Another fortnight passes, with no let up in the pace of events, including the publication of the Illegal Migration bill, the Gary Lineker row which followed and which still rumbles on, the Budget and the government appearing to finally settle with the health unions after months of avoidable disruption. ‘… the government ditched its claim that this year’s pay deal could not be reopened and offered a one-off bonus worth up to 8.2%.The offer – which most health unions are recommending to their members – also includes a permanent 5% pay rise from April, with the lowest-paid receiving a bigger boost, to lift minimum pay in the NHS to £11.45 an hour’. But ministers couldn’t even sing from the same songsheet, some saying it wouldn’t be paid for via existing budgets but Dominic Raab for one saying it would. Financing this pay rise out of existing NHS budgets makes a travesty of what they consider a generous offer.
But could this be the answer? So far I’ve not heard any news coverage of these cuts to social care budgets, a terrible intervention given the rising need for it and workforce problems. Could this be another of those stealth cuts to help finance the NHS pay rise?
Meanwhile, other strikes including teachers and junior doctors continue, alongside mass demonstrations and marches in UK cities, but if you only get your news from the BBC you’d never know because of their impartiality busting policy of not reporting anything likely to upset the Tory puppet masters.
How quickly things can change: recently Rishi Sunak was being (cautiously, in some quarters) lauded for the Windsor Framework, which provided the basis for much better relations with the EU and went a long way towards resolving the Northern Ireland Protocol problems. But soon after this, progress on UK/EU trade was placed in jeopardy by the publication of the ‘small boats’ migrants policy and of the legislation which could lead to the UK leaving the European Convention on Human Rights. A number of Conservative MPs spoke out against the Illegal Migration Bill but still cravenly voted for it so off it now goes on its parliamentary rounds (theCommons voted 312 to 250, majority 62, to give the Bill a second reading).
Meanwhile, it’s shockingly biased and cowardly (no surprise there) that Home Secretary Suella Braverman has gone to Rwanda (when there’s no need), accompanied only by carefully selected media, including GB News, excluding the Guardian, Independent and BBC. This shouldn’t be publicly funded as it smacks of censorship and news manipulation of the kind we’d associate with Russia but, as ever, there’s nothing to stop it. ‘Charity Freedom from Torture labelled it a “showboat trip” after it emerged that the Guardian, the BBC, the Daily Mirror, the Independent and the i newspaper were not invited…. Following the outpouring of support for Gary Lineker and his compassionate stand on behalf of refugees, this government knows it is on the back foot and is once again ramping up the cruelty to distract from their own failures’. It’s interesting she’s excluded the BBC, which, if not previously grasped, the Lineker and ‘lockdown files’ rows demonstrate only too clearly how much the BBC is in this government’s pockets.
It’s astonishing to me that so many Tory-biased BBC presenters are still plying their trade in the same way after the massive Gary Lineker row, which blew the lid off the longstanding pretence of ‘impartiality’. It seems both the government and the BBC were taken aback by the amount of public and co-presenter support for Lineker and his controversial tweet about the ‘small boats’ policy, after which the BBC sought to lance the boil and enable Lineker to return to his role by commissioning an ‘independent’ inquiry into the BBC’s impartiality guidelines. It’s not clear whether they realise this is a non-solution which only buys them a bit of time: whatever its (no doubt hair splitting) findings will be, eg suggesting different levels of freedom for different kinds of presenter, nothing at the BBC will change while a) chair Richard Sharp (still under investigation), DG Tim Davie and board member Robbie Gibb are still in post, all Tories influencing the news agenda, b) Tory presenters are made to rein in their personal views and unbalanced treatment of opposition party interviewees c) the BBC undertakes to report all relevant news (at present there’s censorship via omission, eg of massive demonstrations in favour of striking workers) and d) the BBC addresses the disconnect of punishing Lineker when not tackling the naked bias of presenters like Fiona Bruce and Alan Sugar.
Of course the government initially seized on the Lineker row (eg apoplectic members of the Conservative parliamentary party’s Common Sense Group (!) demanding the presenter’s sacking) as this massive distraction from their migrants policy would have been seen as useful at first, but it’s likely this has backfired now there’s further evidence eg via the ‘lockdown files’ of blatant government influence exerted on the BBC. Added to which the latest David Attenborough series (Wild Isles) is having its last episode withheld from broadcast (solely available on Iplayer) because BBC executives feared the wrath of ministers following the national treasure’s expression of threats to our environment.
Last week there were two excellent articles exposing the ‘fiction’ of BBC impartiality. In one, author and broadcaster John Kampfner described an earlier experience of the Corporation’s craven conduct, around the time of the Hutton Inquiry, which had forced out the BBC chairman and director general. ‘To illustrate the story, we chose an old-fashioned television with spindly legs alongside the logo and the words “Broken, Beaten, Cowed”. That was the BBC then: that is the BBC now in the shadow of the Gary Lineker saga…..The Corporation needs clear and consistent rules. But more than anything it must learn to stop cowering before politicians… This is the same organisation that has encouraged much of its best talent to leave because it did not stand up to the government over the licence fee settlement, leaving a hollowed-out newsroom. This is the same organisation that is emasculating its international output, on TV and radio, at a time when Chinese and Russian propaganda organs are expanding fast’.
