PANIC gripped the UK ruling class yesterday as the bond markets ‘were thrown into chaos and a crisis’ that is bringing new cost of living and mortgage shocks for millions of workers.
The Legal and General revealed that it had stopped making long term investments in the UK debt market because of the degree of economic uncertainty and the scale of the collapse that was ongoing.
Already the Nationwide, Britain’s biggest building society has raised its mortgage rate by up to 0.45 percentage points as the capitalist markets are being shaken up by the high inflation data on Wednesday, showing that prices rose by 8.7% last month, significantly more than the Bank of England’s expectations of an 8.4 per cent increase.
Britain’s inflation rate is now among the highest in the EU and the bosses are very concerned that it is being driven by wage growth as workers react to huge increases in the cost of living – rather than by external shocks. For the bosses the enemy really is at home, and it is the UK working class.
The City of London now expects interest rates to rise to 5.5% by the end of the year, up from 4.5% at present.
In Washington yesterday, Jonathan Haskell, an external member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, gave out a warning that ‘inflation could persist well beyond the terms of trade shock if the dynamics between labour and capital income become embedded.’
Meanwhile, the US ruling class, is seeking to try to avoid the USA going bust by destroying the jobs, wages and futures of millions of US workers and workers throughout the world. This US crisis is stoking up workers revolutions everywhere .
With no deal yet struck between the Republicans and the Democrats, the US Treasury is warning that the US will not have enough money to pay its bills as soon as 1 June, and that when the US catches that bad ‘cold’ the rest of the world will experience pneumonia.
However, as the capitalist crisis deepens, the jobs, wages, and the historic gains of the British working class are being rubbished by a desperate but determined ruling class.
The bosses are destroying not just wages and jobs but also one of the greatest achievements of the UK working class, achieved by the post-war Atlee and Bevan governments, the NHS
In this crisis situation, the NHS is being put into the position of the lamb being led to the slaughter by a desperate ruling class, aided by a tame trade union bureaucracy, that refuses to use the strength of the working class to beat and defeat the Tories to go forward to socialism. The NHS is being demolished and its standards are being destroyed!
Health inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) have just considered shutting down the maternity unit at the William Harvey hospital in Ashford, Kent over safety concerns after an inspection in January. The inspection came after a review last October found at least 45 babies died at the two hospitals run by the East Kent Hospitals Trust.
The inspection of East Kent’s William Harvey hospital laid bare multiple instances of inadequate practices at the unit, including staff failing to wash their hands after treating each patient, and life-saving equipment not being in the right place.
Days after the visit, the inspectors raised safety concerns and threatened the trust with enforcement action to ensure patients are protected.
Key findings of the inspection were:
- At the William Harvey hospital, inspectors found bloodstains on toilets.
- In day care and triage, inspectors ‘routinely’ saw that staff did not always clean their hands or use aprons and gloves while delivering care.
- Resuscitaires were not available in the right place, nor were they cleaned and checked regularly.
- Staff at the hospital did not always ensure a second opinion was sought.
- Staff morale was low across both hospitals.
- At The Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital, equality and diversity were not always promoted.
Deanna Westwood, the CQC’s director of operations south, said: ‘Babies needing emergency resuscitation were taken to a resuscitative device – however, in some cases, these were outside the labour room and in the corridor.
‘This could potentially result in delays in vital care and treatment for newborns, as well as separation from the mother and an increase in the potential for babies to be mis-identified.’
The NHS is being reduced to rubble and is being smashed by the Tory regime starving it of resources. The whole working class must now move into action to defend the NHS by forcing the TUC to call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government that will ensure that the NHS is provided with the resources that it needs to function. Forward to the general strike, a workers government and socialism.
