Sunday 2 June

Well! Although he kept us hanging on for some weeks for a general election announcement and kept saying it would be in the autumn, it was really only a matter of time following those dreadful local election results. But what an own goal calling it so soon (some suggest to avoid the planned vote of no confidence). At one fell swoop he alienated many in his party by not giving them insufficient time to prepare, precipitating another tranche of Tory MPs stepping down, and completely reneged on his ‘flagship’ Rwanda plan and tobacco policy intended as his legacy but which maybe he could finally see were unworkable. Government ‘insiders’ hinted at other key reasons, like wanting to limit the time Reform has to prepare and the IMF warning that the UK faces a £30bn black hole in its public finances.

And what a rollercoaster – we’ve seen all the party leaders dashing about the country trying to make an impact on the voters some of them have ignored for years and what a disastrous start Sunak had. Once again you have to wonder who’s advising him, with these dreadful Alan Partridge videos and PR disasters like being photographed with two exit signs and with the Titanic building in the background, not to mention his wooden and cliché ridden delivery. And the desperation of the Tory campaign is palpable, announcing one unworkable gimmick after another, cooked up when closeted with ‘advisers’ on his one day off the campaign trail.

Within days we were bombarded with back-of-an-envelope national service plans, Triple Lock Plus, jazzed up apprenticeship schemes, 30 towns getting £20m for regeneration, tackling longstanding NHS issues and lower interest rates (when this isn’t even within his remit to decide) but, not surprisingly, neither these nor the Sunak campaigning has made a dent in the ‘headline’ polls. And yet again his inability to relate to ordinary people was apparent when he was ambushed by a student asking why he hated young people so much. Before scuttling off Sunak’s response to the young man saying he’d volunteered all his life was ‘you’ll love it, then…there’s a choice’. And there’s been another defection to Labour – Mark Logan (Bolton North East) – who said Labour could ‘bring back optimism into British life’. And hell, don’t we need it.

Predictably there’s no shortage of people talking up the hapless Prime Minister, including the Daily Telegraph suggesting he’s about to make an astonishing comeback and this extraordinary tweet from failed London mayoral candidate Susan Hall: ‘IfRishi Sunak was able to speak to every voter he’d win. His energy is infectious, his work ethic second to none. Unlike the others flip flopping on every decision or playing the fool in water parks Rishi means business. The economy is recovering-please give him the mandate’. Besides the government’s failure to train anywhere near enough doctors and nurses, those now qualifying can’t find posts, the NHS waiting list gets worse and thousands are seeking private midwives because of the widespread problems with maternity services. Yet gaslighting Health Minister Victoria Atkins tweeted: ‘Nursing vacancies are at their lowest level in SEVEN years. And our Long Term Workforce Plan will increase domestic nursing training places by 92% by 2031. It is Conservatives who have the clear plan to modernise our NHS so it is always there for you’. Yes, the workforce plan is so ‘long term ’they think they can get away with nothing concrete for some time.

Despite their bullish talk and constant fibs about ‘turning the economy around’ the Conservative party strategy seems mainly about damage limitation. ‘Lee Cain, the founding partner of the public affairs and communications consultancy Charlesbye Strategy and a former Boris Johnson communications chief, said: “This is about firming up the base, beating back Reform and ensuring that defeat isn’t as bad as it could be.”Another former Downing Street adviser said: “The first play on national service was about shoring up the Tory vote and shooting the Reform fox. It wasn’t about Labour and framing it as a two-horse race. There isn’t an overarching message and narrative yet.”…One thing the prime minister has been preparing for is the live televised debate against the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, which will be held on Tuesday night. Conservative advisers believe the format will suit Sunak, who has an excellent grasp of detail and is often at his best taking quick-fire questions on a range of topics’. I can’t wait. Just how many PM ‘resets’ are we going to see over the next few weeks?

https://tinyurl.com/3s32ym6z

Meanwhile, we’re confronted by evidence of Tory failure on a daily basis, for example the scandal of the overpayments to carers still rumbling on, with absurd amounts being demanded of carers by the DWP which should have fixed this system problem back in 2019. And despite their accusations of Labour, the Conservatives can’t give a credible account of how some of their gimmicks would be paid for. Media interviews with the constantly lying and gaslighting Jeremy Hunt saw him claiming that a 2% increase in ‘productivity’ would do it, when the very notion of ‘productivity’ in the public sector like the NHS is questionable. Hunt and colleagues are fond of citing technology as a productivity enabler but everyone knows that although this can help, the real solution lies in sufficient staffing, funding and organisational re-engineering. Since 2010 the Conservatives have deliberately fragmented the NHS in order to enable privatisation and reduce accountability: it’s quite shocking to see an organogram of the entire NHS.

But Hunt doesn’t stop at fibbing and gaslighting: he and others do quite a bit of scaremongering, making stuff up about alleged Labour policy. He even had the nerve to tweet about ‘Labour’s £30bn black hole’ when this has been solely of the government’s making. Reminds us of the absurd claims some months back that Labour would slap a tax on meat, and the like. They think they’re being clever when it just looks silly. But we surely reach another level of desperation with the attempt of a Conservative MP to misrepresent himself as Labour, thereby confusing voters: Robert Largan, Tory MP for High Peak, has issued red campaign literature branded Labour for Largan and tweets: ‘So many local Labour voters have told me they’re going to vote for me, because they want to keep me as their local MP. There have been so many that I’m launching a new Labour for Largan club. You can join other traditional Labour voters backing me at…’. He’s been reported and let’s hope the Electoral Commission get onto this ASAP.

Another blow for the Conservatives is the row which blew up yesterday when the PM was accused of using levelling up funds to gain votes – last week’s gimmick to give 30 towns £20m each for regeneration turns out to have focused heavily on Tory constituencies. What a surprise. ‘Just eight awards were made to towns in Labour seats, although many of the party’s strongholds tend to be in more deprived areas in need of levelling up money. The funding pledge led to accusations from Sunak’s opponents of “pork barrel” politics, while those involved in regeneration of the north said the announcement was more about winning votes than levelling up….. Justin Madders, who retained the seat of Ellesmere Port and Neston in the north-west of England for Labour in 2019, said “given their monumental failure to deliver on levelling up over the last four years, why would anyone believe this is going to make a difference now?’

https://tinyurl.com/mrxpx39e

The latest vacuous promise is ‘a £1bn plan to bring more NHS care services into the community, meaning fewer people will have to see a GP. As well as modernising 250 GP surgeries, the party pledged to build 50 new community diagnostic centres on top of the 160 built in this parliament’. Will these meet the same fate as the 40 new hospitals, we have to wonder. At least they seem to have finally realised that most voters care much more about the economy and the NHS than immigration. And nothing compensates for the failure to act on the 2019 manifesto commitment to reform social care.

https://tinyurl.com/mrxpx39e

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins was on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg earlier making all sorts of misleading statements about the NHS and the Conservatives’ intentions for it – there didn’t seem to be a fact checker around to challenge the claim to there being x more Gp appointments, x more GPs working etc etc but the claims made for the much trumpeted Pharmacy First are so disingenuous given the pressure pharmacies are under and how many of them are closing, leaving vulnerable patients with difficult journeys to make. One of the problems is rising debt for these businesses and the fact that they’re significantly underpaid by the NHS for the medications they obtain. Yet again, this scheme was yet another fig leaf to deflect attention from the government’s failure to train sufficient doctors.

But despite the positive polls, Labour aren’t at all out of the woods of course, with the left/right party split having come to a head in the Diane Abbott issue and uncertainty over economic policy.

With so much designed to grab our attention, there’s a risk that other important issues get overlooked and one that simply can’t be is the ongoing Post Office Inquiry. Many were disgusted by the long awaited Paula Vennells’s performance, her weeping and apologising when her wiles, cover ups and avoidance tactics over years as Post Office CEO were uncovered by the excellently relentless subpostmasters’ barristers. They really had her on the ropes despite her haughty manner. Much of the questioning naturally focused on when she knew what, as there had been so much denial – ‘I wasn’t aware’, ‘I can’t recall’, etc. ‘The former Post Office boss Paula Vennells killed a review that would have exposed the Horizon IT scandal more than 10 years ago after being told it would make “front-page news” but insisted she was not part of a cover-up. During a second day of giving evidence at the public inquiry into the scandal, Vennells, who led the Post Office for nine years, said a different decision could have avoided a “lost decade” for persecuted branch operators…. The Post Office did not stop fighting attempts to appeal against the convictions until 2019’.

