Nurses, Teachers, Posties, Civil Servants, railways, you name it! Thirteen years of pay cuts for ordinary workers. Thirteen years of pay bonanza at the top!
How much do Sunak, Cameron, Osborne and Johnson earn? Really!! You can’t be serious!
Scurvy, Ricketts, Starvation or Frostbite and nobody to treat us!
Poetry – The Forgotten and Sacrificed.
The Forgotten and Sacrificed.
Brave nurses in visors and masks
Fight the disease.
Brave carers in marigolds and scarves –
Brought to their knees.
Abandoned in homes,
Sacrificed to the tide,
The elderly
Lie forgotten inside.
No ventilators for you
Margaret,
Though you fought in the war,
Lest we forget.
For admission to hospital
You’ll just have to wait.
Please sign the form:
Do Not Resuscitate!
Brave nurses in visors and masks
Fight the disease.
Brave carers in marigolds and scarves –
Brought to their knees.
Opher – 29.4.2020
As Covid-19 decimates the elderly inmates of our Care Homes the true devastation wreaked by the disease is covered up.
Early on in the fight the government decided to sacrifice the elderly in Care Homes.
There was no PPE for the Care Staff and no training.
When the elderly became ill they were not rushed into intensive care. They were left in the homes to die.
The poorly equipped carers were left to care for them as best they could. No drugs, no protection, no hope. They administered to the dying and went home to their families. No visors for them. No gloves or aprons – other than what they scrounged for themselves.
The deaths were not included in any official figures – it was just covered up!
Yet these were government decisions.
Our elderly were sacrificed.
THANK YOU BRAVE CARERS!!!
We have to live within our means – the May Mantra
That was the mantra coming from Theresa May yesterday – ‘We have to live within our means’.
Well I agree and will put aside the fact that we aren’t doing so at the moment. Despite 7 years of austerity we are still borrowing. Austerity has definitely not worked. There are far better ways – but that’s for another post.
So why aren’t we living within our means?
What can we do about it?
Well basically we are not living within our means because we are not taxing enough.
There are many ways to live within your means:
a. Tax people more
b. Spend less
c. Create more growth and hence more tax income
This government chose to tax the rich less (giving away higher end tax cuts and corporation tax cuts) and spend less by applying pay cuts for the public servants. In the process they shrank the economy and reduced income. The more they applied austerity the less income was generated.
The end result was that the rich bankers who had caused the crisis were rewarded and the poor public servants who serve us all have suffered seven years of misery for nothing.
A sensible way forward is to tax the rich more, pay public servants more (what they deserve), borrow, if necessary, to expand the economy by funding infrastructure improvements. If people have more money there will be greater economic growth that will decrease the debt. Borrowing to invest in growth makes sense. The rich are not investing the bonanza they have been given. They are taking it abroad or sitting on it. Money given to the poor is mainly spent in the country generating further tax income for the government.
Austerity hasn’t worked.
Public servants have been victimised.
It’s time for a big change! More fairness! More equality!
Shortage of teachers – It couldn’t be due to the draconian government policy, could it?
As a Headteacher I caught the beginning of this government’s disastrous policies regarding education. Mr Gove sent us careering back to the 1950s with an outdated knowledge-based approach. The curriculum was narrowed, syllabi limited and children put through a narrow range of tests like pegs in a slot. What comes out the other end are sausages out of a machine. Forget skills and qualities. Forget values. Forget the whole child. All that matters are crude exam results.
Teachers were reduced to cogs in a machine. They were trained to teach in one way only. All flair, individuality and enjoyment went out the window. The three part lesson was raised on the altar and worshipped with the clipboard.
Then the pressure was put on. Pay was cut, conditions of service worsened and pensions slashed.
The workload was made monstrous. The marking regime created hours of extra tedious work. The average teacher is swamped with work. They are trying to cope with sixty hour weeks where their whole life is consumed by work.
I have relatives in teaching. They either are reducing their hours, giving up responsibilities or looking for a way out (abroad, part-time, private schools, or early retirement).
They are worn out, fraught, demotivated and see no satisfaction in the career.
It is an unmitigated disaster.
a. When we look back at the teachers who inspired us they were the ones with flair, eccentricity and who were interesting. The ones with time for us. That is being battered out of teachers in the modern military style, one size fits all.
b. No two children learn in the same way. The uniformity of the teaching mechanism will fail them. What we need is variety. More of the same is boring.
c. What society needs are skills and qualities. The modern world has knowledge at its finder-tips. Knowledge has been downgraded (it is still important but nowhere near as important). We need to train students to cooperate, work as a team, use IT, develop technology and scientific skills, value creativity, be tolerant, be trustworthy, caring and tolerant, be good at solving problems and be great at lateral thinking. Our strength as a nation lies in our inventiveness and skills.
d. The international education (PISA) tables used to bludgeon us are so narrow as to be ridiculous. Why cram kids, like Japan and Korea, to memorise pointless facts. That is not education.
This rigid 1950s model is a disaster.
Teachers have been castigated by the Tory media. I despise the lies – no child left my school unable to read, write or lacking in basic maths skills, no matter how disadvantaged they were.
It is no wonder that teachers feel unloved and morale is through the floor. What is there to attract anyone in?
