PJC Journal – Original » 2007 » July

Jul

05

English NHS gets screwed again

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Nurses in Wales are to receive their full annual pay increase, ahead of their colleagues in England.

The unstaged pay increase of 2.5%, backdated to 1 April,
was announced by health minister Edwina Hart, who said they “deserved
their pay in full”.

The Welsh Assembly Government had originally gone with a UK Government decision to delay part of the rise until November.

Unions had criticised this and were considering strike action.

The Royal College of Nursing Wales (RCN) welcomed the decision, which will be implemented across several departments.

Key NHS workers in Wales including ancillary,
administrative and clerical staff, support services including catering,
estates and maintenance, hotel services and security will also receive
the full pay rise, said Mrs Hart.

The additional costs would be managed as an “in-year pressure” within the health and social services budget, she said.

“This will significantly help to improve staff morale
within the NHS and clearly demonstrates how much I value their hard
work and dedication,” said Ms Hart. (source)

In a disgusting attempt to get the money back however, Gwent NHS Trust has brought in staff car parking fees at Ysbyty'r
Tri Chwm in Ebbw Vale, and may do the same at Newport's Royal Gwent and
Nevill Hall in Abergavenny.

Hospital workers have staged a demonstration against the introduction of £120-a-year car parking charges.

A spokesman for the trust said: “Charging for car parking is now standard practice in virtually every trust in south Wales.

“We will continue to work with staff and their
representatives to reach agreement at Ysbyty'r Tri Chwm, but we must
maintain equity with all our staff who currently pay charges on other
hospital sites.

(source)

The Treasury giveth with one hand, and taketh with the other.

NuLab – Destroying Britain from the inside out.

When Banks dont care about fraud

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Nich Starling. Aka The Norfolk
Blogger. A teacher and former councillor, has become the latest victim of
banking fraud.

Try as he may, he cannot get his bank to respond, answer
calls or help in any way, and the only contact he has had with them has proven
to be lies from the Bank.

Is Lloyds TSB really on a suicide mission to prove just how
much it doesn’t care about its customers.

We have written many times
about Banks being amongst the biggest enablers of fraud, of being slapdash in
their protection of customer data and believe that this is a direct result of
the Governments policy of not enforcing fraud and security regulations
at source, policy that should force the banks to comply.

This is Nich’s story.

I
mentioned yesterday about the problem I was having regarding Lloyds TSB bank
and their inept policy of not answering phones in their Fraud Departments.

Well for me it gets worse. It appears that the Fraud departments take over 45
minutes to answer phone calls and they lie when they speak to you.

For example, yesterday I waited 45 minutes to speak to someone at Lloyds TSB
about the missing money from my account. They said they would cancel my bank
card for the moment, as I requested, for fear that my fraud could also be card
fraud. When I visited my bank today in person, it turns out my card had not
been cancelled at all.

Then the bank informed me that they could do nothing and that I had to deal
with their internet fraud department by phone. They said I was welcome to use
their phone at the branch. Fifty minutes later I was still in a queue of calls
waiting to be answered and the branch itself was beginning to close. When the
bank staff member who was helpig me asked how I had got on he was astonished to
hear that Lloyds TSB internet Banking Fraud department has not answered my
call.

So as I write, nineteen minutes in to my third call to Lloyds TSB in less than
24 hors (of which nearly 2 hours of the 24 has been spent on the phone to
them), I still canot speak to anyone in person and I have had more than £3,000
removed from my account.

A simple word of advice for anyone contemplating opening an account with Lloyds
TSB or thinking of Internet Banking at all. DON'T !!!

Banks, in the same way as politicians, will always be judged
by what they do, not what they say.

The Government has abdicated its responsibilities for fraud, removing
the reporting for fraud from the Police and handing it to the Banks to deal with. Is this an
example of how fraud is to be dealt with in the future.

The actions of Lloyds TSB, as experienced by Nich, is
clearly saying that its customers are not worth the effort, they really are
just in it for the money.

NuLab – Destroying Britain from the inside out.

New Europe Minister shows contempt over Treaty

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Jim Murphy, the new Europe Minster, made his first
appearance at the European Scrutiny Committee yesterday. The general consensus
that it wasn't too impressive. To be fair to him, the issues he was discussing
- such as the revised Constitutional Treaty – are pretty complicated. But we
would have expected him to have got his officials to brief him thoroughly on
the really tricky points – such as the Charter – especially as the legal advice
to the committee was leaked to the Telegraph.

After negotiating the new EU Constitutional Treaty Tony Blair told
parliament that “Nothing in the Charter creates justiciable rights
applicable to the United Kingdom.”

But the MPs on the scrutiny committee weren't convinced. They pointed out that
the text of the UK's
opt-out reads: “nothing in [Title IV] of the Charter creates justiciable rights
applicable in the United Kingdom.”

They asked Murphy whether this meant that everything else in the Charter was
justiciable in the UK?
Murphy failed to answer the question.

