What Crisis?

April 26, 2006

Patricia Hewitt’s assertion that the NHS has had one of its best years ever sounded to me like one of those defining moments when political responses become detached from reality. Whilst it is true that more money than ever is going into the National Health Service and that it is much better than it ever was under the Tories, there are some huge problems. The first is the New Labour’s philosophy on health.

Blair, when in a corner during and election campaign, often barks back at critics that the NHS will remain free at the point of use, again true, but only partly. New Labour remains obsessed with not being part of the past when the NHS was all directly funded by taxation, its capital building programmes were the responsibility of central government, and its services were provided in house by directly employed staff. Even Thatcher did not feel able to destroy the NHS but her government obsessively privatised services within the NHS, encouraged the private medical market, and so under-funded the hospitals that huge queues and waiting lists built up.

Frank Dobson as the first Health Secretary after the 1997 election was very clear that health inequalities had to be tackled, and he put into effect the ideas of Professor Douglas Black, whose devastating report on the greater prevalence of preventable illness amongst the poorest was suppressed by the Tories after the 1979 election.

Frank was moved and Alan Milburn succeeded and was obsessed with private finance initiatives under which the private sector builds a shiny new building, gets the profits from servicing the building and we, the public, pay for it over and over again over many years.

Having decried the Tories for the internal market of the Health Service that the 1986 Health and Social Security Act brought about, the latest missives from the Department deliberately force key services into the private sector, and under the disguise of emergencies to reduce waiting lists, the NHS is buying space in private hospitals. The NHS has been reduced from being the proud provider of services, to the buyer of facilities it used to do itself.

All this has a cost, and will cost many millions of pounds. PFI (Private Finance Initiative) schemes that over-run are then sold on to other contractors, who then treat the long term servicing contract as an asset to be traded. In business terms it makes a lot of sense. The public guarantee the income for up twenty five years and the interest payments are huge. It was described by one of the health unions as like buying your house on a credit card.

There are now many health workers who are fearful of any announcement about deficits, as they are leading to hundreds of job losses all over the country. The management of the NHS by balance sheet and private finance, instead of the overwhelming priority of health care for those who need it will bring back all the inequalities and uncertainties that the 1997 election was supposed to put behind us.

Perhaps Patricia Hewitt could give us a real bumper year in 2006/7 by ending PFI schemes, bringing an end to the contracting culture, and providing job security for those staff who provide the real services that we all need.

………………………………………………………………………………………

Does John Reid have any sense of history? It would seem he lacks this, and any sense of irony. His lightening trip to Afghanistan was to tell British soldiers that they must fight to ensure its future, and that it will be tough. No doubt it will, but he should remember that in the nineteenth century British soldiers were ordered over the Khyber Pass to subdue Afghanistan. They were annihilated in the process. Every other attempt to impose control from outside has failed. The invasion of 2001 by the US was based on the obsession of the Neo Conservatives with getting access to that part of Asia as much as it was of attacking the Taliban. Many of the thousands who died from bombing raids and occupation, who were taken to Guantanamo Bay, were just ordinary poor people.

The US has tired of its Afghan adventure, sensing failure, so the British have agreed to take over and we are about to witness more troops in Afghanistan than Iraq, with a mission to destroy opium crops. When the alternative to growing such crops is starvation it is easy to see why it happens; the solution is not military but it is in ensuring that farmers in the poorest regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan get sufficient income to live on.

The British troops will be a target in what is a colonial war, just like they were in the nineteenth century. The only difference is that it is not British imperialism, but the madness of the Project for a New American century that we are risking lives for.

Today “Military Families against the War” will be visiting Westminster to lobby MPs on future policies toward Iraq. These families have been through the horror and pain of the loss of loved ones, just as American and Iraqi families have. The difference is that in this war there is little public support for the whole strategy, and the families do not feel constrained from openly opposing the policy.

Tony Blair and John Reid were both around in the 1970s, and have probably seen “Born on the Fourth of July” when Ron Kovic, from his wheelchair, opposed and exposed the lies over Vietnam. This was the point when any vestige of credibility of the Vietnam adventure was blown.

