The country we left behind
 

Elaine Morrall died in a freezing home – the state is tossing away people’s lives
:(

Re: The country we left behind
 

That is terribly sad.

Having worked with at risk and homeless youth in NS I’m not entirely shocked tbh.
In the UK they still have it better than here.

Re: The country we left behind
 

Absolutely.

The lack of support - call it what you will - can be dismal here. But Canada never had it to miss it.

For the UK to have something good, in place, and then dismantle it is just criminal. :frown:

All of the things that needed to be done to tighten things up could have been done under existing powers without the wholesale sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut changes.

Re: The country we left behind
 

It is hard to believe given the incredible wealth that exists in this country. And yet, "Theresa, there is no magic money tree" still manages to scrape a victory.

Re: The country we left behind
 

The Tories will be out on their arse next time, and for a very long time too. The only people who benefit from their slashing policies are becoming too small in number to sustain them in power.

Could you imagine being so shameless in 21st century Britain to decide that a town can't afford a library?

Re: The country we left behind
 

The welfare state costs money, it costs a lot of money. How often have you seen reports that this new drug or that new treatment is available or that this little girl will die unless....

People's expectations of a service with finite resources is becoming infinite and therein lies the problem.

In the 1950s I remember my father receiving care in a convalescent home by the sea following an operation, nowadays you're packed off home before the blood dries. So why was it possible then in a bankrupt UK full of war invalids when it isn't possible now? Perhaps it was the limited expectations of a nation grateful to have any healthcare at all, or perhaps there was a realisation that you couldn't have it all without paying for it.

I think that it's about time the welfare state got it's priorities sorted out and concentrated on the basics once again.

Re: The country we left behind
 

No not good is it, But what is the alternative? Corbyn? :eek:

Re: The country we left behind
 

Didn't she find one for the DUP?

Re: The country we left behind
 

No, the problem comes with the constant portrayal of 'scroungers' and the workshy, lazy lone parents and not really disabled and all the other stereotypes along with not bothering to do anything about the far bigger sums involved in bail outs and tax fraud.
Is that a serious question? My mum had an Hysterectomy in Bristol in the 70s and convalesced at Newton Abbott for a week after - although she hated it and escaped over the wall before her time was up. Today it can be done in one day and you're home. Something to do with 60 years worth of improvements I believe.
She certainly did. Maybe even two.

Re: The country we left behind
 

I weep for my country and actually find myself saying well let's see because if Corbyn gets in I'm staying out!

Re: The country we left behind
 

Yes, and not soon enough.

Re: The country we left behind
 

It would be nice to see our political representatives enact compassionate and supportive public policies rather than the narrow instrumental and class riven cack we’ve become accustomed.

Re: The country we left behind
 

A pony would be nice, too.

Simple fact is that no party has any way to fix the UK. It's far, far too broken for that. The idea that tossing May out and replacing her with Corbyn will lead to a magical, free-pony-for-all utopia is simply laughable.

But, back to the point up above about people freezing to death, it's almost as though artificially increasing the cost of fuel might mean some people can't afford to buy it. Odd, that.

Re: The country we left behind
 

It's not broken. Syria and Iraq are broken. I think the UK functions fairly well. Public policy and institutions can always be improved. It'd just be nice to have people in power who want to do so.

Re: The country we left behind
 

"Broken"...simplistic at best. Providing an adequate safety net is not beyond the country's capability.

Re: The country we left behind
 

It's a bankrupt country which no longer has a national identity, that makes most of its money by selling houses to each other at ever-increasing prices, and where the 'best and brightest' have been leaving en masse for the last sixty years.

There's nothing you can do to fix that, other than wipe the slate clean and start over.

And that's before you take account of the massive technological changes that are going to happen in the next twenty years, which no government in the world has any idea how to handle. Certainly not a tired old socialist like Corbyn, whose entire philosophy is based in the industrial-era world that's disappearing right now.

