What can we Britons cope with?

Bus passes - unequal and at risk

A begrudged concession

There have in recent years been discontented mutterings in certain strands of the political classes who despise ordinary people receiving - as they see it - something for nothing. As most of us know, they now have TV licences for the over-75s in their sights, but some have been resentfully eyeing up concessionary bus passes as well.

National bus passes were introduced for everyone over 60 across the entire UK quite a few years ago now, though each is valid only within the UK nation in which you reside. For example, a Welsh pass is valid only in Wales.

What many people don't realise is that the attack on concessionary travel has already begun, but only for residents in England - not for those in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In all of the UK, excepting England, you receive your national bus pass at 60. In England, you receive the national bus pass when you reach the female State Pension age, whether you're a man or a woman. For most people - and soon for all - this will be when they reach 66.

The inequality for the English doesn't end here. London residents get a pass for free travel on buses in London at 60, and Merseyside gives free travel on buses, trains and ferries within the county, also at 60. There may be other parts of England that make similar local offers, but I haven't heard of them.

An example of the cost of this discrepancy: if we take the standard bus fare in my area (£2.30), a person who catches the bus four times a week, perhaps for two return trips to the shops, will lose more than £2,800 through getting their pass at 66 instead of 60. Obviously, the more trips, the higher the cost.

An article on the NHS website in 2012 stated:

"Research [has] found that older people who had a free bus pass were more likely to take part in what the researchers describe as 'active travel'. The definition of active travel includes riding on a bus and activities such as walking and riding a bike. While not studied by the researchers, they did speculate that frequent active travel may have a positive effect on mood and mental health.

"This study comes at a time when the government is reportedly considering scrapping free travel for pensioners or making it means tested. It is useful to consider the contribution free bus passes may make to levels of physical activity among older people.

"Even a small amount of physical activity is known to reduce the risk of disability in older people. And, while the national free bus pass scheme is estimated to cost taxpayers around £1 billion a year, the annual health costs associated with disability and physical inactivity far outweigh that at an estimated £10.7 billion."

With the isolation of some elderly people being recognised as a growing social problem, especially with the decline of extended families, free travel is surely a significant part of any solution, and will help prevent people from declining into immobility, depression, or both, through being stuck in the house.

I despise the short-sighted, penny-pinching attitude of wealthy here-today-gone-tomorrow politicians with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement*. That attitude has already created a real threat to passes because of major cuts in council funding since 2010: the Local Government Association warned last year that maintaining the pass is becoming "almost impossible".

The difference among the nations of the UK will be explained away by saying that bus passes are 'a devolved matter', but that doesn't apply in England which has been denied devolution. I do wonder hypothetically whether a devolved assembly in England would have taken the high-handed action on concessionary passes that the British government chose to impose upon the English.

I'm a resident of Merseyside and received my Merseytravel pass at 60. I still own a car, but my car use has at least halved since I acquired free local travel, and I know others who have stopped running a car altogether. There are environmental gains in encouraging people to use public transport, not by the stick of making motoring more expensive, but by the carrot of affordable public transport. Public and private transport both being expensive will simply increase isolation with its multiple associated problems.

We live in a society where many of our wealthy rulers believe that poverty is a consequence of indolence or bad choices and see no reason why such irresponsible behaviour (as they view it) should be rewarded. We should oppose any attacks on concessionary travel with the same vigour, and for very similar reasons, that we apply to attacks on the benefits system, caring services and the NHS. All such attacks have a common cause, and therefore require a common response.

Neville Grundy
ARMS

••••••••••••••••••

* The sense of entitlement I refer to allows MPs and peers to:

• Eat and drink alcohol in taxpayer-subsidised bars and restaurants in Parliament.
• Claim expenses for items that the rest of us would have to meet out of our own pockets, such as TV licences.
• Claim the costs of mortgages on second homes in London - and then keep the home at the end of it all. Bought by us, thank you!

This list is by no means exhaustive!

Happy Fat Cat Friday (for some)!

I picked up the Metro on the bus today and read on page 2 an article headlined, 'Fat Cat Friday'. A few minutes later, I saw the same headline on Sky News on TV in the pub. By 1.00 pm today (Friday 4 January), the UK's top chief executives will have been paid as much since the start of 2019 as an average worker is paid in a year.

