THE CHAIR OF the Commons Culture, Media and Sport
committee John Whittingdale, has said the BBC licence fee is comparable to the
poll tax – in which case do to it what was done to the poll tax.
The
licence fee, like the poll tax, is a tax, and not the genteel sounding fee that
people with wealth associates with the private school fees they voluntarily
hand over to pay for their children's tuition fees.
Whittingdale
speaks of the long term unsustainability of the tax, but suggests that for now
the tax needs '…tweaking to sort out
anomalies'. The trouble is the tax is one bloody great anomaly and needs getting rid of in the fastest time
possible. We are being forced by law to pay a tax in order to watch television[1],
not only the BBC but Sky, ITV, Channel Four and the hundreds of other channels,
many of which are pay to view, that are now available. For those millions who already
have to pay monthly subscriptions, the £145 added tax is an outrage and should
be done away with.
The
BBC should do what other broadcasters do; seek subscribers within the free
market, from which the BBC has always been protected by government…including
governments whose one and only reason for existence is supposed to be the
promotion of capitalism and the free market. I speak of course of MR Whittingdales'
party.
* * * *
IMMIGRATION HAUNTS today's front pages. Although the
headlines refer to different aspects of the subject; the consensus seems to be
that immigration of all kinds (legal and illegal) are out of control, and the
government is powerless to act. Cameron's rhetoric on this subject, like almost
every other subject he makes promises to the British people about, is now rightly
distrusted by his people.
Government
promises for reducing immigration before the next election will not be met.
When it comes to immigration[2]
the government is dysfunctional: from the Home Office's boarder control agency, and the absconding
immigrants after being given bale; to returning illegal migrants to wherever
they came, but whose return is obstructed by the European courts - it is, as
the front page of today's Daily Mail
announces - a mess.
On
top of which we have the legal European migrants whose legality was gifted to
them by the previous Labour Government under Tony Blair, who signed up to
Schengen and abandoned the transitional arrangement in the agreement which
allowed for a seven year respite for members to adapt to the free movement of
peoples.
When
it comes to immigration, the Labour Party are more culpable than the current
coalition; and have no right to pretend that they would have fared any better
if they had won in 2010. The failure of
immigration is the failure of the LibLabCon triumphret that has had the
monopoly in one way or another of British politics since the founding of the
name the Labour Party in 1906 - signalling the end of the Liberal-Conservative
power duopoly that replaced the Tory-Whig duopoly.
Immigration
has indeed swamped this nation; and
the politicians, who a decade ago were the first to speak out against those who
spoke out against it and called them racist for even mentioning the subject;
are now, thanks to the electoral success of Ukip, using the same kind of
language on the subject, that would have been deemed racist a decade ago.
The
success of Ukip, and its party leader Nigel Farage, has transformed both the
Conservative and latterly the Labour Party. Ukip speaks for the disenchanted
indigenous English from all classes and social backgrounds; who have seen their
politicians run rough-shod over them and taken them, in Labour's case for
granted; while the modern Cameron 'Conservative' Party has described its own people
who have deserted to Ukip as swivel-eyed little Englanders.
I
hope that both one-time traditional Labour supporters like myself, and
traditional Tory supporters, can help secure a Ukip challenge next May to the LibLabCon
triumphret. Only this will make the much needed changes to the country's
immigration policies as well as our relationship with Europe, which should be a
purely economic relationship within a free market.
* * * *
A DOSSIER provided by the Health Service Ombudsman,
declares the NHS has failed every generation. The dossier compiled by Dame
Julie Mellor paints a less than flattering picture of the NHS. According to the
Daily Telegraph's Health Editor Laura Donnelly; she quotes Dame Julie as
accusing the NHS of making 'devastating
and shocking' blunders.
I
can readily concur with Dame Julie. Although I have much to be grateful for
regarding my treatment by the NHS, the Health Service Ombudsman is right. In
one instance I was taken to accident and emergency by an ambulance in great
pain. The ambulance turned up at my home, and they gradually manoeuvred me
painfully from my bed, down my stairs and into an ambulance. I was quickly and
professionally delivered to Accident and Emergency (AE).
I
had had a pulmonary embolism; but you would not have thought so by the way I
was treated. In A&E I was placed upon a gurney bed. I must have lain there for at least an hour
in a great deal of pain before I came under the care a doctor who was foreign
and required the expertise of an A&E sister. She, without seeing me,
advised the doctor to prescribe the medication which, as a sufferer of
Ankylosing Spondylitis[3], I
was already on. It was then decided that I could return home, but as I tried to
manoeuvre myself into the wheelchair provided, I screamed out in pain, and was
allowed to stay the night on a ward presumably put aside for those, like the
drunk I saw stagger onto bed near my own who awoke and left in the early hours.
For
the next 24 hours I saw neither sister, nurse, or a even doctor. I was supposed
to have been sent home the next morning, but it was not until the early evening
that an ambulance arrived to return me home. Once at home, I was no better than
I was before I was taken to the hospital. In fact I felt worse, for my
breathing was deteriorating. My lungs would not tolerate any kind of deep
breathing, and would soon let me know it through the pain it caused to try.
I
had not had any kind of wash for over 24 hours and I went into my bathroom. But
I blacked out; when I came round I called for my brother to ring for an
ambulance. When it arrived, I blacked out once more; and according to my
brother the ambulance people wanted to give my chest an electoral punch to
bring me round. Thankfully my brother stopped them; and I came round again and
was given oxygen.
I
was returned to the hospital, where I received the kind of treatment I should
received in the first place. I was put on warfarin and sent to a ward where I
spent the next four days, being treated for an embolism, which I have since
learnt should have been treated within the first two hours of its occurrence. I
did, when I eventually returned home consider engaging an ambulance chaser to file
for compensation if only to deter further such abuses.
But
as I have said, the NHS has been my saviour as a sufferer of Ankylosing
Spondylitis; and I felt I owed them one. It would have been an open and shut
case; but even if I had taken the NHS on
and won. It would have been the tax payer who would have footed the bill… and I
have had to rely upon them already for my welfare benefits.
THE NHS is living on borrowed time. It cannot continue
in the way it is going. It faces a £30 billion black hole over the next five
years. The population of the UK has been artificially increased by ill-thought
through policies by Labour politicians, particularly by Tony Blair and those
who served under him, like Ed Milliband, who conspired for political reasons,
to deliberately open the floodgates to mass immigration.
The
NHS cannot continue on such a footing and will have to, sooner or later, come
to an accommodation with the private sector. We have a deficit of over a
trillion pounds, and from last April to this September a further £58 billion
has been borrowed by George Osborn, £5 billion more than last year. I can see
the take-up of private health insurance soaring in the future. The NHS has
sadly served out its original purpose.
Very
expensive medical technology, drugs, and salaries within the NHS are
undermining its ethos of free health care. On top of which the institution has
been plagued by scandal after scandal, causing thousands of patient deaths
through neglect by medical staff. All of this undermines the boast that we have
the best health service in the world. The NHS has to change; it is unaffordable
in its present continuance with the pressure of medical advances. Its yearly budget
now stands at between £100 and £113 billion. It must change or give way to the
health insurance industry to have greater say in public healthcare.
Our
national deficit has grown under the Tories despite the boast of reforms to the
welfare state. And it the people can trust Labour to out-austere the meagre
advances of George Osborn on the deficit, then they deserve the fate that
awaits them.
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