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Tag Archives: pregnant

Tories and scandal (go together like a horse and carriage)

14 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by Mike Sivier in Conservative Party, Corruption, Crime, Drugs, People, Politics, UK

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

abortion, bad, Behaviour, black book, blackmail, blue folder, Cecil Parkinson, Conservative, crime, date rape, David Mellor, drink, drug, Earl of Caithness, FOI, Freedom of Information, gay sex party, House of Commons, indiscretion, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, persuade, pregnant, scandal, seduce, seduction, sleaze, Sunday Mirror, Tim Yeo, Tories, Tory, Vox Political


Scene of the - er - indiscretions: The Light ApartHotel in Manchester. [Image: Sunday Mirror.]

Scene of the – er – indiscretions: The Light ApartHotel in Manchester. [Image: Sunday Mirror.]

The Party of Sleaze shoots itself in the foot yet again.

It seems the Conservative Party has been keeping documentary evidence of Tory MPs’ indiscretions, crimes and bad behaviour in a “black book” (actually a blue folder), but this has now been destroyed for fear that the Party might be forced to reveal its contents under the Freedom of Information Act.

The information in the “book”, which was destroyed a little more than four years ago as the Tories prepared for the 2010 general election, was used by party whips – its official title was “Whips’ Notes” – if they needed to persuade a colleague to support legislation they opposed, or a minister under fire.

Sources within the Conservative Party say this persuasion did not go as far as blackmail – although you are perfectly entitled to form your own opinion about this, dear reader.

The book’s existence was revealed by the Sunday Mirror, which also carried details of several more ‘sleaze’ scandals, including allegations that:

  • Taxpayers indirectly funded a £2,500 suite in the Light ApartHotel, used for a gay sex party during the Conservative Party’s 2011 conference in Manchester.
  • Senior Conservatives regularly tried to seduce male parliamentary workers after getting drunk at the House of Commons.
  • MPs and peers used ‘date rape’ drugs on junior activists, and paid for abortions after getting their staff pregnant.

The claims are eerily reminiscent of sleaze scandals from the Conservative Parliaments of 1979-1997, in which Cecil Parkinson was forced to resign after impregnating his secretary; David Mellor’s extra-curricular sporting activities with Antonia de Sancha; and sex scandals involving Tim Yeo and the Earl of Caithness.

The headline of this article is based on a song and is intended to evoke comparisons between ‘love and marriage’ and ‘Tories and scandal’.

To close, let’s remember another well-known saying and conclude that if a leopard cannot change its spots, neither can a Tory resist sleaze.

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Are you going to let David Cameron abolish your rights without a fight?

10 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by Mike Sivier in Business, Conservative Party, European Union, People, Politics, UK

≈ 41 Comments

Tags

age, agency, agency workers, barrier, bedroom tax, benefit, break, cap, child, children, conditions, Conservative, David Cameron, day, directive, disability, disabled, discrimination, employ, employment, EU, european union, family, gender, Glenis Willmott, harassment, health, human, Labour, leave, lunch, Martin Callanan, maternity, MEP, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, off, orientation, paid, parental, politics, pregnant, pregnant workers, reason, red tape, religion, rights, risk assessment, safety, sex, tea, time, Tories, Tory, trade, union, Unions Together, Vox Political, work, worker, working time


Skewed view: This image (not mine) provides a startlingly accurate representation of the way British Conservatives see Europe. Do you honestly think they can be trusted to honour the human rights that European laws have granted us?

Skewed view: This image (not mine) provides a startlingly accurate representation of the way British Conservatives see Europe. Do you honestly think they can be trusted to honour the human rights that European laws have granted us?

You do realise what David Cameron means when he says he wants to re-negotiate our membership of the European Union, don’t you?

For a start, he means he wants to abolish laws that protect the human rights your ancestors fought tooth and nail to win for you.

He won’t make any deals in your interest. That’s not in his nature.

