The Volkswagen Scandal Exposes The True Cost Of The "Free Market".

I have worked as a therapist and as a leadership adviser to big business and I’ve encountered far more psychopaths in the boardrooms of Britain than I ever did in Broadmoor.

In his book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Joel Bakan compares corporations to psychopaths, for whom people are purely a means to making profit. They employ sophisticated control mechanisms, such as excessive pay, to indoctrinate employees into compliance. History is littered with examples of how corporations put profits before people, with calamitous consequences. 

The Volkswagen emissions scandal is the most recent. Whether its emission rigging by the car industry, Libor rigging by the banks, suppressing unfavorable trial results by the pharmaceutical industry (see Seroxat story this week) or the usurping of public services and workers’ rights via the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), far from being free, worshiping at the altar of “the market” has cost people and the planet dearly.

VW could face a fine of up to $18bn (£11.6bn), as well as criminal charges and legal action from customers and shareholders amid claims in the US that it used a device to falsify emissions data. Suspicions that the “defeat device” was also installed in European models, if substantiated, would add to the already crippling pecuniary and reputational costs. It has been described as the biggest corporate cover-up since Enron.

It seems inconceivable that no-one at managerial level knew of this software. The more likely scenario is that a cost-benefit analysis was done and life threatening respiratory problems and irreversible damage to the planet came out cheaper than investing in producing legally compliant cars. The alleged rigging of emissions tests may have added around 1 million tonnes of air pollution annually.

This isn’t the first time the car industry has been in the dock. Ten years ago, I used the Ford Pinto case study to demonstrate that, apart from the morality of conducting a cost-benefit analysis where customers’ lives are known to be at risk, it’s also bad for business in the long term. 

When a fatal fault was discovered in the Pinto production in 1968, Ford’s executives conducted a cost-benefit analysis and concluded it was cheaper to continue selling the faulty car and treat predicted deaths as the cost of doing business. Ford’s now infamous “Pinto memo” caused public uproar and resulted in record compensation payouts. Ford’s reputation never fully recovered.

Last year, General Motors agreed to pay $900m in a bid to prevent the company's executives from facing criminal charges over a serious ignition defect and cover-up which has been reportedly linked to 124 deaths. The company was also accused of hiding the defect (for 13 years) from regulators and defrauding consumers. Apparently, wait for it, a cost-benefit-analysis was conducted which concluded that paying off deceased relatives was cheaper than installing a $10 part per car.

In Bakan’s book he explains the logic behind such amoral decisions, time and time again. Directors are legally obliged to put profit before everything else. Maximising shareholder profit is their first priority. Setting aside for a moment the ethical issues of killing customers, scandals involving cover up, cheating and corruption, kill corporations too. About €25bn (one third), has now been wiped off the value of Volkswagen’s shares in the few days of trading since the scandal erupted. How are tumbling share prices and astronomical penalties good for shareholders?

In 2005, BP was hit with a (then) record $50.6m (£32.5m) fine for failing to fix hazards at its Texas City oil refinery resulting in an explosion that killed 15 people. Numerous red flags had reportedly been ignored.

Four years later, the company hit the headlines again for unleashing yet more human and environmental carnage at Deepwater Horizon. An explosion killed 11 workers and led to 3.2 million barrels of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico

The cause? Same as the last time, “Management failure which put costs before people’s safety”. So why weren’t lessons learned? Because corporate psychopathy (the delinquent offspring of unregulated capitalism), and political incompetence, has no conscience, feels no remorse and refuses to abide by the same rules as mere mortals.

A record settlement of $18.7bn (£12bn) was reached with US regulators and share prices fell by around 46% in the wake of the disaster. History has shown us that ethics belong at the heart of leadership decisions, not as an optional extra thrown in at the end of an MBA.

CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Martin Shkreli, also made headlines this week when he raised the price of a drug called Daraprim from $13.50 per pill to $750. Shkreli has a monopoly on the drug and is effectively holding a gun to the heads of sick and vulnerable people. Further proof, if we need it, that the “free market”, which assumes multiple competing sources, is obsolete. Shkreli has since said he’d reduce the price but hasn’t disclosed by how much. It was later reported that Mr Shkreli is being investigated by the US government for being involved in illegal activities and that he was ousted from his previous post amid multiple allegations of misconduct.

In his book “Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work”, Dr. Robert Hare highlights the disproportionately higher percentage of people with psychopathic tendencies in positions of power. I’m not suggesting everyone in power (and definitely NOT those mentioned here) is a psychopath, but I am perturbed by the proclivity with which we reward dysfunctional, amoral behaviours.

Probably half of society’s psychopaths are incarcerated (the poor) while the other 1% (the rich) are more likely than people without psychopathic traits, to occupy powerful positions. Both groups are a danger to others (as opposed to themselves), the difference being that one is heavily medicated, the other is the lunatic in charge of the asylum.

Jeremy Corbyn's Win Will Breathe New Life Into The Labour Party

I couldn't be happier at Jeremy Corbyn's win. He has already brought swathes of Labour voters back to the fold with his politics of principle & integrity. An edited version of the entry below was published in Thursday's Independent, ahead of the leadership results:

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

Cognitive dissonance is what the brain does to rationalise and justify dysfunctional behaviour.  As a therapist I’ve seen people dismiss even the most compelling evidence in order to pursue a path of self destruction. I believe this is the root cause of new labour’s demise.  In the same way that smokers continue to smoke even though they know it could kill them, “new Labour” resists any movement away from the right, despite the catastrophic consequences.

One of the strategies invoked to deal with cognitive dissonance is to minimise the evidence in support of behavioural change by seeking alternative research. Smokers might do this by latching onto studies that dismiss the dangers of smoking, however tenuous. New Labour produces meaningless reports which endorse business as usual.

Yesterday a report was published indicating that Labour’s woes are attributable to not being Tory enough. It was carried out by a lord and an ex aide to Tony Blair (I kid you not). Labour’s response to the shocking May election result is to commission reports that sanction the onward trajectory to the right, despite it leading Labour to electoral annihilation.

The report was right about one thing though. The party was rejected by an electorate who no longer trust or respect the party.  I lost respect for the party when Tony Blair’s true Thatcherite ideology became apparent (Margaret Thatcher apparently cited Tony Blair as one of her greatest legacies). It doesn’t help that he starts his sentences with “look” and thrusts his thumb out for emphasis.

The epic groundswell of support for Jeremy Corbyn is a far more credible barometer of the public mood. It demonstrates a hunger for the party to be realigned with Labour’s founding principles.  Corbyn gets that Labour lost the election, not because it was “anti-business” (as Blairites claim), but because it wasn’t anti-austerity.

Three weeks before the election, a guy in his 20’s sat opposite me on the train. I was reading Tony Benn’s Diaries, he was reading Margaret Thatcher’s biography. A polite if lively discussion ensued.  Turns out he was an intern for a prominent Labour MP and known Blairite. I asked if it was wise to admit to being a Labour intern while brandishing Thatcher’s biography. He extolled her virtues. As someone who, despite being ideologically aligned with labour, was forced into a political abyss as a result of the party’s lunge to the right, this rankled.

I asked if he’d read Tony Benn’s diaries. With a condescending snigger he dismissed Benn’s legacy out of hand. “He was a bit too left”. I asked what constituted “too left”. He couldn’t say because he hadn’t read his book but had been reliably informed that at labour HQ being “too left” was not good. I knew that already. I met a Labour party insider when I visited the Occupy London camp who told me the party was monitoring developments. It concluded that the movement didn’t generate enough numbers to justify a realignment to the left. It’s that fickle, corporatisation of politics that is so demoralising.

My conversation with the Labour intern drew to an abrupt close when I told him Labour’s support for the failed austerity experiment ruled out my vote. “Voting on principle is wasting your vote”, he lectured, “that’ll just let the Tories in”! It was expressed as a statement of fact rather than with rousing conviction. So that was labour’s election strategy in a nutshell. It came down to tactics and a business strategy involving scaremongering people into voting strategically. Principle, or policies, didn’t come into it.

Suffragettes died so that I could vote, I wasn’t going to be lectured by a man on how to cast it. “If the Tories get back in, it’s down to you guys for pushing supporters like me away. If Labour can’t stand on its’ own principles and be prepared to defend them, why the hell should the people whose principles you abandoned vote for you”?