According to a study by the High Pay Centre and the Chartered Institute of Personnel, the average FTSE-100 CEO is paid £133 for every £1 earned by their employees. Twenty years ago, the figure was £45 for every £1 earned by their staff. To put it another way, they receive more than £1,000 per hour, while the living wage is £7.83 per hour.

Such unjustifiable remunerations are based on the self-serving fantasy of uniquely irreplaceable top managers who are - it is preposterously alleged - worth every penny of their bloated pay packets. On the other hand, the wages of the workers who actually create the wealth is treated as a cost to be minimised.

According to the study, the median pay packet of top CEOs is £3.9 million, an increase of 11% in a year. Frances O'Grady, TUC general secretary, responded to the findings by calling for 'big reforms to bring fat cat pay down to earth.'

This article follows on from the post of 19 December which pointed out that for every £1 million squandered on excessive executive pay, 65 minimum wage or 35 average wage jobs could have been created. Which do you think is worth more to the economy?

Neville Grundy
ARMS

EU - who actually benefits?

The UK's richest 1% is on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030. Foodbanks provide a lifeline to poor and working poor. The Tories continue to take a wrecking ball to the NHS and social provision. The EU's posted workers directive legitimises paying UK-based foreign workers slave wages.This horror has been a feature of life for the UK's working class since the crash 9 years ago while we have been full members of the neo-liberal EU.

Again the question is posed: Will those Remainers calling for a people's vote explain how the working class benefits from EU membership?

Tony Mulhearn
ARMS

We're all in it together

From 1929 - predating Cameron's infamous
utterance on austerity by more than 80 years

Local newspapers everywhere publish letters by readers criticising waste by their local councils, and people often become angered if they believe that central government is squandering taxpayers' money. This is all quite reasonable and constitutes a form of accountability. This is not say I believe that every criticism is correct - for example, I profoundly disagree with those who would completely eliminate our foreign aid budget - but the principle of citizens scrutinising expenditure of taxpayers' money, i.e. our money, is sound.

A different attitude tends to prevail when we consider what large private corporations do with their money. Most of us are aware of the seven (or more) figure salaries that are paid to corporate functionaries in boardrooms. We are led to believe that these passengers on the gravy train are among the best and brightest available, and we are told that such talent isn't cheap. As a result, people are considerably less concerned about excessive boardroom pay than they are by, say, the salary paid to a chief executive of a local authority whose remuneration is a fraction by comparison. The difference is that the public sector boss is paid out of our income or council taxes, which we see as ours, but we are conned into accepting unthinkingly that top executives actually create the wealth that provides the salaries and bonuses they receive.

A quick word about bonuses: a long time ago I assumed that they were paid for success. I soon realised by the sight of failing companies that ensured executive bonuses were dished out prior to collapsing, after which jobs, pensions and, if on public sector contracts, a fortune in taxpayers' money would all be lost. Feathering your own nest in this way at others' expense should be illegal.

Successful business leaders do not 'make' money, they acquire it: the money is already there in the economy. The millions paid to business top brass come from all the ordinary, often poor, people who use their services, buy their products, shop in their stores, gamble, attend professional sporting events, so on. By paying excessive salaries, thousands of millions of pounds are removed from the economy and stashed away for whatever purposes the recipients may have in mind. That wealth didn't appear out of nowhere - it was acquired from ordinary people who should feel just as concerned about what happens to their money after they have spent it as they do about their taxes.

Here's an extreme example why it matters. We recently learnt that Denise Coates received a remuneration of £265 million last year from her on-line gambling business, Bet365. It is widely known that gambling is much more prevalent in poorer communities, and it is from them that Ms Coates derives a large proportion of her wealth. There is a moral argument here, but I'll concentrate on the financial.

If we took £264 million from Ms Coates and left her with a mere £1 million to struggle by on for the year, the money thus gained could:

• Create 17,355 minimum wage jobs; or
• Create 9295 average wage jobs.

All from one person's pay packet.

This is because for every £1 million squandered on excessive wages, 65 minimum wage or 35 average wage jobs could have been created. If you then total all the excessive boardroom wages in all the big companies across the entire economy, it quickly becomes clear why, despite being the 5th or 6th richest country in the world, we have

• Rising levels of poverty; 
• An increasingly outdated and crumbling infrastructure; 
• Struggling health, education and social services; and
• A major housing shortage.

