More UK Government Harassment Of Diabetics

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I have Type 1 diabetes which comes about because of a disease or a failure in the body, typically before middle age rather than Type 2 which tends to arise from obesity or old age.  For some reason the current government is particularly hostile to diabetics.  As I noted in 2013 we are treated as if we are drug abusers and if involved in a car accident that was not out fault we can be arrested and the perpetrator let off: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/diabetic-driver-discrimination.html   The difficulty the police have with diabetics was re-emphasised recently as new laws are coming against drugged driving.  Diabetics are being told to carry medical 'evidence' or face being arrested as if we were abusing heroin or cocaine.  This is ironic because, unlike drug abusers, diabetics are highly aware that with care they can maintain good health and prolong their lives, so they tend to safety-minded rather than reckless.  In one step, however, people with a disability (diabetes has been considered a disability legally since 2005 in the UK) are now assumed to be on the same level as criminal and drug abusers.  I might as well have a letter from my doctor tattooed on to my body to ensure that even if I am beaten unconscious by the police who decide to stop me, the medical evidence cannot be lost.

Anyway, today's posting is about something slightly different.  Britain has long been proud of its state-run health service and its welfare system.  However, there has long been a concern that provision should only go to 'deserving people' and that both run the risk of abuse from 'scroungers' and 'fiddlers'.  Diabetes is one of ten conditions which means you get free prescriptions.  The reason for this is that I take four injections per day of two types of insulin and I take four other sets of tablets.  Each prescription lasts me twenty-eight days (when the doctor gets it right, sometime they only prescribe a fortnight's worth).  At the current rate of £8.05 per item I would be spending £629 (US$968; €849) per year just on the medicines, this does not include the needles for the two insulin injectors or the blood test strips which tell me my blood sugar levels and which I have to use 30 minutes before every time I drive and then every 2 hours of a journey, so getting through a pack of 50 a week very easily.  An acquaintance of mine in the USA has to keep down a good job to fund his Type 1 diabetes and it eats into the money he has for rent and food, the costs there are so high.  The UK prescription charge is a fixed rate not what I would have to pay to buy this medication and appliances on the open market.

With the drive of the coalition government to reduce public expenditure to the level of the 1930s they are incessantly trying to hunt down and charge people who are defrauding the system, that is unless they are high salary tax avoiders or bankers.  Today Diabetes UK reported that many legitimate diabetics were being fined for apparently trying to defraud the NHS (National Health Service) by claiming exemptions from prescription charges.  It was stated in the news that most of those affected were people diagnosed before 2000 when the need to renew your exemption certificate every five years was introduced.  Before them you had a certificate for life because at present Type 1 diabetes is incurable.  The NHS Business Services Authority said it was down to the individuals to make sure that they complied with the rules as they now stood.  What was neglected on the news was that even people who do still face fines.

I have had Type 1 diabetes since the 1980s.  In 2000 I was told by my pharmacy in East London that they could no longer serve me without an exemption card so I got one and have renewed it every five years since.  I have a current one at the moment.  However, even this has not spared me for receiving a fine of £96.60 (US$148; €130).  The letter was very threatening and starts from the assumption that you are guilty.  There is only a tiny section which tells you how to contest the charge laid against you.  If you do not pay within a month they add another £48-50 on to the fine.  Obviously I rushed to contest the fine, though of course they were not there on the weekends.  They finally admitted that they were wrong. 

Apparently the problem arose because they had an old address for me and that did not match the one I was now using.  I asked them how it came about that they did not have my latest address.  Every time I move house I have to register with a local doctor and from there my new address goes on to my NHS file and is not only used by the local surgery but also hospitals in the surrounding area so that they can call me for associated checks on my eyes, my feet and my diet.  I could not understand why they did not receive the same information as I had been at this address for seven months already.

It turns out that the NHS Business Services Authority is not connected to the NHS records system so every time you move you have to inform them separately.  All they do is compare fee-exempt prescriptions coming in against a list they hold and if something does not match then they send out a fine.  What this seems to be is a private company doing something for the government as so often is the case these days.  It does not bother with the processes in place and simply applies its own rules, funding itself from the fines it gathers.

There is a further unpleasant aspect to the Business Services Authority's approach and that it utterly disparages the staff working in pharmacies.  As I collect a prescription from mine every two to four weeks, I am well known in there.  However, every time I go in, I have to produce my exemption card and it is checked by the staff even before they accept my prescription.  Clearly however the Business Services Authority has absolutely no trust in the assiduousness or the capabilities of the pharmacy staff even when dealing with patients they are very familiar with.  Their whole approach is an insult to these professionals.

One can imagine that similar cases will come forward from those with one of the other nine conditions that have been treated in the same way.  I do fear that given this government has overseen two steps to harass diabetics what will happen in the next five years if the Conservatives are even part of the government let alone if they have a majority.  This is despite Prime Minister David Cameron having had a disabled son.  What will he next steps be?  To ban diabetics from driving even though no-one has shown any evidence that they are any great risk and certainly not more than the speeding Clarkson-wannabes who apparently are in full health?  Will the next Prime Minister choose to follow the path of Winston Churchill in the 1900s and seek the sterilisation of those deemed to be at risk of 'sullying' the Great British blood?  By 2020 will I find myself at a risk of not simply an unwarranted fine but a summons to an institution to house me where I will never return from and will be lost to 'complications'.  Remember the Nazi regime killed 70,000 disabled people even before they started the Second World War.  Diabetes is an 'unseen' disability so if people with it are suffering harassment what can be expected for those with more visible conditions?

P.P. 24/03/2015 - The Penalties
Just to sum up how horrendous the prejudice is against diabetics these are the penalties now in force that I will suffer as a Type 1 diabetic if someone decides to crash into me.  In contrast, they may walk away with absolutely no penalty.  This comes from the UK government official website:

"Prescription medicines

It’s illegal in England and Wales to drive with legal drugs in your body if it impairs your driving."

However, if you are involved in an accident that was not your fault they still can arrest you as if it was, because as a Type 1 diabetic you are no longer considered to be like normal people.

"If you’re convicted of drug driving you’ll get:

• a minimum 1 year driving ban
• an unlimited fine
• up to 6 months in prison
• a criminal record

Your driving licence will also show you’ve been convicted for drug driving. This will last for 11 years."

So all I need to spend time in prison and get a criminal record is to have one of those Clarkson-deluded speeders shunt me.  If this is not discrimination against a minority, I do not know what is.

