Health Warning: John Butcher, Surrey County Council and Elmbridge Borough Councillor wants to deny NHS treatment to his constituents! Do not re-elect!

Even fellow Tories distance themselves from this “crazy fascist”

Yesterday, The VOAG re-published a story about John Butcher, a Conservative Surrey County Councillor for Cobham ward. He has worked out a brilliant scheme for pushing up property values in the county – by driving out everyone who is fat, takes recreational drugs, gorges on junk food or has ‘self-inflicted’ health problems of any kind. As a member of the council’s health committee, he has sent an email to staff suggesting a two-speed NHS in which “patients with self-inflicted morbidity, (mainly smoking, alcohol, narcotics or obesity) or an injury through ‘dangerous activities’ are placed in a much slower-moving queue”. https://suacs.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/john-butcher-surrey-heath-tory-councillor-health-committee-nhs
In a response to the Elmbridge Guardian, which first broke the story, John Butcher added: “If sports can ban performance-enhancing drug use, then entertainment etc. should ban narcotics and alcohol abuse”.

“Everyone in, or aspiring to, a position of public responsibility and everyone in a position to influence the public, including entertainers etc, should be asked to sign a voluntary pledge not to take illegal narcotics or consume excessive alcohol, or drive when so affected”.

“Anyone who fails to sign that pledge, or who signs it and breaches it, should be excluded from positions of public responsibility and influence. All public organisations, including regulated broadcasters etc, should agree to impose this exclusion”.

Fellow Councillor, Karen Randolph was also quoted in the paper. She  said: “The views expressed by Councillor Butcher challenge the very credibility of Surrey County Council’s Health Overview Scrutiny Committee, of which he is a member. It is highly disturbing that the Conservative administration at SCC has deemed it appropriate to appoint to this committee a councillor who clearly does not support the NHS and who holds such extraordinary views about the responsibilities of the state to its citizens.”

Cllr John Butcher also sits on Elbridge Borough Council, where he lists his chief concerns as “Challenging wishy-washiness” and “nebulous do-goodery”.

Simon Cook, a Conservative councillor in Cullingworth, Yorkshire called John Butcher “a real deal health fascist” and blogged yesterday: “So if you smoke, drink, drive fast cars round a track or climb rocks (not sure whether Cllr Butcher’s ‘dangerous activities’ includes horse riding and playing rugby) you’ll be made to wait longer in the hope that you’ll move away from Surrey. Indeed, it seems that Cllr Butcher thinks that, by doing this, all these people with “self-inflicted” illnesses will move to places where the authorities believe in equal treatment”.

The real question is: How would John butcher’s proposals push up house prices in Surrey, and to whose benefit would it be? John Butcher’s argument is that people with illnesses will be repulsed from Surrey, whilst “healthy people will be attracted to the better healthcare that Surrey could afford, having been freed from the burden of treating sick people”.

What the councillor is really saying is drive out the poor and less affluent from Surrey (the sick, disabled, smokers obese et al, who are by-and large the less well off) to make lebensraum for his wealthy friends. Bring on the concentration camps.

But let’s give the councillor a chance. Let’s take his comments on face value. There are 1.08 million residents in Surrey. According to Surrey County Council, one in four adults in Surrey are smokers. Surrey NHS estimates there are 455,000 “hazardous”, “harmful” or “binge drinkers” in Surrey. http://www.surreydaat.org.uk/pdf/Alcohol%20Needs%20Assessment.pdf

The Obesity rate in Surrey, lower than the national average, is estimated by Surrey PCT to be at 20% of the population. http://www.guildford.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=569&p=0 As for drugs use, there are no statistics for Surrey, but in the South East, according to the ONS, 8.6% of the adult population took illegal drugs last year, with 3.3% of the population described as frequent drug users. http://data.gov.uk

The councillor extended his attack on the unfit and unwell to people engaged in “risky past-times and sports”. It’s plainly obvious that this is just a smoke screen to hide his real agenda, which is to chase the less affluent, who have a propensity to be less fit, out of Surrey. I can’t believe the Councillor is thinking of his horse riding, rugby playing chums when he talks of “dangerous sports”. However, taking Cllr Butcher at his word again, we have to take account of horse riding, rugby, perhaps even motor cycling, and a host of other recreational pass-times that might be considered potentially hazardous.      

