Surrey Council Health Committee Tory Councillor, John Butcher: “Force seriously ill people out of Surrey to push up house prices”

Surrey County Council Health Committee Tory Councillor, John Butcher: “Force seriously ill people out of Surrey to push up house prices”

From Political Scrapbook blog -June 1st, 2012.
A Tory councillor on Surrey’s health committee has called for seriously ill people to be forced out of the county. John Butcher has suggested those with “self-inflicted morbidity” should be “encouraged” to “move away from Surrey” – in the name of pushing up house prices.

Butcher wants groups such as smokers —  referred to as the “self-inflicted” — to be offered slower NHS treatment so that they will be forced to move: “This factor would attract more ‘other’ patients to come to live in Surrey – and that would push up house prices here.”

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more sick, he ventures that this would benefit the Tories in elections: “any political party that seeks to pander to the needs of the self-inflicted unhealthy, and to win their votes, will suffer twofold … mortality will ensure that its voters will be much fewer in number than the ‘others’”

 Councillor Butcher’s email, which went round Surrey Council like wildfire before being leaked, is reproduced in full below:

1 Please pass on my apology for absence from the Surrey HOSC meeting on 24 May 2012, but I have a hospital appointment that day, and it has already been postponed once.

2 Because of the economic catastrophe facing the capitalist world, the NHS, that is a Marxist organisation, is bound to fail – like Greece.

The government’s efforts to ‘improve’ it are merely a postponement of that failure, which will arise from ever-increasing demand for, and the unit costs of, healthcare and the ever-decreasing national wealth available to afford those demands and costs, through taxation or otherwise.

Politicians who support the diversion of increasingly scarce fiscal resources into propping up the NHS, without taking measures to curb demand, not only accelerate its eventual demise but allow more important demands on the public purse to go unmet, with serious adverse consequences to the people. It will be the people who suffer from the collapse of the NHS – but they will have only themselves to blame – for voting in politicians who promise to improve the NHS regardless of other factors.

3 One way of saving the NHS is to encourage patients to take very much more care of themselves, with penalties on those who won’t do that. If the NHS in Surrey were to be run on the basis that patients with self-inflicted morbidity (mainly – smoking, alcohol, narcotics, obesity) and injury (dangerous activities) are, following due warning, placed in a much slower-moving queue for healthcare than ‘other’ patients, this would encourage the self-inflicted to move away from Surrey, to areas where there is no differentiation between patients on the grounds of their contribution towards their condition.

And it would deter the self-inflicted from coming to live in Surrey. Over time, that would result in the healthcare for the ‘other’ patients in Surrey being significantly better than the average national level for all patients, as the resources deployed to the self-inflicted would be very much reduced.

This factor would attract more ‘other’ patients to come to live in Surrey – and that would push up house prices here – assuming that planning controls remain similar to now.

4 Eventually the self-inflicted patients would end up living in ‘equality’ areas that are dominated by politicians who pander to their needs, thus driving more ‘other’ patients out of those areas, as healthcare there will be badly affected by the over-dominance of the self-inflicted.

These ‘other’ patients would move into areas, such as, hopefully, Surrey, where ‘other’ patients are not nearly so adversely affected. Eventually the country will be sharply divided into two types of area:

4.1 the ‘equality’ ones, where the self-inflicted unhealthy are treated the same as all patients, and 4.2 the ‘others’, such as, hopefully, Surrey.

Average life expectancy will be substantially lower (by, say, 20 years) in the ‘equality’ areas than in the ‘others’. This may mean that ‘other’ patients moving out of ‘equality’ areas may have to live in a less desirable dwelling, because of house price differentials, but that is a trade-off, that they can choose, with healthcare differentials between the two types of area.

Such house price differentials already apply for schooling, with houses on one side of a catchment boundary being worth a lot more than houses on the other side of it.

Indeed, the perception that the gap in those prices between those two types of healthcare area will grow substantially will encourage the ‘other’ patients in those ‘equality’ areas to move out of them sooner, lest they see their dwelling there becoming worthless.

5 Thus, any political party that seeks to pander to the needs of the self-inflicted unhealthy, and to win their votes, will suffer twofold:

5.1 mortality will ensure that its voters will be much fewer in number than the ‘others’, and

5.2 by concentrating its voters into particular areas, that party will never be able to win enough seats to dominate Parliament.
Regards John Butcher.
18 Bramble Rise
Cobham
Surrey
KT11 2HP
jvcbutcher@btinternet.com
Tel: 07899 891685

Join Save Our Services in Surrey – Demonstrate 24th November

Join Save Our Services in Surrey: Demonstrate 24 November.

