Raab: We will 'formally recognise' frontline workers

[norris9]

Paying self employed plumbers 80% for staying home, when I have one on my delivery with a swimming pool in the back garden and two new range rovers on the drive! Maybe if they had put that £150k into savings I and many other still working tax payers wouldn't be bailing them out, or is that wishful thinking. I too have the philosophy of always have enough savings should anything happen and look after yourself, don't expect anything else from anyone. Maybe I'm wrong and should just spend what I have and if it goes belly up, look to the tax payers to give me money.

I do wonder if the self employed will need to pay the money back. The government did ask if these people were planning to be in business next tax year.

[Spartacus]

Working till we're 75 will be our reward.

[NewPostieUK]

Honestly, we'll be paying for this pandemic for the next decade+

I'd be amazed if things change significantly for the better after this.

From what I can see, the UK will be levelled with insane levels of debt, and a huge public finances deficit. So expect years and years of more austerity.

Meanwhile Royal Mail will continue with its plan, and the service will be stripped back.

Spot on.

The country will be £trillions in debt and it will take yonks, minimum a decade, to get back to some normality. We face massive tax increases, and working longer (old age) for less.

Cuts everywhere, education, military, science and research . . 40% normal income tax, 25% VAT, they'll stop at nothing to claw back some money. Massive national debt.

[HTPostman]

I already accept we’ll be shafted with VAT hikes etc. It’s inevitable. I just hope the whole coronavirus tragedy teaches people to have a bit of respect and compassion for others, especially for key workers.

It would be nice if in the future, when things are ‘back to normal’ people are patient if their doctors appointment is running late, if the postman accidentally puts next doors letter through, if a supermarket worker doesn’t get new stock out quickly.

Instead of people giving them a gob full or plastering it all over social media, I hope people just smile, say not a problem. Treat everyone as humans who make mistakes. Sadly I can’t see it, we’ll still have Karen on twitter ‘fumin cos the tracked parcel shudve bin here between 11 and 3 and it turns up at 4’ etc.

[Murdoch]

I already accept we’ll be shafted with VAT hikes etc. It’s inevitable. I just hope the whole coronavirus tragedy teaches people to have a bit of respect and compassion for others, especially for key workers.

It would be nice if in the future, when things are ‘back to normal’ people are patient if their doctors appointment is running late, if the postman accidentally puts next doors letter through, if a supermarket worker doesn’t get new stock out quickly.

Instead of people giving them a gob full or plastering it all over social media, I hope people just smile, say not a problem. Treat everyone as humans who make mistakes. Sadly I can’t see it, we’ll still have Karen on twitter ‘fumin cos the tracked parcel shudve bin here between 11 and 3 and it turns up at 4’ etc.

Haha, that's some wishful thinking right there. The UK population is fairly selfish, entitled and self-obsessed. And that goes for all generations, we're quick to act like spoilt brats when we don't get our way.

Have a look at Royal Mail Help on twitter, I bet there's a constant stream of people moaning that their Radio Times is late, or the parcel they ordered hasn't arrived yet, as is normal.

And this is all while a worldwide pandemic is active and killing us.

[Dorset Plodder]

Haha, that's some wishful thinking right there. The UK population is fairly selfish, entitled and self-obsessed. And that goes for all generations, we're quick to act like spoilt brats when we don't get our way.
Have a look at Royal Mail Help on twitter, I bet there's a constant stream of people moaning that their Radio Times is late, or the parcel they ordered hasn't arrived yet, as is normal.
And this is all while a worldwide pandemic is active and killing us.

Unfortunately I think your right there Murdoch. Talk is Cheap .... Everyone's standing on their Doorsteps clapping and saying how wonderful the NHS is, yet once this blows over we'll be back to our normal selfish selves.

A lot of people have NEVER stopped being their usual selfish selves ..... all these ididots who insist on having parties & barbeques ...... the self-intitled driving to their 2nd homes to isolate (including Gov Ministers FFS ) .... not to mention the shop owners who've been profiteering and the consumers who have been stockpiling!

I've never had a very high opinion of the humanity so it comes as no surprise to me ...... But I think a lot of the "Nicer more Generous types" of people that do exist are finding this situation very upsetting, and are shocked at the way some people behave?

