50 broken Tory promises - how many more to come?

Since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party my previously politically passive husband has become politically vocal. I think he finally has hope that we will see a change for the better once we can get rid of this Tory Govt. and replace it with a proper real Labour one!

This is one of the posts that he shared recently on Facebook - it sums up more succinctly than I can why the Tory Govt. needs to go!

Here are 50 more broken Tory promises from the first five years of failure in Downing Street:

We will balance the books by 2015
THE TRUTH: Britain still has a budget deficit of £90billion

We will pay down Britain’s debts
THE TRUTH: George Osborne has borrowed over £500billion in five years - more than Labour did in 13

We will get net immigration down to the tens of thousands
THE TRUTH: Net immigration is almost 300,000 per year

No more top-down reorganisations of the NHS
THE TRUTH: £3billion wasted on the biggest reorganisation in NHS history

We will improve your living standards
THE TRUTH: Families £1,600-a-year worse off than in 2010

We will deport more foreign criminals
THE TRUTH: The number of foreign crooks on our streets soars 20%

We will keep our nation’s defences strong
THE TRUTH: Army hacked back by 20,000 troops to its lowest level since the Napoleonic wars

We will not raise VAT
THE TRUTH: VAT hiked to 20%, costing the average family £450-a-year

We will protect the vulnerable from the cuts
THE TRUTH: Cruel welfare sanctions force one million people to use food banks

We’re all in it together
THE TRUTH: Millionaires get a £100,000-a-year tax cut - the poor get the £15-a-week Bedroom Tax

GP access promised 12 hours a day, seven days a week
THE TRUTH: Patients face a 10-day wait to see their family doctor

We will get tough on illegal immigrants
THE TRUTH: Home Office loses track of 174,000 illegal immigrants

We will get tough on tax avoidance
THE TRUTH: The Treasury is still missing out on an estimated £34billion a year

We will stop the closure of A&E and maternity wards
THE TRUTH: Dozens closed or downgraded since 2010

We will cut the number of MPs by 10%
THE TRUTH: Not a single MP has been cut

We will get Britain building again
THE TRUTH: Lowest level of house-building since the war

We will have more small schools with smaller class sizes
THE TRUTH: Number of infants in oversized classes up 200%

We will protect front-line policing
THE TRUTH: 17,000 cops get the boot

We will support families through the tax and benefits system
THE TRUTH: The average family loses £1,100 through tax and benefit changes

We will be the Greenest Government Ever
THE TRUTH: Cameron tells his Ministers to “cut the green cr*p”

We will work towards ending child poverty by 2020
THE TRUTH: 300,000 more kids plunged into poverty

We will enhance the status of teachers
THE TRUTH: Teachers’ pay cut in real terms year after year and their status publicly attacked from Michael Gove

We will revolutionise cancer care
THE TRUTH: The key cancer treatment waiting time target missed for the past four quarters

We will cut the number of highly-paid special advisers in Government
THE TRUTH: Number of special advisers soars by 50%

We will support and improve Sure Start
THE TRUTH: 763 Sure Start centres closed and many more scaled down

We will break down barriers between health and social care
THE TRUTH: Social care funding slashed by £3.5billion as part of attack on town hall budgets

We will restore trust in politics
THE TRUTH: The Tories trouser £30million in donations from hedge funds – which were given a huge tax cut in 2013

We will protect our NHS
THE TRUTH: 40% of NHS contracts handed to private health firms

We will revolutionise prisoner rehab
THE TRUTH: Prison escapes, assaults and suicides all soar as inmates are locked in overcrowded cells for 23 hours a day

We will increase spending on vital flood defences
THE TRUTH: Flood defence spending cut by £247million – and thousands of homes are flooded

We will fight for the union
THE TRUTH: Cameron talks up the SNP to punish Labour and unveils plans to downgrade Scottish MPs at Westminster

We will tackle inequality
THE TRUTH: The richest 1% of Britons now own the same amount of wealth as 54% of the population.

We will treat white collar crime as seriously as other crimes
THE TRUTH: 90% of cyber-crime is allowed to go undetected

No more winter crises in hospital
THE TRUTH: A&E departments in meltdown with one in five patients not seen within the four hour target.

We will invest in our schools
THE TRUTH: Plans to build more than 700 new schools across Britain brutally axed

We will help the disabled into suitable jobs
THE TRUTH: Remploy factories shut down and disabled people subjected to cruel Atos tests

We will make our borders more secure
THE TRUTH: Customs checks for dangerous drugs and weapons scaled back dramatically

We will keep supporting our young people
THE TRUTH: More than 2,000 youth workers axed and at least 350 youth centres closed

We will create security for British businesses
THE TRUTH: HSBC is amongst a raft of UK firms unsettled by Cameron’s EU referendum pledge.

