Natural Child, Natural Society: Sunak

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Institutionalised Cruelty as a policy platform - a brief history.

Me too. UK Government "crackdown on benefits fraud" my arse..

Institutionalised Cruelty as a policy platform has a history...... read all about it.

BENEFITS REFORM - What price preventable harm: social policies designed to

disregard human need?

Here's a history of the introduction of the system that led to Work Capability Assessments, Benefits Sanctions and so much else along those lines... I have posted here a section, the introduction, to *peak your interest, dear reader.

*(A dear reader pointed out my spelling error, I used the incorrect word. I ought to have used 'pique' - thank you Bernie Hastie on Facebook...)

I offer this in the hope you will read the paper. I'm afraid it will infuriate and inform in equal measure. Knowledge is powerful, because understanding the evidence makes for better decision making, and also assists in firming resistance to ill-informed policy.

This is critically important information and all to often left out of even the liberal press in their ruminations on this subject of 'benefits reforms'.

To tell the truth so that the population can understand what is being done matters.

Reading Mo Stewart's Paper will, I believe, inform and infuriate in equal measure. I know. I have just repeated myself.

It is shameful the 'news media' refuse this rather straight forward task so often.

https://citizen-network.org/uploads/attachment/746/what-price-preventable-harm.pdf

Mo Stewart

The Centre for Welfare Reform, England

Abstract

"Historically, the UK welfare system was designed to protect those in greatest need, which provided the necessary financial and psychological security for the unemployed and especially for the chronically ill and disabled community who are unfit to work.

This paper identifies how social policy reforms based on fiscal priorities have had the opposite effect, creating a crisis for disability benefit claimants. Conducted over a period of ten years, the Preventable Harm Project demonstrates the negative impact of the adoption of American social and labour market policies, and the often fatal human consequences of the removal of medical opinion from disability benefit assessments.

I argue that the adoption of the Work Capability Assessment for the restriction of disability benefit(s) has created preventable harm for those in greatest need, and this article identifies the negative influences impacting on UK social policy reforms to the detriment of the chronically ill and disabled community.

Key words: preventable harm, work capability assessment

Introduction

The past financial and psychological security provided by state financial support for the long-term chronically ill and disabled community was destined to end with the adoption of neoliberal politics, which is an ideology that supports free market competition with an emphasis on minimal state intervention in all aspects of social affairs.

Neoliberal ideology has swept the globe and has impacted on all countries in the Organisation For Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who are influential in the social policy reforms of all OECD member countries (OECD, 2003; Soldatic & Grover, 2012; Stafford et al, 2019). Margaret Thatcher was the first elected neoliberal politician in the UK and in 1982, during her first term in office as Prime Minister, Thatcher identified her political ambition to remove the UK’s welfare support system, including the National Health Service (NHS), in favour of the adoption of the American welfare system using private health insurance (Travis, 2016).

Every successive neoliberal government since Thatcher adopted social policy reforms to work towards this political ambition. In doing so, the past psychological security provided by the UK welfare state was removed, and every effort was made to ensure that access to state financial support would be made as difficult as possible when moving from a welfare state to a market state.

Commonly known as ‘welfare reforms’ the combination of social policy reforms, together with the adoption of increasingly punitive conditionality using financial sanctions (Dwyer, 2018), increased the prevalence of psychological distress identified within the disabled community (Patrick, 2012). The Preventable Harm Project (the Project) was created to offer a critical reflection of published research papers and key policy documents in this area of social policy reforms.

Preventable harm: the creation of a social policy crisis

The Project identified the adoption of a ‘non-medical’ functional assessment model, known as the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), which disregards medical opinion when used to assess claimants of disability benefit (Stewart, 2018) .

The WCA was introduced in 2008 to restrict access to the new Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) disability benefit, by tightening the benefit gateway in order to reduce the costs of the social policy budget (DWP, 2006); as recommended by government commissioned research (Waddell & Aylward, 2005) which was funded by the American corporate sponsors UnumProvident Insurance (Cover, 2004).

Introduced on an exclusive fiscal basis, with a dangerous disregard for health and wellbeing (Barr et al, 2016), this flawed method of assessment guaranteed that disability benefit claimants would learn to live in fear of the WCA (Garthwaite, 2014), which became a matter of life or death for many of those in greatest need.

The use of harsh sanctions by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for often minor misdemeanors associated with the WCA is linked to a disturbing number of chronically ill and disabled benefit claimants attempting suicide (Mills, 2017; Barr et al 2016), and others have starved to death in C21st UK when they were sanctioned with all benefit income removed, identified as being ‘killed by the state’ (Elward, 2016: 30)."

https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/58235/1/1351_Shakespeare.pdf - a more detailed paper on the Waddell & Aylward, 2005 model. The devastation that the implementation of the BPS model as interpreted by Waddel and Aylward is an immense unspeakable horror story. Millions of lives have been adversely impacted, just to 'save a few bob'...

In essence the voices of the vulnerable, their interior sense of what they are going through, are key to designing healthy policy. Always ask the locals, they know their territory really well.

Meeting the unmet needs of the vulnerable (we are all vulnerable) is an essential element of healthy policy, in as much healthy policy seeks always to avoid avoidable harms.

I think it is not so much to ask for, when we consider Governance of our society. The improved outcomes for all of us are what I describe as the profit of healthy policy. Rather than wealth extracted from privatisation of health care, we ought to mandate the profit as being the outcomes for the whole population.

Clean water is the profit denied when water utilities refuse to invest, and their negligence leads to raw sewage being free, from the rivers to the sea, as CEOs take their bonus's and the shareholders celebrate with glee.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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The English Christian Ruling Class perfected Holy War as a Colonial process. Weaponising internalised identity.

The English Christian Ruling Class perfected Holy War as a colonial process.

Weaponising internalised identity.

Entirely innocent children, now scarred by Genodical assault upon their homes.

Christians Roming (sic) and then anti-Roming all over the place.

An unforgivable pun, my dear reader. Please bear with me.

The British Empire perfected Wholy (sic) War as a tool of Colonisation. Another pun bites the dust.

The three 'C' propaganda - Christianity, Civilisation, Commerce. Whole War. Total War.

1159. The Norman regime Invades Ireland because they are Christian Heretics, to offer them conversion and Salvation or death. (permit to do so received from the Pope).

1600s Protestant Plantations in Ireland to remove the Catholics and building Protestant settlements to bolster English Dominance - deliberately foster internalised hatreds that become multigenerational and almost impossible to resolve peacefully.

1640s White Supremacy Racism as a legalised form of oppression, in the English American colonies. Superiority as an identity, passed from one generation to the other, an endless supply of weaponised hearts and minds.

When we as ordinary people internalise a religious identity and we are told that we are superior and that others are inferior, and that the Religion is under attack, we become weaponised objects of the Hierarchy that manipulates us.

Our internalised sense of identity enters into a permanent state of flight or flight, which we now know causes the emotional reactive parts of our brain to over ride the calming logical forebrain.

Tony Blair’s ‘clash of civilisations’ tactic. He knew exactly what he was doing. The racists and xenophobes took the bait. The bystanders did not understand what was being done, and remained as bystanders. Many protested. Their protests were acknowledged to some degree - freedom of speech, democracy etc., - and their demands for peace and justice repeatedly denied within the Legislature. Muslims were stereotyped as Jihadi's or Misogynists in this 'war of values'.

