'RACISM' LACKS A DEFINITION, Let's Thank GOD! by Brian Bamford

IN 1959, I went to the branch meeting of my local Rochdale ETU branch one Friday night to try to raise the issue of the boycott of South African goods with the elctricians there. I was a 19-year-old apprentice at the time and the TUC, the Labour Party and the Liberal Party had all declared their backing for this international campaign which had been called for in November 1959 by the Movement for Colonial Freedom.

As a young man I was surprised first by the lack of interest of the ETU branch officers, and remember the ETU was then regarded as a militant communist trade union, who despite my protests didn't see any point in my request that the branch should discuss the international boycott campaign. They were too busy collecting the members subscription as they were queuing-up to pay before going out on the razzle as it was Friday night. As I tried to interest a West Indian electrician the chairman, who had become tired of my appeals for support, asked the assembled members if anyone was anxious to discuss the topic of the boycott of South African goods? The silence was deafening! Even the one black man present didn't show any interest.

It took many more years of international struggle before South Africa obtained anything approaching freedom and aparthied was removed.

Yet according to Kader Asmal: ‘If any event galvanised the Boycott Movement into action it was Chief Albert Luthuli’s plea for sanctions”¦’ Luthuli’s statement reads: ‘I appeal to all governments throughout the world, to people everywhere, to all organisations and institutions in every land and at every level to act now to impose such sanctions on South Africa that will bring about the vital necessary change and avert what can become the greatest African tragedy of our time.’

Apathy & Pleading Petitions

I was reminded of this disinterested apathy of these 1950's north of England trade unionists when I was recently urged to sign a petition to support the three footballers who according to the media had been racially abused for missing a penalty in last Sunday's Euro Final.

The protest petition reads:

'Three black football players have received a storm of racist abuse after England lost the final. We can't let such hatred go unchallenged -- so let's meet it with a deafening public cry of support from across the country. Add your name to the public letter below, and when we reach 100,000 names, Avaaz will publish in a major national newspaper.'

The petition pleads the case further:

'Within minutes of England losing the match, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook were flooded with cruel, racist messages towards the players. Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel have since condemned the abuse -- but only after they'd originally undermined anti-racism gestures by the team earlier in the competition.'

'Let's show these three black players, and the whole country, that racism has no place here. That as ordinary citizens, we will not sit by as a small minority of people spew their hatred and ignorance. But more than that, let's show the children of this country what it truly means to be English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh and BRITISH in the 21st century.'

Worthy words indeed!

'Racism' is not defined! Racial discrimination is!

My understanding is that the United Nations (UN) does not define 'racism' as such; however, it does define 'racial discrimination'. According to the 1965 UN International Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, '...the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distintion, exclusion, restriction, or prefernce base on race, colour, desent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundimental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.'[

'Racism' is clearly not defined by the UN because it is ambiguous and is often used as an ideological swear word by the liberal left in much the same way as the word 'Facist' was used in the 1930s as a term of abuse. Despite the fact that one such petition had more than a million signatures on it according to Woman's Hour today I doubt that the culture will change and I suspect that many people will find this kind od virtue signaling turns their stomachs. Even if Gareth Southgate OBE is ever such a nice bloke.

As they say 'Everything Changes, Everything Stays the Same'.

*******************************************************************

The Joys Of The Freemarket by Les May

MY interest in football peaked when I was eleven in 1953 and has been declining ever since. If professional football vanished from the face of the Earth I would not miss it. But I cannot help observing that the proposed formation of a European Superleague is just the logical conclusion of the ‘greedfest’ which led to the formation of the Premier League in 1992. Domestic and international television rights generates about £2 billion a year for the Premier League which is a corporation in which member clubs act as shareholders. A nice little earner one might say.

Clearly the owners of the six UK clubs which want to become founder members of the European Superleague can see the cash registers continuing to roll and even more money finding its way into their coffers. The remaining Premier League members now seem to be crying foul having themselves done much the same thing to the old Football League almost thirty years ago.

And who has stepped in to see fair play? It’s our free enterprise worshipping Prime Minister. Boris has suddenly discovered that markets sometimes need to be managed to bring about socially desirable outcomes. Though quite what he can do to block the European Superleague is still unclear.

