slowly killing Gordon Brown. A rumour has him on monoamine oxidase inhibitor drugs, (presumably selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors didn't work) which if true makes him a very poorly chap indeed.

The Tory regime which will replace this dying Labour one is not going to be fun to live under. It will have an economy to turn around, and they will as always overdo the medicine. However, make no mistake that a Labour one would be any different; the same cuts would have to be made (either by the party or by the IMF if things get that bad) because the borrowing rate is unsustainable.

Oll Lewis said...

Sadly though you're trapped between a rock and a hard place. DC refuses to even be drawn on how he'd tackle the recession, there's only so far you can trust somebody that just smiles and changes the subject when somebody questions him on a subject (much like his aide did in his blanket reply to Richard)... and if lessons have been learnt from Blair you shouldn't trust a person like that as far as you can throw them.

Make no mistake though, I do not intend to act as a cheer leader for new labour any more than I would for the Tories. I have been a member of the Liberal Democrats and been part of an election campaign with them at the last general election.

Unknown said...

It should also be noted that disability benefits are just one of the many things to be cut.
They are also proposing pay freezes for a few years in the public sector, such as civil service, the NHS etc, along with the loss of many jobs, I think they were talking about 1 in 10 jobs being cut in the NHS alone.

In a way I think that is a good thing as hopefully it will lead to widespread industrial action, bring whichever government is in power to its knees and remind them they work for us, the people.

Currently, the main unions are talking about stopping donations to new labour.

The tide is starting to turn and the more people realise that all the main parties are the same, the better.

Anarchy for the UK?
I for one hope so!