Middle class faux-Feminist pundits rallied to the cause, very likely well aware of how this issue was being manipulated.

Examine the history and see the patterns, and what I understand from my wide reading of the history and observation of what happens is that the Israeli colony was and remains an English Empire project built around the same principles .

They Empire expected it will last long enough to prevent the Arab world (which was always multi faith, multicultural, multi linguistic, and always occupied) from ever developing an independent economic policy.

It is not, as the Western conspiracy theorists assert that the Israeli State is influencing the British or the Americans, it is that all three are walking, hands joined, to maintain the process of de-populating lands for expansion, targeting already vulnerable and oppressed populations, who once had a thriving polity and socialist self determining aspirations.

Economic dominance was the objective. By force.

The English Diplomatic Corps worked to favour some groups and Arab polities, promising them a bright future, and oppressed others, by denying them that promised future, and that created the sectarian identarian tension that lasts generations, sustained by trauma that remains unresolved.

Gaza in 2023/24 is the direct result of all that. Naqba to Naqba.

Racism is a tool of the hierarchy.

Sectarianism is a tool of the hierarchy.

Misogyny is a tool of the hierarchy.

Bigotry is carefully curated.

Ant-Semitism is a European phenomenon, a curated hatred of a vulnerable population designed to deflect anger at the hierarchy and re-direct it at those most unable to protect themselves.

The Ableism of our times is part of that dynamic. When Government minister undermine supports for disabled people and then suggest too many are leaching off the tax payer and that the disabled should ‘do their duty’, bigotry against a vulnerable population is weaponised as a political tool.

Churchill's 'Dog in The Manger' speech is instructive.

I used to alter the tag line from Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back - to 'Empower, it never strikes back.'

And every empowered people who are given the space, the resources and the tools of peaceful, democratic, equitable political, social and economic development to progress their general welfare will not strike back in violence. They have no need to. Until something happens to change that situation. Afghanistan prior to US Cold War interventions that brought down a nascent Socialist State.

Russia was asked by the beleaguered Afghani socialists for assistance and protection from the USUK inspired counter-revolutionaries.

Russia made the error, went in with combat brigades, and the USUK created the Taliban to wear them down.

All of this to prevent an independent non-aligned popular socialist state from emerging.

The resolution of the shituation in Palestine is in empowering both Arab and the Zionist colonialists to live together as humane beings, and that requires the dismantling of the Empire's interests in the region... in full.

There's more that we who live within the Empires polity and have democratic voting rights and political rights of free association can do to help this progress - we can and must hold our Ruling Class to account for the harms that they have caused and are enabling.

British support for Israel must be re-visioned by the British voters taking back control of their legislatures to legislate for peace and de-militarisation of foreign policy.

In essence the people who can best confront the British Establishment and its depravity are the people who live within the borders of the United Kingdom, by democratic political action that removes the war makers from our legislatures and places a majority of peace makers and justice advocates in that body to uphold International Humanitarian Law and the UN Charter.... after all it is the British people whose taxes are being deployed to support an ongoing Genocide.

Clearly, the English Establishment will not voluntarily stand down.

This is no easy task, and it is much much easier than living in Palestine or the West Bank.

Starmer, Pope Benedict, Rishi Sunak and that gross election 'advertisement'. Bullies Exploiting Survivors.

In 2010 I took part in street demonstrations held in London. on a sunny Autumn weekend.

A demonstration, directed at The Vatican and towards Pope Benedict and his entourage, who were on a state visit to England. I was there as a Survivor. The march comprised a wide range of The Vatican's critics in Society, from Feminists to Anarchists, Atheists to Pagans, Wizards, Witches, Elves and Trolls, Queers, Lesbians, Communists, Philosophers and Physicists, and Protestants. The rally of the angry comprised all ages, all classes, it was colourful and it was witty. The atmosphere was friendly. Then there was David Icke fan-club. Ick.
Survivor groups from across the UK, Ireland and elsewhere participated. There were many representatives of survivors concerns. As one would expect. They have work to do.

Historical Context
By 2010 the Irish State and population had already spent 20 or so years unveiling a sordid history of 'historical child sexual abuse' - so called to discern it from any child abuse still happening- a story of some seventy years of common place child abuse across multiple State and Church operated residential institutions. Somewhat hard to digest.
Incomprehensive.
Four public Inquiries revealed widespread harm, at scale. Patterns of abuse of children, women and men held in 'care settings' where the State handed the operational care of vulnerable children and adults to the Church and their various Orders, paying the institutions fees, taxpayers cash, for the services provided. The State had oversight duties and neglected them. Both State and Church are liable.

The Irish State offered political and economic support for the Church and The Vatican before offering anything to Survivors. "You back me, I'll back you.." and then defend themselves accordingly against living witness testimony?
Those inquiries focused on Industrial Schools, Mothers and Babies Homes, Magdalene Launderies, and the response from Church and Civil authorities to cases of child abuse in some dioceses. The people of Ireland reeled in shock, and attitudes changed swiftly. The people supported the Survivors. The Government was forced to take action, to establish recognition and redress. It drags it's heels still, pulling against the perceived leash of honesty and evidence, not understanding that honesty and evidence is what will liberate the Government and the State from it's burden, and transform it into a work of social nurture, political equity, justice and humanity. Yes, I know. I'm way too romantic, optimistic and naïve.

I am pointing at the healthy place, that's all. I know it's there.
These inquiries revealed that Church and State authorities knew of the abuse, and that they allowed the Church to cover up these crimes, to move offending clerics from site to site, often leaving them in supervisory contact with vulnerable people, only for them to offend again, and again, and again.
This enabled life long repeat offenders to subsist within the Church systems. This caused even more harm, upon harm.
The agenda was to protect the good name of the Church, justification for handling this criminal activity internally, under Canon Law, thus evading Civil and Criminal Law.

They rationalised offering survivors and their families settlement, out of court, with confidentiality agreements in exchange for cash, as an act of Christian mercy, whilst they made sure that it was backed by setting out on an offensive, adversarial stance backed by expensive legal counsel. Nudge Theory in practice.

Impact
The impact on the children and the adults harmed due to all of this evasive action was set aside. Not considered important.

The effect was to enable widespread sexual and emotional abuse, to the extent that abusers recognised that they had a relatively free hand, that the Church convinced themselves and everyone else that the offenders were committing sins, and that was to be taken at face value by Church authorities, and their offences were not therefore treated as crimes, under the criminal code. They had been indicted by God, and absolved. God is merciful.

What that status offered the predatory ones as they operated within the Church Canon culture was real world impunity - they would not face legal, criminal accountability, and the Church's name would be protected. Penance was paid in prayer, and a new location was happily accepted.
That strategy - to protect and uphold the status of The Church and The Vatican, was fully supported, in full awareness, by the Irish State, the Irish Government and the Irish political establishment as an ethnic cultural necessity.

The Impact II

Tens of thousands of lives destroyed by predatory men assaulting vulnerable children. Degrees of repeat offending suggestive of a 'life style choice' embedded in Church mores.