It’s ironic that traditional labour voters, like myself, were forced to vote elsewhere because new labour reinvented the party on Thatcher’s principles. Yet, when a true labour contender for the leadership contest woos us back with an anti-austerity narrative for which we yearned at the election, we’re rejected on the grounds that we don’t share Labour’s values. What are Labour values? The website boasts, “… the establishment of the National Health Service… and the creation and maintenance of an empowering welfare state”

So why was Jeremy Corbyn the only leadership candidate who voted against the recent Tory welfare bill (which sought to abolish child poverty targets and cuts to child tax credits, Employment and housing benefit for young people) in its entirety? Labour’s crowning glory was the establishment of the NHS. Yet it was new labour, with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown at the helm, that sowed the seeds of the NHS’ demise. The reckless implementation of private finance initiatives (PFI), not only paved the way for privatisation by stealth but saddled the NHS with crippling debt. Next year alone, trusts will make some £2bn in repayments. How is being responsible for polices that bankrupt the NHS espousing Labour values? How was the de-regulation that led to the financial crash, the brunt of which is borne by the most vulnerable, in step with Labour values?

Abandoning Labour’s founding principles has left new Labour with no meaning, no soul and therefore, no relevance. Jeremy Corbyn is the party’s only hope of survival.

What About the African Refugees?

Public pressure has resulted in David Cameron agreeing to accept more Syrian refugees, albeit still a pitiful amount. "Syrian" is now synonymous with "refugee" in almost all the headlines, but what of the swathes of African refugees who are fleeing genocide and persecution? Surely all human beings in need of shelter and humanitarian help are worthy of our munificence, irrespective of colour, creed or nationality? Why is David Cameron not offering homes to victims of the 12 year long genocide in Sudan? Why is their need less worthy than that of a Syrian? What criteria is used for deciding which nationality is prioritised over another? It shouldn't be a case of them or us. The refugee crisis has to be tackled more strategically and more fairly.

The link below is to an article published in today's Independent. It's an updated version of my last blog and includes the heart breaking story of a Sudanese refugee's agonising, dehumanising journey to Britain.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/now-weve-changed-our-minds-about-syrian-refugees-we-need-to-stop-ignoring-those-in-calais-10490142.html

Shame On Britain For Abandoning The Calais Refugees.

“Do some humans smell different mummy?” My seven year old had spotted police with sniffer dogs as we waited to board our ferry at Calais. He wanted to know if the refugees from Sudan, Syria and Afghanistan emitted a uniquely distinctive aroma that differentiated them from the French and the British.

“No”, I said, feeling impotent by the scene of inhumanity (the dogs and the depravity of the camp I’d seen earlier). “The dogs can’t smell their nationality, only their fear". Fear, on this scale, has an intoxicating pungency, I explained. “I hope you never have to know it”.

As the motorway neared Dover a couple of weeks earlier, portaloos appeared at regular 50 yard intervals. Remnants of the tail back that ensued when 2,300 people disrupted traffic when they entered the tunnel to jump on trains and trucks in an effort to reach Britain. The inconvenience to British holiday makers was widely reported in the press, the subtext being “bloody selfish migrants disrupting our holidays so they can come here and have a better life. At our expense…”

Whilst I sympathise with holidaymakers and truck drivers, it is wrong to subjugate the refugees’ plight to our inconvenience. Conditions these other human beings have to endure in the camps, where they have to queue for hours for a toilet unfit for human use, were considered less newsworthy. The inflammatory, dehumanising language, used by David Cameron and Phillip Hammond recently, has served to dehumanise the refugees. A tory tactic that is beneath contempt.

The press has largely (with some notable exceptions) failed to communicate the stories behind the human beings who flock to the “Calais jungle”. They are not seeking a better life (heaven forbid), they are seeking life itself. They’re not just fleeing economic hardship, most are fleeing death and persecution. During the mass bid for freedom in July, a Sudanese man in his 20s died after being crushed by a truck. The day before, an Egyptian man was electrocuted at the Gard du Nord in Paris when he leaped on the roof of a Eurostar train headed to London.

These are not the actions of people making lifestyle choices. These are acts of desperation by people for whom there is nothing left to lose. Whereby death is a more favourable outcome to the alternative. Most are fleeing corrupt regimes in Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and Ethiopia, who starve, kill and torture their own citizens while world leaders bury their heads in the sand.

The same short term politics that precipitated the global financial crisis is now cultivating a European refugee crisis. This isn’t happening in a vacuum. Foreign policy that serves to prop up and embolden despots will come back to bite. David Cameron and Francois Hollande have known about the genocide in Sudan for twelve years but, like their UN counterparts, have failed to implement the UN mandate to protect citizens when oppressed by a sovereign state. What are these people, abandoned by the international community supposed to do? Stay and be starved, raped and bombed, or try to get the hell out of dodge? I know what I’d do.

Even now, as the sky falls, Theresa May stands at the shores of Dover and, with all the delusion of king Canute, issues edicts to refugees to turn back. But the refugees, like Canute’s tide, cannot stem their flow. There is no going back. However high the fences, however torn the flesh in a bid to scale them, and however many dogs are used to sniff out human beings as though they were animals, the refugees will keep coming. We have left them nowhere else to go. British political ineptitude is part of the problem, so it is right that David Cameron provides a fair share of the solution.

Instead, Britain has turned its back on the people at the heart of this crisis. Journalist Owen Jones visited the camp and talked numbers with a UN co-ordinator there.

According to the UN representative in Calais, “31,745 people applied for asylum in Britain last year; twice as many opted for France; more than six times as many applied in Germany; and in Sweden, with a population nearly seven times lower than Britain, the number was 81,180. The UK accepted 10,050 non-EU asylum applications, but France took over 4,000 more; in Germany, it was more than four times as many; Italy, ravaged by economic crisis, accepted more than twice as many. And yet, the vast majority of refugees move from one poor country to another. UNHCR figures show that 86 per cent of refugees live in poor countries, compared with 70 per cent a ­decade earlier; 95 per cent of Syrian refugees are in neighbouring countries, mainly Lebanon and Turkey”.

Fortunately, citizens around Europe, embarrassed and enraged by their government’s inaction, are plugging some humanitarian gaps. Individuals are setting up make shift collection points throughout the UK and France, where vital supplies can be deposited. These incredible individuals will then transport the food, winter clothes, shoes, tents etc to the refugees in Calais, at their own expense. There’s bound to be one near you and/or a crowd fund site where you can make a financial contribution to transport and other costs.

As we were embarking at Calais, my son asked, “What would you do if you saw a refugee climbing onto a truck”? “I’d say, good luck to them. What would you say”? Looking perturbed, he shook his head slowly and replied, “I’d tell them not to come to Britain”. As I tried to disguise my disappointment and wondered where I went wrong, he added, “Someone should warn them that David Cameron doesn’t like poor people, or the homeless or foreigners (he talks to The Big Issue sellers)”. “Interesting angle...”, I conceded, “but until such time as he starts shooting them, Britain has got to be a better option than Sudan or Syria. Right”? But by then he was dangling some aromatic French cheese out the window. "What are you doing"! I gasped. "I'm putting the dogs off the scent. Fear isn't the only thing that stinks mum". Ain't that the truth. 

Want Stress Free Car Hire? Take a Forensic Approach

Pre motherhood, if I wanted to rent a car, I’d book online and rock up at the car hire desk equipped with driving licence and designer shades. Nowadays, I take a more CIS, evidence based approach to car hire. Less Thelma and Louise and more CIS, without the chiffon headscarf.

Arriving at a busy airport on my own with a child, I wanted to minimise any hassle or stress. I never had a problem in the past but I had read the horror stories about the tricks and hidden charges that can ruin a holiday. But first I had to find the best deal.

The cheapest deals are usually through brokers. When booking, I realised the fuel policy was “full to empty”, which is not good. It means you get charged a higher rate for it being filled up on your behalf when you return the car. In the box provided I stated that my rental was conditional on a “full to full” policy (which is the car provider’s policy). When I heard nothing I contacted the car hire provider directly. They said it would be fine. I hung up but the horror stories were ringing in my ear. Is it a ruse? When I get there, will someone else say they know nothing about it and declare the booking void (which the broker says can happen on the terms and conditions). I phoned back and got an email address and name and put it in writing.

I arrived at the car hire desk armed with all my documented evidence (which I didn’t need to produce) and a zoom lens camera. Despite being told the car was brand new and never used before, I took photos from every angle, inside and out (you can’t be too careful when it comes to these cowboys). A piece of dirt was wiped away but left a finger mark, so I took a picture of that too for good measure.

And I didn’t allow all those smiles to lure me into a false sense of security either. Not on your Nelly. Sign here and initial here and here, the agent said. The small print was very small (I should have gone to Specsavers) so I asked her what it said. When she answered, I said, “ I don’t understand that and I don’t sign anything I don’t understand”. So I asked for her pen. To her horror, “what are you doing?” she panicked, looking around for her boss, who appeared to be hiding behind a beige Ford Focus with alloy wheels if I’m not very much mistaken. “I’m writing my understanding of what you just said so that I can initial It. You want me to initial it don’t you?” She nodded resignedly, surveying the mounting queue behind me.

I proceeded to do that everywhere I was asked to sign or initial, including writing “full to full fuel policy agreed” in capitals and underlining it. In the end, she and the manager gave up the will to live, took the clipboard from me and ushered me on my way. I even put an x where the thumb mark was. In the end I think they would have paid good money to get me off the forecourt.