For example, according to Surrey County Council’s 2007 Rights Of Way report, there are 20,000 horses in Surrey. A 1998 Gallop poll found 6% of Surrey residents had gone horse riding in that year. http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/176058/ROWIP-main-text.pdf

Where’s all this going, what’s the point of all these statistics? Well, by my reckoning, if the Councillor had his way, they’d be no-one left in Surrey. His policy certainly wouldn’t produce the rise in property prices that he and his chums so desire.     

As an aside to these arguments; according to the ONS, Excise duty & VAT raised by the UK Drinks industry amounts to £22bn annually, whilst alcohol consumption costs the nation, through the health service, crime, lost production etc £20bn.

Estimates of the costs to the NHS from smoking varies greatly, one study estimated an annual cost of £610m. Another study (Allender, S- The burden of smoking-related ill health in the UK) estimates the cost to be £2.7bn – whilst the Centre for Health Economics estimates the cost to be between £1.4bn and £1.7bn.  According to the HMRC (Revenue & Customs) Tobacco tax revenue last year amounted to £12.1bn.

Another argument, developed by the University of Public Health, Rotterdam indicates that smoking may even save the NHS money. Their study shows that since smokers on average die younger, they do not incur the costs of a lengthy old age or the costly diseases that are associated with it. Their study concluded that the average health cost of a non-smoker was $83,400 whilst the average health cost of a smoker was $72,600.

These fiscal arguments, which clearly show the tax payer incurs no cost from smoking and alcohol consumption, can be equally applied to the sporting activities Cllr Butcher appears so against. In each and every case revenue exceeds the costs.

It’s not the first time John Butcher has hit the local headlines. A council employee lodged an official complaint against him in February 2010.

Council proceedings start with a prayer, during which no one is allowed to enter or leave the council chambers. Cllr Butcher arrived late to the 2010 February council meeting- and finding that prayers had already begun, and the door to the chambers closed and guarded by an attendant- he lost his temper. He aggressively forced his way in to the chambers, thrusting the door in to the face of the attendant, injuring him and bruising his face.

An eye-witness told the Surrey Advertiser: “During prayers I became aware of someone attempting to gain entry to the council chamber, through the door being ‘guarded’ [by the officer], using his body to keep the door shut. It quickly became apparent that this someone had not been deterred by the efforts and they again tried to enter the chamber in a more forceful manner. I then recall [the officer] turning his head towards the door as if to indicate through the frosted glass to the person on the other side that prayers were still ongoing. A very short time afterwards I recall hearing something of a thud as the door hit [the officer] on the side of the head and I witnessed John Butcher stumbling/forcing his way into the chamber through the partially opened door.”

After the incident John Butcher refused to apologise to the attendant and denied injuring him, even though there was a council chamber full of witnesses.

Not only are John Butcher’s views abhorrent, but as I hope I’ve shown, they don’t even make sense or stand up to any kind of reasoning. Rather than exile the less-well-off, the sick and the disabled from Surrey, it’s time to kick John Butcher out of Surrey. Do not re-elect John Butcher to Surrey County Council or Elmbridge Borough Council.
John Butcher
18 Bramble Rise
Cobham Surrey
KT11 2HP
Tel: 07899 891685
jbutcher@elmbridge.gov.uk

South West Surrey MP Jeremy Hunt Conspires with Murdoch’s Media Monopoly

Jeremy Hunt. Now what does that rhyme with?

Jeremy Hunt was appointed as a Privy Counsellor on 13 May 2010. Whilst, I don’t know what a privy counsellor is, this certainly stinks.

It’s been revealed by the BBC that Ofcom thinks there are big problems with Murdoch’s BSkyB power grab. Their report to Jeremy Hunt- Tory MP for South West Surrey and Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport- says the Competition Commission needs to be involved.

