Maggie and Hattie

The universal media protection of Margaret Thatcher as the Savile case unfolds is just jaw-dropping.

The only two arrests have been of her outspoken supporters and generous donors, a category which also included both Jimmy Savile and Jonathan King. Savile, moreover, was a close personal friend of Thatcher's. Her closest parliamentary aide's abuse of boys has finally moved from a very open secret to no secret at all, and her Downing Street is on the brink of exposure as the meeting point of all the paedophile rings in these Islands, possibly in Western Europe.

If she were in better health, then she would already have been arrested, first over Hillsborough, and then again over this. Frankly, is she really all that ill, rather than merely very old? Has anyone bothered to demand an objective assessment of her health?

It is all very well to go on about Harriet Harman and what was once the New Left. It is all very well to plagiarise one of my books in order to go on about Harriet Harman and what was once the New Left, even if, by your own admission, you yourself once gave a job on a Catholic paper to a paedophile priest precisely because he was a paedophile. But by 1997, when Harriet Harman and what was once the New Left got in, the damage had already been done.

It had been done in the 1980s by the sociologically indistinguishable New Right, which always had a more coherent position in that it always did believe in the economic system in which prohibitions on drugs, say, or on sex between adults and children were impossible. The New Left came round to that economic view and thus became New Labour. But the New Right, called Thatcherism while in power, always did see the join, and always acted accordingly.

Hence, for example, Margaret Thatcher was surrounded by Jimmy Savile, Gary Glitter, Jonathan King, Peter Morrison and all the rest of them, giving a paedophile a range of Cabinet positions from which to implement a succession of her flagship policies.

Once the generation of Conservatives actually formed by Thatcherism staged its coup after having lost the 2010 General Election, it enacted legislation that the previous Labour Government had specifically ruled out, so that men who had had sex with 16-year-old boys (or boys who could have passed for 16, or what have you) while the age of consent was 21 had their records wiped clean. Give that a moment to sink in.

Bank Balance

Investment banking and retail banking should be split completely. Furthermore, public ownership took RBS back to profitability, but the Coalition has taken it back into the red. All of the banks should be turned into mutual building societies, ironclad as such by statute. Northern Rock would be an ideal place to start.

Apart, that is, from the public stakes in HBOS and RBS. Those are permanent, non-negotiable safeguards of the Union, as public ownership always is. Therefore, the profits from each of those stakes should be divided equally among all the households in the United Kingdom.

For that, we need a Government which is not so incompetent that it can preside over their degeneration back into loss-making status. Indeed, if this provision had already been in place, then perhaps not even George Osborne would have dared to be quite so stupid and inept as that.

"Atos Killed My Dad"

Here:

A grieving boy of 13 has accused Atos of killing his disabled dad. Kieran McArdle told the Daily Record in a harrowing letter how his father Brian, 57, collapsed and died the day after his disability benefits were stopped. He had been assessed by Atos and deemed “fit for work”.

The youngster said a previous stroke on Boxing Day last year had caused a blood clot on Brian’s brain. He was left paralysed down his left side, unable to speak properly, blind in one eye and barely able to eat or dress. But he was still summoned to an Atos “work capability assessment” – part of the Con-Dem Government’s drive to cut billions from the welfare bill.

Kieran says he had another stroke days before his appointment because of stress, but was still determined to attend. A month later, former security guard Brian got a letter telling him he would lose his disability benefits on September 26. Kieran said his dad’s health went rapidly downhill. He believes constant worry about how he would survive without the cash he needed robbed Brian of the will to live. The day after his benefits were stopped, Brian collapsed and died in the street near his home in Larkhall, Lanarkshire. He had suffered a heart attack.

Kieran poured out his anger about the tragedy in his letter. He wrote: “Atos need to know their changes are killing genuine people like my dad. It has to stop before more people lose their lives.” The Record is campaigning for a fair and decent system that protects the rights of the genuinely disabled. Scots have repeatedly told us how Atos deemed them fit for work despite their illnesses after humiliating assessments. Kieran told us in his letter: “I write to you regarding your fight for a fair assessment for the sick and disabled people. My dad was assessed by Atos and told he was fit for work. After his assessment he was very low and worried how he was going to cope with no money as he was informed his benefits would stop on September 26. He died on September 27. My dad was severely disabled after he took a massive stroke which caused a blood clot in his brain.”

