PROUD TO BE BRITISH: The Aftermath of the Royal Wedding

Guest Author: Jonathan Pims

So it is the morning after the day before.  I really feel wonderful today, the sun is shining, the streets are gleaming and the birds are singing like never before.  Just as the Prime Minister, David Cameron said many months ago, this was just what the country needed to lift it’s spirits in these uncertain times.

As the Royal couple look to the Gods thanking them for the wonderful weather, they contemplate their rightful position at the head of our countries hopes and dream, while the people look up admiringly.

What a wonderful scene.

The World looked on yesterday in awe at the way our society is organised, and how well we celebrate a wonderful day for the great and the good.

In true British tradition, all was forgotten for a day, as we opened the bubbly before 11 am draped in the Union Flag.

But this was not about a day, but about the country as a whole.  We can now look forward and not back, no more thoughts of austerity or recession; job losses or cuts.  No more worries about the NHS or our meritocracy, why should we worry when the context has finally been put into it’s rightful place.

There were jokes on twitter about the crowds being the start of the queue for the AV referendum!  Of course now, after yesterday, no referendum is needed.  Why would anyone want to vote to change the system we have.  If an event could sum up our true beliefs as British people, it was the Royal Wedding.  Lets celebrate the hereditary principle.

The House of Lords has worked fantastically well for the last 100 years so why change it?  The Blairite attacks on our representative democracy by getting rid of the majority of our hereditary peers was simply an act of vandalism, an attack on the people, an attack on our constitution.  It was no wonder he stopped reform when he did.

We need a system for stability, not change. A system that can bring strong government that we can be proud of, where a minority can rule over the majority, imposing their will on people that never voted for them.  Only First Past the Post can do this.  It is so important we keep this system, where the constitution ensures that our political system goes from the top down and not from the bottom up.

Socialism and its ideals nearly destroyed this country over the last 60 years.  The so called “democratic movement” and those calling for “constitutional change” are simply socialists by any other name.

People don’t want more power, more accountability, or more say in their affairs.  By all means let them sort out their own communities social problems in the Big Society as we withdraw support from the councils, after all they have also been infiltrated by these socialists.  But when it comes to democracy, people know where they stand.  As the picture above shows, the people look up to their betters and they look down knowingly.  This is how it was always meant to be, its the best way, the only way.

Those campaigning for the yes to AV vote in the referendum just don’t get what is great about the British and the British constitution.  Up until a few years ago, and disgracefully changed without even a debate, we were subjects and not citizens.  In my view it should have stayed this way.

A society can move forward and be at peace with itself when we know where we stand.  The monarchy, House of Lords, Disproportionate amount of power for a few politicians  in the House of Commons, a Police force that will uphold the rule of law and take out newspaper sellers who defy the authorities, this is how it is meant to be.

We were born to be ruled by the elite, a small group of people who were born to rule, and educated to carry out their order, without interference by the ill educated masses or ethnic minorities.

Many attempts have been made to encroach  on our freedoms.  Health and Safety Fascists; Environmental socialists; and a Human Rights act that actually takes away our freedoms telling us how we should treat our own people.  What right do they have to put limits on our rulers?

The church has shown itself exactly why it is at the heart of our constitution. Rightly attached and embedded into our constitution with our head of state.  In a secular society this is just what we need.

Thank God, AV has been buried by this show of Britishness.  The Royal Wedding has taken away the recession blues and the threat to our constitution.  There is no need to be depressed at economic meltdown or the rise in homelessness.  This is the way it should be.  No need to reduce the amount of safe seats in parliament or increasing accountability, it is the way it is supposed to be.

Those that still, after all we have seen over the last few days, vote for AV should be ashamed of themselves.  The fact that the BNP are campaigning against AV is just a double bluff of extremism.  AV is an attack on the very nature of our Britishness, trying to assert the extremism of meritocracy on an unsuspecting nation.

I am so proud to be British, to be where I am in society.  I doff my cloth cap with the rest of the nation to the Royals, Lords and MP’s, and to the way things are and have always been.

I love my country for the way it is. I am proud to be British.

cc

MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS INCREASE IN THE UK: 40% rise in anti-depressant prescriptions

The health news of the day is that there has been a 40% increase in prescriptions of anti-depressants .  The news bulletins are linking this to the worries about money now the economy has nose dived and unemployment is on the rise.

This however, should not be a surprise to anybody.  It is well known that when the economy falters and a recession ensues the rates of suicides increase and with it the rates of mental health problems, depression and anxiety.

Mental Health organisations like Mind, Samaritans, and  smaller mental health charities like Changes find an increase in enquiries when a recession hits.

Health services in the UK are being stretched, in the last year alone referrals for talking therapies rose four-fold to nearly 600,000, Department of Health figures show.

