Shame of British press as private health’s failure is blamed on the NHS

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Another Angry Voice, anti, babies, baby, backlash, blame, company, Daily Telegraph, David Cameron, drip, failure, firm, health, ITH Pharma, Jeremy Hunt, liquid feed, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, National Health Service, newspaper, NHS, people, poison, politics, press, Press Complaints Commission, private, propaganda, public, right-wing, shame, Vox Political

Daily Telegraph headline this morning: “15 babies poisoned by NHS drips”.

Terrifying – and entirely inaccurate.

Oh, 15 babies were poisoned by drips – and one has sadly died as a result – but the contamination is believed to have come from liquid feed manufactured by a private, London-based health company called ITH Pharma Ltd, and not from any equipment provided by the National Health Service.

Lazy reporting – or part of an ongoing campaign against the NHS by the privatisation-crazy right-wing press?

If the latter, it clearly backfired – as the public backlash against the story demonstrates.

Look at the ‘Comment’ column following the article. ‘Cochranereturns’ wrote: “Another headline from the DT trying to pin blame on the NHS when the fault lies outside the organisation. I complained to the Press Complaints Commission under clause one of their charter about the following headline last week: “NHS breaks promises after staff torture patients at Winterbourne View”: the PCC responded within 24 hours (and the DT removed the link I’d complained about). I suggest people do the same about this article.”

‘Cydee’: “Bad reporting.”

‘Mynydd’: “This is the result the right wing media, and Mr Cameron/Hunt’s philosophy that private companies through competition will always produce the cheapest product, quality, and quality control is of secondary importance.”

‘Percypottamus’ warns: “Much more blatantly Tory-inspired anti-NHS propaganda like this and I will be cancelling my subscription.” Good for you, Sir!

‘Ostercy’: “Odd how you try to blame the NHS for this and not private medicine.”

‘NitroFan’ raised another aspect of the ongoing NHS saga – the too-close relationship between private health firms and the MPs they sponsor, and to whose parties they donate. Or, as ‘NitroFan’ put it: “I would be extremely interested (doubt I am alone) to know who owns ITH Pharma Ltd and the basis on which their contract was awarded! And who awarded it!”

Wouldn’t we all?

On the Vox Political Facebook page, coverage of the story was universally condemned as well. “As usual blame socialised medicine and not the private company contracted to provide the service (devices) in the first place,” commented ‘The Bullingdon Club’.

Sean Young picked up on the obvious inconsistency in the way the story was presented: “Clearly the way to stop such terrible deaths caused by the incompetence of a private company is to increase privatisation!” Riiiiight…

And that’s just the reaction to the story in the Daily Telegraph. The image at the top of this article presents our favourite Angry Yorkshireman’s opinion of the Murdoch Media version of these events.

It won’t change the way these ignorant right-wingers try to influence your thinking but it is encouraging to see that the once-impressionable British public is having none of it.

The worm – it appears – has turned.

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Gove is desperate to avoid fallout over free schools

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"embarrassment", advisor, Al-Madinah, civil servant, Coalition, Conservative, consideration, Department, Discovery, education, failure, fast track, Free School, general election, hush up, incompetence, incompetent, inexperience, instability, Interest, Michael Gove, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, morale, Ofsted, organisation, Party, Pimlico, policy, political, politics, public, silence, sleaze, special measures, struggle, struggling, The Observer, Tories, Tory, Vox Political

Underqualified: This Labour Party campaign meme highlights the drawbacks of Michael Gove’s foolish and expensive ‘free school’ experiment.

The country has been concentrating on government sleaze for the past week or so – and this is a mistake. We should also monitor government incompetence and thankfully Michael Gove is around to provide plenty of it.

He wants organisations that are part of his struggling ‘free schools’ pet project to receive special fast-track attention – to avoid the political embarrassment that would be caused by their failure.

Last year the project was rocked by the failure of the Al-Madinah Free School in Derby, and the resignations of unqualified head teachers at Pimlico Free School in London and Discovery School in Crawley. Vox Political discussed all three at the time.

The Discovery School was one of four that were declared inadequate by Ofsted and closed down at the end of March.

Last week, The Observer revealed that Gove wants to hush up any further damaging revelations by ensuring that problems are tackled before Ofsted can publicise them.

The article stated: “It suggests that party political considerations are now driving education policy a year ahead of the general election.”

Quite. It is also a sharp reminder of how far the Coalition government has deviated from its original claim, to be uniting “in the public interest”.

The plan adds extra pressure to the Education department, where morale has already plummetted due to Gove’s determination to employ his own advisors, to overrule the expert advice provided by civil servants in favour of ideologically-motivated dogma.

It also shows that Gove is giving preferential treatment to his pet project. State schools go into special measures after receiving a ruling from Ofsted that they are inadequate – and can remain there for more than a year.

More damaging still is the fact that many of the problems with free schools have nothing to do with education, but are organisational in origin. According to the article, these include: “Operating in temporary sites without a clear permanent home; new, inexperienced and often isolated trusts needing to upskill themselves to run a school for the first time; instability in principal appointments and senior leadership teams.”

