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If you want to know what’s in store for us in the next wave of Tory ‘reforms’, it’s always handy to take a close look at the Conservative Party’s main activist magazine Conservative Home.
Troublingly, two articles written recently by Conservative Home’s influential assistant editor Henry Hill, have proposed getting rid of retirement:
“The entire concept of ‘a retirement’ is, after all, an artefact of the welfare system.”
“As medical advances help us stay active longer, the expectation in the future must surely be that whilst you can work, you work – unless you can save enough to pay for a period of idleness yourself.”
and replacing GPs and other doctors with untrained volunteers:
“85 per cent of a typical doctor’s work can be done perfectly well by a ‘physician’s assistant’ with a fraction of the training or wages. Volunteers would receive pay, training, and legal rights to take time out of their ‘civilian’ life to work for so many weeks of the year in the NHS.”
I’m not making any of this up. Read it and weep:
We should face up to the end of ‘retirement’
How a Government can beat the BMA
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Henry Hill lives in Hertfordshire
Pride's Purge 
Reblogged this on pictishbeastie.
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aktion t4 rolling along without much of a ado jeff3
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If the Torries do scrap retirement does that mean that all the money I have paid through income taxes ect will be refunded to me including interest, as they keep saying it’s a benefit but it’s something I’ve paid into so it isn’t
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i will read it when i can read it-the stuff is offline..
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Well that would also mean the end of pensions for MP’s and bankers 🙂 Having said that, the government is easily replaceable by an infant schoolchildren – they would probably have more sense than those in Westminster at the moment and look how long children could work for!
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A Victorian government with Victorian ideas. Work until you drop dead & bring back charity hospitals, & people try to tell me the Conservatives are compassionate
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Government has already watered down police officers, with PCSos who can’t arrest. In addition, same technique with teachers, teaching assistants now teach classes when government swore that they never would, but merely aid qualified teachers.
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There’s no denying it, the Tory party is as deranged as the US Republican party. Its supporters and voters are similarly bigoted and irrational. (Maybe not as homophobic as before.)
They’re all disgusting little creatures motivated by hatred, wanting superior status over others. Most are worse than mediocre, most have achieved nothing of value, and yet they think themselves so great to the point where they think the rest of us were put on this earth to serve their every desire. Like batteries to be used up and thrown away when we no longer “work.”
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The Conservative home article is the most idiotic thing I’ve read in a while. Apparently there’s not going to be enough state money to fund people’s retirement. Except there’s plenty of money, money is an invention – they print tonnes of it every day, Now it’s numbers on computers, (quantative easing has been the government giving free money to the banks in the vague hope they’d lend it out to businesses to grow tbe economy. (Except it hasn’t really worked The banks have just kept hold of it and simply given their CEO massive bonuses with some of it.)). A few decades ago even the word billion was hardly heard, now we talk airily of billions and billions and nowadays the word trillion is becoming common. There’s plenty of money it’s just all in entirely the wrong hands and they’re hoarding it. That’s without the ongoing societial changes that are happening with more and more automation and computerisation – these things are already destroying more and more jobs day by day. Capitalism is deeply broken. Yet the Tories want a return to serfdom – probably because they have a severe lack of imagination and mainly because they’re sociopathic idiots.
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I AM weeping! Bloody Hellfire where do they dig these people up?
I’m just glad I’ve no wee boys to shove up chimneys….and glad I’m old and won’t see this kind of stuff in my life time….hopefully xx
>
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Could the reason the country can’t afford anything be in any way connected to the Conservative practice of selling public assets into private ownership at absurdly low prices?
You’d think people would notice that if publicly owned housing is being sold at 70% discounts the country (or if you prefer the taxpayer) is losing quite a lot of money. But no, the government is now selling profit making natural monopolies – like the Post Office and the Land Registry at give-away prices without even a veneer of pretence that ordinary people will be richer as a result of this.
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If that’s a current photo of the author of this tripe he looks young enough to be inexperienced in life’s vagaries and chubby enough to be in line for some of the more difficult, disabling and life wrecking health conditions. Give him time.
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All of these proposals were in fact initiated by New Labour when they were in government. There is no moral or ideological difference between them and the Tories.
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Jaypot – “Well that would also mean the end of pensions for MP’s and bankers”
No it wouldn’t, because they all have private pensions with agreed terms.
