The island of Ireland wants to move on from the past - if Brexiteers will let it

My article on Brexit V's Peace in Northern Ireland was published in today's New Statesman

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/12/island-ireland-wants-move-past-if-brexiteers-will-let-it

Tory MPs with a conscience should break the whip & vote to halt Universal Credit

This was published in today's New Statesman

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/welfare/2017/10/mps-must-vote-against-morally-and-economically-bankrupt-universal-credit

The Tories are lying about Brexit. It'll end in tears

On Wednesday, Liz Truss told Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics that she had changed her mind on Brexit. She voted to remain, she said, based on forecasts that leaving the EU would have major economic consequences. "Since we have left, it has been more positive, so the facts have changed and I have changed my mind."

In that last sentence alone there are two factual inaccuracies, which were not exposed as such by the selectively incompetent Neil. Firstly, we haven’t left the EU yet and secondly, the economy is not fine.

On the same day, Neil will have known that the IMF cut growth forecast for the UK and predicted it would slow from 1.8% in 2016 to 1.7% this year and 1.5% in 2018 and a report by leading investment bank Rabobank concurred. It predicted that a hard Tory Brexit would plunge the UK into immediate recession, cost the economy £400 billion and wipe 18% off GDP growth by 2030. The ONS also warned of record trade-in goods deficit in August and the OBR, the treasury’s official forecasting body, downgraded the UK’s productivity, which it expects to hit growth and weaken the economy.

The economy is in meltdown and Andrew Neil lets Liz Truss, chief secretary to the Treasury, mislead his viewers. A Labour MP would have been skewered.

Meanwhile, also on Wednesday, Philip Hammond admitted that “It is theoretically conceivable that in a no deal scenario there will be no air traffic moving between the UK and EU on the 29th March, 2019”.

Not to be outdone by her hapless subordinates, Theresa May said she didn’t know how she would vote in a re-run of the EU referendum. She would have to look at all the facts. You couldn't make it up. 

Does that mean David Davis is withholding the results of his Brexit impact assessment from the PM, as well as parliament and the public? Is she not aware of the predicted damage Brexit will cause to jobs and living standards? If Theresa May doesn’t have sufficient facts on which to base an informed decision about leaving the EU several months on, why is she going ahead with it her kamikaze mission?

Surely it is in our national interests for the findings of the Brexit impact assessment to be made clear and for the public to be given a chance to vote again – this time based on facts. Not lies.

We are experiencing major economic consequences, the NHS is not getting the £350 million a week and, for many children in this country the tooth fairy leaves magic dust under the pillow because the magic money tree is based in the Bahamas. Not easily accessible for a nurse who, despite being in work, is dependent on food banks to feed her children.  

On a more positive note: Pics from the Labour party conference in Brighton. Spent most of it in The World Transformed fringe events. The highlight was definitely having an intimate audience with the absolute girl - Naomi Klein!

With the People's Chancellor: John Mc Donnell!

Racism is in the Tory party's DNA but targeting Diane Abbott backfired big time

You can read this article which was published in today's New Statesman below:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/elections/2017/09/tories-attacked-diane-abbott-pack-hounds-it-backfired

I went to Grenfell Tower. What happened there is a national disgrace

The acrid stench infused the air. The landscape, adorned with messages and memorials, struggled to reconcile the veneration of dignified grief and irreverent, visceral anger.

I oscillated between both. Grief hung in the ether like a flammable fume. Volatile, toxic, debilitating. The photos of those whose lives were lost. The prayers, the pleas, the eulogies. The human faces behind the headlines.

Days before, some of the dead and feared dead would have taken the train journey I just took, walked the route I just walked to get there, sat in the park around the corner that I just sat in and exchanged perfunctory pleasantries with the local shop keeper like I just did.

The photo of Isaac caught my eye. He left school at the same time as my little boy that day. He will have had his tea, maybe smearing ketchup on his school jumper, like mine did and went to bed, forgetting to brush his teeth, like mine did. Wrapped in a blanket of love he may have told the spiders lurking in a corner of his room a story, like mine did, before drifting off to sleep clutching his threadbare teddy, like mine did.

The difference between Isaac and my child is, Isaac lived in a tower block with no fire sprinklers, exposed gas pipes, combustible cladding (cheaper than the non-combustible yet aesthetically pleasing variety) and dodgy electrics prone to potentially lethal surges. Illegal? You’d think so, but Tory cuts to legal aid means rights are now only available to those who can afford to buy them. That ruled Grenfell Tower residents out.

Five weeks on and survivors are still homeless and dependent on sporadic, demeaning state handouts. A hundred quid here and a voucher for a hotel there isn’t good enough. Survivors need certainty, security and dignity. That starts with a secure, safe home. Some children don’t know if they’ll be returning to the same school in September because they don’t know where their new home will be. Some survivors say they’ve been told to accept homes without being allowed to see them first. Others say they fear being forcibly rehoused outside the borough. I’ve been told of survivors who’ve been threatened that declining housing they’re offered, however inappropriate, would be deemed as elected homelessness, and would incur benefit penalties.