The PO’s then director of communications, Mark Davies, seems to have been very much in the frame, although it doesn’t excuse Vennells. He warned her about the ‘front page news’ likelihood and that the Horizon revelations would become ‘mainstream, very high profile’ and even then she didn’t take responsibility, responding ‘You are right to call this out. And I will take your steer, no issue…the most urgent objective was to “manage the media”. You might recall her tearful statement ‘I loved the Post Office’: this and these key revelations about how long she was in touch with Davies and advised by him epitomise a key issue, in my view, that to people like this, the corporate entity of the Post Office, its brand and reputation, were of supreme importance, not the staff who actually comprised the PO and did the work. A typical avoidant exchange between Vennells and Jason Beer (KC) focused on her continuing to take Davies’s advice, even in 2020 getting him to ‘advise’ her how to deal with the media.

‘Did you exchange messages with Mr Davies about media statements you might make and the media lines you might take in the announcement of this inquiry?” Beer asked.

“I believe that the inquiry has texts that showed that,” she responded.

“He [Davies] was still advising you in 2020 about the lines to take in your media statement?” asked Beer.

“I had kept in touch with Mr Davies for reasons which were very personal to him,” Vennells replied. “I think he offered advice at one point in time.”

See the way her pompous and self-righteous responses are designed to retain the dignity her conduct doesn’t merit? ‘I think he offered advice….’ – so she doesn’t admit asking for this, as if it comes floating in from somewhere not at her behest – nothing to do with me etc. Despite what they’ve suffered over the years, it must have been cathartic for the PO victims present that their barristers called her out on this. ‘Vennells broke down under the questioning of barristers for the victims who accused her of hiding a deceptive nature by using “cloying managerial speak” and of living under a “cloud of denial” and providing “craven self-serving” evidence’.

Another misdemeanour surely bordering on criminal activity was to exclude the by then well founded doubts about the integrity of the Horizon system from the 2013 Royal Mail flotation prospectus and boasting about it. One of the most galling aspects of the sense of entitlement in such individuals is the assumption that they will never be found out. At least now some culprits have discovered that they’re not untouchable. And just to think that at one time the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was seriously considering Vennells for the post of Bishop of London, the third highest position in the Church of England.

The UK has been shamed in recent years with the number of inquiries (Grenfell, Windrush, contaminated blood, Covid and the Post Office) which have several major factors in common – the toxic rot at the heart of much public life, the mass cover ups of wrongdoing and punishment of hapless victims, all aimed at protecting organisational reputations at any cost and those of senior executives. It exemplifies a key principle of capitalist thinking, doesn’t it? The people working in an organisation aren’t there to be cared about in any way – they’re simply units of work who can be ruthlessly sacrificed for what’s perceived as the corporate good.

But I’d say a central and overlooked factor is this: whether public or private sector, many of us have encountered this kind of perpetrator in the workplace – ruthless sociopaths determined to climb the corporate ladder regardless of the amount of lying and bullying they have to do to get there. The fault also lies with inadequate selection procedures which enable these wordsmithing opportunists to be recruited in the first place. An overarching question applying to all the inquiries is how we deal with malpractice in the future. It should never have to get to public inquiry level.

https://tinyurl.com/pjj7mskr

On a related issue, significant concerns have been expressed about the potential sale of Royal Mail to Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky. It seems absurd that such a longstanding British enterprise could fall to foreign ownership but I don’t claim to understand how his has already happened to so many others. It seems that the Royal Mail chair, Keith Williams and his board have been seduced by the generous £3.5bn bid and the government has been typically laissez faire about it. Kretinsky has been described as ‘a shadowy figure’ and one commentator at least has said that Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch should invoke the National Security and Investment Act without delay. ‘Have we learnt nothing from our disastrous record of selling public utilities to foreign and private ownership? There are complex issues to navigate, for example the Royal Mail’s ‘universal service obligation’, the fact that the business is currently propped up an external parcel business, and that letter volumes have declined so markedly since RM floated in 2013. Perhaps such major decisions are put on hold during this pre-election period as a Labour Business Secretary might take a very different stance on this conundrum.

God help us on the actual day because the sycophantic media have already been talking about the Trooping of the Colour ceremony on 15 June to celebrate the official birthday of King Charles. Even more is being made of this as it’s the second one the king has presided over since his Coronation and the timing is soon after his return to official duties following his cancer diagnosis. Not only does all this pomp and flummery act as a cynical deflection from the broken state of this country, it also reinforces a monarchist narrative which acts a kind of anaesthetic, and such exercises are extremely costly when there’s so much else the UK should be spending its money on. Officials must be putting additional precautions in place to ensure that this time horses won’t bolt and cause mayhem.

Finally, it’s interesting to read about the experience of one organisation regarding their privacy policy – in my view one of the most tedious things about so many websites besides the cookies notice. The Week tells us that Dan Neidle of the think tank Tax Policy Associates suspected that these aren’t commonly read and thought he would test this. He inserted into one of his websites clauses: ‘We will send a bottle of good wine to the first person to read this’. You might have guessed: it took three months for the bottle to be claimed. This makes me feel not so bad at not engaging with this stuff – heaven knows what I could be signing up to! I’d also be interested to know what the ‘good bottle’ actually was…

Sunday 19 May

Following the local elections the pace of the political rollercoaster has hugely and predictably accelerated, the last fortnight seeing the dramatic defection of Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke to Labour and the government doubling down on their lies, misrepresentations, delusion and denial. If the local election results fallout constituted the ‘soft’ launch of the general election campaign, the substantial ones firing the starting gun were Rishi Sunak’s scaremongering presentation to the right wing think tank Policy Exchange and Starmer’s pledges speech.

There’s been much debate about the Elphicke move, which, like the Dan Poulter one, blindsided the Conservatives, some seeing it as a massive coup for Labour but others as a potentially dangerous Trojan horse. On the left of the party there’s been considerable disquiet about an MP with Elphicke’s track record being welcomed in, seen as unprincipled and strange as she’s not even standing at the election. But wouldn’t you just know that once the Tories got over the initial shock, they let it be known that Elphicke had unethically tried to lobby the Secretary of State of Justice, Robert Buckland, on behalf of her former husband, Charlie Elphicke. Additional criticisms of her conduct also emerged and of course, the obvious question then was why did the government only come clean about this improper behaviour following what some termed her ‘act of disloyalty’. It’s clear that after four years of silence, nothing except recent events would have changed this.

Rishi Sunak keeps shooting himself in the foot with absurd presentations and out of touch videos and last week’s must be one of the worst: during his scaremongering and gaslighting response to Labour’s success in the elections, he worked hard to convince us that the UK was approaching its worst ever dangerous era, that the UK wouldn’t be safe under Labour and that only the Conservatives could keep the country safe. The irony of this could only be missed by the dimmest and most right wing: it’s Conservative administrations which have significantly reduced police numbers, exposed us to huge security risks (like money laundering and the close connections to Russian oligarchs) and which have wrecked the prison and justice systems so they’ve now decided to release dangerous prisoners early in order to free up prisonplaces.

An X user tweeted: ‘Sunak will say he has “bold ideas” that can “create a more secure future” for Britons and restore their “confidence and pride in our country”. Right, so the best person to restore ‘confidence and pride’ is one of the main architects of their removal?

Sunak’s presentation tellingly was quite controlled in terms of who could ask questions, the journalists being pre-listed. Not for the first time, the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason came in for some flak for so nakedly displaying his Tory bias by feeding the PM the Labour and danger question. Commentator Simon Jenkins didn’t hold back in his own analysis of Sunak’s performance, calling it ‘floundering’ and suggesting that ‘beleaguered British leaders have always resorted to shielding their belligerence behind a wall of ‘values’. That’s what today’s speech was about’. As so often with politicians, Sunak insults our intelligence by assuming that we can’t see through this. Even Daily Mail readers must be questioning his performance by now, making, as he does, absurd claims for the economy, education and the NHS when all around us we see the destructive effects of 14 years of Tory government.