We returned the car an hour early (always leave enough time to review the paperwork and ensure no miscellaneous costs have accrued before dashing off for the plane) ready to thoroughly examine the car. The same young woman was there. “It’s full to the brim” I beamed,  “and not a thumb mark on it”! Without even looking, she took the keys and said “I don’t doubt it. I can see you’re very thorough”, and grabbed all our bags, dashing to get us on the shuttle bus going to the airport terminal. “There’s no need” I protested. “They’re on wheels and our plane isn’t for ages”, but she seemed keen to send us on our way. I will definitely recommend this company I said. All those horror stories psyched me up to do battle, but you guys are amazing. Excellent customer service, no underhand tricks….but we were off.

We waved at the team from the bus, promising we’d be back again. Their gait like smiles indicated the stress these people are under. I bet they have to deal with a lot of weirdos in that job.

The Pay Gap Isn't Just a Women's Issue

An edited version of this was published in yesterdays Independent on Sunday

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/equal-pay-evening-up-salaries-would-also-benefit-men-who-are-under-pressure-to-work-longer-hours-10399092.html

Prepare your daughter for working life. Give her less pocket money than your son. This slogan appeared on an Equal Opportunities Commission campaign poster 15 years ago. I keep it on my fridge to remind my son of his gender induced entitlement.

David Cameron’s announcement this week to make companies with over 250 employees publish their pay audits is welcome, if a tad tardy. Paying women less than their male counterparts for a job of equal value has been illegal since the 70’s but that hasn’t deterred the pernicious practice. In 2012, Birmingham council was ordered to pay over £700m to 170 women, including cleaners and carers, for depriving them of bonuses which were awarded to employees in traditionally male jobs.

In 2005 women earned 18% less than men. In 2015, the gap has widened to 20%, which can reach 40% at senior levels when bonuses are included. The impact of the pay gap on women is well documented. It is particularly marked when women become mothers. Decisions about which parent stays at home are usually driven by pay so it’s no surprise that it is predominately women who relinquish their jobs.

However, the far reaching societal consequences of the pay gap largely go unreported. It creates a vicious circle whereby men, as primary bread winner, are under increased pressure to work ever longer hours in order to ingratiate themselves with the boss. Companies exploit this vulnerability. There is a myth, propagated by employers, that men eschew flexible working practices because they love the cut and thrust of long hours. Whilst this is true of a minority, for the vast majority it is not.

When I carried out research on the long hours culture, I asked men who had small children why they didn’t request flexible working arrangements (having children is no longer a requirement). All of them responded that it would be career limiting. One said he took a promotion to compensate for the loss of his [more qualified but less paid] wife’s income. He was promised his travel would only increase by 10%. It increased by 70%. He was struggling to cope with being an absentee dad and his wife was drowning as a lone mum. He was actively looking for a job elsewhere.

On a couple of occasions, whilst advising some of the UK’s largest organisations on discrimination and ethics, I came across coded data I wasn’t supposed to see. There were secret budgets ring fenced for litigation in relation to discrimination. In amongst stats breaking down staff attrition along gender lines, I came across a column marked “deaths”. In one of the organisations there were 6 in the past 12 months. All of whom were men.

I was told the information was “classified” but gleaned that it related to deaths suspected to be work related. In one global corporation an executive had committed suicide while on assignment overseas. Apparently he got extremely stressed before making presentations. Rather than ease up, his manager forced him to “man up”. Unable to cope with the stress, away from his family, the night before a presentation he threw himself off his hotel balcony.

Elsewhere an executive who worked notoriously long hours dropped dead of a heart attack one night. He was in his 30’s. The corporations’ response? Invest in an onsite gym for employees to “de-stress”. It was spun by HR as a fitness issue, completely unrelated to his being pushed by his employer to breaking point. As I was informed by one HR professional, “Our job is to optimise employee productivity, not to babysit”. In my experience though, people are far more productive when they’re alive.

The lack of women and minorities on boards was identified as a factor in the global recession, which could have been avoided had we listened to similar warnings issued in the Higgs report (commissioned, post Enron, to improve Britain’s corporate governance) in 2005. Higgs found that a few men held multiple board positions and that many were appointed by a tap on the shoulder rather than competing in an open and fair selection process. Isn’t that positive discrimination? Yes, but as long as the beneficiary is not female or black, we don’t call it that.

Homogeneity leads to group think, which in turn leads to bad decisions. Pay transparency (with corresponding sanctions) will help break the vicious circle of inequality by encouraging women to return to work after child birth, for example, and to participate at leadership level. This would mitigate against the long hours culture, which, despite being bad for productivity and societal wellbeing, prevails in a climate of masculinity.

It is detrimental to society and the economy to reduce fatherhood to a walk on part whilst at the same time driving women out of the workforce when they become mothers. Children need fathers as well as mothers and UK plc needs women, as well as men, at the helm.

If You’re Not Angry Right Now, You’re Either Very Rich Or In A Coma.

This weeks’ budget unveiled a naked, brutal assault on the most vulnerable in society. Our poorest children and young people.

According to Nelson Mandela, “There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children”.

George Osborne’s budget oozes contempt for children audacious enough to be born into poverty. Rather than throw them a lifeline to break the cycle of disadvantage, he kicked the escape ladder from under their feet. Knowing what it feels like to live from hand to mouth should be a prerequisite for the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer.

What differentiates human beings from animals is our ability to empathise. Without it, we can’t access compassion and a sense of fairness and justice. Without ever experiencing hardship, it’s difficult (though not impossible, see Tony Benn) to comprehend that poverty is not a life choice. That many people, through no fault of their own, or sheer bad luck, end up in crisis. Many work hard to escape the cycle but find the odds stacked so high against them that they become paralyzed by hopelessness and despair.

According to the institute for fiscal studies, the budget will leave the poorest 10% of families around £800 a year worse off with the next 10% seeing their income slashed by £1,100 annually. Child poverty is expected to soar in the coming years due to relentless welfare cuts. George Osborne also abolished grants for the poorest to go to university and with them any hope of a better future.

Meanwhile the richest 10% will see their family’s income reduced by just £350 a year while inheritance and corporation tax is also reduced. This week Kevin Farnsworth, a researcher from York university, revealed that, at the same time as the government is making 12bn in welfare cuts, taxpayers are handing businesses £93bn a year in hidden subsidies (this doesn’t include legacy costs of bank bailouts for 2008-09 and other crisis measures, which are estimated to have cost £35bn in 2012-13). That’s more than £3,500 from each household in the UK. You don’t have to be Carol Vorderman to do the maths.

I can’t help but see alarming resonances between today’s austerity Britain and the austere Victorian era so evocatively chronicled in Charles Dickens’ “Hard Times”.

I read the book at a time of prolonged recession in Ireland, which didn’t end until the 90’s. I discovered a hook upon which I could hang and articulate all the observations I’d accumulated, through the prism of a working class child. How society is structured, the divide between the classes, how the haves gain at the have nots’ expense. The unfairness and inequality, the powerlessness in the face of the enormous state machine constructed in such a way as to grind you down and spit you out when you become a burden (old, disabled, poor). The way espoused ideology of governments indoctrinate children, through educational constraint (“fact” not corrupting “fancy”), social segregation (private boarding schools) and a cycle of disadvantage and poverty (welfare cuts to the poor and subsidies to the rich).

My father, a self employed builder, would take myself and my three siblings with him on Saturdays in the hope that seeing he had little mouths to feed might shame business owners into paying him the wages he was owed. Some left him for months without paying, others never paid at all, but there was nothing he could do. He had no recourse to justice. Even as a child, I remember feeling incredibly proud of my father’s dignified integrity but at the same time furious at the bosses who claimed not to have the means to pay, while standing next to their brand new Mercedes.

In contemporary Britain, the big bosses plead unfairness at having to pay their fair share, threatening to take their business elsewhere at the first sign of a brown envelope marked HMRC. The Mercedes’ have been replaced by private jets and tax free houses in Belgravia Square.

If my parents’ fate befell me in today’s austerity Britain (or Ireland), working 2 jobs, as they did, would not be enough to shield my child from the indignity of a food bank. During the lean years, clothes were sourced in charity shops (before it was cool) and the hand me down system worked for my elder sister (but not so much for my younger siblings). But, we were never cold or hungry.

The rampant deregulation of industry over the years is crippling society and driving, even those in employment, into poverty. Between 2002 and 2011, energy bills rose by 44 percent and water by 21 percent, while incomes of poorer households fell 11 percent over the same period.

A Report published this week by the Competition and Marketing Authority (CMA) revealed that 70% of customers and 14% of small businesses are being overcharged by the big 6 energy companies. This is not breaking news and the espoused solution is a red herring.

