Happy Easter to everyone…. Many of us will be benefiting from a sunny yet slightly chilly day. It’s a shame that cynical Tories have chosen to misuse this special day by posting the most hypocritical stuff on social media, for example Environment (sewage) minister Therese Coffey’s tweet accompanying a picture of Christ on the cross with ‘The ultimate sacrifice’ – something she knows all about, of course. And today’s picture of the empty cross captioned ‘Resurrexit sicut dixit. Alleluia. Happy Easter’. But it gets even worse: Boris Johnson posted: ‘Happy Easter to everyone today. May your day be filled with joy, laughter, and plenty of chocolate eggs. Let’s take this opportunity to reflect on the hope and renewal that Easter represents, and to be thankful for the blessings in our lives’. Some will be finding it difficult to reflect on hope and renewal given the extent to which he and his colleagues have brought the country down.
What’s also been striking this last week is the number of Tories lauding Margaret Thatcher, perhaps because she’s one of the few points of commonality within the badly split party. Another deluded tweet from Boris Johnson: ‘On the 10th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s death, we remember her as a great leader who transformed our country and the Conservative Party. She enabled people to realise their ambitions and build a better life – that is what Conservatism is all about.’ I think many could supply other views on what Conservatism is ‘all about’ with the present incumbents, including incompetence, corruption, environmental damage and racism to mention just a few.
The start of the Easter break was marked much more emphatically than usual by huge queues at Dover, as post-Brexit checks take their toll, but rather than blaming Brexit, the government attributes the problem to ‘the numbers of people wanting to get away’! During their absurdly long recess we can assume numerous MPs and ministers have managed ‘to get away’, often abroad, the Commons Speaker for example being in Aguilla. There have been questions as to where Health Secretary Steve Barclay is, still refusing to come to the table to help avert the junior doctors’ strike schedules for next week, anticipated to seriously put patients’ lives at risk. A junior doctor said on BBC5 Live that doctors’ pay had lost 26% of its value over the last fifteen years and we know they are unprepared to accept the 5% offered to other health unions.
Yet some Tory MPs at least are staying at home, bullishly tweeting from the campaign trail in the run-up to the local elections, boasting about non-achievements and lambasting Labour councils. Rishi Sunak must have been perturbed that one of key cheerleaders, Scott Benton, has not only been caught red-handed breaking lobbying rules but also promising the fake company posing as lobbyists access to ministers not possible ‘outside the realm of politics’ and telling them how gifts could escape detection by underplaying the value at which they have to be declared. ‘He also suggested he was willing to leak sensitive information to, and ask parliamentary questions on behalf of, a fake investment fund, in an exchange recorded during an investigation by The Times’. A tweeter observed: ‘Rishi Sunak must be delighted at this doubling down on dishonesty prior to the Local Elections. What was that about ‘accountability, professionalism and Integrity’? It seems we’re supposed to be grateful that Benton has referred himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner, which only happened because he was caught. At least he’s had the Tory whip removed but we have to wonder how many more scandals involving Tory MPs are yet to emerge.
What came from the CBI last week could be considered further evidence (on top of the police, fire and rescue service and others) of how the reckless disregard for rules and decency modelled by Boris Johnson has poisoned the body politic. ‘An investigation into sexual misconduct at one of Britain’s biggest business lobby groups has been widened after new allegations have emerged. The Confederation of British Industry is at the centre of claims published by the Guardian, detailing alleged misconduct by individuals. Law firm Fox Williams is overseeing the expanded investigation’. These are in addition to the allegations made against the DG Tony Danker. Some CBI members are said to be considering their membership: I wonder what they get from it in the first place, apart from (presumably) access to lobbying opportunities.