[Dorset Plodder]

Paying self employed plumbers 80% for staying home, when I have one on my delivery with a swimming pool in the back garden and two new range rovers on the drive! Maybe if they had put that £150k into savings I and many other still working tax payers wouldn't be bailing them out, or is that wishful thinking. I too have the philosophy of always have enough savings should anything happen and look after yourself, don't expect anything else from anyone. Maybe I'm wrong and should just spend what I have and if it goes belly up, look to the tax payers to give me money.

I understand that may be very galling Rambo, but they've put a cap on exactly how much you can claim for loses, I thinks it's only up to £2500! (with profits under £50K). Hopefully he should be able to run both his Range Rovers on that?

I thought everyone was going to have to pay this back, but doing a bit of checking I see that as it's classed as a Grant so it doesn't need to be paid back. TBH that really surprises me for a Tory Government. I would have thought they'd have clawed it back on your Tax Codes over the next couple of years.

So it looks like "We're All in Together" again, as my Old Mate Dave Cameron used to tell me. All key workers that are working through this are still going to be hit with whatever austerity measures the Government are going to inforce on everyone. Even your Plumber whose sitting in his swimming pool enjoying the sunshine during his paid Holiday!

[Munchboii]

A Corona medal

As long as Royal Mail get the contract to deliver them.. no complaints from me!

[PostmanBitesDog]

This all reminds me of an interview I read yesterday about the ulterior motives for the austerity plans affecting the NHS. The subject in the interview is John Pilger, who produced the 2016 documentary The Coming War on China. (Not an engrossing documentary; it drags on too long.)

This interview is quite interesting. Skip over the first question about Julian Assange if you want, and pick up where T.J. Coles asks Pilger "In your film 'The Dirty War on the NHS' you expose the British National Health Service’s..."
(For those who haven't seen it, I've embedded a copy of the film below.)

Freedom From Fear
Coronavirus Propaganda, Imperialism, and Human Rights
Interview with Australian journalist and documentarian John Pilger by T.J. Coles (postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth University's Cognition Institute).

April 10, 2020

People are being told to self-isolate because of coronavirus, but Julian Assange has been isolated by successive British governments for years. Can you tell us what’s going on with his case and how he was doing, last time you saw him?

On 25th March, a London court refused Julian Assange bail even though he was convicted of nothing and charged with nothing in Britain. The Trump administration wants to extradite him on a concocted indictment of “espionage”-- so ludicrous in law it should have been thrown out on the first day of the extradition hearing in February. It wasn’t thrown out because the magistrate, Vanessa Baraitser (she is described as a judge but is actually a magistrate) has made it clear she is acting on behalf of the British and U.S. governments. Her bias has shocked those of us who have sat in courtrooms all over the world. At the bail hearing, she added cruelty to her repertoire. Julian was not allowed to attend, not even by video link; instead he sat alone in a cell. His barrister, Edward Fitzgerald Q.C., described how he was at risk of contracting coronavirus. He has a chronic lung condition and is in a prison with people who are likely to be carriers of the disease. The UK Prison Governors Association has warned “there will be deaths” unless the vulnerable are released. The Prison Officers Association agrees; the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, the WHO, the Prison Advisory Service-- all have said the virus is set to spread like wildfire through Britain’s congested, unsanitary prisons. Even Boris Johnson’s Justice Secretary, Robert Buckland, says, “The virus could take over the prisons... and put more lives at risk.” At the time of writing, nine prisoners have died from COVID-19 in British prisons, including one at Belmarsh: these are the numbers the authorities admit to; there are very likely more. Some vulnerable prisoners are to be released, but not Julian: not in the land of Magna Carta. How shaming.

When I last saw Julian in prison, he had lost between 10 and 15 kilos; his arm was a stick. He is as sharp as ever; his black humor is intact. His resilience astonishes me. But how long can this resilience last? He is a political prisoner of the most ruthless forces, whose goal is to break him.

In your film 'The Dirty War on the NHS' you expose the British National Health Service’s creeping privatization and hollowing out, both by Tories and New Labour. What’s the link between the coronavirus and the fragmentation of the NHS?