Public Sector Staff Cuts: Impact on the Ground

We have been told by the coalition government that in tackling its key objective of reducing the UK's deficit the whole public sector, bar the National Health Service and international development, but including the Armed Forces, will face a minimum of 25% cuts in staffing and perhaps as high as 40% in the next five years.  Before I proceed, if you are interested in where I get my figures from see: http://www.civilservant.org.uk/numbers.pdf  and the reports from the Local Government Association (LGA): http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/5826934 and http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/11637001 

I noted in a recent posting the size of different sections of the UK public sector.  It employs a little over 4.5 million people, only 16% of the UK workforce.  The thing is, when you speak about 1.1 million people losing their jobs by the end of 2015, it is difficult to comprehend what that will mean to you.  Of course, we could simply put every teacher and every social worker in the UK out of work and that would still only have removed about 490,000 people from the public sector.  There are 225,000 administrative civil servants, people working on the kind of grade that you meet if you go into a job centre or your local tax office.  In fact the Department of Work and Pensions and HM Revenue & Customs (which handles tax) take up 49.5% of national civil servants between them.  Defence has a further 15.8% and 'Justice' has 17.1%.  As it is, even if you took out every single administrative civil servant working for all national department (as opposed to local government departments) and added these to all the teachers and social workers, you would still be at only 615,000 and would be looking for another around 500,000 people to lay off.  This means you could also remove all of the 217,500 executive grade civil servants, so the people who manage your job centre or benefit office or are the actual tax inspectors and still would need another 280,000 redundancies.

Of course, the government will not expect the full weight of cuts to come from the national civil service, but also from local authority bodies too.  There are 34,400 people working in libraries in the UK, many part-time.  So you could close every single public library in the UK without making more than a minimal impact on the figure the government is aiming for.  Of course, selling off the books, computers, buildings and the land would help a little towards the deficit.  Getting rid of all of the 5,800 trading standards officers, all 38,000 housing welfare officers, all 8,000 school crossing patrol staff, all 15,000 nursery school nurses and 9,000 playgroup leaders, all 36,000 people working in refuse collection and recycling, every one of the 11,800 people who work in public theatres, galleries and museums, all of the 66,700 people who work in every public swimming pool and leisure centre, so closing all of these things down, still does not take us to the desired total.  Yet, even wiping out all of these jobs will mean no refuse collection, no sports or cultural facilities, no state schools, no social workers, no playgroups that are not in private, profit-making hands.  The government says these positions will be taken over by the private sector, so you will have to pay to have your refuse removed and to sign up to a private sports centre if you want to swim.  As for social work who is supposed to take this on?  The new poor houses?  I know back in the 1980s there was talk of 'Victorian values' but purging the public sector of so many jobs will plunge us back into that kind of society.

Of course, rather than take out whole sectors, national departments and the local authorities will carve chunks off individual sections and will hope the remaining staff can continue to deliver as good a service as before.  There is a belief that there is so inefficiency in the public sector that the remaining 75% staff will be able to increase their efforts by a third (not a quarter, think about it; 25% is a third of 75%) to lift their output back to just 100% of the current level.  As it is, there is a shortage of social workers and we have had extensive recruitment campaigns, now we are scheduled to lose a quarter of those we currently have.  Of course, there will be more children dying unprotected by social workers.  They are stretched now, it will get worse.  Of course, in the government's view this is a worthwhile sacrifice to pay back the loan that kept the wealthy bankers afloat.  Another thing, with all these teachers, social workers and librarians being out of work, who is going to process their unemployment claims and benefits with job centres having lost 1 in 4 of their staff?

Big numbers of thousands and millions of people are often difficult to assess, so I will finish off looking at a human-level example.  There is a primary school at the end of my road.  It is a very popular school, so for the 60 places each year there are at least 90 applicants.  It covers the school years from Reception (i.e. Year 0, though given the connotations of that name it is not called that) for children 4+ through Years 1-6 with children leaving aged 11-12.  There are two classes, each of 30 pupils, in each year so it has a total of 420 pupils.  Each class has at least one teacher and classroom assistant usually to help children with learning difficulties.  Some classes have two part-time teachers.  There is also the deputy-head and head, the former also does some teaching.   There is one caretaker for two sites and about six administrators.  So, I estimate about 45 staff for the whole school.  Now, remove a quarter of these, say, 11 staff.  You could remove most of the 14 classroom assistants.  You could take out all the teachers for years 0-4 and one from Year 5.  You certainly could close down the Reception year and take children at 5 as was the case when I started, but then how do you reach the government targets for children's achievement.  You could combine the classes, but that is not permitted and no school has room to have 60 children in a class.  You could only accept 30 children, but then where do the remainder go, given that every other school in the district will be facing similar cuts?  We are lucky that this is not a rural area and there is a choice of schools.  I suppose the government would argue that you could shave more staff from local authority running of schools, but it seems impossible that that could spare every teacher.  Even taking out just 5 staff from a school of this size would disrupt its working; teachers will have to do their own administration as well as teach and prepare and mark.

Of course, these grass roots challenges, as this single example makes clear, are of absolutely no personal interest to government ministers, their children go to fee-paying schools so will be exempt from any cut backs.  This means that ordinary children in the UK who coming through the school system in 2011-15 will be in more crowded classrooms with fewer teachers and poorer equipment will be further disadvantaged than they are now.  The number of working class people going to university has not risen since 2002 and adult learning has slumped since the mid-2000s.  The coalition government's policies seem to be driving yet another step towards Victorian style division in which the rich can afford to benefit from opportunities and the rest of us have to scrabble around for what we and our children can get.  This is far more sinister than it is being portrayed in the media.  People still talk of the blight for the generation that grew up in the 1980s in Britain and it is clear that such a disadvantage is going to be imposed on the children and others of the 2010s.

Flush Out Parliament

In terms of democracy the British have often had a patronising attitude to states where the political system seems to be corrupt.  Of course, with only half of our parliament elected, we have little ground to stand on when commenting on democracy anyway.  However, as the suspension of three former ministers yesterday Stephen Byers, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon because of their 'lobbying' activities shows that we have no basis on which to criticise foreign political systems when ours is so clearly corrupt.  Parliament is very good at keeping its dirty secrets secret, but occasionally evidence comes out.  Back in 1994-6 we had the 'cash for questions' scandal that MPs Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith, in connection with Ian Greer's lobbying company,  had received payments in order to ask specific questions in the House of Commons.  Other MPs were subsequently criticised by the Nolan Committee for behaving in the same way. 