Question: If Boris Johnson can find time to think up ways of taming the excesses of this particular market, why can’t he find time to bring some sanity to the housing market which continues to leave families homeless or living in very substandard housing while paying exorbitant rents a what is euphemistically called ‘the market rate’.

*********************************************************************

Our 'Kakistocracy' plumbs new depths!

by ANDY WASTLING

Kakistocracy (English pronunciation: /kækɪsˈtɑkɹəsi/) is a system of government which is run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.Origin of kakistocracy. Greek kakistos worst superlative of Kakos bad.

This unpublished letter ( below ) to the local media in Manchester last Summer, was an attempt to respond to the declining professional standards of our local political class in Rochdale exposed in the Zoom broadcast of a local council meeting in July subsequently covered in Manchester Evening News article : a Councillor called a 'bitch' for voting with Tories in stormy virtual meeting 'after the mic was left on by mistake' , (Nick Statham - Local Democracy Reporter Manchester Evening News , 17 July 20202 ) .

Such juvenile shenanigans from our elected councillors will come as no surprise to those amongst us who have sought to hold the ' three ring circus ' masquerading as local democracy to public account . Having been outed in the local media the link to the previously broadcast zoom meeting mysteriously vanished into the ether leading some local campaigners to suspect the usual Rochdale Council cover up from the councils digital media team (mal) practiced as they are in the devious & dark arts of censorship & obfuscation..

Indeed a follow up Freedom Information Request :

Location of public link to view Zoom Meeting for Rochdale North Township Committee Meeting 16/07/2020 seemed to confirm this when the eventual response indicated that the council does not have a requirement to publish pretty much anything they don't wish to publish :

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/678543/response/1618283/attach/html/6/Legal%20FOI%20Townships.doc.html

This reluctance from our local authorities to respond to reasonable requests from members of the public for information is just the latest example of Local Kakistocracy plumbing new depths .

We live after all in a town that has has ' 36 cameras operated on behalf of the council plus 41 run by Rochdale Boroughwide Housing ' (1) observing the daily activities of local citizens like ourselves . But not a single electronic device filming RMB Councillors Meetings on a permanent basis as they perform their civic duties on behalf of the local electorate. You'd almost think our councillors have something to hide ?

APPENDIX : (1) . https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/big-brother-watching-youall-day-8987905

Dear Editor , Rochdale Observer / Manchester Evening News :

Comedy Gold !

As a local taxpayer I was blessed to hear live the controversial Council Meeting broadcast on Zoom and discussed in your Local Democracy Reporters recent excellent article : ' Councillor called a 'bitch' for voting with Tories in stormy virtual meeting 'after mic left on by mistake' , ( Nick StathamLocal Democracy Reporter Manchester Evening News , 17 July 20202 ) .

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/councillor-called-bitch-after-voting-18613624

I often hear local people deriding the standards of professionalism , common sense ( or lack of ) and the lack of value for money our sixty strong cohort of councillors represent to the public purse in an era of increasing austerity.

However I strongly disagree, and think perhaps that we are all missing a trick ? Could we not hire outour Councillors to the highest bidder as travelling Troubadours an Alternative Comedy Group who can be leased out to the Alternative Comedy Circuit to bring laughter & merriment to the North during such dark times ? The latest production from the sketch writers at No.1 Riverside was sheer brilliance ! Situation comedy at its very apogee I'd have thought !

So far audiences to Council Meetings have been limited to a small but fanatical fan base ( I include myself in this definition ) .However after some considerable reflection I feel it's clearly now time to further widen audience participation. I've been trying to syndicate this latest episode to try and garner an interest from the program commissioners at BBC Comedy who are keen to see the profile of right wing comedians reach a wider & more divergent national audience . I'm sure the vast majority of our Council Meetings have any potential as pilot episodes of a new comedy series of 30 minute duration .Working title : It's Dim Up North !