Earlier this week the media focused heavily (disproportionately, some felt) on the death of Lord Lawson, Margaret Thatcher’s former Chancellor. From the eulogistic coverage and interviews with prominent Conservatives (like Lord Baker, who praised his privatization of BT!) you’d never think that this titan of the political realm was a climate change denier who went to live in France while extolling the benefits of Brexit. And that’s not all: one tweeter commented: ‘No. Lawson will *not* be remembered for paying off debt. He will be remembered for selling our state assets, squandering the North Sea oil money, increasing inequality, and the housing crash of 1988. Not to mention funding climate change denial’.
As if we needed any more alarming news, the Health Service Journal (NB, not the government) has revealed an intention to halve the proposed social care workforce investment, lopping off £250m. As everyone knows, social care is already seriously struggling, some would say broken, so to cut it even further is an untenable false economy especially as it will put even more pressure on the NHS.
The Department of Health and Social Care did not deny the report. A spokesperson said it did not comment on leaks and added: “The government remains committed to the 10-year vision set out in the People at the Heart of Care White Paper and have made good progress on implementing it, including by boosting workforce capacity, digitisation, improving oversight and enhancing the use of data. We will soon publish a plan for adult social care system reform, setting out how we will build on this progress over the next two years.” Having dodged the big social care conundrums for years, Boris Johnson famously promised ‘from the steps of Downing Street’ in 2019 that social care would be fixed once and for all. Now the Department promises a plan ‘soon’??
What I think is by far the most interesting news item this week is the Guardian’s huge investigation into the Royal Family’s wealth (The Cost of the Crown), the deliberate cultivation of secrecy around this and the evidence that the royals including the Queen interfered with the legislative process which would have brought this to light. Interesting timing, too, given the imminent Coronation and the media’s non-stop brainwashing creation of ‘excitement’ about this event. It seems most of the information painstakingly elicited by the Guardian’s investigators was not in the public domain or was barely accessible, that they were often not helped but explicitly obstructed and the fact that the Royal Family is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act would add significantly to the barriers encountered. ‘At the same time, their finances entered a new era, as well. In 2011, David Cameron’s government replaced the fixed income of the “civil list” with the sovereign grant, which is linked to profits derived from the crown estate – land formally owned by the monarch.
A “golden ratchet” clause ensured that their income would increase in line with the crown estate’s profits, but could never go down. Meanwhile, the government also insisted that income from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall – the land and property estates which provide a significant share of the royals’ income, and separate to the crown estate – were private money’. This is highly debateable. ‘The royals insist their duchy income is “private” and the government treats it as entirely separate from the sovereign grant, the annual payment the royal family receives from the government to cover its official costs. That too has risen dramatically in recent times, and costs the taxpayer £86m a year…Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the Guardian’s figures for income received from the duchies, which it described as ‘speculative’.
Those who continue to laud the Queen as an exemplar of duty and devotion to public service should now get a wakeup call. ‘Obituaries of Queen Elizabeth II uniformly applauded her calm stewardship of the realm, or her supposed non-interference in British politics. None mentioned another hallmark of her reign: entrenched secrecy, which has given rise to a culture in which the British people are deprived of the most basic information about the monarchy…. In the past three years, official papers uncovered by the Guardian have revealed how the Queen and her advisers repeatedly abused the procedure of crown consent to secretly alter British laws, including, in 1973, as part of a successful bid to conceal her “embarrassing” private wealth from the public’.
Polly Toynbee typically wasted no time in identifying what I (and many others, no doubt) see as a major problem, increasingly evident as we approach the Coronation: that people in this country have long been seduced into complying with a state of unconscious feudalism, aided and abetted by sycophantic media including their retinues of ‘royal correspondents’. We’re encouraged to feel grateful when a royal personage comes to our town or village, perhaps the most recent telling example being the Maundy Thursday walkabout in York, which saw the enactment of a tradition going back to the 7th century of handing out coins. Typically, the BBC underplayed the noisy Not My King protest, which was clearly audible inside the Minster, into which Charles and Camilla were quickly ushered. Many are not seeing how this unconscious feudalism encourages a passive mindset which could well explain why, unlike other countries, we don’t rise up against this corrupt government.