Starting last year we had a whole string of allegations against MPs who had been doing various dubious things with their expenses, in particular around their second homes, supposedly to allow them to attend parliament more easily.  This followed rumbling complaints against certain MPs from both the Labour and Conservative parties, in 2007-8.  It included ministers like Ed Balls and Jacqui Smith.  In 2009 a whole raft of 'fiddles' by numerous politicians came to light.  The scandal compelled Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin and Jacqui Smith, Geoff Hoon, Hazel Blears, Tony McNulty and Kitty Ussher all resigning their ministerial positions.  A number of Conservatives involved, Andrew McKay, Douglas Hogg, Anthony Steen, Sir Peter Viggers, Sir Nicholas Winterton and Lady Ann Winterton (how come a married couple can both be MPs anyway, is that not wrong in itself?), Christopher Frasier and Ian Taylor all said they would stand down from parliament either immediately or at the next election.  Last night the BBC News Channel gave details of 20 MPs, many of them Labour ones, who have regularly received free holidays in places like Gibraltar, Cyprus, the Maldives and Sri Lanka and then have tabled motions and asked questions in parliament for the benefit of those territories/countries.

The saying is that 'power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely'.  This is why during John Major's terms of office it was the Conservatives who were most prominent in having corrupt MPs and now it is Labour who is at the forefront in such illegal behaviour.  It seems that numerous MPs and ministers, tens of them, have been involved in taking gifts and payments in order to exert influence on the behalf of vested interests.  Stephen Byers was seen likening himself to a taxi, available to exert influence in exchange for payments.  Has Byers never realised what the concept of prostitution is? Stephen Byers is a prostitute.  He does not give sexual favours, but he gives himself entirely in exchange for money.  How have we got to this position?  I suppose part of it comes from the incomplete job that the Nolan Committee did in stemming corruption in the 1990s and that even this year's reaction to the scandal has been muted.  We need to be arresting and imprisoning corrupt MPs otherwise we will not root out this behaviour from the centre of our civil society.  In such a context are we surprised when we find large companies such as BAe are paying bribes to win contracts?  Parliament and its members set an example to the whole of society and at present are showing us that we need to be prostitutes to get on.

I supported the Labour Party until the mid-1990s when it became the Blairite Party.  I think that era when we moved from traditional political parties to the personality focused ones, that keep reminding me of the Peronist politics of Argentina and Gaullism in France.  Tony Blair himself, while not being charged with corruption, has gone on to an extremely prosperous career being paid large sums to speak and share his 'wisdom'.  Having a party which focused on personalities rather than policies and clearly elicited people seeking influence, the whole Bernie Ecclestone, Hindujas, Cool Britannia scams, characterised politics in the 1990s and into the 2000s.  Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London (2001-8) and a Labour MP 1987-2000 (he remained an MP until 2001 but without the Labour whip), sees the era of Tony Blair's governments with their focus on money rather than policies as being crucial in moving us into an era of very widespread 'sleaze' going beyond just a few corrupt MPs to tens of them behaving in this way.

The fact that Lord Mandelson was compelled to resign twice due to dubious dealings and yet was still able to return to official positions and then receive a peerage because he was favoured by Tony Blair sent out a signal that a blind eye would be turned to such dubious behaviour.  After his first resignation in 2000 over an improper payment for his home, Mandelson should never have been allowed to come anywhere near government ever again.  The fact that he was appointed a minister again and had to resign in 2001 over his connection with the Hindujas again on the basis of improper influence being wielded showed so many MPs that might have been thinking about behaving corruptly, that they would not suffer a great deal even if caught behaving that way.  Even while Commissioner for Trade in the European Commission questions were asked about Mandelson connections with leading business people under investigation by the EU.  Mandelson was made a baron in 2008 and entered the government for the third time.  Is it surprisingly that so many have followed this role model's behaviour?

How do we resolve this situation?  The first step is to press criminal charges.  If taking money for asking questions or exerting political pressure is not yet strictly criminal behaviour it must become so immediately and people must be arrested and imprisoned when found guilty of breaking that law.  The second thing is that we need to entirely flush out parliament of all of those who have been there in this corrupt phase.  I would say that any MP currently in the House of Commons must stand down at the next election and we have an entirely new house that would come in on the basis of the new laws.  I acknowledge that that would leave us with an inexperienced parliament and government, so the compromise would be to limit all MPs to only two terms of office.  Thus, we could retain anyone who was elected in the 2005 election or by-elections since.  Anyone who has been in parliament any longer must now leave.  Anyone elected in 2005 would have to leave in 2015 at the latest and anyone who is elected this year would have to go in 2020 at the latest.  Five years is more than enough time to build up experience.  Of course, some MPs will again become corrupt, but hopefully the new laws would punish them and importantly a culture like Britain of the old days, would be established that eschewed what has become an acceptance of corrupt behaviour.  It always has to be challenged.  Ernest Bevin, Labour Foreign Secretary 1945-51 used to dine with business leaders and they probably exerted influence through him.  However, it seems that corruption was far less rife than it has become today.

While I would not advise that we move to the Chartists' demand of a parliament every year, I certainly would reduce the life of parliaments say to 3 or 4 years to stop people becoming established in the post and so prone to exerting influence in the interests of others.  Perhaps we could make it so that an MP could sit only for 3 x 3-year parliaments or if you insist 4 x 3-year parliaments.  People argue that short governments lead them to make crowd pleasing policies, but that happens even now with 4 or 5-year parliaments.  The UK has constantly neglected long-term planning anyway.  I would have more confidence if policies were not being introduced by MPs doing it because they were being paid to behave that way and who were not corrupt in themselves.  We need to flush out the corruption from parliament.  It is already a gift to the extremists such as the UKIP and BNP who argue that they are untouched by such corruption, because if they gained influence then a lot of us would be finding policies and behaviour that we would find unpalatable in terms of equality, democracy and personal freedom.  We are at a turning point.  Voting in a Conservative government will bring no change as their MPs are as mired in this corruption as those of Labour.  We need thorough reform and new ways of parliament being run to finally clear away the corruption we are seeing and to ensure as best we can that it does not return to our political life in the future.

Sent From Home At 8 Years Old: How Boarding Schools Screw Up Britain

It has always struck me as odd that local authorities and children's homes battle so hard to find adoptive parents or at least foster parents for the children in their care, 'in care' as the phrase goes and yet wealthy parents are permitted to send their children away from home to boarding schools which pretty much resemble children's homes of the past.  It is argued that children need solid families to permit them to grow up as balanced individuals and less likely to fall into crime, mental health and a whole range of problems that impinge on UK society.  However, the rules for the privileged seem to be very different and they are allowed to put their children into a context which severely damages them and in fact makes them socially disfunctional.  The huge difference is that a child from a children's home will never become an MP whereas a child sent to a boarding school quite possibly will end up in the government or a leading civil servant or military commander or lawyer or clergy person.  Why do we think it is fine to cut one set of people off from their families, and in some cases actually see it as a better method and yet for another set of people it is seen as something we should be trying to end and to find families that will take these children and give them a 'proper' family? Of course, one argument is that it is about money.  By definition, a child sent to a boarding school comes from a wealthy family so even if they have no talent or are lazy they will succeed and will get a house and a good job whereas a child from a children's home or local authority care has no-one to provide these advantages so are more likely to end up homeless or facing mental health issues.