It seems obvious that we have huge local resources of as yet untapped comedy potential lying dormant - along with many of our councillors. I feel we could generate much needed funds for our struggling local exchequer if we could only divest or sub contract our Councillors undoubted talents as comedians to be shared with the nation.It's obvious to many talent spotters that with such a rich comedy acting pool of sixty or so under-employed councillors that we have almost unlimited potential for numerous combinations of comedy duos , solo performers, and background extras. However the Zoom meeting with most comedy potential has been inexplicably expunged from the public record? Could someone at Rochdale Council explain its disappearance and direct me to a public link so I can take this project forward to ensure Rochdale Council is given the prominence on the UK Comedy Circuit it so richly deserves?

Thank you.

Yours,

Andrew Wastling Drake Street , ROCHDALE

Orwell's Politics and the English Language

From THE LANCETT:

Richard Horton

ALSO ON THE THE ORWELL Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/TheOrwellSociety

The Orwell Society - Home | Facebook The Orwell Society. 1.4K likes. The Orwell Society aims to promote the understanding and appreciation of the life and work of George Orwell. Join here:... www.facebook.com

GEORGE ORWELL, in his 1945 essay Politics and the English Language, wrote that “to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration”.

The Moscow press briefing held last week on the Russian COVID-19 vaccine quickly turned into a platform for national rivalry. The research, led by scientists at the N F Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology, found encouraging evidence of an immune response using their prime boost strategy of a two-component, human recombinant adenovirus vector-based vaccine. The study was small, non-randomised, uncontrolled, and did not include those most at risk of severe disease. The Russian team recognise these limitations and are proceeding with large randomised trials. The first results were released by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Aug 13. “I know that it works quite effectively”, he said, “forms strong immunity, and I repeat, it has passed all the needed checks”. At last week's event, more big claims were made. The “poorly researched approaches” by “western” nations were criticised, and one speaker challenged western governments to respond to these alleged concerns—“would you please show your citizens” evidence about the safety of western vaccine candidates given the “poorly developed platforms” you are using, he said. “It doesn't make any sense to use poorly researched approaches”, he argued. His view was that a human adenovirus vector was safer than a chimpanzee adenovirus vector (the basis for the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine, for example). A press conference to present the results of a scientific study became the venue for renewed Cold War conflict.

Russia isn't the only country to use COVID-19 as a tool to fight perceived adversaries. US President Donald Trump routinely refers to SARS-CoV-2 as the “China virus”. He is seeking to amplify the American public's fear of China to wound his opponent in the current presidential campaign. In Latrobe, PA, on Sept 3, President Trump suggested that, “Joe Biden wants to surrender your jobs to China”. The message is clear—China is America's enemy, it is the cause of a pandemic that has destroyed the US economy, and the policies of the Democrat candidate will only strengthen America's chief international competitor. There is not one shred of evidence to support these claims. The twisting of language in public discussion of the pandemic is now standard fare. “Thanks to the efforts of Operation Warp Speed”, said President Trump in Wilmington, NC, on Sept 2, “we remain on track to deliver a vaccine very rapidly, in record time”. He has suggested a vaccine might be available by the end of October—an important claim given that the US election will take place on Nov 3. Yet there is no possibility that a COVID-19 vaccine will be ready for public use before the US election. Orwell's reflection that language is used “with intent to deceive” in “the sordid processes of international politics” could not be more apposite.

***********************

Who Will ‘Call Out’ Economic Inequality?

by Les May

LAST Friday a US doctor interviewed for the PBS (Channel 91) documentary ‘The Virus: What went wrong?’ said that 40 to 50% of American families were ‘just managing’. In the 1990s the British economist and journalist Will Hutton said ‘We live in a 30:30:40 society.  Thirty percent of people have made it; thirty percent think they will make it and forty percent know they will never make it.’  Two weeks ago an Indian economist speaking on the AlJazeera programme ‘Inside Story’ (Channel 235) said that if less than 1000 of its most wealthy citizens were made to pay a 4% wealth tax, India could double its spending on health care.

