PROTECT MEDICAL CONFIDENTIALITY NOW

     Some of you will remember the fight to provide patients with rights over the NHS Summary Care Records back in 2006-7. Though the vast majority of GPs and the public opposed the uploading of patients' information without explicit consent, the Department of Health pushed on regardless, uploading the details of anyone* who failed to respond to a single letter. Now the Department is bribing health authorities across the UK to do a massive mailshot to patients. Fail to respond to a single letter and your personal details - including sensitive medical information, such as your last 6 months' prescriptions - will be permanently uploaded to the NHS spine.

    We'd like to know when and where these mailshots are going, as we suspect that the Department of Health is still trying to pull a fast one. If you receive one of the mailshots, which should contain a leaflet entitled 'Changes to your health records', and it DOESN'T contain a copy of the opt out form then please get in touch with us via office@no2id.net

    Latest info indicates that mailshots could already be going out to parts of London and the East of England, with health authorities in the North West, North East, and Yorkshire and Humber to follow in coming weeks. It would be helpful if you could indicate the region in which you live when you contact the office. --

*Anyone, that is, who had not already got their GP to put a 'stop code' on their medical record using the NHS Confidentiality Campaign's opt out letter - which you can still send, if you haven't done so already:

http://www.nhsconfidentiality.org/optoutletter


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I WANT TO BELIEVE!

I WANT TO BELIEVE!

I want to believe

All that is good is out there

Sleeping in hearts that live in dark valleys,

About to blossom like some magic woodland,

In spite of war, in spite of greed

The essence that is humanity struggling to be free.

All around death arrives in many guises,

Silent as the frost poverty kills,

The ruthless march of war

With every drum beat seeks God’s blessing,

While the God fearing kill the God fearing,

Slaughter in the name of the greater good.

I want to believe

All that is good is out there

Sleeping in the hearts that live in dark valleys

About to blossom like some magic woodland,

Not just as the dream of poets.

 

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" A DEVIOUS PLAN"??

   The British state in conjuction wth a load of others has decided on a grand plan to get out of Afghanistan and claim a victory. As Boldrick would say, "They have a devious plan." They are going to give that honest broker President Karzai a pot of gold, £87 million to shell out to young "low level" Taliban. The deal will be come and get a job with us and we will give some of the slush fund. I wonder what the average British and American soldier will think when this young "low level" Taliban who was responsible for killing, let's say, two Americans and one British soldier is offered a pot of gold to come into their camp and do the odd job, or perhaps get his college fees paid, courtesy of the US and British governemnts. Ah, but we all know that is the way the state works, your life is just a bargaining chip in their grand plan of things. Busines is business as the say.

FOREIGN POLICY.

Listless eyes, lifeless face

motionless body with hanging limbs

carried by a mother fleeing

foreign policy’s vicious whims.

No toys, no laughter

no playing in the sun,

a short pitiful life;

an Afghan child, 2001.

No plans, no choices

no hope by any name,

collateral damage

in the big players game.

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WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR COMMONS?

http://www.scottishcommons.org/

     They were stolen. Here is what Professor Cosmo Innes (1798-1874), the famous advocate and Professor of Constitutional Law and History in this Department wrote in his book, Scotch Legal Antiquities: - “Looking over our country, the land held in common was of vast extent. In truth, the arable - the cultivated land of Scotland, the land early appropriated and held by charter - is a narrow strip on the river bank or beside the sea. The inland, the upland, the moor, the mountain were really not occupied at all for agricultural purposes, or served only to keep the poor and their cattle from starving. hey were not thought of when charters were made and lands feudalised. Now as cultivation increased, the tendency in the agricultural mind was to occupy these wide commons, and our lawyers lent themselves to appropriate the poor man’s grazing to the neighbouring baron. They pointed to his charter with its clause of parts and pertinents, with its general clause of mosses and moors - clauses taken from the style book, not with any reference to the territory conveyed in that charter; and although the charter was hundreds of years old, and the lord had never possessed any of the common, when it cam to be divided, the lord got the whole that was allocated to the estate, and the poor cottar none. The poor had no lawyers.”