Quite simply, the nation's wealth is being syphoned off at an accelerating rate for the benefit of a comparatively small number of individuals. We British people need to challenge the widely accepted myth of 'wealth creation' and scrutinise what happens to our money in the private sector with the same sense of ownership that we rightly have about our taxes.

To put it another way: what would benefit the ordinary people of this country more? One Denise Coates, or nearly ten thousand average wage jobs?

Neville Grundy
ARMS

EU: bosses' priorities offer nothing to ordinary people

Bob Crow

Bob's statement cuts through all the nationalistic, sanctimonious claptrap that remaining in the EU is 'essential' to 'our' prosperity. The UK has been part of the Bosses' club while experiencing the most appalling attacks on the working class for 200 years. To see some on the left who claim to support Jeremy Corbyn buying into this hysteria is to do a disservice to the poor and needy who have gained zero from EU membership, while the fat cats who are driving the Remain argument continue to pile up vast wealth. A united Socialist States of Europe should be our objective.

Tony Mulhearn
ARMS

The Curious Case of Janice and Chris

Chris Baugh (left) and Janice Godrich

I attended a meeting recently to consider whom to nominate for the position of PCS Assistant General Secretary, a position currently occupied by Chris Baugh, whose stewardship of the position has been exemplary over a 14-year period. He has been elected and re-elected on three occasions.

Chris has been in the forefront of the fight to defend the members in the teeth of vicious attacks by a government who are determined to destroy the PCS as a great fighting example to the whole trade union movement.

In a rational world, he would have been a shoo-in for the nomination. Not so.

Chris’s opponents are nominating lay officer PCS president Janice Godrich whose stewardship, in that capacity, has also been exemplary.

Chris’s record speaks for itself, so I listened carefully to those campaigning for his removal.

The case against Chris includes:

He doesn’t get along with the general secretary, so much so that, although PCS procedure, like all unions, rules that when the GS is indisposed, his duties shall be assumed by the AGS. When the GS was desperately ill this did not happen. Instead the procedure was ignored in favour of the GS’s choice.

I can think of one or two past general secretaries in the PCS and other unions where friction between the GS and his deputy would have been in the members’ interests and not to their detriment.

He briefed against the proposed merger between Unite and PCS. This charge is based on tittle tattle, and his body language. Apparently, according to a Janice supporter, he was seen smiling when the proposed merger was scotched. In addition, Len McCluskey has stated unequivocally that there is no truth in this assertion.

Apart from loud assertions that he was ‘not the man for the job’ the case against Chris was entirely unconvincing. Although thrown into the mix was that one or two Socialist Party members had referred in an uncomradely manner to Mark’s illness. This is obviously to be deplored, but I’d like to know who they were.

The case for nominating Janice was that she has carried out her President’s duties in an exemplary fashion. Quite so. But the caveat is that she gets on well with the GS.

It appears that the overriding consideration is that the two top officers of the union should be best buddies. It could also be argued that Janice’s excellent stewardship of the president’s position is a good case for her continuing in that capacity.

At a time when the unity of the movement is paramount to fight the crazed Tory government, it defies logic that a campaign is under way to remove an outstanding officer like Chris from a leading position on the most spurious grounds.

This opinion has been penned entirely off my own bat without discussion with Chris or his colleagues.

Tony Mulhearn

ARMS Mersey

Syria bombings - why wasn't Parliament consulted?

Black humour about the most confusing war of modern times.

As you will recall, the UK joined the USA and France in bombing Syria last month. Much has been made of the fact that Theresa May ordered the missile strikes without consulting Parliament. Although we may not like it, she actually broke no UK laws or conventions in doing so.

The UK has no constitution. Defenders of the present system claim that we have an unwritten constitution that is flexible and can adapt to changing circumstances, but I'm not persuaded by this argument. Our political system consists of a combination of precedent, legislation and the royal prerogative that have all developed and, at times, been in conflict with each other over centuries. To put it another way, it's a convoluted labyrinth that is of benefit only to unscrupulous politicians and lawyers.

