Resigning minister Mark Simmonds earnt 417 pounds an hour for his “consultancy” work for Circle Healthcare, a group looking to profit from the massive privatisation of NHS services and functions. He had to give it up during his time as Minsiter, but presumably can now go back to it. Simmonds gets 50,000 a year from Circle, broken down into 12,500 payments once a quarter, for ten hours a month. That is 417 pounds an hour.
This is blatant corruption. Simmonds has no great expertise worth that money, it is simply that the private healthcare industry is buying the MPs who will vote to privatise areas of the NHS to them. New Labour are just as bad as the Tories. Alistair Darling received 12,000 pounds for one after dinner speech to Cinven Ltd, a firm which does nothing but benefit from privatisation of NHS services. Was it because Alistair Darling is just the entertainment people want after a good dinner? No, they were buying his vote. New Labour and Tory MPs are both up to their eyeballs in NHS privatisation money.
It is the same with defence spending. Lord Taylor of Blackburn epitomises the rampant corruption in this area the professional in infant education who earned hundreds of thousands of pounds as a “consultant” to British Aerospace. This blog now has ten times more regular readers than it did when I wrote this article, and I beg of you to click the link and read it. It may open some eyes.
Simmonds has come into the spotlight by resigning on the pretext that his total salary and expenses as an MP in 2012-13 of 271,000 pounds – including a 25,000 for his “secretary” wife and 32,500 in rental allowance – were not enough for him to be able to live a family life in London. This man voted for the benefit cap that limits the total income of families on benefits to 26,000 pounds – that is under ten per cent of the amount which is inadequate for his family to live on. These bastards really do live in another world.
In their world, however, all is good and foodbanks are a sign of a healthy society. This will take your breath away.
‘It truly was a golden time. But the door to all that was firmly slammed in 1979 when Thatcher rose like a malignant Britannia from the waves and stuck her trident into everything that was “true, honest, just,pure, lovely and of good report”.’
Who on earth would have done a thing like that, who back in 1979 would have tabled a motion of no confidence in the Callaghan government? Who out of spite would have voted with Thatcher and saddled Britain with years of misery?
Doug Scorgie
My advice to you is go and see a shrink. You have something ugly developing in your head.
I have said it many times that I have never posted (and have no intention to post) anything under any other name but the one I am known by.
And if it satisfies you keep paying doctors 10 times more than nurses and midwives. Mad western lefties have no problems with this as I see. Somehow other European societies manage to run better quality of healthcare with smaller paygap between medical professions and most certainly without stuffing doctors mouths with gold.
“And if it satisfies you keep paying doctors 10 times more than nurses and midwives. Mad western lefties have no problems with this as I see. Somehow other European societies manage to run better quality of healthcare with smaller paygap between medical professions and most certainly without stuffing doctors mouths with gold.”
So why don’t the people who become nurses and midwives become doctors instead?
Clark
“I’ve voted thoughtfully all my life but it’s never changed a thing.”
Persuade your fellow citizens to vote thoughtfully too. Certainly you can do it without facing long prison sentence or risk of disappearance in one of modern Gulag style prisons in the Kizilkum dessert.
I am well aware of shortcomings of western societies but these shortcomings are nothing comparing to the places I lived in. The major problem in the west is that majority of people are too politically apathetic because despite huge outcry (mostly coming from Mad western lefties) majority of people here are well off (comparing to the rest of the world). Hence no concerns with who is running this country. People will still pay off their mortgage (some will not but majority will), will have bread and butter on their table (some will not but majority will), will travel to beach holidays (some will not but majority will), will upgrade their car after few years (some will not but majority will). And the establishment knows how to balance their profit without risking putting this silent majority into position which will increase their interests in politics.
Remember what all “great” revolutionists used to say. Social crisis is necessary precondition for successful revolution. No social crisis means no revolution. Few reposed houses, few people getting their food from foodbanks, few people unsatisfied with government is NOT social crisis. For the establishment is manageable and they will make sure that it does not get out of their hands.