Re: The country we left behind
 

Only an idiot would think that a Labour government would lead to instant utopia. But it might, MIGHT, just swing the pendulum back from the City financiers and fanatical Eurosceptics and foreign oligarchs just slightly in favour of the 50-odd other million people who live here.

Theresa May's government has done virtually nothing save try to deal with Brexit which was Cameron's failed attempt to deal with a Conservative Party schism. Exactly how is that serving the ordinary people of Britain?

Re: The country we left behind
 

No need to make the City, Eurosceptics or oligarchs scapegoats; its simply Conservative ideological intolerance of the poor.

Re: The country we left behind
 

Not even so much intolerance as incomprehension.

Re: The country we left behind
 

There is something not quite right about this original story. The lady tragically was found dead in her flat supposedly due to freezing because she couldn't afford to heat the home when her children were at school. It was between 10 and 13 degrees in Runcorn on the day she died, is that cold enough to kill you if you don't have the heat on between 8am and 4pm?

Re: The country we left behind
 

It certainly occurred to me that it was a bit early to be that cold.

But she's described as having severe medical issues including depression and an eating disorder. In and out of hospital in intensive care. Benefits cut/stopped numerous times so battle after battle. Housing taking her to court so likely a threat to accommodation as well as income.

If she's not well nourished that might be enough on its own.

State of the accommodation might be a factor too.

Re: The country we left behind
 

Agreed:

For these reasons:

It's a sad state of affairs when people die because a man made economic system means there are people who haven't worked a day in their lives, born into oil wealth driving gold plated Ferraris around London. On the pavements of the very same streets walk people who need to go to food banks despite working full time.


I used to hate the thought of Corbyn, but I think the current political system is so detached from the plight of the common man that we need a wild card in there to shake things up.


I'm not a fool and so I recognise the limitations of the system, but the system is so devoid of equality that the system should change. It doesn't serve the masses, it serves the few.

Re: The country we left behind
 

I agree, I used to think Corbyn a bit of a joke, but I am seeing he is a man of compassion and great integrity, especially on nuclear disarmament, and think he would be an improvement on the current crowd.

Re: The country we left behind
 

I agree that things need shaking up....the UK is not in good shape, but Corbyn? he may be a "wild" card too far...... compassionate maybe, but I think he is dangerously irresponsible.

Re: The country we left behind
 

Cloud cuckoo land I'm afraid. If Corbyn and the labour party were elected today, nothing would change tomorrow. The thought that one politician, who may just may have a little integrity, could change the course of the commons from being self serving to one of compassion is ludicrous.

Remember labour leadership of the past, remember them preaching in Trafalgar Square and marching to Aldermaston proud to be members of CND, remember them in power? Does anyone remember them, even Michael Foot as a minister, getting rid of any nuclear weapons?

Politicians and civil servants alike do what's in the interests of politicians and civil servants and between them they've built up a cozy inertia that masquerades as the government. The rest of us are here to keep quiet and pay our taxes.. but don't be fooled by their rhetoric.. they're all the same.

Re: The country we left behind
 

A very broad brush. Each government has its policies and initiative and things do change back and forth. Nobody expects things to change overnight. I trust you don't trouble yourself with voting, you'd be a fool to vote given your views.

Re: The country we left behind
 

When I lived in the UK I voted in every election, local and general. I voted for Thatcher and I voted for Blair and I was wrong to do so.

My personal involvement with MPs has instructed me how they exploit their supporters, ignore those who vote for them and follow the party whip even when it's patently disastrous to do so. They do this because on the whole they want to maintain their position on the greasy pole. I can think of very few politicians that I'd call statesmen, many that I'd call criminals and most that I'd call jelly. But I'm a realist, what's the alternative? Like most people I'm too honest to be a politician so we're stuck with what we've got and that's our fault because we recognise integrity when we see it and we laugh at it.

Re: The country we left behind
 

Not even incomprehension so much as complete indifference.

Re: The country we left behind
 

One politician, who had no integrity at all, managed the reverse trick.

Her first name began with M.