That the virus has been allowed to sweep through modern, developed societies is a crime against humanity. This applies especially to Britain. In 2016, the Department of Health in London conducted a full-scale pandemic drill, known as Exercise Cygnus. The National Health Service was overwhelmed. There weren’t enough ventilators, emergency beds, ICU beds, protective kits and much else. In other words, it predicated accurately the crisis we face today. The Chief Medical Officer at the time appealed to the Conservative government to heed the warning and begin to restore and prepare the NHS. This was ignored; the documents describing the conclusions of the drill were suppressed.

Why? By 2016, the Department of Health had been reduced to a revolving door of Thatcherite ideologues: privatizers, management consultants, asset strippers, many of them besotted with the “American model” of healthcare, where the current head of NHS England, Simon Stevens, had spent 10 years promoting the private health industry as a senior executive of United Health, a company that exemplifies an infamous system which effectively disbars some 87 million Americans from medical treatment.

In Britain, the Americanizing of health care has been accelerating year upon year since a Tory bill, the Health and Social Care Act, welcomed privateers such as Richard Branson and his Virgin Care. In 2019, more of the NHS was sold to private companies than ever before. By last November, the number of public beds had been cut to 127,000, the lowest bed capacity since the NHS was founded in 1948 and the lowest in Europe. Mental health beds were down to a mere 18,000 -- and most of mental health services were now in private hands, mostly American. This subversion of the world’s first public health service, established to give all people, regardless of income and class, “freedom from fear”, is surely a crime in what is now a state of fear.

Alas, my film foretold much of this. With the NHS and its clinicians prepared and ready with a national testing program not unlike Germany’s, I believe Britain could have avoided the worst of the virus and the draconian measures that followed.

Your 2016 film, 'The Coming War on China', documents US encirclement and demonization of China. Can you talk about the propaganda of corona as a ‘Chinese virus’?

Let’s take one example. When the coronavirus emerged in China and Australian tourists of mainly Chinese descent flew home, they were quarantined in a remote mining camp and an offshore detention center. When a cruise ship, the Ruby Princess, docked in Sydney with mostly white Australians and infested with the virus, the passengers were allowed to disembark without so much as a temperature check, let alone quarantine. As a result, 662 people linked to the ship have fallen ill and at least 11 have died. The difference here is race and racist propaganda. A virulent anti-China campaign has consumed the Australian media in a country whose biggest trading partner is China and the universities depend largely on Chinese students. At the same time, no country is as integrated with the US as Australia: its military and “national security” agencies and bases, its politics and media.

The current U.S. propaganda war on China began in Australia when Barack Obama addressed the Australian Parliament in 2011 and announced America’s “pivot to Asia”. This launched the biggest peacetime build-up of US naval forces in the Pacific since World War Two, all of it aimed at China. Today, more than 400 US bases surround China, from northern Australia, to the Marshall Islands, throughout south-east Asia, Japan and Korea. Such intimidation of China, a nuclear power, is seldom mentioned when China is attacked for building its defenses on islands in the South China Sea. As part of the “pivot”, a barrage of China-is-a-threat propaganda is dispensed by traveling Pentagon admirals and generals, who describe the Pacific Ocean as if it is theirs. In a WikiLeaks disclosure, Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State under Obama, demanded of a senior Chinese official that his government agree to re-name the Pacific “the American Sea”. She later claimed she was joking.

What are your thoughts on the U.S. and British elites treating coronavirus as a ‘war’ to be won, even though they cut back on public institutions that might have pre-empted the spread?

A pandemic described as a war to be won is in keeping with the language of “permanent war”. The disabling or “lock down” of populations is routinely described as a “wartime measure”. This is meant to evoke The Blitz in 1940 when the Luftwaffe attacked England. Of course, to compare the current crisis with the carnage and struggle of the Second World War is profane. The central issue is the ideological destruction of a health service that has been a beacon of a lost world of equity and fairness. How ironic and appropriate that the NHS is currently saving Boris Johnson’s life. If there is a “war”, the weapons ought to be mass testing and tracing the pathways and pattern of the virus, treating people quickly and comprehensively, protecting front line health workers, social distancing and transparency -- but most of this is missing.