Even now, survivors are being excluded from key decisions that will impact their future. Security firms were employed, at tax payers expense, to “keep them out” of Kensington and Chelsea’s council meeting on Thursday. Scenes of survivors being kettled into a public gallery, side-lined and silenced, prevented from participating in decisions about their own lives, were a national disgrace. The footage of Tory councillor, Mathew Palmer, mouthing “Don’t let them in” spoke volumes about the Tories’ contempt for humanity, decency and democracy.

Making my way back to the tube, I was stopped in my tracks by a child. She was surveying the messages pinned to the street railings and was transfixed by an elaborate picture of a dove. She asked her Dad what the text around it said. “I don’t know love, it’s written in a foreign language”.  I squinted to read it, “It says, Suaimhneas stíoraí da anam, which is Irish for, may your souls rest in peace”.

If the souls that perished in Grenfell are ever to find peace, they must first be afforded truth and then justice. We owe Isaac, and all those who died with him, that much.

Momentum was the force behind the Corbyn surge

So proud to have been part of the Momentum/Labour team that saw the party come from a polling of 24% at the start of the General Election campaign to gaining 32 seats.

Theresa May expected a landslide victory. She got a kick in the teeth. Instead of crushing the Labour Party & strengthening her mandate for a hard Brexit & austerity max, she inadvertently gifted Jeremy Corbyn a media platform he had previously been denied.

Suddenly, the man that his New Labour detractors claimed was unelectable, emerged as the people’s politician – headlining Glastonbury & smashing it. Everywhere he went, thousands came, each leaving inspired, taking the message of hope back to their families and friends, sharing memes and messages on social media. I saw the crowds that the mainstream media wouldn’t show & I knew history was in the making.

From the NHS to NME, Corbyn cared. He touched lives, spoke the truth, his humanity already healing wounds inflicted by 7 years of Tory hate. “He seems like a decent man” people would say, then, parroting tabloid propaganda, “but he’s not a leader”. If principles and integrity aren’t leadership traits, what are?

Towards the end everything changed. Sneers were replaced with beaming smiles. Reacting to my (vote Corbyn) badge on the tube one Saturday night, a football reveller broke into song, “Oh Jeremy Corbyn”, as he swayed, arms aloft, shrapnel from his burger discharged randomly about the carriage. Joined in the refrain by a suited white man, a Chinese couple and a Jamaican octogenarian, it was the sweetest tube ride of my life.  

The genie is out of the bottle now & there’s no going back.

Having backed Jeremy Corbyn and his socialist vision of hope and social justice from the start, I never lost the faith. Here's some stuff I wrote in the past:

On Jeremy Corbyn: A worthy leader:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/dont-think-jeremy-corbyn-is-a-worthy-leader-maybe-its-time-to-leave-the-labour-party-a6773741.html

On the chicken coup:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/tess-finchlees/jeremy-corbyn_b_10760550.html

On media bias:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-media-must-give-jeremy-corbyn-a-fair-hearing-a6804821.html

On New Labour losing the 2015 General Electiom

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/suffragettes-died-for-my-right-to-vote-so-dont-tell-me-that-i-shouldnt-vote-for-jeremy-corbyn-10495014.html


With 27,000 members in the UK alone Momentum has already changed the course of British politics. Why not sign up & join the army of foot soldiers we're gonna need to win next time 'round.

Sharing a post election drink with Emily Thornberry & Cat Smith. Two Labour legends & future cabinet ministers.

See channel 4 news clip about Momentum’s role in Labour’s incredible GE result here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3YXRZ4KEvc

A Call for Labour on June 8th

We're within touching distance of a Labour victory on June 8th. Jeremy Corbyn and his team have produced the most visionary manifesto in British history, with social justice, fairness and hope jumping out from every page. Despite the right wing media (I include the BBC in that) & Tory attack dogs resorting to underhand tactics and taking out "dark ads" on social media, Labour has run a positive, dignified campaign. 

The politics of fairness, building a society & economic infrastructure to benefit the many rather than the elite, rich few, has ignited an excitement that change is within our grasp. Jeremy Corbyn's principled politics of hope over hate has won the hearts & minds of the nation. More young people have registered to vote than ever before, thanks to Labour's efforts to engage them. The Tories made no attempt to register the youth vote.

Despite royally stitching up their loyal older supporters (Dementia tax, scrapping winter fuel allowance & the triple lock on pensions), the Tories can probably still rely on their vote on June 8th. Just because many older voters will vote (according to polling experts) out of habit.

So, winning this historic election on June 8th will depend on getting young people to come out & vote Labour and encouraging our parents & grandparents not to vote Tory & vote Labour instead.

Here's 4 things we can all do to make June 8th the end of May & be part of making history:

1) Call your parents & grandparents: Owen Jones' video below is spot on. It provides good routes into the kind of conversation (see below) we can have with our family.

https://callyourgrandfolks.com/

2) Call your friends & talk to them about your hopes, fears & the importance of voting for all of our futures on June 8th.