Jenkins observes: ‘A post-imperial rhetoric has allowed every global conflict to be somehow Britain’s concern… Sunak now declares that the UK must face up “to an axis of authoritarian states” – China, Russia, North Korea and Iran – if it is to “succeed in the years to come”. He demands that these countries not be allowed “to undermine our shared values and identities”. But they are not seeking to do that. He does not have the power to stop them, nor are they anything to do with Britain’s defence. In reality, Sunak’s intention has been simply to taunt Labour for not promising at once to raise defence spending to an arbitrary 2.5% of national income – which he too has failed to do…No credible European leader would seek to scare their people by threatening them that the next few years will be “the most dangerous yet”. They would not call on them to pay higher taxes and sacrifice public services to impose their values on the rest of the world. They would see their job as to uphold those values at home, period. So should Britain’. Oof!

https://tinyurl.com/av47p5bf

In the Observer Andrew Rawnsley also deconstructs the speech in a nutshell, stressing that the longstanding Conservative fear tactics are just not working:  ‘He’s previously tried marketing himself as Mr Stability, Mr Delivery and Mr Change. None of these iterations has put a dent in Labour’s headline poll ratings. They insistently place Sir Keir Starmer’s party about 20 points ahead of the Tories. In his most recent attempt at a relaunch, an exercise he performs almost as often as he changes his undies, the Tory leader tried another costume. This time he cloaked himself in the garb of Mr Security. In what Downing Street puffed as a big speech, the prime minister tried to chill the country’s bones with the warning that Britain is entering a very dangerous period. His ostensible subject was the threat from “an axis of authoritarian states”. His electoral purpose was to try to build an argument that voters will be safer sticking with him than taking a punt on Labour’.

Rawnsley then suggests three key reasons why the fearmongering isn’t working, such as this a strategy needing a powerful leader, which floundering Sunak manifestly is not. We have to wonder how long it will take the government to realise that this isn’t working when they’ve been attached to it for years.

https://tinyurl.com/mr2kc24r

Of course much attention has been directed to Starmer’s speech outlining his pledges and again Chris Mason’s ‘analysis’ came in for flak. An X user tweeted: ‘That Chris Mason ‘analysis’ of the Starmer pledges was predictably biased and patronising, alluding to ‘whizzy presentation’ and ‘theatre’. This kind of thing from the public broadcaster serves listeners very badly and undermines democracy’. What some of the critics don’t seem to get is that (yes, there will be some holes in Labour’s plan) the party has learned the danger of stating policies explicitly because they could well be nicked by the Conservatives, as happened with the non-dom issue. There are quite a few topics not listed in the pledges but which are planned for the manifesto but the Tories can’t bear not knowing. It’s clearly irritating them in the extreme. It shouldn’t be surprising that Labour alludes only to first steps because they will have a hell of a lot of work to do repairing the damage inflicted on the country by the Conservatives.

https://tinyurl.com/bdcsjzwp

So how are the Conservatives reacting to Labour’s election success and the pledges? Fairly predictably, in several ways and it’s clear just how rattled they are. First we have more tweeted photos of Tory MPs on the campaign trail, looking and sounding unjustifiably bullish. Some, like Liz Truss, make you wonder how they dare to show their faces in public after the damage they’ve inflicted. Then we’ve been bombarded by ‘articles’ in Tory papers like the Telegraph, in which the authors try to rescue their reputation and paint Labour in a bad light. Arrogant Jeremy Hunt claims to have ‘set out’ what a labour government will result in (massive ‘black hole in the economy’ when it’s his government which has wrecked it) and what his government has allegedly achieved. An excellent analysis of his spiel clarified the extent to which he’d cherry picked sources to make his case. He’s a great one for making spurious G7 comparisons but on closer scrutiny it’s found that he’s only quoting one quarter – misleading techniques like that. The broadcast media mainly do us a disservice in not bringing these to public attention. Hunt even tried to claim that the UK economy was doing better than that of other countries and that the Conservatives had put the economy ‘back on its feet’ following the pandemic, Ukraine war and energy shocks etc (carefully omitting Brexit and the Liz Truss disaster).

https://tinyurl.com/u98965x7

But Hunt didn’t leave it there: he partnered up with Work and Pensions Minister Mel Stride for an article in The Times reacting to news that unemployment had gone up again, doubling down on their anti-welfare rhetoric. ‘It came a day after data from the Office for National Statistics showed unemployment increased by 166,000 between the final three months of 2023 and the first three months of 2024, pushing up the jobless rate from 3.8% to 4.3%’. Of course these ministers don’t want to take responsibility for the conditions preventing many from working (NHS waiting lists, for example, or needing to provide care as there’s so little social care available), instead just trying bullying tactics and cosmetic tinkering to get people back to work. The dynamic duo even had the nerve to say ‘The road to recovery is never entirely smooth – there are bumps, twists and turns. But by standing up to the issues of our day, we will grow the economy and raise living standards for hard-working Britons’ and that ‘the economic outlook was ‘better than many would have you believe’. Of course what we’ve experienced is far worse than ‘bumps, twists and turns’.

https://tinyurl.com/mw9yx6sz

The third Government strategy in reaction to Labour’s advance is the creation of further culture wars to appeal to their right wingers, three notable recent examples being the sex education guidelines (the subject of car crash Gillian Keegan media interviews last week), Common Sense minister Esther McVey’s condemnation of certain lanyard designs and the ‘proposals’ of Lord Walney (former Labour MP John Woodcock) to proscribe organizations like Just Stop Oil ‘that have a policy of using criminal offences or causing serious disruption to influence government or public debate. If a group’s actions were persistent, and used to promote a political or ideological cause, that would count against them, according to the recommendation’. Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to the Home Office that such protests are about the only option some of these groups have left because other approaches to legitimate protest have been legally suppressed. Yet another attack on democracy posed by this government.  

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2qv7425gvwo

Meanwhile, the bad news keeps coming: despite Sunak insisting that child poverty has declined, Gordon Brown’s longstanding work proving that it’s worse than ever, a quarter of Britain’s children living below the poverty line; the appalling state of our water supply, rivers and coasts due to water company pollution; pharmacies reporting that supplies of some medications are critically short, which could be life threatening for patients needing them; and the disgusting decision to ‘recover’ (albeit ‘with compassion’, as recommended by Oliver Dowden!) overpayments made to unpaid carers when these people are giving essential social care, get little support or respite and most likely have had zero time for admin.

One of the worst aspects of this is the discovery that only pressure from campaigners and some MPs forced the publication last week of a report (one of several suppressed by the then DWP minister Coffey in 2021) which flagged up a problem in the payments system that was never rectified despite its massive financial and emotional impact. Even worse, it’s likely to be the products of decisions like this (to continue with the overpayment ‘recovery’, £250m) which are being used to replenish government coffers emptied by their own wastage.

Meanwhile, Welsh Secretary David Davies is lucky that his breach of the ministerial code has gone under the radar, at least for a while, it seems. Labour is demanding an investigationafter Davies used his government office in Whitehall to film an anti-Labour video that he then posted on social media. The Code states that ‘Ministers are provided with facilities at government expense to enable them to carry out their official duties. These facilities should not generally be used for party or constituency activities’. But ‘in the video Davies said the Welsh Labour government had to decide whether it wanted to spend £120m of taxpayers’ money on more Senedd members or increase the number of nurses, doctors, dentists and teachers, as the Conservatives would do’. He then said that he knew what he would do. This episode clearly illustrates that either Davies didn’t know that this constituted a breach (unlikely) or he just didn’t care, assuming there would be no comeback because recent years have proved that there often isn’t. It’s the ‘rules are for little people’ mentality on display again. So much for the ‘integrity, professionalism and accountability’ Sunak promised when he was parachuted into his role. We’ve seen the opposite when we thought it couldn’t get worse after Johnson.

https://tinyurl.com/mrxe2xzf

So just how long can Rishi Sunak cling on? Following their terrible election results and people waking up to their mismanagement of pretty well everything, he’s clearly at the endgame. But he ploughs on, digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole while desperately hoping the economy will ‘turn a corner’ and ‘prove’ that his non-existent ‘plan’ is working. It’s interesting timing, then, that the government is having another go at trying to resolve the junior doctors’ strike, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins spinning that this is ‘a peace process away from the glare of the media… the talks need time and space’, as if this, rather than government intransigence, was responsible for the failure of previous attempts. In fact the BMA agreed to fresh talks because a so far unnamed independent mediator will be involved and it’s most likely this is the crucial factor, not being away from ‘media glare’. It’s taken the government a while to come to this view, given that the last talks broke down in December.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-69022696

One of the gratifying things this week was the sight of Suella Braverman, accompanied by GB News presenter Patrick Christys, trying to taunt Palestinian supporting Cambridge University students at their encampment into what she called ‘engaging andlistening’ (aka picking a fight in order to maintain a presence in the public eye)about the Gaza issues. They totally blanked her, treating her as the irrelevance she is, leaving them both standing around looking and sounding very foolish. That’s rather a good tactic which no doubt other protesters will be trying.