In his August 7 2020 article for The Atlantic US journalist Kurt Andersen writes ‘In 2006 the annual revenues of Goldman Sachs were greater than the annual economic output of two-thirds of the countries on Earth—a treasure chest from which the firm was disbursing the equivalent of $69 million to its CEO and an average of $800,000 each to everybody else at the place… In 40 years, the share of wealth owned by our richest 1 percent has doubled, the collective net worth of the bottom half has dropped to almost zero, the median weekly pay for a full-time worker has increased by just 0.1 percent a year, only the incomes of the top 10 percent have grown in sync with the economy, and so on. Americans’ boats stopped rising together; most of our boats stopped rising at all. Economic inequality has reverted to the levels of a century ago and earlier, and so has economic insecurity, while economic immobility is almost certainly worse than it’s ever been.’

Full text at: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/i-was-useful-idiot-capitalism/615031/

Examine it closely and Boris Johnson’s ‘Levelling Up’ agenda is just a re-run of Margaret Thatcher’s ‘Trickle Down Economics’; invest in infrastructure to boost productivity in the North to London levels; the rich will get even richer and a bit of that wealth will trickle down. There will be no change in the relative levels of income; it will still be a world of zero hours contracts, food banks, two jobs and insecure tenancies for those at the bottom of the heap.

Who cares? Certainly not the young, or at least not the privileged young, that 30% who will ‘make it’ or the 30% who think they will. They are far too busy demanding the removal of statues, patronising those they see as ‘oppressed’ by demanding ‘safe spaces’ for them, and ‘no platforming’ speakers because they lack the ability or willingness to engage in rational debate with anyone they disagree with.

Speaking at the Oxford Union in 2017 Bernie Sanders said:   'There is an area which is not nearly so sexy as dealing with race, as dealing with gender, as dealing with homophobia and that is the economic struggle and in that struggle we are not only not making progress, we are losing ground'.  As if to emphasise his point the applause came when he made reference to ‘gay’ marriage in the UK.

But as Sanders told his Oxford audience the economic issues ‘wrap around’ all the social issues.  If you are on a zero hours contract, living in a lousy house for a rent which takes a third of your income, are always one pay packet away from being penniless, working but having to use a food bank, it’s not because you are black/white, male/female, gay/straight, cis/trans, it’s because the people who run the system want it that way. They and their even richer friends benefit from running the political system along neo-liberal lines.  And you will find some of the beneficiaries in all the categories listed above.  Which is why ‘racist’ Trump has his Black and Hispanic supporters, and ‘racist’ Boris has his Rishi Sunak and Priti Patel.  Some of them are doing very nicely thank you!

If the young don’t care, what about ‘The Left’.  How about Labour?  You’ll remember in February three Labour leadership hopefuls declared themselves Zionists and one, Lisa Nandy, said if she became leader she would press for the IHRA definition of anti-semitism to be accepted by the Labour party. This is some of what the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has to say about that definition;

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is increasingly being adopted or considered by western governments, is worded in such a way as to be easily adopted or considered by western governments to intentionally equate legitimate criticisms of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism, as a means to suppress the former.

This conflation undermines both the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and the global struggle against antisemitism. It also serves to shield Israel from being held accountable to universal standards of human rights and international law.

Full text at: https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/first-ever-40-jewish-groups-worldwide-oppose-equating-antisemitism-with-criticism-of-israel/#english

Same month, same cast; Rebecca Long-Bailey, Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry all pledged support to the 12 demands of the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights. To which one senior Shadow Cabinet member representing a northern constituency is reported to have said ‘My constituents don’t give a flying fuck about transsexual issues’.

Text at: https://twitter.com/Labour_Trans/status/1226939313264394241

Their priorities seem to be different from mine, but I suppose being on £80k or so blunts the judgement when it comes to thinking about poverty. Increasingly ‘wealth creation’ for some is generating the makings of poverty for others. We see this especially in the privately rented housing market where a new ‘rentier’ class has emerged funded by rents which require a significant proportion of tenant income.

But ‘The Left’ isn’t just the Labour party and here we have yet another problem. There are those who like me think that our society is structured along economic lines, more wealth equals more privilege, and that our priority should be to tackle the vast inequalities between the richest and the poorest in our society. And there are those who want to view our society as structured along racial lines and insist that getting rid of what they define as racism is far more important than pursuit of a more economically equitable society.