3) Get out on the door steps: Momentum has a tool (see below) to help find your nearest marginal (a constituency where the gap in votes is narrow & Labour could win- with grassroots support). June 8th is the most important day for door knocking. If you click on the link below it tells you where the meeting point is, if you feel you can spare a couple of hours, or even an hour on Thursday. If you're driving, maybe offer a lift to some friends & be part of making history together!

https://www.facebook.com/PeoplesMomentum/videos/453282308350495/

How Many More Babies Must Die Before Lessons Are Learned?

Kate Stanton Davies, Jenson Barnett, Ella and Lola Greene, Sophiya Hotchkis, Oliver Smale. Jack Burn, Kye Hall, Graham Scott Holmes-Smith, Ivy Morris & Pippa Griffiths.

These are the babies, that we know of, who died needlessly in maternity services in Shropshire.

In February, Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt ordered a review into a cluster of 15 baby deaths, and three mothers, at the Shropshire Telford and Wrekin hospital Trust (SaTH). At least eleven baby deaths between September 2014 and May 2016 have already been ruled by the coroner as avoidable. The tragic, heart breaking, needless loss of little lives before they’ve even begun.

When the medical director responsible for patient safety at the hospital trust was asked to respond, he said, ‘When I look at the perinatal mortality rate at our trust compared to the rest of the NHS, we are at an equivalent level to the rest of the country”.

Hiding behind national averages, when the coroner rules that babies have died avoidable deaths on your watch, is an egregious affront to grieving families. Yet Dr Borman, along with the CEO, Simon Wright, remain secure in their jobs. For her part in this unholy scandal, the head of wifery at the time has been rewarded with a promotion.

There are some striking similarities in the culture that led to the avoidable baby deaths in Shropshire and the Mid Staffordshire scandal. Causal factors, as identified in The Francis report, were:

• A board that was concentrating on cutting costs rather than patient safety
• A Senior Management Team that stopped investigating patient concerns robustly, which meant that patient care was effectively downgraded, and
• The creation of a culture where staff felt unable to raise concerns about clinical safety for fear they would either be ignored or victimised.

In the wake of Kate Stanton Davis’ death in 2009, her parents, Rhiannon and Richard, were faced with the further indignity of a cover up. Amid their trauma and grief, they had to fight  to have Kate’s death investigated properly. On Thursday, at the first hospital board meeting since the BBC broke the story of an investigation into a further cluster of baby deaths in 2014 and 2015, the board hid behind a cloak of secrecy. Despite it being an agenda item, the board refused to comment.

I asked the non-executive directors, as the conscience of the organisation, if they would intervene and hold the medical director and CEO to account for their failings. This was met with blanket silence. The board also refused to answer a question asked on behalf of Kate’s parents, who did not attend in person. The question was, could the subsequent baby deaths have been avoided, had their complaint been investigated properly?

Tory under funding, pay caps and removal of midwifery bursaries have contributed to a midwifery crisis nationally in this country. In 2014, Cathy Warwick, RCM chief executive warned, “Our maternity services are overworked, understaffed, underfunded and struggling to meet the demands being placed on them. This is deeply worrying for the quality of care women are receiving, and the safety of services." She said safety was at risk because services were operating beyond their capacity. "The Government is responsible for this and it is they who are letting down women, babies and their families”.

 In October 2016 she warned that investment in midwifery services from the government 'remains inadequate to provide the quality of care that women deserve'. The RCM carried out a survey of members in which, only 9% of respondents felt that the government valued midwifery.

Tory cuts cost lives. There has never been a more important time to fight for our NHS & there’s no more powerful a place to take that fight than the ballot box. That’s why I’ll be voting Labour on June 8^th.

See video below of my speech at a recent NHS rally. 

My 9 year old sold "the Big Issue" & revealed the truth of Brexit Britain

I've never felt so proud & sad in the same moment.

This article was published in today's "i". Read it & weep...

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/9-year-old-sold-big-issue-revealed-truth-brexit-britain/

The Big Issue itself ran with the headline, "9 year old boy sets example of how to behave in Brexit Britain". See below:

http://www.bigissue.com/news/nine-year-old-boy-sets-example-behave-post-brexit-britain/

You might also like to read my Brexit Fraud piece published in the Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-referendum-alternative-facts-brexit-bill-white-paper-european-union-a7558886.html

And the alternative facts about immigration used by the Brexiteers in the EU referendum

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/now-my-eight-year-old-thinks-he-could-be-deported-because-of-leave-rhetoric-clearly-its-time-to-face-a7095016.html

Brexit Fraud sentiment resonating throughout Europe

Thank you to Rob in Spain for alerting me to the fact that my Brexit Fraud article in The Independent has gotten 63K shares & counting.

Estoy de acuerdo. Brexit es una locura!