   Now here in the 21st. century they are still at it, selling off and stealing the peoples' common goods. Do we need lawyers to take back what was stolen from us???

 

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REJOICE, THE RECESSION IS OVER!!!!

       We are all supposed to rejoice at the news that the recession is officially over. Of course unemployment will continue to rise as the corporate world streamlines for what it sees as “difficult” times ahead. The mountain sized bailout is still there, it still has to be paid for and that’s where you and I come in, we are expected to pay for it. The main political parties are arguing over just where to cut and by how much. Rest assured that there will be massive cuts in social spending, that translates into cut benefits and less jobs.

      We can accept this attack on our living standards by meekly holding out the begging bowl and pleading for some lousy job with no security and crap wages, so as to ensure that the privileged parasites can get their greed feast going in full gear once more. Or we can take what is rightfully ours, everything we produce. We the ordinary people built everything on the planet, we mined every piece of ore, we smelted every piece of metal, we made every piece of machinery. We grew every oat, apple, potato and banana and we transported them across the globe. It is our world, we have earned it by sweat and blood through generations, it doesn’t belong to the parasites. It’s time to take it all back rather than crawl for a hand-out from those parasites who produce nothing but power and privilege for their own class at our expense.

    In stead of protests and strikes we could start with more occupations, more of locking the bosses out, more taking what is ours and more control of our lives. The first step is collective seizure/management of workplaces, but the next step has to be to dismantle the relationships between the various enterprises, radically transforming them to be part of the community. The inherent relationship in the way capitalism and industry have set things up has an inbuilt value structure that must be destroyed, otherwise workers' self-management could function simply as a form of emergency management of failing capitalist enterprises, to be once more engulf in the capitalist value structure in a renewed and invigorated capitalism. The goal is for collective democratic management tied into the community and working in federation and solidarity with other like projects with the aim of expanding, depriving capitalism of its necessary growth and consumers. The bigger the capitalist crisis, the greater our opportunity to recreate society in the shape we desire.

 

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WORKERS, KNOW YOUR HISTORY.

   

    In a quiet cemetery in Abercrombie Street in the East End of Glasgow, you’ll find the memorial in the photograph above. It was raised to the memory of the six weavers shot in 1787 by the military at Drygate near Glasgow Cathedral. Their crime? They were part of a protest march making its way to the Cathedral in support of a wage increase. Then, as of now, the city officials, the military and the judiciary put 100% support behind the employers. They had no hesitation in using what ever power they had at their disposal.

     In this type of society nothing changes. The harshest of treatment is still handed out to strikers and protesters while the employers are protected by the powers of the state. If we jump forward a couple of hundred years to the 1980’s they were still at it with the brutal and harshest of treatment handed out to the striking miners during the Thatcher era.

   This is what they call democracy, a system where the employers can exploit the workers with the protection of all the power of the state but a demand for a decent living can be met with all the force of the state.

    Today’s struggles are linked to all those struggles of the past and we should learn the lessons. It is the workers against the state and the employers. They fight to keep their privileges and power, while we struggle to get a decent living. The two are incompatible it is either their privilege at our expense, or a decent living for all with the end to the power and privilege of the parasites.

 

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ATTEMPT TO BAN PROTEST OUTSIDE BLAIR INQUIRY

       Negotiations between the police and Stop the War broke down today when it became clear that the government is trying to hide our legitimate peaceful protest from Tony Blair when he gives evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on Friday. After days in which we were told by the police that they would try to facilitate our protest, Stop the War has been told we will not be allowed to protest on the grass outside the QEII Conference Centre. This is a denial of our democratic rights and Stop the War will now call for the widest possible mobilisation, not just to express the majority view in this country that Tony Blair should be held to account for war crimes, but in defence of  the right to protest.