He struggled to explain the meaning of the opt-out and failed to back up
Blair’s argument that this will not be justiciable in the UK.
He could only say that the Charter “doesn’t create any new rights.” He was
asked over 10 times by MPs to give a straight answer “yes or no” to the
question but he failed to do so –much to their irritation. Instead he repeated
that “the legal advice that we have had is that this charter brings in no new
rights.”

Jim Murphy’s failure to answer this question on the Charter only strengthens
the growing consensus that the UK
opt-out is not worth the paper it is written on. Jacques Ziller, a professor at
the European University Institute in Florence,
has said that the idea of one country opting out of the charter was “nonsense”
and would quickly be challenged in the courts. The Guardian has reported that,
former EU Justice Commissioner Antonio Vitorino has questioned the legal basis
for the British opt-out and the Commission’s legal experts expect that the
British opt-out will be tested in the courts.

Murphy's case wasn't helped by the fact that he was forced to defend Margaret
Beckett's lie that there had not been any negotiations
on the treaty until a couple of days before the summit.

He made a distinction between “discussions” and
“negotiations”. When it was pointed out that Government advisers had
begun work on the treaty back in January he claimed that “There’s a difference
between negotiation and conversation”. He argued that because no draft was on
the table back then they were not negotiations.

The advisers – he said – were simply asked to “explain the UK's
concerns and priorities” for the new treaty. Seemingly contradicting
Beckett's definition of negotiations:

“To my mind the process of actual negotiation begins when you are
invited to set out your core demands.”

The MPs were not happy. Even the Labour chairman Michael Connarty – sensing he
was being “had” – began ripping into him . Not the best debut
performance we've ever seen.

(HatTip Open
Europe)

If Brown wants to be seen to be building trust, perhaps he
should appoint a judge to every parliamentary committee with the authority to
hold Ministers in contempt should they lie, become evasive or fail to answer
questions.

The attitude of ignoring the legal basis of agreements sponsored by the former Europe Minister Geoff Hoon must be stamped out.

We demand honesty from now on, we demand a referendum on the European Constitution Treaty.

Sign the No.10 Petition for a referendum now.

NuLab – Destroying Britain from the inside out.

Demand a Referendum from Brown on Treaty

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SPEECH DELIVERED BY PREMIER BENITO MUSSOLINI
Rome, Italy, February 23, 1941

“We
are not like the English. We boast that we are not like them. We
haven't elevated lying into a government art nor into a narcotic for
the people the way the London government has done.

We call bread bread
and wine wine, and when the enemy wins a battle it is useless and
ridiculous to seek, as the English do in their incomparable hypocrisy,
to deny or diminish it.”

“…Great Britain is alone. This
isolation pushes her toward the United States, from which she urgently
and desperately seeks aid. The industrial power of the United States
certainly is great, but for aid to be useful supplies must safely reach
England and also be of such quantity as not only to replace the
destruction already inflicted and that which will come to the
industrial plants of Britain, but also to bring about superiority over
Germany.

This is impossible because Germany now works with the men,
machines and raw materials of the entire European Continent.”

“…when
Great Britain falls, then the war will be ended, even if by any chance
it should die out slowly in other countries of the British Empire.
Unless-and it is possible-these countries, where already something is
fermenting, do not Teach their independence once the metropolitan area
is conquered.

This would bring about a change not only in the European
political map, but also in the world's map.”

Europe has waited a long time for the capitulation of Great Britain, don't let Brown help them succeed.

DEMAND A REFERENDUM

Sign the No.10 Petition now.

HatTip The Final Redoubt

Demand a Referendum from Brown on Treaty

IanPJ Main Page Add you comment

SPEECH DELIVERED BY PREMIER BENITO MUSSOLINI
Rome, Italy, February 23, 1941

“We
are not like the English. We boast that we are not like them. We
haven't elevated lying into a government art nor into a narcotic for
the people the way the London government has done.

We call bread bread
and wine wine, and when the enemy wins a battle it is useless and
ridiculous to seek, as the English do in their incomparable hypocrisy,
to deny or diminish it.”

“…Great Britain is alone. This
isolation pushes her toward the United States, from which she urgently
and desperately seeks aid. The industrial power of the United States
certainly is great, but for aid to be useful supplies must safely reach
England and also be of such quantity as not only to replace the
destruction already inflicted and that which will come to the
industrial plants of Britain, but also to bring about superiority over
Germany.

This is impossible because Germany now works with the men,
machines and raw materials of the entire European Continent.”

“…when
Great Britain falls, then the war will be ended, even if by any chance
it should die out slowly in other countries of the British Empire.
Unless-and it is possible-these countries, where already something is
fermenting, do not Teach their independence once the metropolitan area
is conquered.

This would bring about a change not only in the European
political map, but also in the world's map.”

Europe has waited a long time for the capitulation of Great Britain, don't let Brown help them succeed.

DEMAND A REFERENDUM

Sign the No.10 Petition now.

HatTip The Final Redoubt