If he gets his way, you could lose the right to:

  • Written terms and conditions of work, and a job description – and the right to the same terms and conditions if transferred to a different employer.
  • Four weeks’ paid leave from work per year.
  • Not be sacked for being pregnant, or for taking time off for ante-natal appointments.
  • Come back to work after maternity leave, on the same pay, terms and conditions as before the leave started.
  • Health and safety protection for pregnant women, new and breastfeeding mothers.
  • Parental leave.
  • Equal treatment for workers employed through an agency.
  • Tea and lunch breaks during the working day for anyone working six hours or more
  • One day off per week.
  • Time off for urgent family reasons.

In addition, Cameron could relieve employeers of the legal obligation to ensure the health and safety of their workers, including undertaking risk assessments, acting to minimise risks, informing workers of risks, and consulting on health and safety with employees and their representatives. In his cost-cutting brave new Britain you’d just have to take your chances.

Health and safety representatives from trade unions could lose the right to ask employers to make changes in order to protect workers’ health and safety, and they would lose their protection against unfair treatment by their employer for carrying out their duties in relation to this.

The ban on forcing children less than 13 years of age into work could be lost, along with the limit on the hours children aged 13 or more and young people can work.

Children who could then be forced into work, regardless of the effect on their education, would have no rules protecting their health and safety, and the rules that say they can only be employed doing “light work” could also be abolished.

Protection from discrimination or harassment at work on grounds of gender, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation – direct or indirect – could be dropped.

And the right of disabled people to expect their employers to make reasonable adjustments for them at work could also be abolished.

These are just your rights at work!

Cameron himself has said, as leader of the Opposition: “I do not believe it is appropriate for social and employment legislation to be dealt with at the European level. It will be a top priority for the next Conservative government to restore social and employment legislation to national control.”

And as Prime Minister: “Complex rules restricting our labour markets are not some naturally occurring phenomenon. Just as excessive regulation is not some external plague that’s been visited on our businesses.”

To find out what he meant by those words, we must turn to the former leader of the British Conservative MEPs, Martin Callanan, who said: “One of the best ways for the EU to speed up growth is to … scrap the Working Time Directive, the Agency Workers Directive, the Pregnant Workers Directive and all of the other barriers to actually employing people if we really want to create jobs in Europe.”

Of course, they distort the facts. These rules aren’t barriers to employing people at all; they are structures within which people may be employed responsibly.

The Tories want to ban responsibility in the workplace. They want a return to dangerous employment conditions, abuse of workers and the removal of any legal protection from such abuse that they may have.

They will tear apart your rights at work.

So, if you are living in the UK and you’ve got a job, please take a moment to consider what this means for you. You might agree with the Coalition on its benefits policy that has led to thousands of deaths of sick and disabled people; you might agree with its bedroom tax and too-low benefit cap that has led to a rapid rise in debt and homelessness among the unemployed and those on low wages.

But now you know they’re coming for you, too.

What are you going to do about it?

Are you going to sit on your thumbs and do nothing – just meekly wait for them to rock up and tell you they’ve abolished all your rights at work and you can now go and slave for them in appalling conditions with absolutely no legal protection at all?

In other words, when it’s you that’s threatened, are you going to let it happen, just like you let it happen to the sick, disabled, unemployed and low-waged?

Or are you going to take action and make a difference?

It doesn’t take much. You could write to David Cameron and to your MP at the House of Commons. You could email them – just look up the addresses on They Work For You, or you could add your name to the letter being created by Unions Together. Yes, I know Mr Cameron says the unions are a bad thing, but in this case the enemy of your enemy is your friend.

As the leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party, Glenis Willmott MEP, says: “Our rights at work are not ‘red tape’ to be slashed away. Don’t let Cameron and the Tories get away with this great European scam.”

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Abortion debate: Some Tories just can’t keep their mouths shut

06 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by Mike Sivier in Conservative Party, Health, People, Politics, UK

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

'Killer' Miller, abortion, Alfie, Conservative, government, health, Health Secretary, Home Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, Laurie Penny, Maria Miller, Michael Caine, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Minister for Equality, Nadine Dorries, Parliament, people, politics, pregnancies, pregnancy, pregnant, premature, Professor Wendy Savage, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Theresa May, Tories, Tory, Vivien Merchant, Vox Political


In the 1966 movie Alfie, the main character (Michael Caine) impregnates another man’s wife (played by Vivien Merchant) and has to take her to a backstreet abortionist. Do Maria Miller, Jeremy Hunt and now Theresa May want a return to this extremely dangerous practice?

