Aasof’s Reflections

Monday February 15: My Facebook Page provided a link to a reprise from January 17 2014 The National Insurance Fund. Even the post war Labour government found themselves with an unaffordable National Health Service (NHS) and an even more unaffordable national pension scheme despite their 1946 National Insurance Act and proposed prescription charges through the 1949 NHS Amendment Act. The 1942  Beveridge Social Insurance and Allied Services report has never been implemented as was intended and politicians of all persuasions now plunder National Insurance Contributions (NICs) for political gain.

Tuesday February 16: A reprise from September 2 2008 — Welfare and Unemployment pointed to the deceit behind New Labour’s claim to an economic miracle in their manipulation of statistical data. Unemployment was redefined rather than reduced. As the unemployment rate went down, disability cases rose. Britain had more than 2.5 million non-employed adults of working age who claimed sickness-related benefits. This total questioned the contemporary perceptions of the UK labour market and indicated a high level of hidden unemployment.

Wednesday February 17: A reprise from June 27 2009 — The party of inequality. Fortunately for New Labour and Gordon Brown, in 2009 The Telegraph had broken the story on MPs expenses. From this point on, any other reports about the systemic failures of the New Labour administration were lost amongst the chaff of the expenses furore.

Thursday February 18: A reprise from April 10 2010 — The Faustian Pact in which Nic Cohen stated that it was rare to find the causes for a national disaster encapsulated in the dull prose of an obscure measure, contending that New Labour’s Faustian pact with capitalism led to the financial crisis. The 2001 Financial Services and Markets Act required the Financial Services Authority not to discourage the launch of new financial products and to avoid erecting regulatory barriers that hindered the international mobility of the financial business and damaged the UK‘s competitiveness.

Friday February 19: A reprise from January 23 2011 — The debt we’re in or ‘How Labour cooked the Nation’s Books to fund its welfare programme’.

The following video is part of Prime Minister Callaghan’s speech at the Labour Party conference in 1976. His remonstrations fell on deaf ears and was followed by The Winter Of Discontent in which public sector employee strike actions included many unofficial strikes. Additionally, NHS ancillary workers formed picket lines to blockade hospital entrances with the result that many hospitals were reduced to taking emergency patients only. All of which were a result of the unions rejecting a Labour government’s attempt to control inflation by limiting public sector pay rises to below 5%.