Urging people to switch providers is not the answer. Dealing with the root cause, wanton exploitative practices by the big 6 is the only sustainable solution. It is unacceptable to shift the burden onto the individual customer to change provider every time energy companies move the goal posts. Just like the banks, no sooner have you switched provider to get a better rate, than the rate changes and you’re back to square one.

Meanwhile, with the eyes of the world diverted to Greece this week, the European Parliament dealt democracy a crushing blow. TTIP (see earlier blog) is stolen, like a thief in the night, ever closer into our midst. But hey, at least we can seek solace in some quality TV. I’m off to watch one of the “Benefits Britain” spin offs. Tonight, it’s “Too fat to work” (for the benefit of my overseas readers, this programme exists. I'm not making it up). I'm looking forward to the day when Channel 5 commissions a series entitled, "Too rich to pay taxes". I won't hold my breath.

*I’ve been commissioned to examine the rights (or lack thereof) of children in Britain. It’s a medium term project, which will be published in a couple of months. If you have any personal experiences or stories (relating to education, health, including mental health, access to justice etc) do get in touch. You can contact me directly through my website.

Terrorist Attacks & Child Poverty Are On The Rise

Last Thursday, 164 people were slaughtered in Syria by terrorists who call themselves IS. I just call them terrorists. The next day, the same terrorist group allegedly carried out three further attacks, massacring 38 people on a beach in Tunisia, 27 people praying at a Mosque in Kuwait as well as carrying out an execution in Lyon.

All of these innocent lives are of equal worth and their loss will not be diminished for being borne by brown or white skin. Grief does not discriminate on grounds of nationality, nor should the media.

Despite the Syrian attack having the highest death toll (by far) and being carried out, allegedly, by the same terrorist group, it was not deemed as newsworthy as the other three atrocities. This is no doubt partly attributable to the media’s predilection for focusing on the “British dead” but it’s also more than that. I suspect the sidelining of the Syrian massacre is also about making sure we don’t start joining up embarrassing dots.

The international community’s failure in the region has led to an escalation in civilian attacks, which in turn is creating a humanitarian crisis with refugees fleeing in droves, many of whom end up in Calais, prepared to risk life and limb to give their families some hope of a future. Who wouldn’t do the same in their position?

According to the UN, the world is facing the largest number of displaced persons in modern times, with nearly 4 million fleeing the crisis in Syria alone. Whilst the EU could reportedly comfortably absorb 1 million of these refugees, its’ leaders will only agree to provide safe havens for a mere 60,000 beleaguered souls. Britain’s expressed priority is the destruction of human smugglers’ boats rather than rescuing their discarded victims.

Meanwhile, here in the UK, child poverty is thriving under the Tories. Plans to cut tax credits, which go to the poorest children in society to buy food, shoes and pay for bus fares, will plunge 300,000 more children into poverty.

But the Tories are not ashamed. Two in three children in poverty have at least one parent in work. Rather than tackle the scourge of child poverty by providing a living wage so that families (even those with work) don’t have to resort to food banks, this government’s solution is to repeal the 2010 Child Poverty Act, so that children’s welfare can be legislated away. Forget about eradicating child poverty by 2020. Eradicate the embarrassing target instead.

This week, four UK children's commissioners have joined forces to urge the Government to halt its savage benefit cuts to prevent more young people being pushed into poverty.

The commissioners for Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland sent a joint report to the United Nations, expressing concerns at the impact on children of the Government's plans to scrap the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British bill of rights.

"The HRA has been vital in promoting and protecting the rights of children in the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights has had an important role in developing the protection offered to children by the ECHR," it said.

The report criticises ministers for ignoring the UK supreme court when it found the “benefit cap” – the £25,000 limit on welfare that disproportionately affects families with children, to be in breach of Article 3 of the convention. There are now 4.1m children living in absolute poverty – 500,000 more than there were when David Cameron came to power.

The commissioners said the Government's "austerity" policies had resulted in "a failure to protect the most disadvantaged children and those in especially vulnerable groups from child poverty".

The commissioners also highlighted concerns over failures to tackle child abuse, the treatment of young people in the criminal justice system and the provision of mental health services for children and young people which they said were "vastly under funded".

With a further £12bn in welfare cuts due to be announced next week, the future for our most vulnerable children does not look bright.

This Is No Time For The UN To Abandon Darfur

The following was published in the Independent on Sunday.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/this-is-no-time-for-the-un-to-abandon-darfur-10334281.html

As Sudan’s president Omar Al Bashir flew out of South Africa on Monday, contrails of the country’s shame left an indelible trace in his wake.

Despite Al Bashir being issued with two arrest warrants by the ICC for crimes against humanity and genocide, South Africa offered him immunity to attend an African Union (AU) conference in Johannesburg last week-end.

As a signatory to the Rome Treaty, South Africa had a duty to arrest Bashir and hand him over to the ICC to face trial. A local NGO secured a court order preventing Bashir from leaving the country but while the court sat to decide Bashir’s fate, the fugitive surreptitiously fled the country.

The world once stood with ordinary South Africans in their struggle against state oppression and brutality. Yet, when their fellow Africans in Sudan cry out in tortured anguish, broken by the serial rape of children, serial murder and starvation of civilians, they are serially, cruelly ignored. By allowing Al Bashir to escape prosecution, the African National Congress (ANC), whose founding principle was “to bring all ordinary Africans together as one people to defend their rights and freedoms”, betrayed African victims of genocide.

The ICC depends on member nations to enforce arrest warrants. Having evaded arrest for 6 years, the court appealed to the UN Security Council, which does have enforcement powers. The ICC has said that the Security Council’s failure to authorize any penalties against the Sudanese regime for non compliance with the arrest warrant, is preventing it from fulfilling its mandate of ending impunity.

In November, the Independent reported on the mass rape of 200 girls and women in the village of Tabit and called on the UN to conduct an independent investigation. It did not. Instead, Human Rights Watch produced a report in February publishing findings which unequivocally impugned government sponsored forces for these rapes. Eight months on and the victims have still not received any support or counselling, the villagers live in fear and in conditions they describe as “an open prison”.

Ten months ago the UN waved through a resolution which potentially paves the way for the withdrawal, or significant reduction, of UNAMID troops in the region. The force has already been reduced, with a mere 15,000 troops responsible for a region the size of France. In February UNAMID and UN officials began meeting to discuss the Darfur exit strategy.

In May, Ban Ki-Moon recommended that the Security Council re-authorise UNAMID’s mandate as it is. A Sudanese official I spoke to said he was not reassured. He is fearful that UNAMID will either be reduced or pulled out when it comes to the Security Council vote on 30th June. A UN spokesperson told me that conditions on the ground did not merit a change in UNAMID’s mandate but confirmed that, “Discussions about an exit strategy are ongoing”. He indicated that the emphasis was more on “streamlining” numbers rather than “pulling out”. A report issued by Ban Ki-Moon on 26 May announced that 790 posts had been abolished.

At an informal meeting of the Security Council on Friday, two Darfur activists spoke of deteriorating security in the region and made a heartfelt plea for members to take tougher action to stop the bloodshed. Afterwards, US Ambassador Samantha Power said. "Now is not the time to abandon the people of Darfur." She also called for sanctions and arms embargoes to be enforced.

More than 3 million civilians in the region have been forced into refugee camps, almost 500,000 of whom were displaced in the last year. International Sudan expert, Eric Reeves, estimates that mortality rates in this region alone could be in the region of half a million. UNAMID is clearly failing in its duty to protect civilians but the answer is not to withdraw. Its’ presence has allowed at least some NGOs to operate in the region. If UNAMID goes or is further reduced, the last remaining lifeline will be severed. Bashir will be free to accelerate, unfettered, his genocidal campaign.

Never before in the history of declaring a genocide has the institution then officially left the perpetrator, indicted by The Hague for genocide, in charge of the victims’ safety. It’s like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. Surrendering Bashir to the ICC should be a condition of UNAMID’s withdrawal.

Fortunately, there is some hope on the horizon, in the form of the UK’s incoming UN Ambassador, Matthew Rycroft. He has publicly stated that, “Now is not the time to withdraw troops from Darfur”, urging instead to re-configure UNAMID to focus on its core mandate, that of protecting civilians. Could Rycroft be the person history credits with bringing the Darfur genocide to an end? God knows there’s a situation vacant.

TTIP is a Corporate Trojan Horse & it's Rolling Our Way

This was published in today's Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/ttip-heres-why-meps-have-been-protesting-it-and-why-you-should-too-10313239.html

A vote on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in the European parliament was postponed today, sparking protest amongst a large number of anti TTIP MEPs. Earlier in the week, protesters gathered in Bavaria (despite aggressive police tactics) to protest against the G7 proposal to hand yet more powers to corporations at the expense of citizens. This is what TTIP would do and, despite over 2 million Europeans signing a petition to stop it, the G7 leaders have announced their intention to forge ahead with it anyway.