So when you hear that your child’s school has been under-performing because it has been deprived of resources and support from the Department for Education, just remember that this has happened because we have an Education Secretary who is more concerned with hiding his own inadequacies – problems that could have been avoided if he had concentrated a little more on the details.

On the basis of this term work, Mr Gove, we’ll have to give you an ‘F’ – for ‘Fail’.

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Stalled – the plan to share NHS patients’ confidential information with big business

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approved organisation, care.data, choice, confidential, database, fail, failure, General Patient Extraction Service, government, GPES, health, hold, HSCIC, human, identified, identify, identity, Independent, Information Centre, informed, Jeremy Hunt, medConfidential, medical, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, NHS, NHS England, outcry, patient, people, Phil Booth, politics, private, pseudonymise, public, publicise, quality, record, Research, screening, secretary, sell, service, sick, social care, sold, stall, Vox Political

Freudian slip: The BBC’s article on the care.data delay was accompanied by this picture of a hand drawing on a diagram of a pair of breasts. Is this a tacit implication that the Department of Health has boobed? (Sorry, ladies) [Image: BBC]

A plan to sell the confidential medical information of every NHS patient in England has been put on hold after it caused a public outcry.

The care.data system, also called variously the General Patient Extraction Service (GPES) or the Health and Social Care Information Centre, was dreamed up as a money-spinning device by Jeremy Hunt’s Department of Health.

The aim is that, if you are an NHS patient in England, your GP will be forced to provide your confidential records, showing every medical condition you have ever had and providing intimate details of your current state of health, to a huge national database.

From there, your information may be sold on to private healthcare and pharmaceutical companies for “research”. A new proposal backed by NHS England (a body set up largely to support the increasing privatisation of the NHS, if my information is correct) would give non-NHS bodies including private companies the right to ask for access to the data.

The government has said the information would be “pseudonymised”, in an attempt to reassure you that you cannot be identified from the information to be provided to outside organisations. This is not true, and in fact it will be entirely possible to trace your medical information back to you.

The government claims the information will help experts assess diseases, examine the effects of new drugs and identify infection outbreaks, while also monitoring the performance of the NHS.

In fact, it seems far more likely that this is a widespread invasion of privacy, with the information likely to be used (for example) to sell you health insurance that you should not need.

We are told that NHS England organised a mass mailing to every household in England, explaining its version of what the planned system will do – but a BBC poll of 860 people last week found that fewer than one-third of them could recall receiving it.

Concern that people are likely to end up allowing their information to go into commercial hands without ever knowing about it has led to the scheme being halted – for the time being.

NHS England has accepted that its communications campaign must be “improved”, although we do not yet know how. A propaganda campaign on TV and radio seems likely.

Every NHS patient in England has the right to opt out of the data sharing scheme, and many have already chosen to do so. You can do it right now, using a form designed by the medConfidential website.

While NHS England and the Department of Health will continue trying to justify this scheme, there is no justification for selling your private information to commercial organisations.

It is to be hoped that this six-month pause will end with the abandonment of the scheme.

If the organisations that want the information genuinely intend to use it for humanitarian concerns, it would be fully anonymised and they would not be buying it.

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Are you happy for big business to have your confidential medical records?

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approved organisation, care.data, choice, confidential, database, fail, failure, General Patient Extraction Service, government, GPES, health, HSCIC, human, identified, identify, identity, Independent, Information Centre, informed, Jeremy Hunt, medConfidential, medical, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, NHS, patient, people, Phil Booth, politics, private, pseudonymise, publicise, quality, record, Research, screening, secretary, sell, service, sick, social care, sold, Vox Political

Do you live in England? Are you an NHS patient? Have you realised that your Conservative-led Coalition government is selling your medical records to private healthcare and pharmaceutical companies? Do you know that these ‘anonymised’ records are in fact nothing of the sort, and anyone buying your details will be able to identify you?

Do you want to do something about it? It isn’t too late.

Vox Political warned last September that Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is planning to sell records to “approved” private companies and also universities – that’s sell, mark you, to make money for the government.

The system was called the General Patient Extraction Service (GPES) – although exactly who it serves is entirely up for debate. It seems to have metamorphosed into the Health and Social Care Information Centre by now, but the purpose remains the same. You may also see it described as the care.data scheme.

Hunt wants us to believe that the information will be valuable for medical research and screening for common diseases.

In fact, the information could be used by private health companies as evidence of failures by the National Health Service, and could help those companies undercut NHS bids to continue running those services – this would accelerate the privatisation that nobody wanted.

This week, The Independent reminded us all that the system that will sell off your information will go live later this year.

The article warned: “Companies like Bupa or Virgin that already hold data on UK patients may be able to use the new anonymous data available from the centre to precisely identify where it has come from, according to campaigners.