      Why should the public be denied the right to peaceful protest, particularly when the latest evidence given to the Chilcot Committee shows beyond doubt that Tony Blair knew he was taking Britain into an illegal war, and that he doctored legal advice to deceive his Cabinet, Parliament and the British public.

     Stop the War is calling on all its supporters, local groups and affiliated organisations to mobilise the widest possible support for the Blair protest on Friday. We urge everyone who can to join the demonstration at the QEII Conference Centre from 8am. Full details for the planned events are here: http://bit.ly/8mKM0T

Spread the word as widely as you can among your family, friends, work colleagues, fellow students etc, etc

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Some Democracy???

      The politicians and the media always spout that we live in a democracy yet the shallowest look at the structure of our society makes it blindingly obvious that this is the big lie. Politicians are an elite, drawn from the minority group, the middle or upper class. All that is presented to us on a political level from politicians and the media is controlled and represented by the middle class and on the odd occasion, the upper class.        When, on the odd occasion, a working class person becomes an MP, they must convert to middle class behaviour. Working class individuals who join the political/media parasite club and don’t modify their accents and mannerism to conform to that of the middle/upper class, are ridiculed. In the recent BBC’s “Question Time”, January 14, Ken Clarke stated that class was no longer an issue in Britain. This was said without a smile or a giggle, in spite of the fact the he and the other three members of the panel and the chairman were all from that small privileged group of 7%, the “public school boys” and no doubt part of the old boys network.

      How can they claim it is a democracy when the vast majority of the top civil servants, (70%) are also drawn from the small 7% of the population that are public school privileged. These are the people that advise the middle class club that is our government of the day, on policies. Are they likely to come up with any policies that will damage their privileged position in society? As a group they are completely out of touch with the ordinary working class people of this country and can never really understand the problems and conditions faced by the working class. They will always legislate to make sure that the privileged class of parasites that they belong to will stay in that position at the expense of the majority. In this society wealth buys privilege and power, that allows you to put your kids into that small elite 7% of public school educated individuals who go on to safeguard the privileges of their class by filling all the top positions in the political and media field. Under these conditions it is impossible to have a democracy.

 

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Timeless comment.

Some things are timeless and Hicks is as relevant today as he was when alive, just enjoy, a giggle never does any harm.    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkZQ2Fx1j9E  

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Section 44 must go, says SACC

     Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC) welcomes Tuesday's ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that Stop and Search powers under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 breach Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to respect for a private life). SACC says that Section 44 of the Terrorism Act should now be repealed.

   The judgement concerned a case brought by Kevin Gillan and Pennie Quinton, who were stopped by police while their way to a demonstration at an arms fair held in London in September 2003. However, the judgement was framed in very general terms and it seems almost certain that any use at all of Section 44 stop and search powers would be similarly in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

   Section 44 allows police to search people for items that could be used in connection with terrorism, without needing to have any reasonable grounds for suspicion. The searches can only be carried out in areas where authorisation for them has been granted. Most people are unlikely to know whether a particular place is in such an area or not, and police and the Government are secretive about these authorisations. The Strasbourg judges ruled that the stop and search power itself and the authorisation process "are neither sufficiently circumscribed nor subject to adequate legal safeguards against abuse."

    SACC has long argued that Section 44 stop and searches are unjust and arbitrary. We are glad that the European Court agrees with us. Any police force that continues to search people under Section 44 will be skating on very thin legal ice indeed. There is no need for arbitrary stop and search powers of this sort. Where police have reasonable suspicions about someone they have perfectly adequate search powers without relying on Section 44.

     Parliament should act urgently to clear up this mess by repealing Section 44. It needs to respect both the letter and the spirit of the Strasbourg ruling. MPs need to resist any Government attempt to re-bake Section 44 in a rights-proof form. When the Law Lords outlawed the arbitrary powers of detention contained in the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, the Government devised its bizarre control orders scheme in order to evade the ruling. This obstinacy lead to a catalogue of injustice and litigation. We don't want that to be repeated. We need a clean break. We need Section 44 to go.

