Category: Articles

Tory Britain in 2017: NHS crisis, social care nightmare, school budgets cut for 1st time since 90s, cuts to disabled and riots in our prisons.

This was how Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell’s tweet summed up austerity Britain on the eve of this week’s budget.

He could have added three thousand people use food banks each day and that over four thousand people sleep rough each night.

And this of course is just the tip of the iceberg – the majority of people are now seeing a real squeeze in living standards and wages, which is set to deepen in the years ahead.
Read the full article

The Tory pursuit of a ‘hard Brexit’ and bargain-basement Britain spells big dangers for the economy, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

TWO bits of news last week showed how, despite media spin around Theresa May and Philip Hammond “resetting” government economic policy, they remain committed to ideologically driven austerity.

The first was that the Treasury has asked government departments to prepare for cuts of 3 per cent and 6 per cent, for 2019-20.
Read the full article

Some of the statements coming out of the White House such as the idea that more countries should get nuclear weapons or that climate change is a Chinese hoax may appear deranged but actually do constitute a real threat that needs to be vigorously opposed, says KEN LIVINGSTONE.

Donald Trump’s stances on two issues — climate change and nuclear weapons — illustrate clearly how reactionary and dangerous to us all his presidency is.
Read the full article

A report this week found that the worsening cost of living crisis will lead to the biggest rise in inequality since Thatcher, writes Ken Livingstone.

The Resolution Foundation warned this week that falling living standards for the poor in the period ahead will threaten the biggest rise in inequality since Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.

In response, Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell commented that: “It demonstrates to us all once again that the economy under a Tory government will be rigged for those at the top with poor and middle income households facing their worst parliament for income growth for a period of time.”
Read the full article

The fast approaching February elections will decide whether Ecuador continues on a path of social progress and development or reverts to old patterns of inequality and exploitation, says Ken Livingstone.

THIS has been a big week for Ecuador. The country took on the presidency of the influential G77 and China group of developing countries and has marked 10 years of the Citizens’ Revolution, the name given to the change that has taken place in the country since President Rafael Correa took office on a wave of popular protest following decades of brutal neoliberalism.
Read the full article

Over the past months we have seen a stream of stats and reports showing the extent of the mounting problems facing the NHS due to Tory austerity, which has meant cuts and persistent underfunding, and the accompanying crisis in social care, culminating with the Red Cross declaring a ‘humanitarian crisis’ in the NHS.

Teresa May’s response has been to bury her head in the sand.

But this crisis is of the Government’s making.
Read the full article

We must take back our railways from the greedy hands of the privileged few and return them to their rightful owners, argues Ken Livingstone.

THIS week, ridiculous fare rises to customers on our railways joined the ongoing issues with Southern Rail as what must become yet further nails in the coffin of the failed experiment that has been the privatisation of our railways.

These increases mean that rail fares are going up by 2.3 per cent on average in 2017, so passengers will feel a squeeze on their pockets at a time of an approaching cost of living crisis.
Read the full article

Nobody should be under any illusions as to the reason for mounting pressure on the health service, argues Ken Livingstone – it’s government policy.

OVER the past months we have seen a stream of stats and reports showing the extent of the mounting problems facing the NHS due to Tory austerity, which has meant cuts and persistent underfunding, and the accompanying crisis in social care.

These are a consequence of the largest financial squeeze in the NHS’s history, meaning that by 2018 NHS spending per head will be falling.
Read the full article

The current and ongoing issues with Southern Rail should be another nail in the coffin of the failed experiment that has been the privatisation of our railways.

It is the latest in a series of examples that illustrate just what a bad deal for taxpayers the privatisation of the railways has turned out to be.

From the fiasco of Railtrack, to the issues around Metronet (in charge at one point of two-thirds of the misguided public private partnership (PPP) on the Tube), to the temporary nationalisation of the East Coast line, to the chaos around Southern today, railway privatisation has totally failed.
Read the full article

A major report issued this week shows the extent of the Tories’ big lie that they are making work pay, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE.

This week’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Monitoring of Poverty and Social Exclusion report showed the true scale of the human impact of six years of ideologically-driven austerity, following the Chancellor’s recent Autumn Statement which confirmed the economic difficulties we are now facing.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation in the report is that 7.4 million people in poverty are in working households, showing that despite all their false promises the Tories are not “making work pay.”
Read the full article