See link below in case you missed it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-referendum-alternative-facts-brexit-bill-white-paper-european-union-a7558886.html

BBC's Question Time Special Asks What Brexit Britain Will Look Like? The Answer? Pale, Male & Very Grey

Monday Night’s BBC Question Time special posed the big question, What will Brexit Britain look like? The clue to the answer could be found by looking at the panel. Dominated by white middle aged men, where only gobby women (no more than two) on the right of the political spectrum are invited to speak.

Having intravenously administered a medicinal dose of alcohol to numb the pain of sitting through the agonising programme, my rancour subsided only to be replaced by reality induced despair. How could the BBC exclude young people (anyone under 40 would be a start) and black people (even a dark brown panellist would have shown willing) from a discussion purporting to be about the future of Britain? Of the three pro EU voices, not one was female. Then the dulled, toxin imbued penny dropped. After the EU immigrants are gone and the combination of isolationist xenophobia and misery claims our young people, these clones are all we’ll be left with.

Just before the EU vote, research showed the extent to which women’s voices were being side lined from media debates. Despite other research indicating that women voters could decide the outcome, the Remain camp continued to wheel out white haired men, largely New labour/Blairite, grandees such as, Alistair Campbell, Baron Mandelson and Gordon Brown. Between them, these men have got more baggage than Heathrow’s terminal 4, so the idea that they could speak to minorities, women or the disenfranchised working classes, anywhere in this country, was dangerously delusional.

Harriett Harman also rightly complained of the gender deficit in media representation 4 weeks before the EU vote. The problem with that is, the man who headed up the Labour “in” campaign, Alan Johnson (himself a New Labour grandee), was responsible for giving the media gigs to his old boy mates. And who appointed him to that powerful job? Harriet Harman,while interim leader. Which begs the question, why didn’t she appoint one of her female colleagues to that key role?

Despite the cast having failed at the box office, they just keep getting the staring roles. Airbrushed out of Monday night’s Question Time was the almost certain collapse of the NHS if EU immigrants’ rights are not secured imminently and what a xenophobic country, with hate crime on the increase, will do to the fabric of British society. 

In the months following the referendum result, 5,500 EU workers in the NHS handed in their notice. Surveys suggest that they left because they didn't feel welcome. A recent survey of EU NHS staff confirmed that the vote had made the UK a less appealing place to work. Thanks to successive governments reducing training places here for doctors and nurses, the NHS is already experiencing chronic staff shortages. In a recent Channel 4 Dispatches programme, recruiters were practically begging Theresa May to secure the rights of EU immigrants to work here because without them, the NHS will collapse. 

A German doctor's response to David Davis' reassurances that he would be entitled to get British citizenship (after living here for 20 years) was instructive. "Citizenship isn't just a decision of the head" he said, "it is also a decision of the heart". That was a polite way of saying, "You can take your citizenship of little Britain and shove it where the sun don't shine". 

In the coming years, it's not immigration that will dominate British political discourse, it will be emigration. Who can blame anyone with a lifeboat for clambering in, while the good ship Britannica is sunk by a bunch of deranged sailors drunk on a cocktail of omnipotence, lunacy and stupidity.

It's Paddy's day but this is no time for shindigs

It’s St Patrick’s day but I’m not in the mood for shindigs. Whichever side of the pond you live on, there has scarcely been a worse time to be an immigrant. A hundred years ago, the Irish fled destitution and famine in coffin ships. So desperate and hungry were they, that possible death at sea was better than certain death of starvation by remaining.

Today is not a day to congratulate ourselves on our apparent seamless assimilation into our host countries, it’s a time to remember that the persecution our ancestors once endured still exists today. The scapegoats are different but the fight is the same.

The day the EU referendum results were announced I was forlorn. Asked by another mum if I was OK, I said “not really. For the first time in the twenty years I’ve lived here, I feel like an immigrant. Rolling her eyes, she said “You’re not an immigrant, you’re Irish“. She assured me that “we didn’t mean people like you”. It became evident that she thought Brexit would stop foreigners of a darker hue, allowing more palatable, white European immigrants, like me, unfettered access.

She wasn’t the only one who was confused about Brexit. A few weeks after the referendum result, a Sikh woman was racially abused not far from where I live. A racist thug was reported to shout, “The British people have spoken, so f**k off back home”.

The fact that the woman was British and lived around the corner was a mere fact that didn’t get in the way of an unbridled act of hatred. One of the many indicators of a rising epidemic of odium unleashed on communities up and down the country as a direct result of the EU referendum.

I fear too for my family and friends on the Island of Ireland. The peace and stability that was so hard won is in jeopardy. Growing up in Dublin, people from the south rarely crossed into Northern Ireland, unless they had to. When I was 11, I went on a summer school trip to Donegal which meant having to brave the check point. Combat clad soldiers pointed guns at us from high concrete look outs, adorned with barbed wire and graffiti reading, “Brits out, Peace in”.  After hours of waiting, two British soldiers got on the bus wielding riffles, checking for semtex (according to Bridie O’Malley) under our seats. My friend was so terrified that she wet herself. Even at 11, I remember being made to feel like a terrorist. That was my first impression of British people and I harboured huge resentment for a long time (until I discovered the loveliest person on the planet is British and married him).