The thing that triggered off this posting was the Channel 4 programme 'Cutting Edge' which today had an episode 'Leaving Home at 8' about 8 year old girls sent from their parents to a boarding school.  For those unfamiliar with the UK system, boarding schools are those at which a child stays all year except during school vacations.  They sleep, eat and live at the school.  Some of these boarding schools are the elite 'public' schools, but there are other less prestigious institutions.  They all do, however, charge high fees which mean a small slice of the population can attend.  However, as adults this small slice is over represented among the elites in British public life and business.  In total 67,000 children in the UK attend boarding schools; 59,000 children are in local authority care.  Of children in care 53% leave school with no qualifications; 45% end up with a mental health disorder (compared to 10% of the general population) and of those people in custody 30% have been in care, though children in care make up only 0.5% of all children.  In contrast 70% of judges, 68% of barristers, 55% of partners in law firms, 54% of journalists and 54% of doctors went to fee paying independent schools, of which boarding schools make up 13% of the total private school pupil population.

The programme was harrowing even though it featured very privileged people, the girls themselves were distraught at being separated from their parents and many of the parents were too.  This is unsurprising.  At 8 a child can do many things on their own but they are far from being an independent person.  Whilst boarding schools probably lack the bullying and in fact torture of pupils by others whether their peers or older, that happened in the past, certainly it is an unhealthy environment into which children should be put, and this is recognised by the fact that, as noted above, local authorities and charities always seek to house children in their care with adoptive parents as much as they can.

The damage that boarding schools do to children was highlighted in a 2008 investigation by MPs:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/may/11/publicschools.schools  Of course, not only are there the initial problems created by taking a child from their home and putting them in an instituion, anyone who has worked in the UK especially in London and towns like Oxford where adults who went to boarding school are more numerous, sees the problems that such an education lays for life.  The people who have been through the boarding school system have been doing something like military service for their childhood and of course this makes them tough but it also makes them very callous and uncaring about others.  I have seen no evidence in adults who attended boarding school, of the team spirit that such schools argue they promote.  When you have had no privacy, no space of your own, no space to be yourself and no security for the things you hold dear, of course you will always snatch whatever you can from others and give no thought to anyone's needs bar your own.

I will take a real life case: a woman I met some years ago in Oxford.  Her name was Tiffany 'Tiffy' Foster who though from Suffolk had attended a boarding school in Oxfordshire.  Her family numbered senior military officers and clergymen in its ranks.  I worked with her for nine months and found immediately that she viewed anyone she met who had not been to such a school with disdain which was ironic as she wanted to become a school teacher in a comprehensive school presumably to lord it over the pupils and fellow staff.  She argued that we who had not attended a boarding school were all too weak to deal with life. I was particularly angered when she complained that neither a single (by determined choice) mother who had an incredibly intelligent  daughter able to produce poetry that scanned at the age of eight stood no chance in life before she was not faced with the toughness of a boarding school.  She made no apology for the advantages of wealth and connections she had gained that made her life so easy.  However, this did not stop her taking other people's things in the office without apology.  I guess that the privileged do not feel rules apply to them or really that anyone else's concerns matter.  Another offensive remark she made was to ask what all the fuss was about the First World War (she intended to teach history).  I asked her what was the lowest rank of any of her family who had fought in that war and she said colonel; none of her relatives died in the war.  The highest rank any of my ancestors attained was sergeant-major and that was because he had served in the Anglo-Boer War in which he was decorated.  He was demoted twice for striking officers who were younger and less experienced than him but casualties always meant re-promotion.  He survived the war but died soon after from the affects of gas poisoning.  I have come a long way in social standing from that ancestor of mine (he drove a tram in peacetime) but I realised that it brought minimally closer to where Tiffany saw herself as standing.  To make such a remark about the war that took the lives of millions and mutilated many others was sickening.  Other boarding school families were not spared in the way the Fosters were, yet her own narrow horizons and self-obsession, promoted by her schooling barred her from seeing that.

This is one example, I have encountered many others in my career, but fortunately now I am out in the provinces, far fewer than I once did.  The trouble is that the higher echelons of our society are filled with these people and unfortunately no-one seems to really ask whether people who have been through such a harsh, uncaring school system (despite the efforts of the teachers to make it welcoming, the whole set up of divorce from their parents cannot be counter-balanced effectively) are really mentally fit to have so much power.  Of course, the generation above them lift them up without even thinking about it and they have an effective propaganda machine working for them.  When training as a teacher in a comprehensive school in Oxfordshire I was stunned to find that the headmaster of that school which took a wide range of ordinary pupils had a peculiar deference for neighbouring boarding schools.  Did he have no faith in the system he was part of?  Did he simply do it because it was a job?  Did he look on his own pupils with disdain and only see his role as fulfilling some compelled duty?  He might have been an isolated case, but the way that he privileged teachers who had had a boarding school background, was rather unsettling.  Even though he had not been part of that system he was incredibly deferential towards it much to the dismay to those who had come up through the same type of school that he was overseeing.  I do not have to say anything about the Harry Potter stories and how they show that boarding school pupils are 'magic' and special, to indicate that boarding schools get lots of free propaganda, most importantly to educate us, the bulk of the population, how reverential we should be to their pupils and alumni.

The sense that boarding schools are 'special' producing exceptional people, rather, than in fact, screwed up ones with out-of-date knowledge, is terribly prevalent in UK society.  Even the review in 'The Guardian' of this 'Cutting Edge' programme ended saying '... the kindness of the teachers shows that the boarding school model, somewhat [!] anachronistic in the 21st century, can still work.'  Work at what?  Producing another whole generation of people who will get power as a gift, almost a right, and yet have been screwed up by a system that makes it impossible for them to engage properly with the large majority of people they will encounter in everyday life.  However much they dislike it, they will have to mix with the rest of us.