Phil Booth, co-ordinator at patient pressure group medConfidential, said: “The scheme is deliberately designed so that ‘pseudonymised’ data – information that can be re-identified by anyone who already holds information about you – can be passed on to ‘customers’ of the information centre, with no independent scrutiny and without even notifying patients. It’s a disaster just waiting to happen.”

The information for sale to profit-making firms will contain NHS numbers, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender.

Patients can opt out of the system by contacting their family doctor, but medConfidential has designed a form to make it easier.

On its ‘How to opt out’ page, the organisation writes: “Under changes to legislation, your GP can now be required to upload personal and identifiable information from the medical record of every patient in England to central servers at the Health and Social Care Information Centre. Once this information leaves your GP practice, your doctor will no longer be in control of what data is passed on or to whom.

“This information will include diagnoses, investigations, treatments and referrals as well as other things you may have shared with your doctor including your weight, alcohol consumption, smoking and family history. Each piece of information will be identifiable as it will be uploaded with your NHS number, date of birth, post code, gender and ethnicity.

“NHS England – the body now in charge of commissioning primary care services across England – will manage and use the information extracted by the Health and Social Care Information Centre for a range of purposes, none of which are to do with your direct medical care. Though the official leaflets talk a great deal about research, these ‘secondary uses’ for which your data may be used include patient-level tracking and monitoring, audit, business planning and contract management.

“In September 2013, NHS England applied to pass on your information in a form it admits “could be considered identifiable if published” to a whole range of organisations that include – but are not limited to – research bodies, universities, think tanks, “information intermediaries”, charities and private companies.

“Though you may be told that any data passed on will be ‘anonymised’, no guarantees can be given as to future re-identification – indeed information is to be treated so that it can be linked to other data at patient level – and NHS England has already been given legal exemptions to pass identifiable data across a range of regional processing centres, local area teams and commissioning bodies that came into force on April 1st 2013. The Health and Social Care Information Centre already provides access to patient data, some in identifiable form, to a range of ‘customers’ outside the NHS, including private companies.”

The opt-out form is downloadable from the medConfidential web page, along with a form letter in various formats, allowing patients to opt out themselves, their children and any adults for whom they are responsible.

This is a gross abuse of patient confidentiality for the purpose of commercial gain.

Don’t let it happen to you.

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Is the Coalition government 80,000 times worse than Herod?

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Antipas, Antiquities, Archelaus, bedroom tax, benefit, benefit cap, benefits, Bible, Christian, Christmas, Coalition, Conservative, council tax reduction scheme, David Cameron, dealing, Democrat, drug, Egypt, Eric Pickles, failure, fourier's gangrene, government, Herod, Iain Duncan Smith, Jesus, Joseph, Josephus, kidney, Lib Dem, Liberal, Mary, Massacre of the Innocents, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Nazareth, people, Pickles Poll Tax, politics, Roman, Rome, sexual offence, Shelter, social security, Tories, Tory, unsafe, violence, Vox Political, welfare

You may have noticed that yesterday was Christmas – the day when Christians throughout the world celebrate the birth of Jesus, whose teachings in later life form the basis of their faith.

Jesus was born into a world of politics and political machinations – the Roman world was much the same as our own in this respect – and had an effect on it, right from his birth.

According to one of the Gospels, when King Herod learned that a child had been born who had been named ‘King of the Jews’, he sent spies to find out who this possible usurper was; failing in this attempt, he gave orders for the death of all boys aged two or less in Bethlehem and nearby.

Joseph (husband of Mary, Jesus’ mother) was warned in a dream that Herod intended to kill Jesus, so the family fled to Egypt until after the King’s death – then moved to Nazareth in Galilee to avoid living under Herod’s son Archelaus (the Romans had divided the kingdom into three, and Nazareth was ruled by another of Herod’s sons, Herod Antipas).

Regarding the Massacre of the Innocents, doubt has been cast on whether the event ever took place. No other account of the period makes reference to it. Some have said that this may be because the number of male children of the right age might have been less than 20.

Since the point of this article is to compare what happened then with current events, here in Britain, it seems best to bookmark the disputed event; we’ll come back to it if we must.

The part we are told under no uncertain terms is that Joseph took Mary and Jesus to Egypt until Herod’s rule was over. In modern terms, they were made homeless because of political persecution that was so extreme, they had to flee the country.

The situation in the UK today, as stated by Shelter, is no less than 80,000 times as bad.

The charity told us (in November): “Government figures show that 80,000 children in Britain will be homeless this Christmas.”

Vox Political said then that government policies had caused the dramatic rise: “The bedroom tax; the ‘Pickles Poll Tax’, otherwise known as the Council Tax reduction scheme; the benefit cap that so many people in this country seem to support without understanding any of its implications.” This blog had warned that this would happen, as long ago as January.

In contrast with the Bible story, in which the family fled to safety, most homeless families interviewed by Shelter said they felt more unsafe, witnessing violence, sexual offences, drug use and dealing.

This is more than 2,000 years after the Biblical incident; civilisation is supposed to have improved over that time. Why are we allowing our government to do this to our children on such a massively more widespread scale?