Suicide rates have been on the rise for some time and are approaching the 6,000 mark.  Three times the amount of people killed on the roads and nearly six times the amount of homicides in the UK, more details on these figures can be seen here.

At a time when mental health services, as inadequate as they are, are being squeezed by the cuts, as they are perceived to be the harder outcomes to definitively prove successful.

Mental Health, unlike many other illnesses is not a one stop shop.  CBT for some and anti-depressants for others, is not the way it is treated.

Early intervention is key to prevent people being sucked into a life of dysfunctionality, yet the way society and companies in our fragile economy stigmatise the mentally ill, many will not seek help until the illness is well advanced.  This is even more worrying considering the extent of the increase in anti-depressant prescriptions just over the last 4 years.

I would expect the prescription rate to rapidly increase further as the economic crisis deepens, unemployment rises and the costs of other remedies other than drugs are cut.

Sadly, none of this should be a surprise to anyone.

OTHER MENTAL HEALTH POSTS

The weak shall inherit the earth
IAPToo good to be true
Changes Bristol
Madness What Madness?

Liberal Democrats in Melt Down?

The results from last night are just sinking in with the libdems.  The forlorn figure of Dominic Carman was sad to see as he struggled to fight the seat virtually single handedly. Now we know what the libdems think of “we are all in this together”, they mean leave the candidates up a creek without a paddle and deny all responsibility. Pretty much what many think they are doing with the rest of the country.

Nick Clegg has been showing his usual scant regard for the public in his interviews this morning. The predictable reaction is that – oh well it doesn’t matter.  But this is not a mid term election,  this is just after the shine of the honeymoon period has worn off and before the main cuts come into force in April.  One thing is for sure, they should not be singing it can only get better, as it is going to get an awful lot worse first.

The figures of the election result are damning reading for the Libdems and Conservatives as can be seen below.

Source – New Statesman – http://bit.ly/gLbm5D

The Libdems not only fell to 6th place, but fell below even the independent candidate that has little electoral resources.  They also lost their deposit. £500 not well spent in these times of austerity!

source – Spectator – http://bit.ly/h8PlDC

The Libdems managed to poll 1,012 votes.  As one commentator has said “Shock of the night was that 1,012 people still prepared to vote Lib Dem at all” – tamster.

The focus on the Libdems hides two other major factors here though.  One is that the Tory’s also did terribly badly, falling behind UKIP.  The other is that the far right parties did better than expected, with UKIP finding much increased support.  We will find that this could become a pattern as the cuts begin to bite making more right wing battle grounds in the years ahead. It also shows that the left wing vote who voted for the Libdems last year are deserting them and that this vote may be hard to claw back. In addition it shows that the right wing of Conservative voters are unhappy and are trying to find a voice elsewhere.

Michael Crick in his article –  On the Lib Dems slump in Barnsley – http://bbc.in/ht3SGD – states that he can find at no time since 1945 in England that a party has gone from 2nd in a seat to 6th in one election.

But these figures are great for the Westminster bubble and political hacks, like John Motson’s statistic overdose at FA cup finals, it means nothing in the scheme of things.

So can we take anything from this by-election?  Well it shows the mood of the country at the moment – a snap shot of public opinion.  But in reality, we ignore the political game the coalition is playing to attribute more than a few column inches.

The coalition is making a gamble with our economy and public services, in order to gain advantage at the next election.  Get the pain over as quickly as possible regardless of the pain it causes, hoping the economy picks up by the time the election comes around.  The Tory’s are past masters at this, and even though the wheels have come off so many policies in the last 2 months, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have 4 years to sort themselves out.

I suspect that just like Dominic Carman, many Libdem candidates will be organising their electioneering out of the back of their car until they feel they have any prospect of winning.  On this result, this could be quite a long way off.

THE BANKS ARE THE BIGGEST TAX AVOIDERS: Should we re-think the cuts?

Bob Diamond has said that the period for “remorse and apology” for the Banks is over.  George Osborne has stated that we can now “draw a line” under the Bankers and move on.  But today even Adam Smith is being used against the greed of the Bankers as Banks are being seen as a “conspiracy against the public”.

The whole country is at a crossroads.  The coalition government is entering a time of extreme austerity to deal with the deficit.  A deficit that got out of control, not due to an over spend by an evil Marxist Labour government but due to an economic orthodoxy followed for 30 years by the right and the left in politics.  This was encouraged directly by financial institutions leading to a credit crunch, recession and a slump in tax revenue. (see https://extranea.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/the-truth-about-the-uk-deficit/ )

Those on the right wing and in government call those protesting about the savagery of the cuts as DEFICIT DENIERS.  No one is allowed to discuss and protest on behalf of those that will suffer like the disabled;  mentally ill;  the poor;  the elderly;  communities;  NHS  and  nearly a million unemployed youths.