Traumatised children, often over extended periods of time, multiple assaults, who grow up silenced, managed, ignored, abandoned, who somehow found the strength to live well, who succeeded, by degree, and those who did not. Those who suffered in silence or noisily. The suffering as those children aged and became parents, traumatised parents doing their best. And seeing the impact play out into the next generation. Because a true harm was covered up. A harm was not resolved, and the pain perpetuated. A lot of people. A lot of people.
For seventy years.

There's an inquiry or two yet to be had on the matter of historical institutional care of children and predatory abuse in Ireland. It's not over yet.
There has not yet been any public inquiry in Ireland, into the many Church run boarding schools and day schools across Ireland, in which the same patterns of adverse harmful behaviour have been played out, over those seven decades, from 1922 - 1992. This is a serious matter. That is a large population of children, over an extended period. Wow.
A public inquiry is being scoped out, finally - but only after three survivors spoke out on RTE's live Saturday night premium talk show, The Late Late Show, an appearance in public to unveil the story, which flowed from efforts of the past pupils of one elite boarding school, a small group of alumni who sought to listen to the voices of survivors, to hear what they knew, who reached out to the survivor community and to the wider school community to allow people to bear witness to their experience and provided a forum for those involved to share their concerns.

This was part of their process designed to try to leverage a public demand for a formal apology from the school Authorities involved.
Their efforts - and the response of survivors to their efforts, supported by other Survivors advocacy groups and individuals -finally opened to the public discourse in Ireland the reality of seventy years of Irish School systems and Clerical CSA.
Many survivors had long been demanding such an inquiry, but have been rebuffed by Church and State, ignored by the News media, time and time again. Somehow, boarding school survivors remained invisible.
Last November, 2022, as I wrote above there occurred live witness testimony of three survivors, to the Irish nation, presented on live TV in such manner as made it impossible for the nation to evade the matter. This public witness statement flowed from the work described above.

The courage, humility and humanity of the three survivors who presented themselves and shared some of their stories, as witnesses, was abundantly clear, as was their years of suffering, which continues and will continue until justice is fully met, until the unmet needs of the children, and the adults they are now are being materially met.
The things they spoke of, their experiences as they were, appalled the listener, and the nation, to the core. One could sense an audience in shock, upright and angry, and determined to see this through. "How could that even happen? They must find justice to the full!" That was the feeling at the end of that presentation, the feeling from the presenter and the audience, intensely so. The stood and gave the three Survivors a standing ovation, for eight minutes.
Time will tell how this plays out. These matters take time, patience and persistence is our daily fare.

Progress

It is to be hoped that justice, accountability, honesty will flow from this process. Reparations, including end of life support at every level of need, in recognition of the unmet needs of all those children at the time of the assaults, and ever since. Meeting the unmet needs of the children they were, as they present in the adults they are today. That sort of care, in detail.

They deserve no less.
Bearing in mind that this dynamic ran for seventy years, and that many Survivors have passed away, without relief, without recognition, validation or support. Every year of delay reduces the numbers of living survivors, many of whom die earlier than the average.
There is much work to be done, and it is serious work that must stand on evidence, honesty, empathy and a robust justice that allows closure for all concerned.
The reactionary self-defence of the institutions must be mediated and diffused so that justice can prevail, and peace be restored.
Then we can move on.
So, to go back to 2O1O and the Pope
Before the demonstrations, I met with a gathering of people, organising to make placards, preparing leaflets, you know the usual paraphernalia of street demonstrations, to plan our demo, finding people to team up with in smaller groups for the afternoon's action.
I gave a short talk on the story of Irish Survivors recent history from my perspective. I had read The Case of The Pope, by Geoffrey Robertson. I understood the ground I and other Survivors were standing on. Well , at least I knew what I stood for.
I wanted the Vatican to be courageous, to be Christ-like, to be honest, transparent and to open their files - to share what they know - to survivors, to submit all allegations to inspection and investigation, to record the accurate history as far as those records reveal - for The Vatican to stand aside from dealing with such offenses under Canon Law, to allow civil and criminal law process to proceed, unhindered, to make reparations and to make future policy commitments in areas of child protection, reporting etc. Not too much to ask, considering the scale of the criminality, historical attitudes argument set aside.
I made a small placard with the words - Protect The Children, Not The Church - written in bold type. I knew what I was doing. I knew why I was there, and what little impact I would make. I was not there alone. Those numbers held meaning and hope, a route towards correct action. Hope springs eternal in my heart and mind. I do not apologise for that. Far from it. Anyways...
While I was doing that, making my placard, I noticed one group who were making a series of signs, alleging that The Pope was a paedophile. I went over to them, and asked them if they had read any evidence that Pope Benedict was a paedophile, because I had not, and I would be really interested to read such evidence. I mentioned there was evidence of his involvement in maintaining the policy of covering up the reality of predatory men operating within institutions caring for vulnerable populations.
They mentioned various authors, youtubers, notable writers of hypothetical scenarios. They suggested that the allegation was obviously true. 'Just look at him!' They had read no such evidence. Some mentioned 'Illuminati,' and various other conspiracy hypotheses. Others stated the obvious - that The Vatican was corrupt, a political action religion, wealthy and powerful and guilt of many crimes - and therefore the slander was justifiable. Rage!
I told them that they were protesting against the Vatican, as a political attack, rather than demonstrating support for survivors and for the necessary work survivors are seeking help for. Survivors work is not a political attack. Survivors have no need for that. Survivors need justice. Period.
I told them that exploiting Survivors tragedy - packaging the pain, fear, suffering, despair, the lived experienced lives and suicides of so many innocents - as an emotional trigger to make a political point in that way confuses the discourse, introduces hatred as a political utility, makes survivors look like they make false allegations was a profound and dangerous error in their case and a standard tactic of authoritarian regimes.
"All of this undermines Survivors struggle for justice, because it does not help them. It confuses the situation."
I told them that what they were doing was therefore hindering the work of Survivors. I told them that making false allegations of that nature, in public, allegations that were blatantly un-evidenced, directed at The Pope was stupidly reckless.

"Stick to the known, evidenced verified facts or get off the pot!"
When used as a political weapon, such allegations de facto seek to exploit both the disgust of decent people and the lived experience of the harm and trauma and suffering and pain that survivors have endured, leveraging a caricature as a sensational, manipulative and false dog whistle, riding roughshod over the most pertinent people in this matter - the Survivors.
Making false claims undermines survivors efforts, and all survivors know this.
For a genuine survivor activist this weaponisation of child sexual exploitation is an insult to the work they are undertaking.
Exploiting the pain and suffering implicit in the experience, exploiting the reactionary disgust of bystanders as they avoid really understanding Survivors lived experience, exploiting survivors efforts, piggy backing on their struggle, to launch a political weapon, for an entirely different agenda, making no progress for Survivors in the process.
That pissed them off
I knew in that moment, by their reaction, that they were not here for me, as a Survivor, as someone who had just given a talk on what being a Survivor means. I knew that people like that are not there for the Survivors at all. They do not have our back.
They started to argue with me and I with them. And I stopped. There was no point in this. The outrage in my heart needed a big sky.