Terms like ‘structural racism’ are dragooned into explanations for everything that is wrong with our society; they are sufficiently vague that they can be made to mean exactly what the speaker wants them to mean at the time.

Structural inequality is measurable; income ratios, wealth ratios, rates of direct tax, infant mortality, years without disability, differential morbidity and mortality, are all good measures. And if we can measure it, we can measure how successful we are at reducing it. Eliminating the inequalities of wealth in our world would do far more to help what some people like to see as ‘oppressed’ groups than any amount of rolling statues into the local dock or ‘calling out’ someone as a ‘racist’.

Postscript. I write this as someone who in Will Hutton’s terms has ‘made it’. That doesn’t mean I’m rich. It just means that I have always had a regular income, decent working conditions, a place to live I wasn’t going to be kicked out of at my landlord’s whim, a warm bed, four meals a day, a pension in my old age...

Trump And China

by Les May

I HAVE dabbled with computers for forty years.  For the last dozen years it has been mostly ‘junked’ laptops I have resurrected by installing the free, as in free beer and free of Microsoft, Linux operating system.  Though not free like the old laptops, in recent months I’ve bought a couple of tiny machines which are less than 3cm x 6cm in size and cost me about £5 each.  In case you are inclined to think these are toys I will mention that they have dual processors, and wifi and bluetooth built in.  They are meant for the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT).   I write programs on a laptop, download them to these tiny machines and then they run autonomously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_things

(Scroll down to the section of privacy and security concerns)

But that’s not the most significant thing about them.  They encapsulate the real problem that Donald Trump and the rest of the USA have with China.   Trump may like to claim that China is involved in the wholesale theft of ‘Intellectual Property’ from the US, but these devices are an entirely home grown product, and what they show is that, like it or not, China is beating the USA at its own game; innovating and making things to sell to the rest of the world.

The same goes for the UK.  In Britain we refer to someone who makes ‘bath bombs’ in their kitchen as an ‘entrepreneur’.  The Chinese have entrepreneurs too, and they encourage and fund them, so there may be a lesson for us here. We may feel threatened by the face recognition technology is ubiquitous in cities, but lets face it, getting that working is a bit more difficult than making bath bombs.

What we have not noticed in the West is that China is a communist country in name only. It’s got its share of billionaires and an affluent middle class.  Watch the videos and TV footage and spot the Apple shops, Burberry shops etc.  MaoI recently heard a Chinese political scientist explain in impeccable English that in the US you can change your party, but not your politics, but in China you can change your politics, but not your party.

What he meant was that in the US the Republicans and the Democrats are just two sides of the same coin, whilst in China, since the revolution which brought Mao to power in 1949 the political landscape has changed immeasurably as the country has embraced the market economy and in doing so has lifted something like a half a billion people out of poverty, but that the same political party has retained power throughout that time.

Asked whether that made China a capitalist country like the USA he explained why it did not by saying ‘In the USA the politicians have allowed the capitalists to run the country; in China the politicians made sure they do not.’

Trump’s use of ‘Kung Flu’ to describe the virus which causes Covid 19 has predictably been labelled as ‘racist’, but it tells us more about his juvenile sense of humour and misses the point anyhow; Trump is signalling to his followers that China is the new enemy.

Thirty years ago I heard schoolchildren describing something they did not think much of as ‘Chink made’ and to many of us the Chinese were just that, ‘Chinks’. We’ve grown out of that, but deep down we still believe that they cannot have invented something themselves, they must have stolen the technology from the West; they cannot possibly have been successful in keeping the deaths from Covid 19 so low, they must be lying; if the virus was circulating last autumn, (as seems to be the case), they must have known about it and did not tell the WHO; the virus could not possibly have crossed the species barrier from bat to ‘what?’ to humans, they must have created it in the lab and were too careless to contain it.   Is this an example of what is meant by ‘institutional racism’?

Reagan and Thatcher could always point to a communist USSR as ‘the Red menace’; Trump cannot do that with China as it is clearly communist in name only.  But with a little help from his friends in the West, Trump has floated all of these accusations in one way or another.  Have his western friends just played the part of ‘useful idiots’?   Is he laying the groundwork for a new cold war which will conveniently ‘hot up’ a couple of months before the November election?

