Investment in Health and Education are Vital to the Well-Being of the People and the Socialised Economy

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

Investment in Health and Education are Vital to the Well-Being of the People and the Socialised Economy
What Does the NHS Clawback Mean?
The Proposed Cuts at South Tyneside Foundation NHS Trust

Physics Declared to be in "Good Health":
A Denial of Experience

US Empire and Triad Dictate that the Status Quo Shall Prevail

It has been pointed out many times as the government contributes billions of pounds of public funds to the bailout of the banks, and the featherbedding of the super-rich, that this stands in stark contradiction to the tight constraints put on social programmes. Previously it was the case that the government could always decide to go to war, maintaining troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the world, irrespective of the calls of the state treasury.

The government’s argument is that the banking system is essential to the functioning of the economy. The implication is that funding for social programmes is an optional extra, its level to be decided by the limitations of the government’s budget. The Blairite doctrine of "investment with reform" was a formula for privatisation and paying the rich. In the health service, it has spawned "payment by results", the need to eliminate "budget deficits", and the "purchaser/provider" split. In education, it has generated the involvement of big business in setting the direction for education, an assault on the humanities, and higher education and public schools chasing lucrative funding in the interests of "competition".

The government’s programmes in both these respects, in regard to banking and to social programmes, have been a crucial factor in exacerbating the crisis of monopoly capitalism and the dictate of the financial oligarchy. The unfettered havoc of the financiers and the cutbacks and capping of spending in health and education have both been extremely detrimental to the well-being of the people and the socialised economy. Just as the destruction of the manufacturing base and the loss of jobs is in a negative feedback loop with the crisis of the economy, so are the attacks on the social programmes which are the right of the people.

It might appear that Brown and Darling are reversing their positions by telling the world to increase spending. But the reality tells a different story. For example, some time ago the media and the government machine were full of the "scandal" of NHS Trusts "overspending" on their budgets, budgets which were not decided by them and over which health workers, professionals and the people whose claims for health care must be met as of right, had no control. Cutbacks, "efficiencies" and the like were the result. Now, instead of a "deficit" there is a "surplus". Having made these cutbacks and "efficiencies", the Trusts are being told that they must not spend all this "surplus". NHS organisations will not be permitted by the government to invest more than £400 million of the £1.7 billion "surplus" in the next financial year and will not even get the full increase in resources which was pledged to them by the Treasury. Loss of jobs, cutbacks in PCTs and decreased patient care will be the result. This is supposed to prepare the NHS for a decrease in funding in future years. Compare this with the £500 billion supposedly to rescue the banks.

In education, the reality is that science and humanity courses have been and are being shut down constantly. Yet the government claims that everything is sound and healthy.

One conclusion that can be drawn is that the big parliamentary parties are not fit to govern. If only these parties can come to power, then the political system stands in need of renewal from top to bottom. Another conclusion that can be drawn is the need for the sovereignty to be vested in the people so that they themselves can decide on the direction for the economy, and to put into practice their sentiment to stop paying the rich and to increase investments in social programmes. Since the government is doing the exact opposite on both these counts, we call on the working class and people to organise so that the political programme of stop paying the rich and increase investments in social programmes becomes a reality over the heads of the monopolies, their dictate and the state which is instituted to implement this dictate.

The Health Service Journal (HSJ) asked NHS managers how they expected the spending restrictions to impact on their organisations. This is what the HSJ reported as the answers.

Hospitals

Expect payment by results tariff to be based on assumption of 3.5 per cent efficiency savings year on year;

Warn diminishing waiting lists mean they cannot make up income shortfalls by increasing activity;

Predict cuts of up to 3 per cent of non-clinical staff bill;

Will have to reduce patient length of stay and close beds;

Will have to cut agency staff spending and recruit permanent staff where possible.

Primary care trusts

Predict limits on surplus investment and allocations will mean tight restrictions on funds;

Expect to have to make tough commissioning decisions, putting off plans for some new services.