‘The trouble with the monarchy is not that it is too powerful but that it is utterly useless, a worthless vacuum shrouded in ceremony. So much is spent on ceremonial trappings to disguise its inner nothingness….All ermine and no knickers is what we’ve got, anyway.
Empty heads that wear the hollow crown are symbols of some of our worst tendencies – the growing weight of nepotism, inequality, privilege and inherited wealth…But there are obvious differences between the King’s finances and anybody else’s – chief among them the fact that much of the income is ultimately derived from the public purse by dint of their birth. It’s curious that many who were persuaded to vote for Brexit, at such a pernicious national cost, in order to reclaim “sovereignty” still seem willing as subjects to cede it without question to their sovereign. That royal prerogative is in turn handed to the prime minister in parliament as absolute power, barring a weak House of Lords’.
Another key question the Guardian is investigating is what contribution the royals make.
‘Yet our attempt to discover precisely what public functions royals have fulfilled in return for all this money is less than straightforward. The palace directed reporters to the Court Circular, the official record of their activities. However, the information is only available in daily editions, with no totals and no way of easily searching what engagements royals have undertaken in recent years. To work this out, we first had to drive to the village of Datchet in Berkshire, and the home of Tim O’Donovan, an amiable retired insurance broker who has spent the past 44 years compiling his own paper records of these engagements; archives that he generously agreed to share’. Is it not astonishing that there’s no proper record of what the ‘working royals’ actually do? It wouldn’t be surprising, though, if there was such a longstanding sense of entitlement that the idea of doing something in return for such largesse had never crossed royal minds.
Apparently Buckingham Palace argues that the financial arrangements of royals should “remain private, as they would for any other individual”. What an unintelligent stance: the royals are not just individuals but public figures costing the country dear and we have a right to know the amounts involved, how they were acquired and the rationale on which they are disbursed.
It’s probably no coincidence that King Charles is now suddenly supporting the investigation into its links with slavery: the lumbering Palace PR machine has creaked into action, using this other important issue to deflect attention from the Guardian’s other work. The media have obediently swallowed the bait and have reported this widely. ‘Buckingham Palace released the statement after it was contacted by the Guardian about the extensive history of successive British monarchs’ involvement and investment in the enslavement of African people. The Guardian has published a previously unseen document showing the 1689 transfer of £1,000 of shares in the slave-trading Royal African Company to King William III, from Edward Colston, the company’s deputy governor’. Quite a few historians and other experts say this cooperation is a good thing but much more needs to be done.
One thing’s for sure – no one can accuse the Guardian of hypocrisy: the paper is doing its fair share of hair shirt wearing following revelations of its own connections to slavery. ‘In an article published on Tuesday, Katharine Viner, the editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media, writes: “We are facing up to, and apologising for, the fact that our founder and those who funded him drew their wealth from a practice that was a crime against humanity.“As we enter our third century as a news organisation, this awful history must reinforce our determination to use our journalism to expose racism, injustice and inequality, and to hold the powerful to account.” The Guardian has also launched Cotton Capital, a continuing series of journalism exploring the history of transatlantic slavery and its legacies’.
This week also saw the 25th anniversary of the groundbreaking Good Friday Agreement, which the i paper says has ‘passed its most stringent test – surviving Brexit and Boris Johnson’, adding ‘The irresponsibility of Johnson and his ministers’ willingness to capsize the GFA was astounding… The biggest reason for celebrating the 25 years of the GFA is that its durability has been tested by Brexit but, despite a battering, it still stands’. The battering alluded to consisted of Boris Johnson’s unsuccessful attempt to ‘play the Orange card’ to undermine the Windsor Framework and the fact that concerns about an upsurge in sectarian violence have largely not been manifested.