Perhaps we can take some small comfort from Herod’s fate. Modern medicine suggests he had chronic kidney failure, complicated by Fourier’s gangrene – but let us see how it was described at the time. The historian Josephus – in Antiquities, Book 17, Chapter 6, Verse 5 – describes the disease that killed him shortly after he set out to murder Jesus: “a fire glowed in him slowly, which did not so much appear to the touch outwardly, as it augmented his pains inwardly; for it brought upon him a vehement appetite to eating, which he could not avoid to supply with one sort of food or other. His entrails were also ex-ulcerated, and the chief violence of his pain lay on his colon; an aqueous and transparent liquor also had settled itself about his feet, and a like matter afflicted him at the bottom of his belly. Nay, further, his privy-member was putrefied, and produced worms; and when he sat upright, he had a difficulty of breathing, which was very loathsome, on account of the stench of his breath, and the quickness of its returns; he had also convulsions in all parts of his body, which increased his strength to an insufferable degree. It was said by those who pretended to divine, and who were endued with wisdom to foretell such things, that God inflicted this punishment on the king on account of his great impiety.”

Eric Pickles, Iain Duncan Smith, and above all David Cameron, beware.

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Hands off my medical records, Jeremy!*

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approved organisation, bma, British Medical Association, care.data, choice, confidential, Daily Mail, database, disease, duty, epidemic, experiment, fail, failure, General Patient Extraction Service, government, GPES, health, human, identified, identify, identity, informed, Jeremy Hunt, LMC, local medical committee, medical, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, NHS, patient, people, politics, private, publicise, quality, record, Research, screening, secretary, sell, service, sick, sold, Vox Political

The two-fingered salute: Jeremy *unt displays his high regard for the NHS patients whose details he wants to steal and sell to private business.

Conservatives. They think they own everything – including your medical records.

If you live in England, Jeremy ‘The Misprint’ *unt wants your doctor to send your confidential patient record to a national database, from which it will be sold on – sold on to make money for him, mark you – to “approved” private companies and also universities.

The system is called the General Patient Extraction Service (GPES) – although exactly who it serves is entirely up for debate. You may also see it described as the care.data scheme.

He thinks this gross abuse of patient confidentiality is a good idea. But then, he’s a Tory and therefore thinks he has a God-given right to take anything, from anyone, if they have less filthy lucre than himself.

According to the Daily Mail – and you know the Tories have lost the plot when even the Heil weighs in against them – the *unt wants us to believe that the information will be valuable for medical research and screening for common diseases.

And an NHS England spokesman told the paper, “The programme will provide vital information to approved organisations about the quality of health services.”

Oh really?

So in fact this information could be used by private health companies as evidence of failures by the National, publicly-funded, service, yes?

How would it help in screening for common diseases? This information becomes freely available without any data having to be sold – how else would we know when an epidemic breaks out?

And how is this valuable for medical research – beyond the possibility that the now-infamous ‘job offer’ for people to take part in human medical experimentation may be targeted at particular individuals, according to medical records that they thought were only available to their own, trusted GP?

Doctors say Mr *unt and NHS England have failed in their duty to publicise the plan in a proper and reasonable way, that patients are not getting an “informed” choice about the matter, and that patients could be identified from the data with any information other than that on common conditions – which, we’ve already established, becomes public knowledge anyway.

Some Local Medical Committees (LMCs) are already discussing whether to opt out of the system – and this blog would urge all the others to do the same.

If you are concerned about this gross invasion of your privacy, you can contact your own LMC and request that they opt out. Contact details can be found on the British Medical Association’s website here.

*In fact he won’t be able to get his filthy hands on them anyway because I live in Wales. The title is for effect.

David Dennis – Disregarded? Not anymore!

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Atos, benefit, benefits, Coalition, Conservative, David Dennis, Department for Work and Pensions, Disregarded, DWP, failure, government, inefficient, inept, Jobseeker's Allowance, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, people, politics, story, Tories, Tory, true, unemployment, Vox Political, welfare, Work Programme, work programme provider, Workfare

David Dennis, the author of Disregarded: The True Story of the Failure of the UK’s Work Programme, seems to have a hit on his hands. The book has attracted considerable interest, following my article earlier this month. It is therefore with pleasure that I am publishing the following interview with him, conducted by writer Alex Laybourne.

After reading the new bestseller “Disregarded: The True Story of the Failure of the UK’s Work Programme”, I knew I had to interview expose genius David Dennis. Not only did the book hit a chord with me, it has also hit a chord with readers and is currently flying high in the Amazon.co.uk chart. David is a curious guy, he doesn’t like to show his face. I asked him for a photo to include with this interview. He declined to share one and said he is choosing to remain anonymous. I asked him why, and thus our conversation began.

Q) So, tell me, why don’t you want your face out there? Your name will be on everyone’s lips soon. This book is hot! Don’t you want to be famous?

