Corporate Greed

In this blog I’d like to address issues of what I regard as unsafe practises in the Governance of the United Kingdom. I will only speak to that which I know of, it is for readers to decide whether, now or in the future, my experience could become yours. It is a long and complex argument for that I apologise all I ask is that you take the time to consider it once.

According to people I have spoken to (who I presume have read my first post) I am cynical and at the same time naïve. I am too hard on a government doing their best in hard times and yet at the same time woefully forgiving of the unforgiveable. One person said the following, (the citations are theirs):
Our government is a collective of liars
- Iraq/Weapons of mass destruction
Supported by thieves
- The 10p tax debacle
Protected by thugs
- Jean-Charles de Menezes
Funded by fools
- Us
Since I am concerned to ensure that this blog stays within the realms of that which I know and have experience of I would make the following comments. Government has become purely a producer of concepts. It no longer holds the keys to the engines of application, no longer retains sight of the consequences of third and fourth and fifth party delivery of the concepts. In order to keep up the appearance of managing the problems arising in our society it follows populist trends stoked up by newspapers and then asks private sector facilitators to design, introduce and manage practical policies.

The problem is that those same private sector facilitators have vested interests that are not in accord with long held values of the British public. The same names keep cropping up time and again. Any study of information in the public domain shows that individuals working in areas of Government policy development later appear to have close links with the corporate structures. One is tempted to ask what was the detail and timetable in the development of those links?

My blog contains my impressions of how welfare, including health care, at the hands of the state is developing and its links to other issues. I am of course making an assumption that across classes, genders, races and religions the average British citizen (often endearingly referred to as the majority view) is in favour of certain levels of state support like the NHS. The arguments are always about degree and cost and it is a function of Government to make a decision about what we (the people) demand and what we (the taxpayer) can afford. It is a complex business not made easier by fluctuating circumstances. It is therefore necessary for a Government to build its policies on solid foundations like principle, ethics, morals and an undying respect for democracy.

This Government and the Thatcherite version before it have rejected that model in favour of developing a system of political practicality. It is in my view a cynical change that has begun to poison our nation. Politics can be defined as the exercise of power and it follows that politicians are those who desire to exercise it. My question – to what end?

Welfare reform became necessary not because it is too expensive, which it is, but because it did not serve the interests of those who needed it – us. The reforms should have worked toward the long term interest of the majority not as now pandered to the desires and ambitions of the few. I have come to recognise and accept that it is fundamentally self interest that drives us. We are genetically programmed to protect and nurture ourselves and by extension our family. There will be exceptions but these will be a minority. In a natural world, which ours isn’t, we would be born free to do anything we wished in any manner we wished to do it, to anybody or anything. The flip side of this is others would be equally free to do the same, even to us. Democracy and law are developments of learning that our individual long term interests are best served by cooperating, accepting rules that whilst limiting freedom reduce risk. Cooperation has existed at least since our Neanderthal antecedents discovered that hunting in packs kept bellies filled.

Welfare in all its forms is a manifestation of mutual self interest. None of us know when or if we are going to be injured or ill we cannot know if our children will be born damaged in some way. We all know that it might happen and so we prepare and agree a strategy that we hope will protect the majority and that we will be part of that majority.

Over recent years a new philosophy has developed one that has no link to the natural order it is called Neo-conservatism. It is founded upon greed that is portrayed as wealth. It attempts to persuade us that we should measure our self interest in purely financial and material terms but only at a personal level. It dictates that the success of following this philosophy can be measured, predicted and controlled with mathematics and economics. The current wave of welfare reforms is an example of this thinking and it is the first of a legion of changes that will deprive this nation and its people of that which made us what we are. More importantly it will deprive us of what we could be. Those benefitting most from this philosophy will hold no allegiance to anyone save themselves, will recognise no obligation to the common good and they will prepared to see the ruination of the planet as long as their lives are comfortable. They are the minority and we have put them in charge.

You will see that I hold strong views, and if you haven’t so far asked what’s in it for him, what’s his angle? You’ve missed the point. My angle is the same as yours to nurture and protect me and mine. I am damn nigh sixty, I want to live as long as I possibly can. If I live to claim a pension, I’ll be the first of the male lines of my family to do so. With the heart problems listed in my first blog I imagine I could get odds of 10-1 from a bookmaker if I bet on doing so. My concern is for the younger members of my family. They will be faced with challenges of environmental change that on our current course will lead to war and famine. My argument is the solution starts with how we govern ourselves and that we should consider why we acting as we are. We should consider who are the people governing us and what’s their game what’s in it for them? What are the indicators that things are as I say, will head where I predict?