Politicians love labels and pithy political statements to caricature an argument and to demonise a group of people so that the public will not listen to the arguments.  Like “austerity Britain”; “broken Britain”; “big society”; “the Miliband wagon”; “red ed”; “We are all in this together”  and so on, we have heard more slogans in 8 months than we heard in 13 years of Labour.  Quite an achievement.

In order to provide good policy decision making, politicians need to understand the issues and evidence and provide solutions to the problems we face.

There have been some good signs recently regarding the direction of David Cameron and the coalition with the U-Turn on the forest bill; welfare reform to try and make work pay and the Treasury paper released which could create a more far reaching regulatory system for the financial sector. (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/ )

Today the deficit deniers in the form of UKUNCUT will be occupying branches of Barclays Bank and turning them into useful public spaces.  You could say, contributing to the Big Society.

Those on the right wing will be calling for more laws to control the Unions; how these deficit deniers are living on another planet and how we have to move on from the Banks as a political issue.

The issue of the bankers never seems to go away though.  When we feel we have heard everything we could, and when previous jaw dropping moments pass, another one arrives.  This time it is thanks to some digging by Chuka Umunna MP. We now have a confirmation of just how much tax Barclays Bank paid in 2009.  The total sum of the 28% Corporation Tax paid was . . . er wait for it . . .

£113 million

This is from a profit made of £11.6bn.  Barclays have tried to make out that their entire tax paid was £2bn, but this includes tax paid on behalf of employees and nothing to do with tax on the company itself in corporation tax.

Now, to be fair, it is not a straightforward subject.  A company like Barclays is a very large company with many subsidiaries and they have to pay tax in various locations.  They are also dealing in a global market competing on a global scale.  However, a quick perusal of where the subsidiaries are based and the true picture begins to appear. Within their structure they have 30 subsidiaries in the Isle of Man, 38 in Jersey and 181 in the Cayman Islands, all tax havens.  It has also been revealed that only 20% of the tax paid by Banks in 2010 was not through employee contributions.

We live in an amazing world at the moment. Three years ago we could not have imagined that there would be a run on the banks and then the effective nationalisation of Banks throughout the western economies;  that the most right wing government in the USA in it’s post war (WWII) history lead by President Bush would nationalise the Banking sector;  that a quasi Tory government in Britain would nationalise the very sector that it had courted for the previous 10 years;  that keynsian economics would suddenly come to the fore in the USA;  and that the all knowing IMF, that is still quoted today by George Osborne as the arbiter of  sound macro-economic finance, would produce a report 6 months before the crises stating that the model for economies should be based along the lines of the light touch regulation in the USA and Britain.

Meanwhile,  our response to these remarkable events appears to blame those in the lower socio-economic strata’s of society.  We are about to reduce the amount we are spending on those with disabilities by 20%.  We are told this is a reform and nothing to do with just saving money.  We are making people redundant from the public sector who we are told don’t actually do anything.  We are cutting the services that those on lower incomes and the elderly rely upon, and we have cut the teaching budget for Universities by 80% and increased the student debt by tripling fees.

We are told if we discuss an alternative we are DEFICIT DENIERS.

But like the forests, sure start and the recent figures spouted by Andrew Landsley on the NHS – the facts do not fit the rhetoric.  (see Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science  http://www.badscience.net/2011/02/andrew-lansley-and-his-imaginary-evidence/ )

We now know that Barclays and no doubt all the other banking institutions use tax haven territories to deliberately avoid paying tax in this country.

We know that the government is creating more ways for large companies including the Banks to utilise tax loopholes.  (see Monbiot http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/07/tax-city-heist-of-century )

Like the corrupt MP’s in the expenses scandal, who said it was “within the rules”,  the banks also use this excuse.  The truth is that our leaders, from which ever party, are in hock to the banks.  The banks have to much power over our political parties, and our political leaders have encouraged tax havens in old colonial territories.  The Banks use every loophole in the book to prevent them paying a morally acceptable amount in our society.

It is time for the politicians and the Banks to take their head out of the sands and realise that it was not the general public and the “perceived” weakest members of society that got us in this mess.  It was not an evil marxist Labour government that got us in this mess, and it was not benefit cheats or the disabled who we are led to believe are no longer disabled that are to blame.

It is the economic orthodoxy, corrupt and out of date political system and the Bankers that are to blame.

The controversy over the Banks will not go away until they pay their way; until banking reform is enacted; until the banks are no longer too big to fail and until our political system cannot be corrupted by the vested interests of the rich.

Bankers and Politicians need to wake up and smell the coffee.  If bankers and the rich generally paid their way the cuts would be less severe.  This is a genuine debate, not deficit denying or being left wingers.  If Bankers do not take their noses out of the trough, no amount of rhetoric about the Big Society will placate the growing discontent throughout our country.