Fred
There is one good (Russian) proverb saying that son of the prosecutor will be prosecutor and son of the painter will be painter. Most of the places in Medical school allocated not only to those with great A levels but also number of extra curricular activities taken into account. For most pupils of deprived schools (which are many more than good schools) achieving great A levels is already unachievable task. And lucky they will be to get place at any of the universities and not even close to the medical schools. It is those pupils from well established private schools (or at least schools from better off areas) who will most likely get admitted onto MBBS.
And then imagine British healthcare without nurses and midwives. NHS bill will shoot up in par with national debt and f..ck up every other public spending. So low paid nurses and midwives is actually a cornerstone of the NHS. It enables NHS to keep bill lower and at the same time stuff doctors mouths with gold.
@Fred: As you know, Idiot Trotskyite trades union leaders decided to take Jim on, bringing about the winter of discontent. They wanted a conservative government, because the idiots thought they could bring about a revolution. How stupid… and how stupid of trades unionists to let them do it.
I don’t blame the Liberal MPs who withdrew their support a couple of months later… the die was already cast.
Uzbek in the UK, 10:38 pm:
Yes, that’s what I was saying.
Yeah, I know. It’s not enough. I was part of the Fairer Votes campaign. Ten million of us voted for a small improvement in the voting system, and I’ll bet you 90% of us knew why it was an improvement. However, twenty million people voted against, and I’ll bet you that 90% of them didn’t understand the issue and were just responding to propaganda.
Yes but it’s not a precondition for political evolution, and the establishment need to block that, too. Hence propaganda, establishment support for an under-responsive voting system, and opposition to Scottish independence etc.
I mentioned lack of time; many people never come to a blog like this. Without such a perspective it takes years of careful observation to work out that the corporate media is propaganda. This is one of the advantages the “Western” system has over more autocratic states.
It’s a long time since I checked the figures, but I did hear of some doctors getting paid huge amounts.
Uzbek: Superiority complex made even more complex by inferior reasoning and communication. Let’s all do obeisance.
While I see what Uzbek is saying; roughly, “You think you’ve got it bad? You didn’t have Stalin!”….and have no problem with that:
UK repossession rates in detail:
http://england.shelter.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/825176/Eviction_and_Repossession_Hotspots_201314_Data.pdf
Probably averages around 1%, and certain to increase when a 1/4% bank rate rise is magically converted into a – what? – 5% mortgage interest rise?
1% of all home owners is not a negligible number.
Re. food banks: the public pays whether the state administers relief or the charities do. State relief offers economies of scale (to use the term beloved of megacorps) which local charities and the Trussell Trust, lacking a transport fleet, can’t. The main reasons cited for using food banks are unemployment, low wages and delays in benefit claims. The last are due to continuous restructuring of the system over decades making it unfit for purpose and effectively unable to respond to personal emergencies. As to unemployment and low wages, globalist economics demands both. It’s a crazy setup; low pay and a pool of unemployed are to be subsidised by the charitable public in the most inefficient way possible, for the benefit of The Markets, many of whose members pay no UK tax at all.
But it’s been suggested – don’t remember by whom – that the big revolutions all come from the middle classes. You can grind the poor all you like, IOW, and with any luck they’ll be too miserable to object. But when the bourgeois pips start squeaking, look out. I think that time is coming, slowly.
voting is complete waste of time, it is not the choices that sre the problem it is the system capitolism has to have profit and that can only come by stealing from the working class voting for labour or Tory ,lib deem, or the greens will not change anything the proof can be seen since the end of ww2.the general surge in social house building the HHS nationalisation of industries, nearly all have reverted back to private ownership, food banks bedroom tax, this in the end will lead to reintroduction of the old system of workhouses.well done the peaple of Britain!
A contemptible trougher indeed, his justification for resigning, in his own words, is a gem of the Marie Antoinette genre-
‘There needs to be a system of allowances and support structures in place that supports MPs in their work, enables them to be normal people, which currently I believe is not the case,’ he said.
‘That’s the main reason I have resigned. The sacrifice to family life has become intolerable and the support for continuance of family life is not there… It is time we had a mature debate about this.
‘When I became an MP, the situation and support mechanisms were very different. You were able to have a family home in the constituency and a family home in London. That is no longer the case.’