Anachronistic is the word.  The boarding school system harks back to a period long before even the Victorian era.  I would argue that it owes much to ancient Sparta and the sense that children need to be becoming warriors from birth and that the weak should be exposed, marginalised from 'proper' society.  If we witnessed families, say in China, sending their young children, to be taught in 'education camps' there would be dismay and anger and yet that is what we see in the UK.  There would certainly concern about the future of China and its place in the world if these children were being groomed to run the country.  Yet, that is precisely what happens in the UK.  Boarding schools are bad for the UK because they screw up the people who are going to be our leaders and make them unsuited for the posititons of power they are going into.  Of course, I would ban them immediately.  In the meantime, however, I hope we can shift opinions of those people, you and me, who suffer at the hands of the selfish, arrogant, greedy former boarding school pupils and rather see them as 'special' in a way that we should pay deference to, but see them as people with 'special needs', people effectively mistreated by uncaring parents and in need of particular help in living in modern UK society.

The Change4Life Console Game Controversy

Like me you probably get random emails coming into your inbox which are not really junk, but you do wonder how they got on your mailing list. For many years I used to receive emails about safety equipment for children's playgrounds and invitations to conferences about such facilities and I could only think that someone had written down my email address at some event by mistake or the company had got the wrong suffix, the whole thing of @hotmail.com and @hotmail.co.uk and @mail.com and so on. Anyway, on one of my email accounts I get industry news about computer game design. I think this may stem from me contributing to various message boards about computer games. However, the thing that attracted my attention is the hostility coming from gaming companies to the UK government's Change4Life campaign which is aimed at getting children to eat more healthily and exercise more.

The Change4Life campaign up to now has featured television advertisements of a plasticine family stopping watching television and eating fattening foods and getting out and exercising. The Change4Life campaign is being termed a 'movement' and is receiving widespread support from medical bodies and charities such as the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and Diabetes UK who worked with advertising agency The Gate on the project. Many local groups are getting on board and doing initiatives to get people exercising and eating healthier food. With the recession biting, ironically consumption of takeaways and high carbohydrate and fatty foods has risen. In the UK apparently 2 million children aged 2-10 are overweight (25% of girls and 20% of boys in that age group) and 700,000 are clinically obese. Health provision is already having challenges with obesity in adults but clearly if this high level of children is moving in that direction the death rate in the UK will rise in the next few decades. There is also a rise in illnesses associate with overweight, not only heart disease but also Type 2 Diabetes which leads to complications and can result in blindness and amputations as the body decays.

Now we come to the controversy which raises all sorts of questions about how big business seeks to restrict the ability of government to act. The print advert appearing first in women's magazines which has angered games companies the most shows a boy probably about eight or nine years old slumped on a sofa with a games controller in his hand staring blankly at a screen. The slogan says 'Risk an Early Death Just Do Nothing'. I have tried to put a copy of the advertisement on this posting but probably due to copyright sprites it will not upload. You can access it here: http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/4973/change4lifelarge.jpg

MCV an online gaming publication made an official complaint last week to the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) about the advertisement claiming it was 'unfair and inaccurate'. They say that the advert implies that to stop children playing such games will improve their health and that is not true and simply damages small businesses. Of course it is not the small businesses who have reacted most harshly it is the very big ones.

Sega said it was 'disappointed and frustrated' by the advertisement. They said: 'Television, radio, cinema, listening to music, computing, video gaming and of course, reading all require a high element of passive participation, but of all these media types it is video gaming that provides the most potential interaction and activity. It seems that an advertisement has been put together by a poorly informed advertising agency.' Of course this is rubbish, the government especially since the era of Thatcher and the spin days of Blair has always known precisely what it is doing with its advertising. The government's media image and its use of things like Directgov website are very precise. Other companies have complained including Atari, Konami,Tiga and Sony plus Future a publisher of games-related magazines. Industry body ELSPA demanded an immediate meeting with the government and then went on to pursue the charities. They feel the campaign has gone against their 'responsible' guidance on the Ask About Games website. Of course, ask a child how often they have visited this website and I will be surprised if you can find one.

Richard Wilson head of Tiga began creating wonderful new excuses and whining: 'This advert is absurd and insulting in equal measure. To imply that playing a video game leads to a premature rendezvous with the Grim Reaper is a non-sequitur of colossal proportions. Alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, obesity and involvement in violent crime are forms of behaviour that risk an early death. In contrast, many video games are mentally stimulating, potentially educational and social and some involve physical exercise.' Richard, in the UK far more children and adults will die of obesity than violent crime, I think you are believing some of your gaming scenarios far too much. I think Atari have been more honest when they said: 'At best, the campaign is misleading and at worst, damaging to the industry, its reputation and its potential.' Naturally their profits especially in the recession are what really concern them. These companies only think about children as consumers rather than people who have to live.

Sony has gone one step further and because the child in the picture has a 'Playstation-like controller' they are angered that they were not consulted before the advertisement went ahead. This is just appalling thinking, that a company should be able to stop a government health campaign. Sony are looking into sueing the government over the campaign. I hope they do and I am sure they will lose.

In response the onslaught, the Department of Health has refused to apologise for the campaign, not feeling it was at all misjudged: 'The campaign takes a direct approach, setting out the issue in succinctly and in straightforward language. An unhealthy lifestyle, including poor diet or being inactive, can lead to health problems in later life. If current trends continue, nine in ten people will be overweight or obese by 2050. This can increase your risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers."We are not saying that children shouldn't play computer games or eat treats, but parents and children need to be aware of the benefits of a balanced diet and an active lifestyle. The activities portrayed are examples of poor diet and lack of physical activity.' Diabetes UK has been quoted as being surprised by the harsh reaction of games companies and plans to make legal challenges against the campaign.

I am a big fan of computer games and do not want the industry to suffer, but the time has come for the games industry. They are in the position that MacDonalds and other burger chains were in the 1990s and the cigarette companies were in the 1980s when people realised that what these companies were legitimately promoting were actually doing great harm. Burger chains have responded and the menus especially for children are a world away from what they were twenty years ago. The games companies are looking petulant and bullying. Those complaining are multinationals unused to being challenged. If they react in such a hostile way they are likely to egg the government on to stricter measures such as banning sale of games to anyone under 18. In New Zealand parents face a fine of NZ$10,000 or 3 months' imprisonment if their children play games with a higher rating than their age, notably violent '18' certificate games. I am sure we will see something similar. Keith Vaz, MP, was talking to a select committee about this problem in the UK only recently.

Games companies would be sensible to learn from the MacDonalds approach to health challenges. The Wii physical games can be seen as the first 'healthy option' on the games companies menu but they will have to do more. It is interesting that these days you do not get things as you did on 'Stronghold' (2001) a PC castle building game, had a function that after a certain period of game play your advisor would tell you that you had been playing the game for too long and that you should take a break. City-, business- and castle-building games are very easy to lose track of time with when playing. I think all companies should be compelled to introduce a function in all games which effectively has an 'interval' say after 45 minutes of play the screen freezes just where you have reached and will not release for say 30 minutes compelling you to go off and do something else. This can be introduced first for games which appeal most to children and as with the MacDonalds advertisements they should advise children to go and get some exercise. Of course this will generate hostility for parents many of whom use game consules as a way to keep the child quiet and out of their hair. That change, though, is just what Change4Life is about and it is going to upset people, but it may keep them alive. Evidence this week has shown that even if you do not start exercising until you are over 50 years old, it will lengthen your life.

