Inequalities of social care in Britain’s disunited kingdom.From: Adrian Key, Banks End, Hartford, Huntingdon.
SO the UK Government promises to reform social care services in England. Reading all the articles on this subject, including yours, I can find no mention of the fact that these proposed changes apply to England only.
Instead, as usual, the politicians and the media seek to confuse and deceive the electorate (Yorkshire Post, July 5) by conflating England with the UK or Britain, failing to point out that post-asymmetrical devolution (dreamt up by Scottish Labour), the UK government can only dictate policy in England (with the help of Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs of course), as social care is a devolved issue.
Meanwhile the UK Government continues to subsidise (with English taxpayers’ cash) better services in Scotland and Wales. I bet most of your readers don’t know that social care services are freely available in Scotland. It is only the English who are forced to sell their homes to fund their care.
So when Andrew Lansley talks about the need to offset this against other costs, perhaps he should look at the hard-earned cash of English taxpayers going to pay for better services in the Celtic lands via the Barnett Formula (currently more than £50bn per year), or the billions wasted on EU membership, or the billions wasted on quangos, or the billions wasted on foreign military adventures, or the billions wasted on so-called international aid.
If this was truly a United Kingdom, then all citizens would have the same rights and the same benefits regardless of which country they live in. Instead we have an anti-English, apartheid state, a truly disunited kingdom.
When will the English get decent social care? Not until there is a referendum on English independence from the UK and EU. Only then will we have a government and parliament which represents and serves our interests.