Much of the news has long been terrible for our mental health and it’s no coincidence that during Mental Health Awareness Week last week, George Monbiot penned a powerful article which attributed our worsening mental wellbeing to our society ‘spiralling backwards’ and to the longstanding policy of neoliberalism. ‘The latest map of mental wellbeing published by the Global Mind Project reveals that, out of the 71 countries it assessed, the United Kingdom, alongside South Africa, has the highest proportion of people in mental distress – and the second worst overall measure of mental health (we beat only Uzbekistan)’.This is damning: ‘What it calls “the market” will, if left to its own devices, determine who deserves to succeed and who does not. Everything that impedes the creation of this “natural order” of winners and losers – tax and the redistribution of wealth, welfare and public housing, publicly run and funded services, regulation, trade unions, protest, the power of politics itself – should, albeit often subtly and gradually, be shoved aside. It has dominated life in this country, to a degree unparalleled in similar nations, for 45 years’.

For years politicians have successfully conned us into believing that if we tighten our belts today there will be jam tomorrow, but as we’ve seen, this never comes. Added to which we’ve seen politicians’ naked self-interest and pocket-lining on an industrial scale in recent years. ‘So they keep us hanging on. And the endless promises and the endless breaking of those promises grind us down. It would perhaps be more surprising if we found ourselves anywhere else on the mental health rankings’. This is a ‘world-beating’ ranking you won’t see Sunak and Hunt bragging about.

https://tinyurl.com/ysuxehaf

Some good news to end on, that an intended 76 mile walking and cycling path in Somerset, the Strawberry Line, one which connects villages and communities, has had a significant boost from campaigners using a different approach to gaining the permissions needed to progress the route. ‘….in 2022, they began experimenting with using “permitted development rights” – the separate process that a farmer uses when building a new track through a field’. Although there’s still much work involved, it’s streamlined compared with traditional routes, which have often seen councils turn down proposals. The project has involved a great deal of volunteer effort yet this in itself is good for community development and people can see how it benefits them all. It sounds a great initiative which perhaps could be replicated elsewhere in the country.

https://tinyurl.com/v9y2p77x

Sunday 5 May

Although what we really is a general election, the local elections have proved somewhat cathartic and predictably the Conservatives did very badly, losing the Blackpool South by-election with a swing of 26% to Labour, over half the council seats they contested (could be as many as 500) and losing ten entire councils including Redditch, Rushmore and Nuneaton and Bedworth to Labour, the others where there had been no overall control. The mayoral win for Ben Houchen in Teesside isn’t enough to compensate for these significant losses but this didn’t stop Rishi Sunak speechifying after the count declaration with ‘a message for Labour’. Just laughable. He said twice that Labour needed to win Teesside to win a general election, a statement totally untrue, as commentators have remarked. No doubt he’s now digesting the Saturday afternoon news that Andy Burnham won the Greater Manchester mayoralty and Sadiq Khan the London one. So much for biased reporters like Laura Kuenssberg briefing that the latter was very close. And eventually, after a recount, the shock for Sunak that Labour won West Midlands, which will shiver Sunak’s timbers to the core.

It was noticed that the BBC reported the Houchen victory at length without mentioning the ongoing corruption allegations against him and another thing I don’t understand is how he can be a mayor and a peer. Just one of these positions should fully occupy the incumbent. Polling expert Sir John Curtice says the resultsare ‘not far short of catastrophic for the Tories…one of the worst if not the worst Conservative performances in local elections for 40 years’. The PM seems determined to cling on until polling day. Could this be another Liz Truss moment, though? After days of clinging on she was finally compelled to resign.

Needless to say, the Tory script writers have been busy developing a new spiel and set of sound bites for media appearances and this exercise has resulted in some absurd excuses and examples of twisted logic. First up on the early programmes was party chairman Ric Holden, who delivered what must be the worst car crash interview on the Today programme, even claiming something you’d think they’d never be daft enough to say, ie ‘the performance is typical for governments midterm’! Err, we’re way beyond mid-term. Another later said ‘We’ve got a fantastic Prime Minister….’ – NO, we haven’t. Get real. These people really aren’t helping themselves with their delusion and denial. Then later we heard a very clipped and tetchy Andrew Griffith, Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation, alluding to the government ‘continuing to deliver’ and expecting to be taken seriously. He actually claimed that because two thirds of the electorate didn’t vote the government must be popular because all those people were happy to stay at home.

Next up was pompous bore Andrew Mitchell saying that the Conservatives have still got ‘a considerable number of cards to play’. They expired years ago but even this expression is telling, isn’t it, government conceptualised as about ‘playing cards’. Then we were fortunate to get another dose of defensive Andrew Griffith on Saturday’s Today programme. Mishal Husain: Are you going to change the plan? Andrew Griffith: No, we’re going to keep delivering the plan. Mishal Husain: The reason I ask, because it’s a plan that’s just lost you 448 councillors’.

Part of the Tory script is that this is a straight contest between Conservative and Labour: it’s not and this is disrespectful to smaller parties which have quietly made significant gains. And at key moments in political history the major parties have depended on smaller ones to present a majority to form government. ‘But in a warning sign for the main parties, there was also a strong showing for the Green party, which won more than 150 seats and narrowly missed out on overall control in Bristol, and independent party candidates, who won 260 seats amid disillusionment with Westminster politics and Labour’s stance on Gaza’.

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Voters also elected 10 metro mayors: Conservatives had to swallow the bitter pill not only of Ben Bradley losing to Labour in the East Midlands but also Susan Hall in London and, unexpectedly, Andy Street in the West Midlands. Much media attention had focused on Street, who Sunak has talked up as an example of Conservative success, but Street distanced himself from the party, not mentioning it in any of his campaign literature. The Conservatives’ loss of the West Midlands will give Sunak serious food for thought – hopefully that his game is up.

The persistent rustling noise you’re increasingly hearing is that of the Tories like Andrea Leadsom clutching at straws as they try to cope with what BBC News called their ‘bruising defeats’. And clutch they may well, as (not before time, no place for complacency in politics, and there’s been a lot of it) a former Tory minister told a journalist ‘There’s no such thing as a safe Conservative seat any more’. Also (especially given the plotting against him in some quarters) that Sunak needed to ‘hold his nerve’ until the general election. This is surely a ridiculous phrase well past its sell by date: it’s predicated on the conviction that the government actually does have ‘a plan’, it’s working, and they just have to hang on in there. And increasingly voters can see the Emperor’s lack of clothes.

Once again the vox pops the media are so keen on broadcasting reveal the shocking level of political ignorance in this country, although we have to bear in mind that if media channels choose to interview folk in places like Wetherspoons they’re already guaranteeing the likelihood of certain views. In my view politics and political awareness should be taught in schools (yes, there could be bias but it would be a big improvement on what we have now). Many young people interviewed shockingly say they get their news from the likes of Instagram and Tik Tok. But an overlooked factor in the undermining of the democratic process is the fate of so many local newspapers going to the wall, only some of which have gone online. The Week did a substantial piece on this recently and it coincided (just one example) with a community newspaper around here ceasing to publish its printed version. Between 2009 and 2019, 320 local newspapers closed down and some of surviving ones were rolled into conglomerates, thereby losing the valuable connection to local communities.

Lord Hague, in the Times, stressed how important local journalism is to democracy in terms of promoting and supporting debate and accountability: if communities then don’t have the wherewithal to hold power to account, the chances are (and we’ve surely seen this) this goes by the board, leading to a severe imbalance and abuses of power. Of course these significant changes are attributed to the internet – people getting their news there and advertisers moving online from print – but people also now have a far greater choice of things to do so newspaper reading as a whole has sadly declined. It was interesting to learn that local news publishers have long complained about the BBC regional news websites poaching their readers and distorting competition, some even saying the Beeb had ‘suffocated’ their businesses. Despite the very difficult market conditions, it’s to be hoped that the remaining papers survive and perhaps newcomers will innovate, because, apart from supporting political and social awareness, these resources help keep communities connected.

