So who speaks for the disadvantaged

 

Subject: So who speaks for the disadvantaged

 


And now it’s the GPs who are holding the nation to hostage, threatening to limit patient access because they say their surgeries are underfunded by government which of course means tax receipts. The junior doctors have just secured a record breaking rise on their claim that their hourly pay in the region of £15 ph, is ridiculously low given the time spent preparing to be acknowledged as equipped to exercise any sort of medical expertise. The nurses similarly suffered, under the Cameron/ Osborn austerity regime as  year on year their pay slipped down the cost of living statistic as did so many reliant on public service increases. So whilst as a nation we simply didn’t improve our productivity but instead insisted on withdrawing from our by far our largest market, the EU we were seduced by the rhetoric of the ideological school who insisted we could go it alone irrespective what the economic statistics told us.
Where do we go from here, do we cripple ourselves by becoming more indebted to the sovereign funds who often represent political states which we abore, do we trim back the money spent on social improvement or limit, in a distinctly troubled world our defence expenditure. We seem to have a pathological obsession in not investing in the bright ideas which our academics develop and would rather do a two step with nations who will invest in us, but on terms which benefit  them.
Where are the UK manufactured of wind farms, ships, railway stock, all of which we have to buy from nations who are our competitors. We had the skill base only 50 years ago but frittered it away long before the Chinese arrived on the scene but by a refusal to invest in our ‘trade collages’ we  converted them instead into dodgy universities peddling even more dodgy degrees. We, or should I say,our business leaders, are the author of our demise
whilst they take their seats in the House of Lords to reminisce about the time they made a killing on the stock market we riot on the streets of predominantly northern towns desperate to be heard in a world that has no place for them.
Of course there is an element of thuggery amongst them but there is also a cry to have been let down as to them the last straw is the sight of swelling immigration which culturally and economically displaces them from the very towns they call their own.
This was foreseeable. Having grown up in Bradford the mill owners rather than compete with the Taiwanese and their modern equipment instead used the oldest tool in the box they imported cheap labour from the subcontinent and expected the people of Bradford to assimilate. A few days ago I broke down in the centre of Bishops Stortford.
Parked behind me was a taxi driven by an old Indian chap. I approached him to ask could he take me home but he explained he was out shopping with his wife and not for hire. Anyway to cut a long story down he agreed and as I settled. Into the back seat alongside a lady his wife he explained that she didn’t speak English even though they had lived here for over 30 years.
Assimilation is in some communities a myth especially if the religion separates women from the normal occurrence such as the freedom to leave their home and integrate with others then the possibilities are few.
The riots are a miserable reflection of the waste land which has occurred and is a blind refusal of our politicians to garner as much remorse for their own electorate as they do for other nations. When I see Yvette Cooper the new Home Secretary voice her disgust of the violence, I see a middle class woman whole sole preoccupation has been towards minority and female issues wholly sidestepping the resentment brewing in working class towns and It’s not so funny to see our country as a whole now reliant on the police, a force which has been described as institutionally racist and misogynistic but on who we now place all our hope to face down the misogynist/racist on our streets.
Hope they don’t follow the lead of the junior doctors and go on strike but of course they can’t, they are constitutionally bound to protect us or more to the point the property interests of the influential.