After the Good Friday agreement, that all changed. The removal of physical barriers heralded peace and economic prosperity on both sides of the border. With the guns and blockades gone, people felt safe to move freely on the island. We were welcome guests as opposed to deviant interlopers to be viewed with suspicion. Peace and stability paved the way for foreign investment and with it, people from all over the world came to work and share in the prosperity brought about by being an open, outward looking society. No-one in Ireland, north or south, wants to go back to the dark days of borders and all the misery, animosity and instability that will unleash.

Although the Good Friday agreement allows for a unity referendum, until last June, there was no appetite for one. For the people of Northern Ireland who lived through the turmoil of the troubles, seeing their young people trapped in a cycle of violence, with little hope of a future in the region, economic and social stability trumps national identity every time.

That’s why, if forced to choose between building barricades or keeping the hard won peace and economic benefits of EU membership, I believe the people of Northern Ireland will choose a united Ireland over a disunited little Britain. As a (protestant) friend of mine from Belfast said recently, “Theresa May bangs on about the will of the English people, ignoring entirely the will of the Scottish and Northern Irish people who voted to Remain in the EU”. Who could’ve imagined that a united Ireland would be delivered, albeit accidentally, by a hapless Tory government.

Living in Brexit Britain feels like being a passenger on a speeding train, with an intoxicated driver asleep at the wheel. We know the crash is imminent and that the human fall out will be devastating, but our cries for help go unheeded. All we can do is bang on the locked door and pray to god that the driver wakes up. If enough of us shout loudly enough, she might.

March For The NHS This Saturday: "The NHS Will Last As Long As There Are Folk Left With The Faith To Fight For It" (Nye Bevan)

In towns and villages throughout Britain, an invisible army of NHS foot soldiers have been fighting cuts, closures and the creep of privatisation for years. On Saturday, the army will march on London and I’ll be there with my placard wielding 9 year old.

Ever since my child was nurtured back to health by the NHS having been seriously injured in a car crash, I’ve been part of a local campaign to safeguard both of the county’s A&Es. I live in one of the most rural counties in Britain, with journey times to hospital of over 1 hour already for some. Our Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) wants to reduce a population the size of 19 Birmingham’s to just one A&E. What started as a handful of people is now one of the most formidable health campaigns in the country, with thousands of members who have seen off 2 health chiefs, thwarted 4 attempts to close an A&E and won the respect of the local press, who were initially hostile.

The clue is in the name, accident & emergency.  When patients are faced with life threatening injuries/illnesses, time is absolutely of the essence. There was a 25% increase in deaths when Newark A&E was closed, even though that increased the average travel time from 7minutes to 12 minutes. The distances to A&E where I live, are already further than anywhere else in the country. 

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine cautioned recently, ‘Emergency care pressures are not going to go away, just by closing an A&E department. In many adjacent areas, most A&Es are already pretty full, and most hospitals are pretty full with regards to admissions. It only takes a small change to tip the balance to a hospital being congested. To close a department is likely to have a domino effect on other hospitals.’

A legal Requirement for any major restructuring within the NHS is to do a patient & public needs assessment & an impact assessment on neighbouring hospitals, primary care, social care & planning data. None of this have been done and not a shred of clinical evidence has been forthcoming.

We were promised a network of rural urgent care centres and increased community investment to support the huge predicted transfer of care into the community. Instead, urgent care centres have been scrapped, community hospital wards have been closed and GPs are creaking under the strain of increased workload with no additional resources. That’s before they shut an A&E.

Both A&Es are already stretched beyond capacity. Ambulances are regularly held up in a queue outside both hospitals preventing them from being able to respond to blue light calls. The ambulance service is underfunded and under resourced & they’re regularly taking over 1 hour to get to patients in my region. The air ambulance is a charity staffed by 6-7 volunteers. The fleet is old, can’t land in dark, fog, even drizzle.

In September, the architect of the Health and Social Care Act, Lord lansley, said the act was supposed to be about promoting better services to patients but admits the focus is becoming increasingly about reducing costs – not improving quality of patient care....

“We must not allow reconfiguration to be used as a means of constraining demand – by restricting supply. The NHS must have the resources it needs for a sustainable future. These necessary resources are not anticipated in the current spending review”.

Having failed to invest in social care & the community infrastructure necessary to take pressure off hospitals - the founding tenet of this act - acute service cuts cannot be allowed to proceed. Having immersed myself in consultant speak for over 2 years, I’ve spotted that “improved patient pathways”, and “strategic Transformation Plans (STPs) can be translated as “cuts”. The pathways are designed to divert traffic away from hospitals even if it means into the morgue.

Then there’s the corporate heist of the NHS by private health providers. The Health and Social Care Act removes the responsibility of health care provision from the government. Section 75 compels tendering for contracts, £16bn of which have been awarded to private contractors since 2013.