One of the rather satisfying episodes of recent days was Boris Johnson being turned away from his local polling station because he’d turned up without photo ID. ‘The misstep was embarrassing for Johnson because the requirement to bring photo ID is a stipulation of the Elections Act he introduced in 2022 while in Downing Street’. Marvellous – hoist by his own privileged voter suppression petard. You can almost imagine how the exchange went: BJ loudly on being told he couldn’t initially vote: ‘Do you know who I am???’ Polling station official: Yes, only too well…. you’re the narcissistic charlatan who wrecked the country and still believes he’s PM’. Ipswich Tory MP Tom Hunt also rolled up without the required ID, blaming hisdyspraxia for losing his documents: entitled attitude in a nutshell since the ordinary voter wouldn’t expect to get away with that kind of excuse. 

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As if the elections humiliation wasn’t enough, the Conservatives were confronted with another today, which they immediately tried to misrepresent as being about factors other than the content. ‘The UK government’s climate action plan is unlawful, the high court has ruled, as there is not enough evidence that there are sufficient policies in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions’. How typical that the Tories try to deny by splitting linguistic hairs that the court found this unlawful. Delusion and denial form the Tories’ modus operandi. Now energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, will have to produce a revised plan within 12 months. This must ensure that the UK achieves its legally binding carbon budgets and its pledge to cut emissions by more than two-thirds by 2030, both of which the government is off track to meet. Don’t hold your breath…

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The election flurry has caused another humiliation to go under the radar and typically, Jeremy Hunt, who regularly makes false comparisons between UK and other G7 country performances, is nowhere to be seen. ‘The UK will be the worst-performing economy in the G7 next year, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, as high interest rates and the lingering effects of last year’s surge in inflation drag on growth. In a downbeat assessment, the Paris-based think tank also downgraded its forecast for UK growth this year to 0.4% from a November forecast of 0.7%.The UK will fall to the bottom of the G7 growth league in 2025’. What’s the betting (he has form on this) that if Hunt is called upon to defend this, he will come up with ‘findings’ from another organisation which appear to contradict those of the OECD?

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Yet another blow for Sunak will be the news that pharmacists are complaining that GPs are not referring patients to them for ‘minor conditions’ as per the plan he imagined was clever, to cope with pressure on GPs. Yet another piece of Tory cosmetic tinkering that doesn’t solve the massive issue of GP shortages and NHS pressures across the board. An X user said: ‘I think many patients will refuse to be fobbed off onto pharmacists and will already have gone for minor issues if they feel the need to. And besides not settling the junior doctors’ strikes it’s yet another way (besides the cynical use of Physician Associates) the government is disrespecting the medical profession by trying to bypass GPs in this way’. The BMA said ‘Community pharmacists and GPs want to work together to ensure patients receive safe and effective care. Rather than a reluctance to engage with Pharmacy First, we are aware of GPs raising concerns that this scheme is being rolled out too quickly, and is relying on inadequate IT infrastructure which is ultimately increasing the burden on our profession. This is putting further pressure on a system already close to breaking point’. Another piece of Tory tinkering grounded before it has a chance to take off?

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Last week the witty parliamentary sketch writer John Crace coined a good phrase for the government’s very transparent pre-election stunts: electile dysfunction. This has consisted of two far reaching performative cruelty measures designed to appeal to right wingers – the earlier than planned (there’s the pre-election clue) rounding up of asylum seekers and the disability benefits ‘reforms’. ‘There’s a hint of desperation in everything the government is doing. The absurd publicity stunt of a volunteer offering to have himself returned to Rwanda in exchange for £3k in cash and five years’ paid accommodation. Just to be able to say the flights have begun when they obviously haven’t. To boast “THE PLAN IS WORKING” when it isn’t. It’s hardly a deterrent if people are queueing up to take advantage. Up the cash a bit and I’m sure you could attract a fair number of benefits claimants, too’. The rounding up isn’t even working because of at least two (so far) powerful protests, which succeeded in seeing off the enforcement vans minus those destined to be taken. Wouldn’t you just know that the only way people like James Cleverly can cope with such a humiliation was to condemn the protesters on the front page of the obliging Daily Mail and stress that ‘they will not deter us from doing what is right (!) for the British public”.

It’s not surprising that Dimly overlooks the fact that the protesters ARE ‘the public’ and ‘the public’ never voted for the Rwanda Scheme. It’s yet another humiliation for the government that the Home Office quietly slipped out that ‘Rwanda had agreed in principle to take 5,700 people, of whom 2,143 “continue to report … and can be located for detention’. The Home Office came out with various ‘reasons’ why at least half were not reporting but it’s highly likely that some have absconded, especially when they got to hear about the rounding up and it didn’t strike the spokesman that they can ‘report’ via email but still have vanished.

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But as if he needed yet another problem, Sunak’s policies have led to a diplomatic stand off with Ireland over asylum seekers entering Ireland via the Northern Ireland border. Meetings earlier this week sought to reach a decision, but Sunak has stuck to his guns, refusing to take these people back. ‘We’re not. I’m not interested in that. We’re not going to accept returns from the EU via Ireland when the EU doesn’t accept returns back to France where illegal migrants are coming from. Of course we’re not gonna do that. I’m determined to get our Rwanda scheme up and running because I want a deterrent’.

The second stunt was the disgraceful attempt to demonise those unable or struggling to work because of often chronic mental health conditions by making it much harder (and it’s already very hard) to claim the PIP benefit on which so many have to depend. Being concerned about the expense of the benefits bill is justifiable but it’s clear that neither Sunak nor Mel Stride, who is spearheading this policy, have any real understanding of mental health. And a major factor is that the Conservatives have brought about the very decimation of MH services which could have helped numerous claimants instead of parking them on a long waiting list. Psychologist Jay Watts wrote a good article about this, which well and truly skewered the cruel and nasty thinking underpinning the policy. ‘I speak from experience when I say that politicians propagating these obscenely simplistic and false narratives have the potential to drive vulnerable patients to self-harm and increased suicidal tendencies. They can also trigger acute episodes…those diagnoses are the speakable ways of labelling the very real impact on body and psyche resulting from hardship, a pandemic and a lack of opportunity. It is then made all the worse by the Tories’ demolition of the mental health infrastructure that is needed to recover’.

She calls out the dishonesty of Stride implying that people just visit their GP, speak about their symptoms, get a diagnosis, on the basis of which are then awarded thousands of pounds a month. Of course designed to get the right winger ‘benefits scroungers’ brigade going. The process is very different, and even clearly disabled people have a hard time getting their PIP. Does Stride even know that a condition in itself won’t guarantee PIP? Applicants have to detail what their condition renders them unable to do. Also, PIP is not worth ‘thousands of pounds’:  the highest rate of Pip is £798 a month but most claimants get much less. A friend who worked for the Citizens Advice Bureau for over ten years cited a 32 page form and said much of their work was preparing appeals for highly stressed individuals who had initially been turned down. Many succeeded on appeal but it’s doubtful whether this would have happened without the expert help and many won’t be able to access this.

And this is the key point: ‘This government’s “moral mission” to reform welfare is an attempt to blame on individuals a problem that can only be explained systemically. The rising disability bill is not down to duplicitous claimants, but widespread and disastrous cuts that have left our mental health services emaciated and failing. Rather than an honest assessment of their own failures, all the Tories can do is blame sufferers. It is a grotesque distortion that callously sacrifices vulnerable people for political gain’. Of course it’s convenient and cheaper for the Conservatives to blame the individual rather than systemic factors and it fits with their laissez faire survival-of-the-fittest ideology. The ironic aspect of   Sunak’s attack on ‘sick note culture’ didn’t pass people by, Cabinet Secretary Simon Case having very publicly gone on sick leave  for weeks on end when he was due to appear at the Covid Inquiry. ‘Look closer to home, Rishi’, said one X user.