As the military planners in their bunkers in Washington and London look at options for Iran, they should reflect on the scene above ground and outside in the fresh air. Wars come from greed and power. Every war creates a reaction and this time, in an age of rapid media information, millions can see the stupidity of the decision to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that peace will not come from more soldiers and more losses.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Journalism | Comments Off

Action Iran - introduction

April 20, 2006

Iran is now the centre of world attention and looms as the new target for the Neo Cons in the White House and their allies. The build up of attacks on Iran is familiar to those that followed and opposed the attack on Iraq. To understand the current situation it is necessary to understand the history of the region and the politics of the American Right.

Iran descended from empire, and since the end of the 19th century has been dominated by the western thirst for raw materials, in this case oil, and the debate between liberal modernity and theocracy internally.

Britain was heavily involved in Iran through the Anglo Iranian Oil company, later to become BP. Support for an unpopular monarch and then the overthrow of an elected nationalist Government in 1952 followed. That coup jointly sponsored by Britain and the US ushered in the Shah.

Dramatically overthrown in 1979 the regime of the Islamic Republic cracked down on opponents and forced many into exile.

The war with Iraq was supported, on the Iraqi side, by the West and cost atleast half a million lives: a tragedy from which the only beneficiaries were the arms dealers of the world. Every major arms manufacturer profited from the killing fields.

The war with Iraq was and remains a twin headed monster. The west wants and needs oil but the Neo Cons around Bush, the authors of the Project for a New American Century, wanted to show the world that they could strike anywhere they like in the world.

In the case of Iraq, the assertion of the presence of WMDs proved to be wholly fallacious but had the desired effect on enough gullible people.

We are now being told that Iran, the only signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty in the region, who has nuclear reactors, is building nuclear weapons.

Many of us wholly disagree with nuclear power for any purpose but recognise that it is legal to develop civil nuclear reactors.

Iran has not breached the NPT, has allowed routine inspections and is under threat.

Interestingly, the opposition to any attack on Iran comes from a very wide range of people including both supporters and opponents of the regime.

The western media is obsessing itself with Iran and its alleged breach of international law. No such obsession is apparent at Israel’s development of nuclear weapons without any international observation or inspection.

Both India and Pakistan, outside the NPT system, have developed nuclear weapons. The US President, George Bush plans to reward India with nuclear technology in return for closer economic ties. The nexus of military power and economic interest have become linked.

Iran is under threat; anyone who desires peace in the world would oppose any kind of attack and instead concentrate on dialogue and development of the Non proliferation Treaty system.

Peace does not come in isolation but from addressing the issues of the region. The tragedy of the Palestinian people and the occupation of Iraq are the two most vital issues.

US and British policies have cost the world dearly since 2001 by the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the attacks on liberties in every democratic society.

Iran could be the turning point. If the Neo Cons can be politically stopped from invading or attacking Iran then the world will be a slightly safer place.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Journalism | Comments Off

Teachers deserve top marks for standing up against Education Bill

April 18, 2006

Well done to the National Union of Teachers for holding its annual conference at Easter, which means that its view gets across at a time when news is often light. New Labour forced its Education Bill through on a second reading vote with Tory support.
Quite rightly, teachers realise that the best way to defeat this Bill is to unite with parents to persuade MPs to amend it out of existence in coming months during the crucial committee and report stages.

The Bill, like many of new Labour’s ideas, is an unholy brew containing the illusion of choice for the worried parent, the further undermining of local government, and an insidious view that donors of private or “charity” money should be able to buy into the education system to pursue their own agenda. The headline news that a former Blair adviser on city academies had been arrested in connection with the honours scandal is only part of the story. The Tory legacy of league tables and investigations in the style favoured by ex-chief inspector of schools Chris Woodhead, coupled with the idea of “choice” has created secondary schools obsessed with image and marketing in their quest to attract pupils. Those left behind in this dubious competition have to deal with a demotivated school population which will underachieve.