Statement of Branch Secretaries of Unison and the GMB unions

On Thursday, November 6, representatives of the board met with the representatives of the staff side unions at South Tyneside Foundation NHS Trust. The Trust board wanted to discuss a scoping document for Review of Estates and Facilities at South Tyneside District Hospital. The scoping document which was placed on the table by the facilities Director David Watts for discussion identified as a target £1.3 m + target reductions for Estates and Facilities to be delivered by March 2009 with plans put in place in December. Management side claimed that the cost of the estates and facilities was higher than average of other trusts out side of London, but also because they are in financial difficulties following the change to the "Payment by Results" system to all Trusts by the government where by they only get ad hoc payments for treatments and operations made instead of annual funding on the basis of the population they serve. Outrageously, the increasing cost of fuel at the hospital which will cost them in the order of £1million extra this year is expected to come out of hospital patient care and staffing budget.

The unions expressed their concern that the proposals would lead to a large number of redundancies and failed to see how the hospital could carry out its functions with such a reduction in support services. Staff side said they would meet with members to discuss the situation and respond to management if and how they wanted to respond.

Management said it was their intention to issue 90 days notice for the ending of all contracted overtime at the Trust and that they would also be inviting voluntary redundancies from all employees of the South Tyneside Foundation Trust for information only at this stage.

These proposed massive cuts in support services come after the closure of Ward 23 and the moving of gynaecological beds onto surgery wards. Ironically, it also comes after the Trust has been awarded three stars by monitor for its "services and efficiency".

It was pointed out at staff meetings by a union representative: "Why should we pay with cuts to our jobs which are vital to the health service because the government is no longer taking up responsibility to fund the NHS properly. Let’s be clear, whether people accept voluntary redundancy, or the directors impose compulsory redundancies this will not solve the problem of the financial crisis which is caused by the government's refusal to guarantee the funding of the health service."

Discussions at the hospital were in the context that the security of the health workers lies in their fight and that this is "our hospital, our work place and our NHS".

The staff side unions jointly condemn this direction of cutting back clinical and support services to hospitals and other health care services. They call on all health workers and patients to fight to retain their hospitals clinical services and support infrastructure.

Discussions with staff and meetings with management continue at the Trust.

The Review of UK Physics led by Professor Bill Wakeham, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton, has concluded that physics in Britain is in a healthy state. Given the real-life experience of the country’s physicists, especially in recent years, such a conclusion would seem bizarre. How did the Wakeham Review reach such a conclusion?

The review comes at a time of an ongoing financial crisis that has been created by a shortfall in the funding of astronomy and particle physics. It also comes as the general economic crisis continues to unfold, under which all social programmes are under threat. In the universities, physics, along with other sciences, has been enduring waves of university mergers, restructuring programmes and department closures. Physicists have been increasingly forced to subordinate their research to "success in the global market". In the face of this experience, the review presents its facts and figures, which, according to its outlook, imply that physics is "healthy".

The first term of reference given by the review is that it was to "consider the priorities for investment across physics as a whole, taking account of the need both to maintain the health of discipline, and to strengthen its wider, including economic, impact in the future". The notion of "economic impact" is the starting-point of how the issue becomes obscured, as it begs the questions of what is meant by "economic" and in whose interest does physics impact. In other words: for what aim? For "Britain’s global success"?

"Educationally, the discipline faces enormous challenges," acknowledges the report. "The numbers of students taking the subject at school level have fallen over many years, with A-level numbers a particular cause for concern. The number of physics departments has also declined over the last 10 years meaning that the discipline is primarily concentrated in the older traditional research-based universities. The low percentages of female and ethnic minority students are a worry."

One might conclude from this that physics was rather unhealthy. On the contrary: "The Panel concludes that physics research in the UK is in a generally good state of health, with departments performing curiosity-driven research of the highest international quality and having benefited from a significant increase in research expenditure in recent years."

The "increase in research expenditure" glosses over the reality faced by physics in the current funding crisis, as well as more generally. The main point here, however, is the phrase "curiosity-driven research". The outlook fully taken up by the report is that science is divided into two. On the one hand, there is pure, fundamental, core science, which is motivated by curiosity. On the other, there is applied, industrial, science, which has economic impact and by implication is motivated by profit.