In the quest for profit at any cost, corporations strive for two things, new markets and deregulation. In reality, regulation is what keeps corporations, some of whom are richer and more powerful than countries, in check. The move in the US and the UK to deregulate financial markets was one of the main causal factors of the global financial crash. Regulation, however inconvenient to big businesses, has a crucial role in democracy and economic stability. It provides safeguards against exploitation and protects hard earned rights of the most vulnerable in society.

Critics are particularly concerned about the investor protection clause, known as ISDS. This allows corporations to sue governments for terminating a contract. A US health care provider, for example, could secure a contract to run an NHS hospital, however they want, irrespective of UK laws. If the public objected and the government intervened, they could be sued for the company’s loss of earnings. Running the hospital on the cheap will make more profit but cost more lives. Under TTIP, it’s the profit, not safety, that matters. There are legitimate concerns that this deal could make NHS privatisation irreversible.

It would allow US behemoths such as Monsanto, to put Independent farmers in many developing countries out of business. They cannot afford GM technology and would lose out to the bigger landowners. Eventually corporations like Monsanto will control all food production in these countries and wield far more power and control than is healthy.

MEP Yannick Jadot described ISDS as “a way of privatising justice to the detriment of our citizens". It puts companies above the law and justice system of the country in which they operate.

Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland who are in trade agreements which include this kind of investor-state relationship have been sued 127 times and lost the equivalent money that could have employed 300,000 nurses for a year. The government of Ecuador has just had to pay $2.3bn to Occidental Oil over its lawful termination of an oil concession. A Swedish energy company is using an ISDS clause in an energy treaty to sue the German government for €3.7bn following its decision to close its nuclear power stations in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

Last month it was reported that the EU scrapped planned pesticide regulations under pressure from US officials citing TTIP. According to documents obtained by the Pesticides Action Network Europe, a visit from senior US officials to Europe in July 2013 resulted in the EU dropping planned regulations that could have led to the banning of 31 pesticides containing hazardous chemicals. The proposed regulations related to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which have been linked to cancer and male infertility. The health costs emerging from these toxic chemicals has been estimated at €150bn per year.

How will governments and MEPs justify this to their citizens? They don’t have to. Why consult with the public when the decision has already been made. In secret. The sheer lack of transparency surrounding the negotiations of TTIP alone should raise alarm bells. Key components of the negotiations are reportedly subject to a 30-year embargo on disclosure. How can that be possible in a supposedly democratic union? What is so incendiary that cannot be shared with the people on whom it will have the most impact, the public?

MEP Molly Scott Cato attempted to find out. In order to access the top secret TTIP negotiation files she had to sign a gagging clause which prohibits her from disclosing any of the information she unveiled. Something that is in the public domain however, is that 92% of those involved in the consultations have been corporate lobbyists. Of the 560 lobby encounters that the European commission had, 520 were with business lobbyists and only 26 were with public interest groups.

It isn’t just that TTIP allows for further exploitation of citizens by corporations. The process itself, shrouded in secrecy, is sinister and undemocratic. The electorate has a right to understand, scrutinize and obstruct laws that threaten to undermine national sovereignty and erode the meagre citizen protection that remain in a world where governments increasingly dance to the omnipotent corporate tune.

Why Does Same Sex Marriage in Ireland Eclipse Human Rights Atrocities in Bangladesh?

I’m thrilled that Ireland voted for same sex marriage this week. I’m not, however, inclined to be swept up in the mass hysteria surrounding the landmark outcome. Women, even those who have been raped, are still deprived of their right to choose what happens to their bodies. As long as abortion is illegal in Ireland, any attempt to claim enlightenment, in terms of equality, is disingenuous.

The other reason I’m uncomfortable with the UK media frenzy surrounding the referendum outcome in Ireland, is that it eclipsed the plight of the beleaguered Rohingya population in Bangladesh. After some initial, belated coverage of those forced to drink their own urine while stranded for months on flotillas off the coast of Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, the media (with few exceptions) got bored and moved on.

The following are a list of actions that Physicians for Human Rights urged in a report issued last week. A report that was all but ignored by the mainstream media:

For the Government of Bangladesh to:
• Desist immediately from arbitrarily arresting and forcibly expelling legitimate refugees who have a well founded fear of persecution.
• Establish a national refugee and asylum administrative framework that guarantees the fundamental rights to safe-haven from persecution and non-refoulement and that allows access to life-saving humanitarian assistance.
• Allow humanitarian agencies full and unobstructed access to provide relief to this vulnerable population that faces critical levels of malnutrition and disease. This assistance should include the immediate distribution of food rations to all unregistered refugees and a blanket supplementary feeding program to prevent a high number of avoidable deaths.
• Condemn immediately and prevent the campaign of ethnic hatred and incitement against Rohingya refugees.

For the Burmese government to:
• Cease immediately its campaign of widespread human rights violations against ethnic minorities, including the Rohingya, which has led to the flight of millions into neighboring countries.

For the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to:
• Assert its global mandate to protect and assist the unregistered Rohingya as a population of concern and press the Government of Bangladesh to stop the arrest and forcible refoulement of those Rohingya who have a well-founded fear of persecution.
• Press the Government of Bangladesh to allow immediate life-saving humanitarian assistance to this vulnerable population.
• Launch a coordinated appeal to regional and other donor nations for humanitarian relief and protection to this

Five More Years Of Misery. The Tories Couldn't Have Done It Without Help from Labour & The Lib Dems.

This week a report revealed that EE is the UKs worst communications provider. It comes top of the list for customer complaints and rates abominably for customer service. I was reading this whilst on hold to said provider for the umpteenth time in a week that has been hijacked by EE’s excruciating incompetence. The time and income I’ve lost at the hands of EE’s ineptitude, compounded by a culture of contempt for customers (no apologies, no call backs, no interest) I’ll never get back. What’s worse, I still have no internet access and no indication of when or if it’s likely to be restored in the foreseeable.

Apologies therefore for the delay in this posting, which I’m submitting from an internet café, slightly high on caffeine (they don’t do decaf here).

“What’s a Miliband?” shouted my seven year old. “What’s the context?” I shouted back down the stairs as I multi-tasked (cleaning the toilet whilst fairy cakes burn in the oven). “Miliband’s in peril!” He was reading from the headline of a weekly news magazine. “That’s a long and tragic story” I said. I discarded the marigolds, took Tony Benn’s diaries off the book shelf and began reading it aloud to my child as he tried not to crack his teeth on my cake.

One week after the election, and I remain locked in a state that fluxes between delusional disbelief and catatonic anxiety. Like a lot of people in this country, I’m aggrieved. At the Tories, who have and will continue to annihilate human and worker’s rights, and for destroying the dignity of the most vulnerable in our society. I’m angry at the Lib Dems for selling their souls to the lowest bidder. Five years ago an all male Lib Dem contingent sat around a table and traded party principles in their personal pursuit of power. All five men emerged with top jobs and ministerial cars. For their moment in the limelight, the party and the public paid dear (e.g. the Health & Social Care Act couldn’t have succeeded without their complicity). All five of the Lib Dem architects of that stitch up five years ago got kicked out last Friday. Nick Clegg described the electorate’s response as “unkind”. One word that conveyed so utterly the bubble of oblivion and disconnect he had come to inhabit. My deepest anger though is reserved for Labour.

In theory, Labour is the party for whom I should (but don't) feel the most affinity. In practice, as documented forensically in the aforementioned Tony Benn’s diaries, it has gradually abandoned and betrayed its founding principles. Under Tony Blair, so great was the lurch to the right that the moniker “New Conservatives” would have been far more accurate than that of New Labour. Margaret Thatcher apparently cited Tony Blair as one of her greatest legacies. That left a situation vacant in the political arena for a worker’s party that speaks to and for those hit hardest by austerity. The Greens and the SNP (in Scotlland) provided a refreshing, progressive alternative to austerity whilst UKIP went after “the man in the street” vote. Had Labour not allowed itself to be engulfed in an identity crisis and had instead the confidence to assert a bold alternative to austerity, the election outcome could have been very different.

Five years ago I blamed Labour stalwart Jon Cruddas (MP for Dagenham) for his party’s defeat. I was absolutely convinced he was the key to Labour’s salvation. He came second to Harriett Harman in the deputy leadership election but he won the hearts and minds of the public. I tried my best to convince him to stand for the last Labour leadership against the New Labour contestants, to no avail.

A member of the shadow cabinet and a key Labour strategist, who better to vent my spleen to at last Friday’s results, than Jon. I sent him an “I told you so” email. In my defence, I had been up all night filing election results to an overseas news outlet.