A) I’m not concerned about being famous, Alex. This book was written for the millions out there who are suffering and unemployed. Millions of faces, men and women, all different. Just one face can’t represent everyone or take credit for a small part in trying to improve things.

Q) David, how does it feel, now that you’ve got a hit on your hands to be away from the “Work Programme”.

A) Well, Alex, I guess it’s not exactly apt to say that I am away from it. It still haunts me and it makes me feel sick when I think of all those other people having to go and slave away day after day for the sake of a few quid.

Q) By “a few quid”, you really mean millions that are heading into the pockets of private companies – companies that could well afford to hire and pay employees to work for them.

A) Exactly– private companies are milking our taxpayers of money and our unemployed of their dignity to make vast profits. It’s disgusting to say the least and illegal to say the most.

Q) Illegal? Didn’t a court say it was legal?

A) A court might have said it was legal, but I think the definition of slavery fits like a glove. To work for your ‘benefit’ is to work for something like £71 a week. That isn’t a wage anyone would ‘choose’ to work for. Now, if the companies were happy to add in the rest to make it up to a living wage, that might be a fair deal people would agree with. There’s got to be some leeway given. Somebody has got to give and the unemployed have given too much as it is. It’s the private companies’ turn to put some money into the coffers if they want the benefit of workers.

Q) You believe those on benefits should get them for nothing then?

A) Of course not. I believe there should be a programme where people learn skills and get experience the fair way. REAL help needs to be offered. I do not believe sending people into a multi-billion pound company to stack shelves for free is in any way beneficial to those on the programme– it only serves to help a rich company that’s already rich.

Instead, let’s start getting people into university, college and supporting them through it. Let’s bring back jobs for people– real jobs. The government are paying their private training companies up to £14,000 for every single person on the work programme, over and above the cost of their regular dole. Couldn’t less money be spent sending people through college courses, university or other programmes where we would see a higher return? The way I see it, the unemployed are becoming less employable with every passing day on the work programme. I believe everyone can have productive work, work they enjoy and are fulfilled by, and I think it’s unfair to tar those genuinely unemployed with the same brush used to tar ‘layabouts’.

Q) So Dennis, you believe there are ‘layabouts’ milking the system?

A) I do, and I know that there are more than a few out there. The government has every right to try and keep those people from sucking precious monies from the public purse. But should it be to the detriment of those actually trying to find work? No, absolutely not.

Q) How many people did you actually meet who found work on the programme?

A) (laughs) Found work? None. Sanctioned– many.

Q) Sanctioned?

A) The sanction is the way the government and the system control the jobseekers– if they don’t do as they’re told, then they just cut the money off. If you miss an appointment or you’re ill, you can be sanctioned. Then, how are you meant to survive? There are “crisis loans” available, but good luck getting one. It’s a fear-based, bullying system.

Q) So, you believe the government are willingly cutting people off from benefits and squeezing them to try and make them drop off?

A) Well, I don’t remember saying that, but, yes if you’d like to put it that way– yes– I think there are probably mandates out there that ask the Job Centre to cut people off as much as possible.

Q) What’s the difference between the Job Centre and the work programme?

A) The Job Centre is one of those things that we all know about. It’s the first stop. You go in and see an advisor and they, on the whole, do try to help put you on the right track towards finding a new job. They have targets and regulations, but on the whole, they are pretty straight up and if you follow the basic rules, you receive your dole payment without issue.

The “Work Programme” is something else altogether. I think you could sum it up quite easily as ‘forced labour’. You are sent into a work placement, whether you want to or not; whether it suits your skills or not; and you work. For free. I’ve heard some horror stories and I, myself, had an awful time.

The other part is the “Work Programme” scheme to teach people supposed new skills and help them to write CV’s. The training centre I attended was a complete waste of time. The turnover of staff seemed as though there was a revolving door. The CV’s are useless and to my knowledge sending an architect to a basic maths course is just a weak way to waste money.

Q) Care to elaborate?

A) Sure. I was sent to a placement at a leading gardening store and was shown a health and safety video– then I was sent out to work in a busy warehouse without protective clothing– gloves or the like– legally mandated by health and safety law. When I complained, I was told it was too expensive and we didn’t need them.

As for the architect in one of my classes– there were also health and safety officers, accountants and other professionals sitting through a very basic maths course and to my knowledge many are still doing the same course six months on. As I said– it’s just a way to keep bodies in seats so these training companies can keep charging the government.

Q) Can you tell me which store?

A) The name doesn’t matter. Take your pick. I have heard horror stories from charity shops, supermarkets– you name it and it’s been heard of. As far as I can see, it’s the same across the board, no matter which store it is.

Q) So what do you intend to do now?

A) I am promoting the book. I have several interviews lined up. I had a journalist call me the other day offering to set up a TV interview– the works. I can’t wait– I want to fight for those guys who have no one to fight for them. I believe people should have freedom and choice. If you are unemployed then you shouldn’t automatically become a slave to the system. You should be assisted to find a career that is right for you.

Q) How does the programme affect working people?