Build General Assemblies

In Guildford
We need a broad based student movement in the University to resist education cuts. A General Assembly that recognises the attacks on education is part of a wider program of attacks on public services.Here in Guildford we are seeing the total scrapping of the Connections careers service. Youth centers are being closed and social workers are being made redundant. This is in addition to a £3.9m reduction to front-line services for children and young people that was implemented earlier in the year. There have been 400 redundancies at the hospital with more on the way. A 25% reduction in our fire service. Road repairs are being put on-hold and road-gritting will be stopped this year. Council workers are being made redundant. There are cuts in benefits for the ever increasing numbers of unemployed, and services for the disabled are being cut. The Education Welfare service is being scrapped. The ‘Mother and Baby’ support centers have been closed. The list is endless. Bus services are also about to be reduced and in some places scrapped, due to the ending of the grant bus companies receive to provide less profitable bus services.

These local attacks are in-part due to a 30% cut in the central government grant awarded to local councils. Students, workers, trade unionists and service users must campaign together to put a stop to these unnecessary assaults on public services.Save Our Services in Surrey has already led several successful campaigns, stopping the closures of Shortwood School and Brooklands College. It has a dozen trades union branches affiliated to it, and several community organisations. Royal Holloway University Anti-Cuts Alliance, based at the Royal Holloway University in Egham is also affiliated.

Surrey University needs a large Anti-Cuts campaign “Save Our Services in Surrey Students” that can benefit from the knowledge of experienced campaigners and trade unionists, and with whom we can co-ordinate our campaigns.Education Activists Network Planning Meeting, 15th November.
With millions of young people, teachers and students inspired by the size and militancy of the 10 November national education demonstration, last night’s planning meeting for the Education Activists Network (EAN) was full of two hundred students and trade unionists in London who were eager to join the resistance and make their voice on the way forward heard.

But it rapidly became clear that the meeting – billed as an open and democratic forum for action was just a fig leaf for decisions made behind closed doors by an unelected clique. Farcically, an irresponsible 2pm gathering point just outside the Liberal HQ on the 24^th November had already been announced to the national press in a conference called a few hours earlier by Socialist Worker Party (SWP) members within EAN.

Even worse; while the EAN, little more than an SWP front was unilaterally announcing the Liberal HQ protest, the SWP’s other front organisation, Right To Work, was sending out emails calling for the protest to be outside Parliament. 

Nonetheless, new faces, not just from the education movement but from London trade unions and youth services in the capital quickly filled the room. Activists excited by the prospect of a militant struggle against cuts chatted to each other, exchanging contact details and information.

When the meeting was started by Kings College UCU President Jim Wolfreys, there were shouts from the floor asking why NUS President Aaron Porter, who was due to be speaking, hadn’t turned up. “Where is he?!” students cried!

Speaking from the platform, Paul Whittaker, UCU President refused to condone or condemn the occupiers of Millbank Tower, while Mark Bergfeld from the NUS ‘block-of-12’ and SWP made an impassioned speech for solidarity with those arrested, to escalate the action and build committees of action as part of building a movement capable of launching a general strike to break the Con-Dem government. A speaker from a successful indefinite strike at Tower Hamlets College spoke about the electrifying effect student protests had had on workers at her college.

Mark was right dead right that we need committees of action – but it soon became clear that this meeting certainly wasn’t one.

Strike together!
John Bowman from REVOLUTION said that it was “a disgrace” that Aaron Porter hadn’t shown his face and that if he refuses to fight to save our education, then he should “make way for someone who will.” He said that we should defend education “by any means necessary”, and that we needed a national UCU strike alongside mass student struggle to defeat the cuts.

Echoing this, a member of the National Union of Teachers NEC said that their union was bringing forward their claims, aiming to coordinate national strike action with other public sector unions. He said that a focus for our movement had to be getting rid of Britain’s anti-union laws that allow the courts to ban strikes if they do not fulfill strict criteria. Simon Hardy from REVOLUTION at Westminster University said: “If they’re scared of a few broken windows, they’ll be terrified when we build a movement that gives workers the confidence to break the anti-union laws.”

Act before you think?
But as more speakers from the floor put forward ideas for the next steps that should be taken, Education Activists Network leaflets were passed round the room – declaring that students should gather outside the Lib Dem HQ at 2pm.

But a meeting of 60 students the night before, representing a large number of different universities and F/E colleges had already decided that this was potentially dangerous – at best leading people into a police pen or “kettle”, and at worst gathering an unformed and unorganised demonstration into the hands of violent police bent on revenge for the Tory HQ occupation. So a compromise was reached, that protests should meet at Trafalgar Square at 12pm, 10 minutes away from the HQ.