I said to them: "You do what you want to do, I cannot associate with what you are doing. I've made my point. You now know what you did not know a few minutes ago".
And with that I left them, and went to the demonstration more or less on my own. I met up some of them later, and the Pope Allegation signs were absent. I noted that, and lauded them for that wisdom, that understanding. Grudges held post resolution are a self dug hole.

Digging Holes
The recent ads crafted by The Labour Party, one of which is featuring Rishi Sunak, implying the smiling Rishi is not at all bothered by convicted child sexual abusers current freedoms, with Labour's empty promise of a land of Law and Order where child abusers will tremble in fear!
Fake slur, appeal to disgust, cite statistic out of context, trigger a reactionary, gain a voter.
Here's another way to look at it, from the perspective of a Survivor - "Labour are deploying a vote chasing tactic - publishing content that exploits the reaction to the trauma of children who have been so profoundly harmed, exploited violently by adults for sexual purposes, using it as a trope to exacerbate disgust, in pursuit of a political agenda. Presenting a manipulative slur that has not one shred of evidence to it, that presents a very different proposition than the one at hand - organised child sexual exploitation is well established and pretty much has a free hand in England because neither the police nor the judiciary are on top of it, and the Legislature is clearly failing it it's core duties and responsibilities in this matter today, as it has been doing for decades.

This is not a partisan matter. Labour does not want to look at this honestly. So let's sling some mud! After all, it's what THEY do"

Actually, it is what bullies do. Period. Bullies do this kind of shite. All of them.

I'm not anti-Labour. I am anti-bullying in politics, local, national and international. It's all bullshit.
The Labour Ad implies that smiley Rishi Sunak, the Asian PM, does not care much about prosecuting or punishing adults guilty of child sexual abuse and incarcerating them - GRRRRRRR! and that New Clean Labour does, and will indeed prosecute and punish all those guilty of child sexual abuse. YAAAY! Vote For Labour!"

Intermixed with this is the Race card, the insinuations prevalent across English political public discourse. Systemic means systemic. Dog Whistles all over the shop.
The ad is a targeted intentional lie. It is bullshit. It has racist dog whistle overtones. It has a light blue background. Red is dead, at Labour HQ!
It's an appalling ad. And it is one of several, a series. All doing the exact same tactic.
Public facing content targeting a known bias, vulnerability, fear, hatred, exacerbating the emotional reaction of the target, in order to nudge the target in to behaviour that can be exploited.
This is truly cruel behaviour.
1. It does nothing to ameliorate and balance the bias, the vulnerability, the fear, the hatred. It stokes emotions and misdirects attention, it does nothing to address the reality of the issue, the problem of child sexual exploitation functioning as a multi-million pound industry across the UK.
2. The it exploits the target, not in the targets best interests, not even in the victimised demographics interest, but in the targeteers interest.
A treble cruelty.
Dodgy. There ought to be a law against this kind of behaviour.

Both Labour and the Conservatives are digging holes for themselves, in their exhibitionist bullying. They have no credibility left, whatsoever.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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Tory Death Parties - celebrating not avoiding avoidable harms. Indict them all - seriously. We must indict them.

We must never forget: this is how Johnson started the Westminster misGovernment 'Strategy' on dealing with an infectious virus. 'Herd Immunity, taking it on the chin!'

#torydeathparties

They did die, because this Government rejected suppression of community transmission in favour of 'Herd Immunity'.

Making an error, and repeating it? Deliberate policy. "Who will we not save?"

Lies and Gaslighting, a CDO salesman takes over responsibility for the populations Right to Health and thrashes it.

@corneiliusmusic Tory Death Parties #torycorruption #torydeathparties ♬ original sound - corneiliusmusic

Have we seen how people die of COVID? Our News Media has not shown us much of that reality - but NHS staff are forced to deal with this every day.
Have we seen how people who are afflicted with Long COVID suffer, day in day out, from a Vascular Disease? Yes, it's not the 'Flu - it is a vascular disease that attacks every organ of the human body, and lingers. We do not know the long term implications of infection into future decades and we cannot say with any confidence there are none.

Do we know people whose businesses have been destroyed?

Do we know how many overnight millionaires have been minted by unlawful crony contracts in the midst of all this harm?
Do we fully understand the realities of the harms imposed upon the population of the UK by the manner in which this misGovernment deliberately engineered their Herd Immunity strategic stance, since February 2020?

Indictments are deserved.
Johnson must not be allowed to resign - he must be indicted for Misconduct in Public Office, Malfeasance, Corporate Manslaughter by deliberate negligence and, of course, he must be indicted for corruption. It is written on the wallpaper.
He and the entire Cabinet, and the Corona Virus Recovery Group of Conservative and Unionist MPs and their sponsors must be indicted for Misconduct in Public Office, Malfeasance, Corporate Manslaughter by deliberate negligence.
They are all intimately involved in promoting and advocating the policy of allowing the virus to spread in the community, and rejecting any concerted attempt at Suppression of Community Transmission of the virus. They are all involved in peddling dangerous misinformation that has killed and maimed many, many innocent and vulnerable people.

They are culpable and should be made liable.
They are all culpable.
The parties are small beer. A stale, sour beer. They are indicative of the character of this misGovernment.
The massive toll of avoidable harms deliberately not avoided is the main course.
The entire media sphere is studiously avoiding detailing the reality of the main course. They helped set the toxic table upon which it was served, so it's no surprise they are generally mute on this. Those who enabled misinformation to percolate are culpable for the harms that has caused.
This Government misused furlough.

When they should have been chasing the virus down, protecting our borders with quarantine so that the virus is neither imported nor exported, enhancing NHS capabilities, recruiting more NHS Staff, enhancing NHS Test and Trace by funding it from an expert base, when they should have been localising the Test & Trace workforce, providing economic support to anyone exposed to the virus so that they could safely and comfortably isolate and not be forced to return to work, and take the risk of spreading the virus, when they should have been mandating PPF2 masks, alerting the population to the realities of COVID as an aerosol transmitted risk, when they should have been noting the understanding that COVID is also vascular disease in order to inform people of the long haul risks of infection with SARSCOV2, be they symptomatic or asymptomatic - they did none of this.

They also neglected the 3 million 'excluded' from any form of economic or moral assistance. Furlough was designed to protect the employers interests, rather that the populations right to health. Getting people back to work in offices even as the virus was among us was about the rents the property developers and owners were concerned with.

The removal of the paltry 'Covid Uplift' by Sunak plunged more people into poverty and reliance on food banks and will expose millions of people to increased fuel poverty as a direct result. It was a spiteful move. Especially when one considers that every penny of that uplift would be put into the economy, rather than extracted from the economy and hoarded in off shore facilities, much of it to be used as a Free Market political weapon.

Their abandonment of mitigations in our schools is an appalling deliberate failure. Using children as super spreaders to generate booster infections in the adult vaccinated population? Yes, they did that too. 'Herd Immunity' was/is their 'objective' in spite of it's mythical status. Look at the death and disease rates among their teachers.
Everything they did impose upon us all was designed to look like help and designed to allow the virus to transmit, with the tactical calculation involved in trying to maintain the harms at a level below the collapse of NHS and other services, to remain below radar of polling and electoral loss of popularity, as they pursued 'Herd Immunity' - an imaginary state for a virus that mutates as rapidly and as unpredictably as this virus has been proven to do.
Every measure they undertook was designed to extract wealth from the Public Purse, and pass it to cronies and allies. Their profit, our loss. Pretending to help us they raided the kitty.