Kieran said Brian had a panic alarm around his neck in case he fell or became ill, and had to use a mobility scooter. He added: “How disabled do you have to be to get disability benefits? That’s what I want to know. My dad was a very proud man and didn’t like asking for help, financial or otherwise, but the money helped him retain some kind of dignity. He couldn’t come to terms with the fact he was disabled and needed help. The left side of his body was completely paralysed. He couldn’t walk properly, see out of his left eye, use his left arm, which meant he really struggled to feed himself, get dressed or perform even simple tasks. I was gobsmacked when he got the letter saying he was fit for work and that his benefits were being cut. How could he possibly be fit for work? It is an absolute disgrace and those Atos people should hang their heads in shame for what they are doing to these poor disabled people.

“They are supposed to be targeting the fraudsters, not killing off the genuine folk with their disgusting tactics. Even though my dad had another stroke just days before his assessment, he was determined to go. He tried his best to walk and talk because he was a very proud man, but even an idiot could have seen my dad wasn’t fit for work. He was under a great deal of stress the moment he was told about his assessment, and then after he got the letter telling him his benefits were being stopped he completely changed and he was very down. In the three weeks leading up to his death his fighting spirit was gone. I feel Atos caused my dad stress and unnecessary suffering which brought all this on and didn’t help. So they and David Cameron need to see the bigger picture and know their changes are killing genuine people like my dad. It has to stop before more people lose their lives. I decided to write to the Record to highlight my dad’s case. I know it won’t bring my dad back but maybe it will save some other family the loss of their loved-one.”

We spoke to Kieran, a pupil at Holy Cross High School in Hamilton, after receiving his letter. He told us: “Atos destroyed my dad. They knocked the stuffing out of him. He was always a fighter , but I knew he wouldn’t survive after he got that letter stopping his benefits. It completely changed him. He was stressed out about how he was going to live. No one should have to suffer like that. Atos should hang their heads in shame for what they have done to my dad and other genuinely disabled people. It is disgusting. I will never forgive them. I have not been able to grieve for my dad because I had so much anger inside me. I won’t be able to come to terms with my dad’s death until I get justice for him.”

Kieran said his parents split up years ago but were good friends. He saw his dad “all the time”. “I thought the world of him,” he added. “My last words to him were ‘I love you dad’ which gives me some comfort at least. Maybe I could accept his death a bit better if he had died of natural causes, but knowing that the stress of the Atos stuff killed him makes me sick to my stomach. I refuse to come to terms with it. He was very independent and wanted to live on his own. He had recently bought some disability aids to help him feed himself and was getting on with this life the best way he could. Me and my mum visited him all the time and helped him. He had great difficulty washing himself, getting dressed and feeding himself. He hated that he had to ask for help. He was a great dad and he was saving up to buy me a laptop for my Christmas, but after the terrible news from Atos I knew he would never see Christmas. My life seems empty now without my dad. I don’t know how I’m going to live without him. We were each other’s world.”

The Department for Work and Pensions said: “Our sympathy goes out to Mr McArdle’s family during what is obviously a very difficult time. Through employment and support allowance (ESA), we help people move from benefits and back into work if they are capable of doing so, while giving unconditional support to those who need it. A decision on whether someone is well enough to work is taken following a thorough face-to-face assessment, and after consideration of all the supporting medical evidence from the claimant’s GP or medical specialist. We encourage people to provide as much medical evidence as possible when they apply for ESA. Often, people found fit for work only provide the necessary evidence when they ask for a reconsideration or an appeal.”

Atos Healthcare said: “Our sympathies are with the friends and family of Mr McArdle. Although we cannot comment on individual cases, our trained doctors, nurses and physiotherapists strictly follow the guidelines given to them by the Government when conducting assessments, which form a single, although important, part of the process.”