Precedent: put simply, this consists of what we might, in a less elevated context, refer to as custom and practice, in this case built up over centuries. The most obvious example is how Parliament itself evolved from the body summoned in 1265 by the French nobleman Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, which was a major step forward from previous councils of nobles and clergy because for the first time representatives from towns and shires were summoned. Its powers were gradually accumulated, often not peacefully, over subsequent centuries until the 1688 Dutch conquest of England led by William of Orange, who was offered the English throne provided he accepted the supremacy of Parliament over the Crown. The way Parliament operates today has been determined by multiple precedents established over centuries.

Royal prerogative: not all royal powers were surrendered to Parliament (more info here). The right to declare war remains reserved to the Crown and nowadays is exercised on the monarch's behalf by the Prime Minister with no need to consult Parliament. However, in recent years Parliament has been consulted:

• In 2003 - the Iraq War.
• Retrospectively in 2011 - Libya intervention.
• 2013 - the government was defeated over military action in Syria.
• 2014 - UK air strikes against Islamic State forces in Iraq. 
• 2015 - extension of air strikes against IS into Syrian territory.

One exception: there was no consultation over a small deployment of forces to Mali in 2013.

Legislation: there are no laws governing declarations of war, although there have been vague promises of one. Even if we had such a law, it could be overturned by a simple majority in a future Parliament, which is one reason why we should have a written constitution that would need at least a two thirds majority for change.

Why didn't May consult Parliament? I see three main reasons:

• Her government is weak, propped up by bribing the DUP, and there was a very good chance she'd lose the vote, as David Cameron did in 2013.
• A Parliamentary vote would reinforce the precedent that had been set several times already, and would further the process of eroding the royal prerogative. It's my view that May wished to retain the right to declare war without consultation because it's a form of power can be wielded independently of Parliament - both by herself and by her successors. 
• As a weak Prime Minister, she is desperate to hold on to whatever remnants of power she still has.

My conclusion: the principal reason May didn't consult Parliament was because she wanted to prevent such consultation evolving into an accepted precedent that, in time, would become binding on Prime Ministers. She has thus deliberately stifled a development that most of us would have welcomed in order to preserve the powers and privileges that Prime Ministers can exercise through the royal prerogative without any democratic accountability. 

Consigning this relic of the divine right of kings 

to history where it belongs is long overdue.

Neville Grundy

Chair

ARMS Mersey

Lib Dem Lord: drop triple lock as pensioners 'have it easy'

Peers suffering from austerity - on £300 per day

Commonly known as ‘Dick’, Baron Richard Newby, Leader of the Lib Dems in the House of Lords, has decided to share his wisdom about the generational divide he seems keen to propagate. £300-a-day Dick – his expenses for sitting in the ‘Upper Chamber’ – believes 'pensioners have it easy' when compared with young people’.

The report here in the New Model Adviser business magazine sets out his thinking on the issue. However you may want to bear in mind some of the following.

It may be Dick (64), along with former Lib Dem Coalition Pensions Minister Steve Webb, think that the new state pension system, has been through some kind of reverse time warp. They allege pensioners now receive a state pension of around £8,000 a year. In reality the new system is not fully operational until 2051. In the interim it will leave many millions of pensioners struggling on much less than that figure, including everyone who was in receipt of a retirement pension before 6th April 2016.

Let’s not forget that this whole package of ‘Pensions reform’ including the penalising of contracted out public sector workers and the adverse changes to state pension retirement age were in support of Tory/Lib Dem austerity policies designed to save £500 billion over a 35 year period.

Of course many current pensioners receive much less every month than Dick would get for 2 days slumbering in the House of Lords. And as for bridging the generational divide the Tory/Lib Dem coalition did not leave out other sections of society.

The young whose Tuition Fees were trebled and employment rights trampled on in the burgeoning and unregulated Gig economy. The working families whose employment rights were attacked, occupational pensions undermined and tax credits cut. The disabled whose benefits were cut and job opportunities destroyed.

Dick, Steve and their Tory allies having imposed 7 years of austerity upon everyone but themselves and the wealthiest people in society who have prospered during austerity now believe that they have something to say that you should listen to.

The truth is they have had their say; they have cast a blight across the vast majority of our population and they deserve nothing but contempt for seeking to lecture us about what we should do in the future.

