Be informed

Leicester City today or next week will win the English Premier League. Good for them. The league does not lie and it is so refreshing to see a real team challenge and win. On the downside, my team, Hull City, trying to get back into the Premier League (having been dumped out of the league by Leicester’s failure to be relegated last year) cannot even beat an already relegated side in the run-off to the play-offs in the second league. For non-English readers, worry not, this is all irrelevant to life in general. However, it is clear that my team’s coach cannot motivate his squad of players like Claudio Ranieri can his. Lessons there.

Good also for the mis-named junior doctors striking in the UK. The amount of vile verbiage coming from the British Government at the moment against doctors is par for the course, but good on the doctors for standing up for principles – their’s and our’s. The British Government is dismantling the National Health Service and handing it over to private sector cherry-picking businesses. Jeremy Hunt (right), the egregious English health minister accused the doctors of making the strike political. If I am not mistaken, his government has outlawed political strikes, so by virtue of it happening at all it cannot be political. Equally if anyone has made it political it is Mr Hunt. This is turning out to be a battle of wills between right and wrong. Next thing we’ll find armed police trying to break through pickets just like Thatcher did in the 1980s against another class of workers fighting for their rights and livelihoods.

Talking about strikes, last week those of us in the south of England had our journeys to work disrupted by a strike by conductors on the trains. A 24 hour strike straddling two days caused chaos and major inconvenience. Just like strikes are supposed to do. Good for the conductors trying to block attempts by the train company to change their terms and conditions and turn them into revenue protection officers rather than train managers – responsible for safety and customer service on board. As a season ticket holder on Southern, I favour the conductors absolutely. This is a company that treats its customers with utter contempt. By that measure, employees must be utterly despised.

There is a new phrase going around at the moment like a bad smell. I’ve heard it from my own employer and people involved in the junior doctors’ strike. To paraphrase: “This is a democratically elected government, so…”. To translate, this Government led by a bunch of thieving, self-seeking, lying white men, can do whatever they want because they secured 37 per cent of the national vote a year ago. Please, democracy is not just a vote every 5 years. Democracy is a process. A manifesto commitment is not law. We have two chambers of Parliament, scrutiny committees and courts to test the robustness and fit-for-purposeness of proposed laws. Bad law is untested law and comes from Parliamentarians who do not understand process or those who are self-serving. Or both. It is a duty to oppose poor law whether it was in a manifesto or not.