Herd Immunity, Endemicity, Vaccines
There is no such thing as endemicity with this Virus whilst the entire world is struggling with a Pandemic.

IndependentSAGE hosted a brief chat on what endemic really means. Malaria is endemic, and it kills millions every year. Many other diseases are endemic, and not at all 'mild'. There are global programs to reduce all of those diseases. We do not accept that people must simply 'live with them'.

This Government opposes waiving Intellectual Property rights on Vaccines which undermines global populations Right to Health and increases the risk of variants of concern becoming variants that cause even more harm. Omicron is not 'mild'. The Vaccines are doing a decent job of reducing the harm of Omicron, but the increased infections are increasing hospitalisation, deaths and other adverse impacts.

A more detailed, nuance charge sheet.
The People's Covid Inquiry has, in addition to all of the above, laid out the charge sheet that this Government abrogated their duty to protect the population's Right to Health.

Here's the legal requirements of a Government faced with a public health threat:

1. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948 Article 25);
2. The Constitutional provisions of the World Health Organisation (WHO)
3. Constitution of the World Health Assembly International Health Regulations (IHR 2005).
4. 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights* (ICESCR).
Article 12 by which the government must act in a manner compatible with the
5. European Convention Articles (ECHR), for example Art 2, the Right to Life.
6. National Health Service Act 2006 section 2A - which imposes a duty to protect public health from diseases and other dangers to public health, and indicates appropriate steps which may be taken.
*(1) and (2) read:‘The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest standard of physical and mental health.The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right SHALL include those necessary for ... (c) The prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases.’
Corruption, Anti-Democratic legislation.
And then we come to the corruption, the lies and gaslighting by Johnson and every senior minister, and much of the Press and Broadcast Media and the on-line grooming operations that push conspiracy hypotheses that are intimately linked to the CRG and the ERG.

Then there's the anti-democratic legislation criminalising democratic protest, endangering our elections in order to retain power, removing independent electoral oversight, criminalising the entire Traveller community for their way of life, (an established and acknowledged ethnic group and way of life - 'first they came for....') and much else besides, as blatant a political power grab as any by Hitler, Stalin, Trump or Mao.

A Home Secretary whose wet dream is Capital Punishment bodes ill for this nation.

A decade imprisonment for defacing a Statue, less than the Tariff for many much more egregious crimes that cause harm to the person, their body or mind - Rape, for example draws a 5 year sentence.

Death Parties.
The 'Work' Parties at Downing Street and across Government Offices, to give them their correct status, were Death Parties. They were celebrating their work - look at the outcomes of that work.
160 thousand deaths by Covid, millions of operations cancelled, 1.3 million cases of Long Covid, an economy in deep distress, enhanced poverty for 14 million households whilst British Billionaires added to their number, and increased their wealth by £150 billion.
And here we are into the third year of this Pandemic and there is no end in sight.
How many times have this atrocious misGovernment claimed that they had beaten the virus?

Gaslighting, pretending to act, deliberate negligence.
How many times have this Government said - "we must not waste the success of our efforts to quell the virus"? How many times have they cited the harms they caused as reasons to drive even worse policy, such as sending our children into unsafe schools as a method of delivering a booster of infection to a vaccinated adult population, as a tactic in their overall strategic stance - 'protect the hoard, let the herd take it on the chin'?
How many more must they kill, maim and and how many businesses and social institutions must they distress and degrade before the English people understand the true nature of these awful, callous, grubby, greedy, nasty men and women who are abusing the power invested in their official positions, by a trusting electorate, a vulnerable population?

Who will rid us of this dangerous Government?
Johnson and the entire cabinet must be indicted. Resignation that allows them to walk away from the criminality of their political action is not adequate to the situation.

We need a national unity parliament, where our legislators set aside their current adversarial dynamic with regards to the Pandemic. Indeed the pandemic is, it could be said, a training run for the co-operation and mutual aid that will be necessary in dealing with Climate Change, Pollution and Poverty all of which looms as even greater causation of mass harm in the years ahead.

This is an appeal to all decent MPS, councillors and others tasked with good governance - step up to plate.
We need a Leveson II to regulate and rein in the Press and Broadcast Media that supported this odious misGovernment at every turn.
The Spectator ought to be closed down - spreading misinformation is not Free Speech, it is a deliberate abuse of Free Speech. Free Speech has, since the inception of the concept, been understood best as a matter of speaking truth to power, of speaking honestly, of taking full responsibility in the public domain to uphold integrity and probity to counter political lies and gaslighting.
The Sun must be shut down. Murdoch and his minions must be indicted for the vast harm their misinformation operations have caused to the public perception of this virus, the disease and the pandemic in general. Their track record on Racism and Misogyny is likewise grim.

Revolution?
If the general public were to go on a general strike, and then took the path of a 'revolution' and dragged these awful men and women out of Parliament, and put them in the stocks, to be pelted with rotten fruit and humiliated in public, it would be wrong - that said the anger the population feels suggests such a reactionary move would be partially understandable, given the harms this misGovernment has deliberately caused to the English people themselves.

Luckily, for the misGovernment, the English people are not so violent, not so indecent, not so easily led down paths of political violence - and correctly so. The point of indictments is not punishment, it is accountability and the prevention of future harms. A deterrent to future politicians behaving in such harmful manner.

Given the choice, I imagine anyone would probably much prefer to be pelted with rotten fruit than endure death by COVID, no matter how humiliating the experience.

The most important thing we can do is uphold the Law to it's fullest extent, in the most honest manner possible, so that probity, honesty, integrity are restored to Parliament and the Civil Service.

Rotten fruit will not do that. Nor will riots of any kind.
Indictments for Misconduct in Public Office would be the correct method of addressing the criminality and negligence of this misGovernment.
Have you seen how people die of COVID?

Look at that, if you have not done so. Our NHS staff have had to witness that awful, horrific, terrifying process, day in day out. The relatives of those who died were blocked from seeing that intense traumatic and blocked from attending to loved one's in their final moments. Let that inform your view on this matter.

Celebrating their work? Death Parties one and all.

Every Friday, a piss up to bolster the troops?

Death Parties.

PS: PS: 'Austerity' was and remains a deliberate policy of collective punishment, imposing a stress position to break the community that cares for the vulnerable.

Cruel, deliberate lethality.

The 'savings' of Austerity, de-staffing the NHS as 'efficiency', the reduction in beds as 'efficiency', knowing full well they were implemented by managers ordered to do so to get their annual funding allocations. "No new cash, if you don't make these 'savings'."
'Externalised costs' - the costs in ill health, distress, staff exhaustion and deaths are ignored, set aside in favour of the 'savings'. It's truly appalling and profoundly amoral.

Those who cause such harm run scared from the truth revealed. Allowing lies to adversely afflict and cause such serious harm to a population is unacceptable.

The truth sets us free. Lies imprison us all.

