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Friday 16 December 2016

The answer to the crisis in social care?

Tony Mulhearn of NW ARMS wrote this letter to The Observer:

Yet another investigation in addition to at least ten similar reports this year (Observer 11/12/16) confirms that which everybody with a smidgeon of awareness knows - that there is a crisis in social care. This crisis was inevitable since this fat cats’ government seized on the banker-induced economic crash of 2008 as an excuse to slash expenditure on social provision which is demanded by the wealthiest one per cent who bankroll the Tory Party, and whose income has increased exponentially as the working class’s has declined.

Local authorities like Liverpool have butchered social care by complying with Tory cuts, and a further cut of £90million is promised which in the words of Mayor Anderson could see Liverpool council unable to provide even statutory provision for deprived children and the elderly.

Teresa May attempts to disguise the brutal agenda of her government by feigning sympathy with, in her words, 'ordinary, working-class families, not the wealthy, that had made the biggest sacrifices' since the financial crash. The following week her Chancellor Hammond promised no let-up in the Tory programme of everlasting cuts.

The solution proposed in your comment page merely fiddles with the problem. Certainly political will is required, but to do what? Reversing the cuts in inheritance tax is a start, but what about collecting the taxes being dodged on an industrial scale and increasing the taxes of the top 1%. The immediate cancellation of all PFI payments would yield millions for the NHS and social care.

These measures could be given teeth by 6,500 Labour councillors refusing to carry out any further Tory cuts, supported by a massive programme of industrial action to be initiated by the TUC in defence of those in society who are least able to defend themselves. 

Tony Mulhearn

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