Public Services are not unproductive. They perform an essential service that promotes the economy.
The Tories have an attitude towards Public Services: they regard them in the same way as they look at parasites – unwelcome.
The Tories regard Public Services as an unproductive drain on resources. They wish to reduce them to a minimum and curb pay for public servants.
The Tory ethos is that it is the Private sector that generates wealth. That is where the money should go. We can do without the Public sector.
This is short-sighted. While the Public sector does not generate the wealth directly it is essential to enabling the wealth generators to function. I would make the analogy to the army. The soldier may be the effective force at the front-line but without a munitions industry making the bullets, a transport industry to get them to the front, food, water and information they are helpless.
The Public services provide essential back-up.
We need our teachers, nurses, doctors, road workers, social workers, fire-fighters, police and council workers.
If you look in the field of education (that I happen to know something about) this is obvious. The workforce who are going to power the country and create the wealth are only able to do so because they have been properly educated. Every parent wants their sons and daughters to receive a first-rate education. They want nice schools which are properly equipped, excellent teachers who are well-motivated and a curriculum that stimulates their children.
If you don’t put the money into the system it falls apart. If you don’t pay properly then you do not attract the best. If you have poor work conditions and pension schemes you end up with demotivated staff. If you do not have the money to buy equipment lessons become substandard and boring. If you do not repair buildings they rapidly become dilapidated. You end up with a poor quality service.
The Tory answer is to introduce competition and threat. They deploy Ofsted as a weapon bring in business and use the big stick.
Result – the best teachers leave. The ones left are depressed. The children suffer.
I’ve witnessed it first hand.
The same is true for the Health Service, the Police, The Council Workers, The Fire Service, Social Services and the rest. They are all being paid less, have worsening conditions, reduced numbers, poorer pensions and expected to perform at the same standard. If I get ill I want to be operated on by one of the best. If I get mugged I want the police to sort it out. If my house catches on fire ……..
The rich buy in private to ensure they get the best. The rest of us have to make do with what’s left.
The infrastructure and support provided by the Public Services is a crucial part of the economy. They contribute!
Don’t believe the lies! We should have the best education, health care, policing, fire service, road maintenance, social care and environmental standards. You cannot do that on the cheap!
Teachers are being observed, channelled and constricted to death!
Why are our best teachers flooding out of the profession?
Why are the great teachers being suffocated in bureaucratic strait-jackets?
Why is the flair and individuality being driven out of the classroom?
I’ll tell you why – politicians have got their grubby fingers in the pie! Our teachers are being put through the mill. They are being forced to follow three part lessons, learning outcomes and meet targets until they cannot think let alone teach.
The restrictions, constrictions, enforcements, rules, regulations and constant threat of Ofsted is driving them under or out!
Stress levels are at an all-time high.
We want flair, Fun, creativity and enthusiasm. The Tories have given us claustrophobia, bureaucracy and a nightmare of fear.
Read the only person making sense! I’m an ex-secondary Headteacher who was deemed outstanding through 4 successive Ofsteds yet did it my way!
The Fascist idea of education for the plebs – why are so many of our teachers off with stress? Channel 4 – File on Four have a programme on it tomorrow at 8.00 pm. Check out the link.
Yes – our education system is under stress like never before. The Tories chucked out teaching the whole child and have brought in teaching to exams. It’s all about stats now. Your child has become a number to be jumped through loops, every lesson is a nightmare of preparation and marking geared to extract another exam mark. Personality has gone out the window. Every lesson has to follow the same prescribed formula. It is teaching by numbers to robots.
The Tory idea of education – draft in the soldiers! You don’t need teachers just enforcers!
Teachers and students are being bullied, traumatised and demoralised.
It is scrutinised, observed and analysed to death with dire threat of the sack for non-compliance. There is streaming, testing, exams, over-bearing threats and fear.
Children are ‘processed’, Teachers are threatened and Ofsted are the Storm-troopers who apply the thumb-screws.
It’s the fascist idea of education for the plebs.
Check out the channel four programme tomorrow or use this link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b055g8zh
It doesn’t take a genius to see where it’s heading!
Public Services – We need quality!
While some small minority is in a financial position to no longer require public services the majority of us would appreciate quality.
When I am on an operating table I would like to be in the hands of a superb surgeon.
I would like to be quickly diagnosed by an expert GP treated and cared for by a motivated nurse.
When I am threatened or have suffered a burglary I would like enthusiastic and skilled police to protect me and investigate with some hope of bringing the felons to justice.
I would like my grandchildren being taught in happy schools to really high standards by expert teachers.
I want fires put out by highly trained firemen, bins emptied, roads maintained and the council run effectively.
Why is it that some people think that these jobs are not vital? That these professions are not highly skilled? That these public servants are not worthy of our appreciation?
Why is it that the damage created by the politicians and bankers is being paid for by the public services?
Why is it that the public services are being subject to redundancy, pay freezes, puny 1% pay rises, worsened conditions of service and drastically reduced pensions?
Supposedly we are all in this together. So why tax cuts for the top end? Why inheritance hand-outs? Bonuses and pay rises in double figures for politicians and bankers?
Where is the justice? Fairness? Equality??
Clearly we are not all in this together!
If you create misery among our public servants it will be no surprise when it all goes pear-shaped!