A) Good question. Well, as you know, Slavery was abolished many years ago. If we bring back slavery– who will want to pay people to work? This system is bringing down wages across the board. The end effect will be simple– more people will become unemployed and then be thrown in as slave workers. The government will create a wider gap between the rich and the poor. The middle class will disappear and years of hard work will be thrown down the drain.

Q) I believe you are very brave to even attempt to sell this book. There are people out there who are going to call you a liar.

A) Alex, I know, and there always are. The truth is in the book and if people want to insist that those on benefits are having a great time, I suggest they try it for themselves. Let the Tories go down and work at supermarkets and perhaps they would be kind enough to give their real, well-paid job to a work programme worker. I can tell you, there are qualified people out there who would be able to do it just as well. I don’t believe all this crud about “knowing your place”. The world is there for those who want it– the world is everyone’s– it doesn’t  just belong to those guys with huge bank accounts.

Q) Have you got another book in mind?

A) Yes. I am half tempted to compile case-study interviews with people who went through the “Work Programme”. It would be an interesting eye-opener for all those who say that my experience was some sort of aberration. Let people see what real people are going through and let’s give everyone a voice.

Q) Are you a ‘Working Class Hero’?

A) No. John Lennon was a working class hero. I am just a guy who wants people to be treated fairly. I don’t believe in sitting at home on my arse all day. I believe in work and let’s get people into jobs that will give them a fair lifestyle. Let them add to the economy and let them enjoy the prosperity others enjoy.

Q) Thanks, David, I better let you go, you seem to be pretty busy!

A) I have got a long road ahead of me spreading the word of the silent majority and I intend to see it through to the end.

David was busy with other interviews at the time. I spent enough time with him to realise that he has a story here that is growing daily. His book is a hit and he himself is certainly driven enough to realise it. I wanted to give you a taste of what this guy is like. I have read the book and I know it’s a good one. Find it here and then tell David what you think of it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Disregarded-Story-Failure-Programme-ebook/dp/B00AO6O9QG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1356273446&sr=8-2

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Disregarded-The-True-Story-of-the-Failure-of-the-UKs-Work-Programme/433776256677128

Disregarded: New book exposes Work Programme’s failures – from the inside

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Atos, benefit, benefits, Coalition, Conservative, David Dennis, Department for Work and Pensions, Disregarded, DWP, failure, government, inefficient, inept, Jobseeker's Allowance, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, people, politics, story, Tories, Tory, true, unemployment, Vox Political, welfare, Work Programme, work programme provider, Workfare

The Coalition’s Work Programme is a sham system designed to funnel money from the government to so-called ‘providers’ – private companies whose idea of training forces participants to prove they have the simplest literacy and numeracy skills before placing them in six-week limited positions for companies keen to exploit free workers.

That’s the grim message in Disregarded: The True Story of the Failure of the UK’s Work Programme, by David Dennis. He’s a man who knows his subject – the book is the result of his own time as a participant.

According to the book’s publicity material, “shocking descriptions of his time spent at a for-profit skills training centre show that the unemployed are considered a scourge on society and are treated as such.

“Despite the government’s assurances that the scheme is working to reduce the millions of unemployed, Dennis shows, through his own experience with the programme, that it is inefficient, inept, and fundamentally unhelpful to those who need it most – those hungry and able to work.”

That’s it in a nutshell, according to the author. “What I witnessed at my training centre was a complete shambles and a waste of time for everyone involved,” he told Vox Political. “I spent about 12 months there, on and off, and I don’t know anyone who got a job through them.”

The book itself makes the situation explicit:

This programme essentially uses the unemployed as unpaid slave labour forces for six weeks’ duration for some of the country’s largest companies – highly profitable companies that can absolutely afford to hire people for a decent wage… This would not lead to paid employment… This was a simple case of a company taking advantage of a recession.

“The classes are not put together with a view to the skills of those on the programme,” explained the author. The architect with 20 years’ experience and the recent school leaver both find themselves in the same basic maths class. Literally, we were doing computerised tutorials that were primary school level.”

I arrived early for my first interview at the learning provider building. The building had several stories and as soon as I entered I could see what the entrance requirements were– long term unemployment. The lift, with its dank smell of urine, was unappealing. I walked four flights of stairs and finally reached the right level. “Training” the sign shouted. I walked towards it and opened the door. 

The entrance room was small, a pot plant in the corner and a dishevelled man sat behind the desk. 

“Name?” he asked.

“David Dennis,” I replied.

“Occupation?” he said with a grin. “Oh wait, you haven’t got one!”

“I will have someday and I’ll be paying your wages,” I bit back.

“Sure,” he said with a grin. “Take a seat.”

I sat down as he picked up the phone and dialled through to explain that Mr Dennis had arrived.

“Dennis, David?” the woman said, as she entered the waiting room. “Follow me,” she said without even looking at me. I stood and followed her into a classroom. “We need to do a diagnostic test to see if you can read, count and do the most basic of learning.”

“I can,” I replied. “I have GCSE’s and A Levels and I received very high marks.”