Socialist Workers Party and EAN activists, including Mark Bergfeld had attended this meeting – and chose to ignore the democratically agreed decisions.

Ashok Kumar, Education Officer at LSE was exasperated. He said that he was on the EAN steering committee – but had not been at all consulted about the 2pm Lib Dem office start point, and told about the press conference only one hour before it happened.

EAN is looking and acting more like a party front than a grassroots campaign, if it continues like this, it will not organise the movement but become irrelevant to it.

So what can we do instead? – General Assemblies
In European countries which have seen mass movements of youth and students, like France and Greece, General Assemblies are called which bring students, workers, different unions and campaigns together, at local, regional and national levels. This is what we need to see in Britain now as a burning priority. At these meetings proposals for action are made, voted upon and taken back to local groups by delegates for implementation – and breaking the decisions made by the mass movement is a recipe for isolation.

The assemblies are democratic and grow out of the movement, being called and built for by all activists as organising centers for the struggle.

We need a general assembly of students in Guildford to unite students into an unstoppable movement and to co-ordinate our actions locally and nationally with workers, youth and trade unionists.

A General Assembly has been called in London for the 21^st November. Jo Pinto from the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) said she hoped the Assembly on Sunday would be the first of many. “It’s a great initiative. This is where things really kick off. The General Assembly will bring unity to our movement – but that doesn’t have to mean consensus – if we democratically choose the strategy to go forward, we’ve succeeded.”

“In France and other countries across Europe with enormous student movements, general assemblies have played a key role not just in organising mass unified resistance to government attacks, but have even gone on to becoming key coordinating bodies in mass general strike situations”.

Revolution Socialist Youth and NCAFC member John Bowman, one of the General Assembly’s organisers said “The General Assembly will aim to bring together university and college anti-cuts groups, trade unionists, student unions, college students and school students into a mighty mass forum of resistance to the attacks on education and beyond.

We musn’t let the SWP split the student campaign. Come to the lunch-time protest on 24^th November, 12-2pm outside Starbucks, near the entrance to the Student Union. Join the campaign against Fees and Cuts by joining Guildford Against Fees And Cuts on the 24th. Save Our Services in Surrey:
www.saveourservic.es

Guildford Against Fees & Cuts:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Guildford-Against-Fees-Cuts/167151436659040

London General Assembly on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/l/d609cWb0KaSafN8-yterA3Vs1_g;www.socialistrevolution.org/1416/londonassembly

Election Surrey 2010: Anne Milton’s Tory Sleaze

Rumours of Anne Milton’s Tory Sleaze Continue! 

Yesterday we put out the call for some local Tory sleaze. “If you have some dirt on Anne Milton share it with us” we said. – “We will always post it and we never give away our sources”.   

Since then The Voice of Anti-Capitalism HQ, has been receiving a trickle of tit bits about the conduct of our local Tory adminstration. We’ve had reports of a Tory slander campaign against Anne Milton’s opposition, unethical electioneering practices, and accusations of the bullying of Anne Milton’s rivals. Follow the link for the full story:
https://suacs.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/tories-in-surrey-tory-sleaze-theyre-the-same-everywhere/

We’ve learnt that Anne Milton’s Tory team have even made repeated nuisance phone calls to the work places of Anne Milton’s opponents. 

Today We’ve received the vid, embedded below from an anonymous ‘fighter for truth and justice’. Or more likely – a local malcontent, just as right-wing and dodgy as Anne Milton herself

However all donations are gratefully received. We liked the Vid and hope you do too.

If you have any dirt on Anne Milton – Give it up, don’t be Shy
And remember Only the Lib Dems can keep the Tories out.

For More updates join our Guildford Against Fees And Cuts Facebook page.

Or for more stories of miss deeds:
Visit Surrey Tories:
http://surreytories.wordpress.com/2006/01/04/guildford-mp-awol/
Visit Bloggerheads:
http://www.bloggerheads.com/anne_milton/labels/royal%20surrey.html

Election Surrey 2010: Surrey Workers Fight Cuts.- Guildford Against Fees And Cuts

“Councillors say they are ‘trimming the fat’. However, the fat went years ago and they have been gnawing on the bones ever since”.

 Cuts and closures are already being felt in Surrey, which people usually see as a place of leafy suburbs and stockbrokers. However the county’s less well-known trade union struggles and local, grassroots campaigns are beginning to fight back.

Across Surrey, people are mobilising against the cuts. Brooklands College was saved after a huge local campaign by staff, students, parents and local people. Parents, governors and staff at Shortwood School turned out in their hundreds at public meetings. They organised street stalls and collected a petition of over 1,000 signatures in a campaign to save their school. Working peoples’ creativity and organising ability has shocked the local council.