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On the same subject Frances Ryan focuses on the political thinking behind it, including the extension of demonizing to issuing vouchers, implying that without this claimants would just irresponsibly blow their money on non-essentials. ‘There is a desire to “move away from a fixed cash benefit system”. Reports suggest this could mean disabled people having to provide receipts for the extra costs associated with their disability in order to claim back money from the state, or being awarded vouchers instead of cash. This is social policy if it was run by Groupon: use code TORYWIPEOUT24 for 25% off an oxygen cylinder. She also points out that besides being ‘unethical and demeaning’, the ideas are unworkable. ‘Forcing even a small fraction of the up to three million disabled people who receive Pip to send in their receipts for “approval” each time they need to buy specialist food or pay for a taxi would leave civil servants wading through tens of millions of invoices a month’. And this is the party claiming to tackle ‘bureaucracy’. The scheme would create far more.

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The point above about the tendency to blame the individual rather than acknowledging systemic causes of societal problems has also been identified in the recent example of knife crime. The Hainault attack, where the perpetrator killed a teenager and wounded others with a sword, could be the latest victim of systemic mental health service failings. Of course this does not exonerate him, but it’s a key factor to consider which this government doesn’t. ‘If the police hunches are correct, the tragedy may turn out to be the latest in a series of high-profile killings that have focused public attention on the adequacy of mental health treatment …An internet search of similar incidents in the UK throws up many other recent cases: reports of attacks and arrests, court hearings and inquest findings. Julian Hendy, of the charity Hundred Families, says these are all examples of problems with psychiatric care provision not being taken seriously enough – until it is too late.

Hendy said: ‘The offenders are often people who are dangerous when they are unwell, who can be unwilling or unable to access care. They aren’t getting the right treatment. And it’s often only after the event [the attack or killing] that they get the treatment they need’. He argues that services need to be more assertive and proactive in their approach but even the Care Quality Commission, the health and social care regulator, notes that there’s been a notable decline in the quality of specialist mental health services provided. The government and NHS really need to join the dots and stop pretending that these tragic incidents are isolated and irreparable.

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This week, as the media were supposed to steer clear of politics in the run up to the local elections, they made even more than usual of the King’s ‘return to work’. What work, many have asked. The cynical aspect of this is the government’s recruitment of King Charles into their ‘economically inactive’ strategy, the message being: if the King can get back to work despite his cancer diagnosis, you can too, oblivious of the difference in the nature of that work and of accessibility of treatment for those on waiting lists. Ironically the King’s first engagement was at a cancer centre in central London – he received treatment immediately but for the almost 8m on the waiting list it’s a different story. The King regularly stresses the importance of early diagnosis in cancer cases – of course he’s right but many patients won’t be able to benefit from this. A report from the Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation notes that in poorer areas there’s far less early diagnosis than in affluent areas and that younger people across the board need 3 to 5 or more GP visits to obtain a referral than older people. This markedly reduces the chances of early diagnosis. What’s the betting Charles wasn’t briefed on this and maybe his minders don’t even know?

Finally, as someone whose teeth are set on edge when they hear the letter h mispronounced as ‘haitch’, surprisingly common, it was very good news to hear that viewers of University Challenge had complained in droves about presenter Amol Rajan’s haitches. He has now undertaken to change his ways, saying ‘this matters to a lot of people’. No doubt regular viewers will be keen to see that this undertaking is fulfilled, but what about the other programmes he presents, like the Today programme?! Some of us will be ‘all ears’.

Monday 29 April 2024

Not surprisingly, the last few weeks have seen no let up in the pace of events on the political stage, most of them worrying and/or downright nasty: the escalation of the Middle East conflict and constant platforming of our over-promoted Lord Dave; the passage of the Rwanda Bill (despite the best efforts of the Lords); the equally over-promoted Grant Shapps announcing the uncosted rise in defence spending at the same time as deleting 72,000 civil servant posts; the outing and Whip loss of yet another tainted Tory in the form of Mark Menzies; the ongoing Post Office Inquiry, which has heard even more appalling evidence of the organization’s misconduct; the continuing profiteering and environment wrecking antics of the water companies and Labour’s chutzpah in pinching the Tories’ name (Great British Railways) for the rail service it plans on assuming office. All of this against a backdrop of the question on everyone’s lips: when is Rishi Sunak going to call the election, since his government’s death throes are plain for all to see, epitomized not only by his own increasingly tetchy media performances (‘delivering for the British people’) but also the car crash interviews of his Cabinet, notably that of Home Office minister Chris Philp on last week’s Question Time. And most of this, if not all, is terrible for our mental health because besides the cost of living crisis and crumbling public services, we just cannot feel that our government is performing its proper role of constructively taking charge of the situation and caring for our wellbeing.

But what took centre stage on Saturday and since was the defection of Tory MP and NHS consultant psychiatrist Dan Poulter to Labour – apparently in the planning but kept under wraps for months. Despite the charge from some quarters that Poulter went along with the Conservatives’ NHS policies for years, implying a cynical opportunism on the doctor’s part, there’s no doubt that this has been a massive coup for Labour, timed to coincide with the lead up to the local elections on Thursday. It’s clear that the government’s response to this ambush has been writing more script for the inevitable questions during the Sunday political programmes and scrambling the troops for Operation Deflect, and it wasn’t long coming. On BBC’s Sunday Morning with Laura Kuenssberg, Robert Jenrick was quick to put the doctor down, describing his defection as ‘confused’, then both he and Chris Philp (who appeared to have needed no recovery time despite trending on Twitter for two days following his Question Time humiliation) tried to kid the audience that ‘under the Conservatives’ there had been ‘record investment’ in the NHS and in police numbers. Even the most gullible Tories must now be questioning these fibs and misrepresentations.

Regular readers of this blog will know that as a former therapist I bang on a lot about mental health and worsening NHS services: I think one of the key aspects of this defection is that Poulter isn’t just any old MP who’s never had a proper job. He’s an experienced NHS psychiatrist who has seen at first hand the decimation of services since the Conservatives came into office. ‘Working on the frontline of a health service under great strain left me at times, as an MP, struggling to look my NHS colleagues, my patients and my constituents in the eye. Throughout the small hours, my clinical colleagues and I cared for many patients suffering from serious psychosis who would routinely be waiting several days, rather than hours, in a windowless room in A&E for a mental health bed. The mental toll of a service stretched close to breaking point is not confined to patients and their families. It also weighs heavily on my NHS colleagues who are unable to deliver the right care in a system that simply no longer works for our patients. As a consultant psychiatrist, I am deeply concerned about the failure of the government to implement vital reforms to mental health law and to the 1983 Mental Health Act’….. a reminder that a review of the MHA was commissioned in 2017 but the Conservatives have taken no action on it.

And the killer blow: ‘Political ideology has been put before pragmatism and meeting the needs of patients – who are the real losers from the strikes. There has been a failure to address the longstanding pay concerns of NHS staff, and my nursing colleagues in particular, at a time of a cost of living crisis and increasing staff recruitment and retention challenges’. The Observer, which broke the story, says they gather that ‘discussions between Poulter and senior Labour figures have been going on for many months at the highest levels about the timing and organisation of his likely defection, as well as advisory roles he could play in future in developing the party’s health policies, with the benefit of his first-hand inside knowledge’. An X user tweeted: ‘Regardless of Dr Poulter’s record, the optics and timing of this defection has been spectacularly well managed by Labour and is a huge strategic defeat for Sunak and co’, another criticising the lack of challenge to Philp’s defence of record spending: ‘Philp gets away with his “We’ve increased NHS spending since 2010 by 40%” nonsense on the BBC because of weak journalism… Spending adjusted by population increase has stagnated. No more money is spent on any individual than it was in 2010’.

And of course another little thing Chris Philp avoided talking about is the increasing number of desperate patients effectively being forced to go private, often on the advice of an NHS doctor or consultant. It comes to something when these clinicians recommend it. It seems terrible that this government is deliberately changing the culture by hugely lowering our expectations of prompt treatment. ‘Long waiting lists are creating a boom in the medical insurance market, leading to fears of a long-term change in attitudes to the health service’. Apparently the key insurers are having to recruit many more call centre staff to deal with the additional enquiries. The private hospitals and some major companies have non-UK owners, so the tax revenue isn’t even accruing here.