According to this view, the report resolves its contradictions with arguments such as this: "In summary the Panel concludes that physics training is a valuable qualification to possess, with physicists as people making a significant contribution to many aspects of society and the economy. The Panel also wishes to highlight the collaboration between physics departments and industry and the underlying importance of basic fundamental research for industry. The Panel recommends that these interactions are developed further, but also better publicised so that young people especially are aware of the value of studying the discipline."

The whole report continues to return to this theme. "The Panel was presented with direct evidence from employers that physics is a very desirable training to possess and that physics makes a significant contribution to the economy through the people that it has trained." "In terms of collaboration between academics, the Panel heard from many sources that more encouragement was needed in this area. It was therefore agreed … to develop mechanisms which enable the easy flow in both directions between industry and academia."

In this way, the report obscures physicists’ real-life experience. Further, it directly contradicts that experience through its measure of "health".

"A bibliometric analysis was commissioned … The analysis considered publications in a defined set of journals, largely used by the physics community worldwide and looked at total publication numbers and their citations for a group of comparator countries including the UK. … The analysis finds that the UK ranks fifth amongst comparator countries in terms of the total volume of published journal papers in physics and third in terms of citations per paper. Despite producing fewer outputs than Japan, Germany and France the UK achieves a higher average rate of citations for each publication. However if output volumes are normalised to population, the UK comes out in third place. …"

Quantity, not quality, is the basis of the claim to health. Experience says one thing, but the statistics are used to deny that experience. The whole report is essentially quantitative. It is the same with the figures attached to the "economic impact" of physics, or the "challenge" or student numbers.

It is not then, surprising, that the report essentially concludes: more of the same. Its first conclusion is that "Physics research is performing strongly internationally." Therefore, "The Panel recommends that the UK Government should continue to fund research in both basic and applied physics across a broad spectrum of sub-disciplines, at the level required to retain international competitiveness." This is what it comes down to: to further open up physics to the aim of "international competitiveness". Departments should "broaden" themselves in this direction, and in so doing they will become more "viable", attracting more opportunities, funding and students.

Physicists have to break with such a capital-centric outlook and assess the state of the science on the basis of their real-life experience. This experience shows what the consequences of that outlook have already been. Such official whitewashes as the Wakeham Report should be rejected.

TML Daily*, November 18, 2008

Reject the status quo, another world is possible!

The G-20 Summit on the economic crisis held in Washington, DC on November 14-15 ended as it began in crisis, incoherence and the status quo. The economic conditions that gave rise to the crisis were not confronted; they were embraced and praised. The official G-20 communiqué proudly declares without any hint of shame or embarrassment: "Our work will be guided by a shared belief that market principles, open trade and investment regimes, and effectively regulated financial markets foster the dynamism, innovation, and entrepreneurship that are essential for economic growth, employment, and poverty reduction."

Madrid, Spain, November 15, 2008: Anti-G-20 demonstration; banner reads: "Liberal, robbery!"

The leaders of the US Empire and the global military and social class forces of the Triad (US, Europe and Japan) that have greatly profited from the archaic economic conditions giving rise to the crisis were front and centre at the summit and in the mass media congratulating themselves on coming up with great ideas to preserve their privilege and status quo and rescue their system from its internal contradictions. Fools think their paradise will last forever when shielded from reality by anti-consciousness, opulence, privilege and the power to act with impunity. Prime Minister Harper said without even a faint smile, "The [G-20] declaration should give us all hope and I would hope give the market some reassurance."

The "hope" yearned for by Harper is hope for continuation of the status quo of wealth and privilege of the ruling class, a "hope" very realistically backed up by the military might of the US Empire and repressive organs of the Canadian monopoly capitalist state yet founded in a subjective idealism that refuses to recognise the world as it presents itself.