 The argument is over Murdoch’s News Corp’s attempt to buy the 60.9% of BSkyB shares it currently doesn’t own.  In the report that Jeremy Hunt is keeping secret, Ofcom argues that it may be against the public interest because it would reduce “diversity and quality in the UK media below an acceptable level”. Ofcom recommends that the move is referred to a full Competition Commission enquiry.

 But Jeremy Hunt is sitting on the report and refusing to make it public. Instead, he’s been locked in secret meetings with Murdoch’s representatives. It looks like he could be trying to cook up a way of giving Murdoch’s power grab the green light. These meetings were not minuted and didn’t have any civil servants present.

Things could move very quickly – if Jeremy Hunt thinks he can get away with it, he could give Rupert Murdoch the go-ahead in the next couple of days. This is highly dodgy behaviour. We, the public need access to Ofcom’s report and we need to speak up in favour of the independent inquiry which Ofcom says is necessary.

If we don’t want a fat cat monopoly on the media, we need to make a fuss. The more public awareness there is for this issue, the less room Jeremy Hunt has to stitch anything up. We need to flood our MPs with messages telling them to speak out against the secrecy. Jeremy Hunt needs to be hearing from MPs and the media that he has to follow Ofcom’s recommendation.

Please click here to send an urgent e-mail to your MP. Demand an end to the secret meetings and for Jeremy Hunt to conform to Ofcom’s wishes.
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/hunts-secret-meetings

The BBC’s Robert Peston sums up the suspicious behaviour of Jeremy Hunt: “What I don’t understand is why Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, has not simply published the report and announced that there will be a further Competition Commission enquiry. Why is he only showing the report to Murdoch’s lobbying team? There’s a real risk he’s working with them to find a way round the Ofcom report”.

Ofcom’s recommendation to refer the BSkyB deal to the Competition Commission was a response to pressure from the 38 Degrees group. Now it seems Jeremy Hunt is trying to dodge the report. We need to let Jeremy Hunt know we won’t stand for yet another conspiracy with Rupert Murdoch. 

Jeremy Hunt was appointed as a Privy Counsellor on 13 May 2010. Whilst, I don’t know what a privy counsellor is, this certainly stinks.

Now it happens that Jeremy Hunt was only given the power to rule on media mergers on 20^th December 2010. Business Secretary Vince Cable was stripped of those responsibilities after he told undercover Daily Telegraph reporters he had “declared war” on Rupert Murdoch.

Labour MP Tom Watson has written to the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, accusing the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, of being “knee deep in News Corp”. In the letter, the MP for West Bromwich East accused the government of misleading parliament by failing to disclose the meetings which were held on 28th June and 21st July. Watson said he had been told in replies to written parliamentary questions that no formal meetings had taken place between Hunt and News Corp executives.

Watson also highlighted other meetings, including one on 21st July between the culture secretary and Jeremy Darroch, the chief executive of BSkyB, which was also unminuted. Watson said Hunt should not be handed the power to rule on News Corp’s bid, and demanded to know if the Cabinet Secretary knew about these meetings when he took legal advice before authorising the transfer of powers from Vince Cable to Jeremy Hunt.

The Voice Of Anti-Capitalism – You read it here first (unless you read the papers)

Hugo Chavez And The Call For A 5th International – An open letter from the League For The 5th International

Hugo Chavez, President of  Venezuela, has been calling for a new International Association of left wing groups. – A 5th International. In response, the British section of The League for the 5th International has recently circulated an open letter to the left urging support for Hugo Chavez’s call and explaining why.  We publish this letter in full below.

The fight for a revolutionary International today

An appeal to open a discussion about convening a common conference of all organisations that have indicated agreement that the time is right to take concrete steps towards the formation of a new revolutionary working class International

Dear comrades,
The League for the Fifth International addresses this proposal for discussion to organisations that have indicated they would support steps towards the founding of a new international organisation of the working class, a new International, capable of coordinating a worldwide resistance to the capitalist classes’ offensive against the workers’ social gains, their democratic rights and their natural environment.