March 15^th saw the launch of  the Save Our Services in Surrey (SOSiS) campaign, sponsored by Surrey Unison. The campaign will coordinate anti-cuts activity, support local campaigns, and bring local trade unionists together to defend jobs and services.

Paul Couchman, Tusc Parliamentary Candidate for Spelthorne, West Surrey and founder of Save Our Services in Surrey said at the launch rally: ”We face threats to close Shortwood infant school in Staines, threats to hundreds of essential bus services, a ‘review’ of fire services with a clear intent to reduce the number of fire stations -and swingeing cuts to community hospital services. -And this is before the county council’s £180 million cuts package over the next few years.”

Paul Couchman is also the secretary of the Surrey County Council Trade Unions (SCCTU), representing all trade unions within the council. They have formally affiliated to the campaign. Speaking at a joint SOSiS and SCCTU lobby of Surrey Council, at Kingston Town Hall on 23rd March, Paul said: “Public sector workers and local communities who need public services, will be asking who to vote for in this year’s general election. Most trades unionists already see that New Labour no longer represents working class people and that whoever wins, the next government will take the axe to public services.”

Richard Jones, Surrey FBU branch secretary spoke at the lobby. He said: “We’ve reached a point where fire crews are turning up at emergencies and having to tell the public that they cannot make a rescue because they have to wait for more staff to turn up. These cuts put lives at risk. We turn up to incidents without enough crew and have to wait for back-up before we can safely enter the building. Fire-fighters are going in understaffed and risking their lives. The public is in danger, fire-fighters are in danger, enough is enough!”

Richard Jones continued: “If these cuts go through, Surrey will be spending less per head of the population on fire services than any county in Britain. It will mean the loss of fire engines and station closures. It’s life or death in the fire services and if these cuts continue the Grim Reaper will be taking up residence in Surrey.”

After the lobby, Paul Couchman told the rally: “We’ve sent a message to the councillors that our public services are vital and we won’t tolerate cuts to them. The politicians spent billions bailing out the bankers, and they want us to pay the price. The local hospital has lost most of its wards including the A&E Dpt, local fire stations face the axe and bus routes are being slashed.”

Paul is Chairman of the Elmbridge Care Homes Campaign. Reffering to the Campaign he said: “We have decided to draw a ‘line in the sand’ and say no more sell-offs. We are fighting to preserve the excellent services provided by the care homes”.
Paul explained the importance of working class people having a political voice, now that New Labour has joined the Tories in cutting and privatising public services. “Its necessary to fight together, trade unions and the community, to maximise the pressure on politicians and councils to fully fund public services.”

Alan Greenspan, head of the US federal reserve during the boom years – once treated as a god by capitalists and now reviled as being responsible for the crisis – recently excused his role by saying: “Unless there is a societal choice to abandon dynamic markets and leverage for some sort of central planning, I fear that preventing bubbles will in the end turn out to be unfeasible. Assuaging their aftermath seems to be the best we can hope for.”

Greenspan is right, capitalism, an unplanned blind system driven by profit and not by social need, will always have periods of crisis like at present. Anxious to restore their profits, the capitalists’ way out of the crisis will always be to try to trample working class people a bit further into the dirt.  All of the things won through struggle – are under attack. The NHS, education – the list is considerable,  The crisis is being used to unravel and dismantle all of those social gains. We’re told that poverty must now increase and that we should meekly accept the growing gap between the richest and the poorest in society. However the public are not fooled.

A Mori survey in the FT showed the public was utterly unconvinced of the need for cuts. Only a quarter believed there’s a need to cut services to reduce the national debt. 50% don’t think cuts are necessary at all -and 48% think more, rather than less, should be spent on public expenditure. The recession is the result of massive market failure. It’s entirely technically and financially feasible to create at least a million new jobs, by investing in insulating homes and public buildings, investing in renewables, through a sustainable publicly run transport system, and utilising the skills and know-how in society for socially useful production. None of this will happen if we leave it to the market.

     http://paulcouchman.com/
     www.ourhomesoursay.org.uk
     http://www.saveourservic.es/
     http://www.surreycountyunison.org.uk/

 
Join Save Our Services in Surrey F/b Group:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=194817448458&ref=ts  
Join Guildford Against Fees And Cuts F/b Page:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Guildford-Against-Fees-Cuts/167151436659040