‘This outcome was by no means guaranteed, but the fact that the agreement endured is proof that from the beginning it accurately reflected the balance of power within Northern Ireland between the Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists. It also reflected the balance of power between the chief outside players – the UK, Irish Republic, US and EU. Uncaring Johnson may have been about uprooting the GFA, but he repeatedly found that he had too few cards in his hand to do so successfully’. Let’s hope the GFA continues to do its job.
Finally, and perhaps good timing given the amount of chocolate and hot cross buns being consumed this weekend (!) there have been some useful articles recently on the perennial topic of acquiring and maintaining good health, which contain some statements of the obvious. But there’s a reason they may not be initially seem obvious: because it’s a human tendency to reach for short cuts to health benefits, ones which don’t involve much effort on our parts, and the NHS has unintentionally colluded with this from its inception in the ‘cradle to grave’ ethos. By insufficiently investing in and emphasising the importance of preventative health interventions, it’s fostered the passive lack of personal agency framework that problems are only addressed when they’ve occurred, a lot more costly for both the patient and the NHS. ‘While what Attia sets out is mostly about how individuals can transform their chances of extending wellness and resilience into old age, it inevitably strays into big questions about how systems of healthcare are organised, and the thinking that drives them’.
Peter Attia, the founder of Healthspan, says ‘We can strike big blows against the “four horsemen” of diabetes, cancer, heart disease and dementia by improving our lives in five “tactical domains”: exercise; “nutritional biochemistry” (ie what and how much we eat); sleep; emotional health; and “exogenous molecules” – or, as they are otherwise known, drugs and supplements’…Interestingly, he roughly divides the history of medicine into three eras: although we still rely heavily on Medicine 2.0 (centred on such innovations as the microscope, the discovery of antibiotics and thorough scientific experiments and research)
Attia wants us to move to Medicine 3.0, which “places a far greater emphasis on prevention than treatment”. Generally medicine does not lead us to this important work, for which we must largely take personal responsibility, yet he regularly comes across Silicon Valley folk who neglect the basics like exercise because it’s easier to invest their hopes in some new gene treatment, for example.
Another Holy Grail Attia challenges is the one of longevity when what counts is the quality of someone’s existence. He advises gradual, not sudden changes to one’s lifestyle. Obvious? Yes, but you wouldn’t think so judging by the nature of so many New Year’s Resolutions to get fit, gyms packed out with joiners who drop out weeks later because they’ve set themselves unrealistic goals. ‘Your base system has to be preventive and it has to be preventive early. And by the way, the most beneficial things that you’re going to do to extend lifespan and healthspan don’t actually cost much money…Go exercise! How much does it cost to really educate people to exercise? That doesn’t matter how much money you have’. A pertinent point is also that the NHS is now so underfunded and under-resourced that we can often anyway feel we’re on our own when it comes to looking after our health. But of course it’s not just about our physical health – this interacts with our mental health, which will be more resilient if we invest in the former.
One of the key ingredients of ‘healthspan’, Attia believes, is body strength. ‘… if you look at the majority of people over the age of 75 and 80, you’ll be so struck by how many activities they can’t do because they lack strength. It can be as simple as: ‘Why can’t most people at a certain age not even get up off the floor?’ They simply don’t have the strength in their hip muscles’ and it makes quite some difference. ‘….And when you compare strong with not-strong, the survival difference and the mortality difference is in the order of 200%’. On this point it’s interesting to see this example cited in a witty yet serious article about basic things we can do for our health (Stand on one leg – and 16 other life-changing daily moves that will keep your body happy), one of which is getting up from the ground/floor unaided. ‘The ability to rise without assistance is not only a predictor of a longer life (research supports that acing this test correlates to decreases in all causes of mortality and morbidity), it’s an indicator that your body is stable, supple and efficient’.
Some may remember a tv programme a few years ago presented by Angela Rippon, who tested various groups of people attempting this and she was the only one who could: all the others had to use their hands or a prop in order to get up. It’s interesting that this simple-sounding exercise has been proved to be so powerful!
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Politics and mental health - the missing link? 