B.E. 22 March 2005

Did you know that Sainsbury’s milk comes from cows that are fed with GM feed? Give the manager at your local Sainsbury’s an earful or leave a written complaint at customer services. Better still, if you don’t fancy drinking Frankenstein Milk, or even worse – giving it to your kids, then shop at the Co-op or Marks & Spencer where dairy products are guaranteed GM free. No wonder Sainsbury’s are losing market share.

Did you know that the next group on Tony Blair’s hit list are the disabled?

Look out for drastic incapacity benefit cuts, new draconian rules on what constitutes ‘disabled’ and people who are not fit to work being forced into jobs in work places that have no facilities for the disabled, because of economic necessity as benefits are cut.

There are already stories circulating that wheelchair bound para & tetraplegics are being called into job centers to explain why they haven’t been actively looking for work.

Did you know that house prices have doubled in the last five years?

Has your salary doubled in the last five years?

Did you know that the Government is thinking of introducing compulsory savings schemes to try and cover the enormous black hole in pensions provision?

If you are earning £200 for a forty hour week (or less in many retail and care jobs) then imagine what your take home pay is going to look like if the government take another ten or fifteen percent off you. The UK already has the worst state pension rates in the developed world. Will be interesting to see if the employers will have to increase their contributions in the same proportions and if the rich will also have to kick in ten or fifteen percent of their earnings? Don’t hold your breath.

Did you know that Blair is thinking of changing pension laws to allow his rich friends to be able to purchase second homes or homes for rent out of their tax free pension funds. Imagine what that will do to house prices if billions of pounds of tax-free pension funds are unleashed into the property market.

Did you know that as part of Blair’s promised open and transparent Government, Labour MPs have been banned from asking Parliamentary questions about Foundation Hospitals? The reason for this is that so many foundation hospitals are already heavily in debt, including Bradford that went over four million pounds in the red six months after being ‘granted’ foundation status. Interesting to see if the losses will be covered by the government or will have to be found from cuts in local front line services. Guess?

Did you know that Alan Milburn, the former Health minister responsible for the whole crazy Foundation Hospital scheme, and who champions bigger participation in the NHS pie for profit making health cowboys, receives a very healthy yearly (alleged to be a hundred grand a year) retainer from an a private American healthcare company? In other words he is a paid lobbyist for those concerns that have a vested interest in seeing our NHS privatised.

More Milburn. Blair in place of Gordon Brown who had done a pretty good job the last two elections appointed Alan Milburn New Labour’s election supremo. Milburn has so far been outgunned, outfoxed, and outflanked by a lackluster Michael Howard. Insiders in the Westminster village reckon that Blair gave his Geordie poodle this high profile job to groom him for the succession if Blair, as promised, moves out of number 10 after the next election. The only problem with that is, apart from the lousy performance Milburn is putting up against the Nasty Party, the only person most party faithful, trade unions and backbench MPs hate more than Blair is Alan Milburn. What odds Blair will be forced by backbench and party pressure to roll out Brown before Labour gets stuck too far behind in the polls.

Even more Milburn. Some cynics would say that Alan Milburn would be quite happy to see Michael Howard and his nasty, racist pals take over. As Milburn is a paid representative/lobbyist for a private American health provider, when Howard begins to dismantle the NHS for privatization, Milburn and his American masters stand to get a piece of the action.

Did you know that in that fantastic Valhalla of private heath care - the USA - that more than sixty million US citizens have no heath cover or insurance what so ever?

Is this the plan that Milburn, Blair and others have for us? The rich can pay for treatment and the poor die waiting in the queue at the charity entrance round the back.

I don’t know what your voting intentions are but I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.

If there is no left candidate (i.e. Exeter Democratic Socialist Alliance, or other left grouping) I will put my cross next to the Green Party. If there were no left or green choice then I’d vote Lib-Dem. Yes, Liberal Democrat. That comes from someone who has voted left or Labour all his voting life, some 40 years. Bradshaw after his gung-ho support for the Iraq war and not protesting against any of Blair’s attacks on civil liberties (identity cards, arbitrary arrest by a politician etc.) does not deserve to continue represent ting the people of Exeter.