As for locking down the population and the “forced isolation” of those over 70, to quote one of the British government's favorite journalists, Robert Peston, there is a salutary lesson to be learned. In 2012, a landmark study on the “disease of isolation” was published in Britain and the US. Researchers from University College, London, revealed that isolation was killing the elderly-- not loneliness, but isolation forced on people by circumstances beyond their control. More than “pre-existing” health conditions, isolation was the silent killer.

In my own reporting in Britain in the age of “austerity”, I have seen underfunded voluntary services trying to cope with this killer disease -- for example, in the northern city of Durham, devastated by Conservative policies, one volunteer attempted to care for 21,000 people and to save many of them. This is occasionally a local media story, usually when a privatized care home is caught mistreating its elderly occupants, a common abuse. Once a humane extension of the NHS, Britain’s social care of the vulnerable was privatized by both Tory and Labour governments. Many of the care homes are cash cows for ruthless individuals and their precarious companies. The people of Britain deserve better, at the very least their freedom from fear.

[Dorset Plodder]

I don't expect much of this interview will be widely pubished in the UK. The fact that the NHS was tested for such a Pandemic, found wanting .... AND then absolutely nothing was done about it is truly shocking.

If anything good comes out of this crisis I hope to God they start to appreciate the NHS in Whitehall, and stop trying to sell it off to the yanks.

[AngardWolf]

Really good read, that, thanks for posting.

As I said elsewhere, unfortunately preparing the nation for a pandemic would’ve involved creating spare capacity in a (supposedly) public service, which flies in the face of neoliberal thought, that public services are inherently inefficient and must be slimmed down at all costs. Oddly enough, the government could’ve sold it to the public using its own nonsensical economic rhetoric - saving for a rainy day, as all good households are supposed to do, fixing the roof while the sun was shining, etc. But of course no one truly believed the rainy day would come, that a pandemic could impact on dear old Blighty, though it’s worth remembering David Cameron at least paid lip service to this stuff shortly after his election win in 2015 - the idea of a British Prime Minister urging collective international action to deal with a global threat feels like something from another century now, not the last decade. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33039256" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The future is going to be very bleak indeed.

[Dorset Plodder]

Just watched Boris on the news, singing the praises of the NHS. I don't know how the Bloody Hipocrite could keep a straight face. How long after this has finished will it be back to business as usual, with everyone trying to sell off the NHS and getting their noses back in the trough?

[wacko74]

Paying self employed plumbers 80% for staying home, when I have one on my delivery with a swimming pool in the back garden and two new range rovers on the drive! Maybe if they had put that £150k into savings I and many other still working tax payers wouldn't be bailing them out, or is that wishful thinking. I too have the philosophy of always have enough savings should anything happen and look after yourself, don't expect anything else from anyone. Maybe I'm wrong and should just spend what I have and if it goes belly up, look to the tax payers to give me money.

I do wonder if the self employed will need to pay the money back. The government did ask if these people were planning to be in business next tax year.

Hopefully he might have been paying himself in dividends or pulling some other form of ''tax efficient'' wheeze... in which he'll be entitled to f'all.

[AngardWolf]

Just watched Boris on the news, singing the praises of the NHS. I don't know how the Bloody Hipocrite could keep a straight face. How long after this has finished will it be back to business as usual, with everyone trying to sell off the NHS and getting their noses back in the trough?

We’ll eventually be reading lots of stories like ‘Nurse who contracted killer virus battling to save Covid-19 victims denied right to remain in UK’ and ‘Coronavirus left brave doc disabled - now he’s been found ‘fit to work’’ and people will just shrug. Spending on the NHS has flatlined, we’ve had the Windrush scandal, and the welfare state’s become increasingly punitive, and support for the Conservative Party has consistently risen in every election since they returned to power in 2010. The corruption and cruelty is clearly part of the appeal, the hypocrisy of those responsible - politicians and voters alike - is hard to swallow, but there we go.

[Dorset Plodder]

I was considering the other day how long after Covid has finally cleared up will it be before start hearing adverts saying, "Were you made to Self-Isolate Unecessarily? Do you think you were treated unfairly by the Police ...... asking you to disperse or to stop having your Barbeque in the park?..... You may be entitled to Compensation ..... contact Rob, Steal & Pilfer to start your claim today".