The outcome of the summit and Harper's false hope remind workers anew to cast off all illusions and roll up your sleeves to empower yourselves for there's no cure from the gods of plague!

The ruling class and its minions are trying to make workers believe that change, security and relief from the economic crisis will come without an organised struggle, without the working class organising in itself and for itself as an effective opposition with an independent perspective, voice and programme for change and to defend the rights of all.

The political leaders from the Triad who met in Washington are doing everything in their power to block workers, peasants and anti-imperialists from breaking free from the grip of the imperialist system of states, from the exploitation and unequal global marketplace dominated by the monopolies of the Triad. The G-20 Summit was bluster and empty rhetoric to convince the gullible that the gods of plague can deliver a cure when in reality a cure means that the rights of the monopolies must be restricted, their domination over trade must be broken and their free movement of capital to exploit and profit from the added-value of others be denied. More and more people worldwide are awakening to the reality that the monopolies are not going to agree to new arrangements without an organised opposition led by the working class to force an alternative into being against the will and right of the monopolies.

All the vacuous chatter about whether Obama was at the summit or not; all the threatening remarks against protectionism and tampering with their beloved global state monopoly capitalist system; all their smiles and handshakes could not hide the scheming of the monopoly capitalists and their political representatives to save their particular hides through payments to the rich from public treasuries and other anti-social measures to protect their narrow interests against the general interests of society and the revolt of the working class, peasants and anti-imperialists. Not one word of truth was spoken of the origins of the economic crisis that are found in a global capitalist system dominated by the most powerful monopolies from the Triad. Not one word was said to admit openly that the rich as a social class is anachronistic, irresponsible and parasitic and a negative drag on the socialised economy blocking the working class from resolving the contradiction between public socialised conditions of production and their private ownership.

The modern rich have been rendered incoherent and anti-conscious not by religious obscurantism but by the stupendous social wealth they have stolen, the possibilities to steal even more and the decadence of thinking and culture that comes with such unbridled luxury, privilege and power exercised with impunity. Not one word was spoken of the endless wars, luxury spending and the criminal schemes within the realm of circulation that are draining the world's economies of badly needed social product for economic reproduction and which leave the socialised economies weak and defenceless against imperialism and nature. No one had the courage to stand up and point a finger at Bush, Brown, Aso, Merkel, Sarkozy and Harper and say without equivocation that you people have led the world into wars and crises and you are now leading the world to even greater ruin and catastrophic war for the redivision and capture of markets, raw materials, chattel labour and strategic power. You are incapable of changing your ways because you are stooges of the monopoly capitalist system and the only contribution you could possible render the people is to denounce yourselves, ask mercy for your wrongdoings and call upon the workers of the world to fight for their empowerment, to build new nations in their own image and vest sovereignty in the people.

But that did not happen and will never happen for stooges of the status quo have been historically shown to be incapable of learning and must be removed from power by the organised power of the rising progressive class. Instead, the mass media attempted to embroil the working class in a sterile diversionary debate over national versus international regulation, protectionism versus open markets, US dollar hegemony versus Euro or Yen hegemony and whether hedge funds, over-the-counter derivatives, credit rating agencies, free trade, credit default swaps, IMF, WTO and all the other institutions and schemes to steal the people's social product need better regulation or not. Dear leaders of the Triad, your dark world of international usury and other schemes for big scores do not need better regulation they need to be abolished! Alternative international arrangements based on modern definitions are going to be brought into being by the organised working class movement and that alternative has nothing to do with fleecing the world's peoples and trampling on their sovereign rights; the alternative has everything to do with trading for mutual benefit, respecting all humanity as one and upholding the sovereign right to be of all peoples and nations and their right to live in peace in their own self-reliant way, with their own thought material without being told what values and systems to call and make their own, and without being plundered, oppressed and attacked by the big powers of the Triad.

Join and help organise the nation-building project for democratic renewal and to vest sovereignty in the people that has been undertaken by the committees for democratic renewal in Canada.

Say yes to an alternative! Another world is possible!

* The Marxist-Leninist Daily is the on-line newspaper of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)