‘UK private healthcare is mainly provided by a handful of companies that run hospitals and GP and dental practices: Abu Dhabi-owned Circle Health Group and the FTSE 250 firm Spire Healthcare are the two biggest, followed by the US company HCA Healthcare and the UK charity Nuffield Health, and Australia’s Ramsay Healthcare. Spire’s revenues climbed 13% to £1.4bn last year and it made pre-tax profits of £34.6m, up from £3.9m in 2022 when the business was still recovering from the pandemic’. But adding to the cost of private medical insurance, we’re told that the rise in claims, coupled with higher medical costs due to higher wage and energy bills, is driving up insurance premiums so those able to fork out can expect rises between 10 and 40% this year, with further increases likely in the future.

This article quotes the experience of one patient and there will be many more examples like hers. ‘I waited a month to see my GP, then another four months to see a consultant. His opening words were ‘unless you go private, there’s an 18-month waiting list’, which was a bit of a shock…Much against my principles, I agreed to go private’. She says how it made ‘a big hole’ in her finances: what about those who simply cannot afford private treatment? They just have to wait while their diagnosis and/or pain get steadily worse. And the government still refuses to acknowledge that many of these people account for the much-demonised ‘economically inactive’.

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Chris Philp is either unaware of the extreme dissatisfaction many feel with this government, which has terrible poll ratings now, or is cynically playing it down, during his Kuenssberg interview saying that ‘people were grumpy with the government’. The understatement of the year. An irate X user said: ‘I’m not ‘grumpy’ – I’m bloody apoplectic with rage at their prolific corruption and waste of public money’. Amusingly, Philp tweeted on Sunday: ‘Glad to make clear to Laura (Kuenssberg) this morning that my point to the gentleman on QT last week was obviously a rhetorical question, not a substantive one, as I think any fair minded person would agree’ – pull the other one.

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Responding to this blow PDQ is one thing you can bet the government will work ‘24/7’ on (or ‘straining every sinew’) and what do we see on Sunday? The cynical bringing forward of part of the Rwanda Scheme, in the form of theHome Office launching a surprise operation to detain asylum seekers across the UK on Monday in preparation for deportation to Rwanda, weeks earlier than expected. ‘Officials plan to hold refugees who turn up for routine meetings at immigration service offices and will also pick people up nationwide in a two-week exercise’. It sounds like we can expect to see the Home Office’s Immigration Enforcement vans on the streets very soon.

This desperate stunt is clearly designed to appeal to gammons prior to the 2nd May elections but surely, when the likely candidates get wind of this could it not result in said candidates not turning up to these meetings and disappearing? It will be galling for many trapped for ages in a non-moving justice system that suddenly Rishi Sunak has managed to conjure up courts, judges and 200 ‘dedicated caseworkers’ in order to process claims. Let’s hope media interviewers thoroughly grill ministers as to how this immigration enforcement exercise goes. For the moment Sunak is still insisting that his ‘plan’ is working, telling Sky News that people were ‘worried’ now about coming to the UK. Worried they may be, but as we know from other interviews, not deterred, which was his overriding reason for the entire Rwanda Plan.

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In an ironic twist, it seems that no sooner has Sunak devised what he imagines is some clever plan to get rid of asylum seekers, some barrier is put in his way. The latest is the Irish government deciding to tackle the UK about the number of asylum seekers trying enter Ireland via the Northern Ireland border. It plans to return them and justice minister, Helen McEntee, will be bringing proposals to their Cabinet next week and also discussing this with Home Secretary James Cleverly and other British officials during a visit to London. We can safely assume that this is a meeting Dimly will not be looking forward to. What’s the betting, though, that it will be presented in the media as Cleverly doing some tough talking with this visitor when actually he is very much on the back foot.

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We also see Tory rebels flailing amid the government’s death throes by proposing ‘a 100-day “policy blitz” to secure quick wins if the local election results prove disastrous for the party’. Good luck with that – it’s far too late in the day and such a transparent attempt to save their skins. But hey, Sunak means business: ‘The prime minister said on Sunday that he was not “distracted” by his personal ratings lingering at record lows’. For ‘distracted’ read not listening, either to his party or the public. ‘Their five-point plan to end the reign of “tinkering, dithering and managerialism” includes:

  • An attempt to end the junior doctors pay dispute with a 10-12% offer.
  • Further cuts to legal migration numbers, with a curb on the number of foreign students staying in the UK.
  • Vow to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2027.
  • Introduce measures to jail prolific offenders and build rapid detention cells to increase prison capacity.
  • Cut the benefits bill, with a target to reduce payments for depression and anxiety’.

But most of these will take much longer than 100 days and some are clearly into future. ‘A Tory source said: “These are policies that can be introduced in a few months and then go to the country for people to make a decision’. I don’t think so.

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The Independent tells us that another part of the plan is to replace Sunak with Penny Mordaunt – they’d better not try it. The third unelected PM within three years. ‘The rebels are said to believe that if Commons leader Ms Mordaunt took power and launched a series of right-wing initiatives on tax, immigration and other issues, it could avert a Labour landslide in the election later this year’. How stupid do the rebels think we are?

It’s interesting that the above list doesn’t mention the category they call ‘illegal migrants’ – possibly hoping that the PM’s untenable Rwanda Scheme flops without their intervention. As we note the sad passing of former Labour MP and poverty campaigner Frank Field, and good to think there were once and still are some decent politicians in some quarters, more journalists are giving us amusing (if they weren’t so depressing) eviscerations of key politicians. Besides Sunak, Home Office minister Michael Tomlinson, ‘Lord’ Cameron, Oliver Dowden and Grant Shapps have had the witty take down treatment. In what must be a good candidate for Radio Interview of the Year (run by Feedback on Radio 4) Mishal Husain gave Home Office minister Tomlinson a gruelling grilling on the Today programme following the passing of the Rwanda Bill. You could hear him struggling, becoming increasingly irritated to the point of rudeness and resorting to bluster and repetition in trying to justify the absence of logic, common sense and substance underpinning the whole exercise.  

‘Michael Tomlinson’s efforts to defend Rwanda bill show how well suited he is to be part of the new moronocracy. Where to start with Mikey? Rude, patronising and out of his depth: he’s got all bases covered. The long-suffering Mishal Husain began her Today programme interview with what she thought was a straightforward question. A gimme to settle Tomlinson’s nerves. When were the first asylum seekers and refugees going to be notified they were due for deportation? Mikey was pleased to report that there were 200 caseworkers working round the clock. Only they appeared to have done nothing. Nor could he say whether an airline had been found for the deportation flights…Husain moved on. Perhaps Tomlinson could say who would be eligible for deportation. Victims of torture? Victims of trafficking? “Absolutely,” insisted Mikey. Rwanda was a safe country. He knew that because Rish! had passed a law saying it was safe. People got far too exercised about human rights abuses and death squads’.

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I thought it was unfortunate that it was felt necessary for the Post Office Inquiry to have such a long break, as there’s a danger of losing momentum, but once again many are glued to the proceedings, from which have emerged a never ending pile of scandalous evidence. After years of denial it was finally admitted that from the start senior managers had known about the Horizon system faults and the Inquiry is hearing the details of how some sub postmasters and mistresses were harassed to the point of taking their own lives in some cases. In the ‘dock’ last week was one of the key senior managers, Angela van den Bogerd, and what a cold fish she came across as, looking as if she had rehearsed her denials and deadpan responses to the expert grilling she was getting. Amongst many other things she was forced to admit that despite the finding in the High Court that she had lied, she still got her bonus.

‘The Post Office sought to “hush up” the case of Martin Griffiths, a post office operator who took his own life, by “drip feeding” compensation payments to his widow and lining up a media lawyer to protect its reputation….Angela van den Bogerd, a former business improvement director at the state-owned body, was being questioned at the Horizon IT public inquiry on Friday about the case of Griffiths, who died in 2013 after financial shortfalls were found at his Post Office branch in Cheshire… Edward Henry KC, representing a number of victims of the scandal, told Van den Bogerd that she must be “dishonest or grossly incompetent” to have not realised the significance of internal emails sent to her from 2010 to 2014 that said the IT system could be remotely accessed by Fujitsu, the Japanese IT company that developed it’.