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Just found a post from him from 2005 which clearly shows he is delusional for a 22-24 year old [dependant on school leaving age]. To quote:
“One of the aspects of my old politics I now find most distasteful is the utopian arrogance of those who want to demolish things and rebuild them in their own image, be they cities, constitutions, nations – or people. Especially people.
Although we do have our lapses, in the main a Tory sets a high bar for justifying change, and is far more likely to pick holes in a grandiose scheme than be swept up with it. We’re also far better at recognising the intangible but very real value of things like heritage and tradition.”
So totally suitable to be a tory [after all they have clearly show themselves totally happy to vote on issues they claim to have no understanding of ie ESA cuts]
http://con4lib.com/henry-hill-why-i-am-a-conservative/
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Brian Craig is not correct when he says ‘If the Torries do scrap retirement does that mean that all the money I have paid through income taxes ect will be refunded to me including interest, as they keep saying it’s a benefit but it’s something I’ve paid into so it isn’t.’
From the very beginning, people paying-in to the pension system provided the funds for those drawing out their pensions. There is no accumulated fund of any kind. The present working generation is now directly paying the pensions of those who worked in the past and are still alive. It can be described as a pay-as-you-go system.
What the Bullingdonites are pointing out is that the system can no longer work when life expectancy is increasing at a constant rate – unless the legal age of retirement is also increased and the pension – directly or indirectly (lower than inflation increases) is correspondingly reduced in real – as opposed to nominal monetary – terms.
Before anyone decides to jump all over me, I am not advocating increasing pension age retirement levels or advocating real terms reductions in pension payments.
However, we have to be aware that the Bullingdonites are considering this among a wide range of measures due to Osborne’s incompetence as Chancellor and the fact that he has to plug a £55 billion annual hole in his financial forecasts.
I note he has dropped all references to paying-off the UK’s £1.4 Trillion public debt.
This emerging Bullingdon ideology is entirely predictable and Cameron et. al. are all clearly considering how they can make others pay for the mess they have created.
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I can’t be bothered to read the Conservative Home article as there is only so much rubbish anyone can stand. As the old computing maxim goes “Garbage in, garbage out” and I do not want my mind being contaminated with Tory garbage.
However, that does not mean we can afford to ignore it completely.
I was around in the 1980s when outfits like the Federation of Conservative Students emerged and became the shock troops of Thatcherism. They held what most of us considered to be crackpot ideas – but those ideas gradually became accepted and currently rule the political-ideological roost in the form of neo-liberalism today.
Logically, their ideas today make some sort of sense if your priorities do not include having a decent form of social welfare provision for all in a society.
I think this growing realisation as to their Bullingdon intents is what really lay behind the sudden resignation of Ian Duncan Smith. As stupid as he is, I think he finally realised that he was being set up as the fall guy by the Bullingdonites so that when they smashed up the welfare state they would attribute it largely to him.
Now they have another stupid religious fundamentalist – alongside the Education Secretary – to take the blame for the destruction of Britain’s welfare state.
Smug Cameron, Osborne and probably Johnson will point to Crabb, Morgan and Hunt as the guilty parties – or useful idiots, depending upon choice – responsible for destruction of the welfare state, while they skate off to substantially over-paid futures.
The real question is “How do we stop this 4 years out from a general election?”
I can only suggest that the Labour leadership should try to cultivate relations with its own back-benchers and sympathetic old-school paternalist Tories across the House.
Denying the Bullingdonites a parliamentary majority is absolutely paramount.
The only problem with this strategy is the inveterate opposition of the Blairite MPs.
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This fat twonk obviously has no understanding of the contributory principle. I have been paying National Insurance Class 1 primary contributions since I was 17; I’m 55 now and if these bloody tories try and steal them off me they’ll have a fight on their hands believe you me!
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If I pay into something called a fund surely I’m entitled to receive some sort of remuneration, my main point is that the Torries refer to it as a benefit which it is not, in basic terms I’ve paid into the fund I should receive any benefit from the fund, if you’ve contributed and worked with your hands ect. then the pension age shouldn’t keep creeping up and up, there is no way when i’m over 65 i’ll be crawling under floors or climbing about in attics
These are changes being forced on people by very clever people who probably would struggle to work a screwdriver and wouldn’t have a clue if they were asked to do a proper days work
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Reblogged this on Social Action.