     116 section 44 stop and searches were carried out by Scotland's regional police forces in 2007, 1376 were carried out in 2008 and 878 from 1 January to 31 August 2009, according to a statement made last September by justice minister Kenny MacAskill. The number of section 44 stop and searches carried out by British Transport Police in Scotland is unknown. 117,278 section 44 stop and searches were carried out in England and Wales in the year 2007/8.

      Section 44 stop and searches haven't prevented a single act of terrorism. All they have done is signal to Muslims they are the target of police suspicion (since they are disproportionately likely to be searched), signal to other communities that Muslims are to be regarded as suspicious (since they are observed being searched), and to promote amongst everyone an exaggerated fear of terrorism.

      SACC will continue to campaign for the repeal not only of Section 44 but of the whole of the Terrorism Act 2000, which manufactures injustice and fear in many other ways besides those considered in the Strasbourg ruling.

Notes
1. The Strasbourg ruling in the case of Gillan and Quinton v. the United Kingdom, can be read in full at http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view.asp?action=html&documentId=860909&portal=hbkm&source=externalbydocnumber

2. Figures for Section 44 Stop and Search in Scotland can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/default.aspx?pq=S3W-26459

3. More about stop and search in Scotland at http://www.sacc.org.uk/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=422&catid=44

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Community Action.

    Extract from BBC, more here 

   " Parents at a closure-threatened primary school in North Lanarkshire have occupied the building and are refusing to leave. Four women are staging the sit-in at St Matthew’s Primary in Wishaw. They are angry at proposals by North Lanarkshire Council which could see the school shut, along with three others in the region. The council said education officials were going to St Matthew’s to in a bid to resolve the situation. The protesters told BBC Scotland they had sleeping bags and food and were determined to remain in the school. A public consultation on the school closures is due to end on Friday.

      Parents at the other threatened primaries – Belvidere in Bellshill, Gartsherrie in Coatbridge and St Francis of Assisi, Cumbernauld – have also staged protests, held meetings and arranged petitions in a bid to keep the schools open."
   Where possible support should be shown by turning up at the school to boost morale, donating food etc. and picketing council offices. The communities belong to the people who live there, not a bunch of town planners who live elsewhere.   

 

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A Call for Solidarity.

Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, the only serving British soldier refusing to fight in Afghanistan, was released from the Military Correction Training Centre in mid December and is now awaiting the legal hearings prior to his court martial. The initial legal arguments will be heard on Friday 29 January. The army has decided that the hearing will be held at Bulford Camp , about 10 miles from Andover, probably because it thinks holding it in Wiltshire will diminish media coverage. Stop the War will be organising transport to go to Bulford to give support to Joe on the day of his first court martial hearing. If you would be interested in going, please inform the Stop the War office:

Call 020 7801 2768 or email office@stopwar.org.uk.

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State insanity.

    The British state moves with steady stealth at introducing compulsory ID cards to enable you to access practically all transactions, banking, social benefits, doctors, and all aspects of our National Health Service, not to mention libraries etc. inspite of widespread opposition from all sections of society, the knowledgable in these matter and the lay person. Apart from the problems that would be created if some of the information on you card was wrong and the fact that the information could be compromised as it shuttles between the various institutions, there is the problem of mass errors when cards are produced.

     A little glimpse of this is happening in Germany at this moment in time. On the 1st. January 2010 over 30 million holders of bank cards in Germany found that they could not withdraw cash from their accounts nor could they make any purchases with their cards. The problem is still there at the date of his post. The problem, a fault in the chip, the estimated cost of putting it right, approximately $432 million. Of course retailers are considering sueing for the lost business which will of course add to the cost. Perhaps the Germans are lucky, it was just cash and purchases that were involved. If however it had been the British "super" ID card, that could have been 30 million people locked out of medical treatment and health care, prescriptions, benefit cash, as well as their bank accounts.