A related ‘take’ comes via the Guardian’s Jonathan Liew, who describes what has actually been going on for years beneath the ‘warm and fuzzy image of the BBC that has been bequeathed to us over the generations. This lovable national treasure, informed by the sacred mission of its founder Lord Reith, a humming hive of family entertainment and artistic monuments and the Sports Report theme tune and David Attenborough cuddling gorillas, a place that expresses the best of us and represents all of us’. He won’t be alone in believing that the BBC has never been a truly impartial space. ‘And what, on reflection, did we ever expect from an organisation that owes its very existence to the consent of those in power? What kind of world were the 17 white men who have served as its director general – 12 of them privately educated, 11 of them Oxbridge graduates, eight of them former military personnel – ever going to construct?….. Perhaps the same world in which Andrew Neil can anchor political coverage while being chairman of a rightwing magazine, while the presenter of a football highlights show can be suspended for criticising a rightwing government policy.’
Unfortunately, we have yet another toothless regulator in Ofcom, illustrated by its Chief Executive, Melanie Dawes, correctly saying that theimpartiality row goes ‘straight to the heart of the BBC’s wider reputation beyond its news and current affairs coverage’, but then carefully sidestepping two important questions put to her. There’s also been criticism this week, initially raised by MP John Nicholson, of what amounts to a breach of broadcasting rules: two Tory MPs interviewing another Tory MP on GB News. What are these ‘regulators’ paid for?
While the aftermath of this row rumbles on (and how long will the inquiry take, let alone the two investigations into BBC chair Richard Sharp?) media attention has naturally focused on the so called ‘back to work Budget’, especially the decision to finally (why has it taken so long?) address the problem of tax on senior doctors’ pension pots causing them to retire prematurely. The predictably stupid and lazy decision to make the measure applicable to all those accruing those colossal pension pots will cost the country much more and benefit the already wealthy than it would have if only they’d done the work of targeting it. As one journalist put it: ‘Even in a budget that sought to rehabilitate the party in the eyes of ordinary people, they couldn’t resist making the rich richer’. Quite staggering that they can’t see that this brings them even further into disrepute.
‘All this may seem perfectly reasonable if you move in circles where everyone has seven-figure retirement funds – maybe you’re a former Goldman Sachs banker married to an heiress, for example – but rather less so to a care worker wondering why nobody’s earmarked £800m a year to stop them and their colleagues leaving for better-paid jobs at Aldi’. What we really need is a wealth tax but fat chance of that under this regime. ‘But imagine how much more could be achieved with a radical rethink of wealth tax – perhaps with proceeds ringfenced to build houses for those who can’t borrow a deposit from the bank of Mum and Dad, which was the big idea glaringly absent from this budget’.
But that’s not all – one of the striking things was the attempt to help the ‘economically inactive’ back to work (as the government needs your tax and national insurance payments, don’tcha know) in the form of 30 free childcare hours, but the (predictably) dishonest aspect was the expectation of praise for this when, in fact, the scheme won’t start till 2024 at the earliest, when the Conservatives are likely to be out of office. Cynical or what? Even more of a nonsense is zero consideration of where the childcare places are going to come from. These were already in short supply and a number of providers have closed down because of the costs of keeping them going, including energy costs. (According to Ofsted the overall number of childcare providers in England dropped by around 4,000 between March 2021 and March 2022, the largest decline since 2016).
But, as previously discussed here, the issue of the ‘economically inactive’ is multifactoral, and this government again and again has proved itself incapable of big picture thinking. True, they have removed the controversial Work Capability Assessment and childcare is indeed one aspect of the problem. But it’s also the massive NHS waiting list which prevents many in need of treatment returning to work, not to mention lifestyle choices post-pandemic (now we’re much more aware of the passage of time and what’s important) and the prevalence of bullying and incompetent bosses who blight workers’ lives. Instead of just putting up with it, as some may previously have done, more are simply not prepared to further tolerate the undermining of their mental wellbeing. It seems to me quite risky that Hunt has billed this a ‘back to work budget’ as it leaves him and his government wide open to criticism if statistics show that substantial numbers of the ‘inactive’ (around 630,000) don’t pick up the cudgels.
An interesting article in the Times spells out what the government constantly overlooks, that many more are suffering poor mental health with very little to help them, when Tory spiel is always about those waiting for physical health treatment. Mental health services have been markedly underfunded for years but, as this author explains, there’s also a danger thanks to the prevalence of biomedical bias that people’s understandable distress at common life events is being unnecessarily and unhelpfully medicalised. This, in turn, has for years boosted the profits of the large pharmaceutical companies, which have a close relationship with the medical profession. This does not excuse the government’s underfunding of services but it does make clear that a much more nuanced understanding of mental wellbeing is needed. What’s appalling is that, besides the normal painful life events people have to navigate, the government has for years added to these via its austerity agenda and by creating such unstable governance.