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Brian – and others. The Tories – and other politicians – have severed the link between national insurance contributions and welfare benefits. NIC today is yet another form of a tax, like income tax and other general revenue taxes. That is why they do not perceive the pension as coming out of any particular “pot” or fund.
They, true to their loyalty to their own class, are more concerned about cutting taxes for themselves and their pals, leaving nothing for what they consider to be “ordinary” people.
This is why we all must take seriously the ravings of this Tory juvenile.
He could represent the harbinger of a deadly new form of Bullingdonism.
Political organisation and representation is an absolute must to defeat them!
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I have no love for the Tories, but your headline is massively misleading.
You make it sound as tho Hill’s idea is Tory policy.
Conservative Home is not an official Tory blog (check the “about” at the end of the blog). And the view is that of one person (a nasty little shit, it’s true), not of all Tories, as you imply.
The result of your exaggeration is that you damage your own credibility.
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Alasdair – I will summarise the answers Tom has given me when I’ve made similar criticisms of him in the past…… He is not a journalist and so he has no responsibility to be objective, fair or accurate. That is of course true, as is also your last sentence.
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If the idiots didnt sell off the family silver we wouldnt have the problems we have now.
Thatcherism and neo Liberals have seen the destruction of our security in old age.
Jail should be freely mentioned when it comes to those who deliberately continue this decline for their own gain.
We could also get the money back from their estates once convicted of this fraud.
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I suggest the government is run by volunteers that would solve all our debt problems.
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Pingback: Tories propose end of retirement, scrapping pensions and volunteers to replace NHS doctors | Pride’s Purge | Vox Political
Reblogged this on sdbast.
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Reblogged this on markcatlin3695's Blog.
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Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
I have to agree with Mike over at Vox Political when he said that Mr Pride must have a stronger stomach than most people, if he can wade through Conservative home long enough to find rubbish like this. It’s an extreme opinion, but it all logically follows existing Tory policy. The Tories have raised the retirement age to 70, and I think there were murmurs last year or the year before encouraging people to work into their retirement. A few years ago, the Republicans in America were ranting about how they couldn’t cut pensions, although that was where most American welfare spending went. Throughout the late ’90s and early years of this century there was right-wing moaning about the soaring costs of the pensions bill due to an aging population.
As for the idea that you can get rid of NHS doctors and replace them with clerks, one of the commenters on Mr Pride’s blog points out that this is what the Tories have already done with teachers. There are only a small number of them, and most of the teaching is done by teaching assistants. ‘Cause they’re cheaper. Of course it’s lunacy to try to replace doctors, who are by necessity highly trained professionals, with volunteer workers, but none of this seems to penetrate the thick skulls of public schoolboys and schoolgirls, their minds all aglow with Thatcherite ideals of shrinking the state and the welfare bill.
As for Hill himself, by his photo he looks like someone, who has no experience outside the Tory bubble of people like himself, all whining and complaining about the demands of the poor on the rich, and how wonderful Milton Friedman was.
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Reblogged this on Britain Isn't Eating and commented:
Wow….just incredulous.
Proof that Tories do not live in our real World.
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The Tory party is now full of inbreds and people over the age of 70 which is why it is now full of moronic and/or outdated ideas. I live in a Labour-Tory marginal constituency and while the local Labour party only has a small fraction of it’s large paid up membership active on the streets the local Conservative party has even fewer activists on the streets; just candidates, agents and their spouses. Everybody in the local Labour party is informed by e-mail of forthcoming campaigning sessions and urged to get involved.
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I can’t bear to read Conservative Home at all. Not since Chuka Umunna, a very right wing Labour MP, was criticised for having a girlfriend because at his age he is either supposed to be married or a confirmed bachelor, Apparently even Chuka isn’t right wing enough for them. Prefer to subscribe to Lib Dem Voice and their round up of the latest blog entries and Labour List and wade through their much meatier and more well thought out articles.
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We Tory’s have got the answer to the pension problem.
Before the NHS life expectancy for the poor was below 70yrs,as we are now about to destroy the NHS and making sure that treatment becomes unaffordable for the poor,life expectancy will revert to an acceptable level (but only affecting the poor).hoho we Tory’s always ahead of the game.
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The worst part of it is we the voters have invited them to do all this how many people will now admit that they voted tory. I confirm that seeing all this coming I did vote LABOUR
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