     Only the paranoid, authoritarian, control crazy state apparatus would push such an insane scheme knowing the possible chaos and life threatening situations that could arise under such conditions.

     Let's not drop the drive for a mass anti-ID card movement. Don't believe any of the crap coming from the government on this matter, no matter what they say, they are intent on getting these life threatening cards into everybodies wallet.

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BREAKING OUT OF THE ILLUSION.

        As anybody who has even a miniscule awareness of history knows capitalism has never delivered what its proponants declared it would, prosperity for all. In developed capitalist countries it has created wealth for a privileged few, struggle for the majority and poverty for the remainder. Its "mission statement" is an illusion.

      We are all aware of the endemic poverty in the "poor countries" the "Tthird World", most of it, if not all, due to international captalism.

      However, for capitalism's failings we need look no further than its "successes". In the world's biggest and richest economies, the developed capitalist economies, the proof that even at its highest developed level, the system of capitalism can't deliver prosperity for all.

     In America, that pinnacle of capitalism, we see its glaring flaws and failings. according to recent figures, one in eight Americans now receive food stamps, with 6 million of them claiming to have no other form of income. 25% of children in America are fed on food stamps. Added to that is the fact that 1.2 million children live in homes with no income.

   Japan, that other juggernaut of the capitalist eceonomy can boast of approximately 10,000 people sleeping on the streets of Tokyo, with thousands more renting a "cubicle", not much bigger than a coffin, in the cities "Capsule Hotels". These places are fast becoming one step away frm the street.

   Some capitalist ecomomists are proclaiming they have to make it worse for the many, insisting that governments must cut social spending to allow the money grabbers to start their greed feast all over again. While others state, the only formula to get the economy growing again is to cut social benefits and lower wages. Obviously the survival of the system is more important than the well being of the people.

   Under these conditions the people have the right to defend themselves by whatever means possible. That doesn't mean marching in an orderly fashion to some government building and asking to be employed in some lousy job for a crap wage.

   We have a better imagination than that, we can break out of the capitalist illusion. We can take control and shape society to see to the needs of all our people, instead of pandering to a greedy bunch of shareholders and financiers.

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CLASS WAR

       Recent statements from the representatives of the parasite group such as Tessa Jowell's statement "Most people don't give a thought from one day to the next whether Eton exists." and "Class war for votes is not our plan." and Cameron ridiculing any talk of clas war, is how the parasite class would like us to think.

        However make no mistake the class war is in full swing with the parasite class plundering public resources and being "bailed-out" with workers money. According to the parasites, there is no class war when  they take from us, it is only labelled class war "nonesenses" when we complain.

         As for Eton and other institutions of privilege that support the parasites, perhaps we should take note of some figures. Although private education of young people only accounts for approximately 7% of the population, they go on to fill around 50% of places at the top universities. Then move on to account for 75% of judges,  70% of finance directors, 45% of top civil servants and let's not forget, 32% of MPs. From these positions they shape society to guarantee victory for the parasites in what they know to be a class war. In this society private education is the bricks and cement  of the class system, it perpetuates privilege and poverty.

       In the near future we will be expected to pay for the parasites "bail-out". We will be expected to quietly and with subservience accept higher unemployment, lower wages and pensions, accompanied with drastic cuts  in social services. those who resist will be demonised and called destructive, trouble makers, hooligans, extremists, etc..

        It is only if we accept that we are in a class war and take steps to organise accordingly can we hope to  turn the tide. We must organise to take control in the community and work-places, to take back all that is ours, and that is all production and distribution. The bigger the crisis in the capitalist system the greater our opportunity to create a society based on mutual aid and co-operation freed from the greed and profit motive of this system of privilege and exploitation.

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