The News In Shorts

How the news would look if everyone stopped waffling and told the truth.

Sunday 25 January 2015

Is The Tory Party A Haven For Sociopaths?

A sociopath is defined as someone who is utterly selfish, has no empathy with anyone else and will ruthlessly exploit other's weaknesses for their own benefit. There is no lie they will not tell, no despicable action they won't take to get what they want and, when caught out, will move heaven and earth to distance themselves from the consequences of what they've done. I'm tempted to say at this point "I rest my case", but more needs to be said for the benefit of those foolish enough to vote for this vile political party. The telling of lies by politicians is common to all parties if they have any hope whatsoever of being elected into office within a democracy. That is the greatest weakness of democracy - the electorate don't like bad news or unpalatable truths. Telling the truth for a politician is all too often nothing less than career suicide and can be so damaging that, even if proved right, they will never regain the confidence of the electorate. What it comes down to then is the motive behind a politicians lies. The politician who genuinely wants to do something for his country will lie in order to get into office where he can do some good. The politician who thinks only in terms of his or her own career will tell lies that will get him into office so he can line his or her own pockets irrespective of the damage it does to the country and the electorate he or she are supposed to represent. The difference between the two is entirely dependent not on the lies they tell but how they behave when in office. Putting aside the lies that the Labour party were responsible for the banking crash of 2008, that poor people are all feckless and deserve no favours, taxing the rich produces less revenue, tax loopholes are impossible to close and privatisation is the answer to everything, what have the Tories actually done? First and foremost, of course, is that they have made themselves and their rich backers even richer than they were in 2008. Second, they have made the poor much poorer than they were in 2008. They have deliberately undermined the NHS, starving it of funds and destroying the morale of its staff while remaining completely unmoved by the total chaos they have created or the danger to those in need of health care provision. They have vilified the sick, the disabled and the unemployed, lumping them all together under the heading of "feckless scroungers." They have kicked into the long grass any meaningful investigation of organised child abuse by an elite group of politicians and establishment figures, probably because it's true. They have done everything they can to demonstrate quite clearly that they are utterly selfish, have no empathy with anyone but themselves and have been eager to exploit the weakness of others for their own benefit. So is the Tory party a haven for sociopaths? Of course it is. Unfortunately it also seems to be a haven for those a little further along the spectrum of anti-social behaviour (and don't forget that the Tories believe that society doesn't actually exist at all) - the psychopath. Psychopaths are those who are evidently sociopathic but are also quite willing to murder those who get in their way because they have no fear of being caught or punished. Given the number of deaths that can be directly attributed to such lovely Tory policies as the bedroom tax, denying vulnerable people benefit payments on flimsy grounds and the destruction of the NHS, now I rest my case.

Sunday 11 January 2015

Tories Unveil Plan To Solve NHS Problems.

Circle Holdings, the company that was the first to run an NHS hospital as a private concern, wants to withdraw from its contract because it is "no longer viable under current terms". In other words they cannot make a profit out of other people's misery unless they can get their sticky fingers on yet more tax payers money. The problem, Circle told the press, is that there are too many sick people wasting resources at Hinchingbrooke hospital. If only they could get rid of all the sick people, sack all the doctors and nurses and flog off all the medical equipment then tax payers money could go where it belongs - into the offshore bank accounts of Circle executives. The hospital itself has been put into special measures after it was revealed that the A&E department was being run so badly that patients were being put in danger while staffing levels were completely inadequate. Shocked by their revelations about the complete failure of a private company to run an NHS hospital David Cameron immediately swung into action and declared that, if he wins the next general election, then he will make it more difficult for public sector workers to go on strike. "The last thing this country needs," he told our reporter, "is doctors and nurses going on strike in protest at my complete mishandling of the NHS. Publicising the fact that private companies are not fit to run hospitals and are efficient only in diverting tax payers money into their own pockets is not in the national interest. People simply don't need to know this. It only makes them fearful and distrustful and I intend to come down heavily on anyone who spreads such despondency. What I want to see are patients cheerfully laying down their lives in dirty, underfunded and under-staffed A&E departments and declaring that is their patriotic duty to die for the greater good of the Tory party, the rich, the greedy and the over-privileged. Meanwhile doctors and nurses should get on with their job - providing profits for me and my rich mates to skim off the top. What else are doctors and nurses for?" Meanwhile the British public have remained completely apathetic since most of them don't work in the public sector and are content to work for starvation wages just as long as the unions are kept in check. "We don't want a return to the Winter of Discontent," one member of the public told our reporter. "I remember it only too well. There was garbage in the streets, pot holes appeared all over the roads and you couldn't get to see a doctor or a nurse. Ahhh - hang on a minute......"