Many people have been saying they want an alternative to the ‘different shades of grey’ offered by politicians up to 2015. Now the Labour Party is offering that alternative the challenge is to seize it and never forget the sacrifice and despair Dick and his friends are offering.

Eddie Spence
ARMS National Vice Chair

How do we bridge the Generation Gap?

If you believe some media commentators and politicians the 'Generational Divide' is the most corrosive issue in our society. They say wealthy Baby Boomer pensioners have swallowed up all the wealth whist younger generations struggle with student debts, lowly paid jobs and inadequate housing.

The media often characterises pensioners as playing golf on lush courses or enjoying luxury cruises without a care in the world. I find it strange I don’t know one such person. However I do know older people who struggle with their health either through age, disability, loneliness, isolation and of course poverty. I also know young people who worry about their education and whether they or their family can afford it. I know many more who struggle to find a decent job with reasonable working conditions and pay and who are exploited by employers without an effective regulatory system to safeguard their rights and many without a union to fight for them.

With all this in mind it is heartening to see a more constructive analysis of the issues that can and should be tackled. It is also of interest how uniting across our generations might start to challenge the real inequality in our society between the vested interests a rich, powerful global elite, its hangers on and the rest of us. It is worth taking a moment to read the article here, and why not share your views in the comments box below this post?

Eddie Spence

ARMS National Vice Chair

Tory Government continues to use Social Care as a political football

Apparently having learned nothing from their car crash of an Election Manifesto the Tories now have a new plan to improve social care.

After reducing funding on social care by £4.6 Billion since 2010 particularly through the cuts in Local Authority Budgets, the new plan is to get the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to inspect the failing and underfunded social care system. If the arrangements are found to be unsatisfactory the Government can impose a financial penalty on the relevant Local Authority rather than allow it to access funding from the Governments ‘Better Care Fund’ into which they have invested £2billion – just £2.6Billion short of the money they have taken out of social care funding.

This approach is being championed by none other than NHS saviour Jeremy Hunt. ‘Simples’ the answer was staring us in the face all along? Even Tory cheerleader the Daily Telegraph is struggling to get its head around this latest panic measure - read more here.

Eddie Spence
ARMS

Government policy on housing disastrous

'Tory Housing policy disastrous' says the National Housing Federation along with their backdoor bedroom tax on pensioners reported in a recent issue of the ARMs Newsletter 'Up in ARMs'. The Independent recently reported that:

"From April 2019, housing benefit in all social housing will be capped at the level of the Local Housing Allowance (LHA), used in the private rented sector.

"Crucially, the LHA is calculated – like the removal of the 'spare-room subsidy' – on the basis of household size, rather than the size of the property.

"That means a single person, or a couple, living in a two-bedroom home will have their housing benefit capped at the one-bedroom LHA rate.

"The impact will be severe across the Midlands and the North, where lower private rents will mean a lower one-bedroom LHA rate, threatening tenants with huge benefit cuts."

Full article here.

Housing Associations are reluctant to commission the building of new houses because their income from rent is under threat. The consequence of a doctrinaire decision by the Tories, little noticed at the time, will almost certainly deepen the social housing crisis even further. 

This 'weak leader' is taking on the whole British Establishment

Corbyn has mass meetings.
May meets selected party loyalists.

For far too long there was precious little real choice at a general election. As Labour drifted to the right and both they and the Tories fought for the same centre ground, more and more of their policies converged, which left many voters struggling to distinguish between them. Thanks to Corbyn, this is no longer the case. The leaked Labour manifesto is a programme for serious change to the way this country is run, and for whose benefit it is run.

Gone are the days when timid Labour leaderships, cowed by Thatcher’s legacy, dared not mention the word 'socialism', were afraid to talk about wealth redistribution in case it caused a media backlash, and meekly fell in line with the military ambitions of the USA, which caused many traditional Labour voters to desert the party.

Now we have a Labour party that is taking aim at the UK's gross wealth inequality and is planning to do something about it, that recognises how adversely public service cuts affect working class people and intends to reverse them, and that is prepared to stand up against unhinged Trump's foolish and dangerous war games rather than give him unquestioning succour.

Corbyn is standing up for, and firmly defending, what he believes in, putting forward a strong case for making the fat cats and wealthy corporations pay more tax in order to improve the lives of ordinary people, and today telling the USA that he will not be their poodle.