“Had you listened to me 5 years ago and stood against Miliband”, I pontificated, “all this misery could have been avoided”. I told him the party had shot itself in the foot with Brown, then Miliband. The time had been right for the party to go back to its roots after Blair. There was a situation vacant for a worker's party, a party for ordinary people. Jon Cruddas ticked (& still does) all the boxes. He’s likeable, lacking in grating affectations, a voice and background that people can relate to. Yet, to my fury, he didn’t stand.

After 5 years of austerity, the Labour party could have decimated the Tories. The tough talk about tax evasion, energy companies and non doms was too little too late. Hedging bets and trying to be all things to all people means Labour has no meaning, no purpose, no soul and therefore, no relevance.

I am forlorn at Labour’s apparent inability to learn from mistakes. The only viable option for survival is to be the champion of workers, the poor and marginalised, as well as everyone else, from across all classes, who believes in equality of opportunity and fair distribution of wealth and power. Without fairness and justice, social order and economic stability will crumble. That is in no-one’s interest. Labour should be a party driven by principle and passionate, convicted leadership, as opposed to a "safe", albeit lacklustre, disconnected, pair of hands.

I’m not going to divulge Jon’s response to my email. On Monday, he resigned his post in the shadow cabinet in order to carry out a review of the party’s direction. No better man or woman for the job.

Until the Labour party is prepared to live up to its name and founding principles, it, as well as democracy and society, are doomed.

Being Mistaken for a Terrorist by the BBC (parts 1 & 2 )

Maybe it was my Irish accent, which, to the uninitiated could be from anywhere. Perhaps it was my scarlet boots with matching finger nails, but I suspect what alerted the BBC to my radical tendencies was the badge on my lapel which read, “I Love the NHS”.

That’s pretty much the explanation the editor gave for editing out my question at a local hustings, despite the question provoking cheers of support from the audience (it’s the single biggest issue for this community), uniting people across all political hues. Our local A&E is under threat of closure and the Tory candidate, (in a seat that’s so safe he’s built a moat around it), is the only one to declare he wouldn’t fight it.

Thousands of locals have signed a petition against closing our A&E, so our position is clear. I told the Tory candidate that the most important criteria for this job is that he works for us and if he’s not prepared to fight for our A&E, why on earth should we vote for him. The audience's reaction did get a bit rowdy, to be fair. They booed and heckled when he mentioned the “business case” (hello, the NHS is a service, not a bloody business) as his defence, which, the BBC must have thought was jolly irreverent. And who sparked the riotous booing rebellion? Moi.

Perhaps precisely because my question was delivered in mellifluous tones, the BBC suspected my tactics as a sinister inversion of fundamentalism. After all, what could be more incendiary than a loaded question shot from a velvet gun? The question and the embarrassing heckles ended up on the BBC cutting room floor.

The editor had forensically researched the issue of A&E closure in this constituency (she spent a couple of hours outside a supermarket on the outskirts of town) ahead of the programme. Not being from here herself she obviously felt honour bound to exert the utmost rigour. She concluded that my question on A&E wasn’t relevant because people around here aren’t that bothered. The reaction of the hoodlums (not her exact word) at the hustings was not representative, she said. They could have been bussed in by Al-Qaeda for all she knew, in a bid to destabilise the state.

But what of all those petitions and posters in the shop windows saying “Hands off our A&E”? How was she supposed to corroborate and authenticate their true source. That butcher’s shop could be a safe house for the Taliban, and the baker next door is a known Green Party activist, for god’s sake. When you work for the BBC, you simply can’t allow yourself to be hijacked as the voice piece of ordinary people and their NHS fundamentalism. It could result in even more people engaging in the democratic process, which would completely undermine the hard earned ground in the fight for autocracy.

As I chipped away at the editor's logic, she grew impatient (she’s not used to having to account to us licence fee payers) and in a fit of unguarded rage, the truth was out. She knew who I was and had strong views about me. “And, and (she puffed), you strike me as someone very passionate and, and campaigning”. She spat the words passionate and campaigning out as though they were egregious character traits, indicative of social deviancy akin to, well, terrorist activities.

If being passionate and a campaigner makes me a terrorist, then I’m guilty as charged. My writing about human rights abuses has been cited as evidence by the UN in the International Criminal Court. Ten years campaigning (fitted in around my day job), armed only with a pen and some passion, has helped provide evidence against a genocidaire. The cost of which is constantly having to look over my shoulder. My charge sheet, obfuscated by a veil of repute, is lengthy. It's true that I am an unrepentant recidivist.

Having started my career as a therapist, I dug down deep and found the dregs of empathy lurking in a crevice of my red suede boots. The BBC cannot be seen as a recruiting sergeant for passionate people like me. It goes against editorial guidelines. Passion has no place on the BBC, unless you’re a right wing commentator such as David Starky or Katie Hopkins, being passionate about hating women, immigrants &/or people on benefits. Anyone passionate about inequality, corporate or political corruption and greed has no place on the BBC (section 196, para 50, subsection 1.2b). Celebrities passionately against tax on their mansions are allowed but not anyone who has any sympathies with people squatting to save their council homes from being sold off to developers. Leave that stuff to looney lefty, Russell Brand.

By way of neutralising my newly acquired persona, I declared my personal interest in preventing the closure of my local A&E. I told the editor that my child was seriously injured recently and it already took over an hour to get to A&E in an ambulance. All the medical evidence suggests the greater the distance, the increased likelihood of mortality. She lamented that, had I said that at the hustings she might not have cut it. She invited me to phone in and pose the question again at a BBC radio hustings a few days hence. When you come close to losing a child, it’s hard to talk about it publicly I said. I’m still feeling emotionally raw. But I agreed to do it in good faith.

When I phoned in to ask my question, I thought I had taken a wrong turn at the larder and strayed onto the set of Newsnight, where I was being cross examined by Paxman for crimes against humanity.

It occurred to me that I had inadvertently unleashed my secret weapon and the BBC editor immediately saw the error of exposing me to listeners. There was a very real risk that people might warm to my dulcet tones, thus indoctrinating and even converting listeners to my “cause”. I had to be stopped before I radicalised hitherto complacent listeners to NHS fundamentalism. The presenter tried correcting me on something I didn’t actually say in a bid to disarm me. He then went on to take out all the candidates who had pledged to support constituents in the A&E fight. He verbally AK47ed all of them for the crime of being prepared to fight on behalf of constituents and disagree with the Tory. Who needs to pay for a press officer when you’ve got your very own BBC henchman.

After my BBC appearance, people stopped me in the street and asked if they could join my terrorist cell. My status has been elevated in the community to that of Che Guevara. The school gates have become a recruiting ground for mothers wishing to don their fundamentalist credentials on their lapels. “I love the NHS” badges are selling like home made jam on the farmers market. Leafleting, petitioning and other radical activities, such as writing “passionate” letters to the press, have all become embedded since the BBC elevated community activism and passion to terrorist status.

Power to the people for whom the BBC is as irrelevant and disconnected as the party of hedge fund managers (locally at least) it favours to win the election.

Further evidence of my NHS fundamentalism can be found on the Huffington Post website.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/tess-finchlees/the-nhs-conspiracy-of-sil_b_7174328.html

My article, The NHS Conspiracy of Silence, was published this week. Health warning: Contains flashes of passion which some BBC editors may find disturbing.

Hilary Clinton's Presidency Bid Will Be Determined By Her Ironing Skills

My best friend is a woman and I am one myself so I’m obviously not a misogynist. Having said that, it’s more than my feminist sensibilities can bear, to see women vying for space in the political arena.

First we had three women making cameo appearances in the leadership debate here in the UK. Then this week, Hilary Clinton threw her hair net in the ring for the US presidency.

Has she not learned anything from her previous attempt at the presidency? All those men who interrupted her speeches to chant “Iron my shirt”, were not the sexist pigs that the political correctness brigade would have us believe, but rather the voice of a frightened, marginalised, increasingly alienated group in American society. The white male.

It’s not that these men hate Hilary per se. It’s what she represents. In the unlikely event that she was to become the first female president of the US, what kind of role model would she be to the young women of America? It would be bye bye babies and hello back room deals. What message would it send to young men, who have been raised on the absolute promise of higher pay and male dominance when it comes to the jobs that matter? Suddenly they’ll have to accept equal pay and share power with women. Societal order, the thing that makes us feel safe (apart from nuclear weapons) would collapse.

The writing has been on the wall for sometime. We only have to look at other women who’ve made similar bids for power to know it always goes tits up. The Times (UK) captured the outstanding victory of Sonia Gandhi 10 years ago with the headline “The Italian housewife with a lot on her hands”. Voted for by 675m people, the focus of the article was that of her gender “handicaps”.

When Segolene Royal made her presidency bid in France the media questioned who would look after her 4 children if she were successful. Women who have children are mothers first, and everyone knows a good mother wouldn’t leave a 16 year old child at home with flu while she swanned off canvassing to be the first female president. She was lambasted for allegedly doing that and rightly so. That’s tantamount to child neglect.

