Sham Cam

[newwave]

Touching to see Mr and Mrs Cam crying at the school their late Son Ivan went to and all the nice words about the care he received. Pity is that he dosent give a toss for other children in the same or similiar positions, if he did he would not be cutting so much child provision.

Still not suprised, being a Tory or voting Tory says you are a selfish person.

I think vodafone and hmrc had been arguing over how much vodafone owed them for years and HMRC accepted an amount that was lower than they thought they were owed in order to bring the matter to a close and get some revenue.
I'm not sure on this though

Hudd - have a look at the Private Eye website, they have been running stories on this for months. (search term Vodafone). The stories appear to be coming from some very disgruntled insiders who obviously reckoned Vodafone was over a barrel. Only the personal intervention of the HMRC head honcho offering a low settlement appears to have saved them - it's a story which is not going to die down.

'if he were to completely protect all disabled provision, where is he supposed to get that money form?'

he can find the money. he has increased the foreign aid budget. He could take some out of that in an emergency. He tells us that the country's finances are like a family's finances. When a family faces hard times, it doesn't increase its contributions to charity, it cuts back until it can again afford it. But you won't hear Labour complaining anytime soon.

Have we not signed up to contribute 0.7% of GDP in foreign aid as part of the millenium development goals.

The US and Sweden have reduced their foreign aid in this climate. How come we let the disabled suffer and increase foreign aid? Don't they often tell us that some of this aid ends up in the wrong hands anyway? Where are the caring socialists, who care so much about our poor, elderly and disadvantaged? If you believe that, then you probably also believe in Father Christmas?

They've signed up to that agreement as well but they are choosing not to honour it, doesn't mean that that we shouldn't

Why do we need to honour that agreement, when Blair and Brown and Clegg etc. don't honour their manifesto commitments to the voting public? We are supposed to be in a financial crisis, the biggest since teh 1930s, and they have just increased the foreign aid budget and want to cut the disability budget. Where are our caring socialists? Aren't they supposed to be on the side of the people?

We are going to honour it because we should try to honour committments that we make as a country.

We don't have any socialists because the country doesn't want them, the last socialists we had in public life Foot and Kinnock were laughed out of town.

Can't they save money by relaxing some of their green targets? They could renegotiate their agreements and targets and postpone them until we recover if they felt like it. But don't hold your breath, they won't, they think these agreeements are more important than the sick, elderly and disabled. Oh, and the caring socialists agree with them, that's why they are so quiet.

We don't want to relax our green targets as doing that could to lead to environmental disaster in the future

In a democracy, shouldn't they honour the commitments to the electorate, or do foreign agreements and institutions take precedence over the people that they are supposed to be representing, the people who pay for their duck houses, moats and flipped homes.

The environmental scare stories are a lie. More and more people now realise this. That's why they had their recent Channel 4 documentary and debate on "what the green movement got wrong", where they admitted that polls show that the majority don't believe the bigwigs and earnest talking heads.

In times of need, you batten down the hatches, you try to ride the storm and you look after your own suffering people first, until you again have the money to spend on other causes. That's what other countries do.

Cutting provision for people with disabilities is not only inhumane, it is also short-sighted and costly. It's just that the costs show up somewhere else - so it looks as if you are saving money.

When NHS trusts sack nurses, people don't stop being ill. When social services are withdrawn, people don't stop needing support with personal care.

You end up with families and carers unable to cope with the overwhelming pressure, with people breaking down, with families or disabled people having to give up work, with increased mental and physical health problems, you end up with disabled people getting sicker because they aren't getting the services they need, so they reach a crisis and have to be admitted to hospital (many times more expensive than social care - one visit to A&E alone is £350 without including the knock on costs of admission or treatment).

It's stupid. The costs still exist - in fact they actually increase. But because it doesn't show up in the original budget of the LA or PCT employing six SALTs, that's fine. Bugger for the disabled person and the taxpayer, though.

(Oh, and I agree with the OP, David Cameron is being a hypocrite parading his sensitivity in public while making savage cuts in the services that he KNOWS full well are so vital for disabled children.)

good post edam, can I just add that a lot of families will have no choice but to put their children/family members into residential care, which will cost thousands

Are people really suggesting that we should go against our committments to the developing world?

Very true, twoshoes, should have included that in the list.

I agree locotitis, I always find it strange that people start questioning the foreign aid budget and say it should be cut in order to help the poor in this country even though the lives of the poor in this country are far superior to the poor in the developing world.

Are you saying it's OK for social services or the NHS to stop providing overnight care for a profoundly disabled stroke survivor because worse things happen in India, or Afghanistan?

I agree that suggestions that it's either or are false - it's not development vs. social care, we should cut things that don't hurt vulnerable people. But your post smacks horribly of 'poor people in this country don't know how lucky they are'.

There's an interesting argument about whether we should be sending aid to emerging economies such as India and China, I think. If these countries are growing wealthier and becoming competitors, should we be helping them out? Or would it be inhumane to cut support for the needy just because some people in the same country are getting rich? Or are we using aid to further our own political purposes, i.e. to build a relationship with the emerging economies?

The reason that diasbled and other services are being cut is because of the dire fiscal situation we're in. I think Tony Blair said that the poorest and most vulnerable suffer if you let the public finances get out of control.

popelle - why should the sick, the poor, women and children take the lion's share of the pain? That's a political choice. You don't have to make them suffer. The government decides where the axe falls - it could protect services for the disabled, it is choosing not to.

I think we should send money to emerging economies as even though they are showing very impressive rates of economic growth there are still a lot of people in those countries who live in horrific poverty.

The point about aid helping to build relationships with emerging economies is an interesting one. Although aid should not be sent purely to help build partnerships I do think that it is helpful in relations with these countries and we should seek to capitalise on that.

edam- the problem is the deficit is so large the axe has to fall nearly everywhere. The coalition is ringfencing NHS spending which is a fairly large chunk of public spending so to make the cuts needed to eradicate the deficit then nearly everything else is going to have to be cut.

I take it back. Credit to a socialist. The ex-Labour MP, Dennis McShane, has actually raised the foreign aid issue

'India?s economy is about 50% bigger than Britain?s, the country has more millionaires than the UK, so why should British taxpayers continue to help? This was the question posed by a former government minister ? Dennis Macshane, yesterday'

People are actually asking questions on BBC World

worldhaveyoursay.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/why-is-britain-giving-aid-to-india/

It probably doesn't get much air time here, just on BBC World.

Indias economy is 50% bigger than ours but they have a population of approximately 1 billion whilst we have a population of 60million.