What Makes Capitalism Work : Make Low Paid Work Seem More Attractive - Privatise NHS, Education - Reduce Real Value of Benefits- 1982 Cabinet Report -

What makes Capitalism work?

Update September 30th 2022.

"Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor, has already announced plans to cut benefits to encourage more people into the job market, saying that this was part of the government’s plan to “make work pay” by not allowing people to rely solely on welfare as their main form of income."

This is the strategic stance of the English Ruling Elite, the Aristocracy, the Land owners and the Corporate Bosses and their Shareholders.

Their strategy is to remove state provided social and economic support in order to drive people into low paid work. This planning involves privatisation of NHS, Education and Social Care, keeping wages low and undermining democratic regulation of Industry and shared commons monopolies.

All excuses will be made, in spite of evidence of harm. Removing these three elements on their own is creating poverty in order to extract more wealth from workers. Socialism is to be destroyed as an 'enemy'.

The most brief analysis of socialism is that it is designed to abolish poverty by regulating the power of the Oligarchy using the means of the Legislature.

In practice it is 'Nudge' (introduced by Cameron, previewed by The Work Capability Assessment). Or, more harshly, withdrawing social support to herd poor people into a situation designed entirely to maximise Wealth Extraction aka shareholder returns, irrespective of the harms it will cause, (raw sewage from Chicken Factories destroying entire river systems, polluting our shores), all the while well aware of those harms. It is brutal and purely for the purpose of Wealth Extraction. Psychopathy runs through the corridors of power in England. Lies, gaslighting, bullying, hate campaigns and grift.

In this blog I am examining a 1982 Cabinet long-term policy discussion paper, because it indicates a 40 year political operation, in incremental steps, to privatise social programs, from NHS to Education, Water to Energy and much else besides. It also gives an insight into the thinking and the sense of entitlement to Rule within the English Ruling Class and illustrates how they view ordinary people as people who can be manipulated by how the Government sets the circumstances within which we live. Nudge has evolved to pushing people over an economic and social cliff.

Looking at attitudes towards poverty, I found this article from 2016, "Is poverty in the UK in 2016 caused by employment, habit or circumstance?" prepared by the New Policy Institute, which explores those attitudes as they stood in 2016. It draws on some details of a survey of poverty carried outlined in a Survey of Poverty in East London : Labour and Life of the People Charles Booth (1889) Source

"The day after we published Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2016, Indy Bhullar, curator for Economics and Social Policy at LSE library, shared this fascinating excerpt from Charles Booth’s famous survey of the East London poor, first published in 1889. He shared it because the percentage of ‘very poor’ households categorised as being in ‘great poverty’ by Booth due to having insecure, irregular and poorly paid work was the exact same proportion of people in poverty in the UK in a working family in 2016: 55 per cent"

"Booth’s belief that some poverty is attributable to laziness (‘idleness’) or immoral habits (‘drunkenness’ and ‘thriftlessness’) also resonates very clearly today. The circumstance of being in poverty (especially if you receive any working-age social security benefits) is taken as a sign by much of the media, political establishment and the general public to be a sign that you are feckless and lazy. Problems relating to addiction, from substance misuse to smoking are still viewed by many as ‘bad habits’, as a recent proposal from a CCG in Yorkshire to limit surgeries for smokers highlights.

While Booth referred to illness, disability and family composition as ‘circumstances’, many of the policies of the last five years- from the increased scrutiny of people receiving disability benefits to the limit that only two children per family will be eligible for support through Universal Credit and Tax Credits from next year- show that what Booth termed ‘circumstance’ are increasingly seen as bad ‘habits’ which must be quashed.

There are fundamental problems with attempting to draw a line between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. We need to ask ourselves what price, both financially and ethically, we are willing to pay as a society in the service of this paternalistic view of the poor. In 2015/16, 93 per cent of JSA sanctions that were reviewed were overturned- this is just one of the many indications that mechanisms within our current system for separating the ‘deserving’ from the ‘undeserving’ are applied in contradictory and inconsistent ways. Is it worth significant public money being spent on gatekeeping to ensure no one with ‘bad habits’ is benefitting from our public safety net? Is the possibility that someone ‘undeserving’ may get support from our social security system really worth other people who are disabled, raising a young child alone, or unable to find work suffering?"

The fundamental question is this - is the suffering of so many people a harm that can be avoided, and if it is not being avoided who deems that harm worth it, and why?

~ Pdf file of the 1982 Cabinet Report : 30 pages, carefully typed out, photographed. Take a look. It's informative. Instructive even. More about that later. Kew Archive Location CAB 184/628 (Available to view at Kew, not available online)
~
A Guardian report on the release of the Cabinet Discussion Paper, in 2012, under the 30 years rule.
~
W.E Du Bois is much respected as an influential writer and thinker, of some wisdom. These are his words.
~ “We should measure the prosperity of a nation not by the number of millionaires, but by the absence of poverty, the prevalence of health, the efficiency of the public schools, and the number of people who can [and] do read worthwhile books.”

W. E. B. Du Bois - 1868 - 1963 ~ “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century.”
― Aneurin Bevan ~

Topical Images indicating Westminster Ruling Class policy influencers:

Map of raw Sewage Release permits voted for recently by Conservative and Unionist Party MPs; Effluence People reacted with anger when the Tory party voted to allow raw sewage release in to rivers and onto coastline. They may yet turn the tide. #Turdreich

The point being made in 1982 at the Cabinet Office level: Influence
Poverty levels of State assistance and the social deprivation that acknowledged as directly linked to petty crime, ill-health, bad nutrition and much else besides as a causation.
~

Cheering the passage of a 2015 Budget that maintained poverty levels of low wages, and sub-poverty levels of State Assistance to unemployed, disabled and other vulnerable citizens.

Nonsense "Universal Basic Income would disincentives worker to take up jobs, and anyway, Universal Credit, the system I created, would be much better suited". Iain Duncan Smith

Consequences (DWP staff admit psychological abuse of claimants, able, disabled and vulnerable) UN Report - 120,000 excess deaths 2010 - 2019 largely among vulnerable Universal Credit claimants. Poverty is a chronic stressor, and it has a huge health impacts on it's own, eg recent report on adverse birth outcomes, how poverty affects children's health, is a major factor, for millions of people in the UK. 5th Richest Country in the world, they tell us. We see very little comfort in that thought, the way things are.

Another nonsense that has caused a lot of harm is the Work Capability Assessment, introduced in 2005.

'let's get you into work, then shall we? It's for your own good, you know.' This attitude emerges from both Conservative and Labour Parties (apart from people such as Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Diane Abbot, Richard Burgon, Zara Sultana et al.) aligned with the establishment Civil Service Aristocrats, people like old Robert Armstrong. The establishment are behind the scenes. Class system prevails.

Affluence - what does a multi-millionaire understand about living in poverty?

2021 - By removing the £20 uplift, poverty will increase among the 6 million claimants of Universal Credit. 40 percent of these claimants – over two million people - are in work

Quite a lot as it happens, and he just doesn't care much. That is the problem. That lack of concern for the welfare of ordinary people, the low aged and the poor.