We will not means-test child benefit
THE TRUTH: Child benefit means-tested and then cut for better-off families

We have no plans to get rid of the Education Maintenance Allowance
THE TRUTH: Six months later it is axed completely

We have no plans to get rid of Labour’s Future Jobs Fund
THE TRUTH: Six months later it is axed completely

We will improve Britain’s productivity
THE TRUTH: Productivity is 21% lower than the G7 average

We will deal with long-term unemployment with our ‘Work Programme’
THE TRUTH: More than 650,000 people are left off work for more than a year.

We will bring in 3,000 more midwives
THE TRUTH: Cameron misses his target by almost a third

We will create the “right sort of jobs” to spread prosperity “for the many not the few”
THE TRUTH: 1.7million zero hours contracts handed out in Cameron’s low-pay Britain

No-one will be made homeless by our welfare cuts
THE TRUTH: Rough sleeping up 55% since 2010

We will not allow cuts to front-line services
THE TRUTH: Services are cut across the board, from nearly 500 public libraries to over 1,000 lollipop ladies

We will not cut the NHS
THE TRUTH: The NHS is forced to find £5billion of ‘efficiency savings’ – cuts by any other name

We will have head-to-head TV debates like in 2010
THE TRUTH: Cameron was too chicken to take part

And there will no doubt be more of the same. If you think this is wrong, please join the Labour Party today and help us put things right. https://join.labour.org.uk/

Petitions that get results...

Following on from yesterday's post about the use of petitions, I was pleased to receive a response from my local authority, South Lakeland District Council, in respect of a petition on care2.com that I signed back in June of this year.  The petition "Stop housing discrimination against homeless people with pets" called for a rethink in the way that homeless people with pets are dealt with, and a copy of the petition was sent to each local authority.

The response from Cllr Graham Vincent, the council's Portfolio Holder for Health and Wellbeing, thanked me for raising the issue and explained the council's position,  insofar as housing homeless persons meant they often had to share accommodation (I presume this means hostels) and that having pets in such places was not appropriate so the pet was kennelled overnight (presumably at the council's expense.) He also referred to families escaping domestic abuse and that having pets housed with children is not always appropriate.

Cllr Vincent went on to explain that the council was currently revising their housing strategy and that this issue would be looked at as a part of that review, and that he will raise the matter at the regional Homelessness Forum to see if there are other options which may be better.

I have to say that I am delighted to have the reply from Cllr Vincent, and his assurance that he will look at this again.  I shall respond to him and make some comments and suggestions which I hope he may find of use.

Whilst I understand the reasoning behind the council's stance, I do feel very strongly that where a homeless person has been sleeping on the street and their only companion has been a dog, that it is wrong to separate person and dog as part of the rehousing issue. The dog is a vital part of the well-being of that person, possibly their only friend or companion, and once parted both will suffer.

The same can apply to families - if children are forcibly separated from their pets due to homelessness / rehousing, it can simply add to their trauma. Maintaining the continuity and stability of the good things in a child's life is essential when they are faced with domestic violence or abuse issues, as it will help them to cope with the huge changes they are going through.

If the current method of housing homeless persons does not allow for them to keep their pets then we really need to be rethinking how and where we rehouse people.  It's difficult enough being homeless without the distress of losing a loyal and trusted companion also.  I look forward to hearing how my local authority will progress this issue and hope they will be brave enough to consider some alternatives to the status quo.

Why has homelessness become such a big problem?

When I moved to London in 1981 I was staggered at seeing people sleeping on the streets, living in cardboard boxes on street corners, sleeping in subways and on park benches.

I had moved from Kendal in Cumbria, where there were two people who slept rough, both of whom apparently refused to live in proper housing for their own reasons. 

That people had to sleep rough was such a revelation to me...  now almost 35 years on and there are even more people sleeping on the streets or being dumped in unsuitable temporary accommodation.

People with mental health issues, young people, homeless families, or ex service-people who have nowhere else to live and who are suffering the awful after-effects of their involvement in any of the more recent conflicts.

How can this be? Why and how have we got it so wrong as a society?  How do we solve the problem?  And how quickly can we solve it?  We need social housing, we need affordable housing, we need a variety of housing suitable for the different needs of people. Not just family homes, but flats or houses for single people, for elderly people, for disabled people, for everyone to be able to have a place they can call their own.  It should not be too much to ask in 2015 that we all have somewhere to live!

*Jeremy Corbyn's housing manifesto proposes a radical rebooting of home construction permitting councils to be house builders and providers in order to meet the demand for affordable housing in their own areas:  PDF LINK

*  The new Leader of the Labour Party, just in case you missed it!