Why your expensive home will make carers of your kids

The way in which society has been organised since the 1980s has meant that for all but the most able and determined young people without inherited wealth, will have the income they need to buy their own home.

The reasons for this are complex, but put simply, while building costs have risen because of a shortage of trained labour and resources being used up by rapidly developing countries, the main reason houses are so expensive is because successive governments have created a shortage of housing to artificially elevated house prices.

To achieve this shortage the first thing the government did was to sell off large chunks of the public housing stock. So worried we're they that those living in their Council House would be reluctant to part with housing security, they sold off the public assets at a discounted price. After a short while the responsibility for housing passed shifted away from from Local Authorities to private builders and landlords.

At the same time as selling off the publicly owned housing stock on the cheap, successive governments have further exacerbated the shortage of housing by making it easy for those that can afford it to buy as many houses as they like.

Demographic changes and out of control migration have played their part too, but engineering a housing shortage is the primary reason why young people are unable to buy a home of their own.

There is however, a silver lining in that as a consequence of government policy to keep property prices high, more people will now be forced to live at home until their 40s and 50s and will be available, therefore, to look after their elderly parents. Care that would otherwise have had to be funded by the state through Adult Social Care will increasingly be off-loaded to children of those too frail to look after themselves.

This hoodwinked generation, mesmerised by Social Media and the fantasy-world provided by their games consoles, may grow up to think otherwise, but it's a win-win for government and the elites they represent.

I'm arguing that the current housing crisis, rather than the supposed headache it's presented to be, will be a huge fiscal benefit to government because not only is government abrogating responsibility to house the population, they'll no longer have the cost to care for the elderly either.

In a democracy, we get the governments we deserve, but that doesn't mean that future generations won't feel conned by the governments that failed satisfy their basic need for shelter, or look after mum and dad when they get old.

Will AI allow us early retirement?

In the 1960s, politicians told us that technology would herald a leisure economy.  This didn't happen. Today, those in power are preaching the same message about AI and predict that robots will soon do our jobs so we don't have to.

If we take a step back, history teaches us a different lesson. Since the invention of the microchip, most people have had to work harder and longer to put a roof over their heads. This wasn’t how the technological age was sold to us was it? It would appear that those putting about such ideas, either lied to working people about the benefits of technology, or just got it wrong.

We must remember too, that the only thing that working men and women have to bargain with is their labour, so if robots can be programmed to work in their factories and farm their land, then the rest of us will be increasingly less useful to prospective employers,

Before pushing the AI button, however, those that own the country’s wealth have a problem. because at the moment, they are hopelessly unsure how far the technology should be allowed to go.  Too little consciousness and the robots won't be able to do the jobs they are predicted to be able to do, too much awareness and they will start making their own plans, that may or may not involve the ruling elite.   

We were told in the 60s by the then Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, that new technology would mean working less. The sound-bites of the day was "The White Heat of Technology and the Leisure Economy". Back in the real world, the consequences of new technologies is that when once a single person could afford to buy their own home on an working wage, it is now difficult for two or three working adults earning an average income to get on the property ladder.

The intelligence they call artificial may well alter the way we live, but don't be fooled that those that invest in the technology are doing so for the benefit of working men and women. They are sinking billions into AI so that robots and not humans, will do their chores, and fight their wars.  While the ruling elites plan your redundancy, the big issue for them is whether they are able to control the technology they crave as easily as they do their current human workforce.     

 

The debate around A1 is dressed up as an immeasurable benefit to mankind, whose champions pretend that it will mean humans will no need be to work.  Theoretically, for some this may well be true, but the practical reality is that the benefit of AI to you and me is dependent on who controls it.

As I write, the multi-national tech giants with money to burn, are engaged in a desperate scramble to see who can crack the AI code first.  This is where the danger lies.  In the race to be first, the tech-giants and the governments dependent on them, have lost sight of the probability that, if their technology is successful, robots, despite their fake intelligence, will be less easy to manipulate than we are.

 

There is little doubt, that one way or another, AI will provide benefits we may be allowed to share, but in the end, I believe it is extremely unlikely that AI will reduce the retirement age or make it easier for ours or future generations to rent or buy their own home, any more than the technological age of the 60s and 70s did.    

 

 

Death by a thousand contracts | Is the NHS being privatised under nurses noses?

Image by kind permission of: NHS Solidarity

Following the 1948 Public Health Act the Secretary of State for Health had a legal obligation to provide universal health care.  In 2012, by passing the Health and Social Care Act, the Coalition Government removed the duty to provide universal heath care and enshrined in law instead the right of the Secretary of State for Health to develope a marketised, insurance based healthcare system.  More than 10 years later and Drs and Nurses on the frontline tell us that the NHS is being privatised, contract-by-contract, right under their noses.

 

Professor Allyson Pollock is Director of the Institute of Health and Society

So where's the saving made when contracting out chunks of the NHS?  You'd think that for an organisation with such a fantastically well motivated staff, outsourcing would distraction from patient care and just add another tier of expensive management. On top of the extra cost of outsourcing healthcare, there's the reality that part of the money spent on buying in NHS services goes straight into the pockets of the private business owners that, quite naturally, want a slice of the action. 

While NHS managers, spend their days trying to decide between competing healthcare suppliers, sick patients are stuck in ambulances, or being treated in privately owned hospital car parks.  This must  be agonisingly difficult to endure day in day out, but this is what a marketised healthcare system looks like.  Privatisation of the NHS is unwanted, unnecessary and, worst of all, is failing the public miserably - but it doesn’t have to be like this.