The games companies no doubt have decided to adopt the 'don't blame us' approach and like many industries in the past especially in the face of a Labour government, will use the full weight of the law and their vast funds to try to stop government policy. They may win, some industries have in the past. However, this is not something like releasing control over copper supplies or not nationalising the sugar industry, this is about the health of children and that is a very emotive subject which parents can be made to feel very guilty about in a way no games company can assuage. In addition, this campaign is perceived as something coming from the government or particular charities but the games companies have missed the fact that it is in line with policies already in place especially in schools and leisure facilities. This is the most prominent bit of the iceberg, but there has been a lot going on in the UK regarding children that they seem to have been oblivious to. If they are sensible games companies will be looking at ways to alter their products. As the Department of Health has noted they are not seeking to ban children playing computer games, but the more hostile the industry is, the more likely they will move in that direction. To get through this the games companies need to be clever not aggressive which does them no favours.

P.P. 24/04/2009 - Online games industry journal MCV is lauding the 'shock U-turn' in the Change4Life advertisements as the latest ones say that exercise got through games such as those used with Wii that make the players move and jump around can contribute to the children's daily fitness. The industry feels that its bullying has paid off. Many games companies tried to censor the campaign last month when it rightly said that if children were simply stuck in front of console and computer games they would have an early death. Of course Change4Life has not done a U-turn, it always said that restricted games playing by children was fine, but of course the games industry had to act in its exaggerated outrage arguing the government was seeking to ban console games. In addition, it is not a U-turn because active games such as those provided through Wii remain a small minority of console and computer game playing. The Wii has sold 50 million units across the world since 2006, Playstation 2 has sold 136 million, but of course many are in use by second and third hand owners now. The Wii has sold 4.9 million in the UK and the Playstation 3 has sold 1.9 million since Marh 2007. So passive-activity games consoles still remain predominant. The console games industry cannot be allowed to bully or censor health campaigns and like the fast food industry has done, need to wake up to the harm their products can cause, especially to children.

How Torture Became Culturally Acceptable in the UK

You may have heard about the recent advertisement that the BBC pulled after numerous complaints. In the UK you have to buy a TV licence every year, it costs £139 (€187; US$265). This money goes to fund the state-run television organisation the BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation) which now has six television channels and about ten radio channels. The fine for not paying it is £1000 (€1260; US$1780) and if you do not pay that then you get sent to prison. The number of people being imprisoned (usually women are heavily over-represented for this crime) has been falling, in 1996 it was 157 people; in 2000, 20 people, though there were fines and community service orders instead. In 2001 almost 400,000 people were prosecuted for not paying their television licence, but I guess the bulk paid up because the previous year only 2,149 reached court. In the mid-1990s however, more women were imprisoned for not paying this licence than for theft, prostitution, fraud and forgery, attacking people physically, burglary and robbery or drunkenness, so it is a gender-specific crime. Men are more likely to continue defaulting on their payments but eight times less likely to be imprisoned than women. This may say something about how courts perceive the two sexes, and to some degree that in general women are less likely to commit any crime than men are. With various forms of watching television now available there is mass confusion: do a I need a licence if I watch on my computer or my mobile phone? The licence is a state fee so even if you do not watch the BBC channels you still have to pay.

Anyway, people are being fined and imprisoned for not paying their licences and the BBC is effective at catching them. However, this does not seem enough. They feel the need to terrify people into paying the fee and this is where the advertisements came from. They were introduced in April 2008 and faced immediate criticism. They have been likened to scenes from 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' saying that they know where you live, who you are, etc. This is a standard tactic of government departments in advertising, another regular example comes from the so-called Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA).

The most alarming BBC advert featured the consequences of being imprisoned for not paying a TV licence, showing a man in prison and screams coming from a shower block with the tagline that detector vans can always find you watching an unlicenced television and implied that you could also be found in prison. The clear implication is that the prisoner is being raped in the shower block. The BBC admitted it had gone too far with this advertisement but felt that its softer approach in the past had not been successful. Prisons are violent, dangerous places the world over, people are raped in them, but it seems disgraceful that the threat of this should be used to get people to pay a £139 fee. Why does the BBC not cut out the middle man and simply have a van full of rapists which it drives round to the house of any defaulter and lets them in on the defaulter as a punishment rather than go through all the difficulty of sending them to court? Why is homosexual rape more tolerable for prime-time television than heterosexual rape or lesbian rape which is much more likely to be the case given the profile of those imprisoned for not paying?

The only real complaint about the campaign that attracted attention came from the very avuncular presenter Noel Edmonds who worked for the BBC for thirty years and now is on Channel 4. In September he said that he was going to stop paying his TV licence in protest at the heavy-handed approach that the BBC was adopting in its adverts. What is shocking is that there was not more widespread protest and from presenters with gravitas. Perhaps they are fearful of possible treatment from the BBC. How has it happened that the broadcasting corporation whose 'mission' (and it is on their website) is to 'Inform, Educate and Entertain', not to 'Terrify, Arrest and Punish'? I suppose this is part of the 'permissive atmosphere' that you find in authoritarian states. It does not need the dictator to say that various state bodies should act in a certain way, it just needs him to signal that he will do nothing to hinder them if they do. With the Blarite steps towards authoritarianism, this 'permissive atmosphere' has appeared and so state bodies now feel free to try to terrify people into compliance.

This incident got me thinking about how acceptable torture has now become in everyday culture. The BBC advert went out at prime-time which means that children, certainly teenagers would see it. How would you like to explain to a 13-year old or an 8-year old why that man is screaming? Yet, to the BBC supposedly a cornerstone of British culture, it is acceptable. This is because torture has become acceptable. People talk about how television and computer games have made violence commonplace, not something that I accept, but I do agree they can raise our tolerance for such things. The focus is always on the violence by the individual but in fact it works even more effectively for violence by the state. All of this stepped up in 2001 following the 11th September attacks in the USA. This was the excuse the US government had been waiting for and seemed to allow them to do anything now to counter their perceived enemies. It is ironic that in the 1970s the USA led the way in criticising the USSR for its human rights record and in the 1990s, China. Yet in the 2000s the USA has led the way in eroding human rights, snatching people from across the World to be tried under their jurisdiction (well in fact, that legal black hole which is Guantanamo Bay). We had not seen anything like this since the 1960s when Israeli snatch squads roamed the World seeking out former Nazis to abduct and take to Israel for trial. At least in the case of the Israelis generally they had loads of evidence against the people they took, the Americans do not even have this which is why so many of these prisoners have been held for so long and have to be tortured to get anything that will stand up in court.