She didn’t take any notice. “You have one hour to complete these tests.”

“Excuse me,” I said as I began to feel like the invisible man. “I can talk, you know.”

“I do not wish you to talk,” she snorted. “I wish you to do your diagnostic tests,” she explained. “I do not wish to hear about tests you passed once upon a time.”

I was shocked. I sat down at the computer and took the diagnostic tests.

To my mind, they were a complete joke. Questions such as: Where does the full stop go in this sentence? “Anna walked down to the beach” Well, let’s see? Where does a full-stop normally go? Where does the capital letter go in this sentence? “the alligator swam through the water”. Ninety-eight more of these basic literacy questions followed. The maths assessment was equally as ludicrous. I was completely insulted by this absurdity. The very fact that not only had I passed my GCSEs and A-Levels, I had received very high marks on them, should have exempted me from this degradation. There was obviously no pre-vetting process based on previous educational credentials.

I dutifully completed the test and waited for her to come back. Eventually, an hour passed and finally she returned.

“Have you finished?”

“Yes,” I replied with a smile. “Within about ten minutes.”

“You rushed them,” she accused. “Don’t blame me if you have failed.”

“I didn’t fail them,” I replied. “I know where full stops go and I know how to add and calculate percentages.”

Without listening she took the computer and looked at the results. I had scored highly and I thought I had proved my worth.

“You did alright,” she said with a shrug. “We can improve on that though.”

“How can you improve on 100%?” I asked.

“Those tests are the easiest we have,” she said . “We expect people to pass with at least 20%.”

“Well let me have a bash at your others,” I asked as I grew older every second.

“No,” she said dryly. “You are not ready yet.”

“I see,” I replied, already knowing what the game was. This woman knew she was stuck with me and needed to show some improvement to claim payment from the government. This way she could say that I had started favourably with the lower test scores and passed the higher ones with her guidance. What a complete scam.

“You will begin intensive revision on Monday.”

“I thought I was going to learn ‘retail’ here?”

“Well, you’re not,” she decided. “You must learn Maths and English first.”

So that was the game plan. This company would teach me skills I already had mastered and then charge the government for the pleasure of it all.

“I was told by my advisor that qualifications gained in school were irrelevant and I should not put them on my CV,” he said. “The mandatory CV template is useless and allows for no self-expression.”

“I was also sent on a Workfare assignment to “a leading gardening company”, and again, that was a complete farce. I have 13 GCSEs and three ‘A’ Levels and they sent me to do manual labour – and here’s the good part: When I asked for protective gear like a pair of gloves, which were mandatory in the health and safety video we watched, not I, nor anyone else, received them.”

The book reveals that there is a high turnover of staff on the Work Programme: “In the months I was on the programme, my tutors and advisors changed endlessly. There was no continuity and the calibre of the teaching staff was appalling. To my knowledge, none had a teaching background and many were completely unprofessional.”   Sanctions are used to discriminate against the unemployed and used to bully them, the book states.

And ex-prisoners attend the Work Programme skills sessions along with school leavers. “I find this to be not only socially irresponsible, but again indicates everyone just gets lumped in together without regard to personal experience or qualifications,” said Mr Dennis.

“I was approached by an ex-prisoner with an offer to get into less-than-legal dealings. Had I been desperate or more vulnerable, I could have easily fallen into a deep trap.”

Disregarded is available from Amazon as either an e-book or in a standard, print version. My understanding is that it costs just £2.

I’ll leave the last word to Mr Dennis: “It’s a good-ol’-boy system between the owners of these companies and Cameron’s cronies. Either that, or just a pass the buck situation whereby the government can say they’ve “handled the problem” by putting it in the hands of these training centres but with no obvious supervision or managed thought from the top.

“This programme really needs to be exposed for what it is – a way for these private training companies to take taxpayers’ money from the government. They certainly aren’t helping those in true need.”

Britain’s worst idlers – the MPs who wrote Britannia Unchained

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I have been saddened to learn of two events that will take place in the near future: The death of The Dandy, and the publication of Britannia Unchained.

The first needs little introduction to British readers; it’s the UK’s longest-running children’s humour comic, which will cease publication (in print form) towards the end of this year, on its 75th anniversary. The second appears to be an odious political tract scribbled by a cabal of ambitious right-wing Tory MPs, desperate to make a name for themselves by tarring British workers as “among the worst idlers in the world”.

The connection? Even at the end of its life, there is better and more useful information in The Dandy than there will be in Britannia Unchained.

The book’s authors, Priti Patel, Elizabeth Truss, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore, and Kwasi Kwarteng, all members of the Free Enterprise Group of Tory MPs, argue that British workers are “among the worst idlers in the world”, that the UK “rewards laziness” and “too many people in Britain prefer a lie-in to hard work”.

They say the UK needs to reward a culture of “graft, risk and effort” and “stop bailing out the reckless, avoiding all risk and rewarding laziness”.

Strong words – undermined completely by the authors’ own record of attendance at their place of work.