It could be, too, that there are other unspoken factors underlying the reluctance to return to the workplace, such as (perhaps) the increasing phenomenon of hotdesking in offices. Gone in some places at least are the days when employees could personalise their workstations with photos and the like and leave their desks piled with papers. Desks have to be cleared at the end of each day and stuff put in a pedestal or locker – alien to what many would have been accustomed to. The Week cites a Times article suggesting that ‘silly job titles’ could also be off-putting to returners. ‘A brief trawl through job ads suggests the entire recruitment market is infected with gobbledegook’, eg job titles like ‘productologist’, ‘head storyteller’ and even ‘sandbox manager’ and ‘experience ambassador’. This reminded me of the title on a high profile Twitter account – Chief Purpose and Vision Officer. It would indeed be interesting to know how much returners were deterred by such developments.
I won’t be the only one sad to see the end of the excellent crime series Endeavour, but what will surely keep many glued to their tv screens on Wednesday afternoon at least is the way overdue televised appearance of Boris Johnson before the Commons Privileges Committee, billed as ‘potentially explosive’ by the Observer. It’s expected to last up to five hours but the Committee is only meeting to prepare for half an hour before the start. It seems astonishing that our former Prime Minister, despite all the evidence to the contrary, has apparently worked hard not on constituency business but on preparing a killer dossier (we’re being led to believe) which will prove his innocence. ‘The document, overseen by his lead counsel David Pannick, is set to be published before Wednesday’s five-hour hearing. It is expected to warn the cross-party committee that it will effectively be ripping up parliamentary precedent should it sanction Johnson, who, the document will say, gave his honest views at the time and corrected the record when he learned of wrongdoing’. So now he and his legal team are trying to bully the Committee, adding to his record of misdemeanours.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65001385
Lord Pannick had tried to get permission to speak himself but was turned down. There will be a lot of note passing, no doubt, but much will depend on the capacity of Johnson to think on his feet, something this shambling, bumbling and increasingly inarticulate figure of recent months may well struggle with. But the other astonishing thing is Rishi Sunak ‘giving’ his MPs a free vote if it comes to sanctions being applied – surely, if found guilty of misleading the House, the culprit should be removed from post and a byelection triggered. Yet another reason why we need a new and much firmer set of parliamentary procedures than what pertains now.
It seems hardly a week passes without hearing about yet another Tory being placed under investigation and usually with no timescale being given as to the likely outcome date. The latest is Steve Brine, chair of the Health Select Committee, for allegedly breaking lobbying rules. It’s yet another revelation emerging from the WhatsApp ‘lockdown files’ and how many more are waiting to come out? ‘WhatsApp messages leaked to the Daily Telegraph had suggested the MP lobbied the head of the NHS in England on behalf of a firm paying him £1,600 a month during the pandemic’. One message to Michael Gove said that he, Brine, had been “trying for months” to convince the NHS to recruit anaesthetists through Remedium, a recruitment company he worked for when parliamentary rules state that MPs must not lobby for an organisation from which they are receiving ‘a reward’ for six months after receiving a payment. In case anyone thinks this is just business as usual for this government, it’s worth remembering that it’s the same offence committed by Owen Paterson, the aftermath of that episode developing a long tail which culminated in the end of Boris Johnson’s administration (I can’t call it ‘premiership’).
With one scandal after another and with so many systems and services malfunctioning or grinding to a halt many will be thinking what Shadow Chancellor asked as her Budget response opener, described by the Guardian’s John Crace. ‘She started with a simple question. One that bears being asked repeatedly. Name one thing that works better now than it did 13 years ago. Silence from the Conservative ranks’. And one that speaks volumes.
Finally, on a lighter note, you may have heard it by now but I thought this was a charming story so I wanted to include it. A woman who sadly lost her husband, Peter, in 2018 decided to continue their joint mission to sample a scone in as many National Trust locations as possible. After ten years she has now completed her mission (244 scones) and wrote a blog about it. (I love the blog, though it doesn’t seem to give the option of following – you can click on the properties she visited and read about her experience of them and their scones!).The Metro tells us that Sarah Merker ‘revealed the secret to the best ones’ and not surprisingly, it’s that the item must be fresh, baked that day, then ‘you can hardly go wrong’. Of course this doesn’t sound like rocket science but I suspect quite a few specimens on sale generally don’t fit that bill.
Scones are so popular at National Trust properties that they’re lined up ready for visitors at large venues during the summer and don’t do too badly during the cooler months either. Sarah said there had been one or two bad ones (as we know, some offerings are like concrete) but for her the one that stood out ‘was a Christmas pudding scone with brandy butter at Treasurer’s House in Yorkshire’. That’s certainly novel. A recent article by journalist Adrian Chiles (featured in this blog recently) expressed his aversion to the new varieties of hot cross bun (eg cheese and stout) and for some the same will apply to scones. But I think this was a great 10 year mission and completing it a meaningful tribute to Peter.
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 