This won’t be a popular post. It seems you don’t want to read about abortion from the figures on my ‘Killer’ Miller piece.

But I don’t write this blog because I want to be popular; I say some things because they are to be said, and this is one of those pieces. Cutting the time limit on abortions will continue to be ignorant lunacy, no matter how many Cabinet ministers support it.

From that, you can guess my opinion of the Cabinet ministers involved, who are Maria Miller, Jeremy Hunt, and now Theresa May.

The Home Secretary said she thought there was scope for a 20-week limit (the current limit is 24 weeks, remember). The Health Secretary had already gone further, saying he supported halving the limit to just 12 weeks.

This is a man who admits that doctors have operated on his head. Presumably they removed all his intelligence.

Thank goodness they were only expressing personal views, no matter what may be said by those who support the suggestion – oh, what am I saying? The Conservatives are desperate for a popular policy. They’re probably writing it into their Conference speeches right now.

I am glad to see that my own concerns about this were absolutely correct. In a comment on Today, Professor Wendy Savage, a gynaecologist and campaigner on women’s rights, pointed out: “The number of abortions that take place over 20 weeks is very small. Of those a considerable proportion are of foetuses which have got a congenital abnormality.

“I think the majority of the population think that if somebody has got a foetus that, if born, will have a severe disability, they should have the right to choose whether or not to continue with that pregnancy.”

If you’re still undecided on the issue (all 12 or 13 of you who are reading this), try reading Laurie Pennie’s ’24 Reasons for 24 Weeks’, a blog she wrote back in 2008, before the Tory MP Nadine Dorries (remember her?) was defeated in her own attempt to cut the time limit.

Of particular interest should be number 3: “Research shows that lowering the time limit does nothing to lower the number of abortions taking place.” But if they can’t get a legal abortion, where do they go?

Back to the backstreets, everyone?

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‘Killer’ Miller’s new job – removing women’s rights

04 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by Mike Sivier in Conservative Party, Health, People, Politics, UK

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

'Killer' Miller, abortion, Conservative, government, health, Maria Miller, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Minister for Equality, Parliament, people, politics, pregnancies, pregnancy, pregnant, premature, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Tories, Tory, Vox Political


Maria Miller: This minister for equality understands the needs of women even less than she understood the disabled.

Maria Miller, the newly-appointed minister responsible for persecuting minority groups, has started by attacking pregnant women.

She wants to lower the legal abortion limit in England, Wales and Scotland, from 24 weeks to 20.

This should come as no surprise to anyone. She voted for a 20-week limit in 2008, as I mentioned in a previous article on this blog.

Ms Miller has justified her stance by saying care for extremely premature babies has improved rapidly, saying it was “really important” to consider the impact on women and children, and claiming it is “common sense“.

But the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists reviewed the matter two years ago and said there was no scientific evidence to justify a lower limit. Survival rates before 24 weeks have not improved. Also, there are circumstances in which some women will need to end a pregnancy after 20 weeks.

In other words, based on the scientific evidence, Ms Miller’s approach is the exact opposite of “common sense“.

One has to wonder, what is this minister’s problem? She must know that there are reasons for terminating pregnancies that are based on the health of the mother, the child, or both. And that doesn’t even take into account the effect on the lives of those individuals after the child is born.

Correct me if I’m wrong; I’m looking at this as a health issue because it occurs to me that, except in rare cases, a woman would be aware she is pregnant after 20 weeks and would want the child. I don’t think we’re discussing the “pro-life/pro-choice” issue here. It seems to me that we’re discussing whether children will be born with congenital conditions that will impair their experience of life, or whether the pregnancy will seriously harm the mother’s health.

In either case, being forced to go to full-term, because the law demands it, could lead to a life on benefits as what Ms Miller might call a burden to society – or so it seems to me.

So this “common sense” approach is entirely contradictory, considering the minister’s history.

Hasn’t ‘Killer’ spent the last two years taking benefits away from people like that, effectively killing them off? Why is she now trying to bring more of them into the world?

In short: Does she get a kick out of causing suffering?

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