Of course the same rules don’t apply to men. In a meritocracy, we have to accept that men are better at leadership, that’s why they have wives to whom they can delegate child care duties, leaving them to get on with the business of war mongering and creating global economic carnage. After all, if there’s no crisis there’s no fear and without fear the masses are far less malleable.

At least Angela Merkel had the good sense not to enter politics with womb manufactured baggage. She didn’t have children so she can never be accused of neglecting them. Genius. She may also be the most powerful woman in the world and preside over the strongest economy in the euro-zone, but she can’t dress for toffee and she reads from her notes, for gods’ sake. It’s only a matter of time before she’s toast.

Commentator, Janet Street-Porter, recently outed Leanne Woods for reading from her notes during Question Time. Rule number 1 of politics, it’s not what you say but how you say it that matters. Street-Porter was so irked by this that she attacked Wood for criticising HRH David Cameron. Dismissing any criticisms of the Tory austerity regime, S-P shouted “If that’s true, why is everyone so bloody happy, as proven in a recent happiness survey commissioned by the happiness society (or some such)? Eh eh? Cat got your tongue? you bloody Welsh, note reading upstart”. I’m paraphrasing slightly but I feel I captured the essence of the occurence.

Coming back to the UK leaders’ debate, various commentators picked up on crucial, vote losing faux pas, committed by the female panellists. One of them was far too intellectual for her own good (as evidenced by the fact she was wearing flat shoes), the other was too confident (for a woman) to be credible and the other had a wardrobe malfunction. She turned up wearing a casual collarless ensemble. Everyone knows that’s political suicide.

I toyed with the idea of becoming more engaged with local politics. If plans to close our A&E succeed, it would be quicker to drive to Luton (300 miles away) and catch a Ryan Air flight to Australia (that’s where all the best doctors go when they burn out here) than to dial 999. When you factor in the 3 hour wait in this county for an ambulance, then the added journey time to the next nearest A&E (1.5hours) then waiting in the queue of ambulances that backs onto the motorway, you’re looking at about 8 months before you get to see the inside of a cerise A&E cubicle.

When you do get in, the nurses and doctors will have lost the will to live and will have emigrated to Australia, so why not just go straight there in the first place?

I digress. I put the notion of political activism to my 7 year old who was horrified. “We’re supposed to be making Victoria sponge tomorrow” he protested. “What would you rather have, a mother who stays at home making cakes all day or one who makes a stand for social justice?” He didn’t miss a beat, “I’ll take the cake option”. Obviously children are not naturally predisposed to decisions that involve deferring gratification but nonetheless, that was my dalliance with politics over. A woman’s place is in the home.

The harsh truth is that politics is a precarious career choice for women. Hilary Clinton’s presidency bid won’t be decided on her stellar track record or her proven competence. It’ll be decided on where she stands on ironing shirts, what she wears and whether her ambitions undermine her ability to be a good mother and grandmother. Even if she overcomes those hurdles, she’ll know better than most that, however well she thinks she’s doing, it takes just one bad hair day and its curtains.

The NHS Conspiracy of Silence

I’d have more luck publishing a piece about colonic irrigation than the NHS right now.

Despite the fact that it’s the one thing that unites the electorate, the NHS was airbrushed out of the budget. That should have been a media talking point, but it wasn’t. In the first of the leaders’ non debates (King Cameron threw Milliband to his Tory attack dogs, Paxman and Burly, instead), there were no scripted questions about the NHS. As soon as random audience members were allowed to speak, it was the NHS that stirred the audience. One woman accused Cameron of breaking his promise about no more top down restructuring. “You broke your promise before, how can I trust you again”. The answer is, you can’t.

This week 100 business bosses, who happened to have either OBEs after their names, or Lord/Baronness before them, signed a letter supporting the Tories. Shut the front door! There’s no other group in society that can cheat the exchequer of tax and get away with it.

This week Sports Direct hit the headlines for giving staff in one of their warehouses 15 minutes notice of their redundancies. The subsidiary was put into administration then immediately bought back by Sports Direct, wait for it, without the debts. The taxpayer was left to pick up the bill for the staff redundancies and suppliers. Then there’s the unpaid tax bill, which comes to almost £700,000. What is staggering about this scandal, is that none of what Sports Direct did was illegal, apparently. A Conservative Government has presided over a system that allows big business to exploit loopholes at the taxpayers’ expense.

Trillions of pounds that should be going to our health service is being siphoned off into offshore tax havens. The Conservatives had 5 years to redress this injustice but chose not to. They chose instead to clamp down on the disabled and the most vulnerable in society. Many of whom have been driven to suicide as a result of the hideously inhumane bedroom tax and other savage benefit cuts, which after all, are not a nice to have but the difference between eating and starving. Keeping warm or freezing to death.

Last Tuesday, David Cameron got heckled by an Age Concern audience for presiding over, what actor Michael Sheen described last month as, “a systematic dismantling of the NHS”. A report published on the same day, showed that mental health related absences in the NHS, due to stress, depression and anxiety, have doubled under the Tory administration. Apart from the tragic human costs, sickness and absence costs the NHS millions every year.

There has also been a 3 fold increase in the use of agency staff, who can charge as much as £1,600 a shift (most of which goes to the private company). The total agency bill to the NHS this year is expected to be £980 million. Peter Carter, RCN chief executive, said: "This report shows the true financial cost of a health service which takes a 'payday loans' attitude towards workforce planning”.

One NHS hospital paid more than £3,200 for a locum doctor to cover a single 24 hour shift over the Christmas crisis. No organization could withstand this level of gross mismanagement. It's no wonder the NHS is on its knees. We know from history that running down public services is a precursor to privatization (see Privatising the World by Tory MP Oliver Letwin).

The coalition’s Health and Social Care Act (waved through under the media’s radar) means CCG's (Clinical Commissioning Groups) can privatise chunks of the NHS without the inconvenience of consultation. Taxpayers, won't know about it until it's a done deal. Last week, leaked documents showed this is exactly what's happening at Staffordshire, where the CCGs are pushing through plans to privatise cancer care. A contract worth £1.2bn is up for grabs without any safeguards for quality of patient care or provision for what'll happen when it goes belly up. This barely got a mention in the mainstream media.

Despite the disastrous failed privatization experiment at Hinchingbrooke hospital (which was recently handed back to the NHS when Circle Holdings were exposed by the Care Quality Commission as having scant regard for quality of patient care), CCG’s are still blindly pursuing the reckless strategy of outsourcing to private companies, who are driven by profit, not patient care.

That, in the words of one of the doctors interviewed in the incisive documentary “Sell-Off: The Abolition of the NHS, “is like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank”.

Trevor Phillips is to Race Relations What Margaret Thatcher Was to Feminism

A saboteur. This statement was true when I said it 6 years ago and Phillips’ party political broadcast on behalf of UKIP last week, proves it’s still true today.

The Channel 4 documentary, Things We Won’t Say About Race That Are True, had more holes than my grandmothers hair net. For those of us who spent our time cleaning up after the mess Phillips made as head of the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC), this mocumentary was no surprise.

Phillips never understood what racism meant or the manifold, sinister ways in which it manifests itself. Having spent a number of years working with the police service, implementing recommendations from the Macpherson report (which examined the Mets mishandling of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence) I got a call from a senior met officer who was distraught. He had just come from a board meeting where he said Trevor Phillips announced it was time to forget about institutional racism because it made white officers feel alienated.

Rather than explain what institutional racism means, i.e. it’s not about individual officers being “racist” but about policies (such as stop & search targeted at young black men) and a predominately white leadership, that produces unconscious outcomes, such as alienating and criminalising black and minority ethnic people, he threw the (black) baby out with the bath water. Even now, the Met cannot retain their black recruits amid constant reports of race discrimination and harassment.

Then there was the "sleepwalking into segregation" chestnut, for which Phillips was later forced to apologise, having misrepresented research to support his case. Having advocated integration and warned against creating neighbourhood "ghettos", Phillips later did a bizarre U-turn suggesting black and white boys should be segregated at school.

A few years ago I challenged Trevor Phillips on his suggestion that the solution to black boys' educational underperformance was to segregate them. Speaking at a Confederation of British Industry conference, I pointed out that there were some barriers to achievement beyond the individual's control and that those barriers had a disproportionately negative impact on black boys. For example, black pupils are more vulnerable to negative stereotypes by teachers, resulting in their being three times more likely to be excluded than their white peers.

Even though experts constantly urge political leaders to address the "festering abscess" of institutional racism, Phillips belligerently ignores their recommendations.

Although at a loss for words on the podium, Mr Phillips sought me out afterwards. Towering over my slight, 5ft 3in frame, Phillips, a big man, jabbed his finger and insisted "someone like you" (I’m white) had no right to question "someone like me" (he’s black) on the subject of race. In the same way that being a woman does not automatically predispose one to feminism, being black alone does not qualify someone to be an authority on race.