It is difficult to overestimate the fortitude and courage of a politician who is prepared to challenge head-on the accumulated privilege of the whole of the British establishment, along with all the rich and powerful interests it protects, yet he seems to be relishing the task. In that respect, Corbyn is arguably a far stronger Labour leader than any since the 1980s (with the all too brief exception, perhaps, of John Smith).

Working class voters can no longer complain that they only have a choice between Tory and Tory-lite. They can now choose between a full-blooded Labour party that firmly has their interests at the core of its manifesto and a determination to carry it out, or a Tory party that has run out of ideas, will make their lives even worse, and whose manifesto, I predict, will contain barely any firm policies to 'help ordinary working families'. The choice this time will be stark.

The Tories portray Corbyn as spineless - even though nothing could be further from the truth - because they know that his policies are very popular (the leaked manifesto has very high approval ratings already) and that their best hope of stopping him is if they can maintain the myth that he is weak and unfit to be prime minister.

So, don't expect May's 'strong and stable' mantra to stop anytime soon.

Brian Nelson
ARMs Yorkshire and Humberside region

Turning Of The Tide?

Now that the election campaign has started and Labour’s policies are finally beginning to get more media coverage, is public opinion beginning to shift in their favour? A Times/YouGov poll published this week already bucks the media predictions of an inexorable swing towards the Tories - and we are only a week into the campaign. I’m not holding my breath but it will be interesting to see how many other media sources (I have only seen it in the Independent on 27th April) publish this poll’s findings, which embarrassingly don’t fit their analysis that Labour has no chance of winning power.

I have said before that I believe one of the main reasons for Labour’s poor poll ratings has been the media’s (including the hitherto Labour-supporting media) obsession with reporting the party’s factional infighting, rather than its policies. But general election reporting standards require that all the main parties now get proper coverage to enable voters to make a properly informed choice, and the more Labour’s message gets across, the more people will be able to see that they, not the Tories, have the policies that will help ordinary working families.

I expect that distinction to sharpen once the party manifestos are published because the Tories will have to find a way of showing in print exactly how they plan to fulfil May’s hollow claim that they are now the party of ordinary working families. Since she became PM, she has done absolutely nothing to back up those easy, glib words but her manifesto team now faces the uphill task of converting a meaningless soundbite that the Tories privately don’t believe into a published action plan that they know will be examined more forensically than May’s snippets of verbal propaganda have been.

The Tories may try to console themselves by dismissing this poll as a rogue result but they will be a lot more worried by another YouGov poll published alongside it that shows a considerable shift of public opinion away from Brexit (only 43% now supporting it compared to 52% in the EU referendum). If voters really are beginning to reassess the merits of a hard Brexit now that some of its unpalatable realities, rather than the referendum campaign deceptions, have had to be acknowledged by May’s ministers then that could put a very different complexion on this election in the very seats that May (and UKIP) gambled on winning - i.e. those where a ‘remain’ Labour MP’s constituents voted for Brexit. The last thing May will want to see is evidence that those voters are revising their previous support for a hard Brexit and possibly moving closer to Labour - particularly when she intends to make Brexit her main election pitch.

That much-vaunted Tory landslide is beginning to look a lot less certain than the establishment would have us believe. If this poll turns out to be correct and public opinion is already starting to shift in Labour’s direction with still another six weeks to go before polling day, May could soon be wondering if she will finish up with a smaller majority than she has now, or possibly none at all.

The article in the Independent is here.

Brian Nelson
ARMs Yorkshire and Humberside region

How do we reactivate lost voters?

Eddie Spence explains how so many voters are turned off by media distortions and political misdirection.

No prizes for guessing the issue that has headlined in the Media over the last week. I suppose it's typical, you wait 5 years for the General Election in 2015 and then two come along within two years.

Prime Minister May who promised that she wouldn't have an election until 2020 has now decided that she will and it's everyone else's fault. Apparently the general election will be about giving the UK a stronger hand in Brexit negotiations as it would appear that the tricky negotiating tactic of saying "Brexit means Brexit" and then staring into the middle distance isn’t making much progress. Plan B of saying it’s going to be "a red, white and blue Brexit" and then and staring doesn’t seem to be getting very far either. So what else is there to do apart from go to the nation in a general election and say trust me with everything. That's not just Brexit negotiations but other key issues and policies that will affect us all over the next 5 years as you can bet your bottom dollar that May's commitment to a fixed term parliament will return if she is able to secure a working majority.