It is absurd to believe that this problem can be solved by allowing successful schools to expand at the expense of others. The secondary schools in inner-city constituencies like mine are now much better funded than under the Tories and have improved beyond recognition in the past five years. But the Bill would end this by creating a free-for-all, as anxious parents in inner cities manipulate the system to send their youngsters to the expanding schools in the suburbs. The losers will be the less articulate, less able parents and those whose first language is not English. More children will be educated outside their areas, removing their sense of community. Our education system is under threat from privateers who want to buy into academies. We have already seen wealthy creationists buying into the education system, bringing a US brand of far-right politics directly into our classrooms. Tony Blair claimed that the Bill will resolve what is mainly a London problem. In fact, it will intensify the current problems and dump them on the rest of the country. State-funded local education authorities can plan and develop all the educational requirements of a community. There is actually a very efficient way of bringing private finance into education. It is called taxation.

RAF refusenik is just the tip of the iceberg

THE imprisonment last week of RAF doctor Malcolm Kendall-Smith for refusing to serve in Iraq for a third time is an example of the enormous opposition that exists to the war. The invasion of Iraq on March 18 2003 set in motion many terrible events. The deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, over 2,000 US soldiers and more than 100 British troops since the invasion are a tragedy. The political fallout will never go away. In no other recent conflict or deployment have serving army personnel demonstrated openly against government policies on the war. The support and growth of “Military Families Against the War” is unprecedented. The occupation has also endangered all our liberties as legislation rushed through Parliament in the name of the “war on terror” pushes aside normal court processes to make way for instant detention and control. Last week, a High Court judge observed that control order legislation makes it impossible to mount a legal defence. This is a major step towards preserving our liberties. Untrammelled power in the hands of the security services is the root of the danger. Wise heads predicted that the Iraq invasion would make any peaceful settlement in Palestine harder and create an atmosphere of conflict across the region. War is again raging in Afghanistan. We have witnessed vocal debate about what constitutes a civil war in Iraq and open threats to Iran. The supreme folly of following the Project for a New American Century makes the case for withdrawal of British troops stronger than ever.

Why Britain backs Nepal dictator

ISOBEL HILTON wrote an excellent article about Nepal in last week’s Guardian. This was followed by news that the general strike was still holding and that, despite the inevitable shortages and price rises in Kathmandu, popular support remains strong. Crucially, the alliance between the Maoist guerrillas and the opposition political parties has held. The struggle in Nepal is rooted in the appalling poverty endured by the masses on the one hand, and the absolute power of the monarchy and the army on the other. Following murder and intrigue within the royal palaces, King Gyanendra is obsessively holding onto power in the face of popular protest. The majority of the population might be poor, but the army is comparatively well resourced. It is using foreign-supplied equipment to pursue a brutal counter-insurgency campaign. Britain has been a major supplier of weapons to Nepal and the murkiness of arms sale and short-sightedness of controls is now becoming obvious.

In 2004, Britain spent nearly £5 million from the oddly named Conflict Prevention Fund to purchase surveillance aircraft for Nepal on the clear and, apparently, strict understanding that they would not be used for military campaigns. UN observer Ian Martin, representing the UN Human Rights Commission, has since registered concern over these planes being used to indiscriminately drop deadly mortar shells. News from Nepal is followed closely throughout south Asia and, in particular, in the poor neighbouring areas of India. The reasons for their discontent are the absolute power and brutal methods of the monarchy and the systematic discrimination of the caste system as well as the poverty of remote villages in this stunningly beautiful land. But the main concern in Washington and London is that the defeat of the Nepalese monarchy will encourage similar campaigns elsewhere. The logical conclusion of the State Department thinkers is, therefore, that the West should back the brutal and undemocratic king.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Journalism | Leave a Comment

Detached from reality

April 15, 2006

Patricia Hewitt’s assertion that the NHS has had one of its best years ever sounded to me like one of those defining moments when political responses become detached from reality.

While it is true that more money than ever is going into the National Health Service and that it is much better than it ever was under the Tories, there are some huge problems.

The first is New Labour’s philosophy on health. Blair, when he is in a corner during an election campaign, often barks back at critics that the NHS will remain free at the point of use. Again, this is true, but only partly. New Labour is obsessed with not being linked to the past, when the NHS was directly funded through taxation, its services were provided in-house by directly employed staff and its capital building programmes were the responsibility of central government. Even Margaret Thatcher did not feel able to destroy the NHS, but her government obsessively privatised services within the NHS. It also encouraged the private medical market, which left hospitals underfunded and allowed huge queues and waiting lists to build up.