The 'permissive atmosphere' was very apparent in the Iraq War of 2003 especially the Abu Gharib prison torture. It is clear that ordinary soldiers felt it was acceptable to torture prisoners. In common with torturers from the past notably Germans and paramilitary units of their allies, they were happy to be photographed carrying out these acts. No-one on the ground in Iraq questioned this behaviour; there were no moral questions about it despite the USA very loudly proclaiming itself a Christian country. The Iraqis (like the Vietnamese thirty years earlier) had been so de-humanised in the eyes of the average American, that treatment of them no longer fell within the bounds of what is acceptable for a human. These American soldiers no longer saw their prisoners as human beings, just objects to be abused. This happened in Vietnam too where the Vietnamese became 'Charlie' or 'VCs' not people. The atrocity of My Lai is well known (but too rarely mentioned these days) and it is becoming clear US soldiers in Vietnam were committing other atrocities, the activities of the so-called Tiger Force in the Vietnamese highlands in 1967 came to light in 2003. Quotes from former members of the unit were similar to these days: 'I knew it was wrong, but it was an acceptable practice.' and 'If they ran we shot them, and if they didn't run we shot them anyway.' This unit alone slaughtered hundreds of civilians and I am sure there are many others that will never be revealed. Knowing this is often the standard behaviour of their troops, in 2003 they sought exemption for all US troops from any war crimes charges, the only country in the World that would have been permitted this. Even though they did not get it, the arrogance of such a demand is alarming.

The USA may feel its troops have a right to commit war crimes and carry out torture if they choose, but the rest of the World generally seems to accept this. The focus in the UK seemed to skip past any concern about what was being done at Abu Gharib and instead focus on whether Lynndie England one of the soldiers photographed carrying out torture was a lesbian and so was asserting female control over men which she then sought to publicise across the internet as some sort of threat to male hegemony. How had the focus shifted from 'US troops carrying out torture' to 'lesbian challenging men through torture'? Given that she was pregnant by the time of her trial there might be questions about her sexuality. People seem happy to accept that torture was going on and somehow were more upset at frivolous explanations for the uses it was put to. This is as appalling as the 'causal nexus' explanation for the Holocaust carried out by the Germans in the Second World War, i.e. blaming Stalin's massacres for provoking Hitler's. Both were simply evil men who wanted to kill, there is no need to find a connection.

The reason why people could allow such attitudes without questioning the basic wrongness of torture I believe is because popular culture has shifted us this way. Torture features in serious, if popular television series. I am sure there are many I could mention but many I have not seen. I did watch 'La Femme Nikita' TV series (1996-2000) and in that torture was a weekly occurrence for a sinister US organisation. One week an agent happened to run into an old girlfriend while on a mission and so was routinely tortured by his own side to find out if he had given away anything. Psychological and physical torture were a weekly part of this series. Torture also appeared in another spy series 'Alias' (2002-06), though in less quantity. There was a sense that it gave these series 'edge'. The series 'Lost' (2004-10) also featured abductions, mental and physical torture. One of the lead characters is a former torturer from Iraq and the characters 'The Others' accept torture as a normal way to defend themselves, directed by their charismatic leader. They even blame the heroes of the series for 'making' them use torture. This has parallels with the USA's attitude especially to the Iraqi population, there are parallels to Vietnam too. I imagine these are deliberate on the part of the writers. A UK one is 'Spooks' supposedly an authentic series about the work of Britain's Security Service commonly known as MI5. It started in 2002 and has now run for seven series and does not look likely to come to an end, partly as the cast keeps on being renewed as individual characters are killed. This tries a very British approach on the counter-espionage/terrorist role and shows that even the UK's allies and leading people in the UK cannot be trusted. However, again torture both mental and physical is used. If this is going on in British prisons for real, then there are a lot of UK officials who should be hauled in front of war crimes tribunals too.

All of these series have had high viewing figures both in the USA and the UK and I imagine other parts of the World. They show torture as being something necessary and generally having to be used as a weapon in the war against even more evil people. I know moral ambivalence is 'sexy' these days and is probably an accurate reflection of where people stand, but it does push on the acceptance of such behaviour in real life, especially when in the context of 'them' and 'us' which our governments have been pushing hard right through the 2000s. It also encourages us to think the way that people did in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR, not to be concerned if a neighbour or even a family member is arrested, clearly they are wrong and dangerous. Our popular culture is teaching us how to live in an authoritarian state without complaining; to accept that whatever is done however horrific because it is 'necessary' for our 'safety'. You need to remember that the organisation that ran the Terror of the French Revolution was the Committee of Public Safety.

So, I suppose we should not be surprised, if by now, after years of such popular and state propaganda, that the BBC feel it is alright to use such imagery and such threats to encourage people to pay a £139 fee. The question is, given how so few people raise any questions about such methods, how far do we go with the next step?

P.P. 18/11/2008: I had forgotten two more popular television programmes which contributed to the 'normalisation' of torture in the British media. The first was the inclusion of scenes from the Japanese television programme, 'Endurance' in which contestants were voluntarily tortured in a number of ways including sleep deprivation, prevention of urinating, bloating with food, deprivation of food, beating, exposure to creatures such as insects and reptiles often to the face (in actions reminiscent of scenes in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four') and so on. This was shown every week on 'Tarrant on TV' (began in 1992 and still running), certainly in the 1990s, I have not seen it for years. In some ways it was a racist feature inviting the audience to laugh at Japanese behaviour but also it made torture seem something comic rather than alarming. Many of the elements of 'Endurance' particularly exposure to creatures to the face and being forced to eat unpleasant things is a core element of 'I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here' which has been running each year since 2001 with this year's series being watched by nearly 9 million people. Possibly even worse than featuring torture in drama, having it in so-called 'reality' shows makes it seem very normal, and almost to be expected.

P.P. - 05/04/2009: It is interesting that this past week the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, a permanent committee made up of MPs from all parties will begin examining the allegations that have come to light over the past two years about British involvement in torture, especially in connection with the war in Afghanistan and action by the Pakistani Internal Services Intelligence body ISI and the US Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay to which prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq have been flown and held without charge and tortured. In addition, there is the particular case of Binyam Mohamed and other British complicity in torture. Both MI5 (the UK's internal Security Service) and Greater Manchester police have admitted involvement in this torture already.