The current welfare reforms are being managed on a day to day basis by Atos Origin, they are linked with an American insurance company called Unum. The contract with Atos is worth £500m plus. The policy Atos follow is one approved by the New Labour Government. It is largely based on the advice of Unum Provident. The Chief Medical Adviser at the time was a man called Mansel Aylward.
"In the US, Unum claims management had been coming under increasing scrutiny. In 2003, the Insurance Commissioner of the State of California announced that as a matter of ordinary practice and custom, it had compelled claimants to either accept less than the amount due under the terms of the policies or resort to litigation. The following year, a multistate review forced Unum to reopen hundreds of thousands of rejected insurance claims. Commissioner John Garamendi described Unum as, "an outlaw company. It is a company that for years has operated in an illegal fashion". Guardian March 2008

Prof Mansel Aylward CB
Position:Director of Unum Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research (CPDR)
Professor Mansel Aylward is also Chair of the Wales Centre for Health which is a new body, established by the Welsh Assembly Government, to lead improvements in the nation’s health. From 1996 to April 2005 he was Chief Medical Adviser, Medical Director and Chief Scientist to the United Kingdom’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). He was also Chief Medical Adviser and Head of Profession at the Veterans' Agency, Ministry of Defence. He was made a Companion of the Bath in the Queen's Birthday Honours List 2002. In 2001 he was appointed as The Royal Society of Medicine's Academic Sub Dean for Wales. Faculty Website University of Cardiff

LoCascio (a Unum director) replied in the negative when Private Eye asked if he was not concerned about the conflict of interest involved in his company's advertising campaign, which sought to gain from benefit cuts that he had helped to institute. However Unum Chairman Ward E. Graffam did acknowledge the 'exciting developments' in Britain. Unum's influence in government was helping to boost the private insurance market: 'The impending changes to the State ill-health benefits system will create unique sales opportunities across the entire disability market and we will be launching a concerted effort to harness the potential in these.'

Call me cynic if you like but welfare problems are a social phenomena not a sales opportunity. Throwing ill and disabled people to the wolves with no regard for the predictable consequences is short sighted, callous and in the longer term counter-productive. Make no mistake you will feel the consequences whether you are ill or able bodied. As a result of these reforms there will be suicides, alcohol and drug abuse, increased criminality a reduction in social cohesion all of which will cost money. Police expenditure and the impact on health services will be massive. In a few years time as the economic consequences of corporate mismanagement bite harder a future Government may be forced to choose, health care or order in the streets. My bet is they will go for order in the streets with the introduction of draconian measures. Atos Origin have expressed an interest in running the ID card scheme, an eye to a potential market as ever, but are welfare reforms just a marketing ploy. A scheme to enable circumstances to become such that the introduction of an ID register is inevitable. Would that effect you? If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to lose right?

Read the page on this link
http://www.uk.atosorigin.com/en-uk/services/solutions/managed_operations/atos_infrastructure_solutions/connectivity_security/default.htm
and then consider this:
Ministers have been forced to order an emergency shutdown of a key Government computer system to protect millions of people's private details.
The action was taken after a memory stick was found in a pub car park containing confidential passcodes to the online Government Gateway system, which covers everything from tax returns to parking tickets.
An urgent investigation is now under way into how the stick, belonging to the company which runs the flagship system, came to be lost. Mail Online November 2008

The firm that lost highly sensitive taxpayer records in a pub car park faced fresh criticism last night over its handling of nurses' personal details.
Last weekend the Department for Work and Pensions closed down a key online services system - the Government Gateway - after a memory stick containing confidential documents and passwords was found outside a pub.
It is feared that the data of around 12million people was jeopardised.
The memory stick was lost by an employee of the French firm Atos Origin. Now the same firm has come under fire from a nursing union for putting its members at risk.
Under the Government's policy to get those on incapacity benefits back to work, each claimant must have a medical.
Atos Origin, which gathers information on claimants, has stipulated that nurses carrying out the medicals must include their Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) identification numbers on the case files.
But officials at the Independent Federation of Nursing have found that if the PIN and name of a nurse are typed into an internet search engine, the user is given access to the NMC database of all registered nurses, containing names, addresses and other details. Mail Online November 2008
Atos assures us that a massive effort is always maintained over all issues of security but allowed its employees to wander around with very personal and sensitive data on an unencrypted, unsecured memory stick. They are contracted to a government that allowed 25,000,000 personal records to be lost in the post. Just think of the problems that the information contained in those records could have caused.

This isn’t just an issue about welfare reform or data security it is an issue about Governance. When was the last time a Government minister said we got it wrong? Blair excused himself of culpability in the WMD fiasco because he “genuinely believed” what was contained in the dossier. For a lawyer and Prime Minister that shows a remarkable lack of analytical and management judgement. What is worse is he was probably the most able of those in cabinet.

Wake up Albion, recover your backbone, the responsibility for faulty policies is the Governments. The responsibility for faulty Government is ours. Resist all changes that are sold as “for our own good” ask who benefits and how. Refuse to accept legislation from parliamentarians who fail to uphold the sanctity of parliament. You may very well hold different views to me. It is your right to hold and express them, it is your duty to ensure that they are views considered in the light of evidence and it is your responsibility to ensure that the same rights are available to your sons and daughters and not trampled under the pigs trotters of corporate greed or discarded by lazy politicians. The actions of people described above are not the result of evil intent nor, probably, conspiracy they are the actions of people who have become too greedy and detached from the world of ordinary people. Unless we shout they won’t know we’re here.