 Concretely, the need for a new International has been emphasised by Hugo Chávez’ call for a Fifth International. This has attracted interest from a number of socialist organisations on the far left who recognise that the building of a new International is an urgent task of the day, not a theoretical project for the distant future.

The need for a revolutionary international is posed right now by the sharp offensive of the bosses against working people all over the world. The enemies of the working class are attacking jobs, wage levels, social welfare, health, education and democratic rights.

The capitalist classes of the world survived the initial shock of the most severe economic crisis since the Second World War thanks to the weakness of the traditional leaderships of the workers. Now, they are determined to unload the full cost of the crisis onto the backs of wage earners, pensioners, the unemployed and the young.

There has been a determined fight back, but it has been hampered by the national and continental fragmentation of the forces of resistance. In Europe, the governments of the EU, led by Germany, coordinated an international campaign of vilification against the Greek workers, farmers and lower middle classes, accusing them of laziness and living beyond their means. Their journalists extended the hate campaign to most of the southern nations of the continent, describing them by the disgusting acronym “the PIGS” (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain).

At the height of the crisis in Greece, we clearly needed a body that could, and would, mobilise the workers of Germany, France, Britain, indeed the whole of Europe, against this chauvinism; that would explain that it was not Greek working people but the bankers of the City of London, Frankfurt, Zürich and the billionaires of the bond markets who were master minding the biggest rip-off in history and turn the hatred of the masses against them. There was no such body and now governments across the continent are seeking to impose their own austerity programmes, insisting that workers accept huge cuts in social spending “or suffer the fate of Greece.”

What is the network, the organisation, and the leadership that could mobilise the working class resistance? It is an International. We believe that the global capitalist crisis has created conditions in which the task of creating a new revolutionary International can no longer be postponed. It is a task of the day, alongside the task of building revolutionary parties in every country.

We believe the present crisis is no “normal” cyclical recession, but marks the entry of the world into a period in which the overall trend of capitalist development is downward – constituting a historic crisis of the system as a whole which obliges the bourgeoisie to launch a sustained attack on the working class. In general, cyclical upturns will be shallow, downturns deep and protracted. Rivalries between the powers will intensify; pre-revolutionary and revolutionary situations, the rise of reactionary forces, wars and environmental disasters will increasingly pose point-blank the need to resolve the crisis of proletarian leadership, the need for a socialist transformation of society.

There is great unevenness between the old imperialist heartlands and the emerging global powers on the one hand, and the underdeveloped semi-colonial economies on the other, some of which are growing while others sink deeper into debt and destitution.Although we recognise the historic character of the current crisis, we should not turn a blind eye to sporadic recoveries and speculative booms. The cyclical rhythm of capitalist development naturally continues, but it is sclerotic and painful, with expansion in one country or region exacerbating crisis in others. As the system as a whole moves in a downward trajectory, the competition for dwindling spoils intensifies.

The crisis is greatly accelerated by the contradictions generated by globalisation over the preceding period. In Europe, we are faced with the dismantling of our post war gains (the welfare state) and in the third world we are struggling under a new round of debt and austerity measures. We are seeing the beginnings of a struggle for the re-division the world between rising and declining imperialist powers, threatening regional and proxy wars and intensified diplomatic and economic conflicts. Instability is further increased by severe environmental catastrophes.

We believe the present crisis has a special significance because, by bringing to the surface of events the historic contradictions of the capitalist system, it underscores the basic insight articulated by the revolutionary Comintern in the days of Lenin and Trotsky: that the imperialist epoch is a revolutionary epoch, the epoch of capitalism’s decline and fall, and that the actuality of the revolution, the potential struggle for socialism, is lodged in every episode of the class struggle.

In such a period, the intensification of the class struggle leads inevitably to the possibility of revolutionary or counter-revolutionary outcomes. Where the question of power is posed, the victory of the working class is certainly not an issue that can be left to the dynamics of some sort of objective process. For victory, the working class needs a correct strategy (a programme) a combat organisation of the vanguard (a party) and a class struggle that builds up new or renewed fighting organisations of the masses. Ultimately, none of these tasks can be completed in national isolation.