While the media lens was focused on Richard Branson’s spat with Jeremy Corbyn in August, Virgin Care was quietly signing an NHS contract worth £17.6m a year to co-ordinate adult community health services in Guildford. Despite operating as a tax haven and, according to Tax expert, Richard Murphy, Virgin Care is unlikely to pay tax in the UK in the foreseeable future, the company has been awarded contracts worth millions to provide NHS services across England. All hidden behind the NHS logo.

In July, Virgin Care lost its contract to run Croydon’s Urgent Care Centre in the wake of criticism by the CQC, which found patients were being streamed by untrained reception staff which compromised safety. 30-year-old Madhumita Mandal died of multiple organ failure and sepsis caused by a ruptured ovarian cyst after a receptionist at the urgent care centre failed to refer her to a medic.

The problem is, private companies are not bound by the same accountability as public services and they’re driven by profit, not patient care or employee wellbeing. A recent study showed that mental health related absences in the NHS, due to stress, depression and anxiety, have doubled under this government. Apart from the tragic human costs, sickness and absence costs the NHS millions every year.

One senior A&E sister who left my local hospital in the last few years said, “It’s like being in a war zone every day. There was never enough staff on duty to cope with demand, so we were working under constant stress. Every time you’re forced to deprive a patient of the care they need, it chips away at your soul until eventually there’s nothing left to chip away at and you just stop caring. That’s when most of us realise it’s time to leave the profession”.

If we accept the narrative that NHS cuts are necessary, it follows that we concede privatisation is inevitable. If we relinquish the principal of public health care for all, we’re signing our NHS over to corporate providers. That is like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank. 

Brexit is the greatest fraud perpetrated on the British public

An edited version of my blog (below) was published in today's Independent.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-referendum-alternative-facts-brexit-bill-white-paper-european-union-a7558886.html

You might also be interested in reading a pre EU referendum piece I wrote debunking the myth that immigration is bad for Britain: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/now-my-eight-year-old-thinks-he-could-be-deported-because-of-leave-rhetoric-clearly-its-time-to-face-a7095016.html

Brexit is the greatest fraud perpetrated on this country since Tony Blair’s dodgy Iraq dossier. It was predicated on lies and tonight it was legitimised by deceit.

MPs who voted to remain in the EU in June, queued up to give Theresa May carte blanche to trigger article 50, which sets us on an irreversible course of self-destruction.  The only honourable justification for MPs, who hitherto vehemently believed remaining in the EU was in the country’s best interests, not opposing Theresa May’s bill tonight, would be if they had been persuaded that the opposite is true. Instead they all hid behind the vapid UKIP mantra, the so called, “will of the people”.

The idea of being driven to economic ruin (for which the poor will pay) for political expediency is, in my view, an act of constitutional vandalism. Worse still, it flies in the face of all the emerging evidence indicating the will of the people has changed since June.

Professor Low of Staffordshire University has analysed the result of 13 polls since the Brexit vote in June, all of which ask variations on the question, “would you vote the same way again”. A staggering 11 of the 13 polls show that, were there to be a second vote, Remain would produce a decisive victory. Whilst the remain vote held firm statistically, a significant number of people who voted to leave would now change their vote.

In December, the West Midlands Express and Star newspaper published this: We DON’T want out anymore: shock poll reveals Express readers have changed their minds.  When asked before the referendum how they would vote, 80% of readers voted leave and 16% remain. When asked the same question in December, an incredible 62% voted to remain with only 37% voting to leave. 

The Express and Star conceded that it was the biggest survey the paper had ever carried out, with 10,000 respondents.

Why was Brexit fraudulent?

1. It traded in “alternative facts”, or lies. Most notably the promise of £350 million a week to the NHS which was rescinded as soon as the vote was in.

Families in my community have fallen out because older members admitted they voted leave, believing the NHS would get the promised cash. The younger ones feel betrayed by their parents and grandparents and the parents and grandparents feel betrayed by the politicians who deceived them. 

2. Only 37% of the population voted and of them only 26% voted to leave. This is not a representative or legitimate outcome.

3. The referendum did not require the 2/3 majority which is the norm when the outcome involves major constitutional change. 

4. In the wake of the Brexit win, a significant number of those who voted leave told the media they regretted it, or didn’t understand it, or thought it could be reversed at the next election, or that they did it as a protest against austerity and the Tories.

An irate local farmer told me he voted to leave as a protest against EU bureaucracy that delayed payments of his subsidies. When I pointed out that Defra was responsible for the delays, he said, “That’s right!”. He thought Defra was an EU department. He didn’t realise it was the department for rural affairs and that the EU had fined our governmental department for its incompetent administration of subsidies. No matter, we got our country back, even if it means losing the subsidies and keeping the incompetence.

Britain’s farmers received £2.4bn last year in EU payments and the NFU has already warned that many farms would fail without these handouts.

5. There was no mandate to leave the single market, sell off the NHS to US private health insurers or to turn the UK into a tax haven.