Sunak reduces real value of benefits, increases support for Wealth Extraction.
~

There's a pandemic underway and Government demands that we keep on shopping and clubbing. Keep on working for the economy. The false dichotomy of a conflict between the people's health and the Economy is driven by the desire to extract wealth and enhance power. The people's health is quite clearly not a priority when we are seeing close to 100,000 cases of infection daily.

There's a lot of PR involved in all of this. Selling the product, (it's like flu, it doesn't affect children, they would have died anyway) making the sale determines elections more than does policy well explained and thus accurately understood by the electorate.

Marketing
The world of marketing is predicated on the ability to manipulate people's emotion and perception in order to make a sale.

Consumers can be manipulated by availability, price, presentation, bias, vulnerability, 'personal choice' or by restrictions. (price increase, scarcity).
A population of consumers can be manipulated by availability, price, presentation and bias, vulnerability, 'personal choice' or by 'restrictions', (price increase, scarcity).

Workers can be manipulated into accepting just above poverty wages by lowered levels of social support programs, privatised health care and education, and much else besides, availability, price, presentation and bias, vulnerability, 'personal choice' or by 'restrictions', (price increase, scarcity). Nudge has been around for a long time indeed!
Is this a key understanding of why Power invested in the Ruling Class entitlement likes consumerism so much? Because consumer social behaviour can be more readily 'nudged'? And if you can change behaviour there, without the targets noticing it, then you can change behaviour anywhere. Without the targets understanding what is being done to them.

The Story of Stuff : Consumerism's origins
Consumerism is undermining our environment, our social systems : bookmark this 20 minute video, because it speaks eloquently and accurately of when consumer culture was birthed, and why. And who benefits the most.

Keep buying our stuff!

Do the Ruling Class understand the individualism of the consumer, and the isolation, the addiction, the disempowerment that develops with that addiction, and how that assists in the the political dissolution of organised workers that consumerism amidst real poverty seems to inculcate?
Did they already know this in the 1960s?
Here's a recent find, for me, saw a reference to it in a tweet. The Paper I mentioned above.

The 1982 Cabinet Report
Long term plans, a few words to start the ball rolling. This memorandum was released to public viewing under the 30 year rule. The original sits in the Kew Archives.

A document prepared in September 1982 for the Cabinet, discussing long term policy, including topically enough, privatisation of the NHS. They had just 'won' the Falklands War.

I have some of my own insight to offer, having read the paper twice.

What I see here.

The report was written by a senior civil servant, the late Robert Armstrong, an aristocrat by birth, inheritance and award.

What I see here is that it is that the politicians operate as the public front, they shield the Establishment ruling class within the Civil Service, who direct and influence the the politicians as much as the corporate billionaires do.

The public facing politician's function is, in part, to take the popular ire 'on the chin' in the theatre we call The News, to protect The System, safe in the knowledge that their pension and future wealth is secured and that custodial sentencing is not likely, under any circumstances, no matter how egregious their behaviour.

The adulation of the monarchy preserves the status of the aristocracy, as a political power base rooted in the class system, and it maintains the power of the aristocracy through the undemocratic House of Lords. Take away the monarchy and the House of Lords crumbles. Lords and robber barons dominate our political situation.
Here is a brief report from the Health Policy forum on the NHS part of Cabinet Document.
https://navigator.health.org.uk/theme/thatcher-cabinets-private-consideration-radical-reform-nhs
Documents disclosed in December 2012 revealed that Thatcher's Cabinet had considered radical reform of the NHS. The Central Policy Review Staff prepared a paper for a Cabinet meeting on 6 September 1982, outlining longer-term funding options of public services.
The Cabinet considered introducing private health insurance and increasing or extending user charges. The Cabinet paper suggested that some of the options reviewed in the paper would represent the end of the NHS for the majority of the population:
'Even though a free state service would be retained for the uninsured and possibly for the non-working population, for the majority the change would represent the abolition of the NHS. To save substantial sums involves raising existing charges and breaking unpopular ground in three areas - imposing charges (eg for drugs) on patients who are now exempt (eg children); charging for seeing the general practitioner; and for hospital treatment.'
Pdf file of the document, 30 pages on carefully typed paper, photographed. Take a look. It's informative.

The Theme~Repeated throughout in this Cabinet Paper of 1982 is the concept of using gradual withdrawal of State support on all measures that effectively abolish poverty, to 'reduce real value of benefits' and to do so as a behavioural lever, and to mask it in the language of 'saving expenditure' in order to protect Wealth Extraction.
To give people who might be in need, and on benefits, an incentive to "see the attraction of low paid work".
Who needs low paid workers?
Who extracts the most real value from low paid workers? Exactly. The Boss earns more by not doing any cleaning work. The cleaner gets just enough to get by, no more. More for the boss. Maybe the cleaners children will get a better job, but not all of them, They need low paid workers, and they desire to maintain some visible poverty as a behavioural incentive. The system could be set to eliminate poverty, low wages. It's a systemic problem.
Then there's this : the relaxed sense of entitlement to impose privatisation, for profit, to render democracy safe for power by treating citizens as consumers, rather than State provision, free at point of use, accessible to all, citizens as persons, people.
The social programs that abolish real and relative poverty also include support to maintain clean water, cheap energy, mail, communications, rent capped at % or ratio of income, social housing, education, public transport, roads and rail, health care, old age care, care for disabled and other vulnerable groups.
The poorer you are the more likely you will face a need you cannot meet on your own, and find yourself stuck in a pretty horrible place, as a human being, a person. Think about what Health Care costs causing bankruptcy and poverty means. Think then of not being able to access further quality health care because of that poverty. Think of the slow suffering of the many, many people faced with real poverty and chronic disease. Horrible, terrifying, precarious.

Using intentional restriction of support as a behavioural modification utility.

here is a comment from page 7, paragraph 16 :

"Some of the options would make some people word off. But it is very difficult - sometimes impossible - to effect changes in the role of Government without making some people worse off, particularly where public expenditure and hence taxation are involved. It is therefore necessary to accept that possibility, whilst always recognising that it is the proper function and duty of the Government to ensure that no-one is made so much worse off that he or she is subjected to undue hardship.

If poverty is thought of as a relative condition, adverse redistributive effects become hard to accept. If, however, it is recognised that there is such a thing as an absolute level of poverty from which people should be protected. and that poor people should share in the increasing wealth of the country, but perhaps mot in full proportion, then some redistributive effects can be accepted - as they must be if the amount of wealth for distribution is to increase."

In other words in order to maintain poverty as a whip, as a nudge, the system will need to offer just enough support to people to avoid destitution, just enough support to make low paid work attractive and they will use media to portray that choice to work as being 'honourable' and that all of this subterfuge and rigging is essential to the continuation of that which generates their Wealth.

The tone between 'redistribution' and 'distribution' of wealth is worth noting.

Poverty as an incentive to push the population into work. Sado-Monetarism.

Poverty level benefits to force people to accept low paid jobs.
"The reduction in the real value of benefits for those of working age would increase incentives to work and increase the attraction of low paid work."
That would cause few problems:
"There would be an increase in real poverty and the current problems of social deprivation would be worsened (crime, poor care of children, illness from cold homes and poor nutrition."
Note they make no mention of the emotional and psychological stresses and chronic mental health of the people affected by poverty levels of support...
How it effects the people who must subsist on so little, how it afflicts their minds and hearts and bodies, as persons. That metric informs Corbyn and most decent people's naturally benign disposition. Most people are decent enough to recoil at that image, the suffering person, suffering because of Government policy that is designed to support the extraction of wealth.
That humane empathy is absent in this document.

