As happy a Christmas as possible to all readers! These are busy days for many but you may perhaps have time to peruse this mini blog post while basting that turkey or nut roast, when grabbing a crafty snifter while peeling those spuds, or during the post-lunch/dinner slump! Recently transport minister Mark Harper was trying, in view of the multiple strikes, to prepare us for ‘a virtual Christmas’, cynically trying to pitch the public against the unions by invoking the lockdown Christmas, but it seems that most who wanted to have managed to travel, except the unwell ones. Best wishes to them for a speedy recovery. So, given what some are calling a General Strike in all but name (Sky News, the Guardian and other media have a useful matrix showing who’s on strike when), perhaps we should count ourselves lucky to be having any kind of Christmas!
It seems Mark Harper expects us to count ourselves lucky that the government has made its ‘biggest ever intervention’ to keep rail fare rises below inflation, condemned as a sick joke by Labour, as fares in England, already sky high, will rise by 5.9% in March. Commentators have pointed out the contrast between these rises, deterring people from using rail, and how road and air transport are treated – fuel duty was cut and fuel on domestic flights remains untaxed.
What’s gone under the radar somewhat is how much the government is spending (of hallowed ‘taxpayers’ money’) in order to maintain the strikes and the ideological intransigence underpinning ministers’ stance. Army personnel are being paid extra to stand in for striking workers, a shameful intervention and something they could well feel aggrieved about. The Telegraph reports having been told that the military believes it is ‘not right’ for soldiers, who are banned by law from striking themselves, to replace striking public sector workers over the festive season. In addition, senior members of the Armed Forces are understood to have also warned ministers that the plan risks weakening the ‘operational capability’ of the military to respond to threats.
In a related issue, Labour had to use FOI to uncover how much the NHS was spending to compensate for its staffing crisis. English NHS trusts paid £3bn to agencies for staff during 2021-22, 20% more than in the previous year and as much as £5,200 a shift for agency doctors. ‘In addition, trusts spent £6bn on so-called bank staff – NHS professionals paid to carry out temporary shifts, including employees looking for extra work’. Economist Richard Murphy commented on the failed economic policy: ‘….the obvious reason why the UK’s economic performance is relatively poor despite austerity…The simple fact is that the deliberate undermining of our public services has undermined our national economy and well-being. And if we want to improve either nothing will work until we invest in fully staffed, well paid and properly valued public service’. This is exactly what the government does not wish to do because of its ideological obsession with small State.
Last week, ahead of the ambulance workers’ strike, we were absurdly told not to ‘do anything risky’, which junior health minister Will Quince, during an interview, seemed to think included driving one’s car. The government tries to spin their intransigence and refusal to sit down with the unions as being ‘resolute’ in the face of pressure from ‘union barons’, when the unions involved are not even affiliated to the Labour Party, while wheeling out the tired old discredited schtick about ‘accepting in full the recommendations of the independent pay review body’, when it’s now well known that these bodies are not independent. Although the Tory bias in many Radio 4 presenters is clear to see, Mishal Husain did very well on 21st December, keeping Health Secretary Steve Barclay under pressure throughout and showing (he did not even know the answer) that the government had four times not accepted recommendations of a pay review body, thereby proving that the current immovable position adopted is not consistent. And this, of course, reveals the current stance as unjustifiable. It’s surprising that despite this admirable foot in the door of the government’s script, Rishi Sunak keeps going robotically round the same track, gaslighting the public about the risks to patient safety being due to militant unions etc.
Others have no doubt where responsibility lies. Two major health service organizations, the NHS Confederation and NHS Providers, have told the PM of the ‘deep worry among NHS leaders about the level of harm and risk that could occur to patients tomorrow and beyond…We’ve rarely heard such strong and urgent expressions of concern from those running our hospitals, ambulance services and other vital health services. The fear of NHS leaders is that the risk to patients is only going to get worse with future strikes planned. That is, unless your government is able to reach agreement with the trade unions to bring a swift end to the dispute. We urge you to do all you can to bring about an agreed solution, otherwise more members of the public will suffer unnecessarily’.
Can the PM and ministers really remain deaf to such a powerful message from people who know what they’re talking about? Ok, it’s Christmas, but they can’t afford to completely switch off. Also, it’s not just the risks we mostly hear about, it’s the appalling rise in excess deaths (those non-Covid deaths which are above the seasonal norm) due to service cuts and failing NHS and social care services, a phenomenon which often goes under the radar. Statistician David Spiegelhalter and Royal College of Emergency Medicine president Adrian Boyle recently said this figure was 900 per week: this is over 100 people dying younger than they should every day, ‘because social care and the NHS are starved’.
It’s struck me that one of the unspoken elements of the current situation is that ministers feel superior to union leaders, not seeing them as equals, when it’s increasingly clear that these leaders are highly intelligent and experienced people who, especially in the case of Mick Lynch, run rings around all their opponents. Besides the political intransigence, fear of these leaders getting the better of them will be a further deterrent to ministers meeting the unions.