Thursday 8 January 2015

The NHS: The Beginning Of The End?

A & E departments across the country are so hard pushed that they have little choice but to declare a major incident and introduce emergency measures in order to cope. Doctors and nurses are at breaking point, patients are waiting up to five hours outside hospitals in ambulances and the government is failing to reach even its own pathetic targets. The crisis facing the NHS this winter is unprecedented and is the culmination of five years of Tory ideology which has inflicted untold damage on the service and brought it to the brink of extinction. So what have the Tories got to say about all this? Nothing intelligible. Cameron has accused anyone asking questions about this mess of "using the NHS as a political football" - as if he hasn't. He has also accused sick people of clogging up the system by having the sheer nerve to be sick and old people having the sheer nerve to be old. Not one word about the disastrous top-down re-organisation that he, Andrew Lansley and Jeremy Hunt have pursued for the last five years. Not one word about the cuts to spending on the NHS over the last five years. Not one word about the destruction of morale amongst NHS employees over the last five years. Not one word about the destruction of those ancillary services that support the health care system and have now left the NHS exposed. Just more of the favoured Tory trick of blaming the victims. Nothing could demonstrate more clearly the commitment of the Tory party to their core principle of killing people for money. The cuts inflicted on the NHS are designed to provide tax cuts for the Tories and their rich mates. The so-called re-organisation is designed to allow the Tories and their rich mates to get their hands on billions in assets that are actually the property of you and me - the tax payer. This is what Tory ideology means on the ground - more money for them and more misery for the rest of us.

Thursday 1 January 2015

How The Poor And Disadvantaged Wage Class War.

The man pictured above is Alun Jones president of the Girls’ Schools Association (GSA) and, according to him, limiting tax breaks for private schools that cater for the rich and over-privileged is "class war." Essentially what he is saying is that when the rich and greedy grab whatever they get their hands on, that is "charity". When the poor and disadvantaged protest about this, that is "the politics of envy." Of course the underhand tactics of "class war" as practiced by the poor are, according to people like Alun Jones and those millionaires who don't want to pay tax, totally unacceptable even though they seem to work only rarely - if at all. Despite many decades of the poor waging an unremitting "class war" and despite their dishonorable tactics, the poor only get poorer while the rich get ever richer. So, is Mr.Jones right when he talks about "class war"? I'm tempted to say that you can "bet your bottom dollar" that he's absolutely correct, but you already have and, what is more, if you can't afford to send your children to private school, then you've already lost. The truth is that a class war has indeed been raging all around us forever but has certainly intensified over the last five years since the Tories sneaked in through the back door of No.10 Downing Street in 2010 with the hot and eager help of the turncoat Lib Dem party. They have conducted a campaign of terror against all those in society that they hate - the poor, the under-privileged, the sick, the disabled and anyone else who isn't of the "better sort". Those that the Tories accuse of waging "class war" are the actual losers in this struggle, the target of the Tories age-old tactic of blaming the victims. The Tories tell us that the only way to get the British economy back on its feet is to punish those who had absolutely nothing to do with wrecking it in the first place. The people who actually wrecked the economy, criminal bankers, immoral venture capitalists and corrupt politicians, must be protected at all costs from the consequences of their own actions because otherwise "chaos" will ensue. What would you call the banking crisis of 2008 then? Protesting against unfairness and inequality is not "class war" nor is it "the politics of envy" - it is simple self-defence against an over-priviliged and greedy elite whose only game is "heads I win, tails you lose."