I still have to be careful not to strain my eyes and over the last few days I have written a piece about government for today, but events have overtaken me and so I write this virtually in shorthand. Please forgive me.
A number of incidents concerning the national accounting are perturbing me. It started some months ago when my dentist said he was going private because he spent too much time sending financial statements requested either by the NHS or the Inland revenue, that he had already furnished, but recovering them again took time as they were small items. He is honest, hard working and reliable – I trust him. He said it was a ploy, by the Government to make the dental faction of the NHS go private, so that the allocation of money for dentistry could be reallocated to balance the NHS books. I wrote on the 18th January about another piece of sleight of hand. Then there was the row about police pay, lately the problems with differential pay in Birmingham, the lack of funding for the armed forces and NOW, there is a proposal which will, if put through, make GPs also go private. If this happens, the whole structure of the health service will collapse as the dental service is collapsing, and the disadvantaged will suffer yet again.
The funding of Rock will have had an effect, but there are other matters I don’t understand. Who is footing the bill for our contribution in Iraq and Afghanistan? I can’t find out if the UN is in part, or if it is just us? I don’t understand why some countries are contributing troops to Iraq that are not allowed to be at the front, while our boys are being slaughtered day on day. When Haines was Minister for Northern Ireland he used some very questionable tactics to try to blackmail and bully us to toe some very unreasonable lines, and he was not alone in this. Labour wants to appear to be successful in government, but I believe Brown as Chancellor and now PM has joined Blair in making some glaring mistakes and intends more for that very reason. Our infrastructure is miles below what it was in the 70s, our health service, road networks, and transport services are all below par, and fares are excessive, Our educational system is in total chaos through constant tweaking, term on term, not even year on year. Our taxation is more hidden than open and there is confusion what is included in Council taxes.
You know I could double the list, but I would be preaching to the converted.