Over coming weeks we can no doubt look forward to those old cheery Tory election campaign 'one-liners' such as: "The NHS is safe in our hands." Or maybe we will hear the one about controlling energy prices in the industry they privatised or rail fares in another industry they privatised. They could tell us about putting £2 billion into Social Care and forget to mention that they've taken £4.6 billion out. We could also hear how they are being tough on Tax Dodgers and big business. We may be told again that older people and pensioners will fare better under the Tories despite the total inequity created by the 2012 Pensions Act, cutting the State and public sector pensions link to RPI and driving down the value of any savings older people may have through a constant process of quantitative easing to keep interest rates low.

There will be much talk of May's strong leadership but based on what? She was last woman standing as Gove and Johnson stabbed each other in the back amidst Tory leadership in-fighting. No doubt much will be made of Theresa May's dazzling achievements as Secretary of State for Home Affairs since 2010. Erm, then again maybe not. Her track record was observed as follows by Alan Travis of the Guardian:

"Her six years at the Home Office were marked by an instinctive secrecy, a talent for 'going missing' or delegating when things went wrong, and a too careless approach to civil liberties.

"Her capacity to make herself scarce at key moments of political danger peaked during the referendum campaign. Her minimal public contribution not only failed to defend her record on immigration but instead focused on her personal pledge to withdraw from the European convention on human rights to demonstrate that she was a wafer-thin remainer."

A track record based on personal survival as opposed to public responsibility and achievement is hardly the best qualification with which to support her claim to be a 'strong leader'. How many in the media will test May on the reality of her record in public life? If anyone has the guts to do it you can guarantee that her lack of achievement will be everyone else's fault. Now where have we heard that before?

Of course more recently May has pledged to help those 'Just about managing' or 'Jams' as the media describe people in work who are struggling to make ends meet after 7 years of Tory Austerity policies. That will be the Tax Credit cuts will it, or maybe the pay freezes or minimalist 1% often unconsolidated pay increases in vast swathes of the public sector? MPs have borne the weight of austerity as well with their salaries only increasing between 2010 and 2017 from £65,738 to £74,962. But none of this has anything to do with Theresa May; it's not her fault.

Criticisms that the Tory Cabinet decision to call for a General Election simply amount to blatant political opportunism have been rebuffed. However no political party worth its salt can resist the opportunity to take its policies and its candidates to the voters and ask us to decide. Of course that requires us to vote and in 2015 there were 15.9 million people who were entitled to vote in the General Election who did not - that's 34% of the 'voting population' and much more than any one political party received in 2015.

What we can predict is the vested interest in much of the mainstream media will continue to attack and undermine the opposition to the Tories and in particular the Labour Party as the main opposition party. They will endeavour to ignore the policy commitments being promoted by Jeremy Corbyn and instead focus on attacking the image they have created of the man. In truth it is the policies that matter but the media won’t want to focus on them particularly as many will be aimed at tackling those vested interests that the media serves. We will see febrile attacks, sensationalism and attempts at character assassination all designed to take our eye off the real issues about what an incoming Government will do that matters to us and our families? It's up to us to see through that and to talk to friends and neighbours about what is at stake.

2017 may well be the year where we have clear policy differences on offer and if we haven't liked what has been done by past Governments then we have the chance to change that. The argument posed by some non-voters that 'politicians are all the same' will not stand up and so it is up to those people who haven't voted in the past to vote for real change in the society we live in.

Well, we have 7 weeks to look forward to and we will have the opportunity to question those candidates who are standing across the United (at least for the minute anyway) Kingdom and Northern Ireland. Members will no doubt have a lot of questions for all the candidates but as well as keeping in touch with developments in the media we will post thoughts on this Blog about those issues you may wish to probe candidates on in particular. We would also welcome your thoughts.

We welcome your views on all of this. For example how are we going to convince the 15.9 million people who didn’t vote in the 2015 General Election to at least play a part in the society we live in?