Atos have raked in millions assessing ESA claimants. And despite fury over their methods, they won contracts worth £400million to assess disabled people for the new “personal independence payment” which replaces disability living allowance from next year. Secret papers revealed Atos could make £40million profit from the assessments in Scotland and the north of England. But after our campaign, they announced that they had sub-contracted the assessments in Scotland to an NHS agency. Opponents called it “a humiliating climbdown”.

The Wrong Pathway

This is what happens when you flog off the NHS to your mates and paymasters in the companies whose racket Obama is finally busting in their own country. People become refuse, to be disposed of.

Although The Orange Book, the basis of the May 2010 coup, is behind this, the Lib Dems have in their time provided one of this country's greatest ever pro-life MPs, right there in Liverpool.

In fact, there have been many, many staunchly pro-life MPs from that area. But most of them have come from a different party. It is not peculiarly a Scouse thing. John Smith was totally pro-life. Gordon Brown was and is very eloquently opposed to assisted suicide.

The present Shadow Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, is a practising Catholic who declined to back up Yvette Cooper's condemnation of Jeremy Hunt's expression of support for lowering the time limit on abortion to 12 weeks. Cooper's support came instead from David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

Save lives. Save life. Save, or restore, the National Health Service. You know what you have to do.

UKIP Died Last Night

UKIP has had 20 years, or as good as, to turn the Conservative Party into its own Eurosceptical fantasy of that party's past. It has failed miserably, and comments on certain websites make it perfectly clear that its supporters will now tell themselves anything in order to be able to go home to the federalist-as-ever "Tories" before they die.

Seats won is how we count these things in this country. UKIP has never won one. Not one. The Greens, also very anti-EU, have won one. Respect has won two, even if they have both been won by the same person, no friend of the EU. But UKIP has never even managed that. And for internal reasons, UKIP will be lucky to exist at all by 2015.

Ar ôl deng mlynedd ar hugain

It's wrong, isn't it? Just this once, I swear, blame Google Translate. I know, I'll be using Wikipedia next.

Google also gave me Ddeng mlynedd ar hugain ar, which I suspect might be even worse, merely "thirty years" and "on" shunted together. But you will have worked out by now that I am open to correction.

Anyway, the real point of this post is today's thirtieth birthday of S4C. That Gwynfor Evans threatened to go on hunger strike if the Thatcher Government reneged on its, and Labour's, 1979 commitment to a Welsh-language television channel recalls an age when the Conservatives saw much point in trying to win seats in Wales while Labour saw much point in trying to win them in rural areas, for where the two intersect is where Welsh is most commonly spoken.

Indeed, Evans had in 1979 lost his own rural, Welsh-speaking seat of Carmarthen to a Labour candidate who was at most a mild devolutionist. Earlier that year, Welsh-speaking Wales had voted No to devolution by the same enormous margin as English-speaking Wales. 20 years later, whereas the split by language ran and runs North-South, the split on devolution ran East-West. How the world turns. And how quickly.

But there is still the odd pocket of the old order. Ynys Môn, the most northerly seat in Wales and as solidly Welsh-speaking as its name suggests, was Conservative in 1982 and is now fought out between Plaid Cymru and Labour, with the latter currently holding the seat, and with the Conservatives in a respectable third place, especially since their vote increased very dramatically indeed last time.

If Labour recovers the rural Radicalism and the basically Nonconformist peace tradition that created it in the first place, then there are no no-go areas for it in 2015. In fact, of the areas that could thus be reached, the presence of Plaid Cymru make North, West and to an extent Mid Wales the hardest nuts to crack. The loss of the 2014 referendum on independence will have the SNP on the run. While the West Country and its hinterland are just there for the taking. So take them.

"Dissident Republicans"

If they were really any such thing, then they would be dead by now. The PIRA only grew because the OIRA let it, and then the OIRA only survived (which it did) because the PIRA eventually let it.

The failure of the "dissidents", not only to win, but even to contest the West Belfast by-election proved conclusively that Irish Republicanism no longer existed as a serious political force in Northern Ireland, rather than as an annual outlet for the mixture of adolescent levels of testosterone with alcohol and other intoxicants.

The former MP's election in County Louth is only because his party in the South long ago gave up anything more than the merest pretence of attachment to that cause.