The Voice of Anti-Capitalism in Guildford – Spotlight On The Budget

There’s no need for the cuts – the money’s there

This week’s budget will see the mainstream parties and the media agree that there is no alternative to huge cuts in public spending. The only debate is about how fast this should happen. Yet there is plenty of money that could be used to ensure that there are no cuts to vital services. Mark Thomas writing in the Socialist Worker gives us some suggestions:

Close the tax gap

The gap between tax owed and tax paid in Britain could be as much as £120 billion a year, say the Tax Justice Network. This “tax gap” is made up of tax avoidance using legal loopholes, and illegal tax evasion. Even the Revenue & Customs department says that £40 billion of tax is avoided and evaded. In addition, £28 billion in tax owed is still unpaid. But the Tax Justice Network say this “dramatically underestimates” the real figures. It puts the total tax gap at a minimum of £70 billion a year, but say it may be as much as £120 billion. The projected annual tax deficit between the government’s income and spending is likely to be around £170 billion. The Tax Justice Network point out that tax avoidance “shifts the burden of tax payment from capital (and the large companies that utilise it) onto labour, and from the wealthy and self-employed onto employed labour.” The rich should pay much more in tax. But even if they just paid what they currently owe there would be plenty of money for public services.

Cut military spending

Britain’s military budget for this year is approximately £37 billion. Under Labour, military spending has increased 11 percent above inflation since 1997. And the extra costs incurred from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t covered by the Ministry of Defence’s budget. The Treasury Reserve pays them. Since 2001, an additional £9.5 billion has been spent on the occupations of these two countries.

Take from the rich

The recession seems to be over for some. Pay outs to shareholders in top companies are set to rise by 18 percent. Top bankers are still raking it in after the government stepped in the bail out the financial industry. Bob Diamond, Barclays bank’s president, boasted a couple of months ago that he wouldn’t accept a bonus this year in response to public anger. Yet Diamond still grabbed more than £22 million in pay last year. Other Barclays employees will share a bonuses of £2.2 billion. Investment bankers at its Barclays Capital division will get an average payment of £95,000.

Sussex University Occupation – The First Day

The Voice of Anti-Capitalism in Guildford joined Sussex University students for the first day of their occupation.

12th March.
Download our tribute to them below in plain text or text with pictures

Download Word Version of this document with pictures: https://suacs.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/cuts-text-pics.doc
Download Word Version of this document -text only:
https://suacs.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/cuts-text-only.doc

Come to the UCU demonstration against cuts in London on the 20th of March http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=3787
Attend the Education Activists’ meeting, Kings College London. 16^th March.   https://suacs.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/16th-march-regional-meeting-flyer.pdf
Details of further action: https://suacs.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/cuts-further-action.doc

LINKS: 
Visit our blog https://suacs.wordpress.com/ for the full story to date and further updates.
Or join Guildford Against Fees And Cuts F/b page.

Join the  F/b group: Sussex Stop The Cuts
Or Visit http://www.defendsussex.wordpress.com

Dan Vockins, Sussex NUS addresses a meeting of academics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5ar1KjLKME&feature=channel

Bolton Town Hall Lobbys Home Secretary To Ban EDL Rally Later This Month.

Bolton Town Hall Lobbys Home Secretary To Ban

EDL Rally Later This Month.

TOWN hall chiefs
have this week sent an appeal to Home Secretary Alan Johnson asking him to ban the proposed English Defence League rally later this month.The two-page letter, signed by political, civic and faith leaders on Bolton Vision letter-headed paper, was sent to the Home Office on Monday.Bolton Council’s legal department has spent a fortnight putting the proposal together.

Copies of the council motion — which was unanimously passed last week — and a statement signed by the Bishop of Bolton, the Rt Rev Chris Edmondon, on behalf of the Bolton Faith Leaders Forum were included in the appeal, as was a copy of the One Bolton Pledge, which was launched on Saturday and promotes community cohesion.

Mr Johnson, as Home Secretary, is the only person with the power to stop static demonstrations such as that planned by the EDL for Bolton on Saturday, March 20.

The signatories of the letter state they do not want to prevent freedom of speech or freedom of assembly by asking for the rally to be banned.

They say past EDL events, such as those in Manchester and Stoke, have led to outbreaks of violence and disorder and that they want to prevent that happening in Bolton.

Sean Harriss, Bolton Council chief executive, said: “This has the full support of all the party and faith leaders and we are hoping for a positive response from the Home Secretary.

“We will also be seeking a meeting with Alan Johnson, or his representatives, so that we can put forward our case in person.”

Bolton Against Racism has already announced it plans to hold a “celebration of unity” event on the same day.

According to a number of websites, protesters against the rally, plan to arrive in numbers from as far away as Aberdeen and Dover, as part of a counter-demonstration.