Translation- under the old system I could acquire a second home at taxpayers expense, now I can’t. Poor me.
http://londonnews24.com/2014/08/foreign-office-minister-mark-simmonds-quits-the-government-and-moans-i-just-cant-live-in-london-on-120000/
There is another world….lost in space, this one.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/10/north-east-avoid-becoming-britains-detroit
(Sorry it’s the Guardian, but it’s one of its better efforts)
Agent Cameron returns from Portugal today. There is a lot of sorting out for him to do. Go now Dave and let’s have an election next month.
@Uzbek
So should the cleaners be earning as much as the nurses then?
@Peacewisher
So did the SNP MPs table a motion of no confidence in the Callaghan government?
Did the SNP vote for Thatcher against Callaghan?
If they had voted against wouldn’t Thatcher have been defeated?
Uzbek seems to have some animus against doctors. Suggest he holds off in the hope that the day doesn’t come when he might need one.
On my recent pathway through the local NHS, I have met and been cared for very well by doctors from different origins, and just a very few from a British middle class background. Some were British Asian and from Europe. My own GP is from the far East.
“There is one good (Russian) proverb saying that son of the prosecutor will be prosecutor and son of the painter will be painter.”
Yeh they have a saying where I come from too. If you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
@Fred
I blame Callaghan, not the then coalition (or “pact” as it was called)… for expecting the idiotic trades union leaders to accept a 5% wage rise when inflation was several percentage points higher. He should have called an election in the autumn when he had a slight lead in the polls, as should Gordon Brown almost 30 years later. Still, hindsight and all that…
The SNP, Libdems, and NI parties held the balance of power. Callaghan chose a high risk strategy, and they supported him. When it didn’t work, they blamed him. That’s politics.
I hope the libdems, NI parties and SNP do the same to Cameron as he continues with his deeply divisive polices.
In retrospect, I actually think one term of Thatcherism was needed in Britain, although I wasn’t so sure about that at the time. It put the power of trades unions back into balance. It was what happened in 1983 with her “rolling back the frontiers of socialism…” speech that really started the rot.
@Peacewisher
But it was the SNP who tabled a motion of no confidence and put Thatcher in power.
Westminster voted for the undemocratic 40% rule which denied the people of Scotland devolution in 1979. Denying the people of Scotland is a Westminster trait. Scottish unionist politicians, originators of the 40% rule, love doing Westminster’s dirty work. They will do anything for a phony title and a seat in the house of lords. Another good reason for voting Yes.
@Dan Hull
But it was the SNP who tabled a motion of no confidence and put Thatcher in power and sentencing everyone in Scotland and England, not just the Scot who introduced the 40% rule, to years of Misery. I wasn’t asking why they did it, I know it was spite.
Fred… The SNP tabled the motion of no confidence for very good reason. Callaghan’s crew had proven themselves to be unworthy of any confidence.
Thatcher was not elected by the SNP or by Scottish voters. In that instance, as in almost every instance since I was born in the middle of the last century, Scotland elected some MPs, but England’s voters elected the government.
As ever, when seeking to spread some blame around, it is better to spread it where it belongs. In this case (once again) we can only look to that semi-mythical monster known as, “Middle England.”
Interesting that the Scottish Parliament is still going strong whereas the HoC troughers went off on July 22nd for 6 weeks, returning 1st September.
http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/business-faq-page/recess-dates/
The Scottish parliament goes off for a month on 23rd August.
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/index.aspx
Live on Channel 81 Freeview.
Well said Craig, you do not mince your words and this is really what we need.
All this IS utterly disgraceful,and you hit it on the button.