These immense challenges find the working class movement worldwide, above all its mass organisations, parties and trade unions, without even the rudiments of a revolutionary leadership. Neither is this simply an absence, a vacuum waiting to be filled. The existing leaderships of the unions, the Communist, Socialist and Labour Parties, are agents of capital who, at best, have no idea of the alternative to capitalism in crisis and, at worst, seek to thwart and divert the mass militant struggles which continue to erupt, despite them.

The period we are entering undoubtedly presents great opportunities but also great dangers. The opportunities centre on the possibility that revolutionary socialist ideas and politics can again become a mass phenomenon, winning over the actual vanguard of working class militants and of all the oppressed and exploited classes and strata that form the natural allies of the proletariat.

This possibility, however, will only be realised if revolutionaries play an organising and politicising role internationally – as Marx and Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky did in the previous four Internationals. In this task, we are not starting from the beginning; we have the heritage of all these historic figures on whose shoulders we must stand. In part, we will be continuing the work of the revolutionary years of the Internationals that they founded. However, we will also be addressing positive developments over the last ten years. In the period of expanding globalisation, the forces of internationalism were plainly on the march.

The most remarkable examples of this were the anticapitalist mobilisations from Seattle to Genoa, the mass mobilisations in Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, and the global antiwar movement of 2003 which, even though it failed to stop the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, significantly undermined popular support at home for the war and placed limits on further attacks. Likewise, in Europe and Latin America, links of solidarity between countries resisting capitalist and imperialist offensives, economic and military, have led to mass mobilisations.

These developments have been manifested at various gatherings such as the world and continental social forums and, most recently, in the call issued last November/December by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, for a Fifth Socialist International.

A number of political forces worldwide, generally those that have been active in the various anticapitalist, anti-imperialist and antiwar movements of the last ten years, have responded positively to this call. These have included various Trotskyist currents as well as non-Trotskyist and Marxist-Leninist organisations.

Varying degrees of criticism have accompanied this support for Chávez’s call. These have mainly centred on the obvious danger that this ‘International’ would be subject to the foreign policy of a capitalist state (even if an “anti-imperialist” one) and the class contradictions lodged in the very heart of ‘Bolivarian socialism’.

We certainly share these criticisms. The class contradictions in Venezuela are very real. They express, yet again, the simple fact that socialism cannot be brought into being in any sense without the expropriation of the capitalist class, the breaking up of the old state institutions and the establishment of working class states. The lack of democracy in the PSUV, the decline and bureaucratisation of the missiones, and Chávez’s condemnation of workers fighting for pay rises amid spiralling inflation as ‘counter-revolutionary’, give a clear warning of what a new international would look like if it were built around his reformist vision of socialism and under his leadership.

If a new international looked like a re-born bourgeois Non-Aligned Movement, as Chávez has on occasion suggested with his appeals to the Iranian regime and the Chinese Communist Party, it would be a dead-end. We need, in contrast, a new working class international that fights for genuine socialism and the final overthrow of capitalism in a revolution.

Does this mean that those who contemptuously rejected Chávez’s call, often with formally correct criticisms of his record and policies, were right to do so? Absolutely not. Firstly, they ignore one simple fact: the working class does need an International, not some distant future but now; to fightback against the massive attacks launched against it in the context of the present crisis. If workers’ organisations respond positively to this call, then it would be the height of sectarianism to refuse to engage with them.

Secondly, if revolutionaries refuse to participate in any initiatives resulting from Chávez’ call this would actually tend to ensure the very outcome which they say they want to prevent: the formation of a bourgeois international. Such an outcome would certainly be a crime against the working class, particularly if it were draped in the red banners of Lenin and Trotsky, but to avert this outcome requires that we do something.