Despite having no apparent experience, interest or aptitude in campaigning for human rights, Phillips was appointed by New Labour to lead the EHRC. In my opinion, he did more to sabotage race equality than Jeremy Clarkson. It was out with multiculturalism and in with "Britishness", as defined by the willingness to "honour Dickens and Shakespeare". Post 7/7 he singled out Muslim men and told them how to integrate. His comments came at a time of heightened Islamophobia.

In the past decade the gap between rich and poor (black & white) has widened and inequality has soared. To make people of all communities feel included and part of British society, they need to have a representative voice at the highest levels. It's this lack of a legitimate voice and the power to influence that leaves communities, including impoverished white people, feeling disaffected and misunderstood. But Phillips still doesn't seem to have grasped that.

A Paddy's Day Limerick Dedicated to David Cameron

There once was a gombeen called Dave
Who didn’t know how to behave
His mates were all loaded
T’was the poor that he goaded
And took the man in the street as his slave


* Gombeen is an old Irish term for feck'n eegit.

How Did a Nurse & Actor (Michael Sheen) Succeed Where "Bland" Politicians Fail?

By rousing an audience with their passion and conviction. In the words of Michael Sheen in a speech that went viral on the internet this week,

" You must stand up for what you believe, but first of all, by God, believe in something."

His blistering criticism of the coalition government’s systematic dismantling of the NHS touched a national nerve. With few exceptions, “bland” politicians struggle to communicate a belief in anything, other than their own aggrandisement.

Last week BBC's Question Time was televised in Telford and, despite politicians’ attempts to ingratiate themselves with the audience by giving immigrants and Islam a good kicking, they just weren’t biting.

Then a nurse spoke, from the heart, with candour and courage. The audience erupted in whoops and cheers (when was the last time a politician generated that kind of reaction?). She gave voice to the one thing everyone cares about, irrespective of political persuasion, our beloved NHS.

The nurse from Telford said she was disgusted with herself for voting for the Tories, “I helped put you in your jobs and now I’m having to fight for a 1% pay rise, I’m facing my unsocial hours pay being scrapped and I’ve lost all my increments, despite there being a signed contract. As far as I’m concerned, You’re [pointing at Tory party chairman Grant Shapps] in breach of contract with NHS nurses”.

Agency and temporary nurses are costing the NHS millions and are reported to provide poorer quality care. NHS bosses say they can’t recruit nurses, but why not? Nurses I’ve spoken to locally who have left the profession say they felt they’d been forced out of their jobs for the crime of highlighting poor patient care.

One senior A&E sister who left the local hospital in the last few years said, “It’s like being in a war zone every day”. There were never enough staff on duty to cope with demand, so nurses and doctors were working under constant stress and burn out levels were high. “Every time you’re forced to deprive a patient of the care you know they need and deserve, 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”.

A previous colleague of hers, a highly respected A&E consultant, left around the same time, in protest she said at repeated failures of management to recognise that lack of funding was compromising, sometimes fatally, patient care. That consultant, like many others interviewed in a recent BBC Radio 4 documentary, fled to Australia to work in an A&E system that funds proper patient care and allows doctors and nurses to work adequately staffed shifts as well as affording much more work life balance. It’s not rocket science.

Whilst agency and temporary staff may cost the NHS millions in exchange for poor quality care, they have the advantage of being easily disposed of if they become too gobby/principled. No messy employment rights to be circumvented.

A couple of months ago my child was seriously injured in a car crash. The quality of care he received at our local A&E was first class, for which I will be forever grateful. That intense experience of the NHS made me realise just how the government has eroded the structural underpinning of the institution by starving it of the investment it needs to thrive.

I learned that my A&E is under threat of closure, which would mean a journey that already takes over an hour (in excruciating pain), could be extended to over 1.5 hours. I also learned that my local Clinical Commissioning Group (that’s the board who hold the local NHS purse strings) had opted out of meeting national ambulance response targets (the only county in the country to do so) rather than fund the service to operate at a safe level. Medical campaigners warn this will inevitably result in higher mortality rates.

Still, in a move that seems to acknowledge, albeit implicitly, the likelihood of increased mortality, the Trust has just announced it’s investing £1.4m in extending the mortuary. It’s one thing having ambulances backed up nine strong out the door of A&E, it’s another thing entirely to have the DOA’s (dead on arrival) spilling out into the car park. It would kill tourism.

In order to take a temperature check of my local NHS, I went along to a recent hospital board meeting, which opened with the chairman’s award. The recipient, like the three previous recipients, was a manager. I clapped because I don’t doubt his worthiness. At the same time, I’ve been told by a source inside the hospital that front line medics are feeling aggrieved. The winter months put unprecedented pressure on nurses and doctors who are already over worked and underpaid yet they see managers who make financial savings, not those who save lives, disproportionately, in their view, recognised and rewarded.

Next, the chairman invited the gathering to accompany him on a journey. First stop was a heart rending patient story about appalling end of life care. The patient’s wife outlined a catalogue of medical errors, shoddy hygiene, poor patient care and interdisciplinary communication. The patient’s wife said that although it was too late for her husband, who died alone (she was not informed of his deteriorating condition), she asked that doctors and nurses be reminded that the person in the bed could be their father, brother, husband, and to see them, not as just a collection of symptoms, but a human being.

I was moved to tears and thanked the family for their candour and courage afterwards.

The board move on to examining the Clinical Commissioning Groups, "Future Fit" (FF) proposal. This is their vision of our local health care "offer", "going forward" (AKA: cost cutting measures). He says its viability depends on the setting up of Urgent Care Centres (UCCs) throughout the county in order to alleviate some of the pressure on A&E’s. Problem is they’ve only planned 2 prototypes, only one of which seems operational (reports indicate that it's run by a private company) & it seems it’s not taking pressure off A&E. One of the reasons for this, according to the CEO, is that it’s not a proper UCC yet. Staff haven’t been sufficiently trained so it’s all a bit, well, up in the air.

The chair said he was concerned that wasteful models that don’t deliver could cost more than before. Someone said there was no point in building a new hospital if beds there just get clogged up too. There were concerns about the integration of FF with other providers.

The CEO’s body language grew restless. “We’ve been standing on a burning platform for months now. We must make the best set of assumptions and move forward”. Health warning: When it comes to transformative change of any kind, let alone on an NHS scale (which involves people’s lives), “best assumptions” don’t cut it. Decisions need to be based on evidence, including detailed financial modelling. General Motors famously carried out a cost benefit analysis before deciding whether to recall known faulty cars. They concluded that it would be cheaper to pay out when sued over resultant fatalities than to recall & repair the cars. Private corporations are not driven by customer safety, their allegiance is to profits.

The medical director says it’s deliberate that no detailed costings have yet been forthcoming. If that’s true, it’s deeply disturbing. For example, one of the options is to build a new hospital, which would mean diverting vital funds away from patient care and front line staff. It wouldn’t solve the problem of bed blocking (as noted by the board), which means the problems remain but the funds have been recklessly depleted, all because financial modelling wasn’t provided at the outset. Asking people to respond to hypothetical options that may be unfeasible/dangerous seems to me to be a gross waste of time and money (how much does it cost to despatch an army of highly paid clinical commissioners to every consultation and pop up stall around the county only to have to do it all again once they’ve had a chance to think things through a bit better)?

The CCG had asked the board to endorse their shortlist of proposals but they declined on the basis that there wasn’t enough detail.

Next, the CEO told the board that there’s no capacity to transfer patients off the wards, “We’re working 100 miles an hour but the rest of the system is working 10-20 MPH”.

A board member interjected, “When do we say as a board, enough is enough. How do we support colleagues”? He spoke of the burden on A&E staff and the need for shared ownership with other providers (of social care). He said “we need to draw a line in the sand”, critical of his perception that social care & community trusts ration their contribution. This is problematic because the Future Fit model depends on shared ownership and these partners making beds available in the community.

Someone else chipped in, critical of the local authority (LA) who he said is using money provided for the social care pot, to make savings rather than use it to fund vital infrastructure in the community.

Yet more flashes of brilliance only to dissipate into the ether.

The chairs solution? Using Health Care Assistants to plug the nursing gap. “We already use agency nurses but they don’t give the love”. I look around the table. No sharp intakes of breath. The corporate governance director seems unperturbed so I focus my gaze on the director of nursing, who when asked what she thought by the chair said, “I’m happy to consider it if the board is happy to accept the increased risk”. No one objected.

If we accept the narrative that there’s no money for the NHS then it follows that we accept privatisation as inevitable. If we relinquish the principal of public health care for all, we’re signing our NHS over to corporate providers, for whom profit will always come before patients. As Sheen so eloquently put it, “There is never an excuse to not speak up for what you think is right”.