Re: The country we left behind
 

You do realize that the 'city financiers and foreign oligarchs' are among those who benefit the most from staying in the EU, right? Which, last I heard, was something Corbyn supported?

Well, yes. May is a total waste of space, as was Cameron.

But so is every other leader of every major political party in the UK. None of them are prepared for the technological steamroller that's rattling down the road toward them.

Exactly. The ordinary people of Britain voted to get out of the EU, but the politicians are desperate to keep them in.

But it really doesn't matter. Whether Tories, Labour, or Monster Raving Loonies win, it's only a question of how fast the whole thing collapses. And Britain will be a much better place after it splits into half a dozen nations.

Re: The country we left behind
 

From Saskatoon?

Re: The country we left behind
 

Agreed, and she did it by recognising that individuals, as well as politicians, were adicted to greed.

The 'right to buy' at ridiculous discounts removed, at a stroke, the ability of local authorities to offer affordable social housing to those who needed it and who could turn down such a tempting offer?

And Sid, remember him? Who could resist buying shares in a company that they already owned because they knew they could make money on it and if you couldn't afford to buy then hard luck.

She exploited greed to break up what cohesion was left in the country and exemplified this in her speach "And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours." And the people looked after themselves first, and if you had a little she left you with nothing.

And I voted for her because I realised that the Callaghan government had been a disaster and something had to change and I probably voted for Blair in much the same frame of mind, guess it was all my fault. I note that similar arguments have been used by others in support of Corbyn.

Plus ca change......

Re: The country we left behind
 

I wondered about all of the above too :(

It happens in Canada too. And in other 1st world countries as well, I’m sure.

“Hidden” poverty has been a problem in the UK (for example) for longer than I’ve been alive, and I have cogent personal memories of it, no matter which political party was in power.

Re: The country we left behind
 

What makes little sense is forcing the poor to pay higher rates for electricity (through meter systems) than those who can afford it. Totally perverse. I think I read there are now moves to change this. Hope so. Heating, like water, should be a human right.

Re: The country we left behind
 

:nod:
A couple of years ago I remember reading of an old woman who lived out in the sticks in NB with no heating at all apart from a dangerous stove and how local people were helping her. I might even have posted it.

As I said earlier though, in Canada and some other countries they never had the systems to deal with this stuff in the first place.

The UK did (and still largely does) and is steadfastly dismantling it.

That woman out in the sticks might well have fallen through the cracks/off the radar, whatever, but once discovered the UK system would have helped. There would be various statutory duties of care that don't exist here.

Re: The country we left behind
 

Remind me again which party put these things in place and which party is steadfastly dismantlng them?

Yea, all politicians are the same. Thanks Rupert.

But you haven't won yet.

Re: The country we left behind
 

Quite right they want to keep us in the EU because they know it's insanity to leave.

Ordinary people voted to get out because they were fed lie upon lie upon lie by despicable creatures like Boris Johnson who never thought so many people would believe him. Millionaire posh boys playing games, except this is for real.

Corbyn was never a EU supporter. A failing, if he had tried harder to galvanise Labour support, for example by highlighting EU investment in deprived areas that would never - and will never - come from Westminster, then we may not be in this dreadful mess.

Re: The country we left behind
 

Agreed. At the time the political class assumed that Remain would carry the day so we're fairly complacent.

Boris is the worst. He was on the fence totally undecided until he made his (political) mind up, then he started gunning for Brexit like a possessed John Redwood.

Re: The country we left behind
 

Don't forget that until May's fatal call for an election this year, and the result of that, that Corbyn was under constant attack from the Blairite right wing of his own party.

It's only a few months ago, but people on all sides have moved on from that.

According to the beleaguered Tories, he's an existential threat (and I hate my self for misusing the term in the modern vernacular).

But now, the whole Tory/Brexit agenda is focussed on the premise that a Corbyn lead government would be ...well would be what? Bad for the 0.01%?

F**k them.

Re: The country we left behind
 

Vive la revolution!