As Rishi Sunak unwittingly continues to disprove his trumpeted mission of leading a government of ‘integrity, professionalism and accountability’, one of the latest decisions being to appoint ‘a veteran banker’ to the position of Ethics Adviser (one who, again, cannot initiate his own investigations so pretty useless), more commentators focus on the Prime Minister’s robotic manner and lack of impact. ‘Rishi Sunak is a conundrum. Schrödinger’s prime minister. The more you see of him, the less there appears to be. A man who doesn’t much care about anything. A man so rich he can afford not to be seen to even care about his wealth. His beliefs dictated by a Goldman Sachs training manual. The country just an intellectual playground for him. Its people just problems to be solved. Preferably with a PowerPoint presentation. He is a man without emotional affect. Either dead or empty inside. Or just completely disconnected’.
An example of his tone-deaf behaviour is his ‘excruciating’ interaction with a homeless man at a soup kitchen, where the photo call had the PM dishing up breakfast. ‘After a brief exchange he asked the man whether he worked in business. The man replied that he was homeless. Sunak then discussed his background in the finance industry and, with a great sense of priorities, asked if it would be something the man would ‘like to get in to’. The man replied: “I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t know, I’d like to get through Christmas first.” Sunak used the trip to outline that the government had pledged £2bn to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over three years’. As this faux pas trends on Twitter, former chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal observed: ‘When you’ve never met real people and understood their lives then you’re the kind of person that asks a homeless person if he “works in business”.
Perhaps some awareness of his flagging popularity has prompted the latest move, again demonstrating a conflict of interest. The PM has appointed as political secretary (whose job it is toensure that ‘Downing Street, the policy teams and MPs are more united as Britain heads towards the next election) James Forsyth, who is the Spectator political editor, Times columnist and Sunak’s friend. A key question must then be whether he will have the guts to point out and prevent missteps, assuming he can spot them coming in the first place. Remember Sunak challenging his party during the leadership contest: Unite or Die? The Conservative Party is definitely not united so this is a key policy area to focus on over the next year, assuming he lasts that long. ‘Sunak and Forsyth are now expected to focus on a series of issues that can unite the party and prove popular with the country as the election approaches. The plan has already seen Sunak focus on trying to reduce small boats crossing the Channel. He is also expected to focus on reducing the NHS backlog, improving the poorest performing hospitals, and improving technical education as the UK struggles with labour shortages’. Good luck with that, because these are all long-term projects demanding effective planning and nuanced thinking, not qualities this cynical and short-termist government has more than a passing acquaintance with.
Meanwhile, some are still pining (and plotting) for ‘Boris’ to return, seeming to believe that he can yet save them from political extinction. Again, good luck with that, because his constituents have finally woken up to his outrageous absenteeism due to frequent long holidays and delivering of lucrative speeches. It also beggars belief that Johnson wrote in the Spectator that he was on a ‘career hiatus’ despite remaining MP for a seat of more than 110,000 people. Nothing else quite shows the level of contempt this disgraced individual has for parliamentary procedure. ‘Residents in Boris Johnson’s seat say they feel abandoned by their part-time MP, with the ousted Prime Minister appearing largely absent since leaving office. One Tory voter told Byline Times that Mr Johnson had been away for longer than Matt Hancock’s controversial ‘I’m a Celebrity’ appearance in Australia’. Not only that but the speech delivery has broken the ministerial code once more: ‘The high-paying gigs breach instructions from revolving-door regulator Acoba that he must not work for the Harry Walker Agency for at least three months after leaving office – a cooling-off period meant to avoid conflicts of interest’.
As the controversy over Boris Johnson’s resignation honours continue and we brace ourselves for the imminent New Years honours, the discredited system is brought further into disrepute by revelations (no surprise there) that chairs of honours committees have been leaned on to accept nominations of Tory donors and others. Those not complying were let go. ‘Current and former members of the government’s honours committees have said they faced pressure from Downing Street to reward Tory donors, and that if they failed to comply with requests they were informed their services were no longer required, an investigation by Channel 4 News has revealed… Earlier this month Dame Louise Casey, chair of the community and voluntary service committee which awards the majority of honours, told the Cabinet Office, in an email seen by Channel 4 News, that she had concerns about ‘politicalisation’ of the system. It’s appalling and such a pity that the well-deserved honours are mixed up with all these others and (incomprehensible to me) career civil servants.
Between Christmas and 2nd January is the period during which Radio 4’s Today programme invites guest editors to take the reins. Some are great choices but we have to wonder about some of the others Every year I ask why they don’t ask regular listeners to do this: of course they’re mostly not famous but I believe their efforts would be equally interesting to listen to. This year we have Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, Jamie Oliver, Lord Ian Botham, Sir Jeremy Fleming (head of GCHQ), Dame Sharon White (chair of the John Lewis Partnership), and technologist Anne-Marie Imafidon.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63777454
Finally, we hear much about how Brexit and other pressures are negatively affecting businesses and their capacity to export, but there’s a cheering example of one company which has bucked that trend. Tunnock’s, the Scottish family-run purveyor of ‘teacakes’, reported a 27% increase in sales to ‘a record’ £72.1m, due mostly to booming exports. For southerners, this isn’t a teacake as you know it: it’s ‘soft marshmallow on a biscuit base fully coated in real milk chocolate’. Have they cracked the secret of post-Brexit paperwork?? I think we should be told!
Best wishes to all for Christmas and the New Year.
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 