With friends like these…

Iran is a country in which the USA and Britain have a history of interference. It’s history was shaped by the overthrow of the Mossadeq government which had the audacity to nationalise Iranian oil. He was removed in a coup in 1953 supported and funded by the US and British governments. The price of this coup was paid by the Iranian people with the brutal regime of the Shah. One of the consequences of this dictatorial regime, with a complete absence of any freedom to organise, was the use of the mosque as a focus and a cover for opposition in the absence of any democratic framework for the struggle for democratic rights. In that sense Britain and the US share responsibility for the fact that Khomeini and the clerical regime emerged from the revolution of 1979 as a ruling elite.

Keep Our NHS Public AGM

Saturday I attended the AGM of Keep Our NHS Public. One of the issues which was discussed was the possibility of KONP standing candidates in elections. This debate elicited the response from a representative of UNITE (which is an affiliate and financial supporter of KONP) that if it did take such a step then the union would have to withdraw its support from the campaign. The issue will be discussed by the Steering Committee this week.

Paying the private sector for NHS work it hasn’t done!

The Health Service Journal reports that the first independent treatment centre to complete a five year contract will have delivered about 20 per cent less work than it was paid for. South African company Netcare’s contract to provide mobile cataract surgery ends on 31 May and is not being renewed.

The £42m contract was for 44,735 procedures. By the end of May Netcare expects to have done just over 36,000 – or just 81 per cent. The NHS will be paying them around £8 million for work not done.

It’s difficult to know whether such a contract is the result of incompetence or the government’s desire to encourage private companies into the “health market”. In contrast NHS organisations have been penalised for carrying out “too much” work, being paid less money for each activity. This reflects the fact that the new “health market” is designed as if they were producing commodities. However, patients do not chose to become ill.

The national MRI scanning contract also comes to an end in July. The Department of Health says more than 431,000 scans have been performed under the contract. HSJ calculates this will mean around 100,000 scans will have been paid for and not used by the end of the contract, which is thought to have cost around £95m for 560,000 scans over five years.

For all the talk of the government abandoning neo-liberalism, it has not shown any sign of moving away from privatisation. Indeed, the DoH has recently produced a document which sets out “a new commercial operating model”. To drive this and increase competition “regional commercial support units” will be set up to “stimulate the market”. They “wish to maximise the contribution of third and private sector organisations”.

Under-employment as well as unemployment on the rise

Everybody is aware of the a steep rise in unemployment. The latest figure shows 2.2 million out of work; 7.1% of the workforce. However, the TUC has highlighted what might be described as under-employment: people who want full-time employment being forced to take part-time work because that is all they can get.

It appears that one in nine people in part-time work are in this situation (11.2%). There are 829,000 ‘involuntary part-timers’. One in five men working part-time are doing so because they cannot get a full-time job; double the level for women. Twenty seven percent of vacancies in job centers are for 16 hours or less.

The recession if hitting young people particularly hard. The unemployment rate for 18-24 year olds has now reached 15.1%. There are 438,000 young people claiming job seekers allowance.

In January 2008, vacancies were 43% of the number of unemployed (ILO unemployed). This has now fallen so that in January 2009, vacancies were 24% of the unemployed and in March.

Acute beds in hospitals cut by 10% in three years

The latest issue of ‘Pulse’ magazine reports that NHS hospitals have cut acute beds by 10% in just three years “as managers pile pressure on GPs to manage complex cases in the community”. The figures have been released in response to a Parliamentary question.

Principles above self-interest

Swindon is undergoing an ‘options appraisal’ of its Council housing. This is the charade that offers ‘choice’ to tenants to stay with their Council or to transfer to a Housing Association or some other body. From a high of 18,000 homes, since the ‘Right to Buy’ was introduced by Thatcher, the Council stock has declined to around 10,500. With the New Labour government maintaining the ‘Right to Buy’ (albeit it with less of a reduced price) and the effective ban on new Council house building, the housing waiting list in Swindon has trebled since Blair came to office. This is despite the fact that many people do not even bother to put their name on the list since they know they have no chance of getting a house.

Swindon Palestine demonstration

Here are a couple of pictures from a demonstration in Swindon today, in support of the palestinian people and against the Israeli agression. There were around 250-300 people present.

The premature announcement of the death of New Labour – tackling the recession or tinkering?

According to some of the right wing press, Gordon Brown has abandoned New Labour. Some trade union leaders agree, roaring their approval. Derek Simpson reckons that “Gordon Brown has thrown off the shackles of New Labour to reveal the real Labour”. Dave Prentis welcomed the Government’s “courage and determination in facing the economic crisis head on”. He wants the government to “hold firm to its commitment for increased public sector investment to create and sustain jobs”. For Tony Woodley the government has “shown that it is listening to people’s fears and is helping the people of this country weather the economic storm”. It has also shown itself “willing to embrace progressive politics”. Whilst these comments are made with one eye on the next General Election union officials are seeing what they want to see. In a situation where their members are faced with a growing wave of redundancies they should be raising their voices for action to save and create jobs rather than painting these changes as the abandonment of the politics of New Labour. Judged by the criteria of how the government is tackling the economic crisis, the pre-budget report fails the test of our members’ interests.

A gentleman’s agreement?

The government has said that it has an agreement with the banks such that repossession will be a “last resort”. BBC Radio 4’s File on Four has put this ‘agreement’ to the test and placed a big question mark over whether there is any substance to this agreement.

“US hedge fund bosses threaten to move to Britain”

Some weeks back one of our New Labour MP’s, Anne Snelgrove, asked one of her constituents how she thought the government was handling the global crisis. In response to a comment about this being the result of deregulation the MP told the astonished constituent that Britain was the most regulated country in Europe!

Today’s Guardian reports on the hearing before the US Congress of the great five hedge fund leaders. Defending their industry against the dreaded threat of regulation they more or less threatened the US government with taking all their jobs over to…London.

“It breaks my heart when I go to Canary Wharf and I look at thousands and thousands of jobs in London (this was before the crash, of course) in the derivatives market which belong in America.”

The reason they came to Britain was obviously because we are “the most regulated country in Europe”.

In a column in the local paper recently, Snelgrove referred to “spivs” in the City (that is the great ‘innovators’ that Gordon Brown fell in love with). Yet here we have some spivs threatening to come to Britain precisely because it is the most under-regulated country in Europe. Only last year Snelgrove’s great leader announced in a speech to the City big-wigs that they had ushered in a “new Golden Age” of the City of London. As they say, politicians have short memories.