The fact that a civilian British police force has been involved is even more alarming. I know the Greater Manchester Constabulary have been dangerously odd since the days of Sir James Anderton (nicknamed 'God's cop' for his fundamentalist proclamations) as its Chief Constable (1976-91) and his outrageous statements about purging the city on a kind of religious basis that harks back to the witchfinders of the 17th century. The committee will also investigate the use of British Dependent Territory Diego Garcia for rendition (i.e. kidnap) flights to the USA, oversight of private security companies (i.e. mercenaries) employed by the Foreign and Commowealth Office and incredibly sexual abuse at the British embassy in Baghdad. It is apparent civil service standards deteriorated so far as to be like those of some third rate dictatorship not that of a supposedly leading democracy in the world.

In such a culture of self-righteousness of course torture will be seen as acceptable. I doubt the select committee, whose members are chosen by the prime minister of people previously involved with MI5 or MI6, will probe too deeply, at least some evidence of the shameful behaviour of British bodies is coming to light and makes ridiculous any attempt to portray the UK as a bastion of human rights. Rangzieb Ahmed arrived in the UK having been tortured by the ISI with three of his fingernails missing, so this torture that the UK is supporting is of the most medieval kind. It is sickening.

Why On Earth Mandelson?

I know the UK, like all countries in the World is facing a difficult time with the global credit crisis. I know Prime Minister Gordon Brown is not only having to tackle these issues, but seems to have been written off politically by British society despite the fact, that the Conservatives still have no policies even after their party conference this week. The Conservatives threaten to make the UK far more divided and will follow policies which will exacerbate the difficulties for average people in the UK. However, that seems to be overlooked. Another, possibly even more crucial factor that has been overlooked is that Brown lost the showdown with the energy companies. He was unable to introduce a windfall tax, despite their huge profits, because they said they would simply recoup it from consumers by raising prices so totally undermining the point of the tax. Many people will die this Winter in the UK because of the greed of the energy companies. No UK prime minister now has the ability to stop that, it was proven last month, but no-one seems to have noticed that. Now that EDF (known in its home country, France as Electricite de France has now bought British Energy Group which controls the UK's nuclear power, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has even more control over Britain's energy prices than he did last month. EDF is 85% owned by the French government. In France Sarkozy (a conservative, not a socialist) prevented Electicitie de France raising prices by more than 1.5% this year, in the UK all energy companies have raised prices by 25-34% this year. So the head ot the French government has more control over our prices, because he runs one of our leading suppliers, than Brown does.

How has Brown addressed both the issue of him having no ability to control energy prices and also struggling to face down the economic crisis? Well, he has a cabinet reshuffle and introduces a 'war cabinet', though at 18 members it is only a few people short of the full Cabinet. Traditionally war cabinets in the UK have had 6 members. He has made Ed Miliband (brother of David Miliband his glamorous rival for control of the Labour Party, and probably his successor), head of the new Department of Energy and the Environment. It is sensible to combine these two, because issues such as wind power, new coal power stations, nuclear power, all impact on both of these. However, unless regulations are tightened, or in this atmosphere of the UK government nationalising things, a leading energy company is taken over by the state (I suggest British Gas, it is the largest supplier, the greediest and it used to be state-run) there is little Ed will be able to do, certainly in terms of changing energy prices to consumers.

Again, I will emphasise that people will die. Already, even before the sharp price rises this year, Help the Aged has noted that 25,000 elderly people were dying each year in the UK as a result of being unable to heat their houses. That figure will rise sharply in the next few weeks. In every street in the UK, you will see the corpses of dead old people being carried from their houses because of the greed of energy companies in the UK.

There are 11 million elderly people in the UK, 2.5 million live in one room so they can keep warm, 2.2 million turn off their heating entirely because they cannot afford to run it; 2 million wear outside clothing indoors to keep warm. These were last year's figures which will be worse now prices have risen. It is predicted all of these figures will treble this year, so we are probably looking at 75,000 dead this Winter, equivalent to every single person living in the Scottish town of Paisley or the English town of Southport simply dying.

Sorry, my anger at that fact always distracts me. Back to the issue in hand, the reappearance of Peter Mandelson. What was going through Brown's head when he decided to bring Mandelson back into the Cabinet? Mandelson is the smarmiest character in British politics of the last thirty years. The way he talks makes your skin crawl. He is smug, very self-satisfied and everyone assumes he has abilities that he has never proven he has. At best, he is good at 'spin' altering media perceptions of challenges being faced, and I accept that Labour probably needs at a time when the media have effectively given the premiership to Conservative leader David Cameron, without him having done anything to earn it. However, Mandelson has no clear ability in economic or business issues. It would do the Cabinet far better to reanimate the corpse of former Labour leader John Smith, with his friendly bank manager demeanour, than to bring Mandelson back. My opposition to Mandelson does not stem just from his unpleasant manner and the fact that he appears on television as if he considers everyone around him to be fools unable to see the truth of his brilliance.

The other thing about Mandelson, which I feel should bar him from office whether in the UK, or in the European Commission where he has been Commissioner for Trade since 2004. Basically he is the most corrupt politician in recent British politics. In December 1998 he resigned at Secretary of State for Trade & Industry after only 5 months in the role after it had been revealed that he had been given a cheap loan for £373,000 from the Paymaster-General Geoffrey Robinson, a millionaire who was under investigation for his business dealings with Mandelson's department. As Tony Blair, for some reason, thought highly of Mandelson he came back in October 1999 as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, a very challenging role which he was highly unsuited for. Fortunately he had to resign in January 2001, so after only 14 months in this post, because he has accepted a £1 million donation from the Hinduja brothers towards the Milennium Dome (this had fallen in his remit when Minister without Portfolio before he had gone to Trade & Industry) in return for being given a British passport. This time Mandelson will be made a lord so does not have to stand for election, and will be a member of the House of Lords, so part of the parliamentary system, for the rest of his life.

Is the UK so lacking in talent that the government has to bring back a man who has been proven to be corrupt and so without talent that it is stunning; who has had only 19 months in ministerial positions? Is there no-one else in the UK who could feel this role, as least as well, if not a great deal better? Mandelson is not even popular within the Labour Party, probably because of these major flaws in him and the fact that he was never nothing more than a smarmy crony to Tony Blair. Send him off to be Blair's assistant or his butler; do not bring him into British parliament for the next 10-20 years. Mandelson was born in 1953 so could still easily be in House of Lords in 2028 if not 2038! Why has Brown shackled our government to this despicable, incapable man? After it seemed he was recovering some ground on the clueless Conservatives, he has now given his government a self-inflicted injury. Drop Mandelson now before he damages this country any further.