Shunak is operating the old tradition to the tee!
The writer, Robert Armstrong, a life long civil servant, and very much a member of the ruling class, mentions in the document the problems they'd have to spend more on, the symptoms of increased real terms poverty - the social, community level stressors of poverty and the behavioural change as poverty impacts peoples lives and causes harm. They acknowledge that poverty causes low level criminality, neglect and disease.
Because it's a money thing. The person at the other end of this power transaction is not in the room. They are not valued.
Take away a little slice of support at a time via reform to nudge to citizen along a behavioural track, based on a deeply biased mis-understanding about people and our needs... as in rating and relating to people as economic units, as workers in the industries the ruling class own, and their children as future workers, whose work is needed in order to increase wealth 'redistribution', which as we see with Shunak's Autumn Budget 2021.
Less support for the poor, more support for the very, very rich.
Cash flow into the coffers of the billionaires. That money tree remains, always.
Government's role in the mind of The Owner Ruling Class is to funnel State revenue - currency, taxation, subsidies into the Wealth Extraction system, it's job is to legislate to protect that Wealth Extraction, and it is to never cede that legislative power to workers. Make concessions if we must, but never cede power.

Here's an excerpt on the NHS from the planning discussion document.

"As living standards rise, individuals are likely to demand more and better health care. There is some social gain from improved health care, but mostly it is a matter of individual wants and choices (income-elastic demand). Hence it is arguably not appropriate for public finance, and puts a strain on the Exchequer by distorting choices and shifting the burden from the consumer to the taxpayer. Public health services also tend to be led by the producers rather than consumers.
It is therefore worth considering whether over a period the provision health care for the bulk of the population could be shifted from the State to privately owned and run medical facilities. Those who could not afford to pay would then have their charges me by the State, in the form of rebate or reimbursement. As an exception to the general rule, it might be judged more efficient for the stay to provide institutional care for long stay patients (mentally handicapped, elderly) who clearly could not afford to contribute.
This would mean leaving to individuals how far they insured against facing high costs of health care, and it would be important to monitor the growth of private health insurance over the intervening period.
Given that the State would in the last resort meet the costs of necessary health care, they could be a danger of under-insurance by a large part of the working population, and thought might therefore have to be given to a scheme for compulsory private insurance.
If ministers accept the broad concept as a longer-term objective, they will want to judge more immediate health options as steps along the road. In particular they will want an examination of how far the switch from public to private provision of health care could be promoted, and whether there are an institutional changes, within the NHS, that could make this switch easier.
1. Increased and extended health charges
2. Private Health Insurance."
The document discusses Social Care.

Then the document looms over privatisation of Education, page 4, paragraph 11, discussing the move towards wholesale privatisation, slowly, slowly, starting promoting more private schools, reducing State spending on State Schools. 1 982.

Fast Forward to 2021

https://www.tes.com/news/heads-condemn-dfe-plan-cut-school-improvement-fund

"Plans to remove a £50 million school improvement fund for councils will be seen as a “thinly veiled attempt to turn up the heat” on maintained schools to convert to academy status, a headteachers' union has said this afternoon.
The Department for Education has launched a consultation today on removing the local authority School Improvement Monitoring and Brokering Grant.
Instead, the plan would be for councils to fund all of their school improvement activity by taking a slice of funding directly from school budgets."
Defence: Annexe K, page 29
A warmer discussion in tone. We have money for the Military. Military is growing. Maybe we can persuade NATO to increase the mandatory spend. Background is that Defence spending was increasing in real value and budget had to find ways maintain 'real value'.
Previously they were discussing cuts to social programs as incentives in to work. Now they are the discussing the impact of 'an absence of real growth in the defence budget, as against the increase of complexity and cost of major equipment, would entail a reduction in United Kingdom Military Capabilities."
No cuts to their real value budget, to incentivise the military into peace, then?

Cuts to social support designed to nudge behaviour by the stress of real poverty.
Would eschewing maintaining an expeditionary army incentivise a country to behave more like a peacemaker? Perish that thought, now!

One rule for the Rulers, a swath of rules and sanctions for us. To get us to behave. Behaving didn't get the Unions far in the 1890s onwards, that's for sure.

Misinformation, preventing manipulative political grooming.
It is maddening how disruptive Oligarchy funded think tanks and their proxy movements, led by guile and grooming, cry 'Freedom' for all the elements that support the long term strategic planning of the Ruling Class thinking they are doing the exact opposite.
The opposite of that strategic operation is grass roots cohesion, which itself is based on accurate understanding of the situation. awareness of how division is encouraged, how emotions are exploited, how lack of information can be a vulnerability and a curiosity to see that we the wage earning ordinary folk build an equitable culture amongst ourselves that translates into votes and healthier legislators.
How to make government safe for people?

So I have been thinking many years on this - as have many, many others, and far more education and knowledgeable than I could ever be. I set out in 2017 a metric for healthy governance.

"I think of Healthy Governance as being focused on the practical realities of administering a communities shared resources for the equal benefit of all members of that community.

Healthy governance sets the context of governance as operating within as a shared responsibility of duty of care for one another. In that regards healthy governance has to be evidence led at all times. Opinion and belief are insufficient to meet the responsibility of duty of care.

Healthy governance sets the global context of governance as nurturing, caring for and stewarding of the habitat within which the community lives and from which that community draws living materials and other resources."

Now consider the policy choices of this Westminster Government during the past 20 months on managing the national epidemic and the global pandemic, in the light of all of the above, and perhaps some of what that have and continue to do makes more sense - "let the Herd take it on the chin, protect the Hoard."

In my view there's a degree of cruelty and callous recklessness in all of this that is deeply, profoundly uncivilised bordering on sado-monetarism. The gaslighting and lying to maintain that trajectory is a huge red flag.

I know that the only way for the people to counter this is to build a united grass roots front, from a shared sense of human solidarity, as persons, from the poorest to the most comfortable that elects decent men and women into our legislatures.

Stephen Reicher on why elimination of community transmission prevents surges, lockdowns and restrictions - precisely because the protocols when carefully set, give the population more choice, more freedom.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/28/covid-measures-choice-restrictions-science-freedom-infections-safe

"What we need right now, to supplement the vaccine rollout, is a set of protections and support measures to reduce the harm inflicted by Covid and relieve pressure on the NHS. In order to make that clear, politicians and journalists need to reframe the way they talk about the pandemic. Stop asking: will the public stick to the restrictions? Instead ask: will the government protect and support the public to keep one another other safe?

The real irony is that, by conflating protection with lockdown and refusing to implement the protections necessary to bring infections down, keep people safe and relieve the pressure on the NHS, this increases the likelihood, as Sage noted this month, that more draconian measures will be needed in the future.

In the end (and as we saw last year), the true lockdown party would be the 'do nothing' party."

Mr, Reicher is on point, and utterly correct.

What say you?