As the first Health Secretary after the 1997 election, Frank Dobson was very clear that health inequalities had to be tackled. He put into effect the ideas of Professor Douglas Black, whose devastating report on the greater prevalence of preventable illness among the poorest was suppressed by the Tories after the 1979 election. But Dobson was shifted out of the job, to be followed by Alan Milburn, a man obsessed with private finance initiatives, under which the private sector builds a shiny new building, gets the profits from servicing the building and we, the public, pay for it over and over again for many years. Having decried the Tories for the internal market of the health service that the 1986 Health and Social Security Act brought about, the latest missives from the Department for Health deliberately force key services into the private sector and, under the disguise of emergencies to reduce waiting lists, the NHS is buying space in private hospitals. The NHS has been reduced from being the proud provider of services to the buyer of facilities that it used to be able to do for itself.

All this has a price and will cost many millions of pounds. PFI schemes that overrun are sold on to other contractors, which then treat the long-term servicing contract as an asset to be traded. In business terms, it makes a lot of sense. The public guarantees the income for up 25 years and the interest payments are huge - the system was described by one health union as like buying your house on a credit card. Many health workers have now learnt to be fearful of any announcement about deficits as they lead to hundreds of job losses all over the country. The management of the NHS by balance sheet and private finance, instead of the overwhelming priority of health care for those who need it, will bring back all the inequalities and uncertainties that the 1997 election was supposed to put behind us. Perhaps the Health Secretary could give us a real bumper year in 2006-7 by ending PFI schemes, halting the contracting culture and providing job security for the staff that provide the real services that we all need.

Reid’s lacking a certain sense of history

Does Defence Secretary John Reid have any sense of history? Apparently not, and he has no sense of irony, either. He made his lightning trip to Afghanistan this week to tell British soldiers that they face a tough fight to ensure its future. There is no doubt that this is true. However, he would do well to remember that, in the 19th century, British soldiers were ordered over the Khyber Pass to subdue Afghanistan. They were annihilated. Every other attempt to impose control on the country from outside has failed. The 2001 US invasion was as much based on the Neo Conservative obsession with gaining access to the part of Asia as it was about attacking the Taliban. Many of the thousands who died from bombing raids and occupation and those who later ended up Guantanamo Bay were just ordinary poor people.

It would appear that the US has now tired of its Afghan adventure and senses failure. Instead, the British have agreed to take over. We are about to witness the deployment of more troops in Afghanistan than have been sent to Iraq. Their mission is to destroy opium crops. But, when the alternative to growing opium is starvation, it is easy to see why they are cultivated. The solution is not military. It lies in ensuring that farmers in the poorest regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan can earn enough money to live. The British troops will be a target in what is a colonial war, just like they were in the 19th century. The only difference is that our troops are risking their lives not for the British empire but for the madness of the Project for a New American Century. Military Families Against the War will be visiting Westminster today to lobby MPs on the future policies towards Iraq. These families have been through the horror and pain of losing loved ones, just as US and Iraqi families have. There is little public support for the whole strategy behind this war and the families do not feel constrained from openly opposing the policy. Tony Blair and John Reid were both around in the 1970s. They have probably seen Born on the Fourth of July, which sees Ron Kovic oppose and expose the lies over Vietnam from his wheelchair. This was the point at which any vestige of credibility around the Vietnam adventure was blown. As the military planners in their bunkers in Washington and London look at options for Iran, they should reflect on the scene above ground and outside in the fresh air. Wars come from greed and power and every one creates a reaction. This time, in an age of rapid media information, millions can already see the stupidity of the decision to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. They also know that sending more soldiers and losing more lives will not bring peace.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Journalism | Comments Off

Backing a rogue state

April 5, 2006

We have been treated to intensive media reports of the elections in Palestine and Israel over recent weeks. The Palestinian elections were held under occupation without freedom of movement for candidates and with campaigning banned. Nevertheless, a new national assembly was elected. Since Hamas, the winning party, does not recognise the state of Israel, it was denounced immediately. The US and others threatened to cut off aid and refuse recognition for the new government.