If in 1948, after being bankrupted by two World Wars, the UK could afford to provide Universal Health Care, why is it today, as the sixth largest economy in the World after France, that we are told that the country can't afford to pay for a publicly run Health Service, or pay doctors and nurses properly?  

In 2023, while Doctors and Nurses are having to fight for better working conditions and a fair wage, Ministers continue to dismantle the NHS by systematically outsourcing healthcare contract-by-contract to private companies.  

The argument that the UK can't afford the NHS is a myth put about by free market ideologues as they  convince unwitting NHS managers that the only way to save the NHS is through the miracle of private enterprise.  NHS management, however, are torn between their belief in the provision of Universal Healthcare enshrined in the original 1948 Act and the certain knowledge their employment is dependent on the inexorable shift towards a marketised healthcare system that has removed by law the duty of the Secretary of State for Health to provide Universal Healthcare for all.  Without structural and political change, sadly, the future of the NHS looks increasingly bleak.

What Drs say about NHS funding since 2017
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The Department for Health and Social Care Perspective 

Why people will always need to protest

At the Tolpuddle Martyrs museum 2017 

Throughout history people have always had to fight for their rights, rights denied them by the ruling elite, whether those in power be emperors, Russian Tsars, French, or British monarchs, fascist dictators, or unelected EU Commissioners. 

Over time, and considerable struggle, people have achieved a great deal to overcome oppression. For example, the right not to be treated as property, as slaves were until the abolition of slavery in 1833. We also take it for granted today, but it really wasn't that long ago, that only the very wealthiest property owners were allowed to vote in general elections. Men with  urban property got the vote in 1867, while men without property over 21, had to wait until after the end of First World War in 1918 to be eligible to vote. Women without property, thanks to the Suffraget Movement, finally got the vote ten years later than men in 1928. Finally, under a Labour Government, Harold Wilson in 1969 made it possible for 18 year olds to decide who represents them in Parliament, and so the fight for democracy goes on. Today, 16 year olds, while old enough to work, get married and have children, are unable to vote.  It must be right that young people should have the chance to choose who makes the laws that they are expected to obey? Democracy, even now it seems, is work-in-progress.

As a consequence of past class struggles, men and women are now able to vote in general elections and choose, if they wish, to elect representatives that will demand a descent living wage, a proper education, universal health care and to be cared for when they get old. Progressive change would not have happened were it not for the 19th century liberal approach to politics, 20th century Socialism, or people making themselves heard by protest.

In the 21st century, it seems to me an enduring truth that there are two popular views of how people are governed: The Conservative way and the Labour way. The distinction is simple, the Conservative Party exists to look after and maintain the the interests of the owners capital, while the Labour Party's purpose is to protect the workers (the people that toil to create the country's wealth).  Both systems claim  to oppose the ill treatment and exploitation of human beings that existed in the past, and the opportunity to protest, helps ensure that people will never again be slaves. 

There is still much work to do and damaging  inequality still remains in the UK, so until the norm across society is fairness, justice and equality we should take care not to judge too harshly those that stick their neck out to try to make their lives better.

History of Slavery

History of Voting

Equal Franchise Act 1928

Labour's Manifesto 2017

UK Equality Trust

World Wealth Inequality

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When will there be a cure for Covid-19?

THERE IS NO CURE for the common cold and because that was caused by a previous version of Coronavirus, we have to consider the probability that a completely protective vaccine anytime soon is unlikely.   

Expert opinion varies from 18 months to 10 years (from Lab to Doctor's surgery) for a fully working vaccine, however, until it's thoroughly tested, the most effective way to dodge the disease is to starve the virus by keeping away from other people as much as we can.  So, in the short-run, if we keep as far away from potential carriers, wear face barriers (screens and masks), wash our hands and the surfaces where the virus lingers, we should be able to keep the virus within manageble limits.

According to W.H Allen, the author of: The Pandemic Century, and speaking in June 2020, scientists' working in Asia have identified 500 Coronaviruses (mainly in bats) and 50 of those have the potential to cause as much disruption and death as Covid-19. In the longer term, therefore, it's essential that scientists' working in epidemiology are properly funded and worldwide investment in health systems are sufficient to identify, then isolated animal-based Coronaviruses before they have a chance to spread.  

Vaccine Tracker

Is Coronavirus a wake-up call for humans not to eat exotic animals?

The practice in Asia of keeping live animals at market because some people like to buy "warm meat" is the probable cause of the current  pandemic. The market trader of wild animals slaughter and butcher the creatures there and then, which runs a risk of contamination. These zoonotic viruses then become human viruses, just as measles started in animals. In a global world we have to change how we farm and eat meat. Coronavirus is a wake-up call and thankfully, with a the death-rate currently running at rate at 2%, does not appear as great a health risk to humans as some others, e.g. Ebola, which has 50% death rate or Nipah virus that kills 70% of those exposed to it.

Hopefully, lessons will be learnt from the Corona experience and humans will now think twice before eating wild animals.

Referencing: Professor Andrew Cunningham (expert in zootonic diseases) after listening to him on the BBC Monday 16th March 2020.

How to avoid a second EU referendum

1. Take Remain off the table

2. Take No Deal off the table

3. Lock MPs in Parliament for 7 days with packed lunches until they do their job and decide what to do

4. If they can't agree then replace MPs with a general election

5. In the event of another Hung Parliament, Repeat stages 1 - 4 until a deal is agreed

6. Put the deal to EU

7. If the EU agree to the deal

BREXIT DONE

8. If EU are unable to agree - walk away without a deal and do deals after Brexit