The political systems in both the US and in China have one thing in common; they both rely upon an underclass to sustain them.  In the US it’s those who have two jobs and visit food banks just to survive.  In China it’s the migrant workers living three families to a single flat in a city far from home. Some things don’t change it seems.

Question:  Does having a market economy, irrespective of what you call the political system, inevitably mean having very large differences in income and wealth?  Discuss.

**************** 

There’s No Pockets In A Shroud

by Les May

WHEN Theresa May called a General Election in 2017 one proposal in the Tory Manifesto was immediately dubbed a ‘Dementia Tax’.   At present councils pay for all or part of a person’s social care if they have less than £23,250 in capital. This applies if a person is in a residential home or nursing home. The cost is then recouped from their estate after their death.  May also wanted to recover from their estate the costs of care given to people in their own home, to raise the protected sum to £100,000 and axe the Winter Fuel Allowance for more affluent pensioners.

These proposals went down like the proverbial ‘lead balloon’.  They were attacked by both Labour and the Liberal Democrats.  The Tories could reasonably argue that this was a better deal for relatively poorer people who needed residential care and would mean that the costs of care given in the home would be recouped only from the more wealthy.  Strictly speaking of course that’s not quite true.  Until someone finds a foolproof, (and fire proof?) way of putting ‘pockets in a shroud’ it will be the beneficiaries of the estate who will have their inheritance reduced.

Social care today is in the same state as health care was in the 1930s, a hodgepodge of partly national and partly local provision, and funded partly by those who have the misfortune to need long term care, often with pressure applied to their spouse or family, and partly from the public purse.   Unlike the NHS which is ‘free at the point of delivery’ social care is not built around a ‘shared risk model’.

Such a model would recognise that throughout our life we all run a small risk of requiring social and residential care due to age, infirmity or accident, hence we should all make a contribution to funding that care for those who need it.

The simplest and most effective way of doing this is via the tax system.  But here we have a choice we can either raise the money through a tax on income or through a tax on wealth, specifically a tax on inherited wealth.  When the costs of care are recouped after someone’s death the burden falls on the estate not the deceased individual.   If you doubt this you might like to consider that a dead person does not own their own body, so how can they be said to own property or other assets?

Switching to such a funding model would go much further than Labour’s 2010 proposal for a ‘National Care Service’.  Labour shied away from a fully tax funded system as being too costly to be a sustainable model on the basis that it would put too high a financial burden on the decreasing proportion of the population that is of working age (p126 below).  I fail to see that a tax based upon inherited wealth would not be sustainable.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/238441/7854.pdf

The distinction between social (or personal) care and medically required care is an artificial one.  Dementia is a chronic medical condition; it results in sufferers requiring social care in their own home.  Why should the necessary care for both the condition and its side effects not come from the same source?

May’s ‘crime’ was to try to have an adult conversation with people who prefer not to think about the problem of funding care for older people and send to parliament people who are similarly reluctant to talk about it.  In 2019 the lesson was learned, no one wanted a caning for talking out of turn.  The Tories pledged an extra £1bn, the Lib Dems £3bn and Labour £10bn by 2024 to fund in home social care for all who needed it and to ensure that carers were paid at least £10 an hour with no ‘zero hours contracts’.

These are significant sums of money, but even Labour’s proposals leave the question of funding residential care for those who need it unresolved.  This matters because the available funding has an impact on the quality of care which is provided.   Nothing illustrates this more sharply than the spectacle of the owners of ‘run for profit’ residential homes asking to be provided with kit to protect staff and residents against coronavirus, and being told it is their responsibility.

We need a politician with vision and determination to keep fighting for a universal and comprehensive care model for those who need it due to age or a chronic medical condition funded by a tax on inherited wealth, in the face of short sighted claims that it is a ‘death tax’ or a ‘tax on the sick’.  As I said earlier, ‘there’s no pockets in a shroud’.  Even though I am unlikely to be the recipient of inherited wealth it seems to me it would be better to have the certainty 80% of something rather than run the risk of 100% of nothing!

http://www.renewal.org.uk/articles/death-and-taxes

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2017/03/death-tax-social-care

***********************************