6. EU membership already has built in border controls under the “right to reside” test. This provides conditions to entry, such as, having a job or being financially self-sufficient. There are no immediate, automatic entitlements to benefits, which require further conditions. Most other EU states impose these controls rigorously but the UK has been less assiduous in its implementation. If immigration is such a problem, why did Theresa May not sufficiently implement the EU controls at her disposal in her 10 years at the home office? 

Brexit has divided the nation. For Theresa May to unite the country she must heal wounds and take the public with her. This can only be done through a second referendum, which eradicates the fraudulent failings of the first.

As Churchill said, “Never give in--never, never, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense”. Brexit is neither, so I’ll never, never, never give in.

Trump's ban on Muslims is divisive and dangerous.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets throughout Britain last night to protest against Donald Trump’s declaration of war on Muslims. That’s what the ban on Muslim countries amounts to. 1.5m people in the UK signed a petition to prevent Trump’s “state visit” to our shores and parliament voted unanimously to repeal Trump’s immigration ban, leaving Theresa May isolated in her sycophantic, shameful acquiesce.

This show of solidarity and defiance against the US miscreant affords some much needed succour to my jaded soul. This country will not be divided by hate and fear.

Article I of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Donald Trump’s contempt for human rights is not breaking news, but his executive ban on Muslims shows a chilling incognisance of history, human psychology and national security. Far from being safer, by depicting all Muslims as suspected terrorists, Trump is making the world a more dangerous place. His dehumanisation of an entire people based on their religion is sinister and dangerous.

Dehumanization negates the humanity of people different to us, who are portrayed as imbecilic and sub-human. It desensitises us to the plight of “other” and makes the conditions for discrimination and oppression possible. Slavery, the Holocaust, the Rwanda and (ongoing) Darfur genocides are just some examples of how the dehumanisation of people, based on colour or creed, can become justification for persecution and ethnic cleansing.

In order to diffuse the dirty bomb of hate that Trump has detonated, we must counter the narrative that conflates Islam with terrorism. Throughout the reporting of “the troubles in Northern Ireland”, I never heard the words “Protestant” or “Catholic” followed by the word “fundamentalist”.  Not since the holocaust have human beings been so universally demonised because of their religion. Standing by and allowing it to happen again would be unconscionable.

Dehumanisation is expedited with stories depicting the outgroup as evil. When we have little contact with people who are different to us, we become susceptible to the shorthand of stereotypes, which is why we need to get out more and share our positive stories.

At seventeen, in my naivety, I decided to trek across Europe (from Ireland) to visit my friend who was au pairing in Switzerland. The route involved two boats and three trains. On the final leg, I was exhausted and, having chatted to brothers (19 and 20) on the Harry Potter style train for a couple of hours, I dropped off. They watched over me while I slept and missed their stop so that I could be protected and not disturbed. I was struck by their respect for me as a young woman. They were Moroccan Muslims.

In response to Trump’s Muslim ban, Jeremy Greenstock, a former chair of the UN Security Council’s counter-terrorism committee, said  “I don’t think Islamic terrorism is an existential threat to western democracy. If there is to be a global anti-terrorist coalition that is effective, it’s got to deal with some of the causes of it, rather than the symptoms. It’s got to deal with governance in the Middle East.

There’s no evidence that the 7 banned countries pose a terrorist threat in the US, but there is proof that hate speech incites violence and divides communities, which does undermine national security.

In just ten days of Trump’s presidential win in November, 900 hate crimes were documented, 40% of which invoked Trump’s name. 

On Sunday night, 6 Muslims were killed and 8 injured when a Mosque was attacked in what Canadian Prime Minister, Justine Trudeau, called a terrorist attack. The right wing media here and in the US initially reported the gunman as being a Moroccan Muslim, with Trump’s press officer citing it as justification for the ban on “bad dudes”. These claims were false and a suspected white supremacist has now been charged.

In the UK, the Global Terrorism Index reported that the number of terrorism fatalities had steadily grown since the Iraq war and the former head of MI5, Baroness Manningham-Buller, said the Iraq invasion led to a huge increase in the terrorist threat to the UK.

Every pound of Muslim flesh that Trump and May feed the far right unpicks another seam in the increasingly fragile fabric that binds our communities together. Shame on Theresa May for her complicity.

How being adopted by a Muslim family and a chance encounter with "white van man" gave me hope for 2017

Chrsitmas got off to a bad start. One of the bikes got stolen from the back of our campervan on the first day of the holiday. Since my parents died, Christmas has been the hardest hurdle. Their absence at the table is agonising. All the fairy lights in Piccadilly can’t ignite the light that grief extinguishes at Christmas. For the past 2 years, we’ve gone away. Left cold by the icy, xenophobic winds of Brexit, and being Spanish speakers, we headed for Spain.