Chris Skidmore’s Parliamentary attendance record is just 88.1 per cent – and he’s the most diligent of the five. Kwasi Kwarteng weighs in at 87.6 per cent; Elizabeth Truss at 85.3 per cent; and Priti Patel at 81.8 per cent. Dominic Raab is the laziest of the lot, with Parliamentary attendance of just 79.1 per cent.

To put that in perspective, if I took more than a week’s sick leave per year from my last workplace, I would have been hauled up before the boss and serious questions asked about my future at the company. That’s a 97.9 per cent minimum requirement. Who are these slackers to tell me, or anyone else who does real work, that we are lazy?

Some have already suggested that these evil-minded hypocrites are just taking cheap shots at others, to make themselves look good for promotion in an autumn reshuffle. Maybe this is true, although David Cameron would be very unwise to do anything but distance himself from them and their dangerous ideas.

I think this is an attempt to deflect attention away from the way the Tory-led government has mismanaged the economy, and from its murderous treatment of the sick and disabled. As one commentator put it: “They get a token Asian, a token African, a token Jew, mix in the middle class/grammar school rubbish propaganda, and suddenly they are just ordinary people? No they are not; they are stooges for the ruling elite.”

Britain doesn’t reward laziness among its working class. What it rewards is failure by managers, directors of industry, financiers. These people continually increase their salaries and other remuneration while their share prices fall, their dividend payments are lacklustre and shareholder value is destroyed. What have they given shareholders over the past 10 years? How many industrial or commercial leaders have walked off with millions, leaving behind companies that were struggling, if not collapsing? Does the criticism in Britannia Unchained apply to senior executives and bankers?

Our MPs are as much to blame as big business. They vote themselves generous pay, pensions and extended vacations (five months per year). They never start work before 11am, never work weekends (or most Fridays, when they are supposed to be in their constituencies, if I recall correctly). They enjoy fringe benefits including subsidised bars, restaurants and gyms. They take part-time directorships in large companies which take up time they should be using to serve the public. Only a few years ago we discovered that large numbers of them were cheating on their expense claims. They take more than £32,000 in “Resettlement Grant” if we kick them out after one term – which, in my opinion, means all five authors of Britannia Unchained should be applying for it in 2015.

These are the people who most strongly represent the ‘something-for-nothing’ sense of entitlement the book decries.

Have any of them ever worked in a factory or carried out manual labour? I’ll answer that for you: With the exception of Elizabeth Truss, who did a few years as a management accountant at Shell/Cable and Wireless, none of them have ever done anything that could be called real work.

In fact, the people they accuse work very long hours – especially the self-employed. When I ran my own news website, I was busy for 12-14 hours a day (much to the distress of my girlfriend). Employees also work long hours, get less annual leave, earn less and pay more – in prices for consumer goods, taxes and hidden taxes – than most of Europe. Average monthly pay rates have now dropped so low that they are failing to cover workers’ costs, leading to borrowing and debt.

Are British workers really among the laziest in the world? Accurate information is hard to find but it seems likely we’re around 24th on the world league table. On a planet with more than 200 sovereign nations (204 attended the London Olympics), that’s not too shabby at all.

Interestingly, the European workers clocking on for the fewest hours are German. Those lazy Teutons! How dare they work so little and still have the powerhouse economy of the continent?

If so many are reluctant to get up in the morning, why are the morning commuter trains standing room only? Or have the Britannia Unchained crowd never used this form of travel?

It seems to me that Britannia Unchained is just another attempt by the Tory right to make us work harder for less pay. The Coalition is currently cutting the public sector and benefits to the bone, while failing to introduce policies that create useful employment, and trying to boost private sector jobs. The private sector has cut wages and pensions. The result is higher unemployment and benefits that cannot sustain living costs, creating a working-age population desperate for any kind of employment at all (even at the too-low wages already discussed).

And let’s remember that Conservatives want to remove employment laws to make it easier to dismiss employees. In other words, they want a workforce that will toil for a pittance, under threat of swift dismissal and the loss of what little they have.

Why do they think this will improve the UK’s performance?

We already work longer hours and have less protective legislation than in Europe (such as the European Time Directive). But we are less productive in terms of GDP than their French and German counterparts, who work fewer hours and are protected by the likes of the ETD.

France is more unionised than we are, yet its production per employee is higher.

The problem is poor management and bad leadership. Poor productivity is almost always due to poor investment and poor training. Workers are abused when they should be treated as an investment. They lose motivation and when managers get their decisions wrong, they blame the workers.

Working class people are sick of grafting for low pay and in poor working conditions, to be exploited by the types of people represented by the authors of Britannia Unchained.

Is it any wonder we feel de-motivated?

I started this article by linking The Dandy to Britannia Unchained, noting that one was coming to the end of its life in print while the other was about to be published for the first time. I’ll end by pointing out a quality they have in common.

The Dandy is closing because it represents ideas that are now tired and out-of-date. Britannia Unchained should never see publication – for the same reason.