Yet last week’s Israeli elections were treated as ‘normal’ by the Western media. The fact that one party leader had called for the assassination of peace group Gush Shalom’s co-founder Uri Avnery was hardly reported. The fact that openly fascist groups calling for the expulsion of all Arabs were contesting the poll went un-noticed by the West. The fact that Israel is constructing an illegal wall inside Palestinian territory was not deemed worthy of a mention.

Post-election analyses have shown that the same curious sense of “even-handedness” manoeuvres in Israel are seen as normal politics, while the democratic process which brought Hamas to power in Palestine is presented as exactly the opposite. The real context of the whole debate and reporting should start from a few basic facts:

Jerusalem, the centre of so much learning and faith, has been cut off from the West Bank as Israel attempts to annex it illegally by creating “facts on the ground.” There was only muted condemnation when Israeli forces stormed Jericho prison recently after the withdrawal of US and British monitors. But this was an invasion of one country by another.

Among all the column inches devoted to condemning Iran for developing civil nuclear power, the media routinely ignore the obvious fact that Israel not only has an active nuclear reactor but also has a large number of nuclear warheads.

There is nothing normal about the state of Israel and its behaviour in the Middle East.
A long time ago, the Palestine Liberation Organisation made a historic compromise by accepting the existence of the state of Israel. In return, it was meant to be granted peace and recognition.
Since that time, the reward for the Palestinian people has instead been poverty and land theft, execution and bombardment. The myriad of extreme positions presented to the Israeli electorate hardly provided a promising platform for long-term peace. But the supine way in which the US underwrites the Israeli economy and continues to provide arms and supplies is the real heart of the matter. Any other country which so flagrantly broke international law would be subject to sanctions.

Apparently, in the warped world of Jack Straw and Condoleezza Rice, only Palestine has to prove its democratic credentials and fitness for negotiations.

We need to be policy-obsessed first:

The idea that the sum total of politics is a personal rift between Gordon Brown and his neighbour Tony Blair is way off the mark.

It’s true that, by announcing that he was going to leave before the next election, Blair became the first British Prime Minister to declare his own departure ahead of time. Unfortunately, like moths to a lamp, most political commentators have become entranced by this issue and seem incapable of assessing the real political decisions facing the government and the Labour Party.

Instead of debate on personality, there should be a serious debate in the labour movement about policy objectives. No one is disputing the fact that there has been a huge increase in spending on education and health - and the military. But huge problems surround the real cost of spending in health and education.

The government has used the private finance initiative to build new facilities. PFI has brought with it exorbitant charges or even the handover of operations to the private sector. It has also contributed to the deficits and job losses that we are now seeing in many hospitals.

PFI is massively unpopular and wasteful and any new leader ought to be committed to funding public spending in the traditional way, which is through direct government borrowing. This is both cheaper and more secure and keeps public services in public hands.

The Labour Representation Committee’s Public Services Not Private Profit campaign, which is backed by 13 public-sector unions, shows that this issue will not go away. Its core demand of a halt to privatisation has a huge public resonance.

Another area of public concern is the education system. A decent education system for everyone has always been a core Labour movement aim. People who have spent their political lives defending the principle of comprehensive secondary education are understandably aggrieved when they are told that the formation of trust schools, the sidelining of local education authorities and the threat to national pay bargaining are progressive policies.

The pensions debate also goes to the heart of labour movement principles. The whole point of the universal state pension is to recognise the part that people play in society during their working life and to give them a decent guaranteed level of retirement income in return. Former CBI director general Adair Turner, the man handed the responsibility of investigating pensions, graphically illustrated the problems with pensions provision in the UK.

But the solution is not to force workers into dubious savings schemes or to work longer, but to ensure that the state pension is set at a living rate and that public-sector pension schemes, which are guaranteed by the government, are honoured.

We need to have this debate before considering personalities. Labour was elected to replace the discredited Tory government. We were not elected to copy their policies or privatise public services.

The Sunday discussion programmes would do better to take a vow of silence on the squabbling neighbours in Downing Street and discuss the things that actually affect ordinary people.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Journalism | Comments Off

Action Iran - Introduction

April 2, 2006