How can anyone with a brain vote no? ( excepting corrupt politicians of course )
O/T for Mary who had some interest in this unresolved mystery surrounding Sandringham estate. I think there will be an open verdict soon. Murder by unknown assailants in a green Lexus. There must be thousands of green lexuses in the east of England, or is it just a few hundred? I could not find out…. but somewhere on that Lexus site……;)
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/crime/alisa_dmitrijeva_norfolk_police_pass_case_of_wisbech_student_found_dead_on_royal_estate_at_sandringham_to_coroner_1_3724869
Callaghan was widely advised to hold a general election in 1978 and didn’t. Callaghan took a completely unnecessary (see below) and large loan from the IMF in 1976 in order to plead poverty, a loan with with gruelling conditions attached, including public sector, NHS etc. pay freezes, though these wages had declined against inflation and rightly needed significant rises to correct. Callaghan cancelled a government order for motor cars made by Ford, worth tens of million, as Ford gave their workers a 12% pay rise despite Callaghan’s demands to limit it around 6-7% (still well above the ‘frozen’ public-sector cap) which destabilised other motor-makers, particularly British Leyland, whose workers were stringently subject to the pay freeze. In the midst of the winter-of-discontent public-sector strikes, Callaghan swanned off to the Bahamas and when he returned his seeming indifference to scenes such as uncollected rubbish piling up, was capitalised on by the then as now, predominantly Tory-biased press.
Money from oil was pouring into the Treasury already but Labour having decided to lie in 1976 about the coming oil revenues, by burying the economic facts of the McCrone Report could not or would not admit this. Amidst fake ‘austerity’ the IMF loan was returned in full quietly, it wasn’t and they knew it wasn’t, ever needed at all, it was all a stupid political stunt by Callaghan and Healey, but the IMF’s tough conditions were adhered to, including the pay freeze and the looting of state assets, they called privatisation was also demanded, reasonable pay rises to correct by then appallingly low wage levels were denied. The clock was ticking, Callaghan had to call an election, Thatcher was already the government in waiting, and immediately when in power she found lots of lolly washing around to gift to her cronies, and the obvious whopping lies Labour had been telling since 1976, meant Thatcher had them over a barrel for years, but did not reveal their treachery as the same lies Labour had told were useful to her and the Tory party too, for the same reasons.
Labour and Tories, as one, united in lies and deceit, set the pattern we still see today.
Thanks Nevermind. Three years ago. A sad story. Poor kid.
Well everybody seems to have opinions.
I state the facts.
Ed Murray on the MLMB gets the prize. E mail to Frei Ch 4 News
Mr Frei,
Full flow propaganda mode for tonight’s Snowmail, I see.
You talk about Cameron’s “well-earned holiday” and ask why Britain has ruled out a “military response”.
You finish with a flourish:
“And what is the overall strategy for preventing the country that we invested so much blood and treasure in from disintegrating into a black hole at the heart of the Middle East?”
I suppose the million plus Iraqis that died as a direct result of the US/UK illegal invasion in 2003, don’t count in your “black hole” calculations. The other million plus that died as a direct result of US/UK sanctions, clearly don’t count either.
ISIS turn up though and you are writing scenes from the Book of Revelation and lamenting the lack of bombing, by the very people responsible for causing all the chaos in Iraq in the first place.
Why is it that when I read any “analysis” of world events by Channel 4 News, with you, or the “excellent” Jonathan Rugman, or the indefatigable Lindsey Hilsum, “explaining” it all to me, I just have to go online, look up a few independent commentators who aren’t spoilt, overpaid msm hacks and I get a totally different, vastly more compelling analysis that actually dares to talk about the realpolitik of the situation, instead of a lot of BS about “our” benign intentions in the Middle East.
However, when I read your reports, it’s like you are ticking every western propaganda box in sight, as if hoping the great and good are watching you and will gratefully recognise what a safe pair of hands you are for disseminating their poisonous nonsense.
I can just hear you saying “Alright Mr. DeMille, I am ready for my close-up”.
Ed Murray.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1407954743.html
“Callaghan swanned off to the Bahamas and when he returned…”
________________
Right, Tony M ……except you’re srong.
The meeting you refer to was held in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe and not the Bahamas. First point.
Guadeloupe was chosen for the venue because the meeting was held at the invitation of President Giscard d’Estaing (you may remember that he was French, Tony!); so not a question of Callaghan flying off to th sub of his own volition. Second point.
The meeting was called in prepareation of the forthcoming July 1979 meeting in Tokyo of the G7. As the UK was – and is – a member of the G7, it would have been rather strange if he did not attend. Third point.
You are an idiot. Fourth and last point.