Late on Christmas Eve we parked up on a square in Arco de la Frontera, said to be one of the prettiest Spanish villages. Morale (robbery) and provisions (shops shut) were low.  The next morning, Christmas day, three brothers came out with a football shouting, “Feliz Navidad” (happy Christmas) and invited our 8 year old to play with them. Having spent several hours playing together, the children’s parents appeared with a tray of biscuits, cake and refreshments. Mum was wearing a hijab and spoke Arab to the children. Unable to reciprocate their hospitality, we were reluctant to accept but it was clear that rejecting this gesture of kindness would be rude.

We were invited in for a meal. Mortified, I said, “You don’t even know us”, to which they replied, “We’re all brothers and sisters of the world”.  Overcome by this simple act of humanity, on Christmas day, I hugged the stranger whilst surreptitiously wiping away a tear. After all, 2016 wasn’t exactly the year of compassion.

We were treated to traditional Msmen flatbread and Moroccan mint tea. The sweet amber liquid was poured from a lavish silver tea pot into ornate glasses with golden rims. My son, who had only got a few stocking fillers from Santa (who deposited the main pressies at home), shared what he got (a 4 pack of funky pencil sharpeners and a selection box) amongst his new friends. He wanted to hand my stocking filler over too but when he realised it was a pocket guide to Trumpisms, he relented. “I don’t want them to know that Trump hates Muslims” he reasoned, though I suspect they already have an inkling.

Afterwards, while the children overcame the language barriers by playing the card game “UNO” on the floor, we learned that, although the children were born in Spain, their parents were Moroccan. They met in Northern Spain and had established a thriving business on a market stall. When their oldest child developed life threatening respiratory problems they moved south, hoping to increase his life expectancy. Although he has made a full recovery, the family are struggling to make ends meet. Dad sells clothes out of his boot and both worry for the future of their children in a country that has a youth unemployment rate of almost 50%.

That night, curled up in our van, adorned only by tiny fairy lights (lovingly & thoughfully gifted to us by friends), my son drew parallels between the Christmas story and us being far from home, in a strange place, being shown the kindness of strangers. It’s ironic that my child learned the real meaning of Christmas from a Muslim family whose code of ethics is clearly a way of life, not just for Christmas.

The next day we drove down to the Costa del Sol and parked up in a town where British expats almost outnumbered locals, 60% of whom don’t speak a word of Spanish (though I understand  no language/citizen tests declaring allegiance to the King are imminent). My son struck up a friendship with a British boy on the beach. His father, a self described, “white van man” (WVM) from Rochdale, sat down beside me. He asked if I’d heard about the “nutters” who’d driven a lorry into Christmas shoppers in Germany. I had deliberately avoided all news so I hadn’t. I braced myself for an Islamophobic tirade, after all, he was a white van man and from Rochdale, so he must be racist right? Wrong.

He was horrified by the attack but he was also angry about how Muslims were routinely portrayed as terrorists by the media.  He was particularly angry about the BBC’s reporting on the plight of Palestinians. Turns out, he knew a Palestinian refugee whose family had been killed by an Israeli mortar attack in Gaza. When the Palestinian was walking in the park to keep warm, he came across a gang who had cornered a younger boy and were threatening violence. Rather than walk by, the man risked being deported by stepping in and saving the boy, with whom my son was playing. Since then, WVM has been an active campaigner for Palestinian human rights (unlike Theresa May).

WVM confided that he voted to leave the EU because he wanted to teach the Tories a lesson. He was angry at his Tory led council giving themselves wage increases while bins are left unemptied and deprivation soars throughout Rochdale. He was angry that his local A&E was shut and that the Tories allow fat cats to legally avoid paying taxes while he is vigorously pursued for every penny.

He admitted that he had to work 6 days a week just to get by and that Saturday had to be cash in hand. “I’m not proud to admit that” he said, “but I have to put food on the table for my family”.

He was more ashamed about voting to leave the EU than he was about taxdodging. “It was a protest vote”, he said, "I didn't expect it to count". All the polls said we’d remain. So I figured, what the hell, I’ll give the Tories a bloody nose. My vote won’t matter". Living in an area that also voted to leave, this has been a recurring theme, but it seems the Tories would rather take this country into economic Armageddon  than admit the truth. That the electorate may loate them even more than immigrants.

The moral of the story is not rocket science. Most Muslims are not terrorists and most white van men are not racist. If the only interaction with people who are different to us is limited to prejudice infused stereotypes, fed to us daily on a shovel by the media, the likelihood is that you will believe the opposite to be true. It’s no coincidence that those parts of the UK with the highest number of immigrants voted to stay within the UK. Contact with people who are “other” removes the sense of fear and perceived threat because we’re interacting with three dimensional human beings, as opposed to a two dimensional stereotypes.

To counteract the rising xenophobia and hate crimes unleashed by Brexit, we should all get out more, or rather, put ourselves out there more. Make 2017 the year you speak to people you would never normally engage with. Strike up conversations in the room/bus stop/at the school gates with the person least like yourself.  Open your heart and mind and reach out to your brothers and sisters of the world. You never know, they might surprise you.