Heads Full of Straw

There have been several announcements by various Departments around Christmas, which prove the spirit of Scrooge is far from dead.

First, Chris Grayling from Justice, stopped Christmas parcels for all prisoners just to show how tough/ambitious he is. Then Ian Duncan Smith, condemned the Church charity administering the nation’s food banks and accused them as ‘scaremongering’ and being ‘political’.  Also the unemployed will have to work 35 hours a week for any benefits and anyone appealing against an Atos assessment will lose all benefits for months eventhough Atos are wrong 40% of the time. Cameron has created a phoney war on a wave of Bulgarian and Romanian scroungers when there is no evidence to show they exist.

Today, we have a bullish stance in denying anyone who is non-EU free medical care at A&E departments. The Government has successfully introduced the catch phrase ‘health tourism’ in an attempt to portray foreigners as wilfully getting ill and injured in the UK just to rip off ‘hard-working taxpayers’.

The cumulative effect of these policies is to convince Middle England that the Conservatives are striking out against hordes of lazy, grasping foreigners and scroungers. It simultaneously diminishes us as a nation where Britishness used to imply humanity, generosity and tolerance. And as a country we were proud of that reputation. Now there is little protest to police randomly checking everyone’s immigration status at train stations.

Now rattled by the threat of sustained electoral support for UKIP and assisted by a largely small-minded and embittered press, Ministers feel free to be as mean and nasty as they wish, despite what the actual cost of these services are. All figures show a tiny amount of benefits being claimed by migrants and much more paid in tax proportionally than UK residents.

The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt’s estimate of a cost of £2Bn to the NHS from migrants turned out to be closer to £80m. Labour has mainly bottled it on these issues. Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said: "We are not against improving the recovery of costs from people with no entitlement to NHS treatment."

These headlines turn in reality into dishing out huge bills to elderly, vulnerable and poor people. It also means doctors asking to see your passport. But most of all it means another aspect of the NHS privatised. There is a reason for opposing this policy of imposing health costs: it is simply wrong and against the first principles of universal healthcare.

"Now He Belongs to the Ages"

In the late 1970s, my old headmaster would lecture us on world affairs in his reactionary Home Counties manner. When it came to South Africa, he would always say tritely, “it can only end in a bloodbath.”

That view was commonly held in Britain then given its proximity to the police murder of Steve Biko and mass shootings of Soweto students. But it figured without the extra-ordinary leadership and political guts of Nelson Mandela. At the time he was a rather forgotten figure, about halfway through his prison sentence for sabotage and conspiracy: hard labour, two letters per year and one visit.

When he emerged from prison in 1990, South Africa was in deep flux and greybeards from the ANC sought direction and counsel from the great man. He told them the solution to a political future for South Africa was for, “both sides to compromise their fundamental beliefs.” They looked at him like his brain had gone soft in custody. But those apparently contradictory words proved to be visionary and saved his nation from what appeared to be inevitable carnage and conflict.

I heard Mandela speak from South Africa House in Trafalgar Square in 1996. The crowd was close to hysteria and erupted when he addressed them. It was an extra-ordinary and exhilarating speech. We are constantly disheartened listening to obviously disingenuous words of so many politicians. Here was finally one who meant what he said and had the courage and persuasive skills to achieve it. By that time those leaders who had described Mandela as a terrorist had long been sidelined to the wrong side of history.

Throughout the apartheid era, black South Africans were treated with brutality and violence and denied the rights of voting, to chose where to work, live and who to marry. People should always have the means to re-claim and defend those rights. Mandela resisted with unyielding determination that oppression his whole life and delivered freedom and peace to his country - South Africa's "greatest son."