That means that we do not stand passively on the sidelines, giving Chávez and company every opportunity to shape an international as they want it, but intervene and fight for a revolutionary internationalist programme and policy in any and every arena created by this new initiative. This is why we welcomed Chávez’s call without endorsing his project and why we would attend any international conference he organises. Whether this conference can play a positive role depends on how many organisations respond, who they are and what they do at it.

A Fifth International must be built, but on a revolutionary basis which accords not merely with areas of agreement between existing organisations, but to the objectively determined necessities of advancing the class struggle. That is why we appeal to all revolutionary and working class organisations to join us in the struggle to make the new international stand on firm socialist foundations. The mass vanguard of the working class, presently fighting back against the savage austerity programmes of bourgeois governments, desperately needs a network of national sections (parties) and an international centre to coordinate its struggles, to hammer out a strategy for a counteroffensive which ends in the seizure of power: a world revolution.

We, in the League for the Fifth International, believe that, if Chávez calls a conference open to all who want to fight capitalism and imperialism, then all revolutionary tendencies and currents should attend it. More, they should collaborate in advance to prepare a revolutionary intervention, and argue for a militant programme of action, for class independence from all states and for a debate on our revolutionary goals and strategy (i.e. on programme).

However, we do not believe that it is right, or necessary, to wait for an event that may never happen, or that may happen in a form that discredits the very idea of an International. It is high time that all those forces who believe in the necessity for a new International themselves take an initiative to summon forces to the task of creating a new International.

For this reason, we propose that all such forces organise an open conference to discuss the linked questions of coordinated global resistance to the crisis and the austerity measures of the capitalist governments and the question of putting the issue of a new (Fifth) International squarely before the mass fighting organisations of the working class in every country.

We are eager to hear your response to our proposal.
With revolutionary greetings,
Dave Stockton for the League for a Fifth International
http://www.fifthinternational.org/fight-revolutionary-international-today

Election Surrey 2010: Surrey’s Tory Experience

 Surrey’s Tory Council Prepares To Cut The Fire and Rescue Service

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

When Richard Jones addressed a “Save Our Services in Surrey” lobby of Surrey County Council, Kingston Town Hall on March 23^rd, the Surrey Fire Brigade Union (FBU) branch secretary painted a picture of crisis in Surrey’s rescue services. 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!”

He continued: “If the Council’s 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.”

Richared Jones was quoted in the Woking News & Mail yesterday as saying: “The council have said it is making cuts to Surrey Fire and Rescue because there had been a reducution in funds from the government”. However Richard continued, he could see no cuts that had been made by the government, and accused the council of “making reductions to enable lower council tax bills, in order to gain votes in elections in the coming years”.

The Tory Council is considering several cuts packages, including stopping day-time retained day cover and reducing the number of night time fire engines in service. Many of the smaller towns in surrey have a retained fire service, where fire crews are called in to the station from home when there is a fire. Any further reducions in these services will greatly lengthen response times and cost lives. These cuts are being made from council set budgets and are going to cause great damage to the fire service.

In his Woking News & Mail interview, Richard Jones said: “The cuts would only amount to an average of two pence per week for an average council tax paying household”. These cuts have already begun, with the fire service already loosing half a million pounds from its budget.  

The interview took place following the Woking News & Mail’s freedom of information request, which revealed Woking area fire crews have been called to 384 night time incidents in the past twelve months. 

The Tory Council is using the recession as a smoke screen for its own political agenda. Up and down the country the recession is being as an excuse to attack working conditions, pay and services.

The government blamed the recession when it announced their plans (now scrapped) to privatise the post office. Many universities have used the real cuts in education funding to hide large scale cuts of their own, desisgned to re-orientate the focus of the entire education system. The same tactic is being used by bosses in the rail industry and across the public sector.

 However, time and again, local people have shown that when they stand together in anti-cuts groups, local coalitions or ‘committees of action’ they are able to defeat plans to cut services. The government has baulked at privatising  the posal service; the campaigns against cuts in education have met with etraordinary successes everywhere.- And here in Surrey, Brooklands College was recently saved after a huge campaign by staff, students, and the whole community.

Remember public services when you vote May 6^th.