It’s shocking and disgusting (and how common is this now becoming in public and commercial life?) that the Post Office lined up ‘specialist media lawyers’ to help them deal with enquiries resulting from the scandalous revelations. Another KC suggested that rather than care for the victim and their family, ‘It was all about brand reputation, brand image’. In a nutshell. Perhaps Bogerd herself is getting  specialist coaching for this Inquiry as I suspect some giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry are. It’s also shocking (to me and must be to others) that so many seem prepared to lie under oath. How does a court or statutory inquiry deal with this? This is something for the Inquiry to keep a close eye on when Paula Vennells gives evidence from 22-24 May. Alan Bates, the former post operator and campaigner who inspired the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, has suggested that as the Post Office made full use of private prosecutions, he and campaigners could do the same thing if the police continue to drag their feet. An X user asked on Twitter whether we would be prepared to help crowdfund this and I suspect many of us would.

https://tinyurl.com/4bb4rv5v

Another topic that never stops trending on Twitter (have people got nothing better to do than follow the royals so slavishly?) is the state of the Royal Family in the context of the illnesses of the King and of the Princess of Wales. The brainwashing coverage seeks to convince us that the royals are important and work hard, when neither is the case. Now they’ve been lambasted for an issue raised many times before but not in such an eviscerating way: that of the absurd honours system and the Royal Family’s ability to confer pointless and archaic honours amongst themselves. Former Lib Dem MP Norman Baker launches off: ‘King Charles looked for heroes to honour – and picked William, Kate and Camilla. Laugh? Cry? You choose…. Can we really say Britain has a modernised monarchy when archaic titles are being handed out as if it were 1348, not 2024?’ He goes on to cite the meaningless titles of these honours, eg Grand Master of the Order of the British Empire (Camilla…. and empire??) and Companion of Honour (Kate, though this is supposed to be awarded for excelling in the arts, medicine or science).

And I’ve often wondered about this key point (not dissimilar to how hardworking and genuine peers might feel now in the company of so many charlatans): how do those who’ve properly earned an honour feel when the royals attend functions with zillions of medals pinned to their chests which they’ve done nothing to merit and award themselves these daft titles? ‘This latest set of nepotistic awards makes the royal family look ridiculous, arrogant and breezily self-serving. It also illustrates graphically how our monarchy is still an imperial one, wedded to a distant past and totally out of touch with modern Britain’. Oof!

https://tinyurl.com/3kyd92kr

You’ll have read about Venice introducing a much-needed tourist tax in order to deter the hordes who descend there daily and many other towns and cities are similarly suffering and considering something similar. But at least one commentator has wondered whether the 5 Euro fee will raise much, given that it doesn’t apply to residents, relatives of residents and people actually staying there – just day trippers like those emerging from cruise ships. A related formula has applied for years to many Italian towns and cities, usually 1.5 euros per tourist per night. I can’t think why this isn’t done here – surely a no brainer. Numerous officials and residents elsewhere will be keeping an eye on how this Venice scheme works out.

Finally, we’ve long heard comments and complaints about diners constantly using their phones in restaurants and now an Italian place has come up with a novel solution. Again, something to try here? The owner of Al Condominio in Verona is offering a free bottle of wine to customers prepared to dine minus their phone, in order to encourage customers to talk to each other. This sounds an interesting plan and could appeal especially given the pressure on people’s budgets!

Sunday 7 April

If we thought we’d seen it all from this government in recent times (eg ever worsening performance from our PM; electioneering in plain sight involving alleged ‘doorstep’ exchanges and leaflets picturing King Charles; more examples of Tory corruption and gaslighting; continuing support for Israel despite genocide in Gaza; disgraced Blackpool South MP Scott Benton standing down so yet another byelection coming; the Rwanda Bill humiliation; more shocking news about NHS deficits and the continuing disaster of water privatisation, phew) the Conservatives have surely plummeted to a new low with the MP William Wragg revelations. As many have pointed out, it beggars belief that someone in his position would engage in this kind of security breaching activity, dragging others into it besides himself. In any other field of endeavour such an individual would have been sacked or at least firmly disciplined. Said one disgusted tweeter: ‘In the real world, sending pictures of your c*ck here there and everywhere would guarantee instant dismissal. However, this appalling government has rewritten the rules to suit their appalling behaviour. And the fecking nobs on #r4today want us to have sympathy’.

This is yet another reason why we need new and enforceable rules for parliamentary conduct. But as if this wasn’t enough, Jeremy Hunt (and others) stepped in to defend Wragg, portraying him as a victim and praising him for his courage in admitting to what happened and apologising. Ah, it’s all ok, then. Hunt has complacently tweeted another picture of himself and ‘supporters’ on the election trail: he might have donated enough to his local Conservative Association to be nominated but this and the other gaffe (about normalising a £100k salary) have revealed just how out of touch people like him are. ‘However, some MPs have privately expressed surprise that Mr Wragg has not lost the Conservative whip. At least one Tory MP has contacted the whips’ office to say he should be suspended from the parliamentary party’. Wragg himself has declined invitations to media interviews, clearly an area where his Hunt-cited ‘courage’ does not extend. Needless to say, this episode has drawn forth the usual timid response from the Speaker: ‘Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has written to MPs telling them it would be “unwise” to speculate, and promising to keep them “updated on developments”.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68740332

Meanwhile, another PM interview reinforces how weak and in denial Sunak is, not only affecting his reputation here but abroad as well. ‘There were, however, a number of firsts: Sunak’s answers on immigration were an absolute mess but there was nothing new about that. Trying to square the circle of being both pro-migration and anti-migration, he re-routed the issue through the prism of fairness: illegal immigrants were jumping the queue, and that went against the prime minister’s inalienable sense of fairness’. He still refuses to be drawn on an election date ‘and his reason for stringing out his decision gets ever thinner. He’s focused on the things that matter, to ordinary people, who never ask him about the election, they only seem to ask him about the wonderful things he’s done to improve their lives’. This captures well the extent of Sunak’s denial and delusion, stressing as he does that the public ‘doesn’t want an election’ when most of us absolutely do.

But it gets worse: as we know the government has fudged the non-dom status measure and during this interview he tried an outrageous ploy to justify it: ‘It was the first time love has been proffered as a justification for non-dom status, and the attendant question marks hanging over Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, most of which are more of a statement: wow, that’s a lot of money. “I can’t control who I fall in love with, right?” Sunak said. In the great dating game of life, the heart wants what it wants. If it wants shares in Infosys, what’s a guy supposed to do?’ Right: so it’s not about tax avoidance and thereby holding the public in contempt, it’s about who our PM not having ‘control’ over who he ‘falls in love with’. Somehow we can’t see this argument cutting much ice but can imagine him congratulating himself afterwards on a good interview. And, weeks later, there’s still no update on whether the Tories will return the controversial Frank Hester £15m donation to the Conservative Party.

https://tinyurl.com/yvx3frcn

Following the targeting and killing of 7 aid workers in Gaza last week there have been robust calls to suspend arms sales to Israel. I find it sickening that this ‘conflict’ (as the media like to call it) has been going on for 6 months and the US and UK have colluded with the Netanyahu genocidal strategy, amid continuing impotent government handwringing about the numbers dying in Gaza. But now Boris Johnson, who the media still stupidly quote as if anything he says or does is relevant, has pronounced in his Daily Mail column that ‘it would be insane for Britain to ban arms sales to Israel. The sooner we denounce the idea, the better’. The typically hyperbolic opening paragraph reads: ‘If you want an example of the death wish of Western civilisation, I give you the current proposal from members of the British establishment that this country should ban arms sales to Israel. If you want evidence of government madness, it appears that Foreign Office lawyers are busily canvassing the idea — which has not, as far as I can tell, yet been rejected by the Foreign Secretary himself. He seems to have gone into a kind of purdah on the subject’.

(On the subject of Johnson, it’s an increasingly visible indication of Sunak’s weakness that he doesn’t reign in these disgraced former politicians including Liz Truss and now Suella Braverman, who try to conduct foreign policy off piste and who clearly haven’t quite understood that they’re no longer in their former roles. Unfortunately the media collude with these culprits by constantly quoting them).

Johnson won’t be the only one envious, jealous even or downright annoyed about ‘Lord’ Cameron being rescued by Sunak from his ‘bored shitless outside politics’ vacuum, but it seems tasteless to disrespect him in the way he does so publicly in this article. It seems that no sooner than 600 lawyers including Lady Hale had signed a letter calling for sales to be suspended, another tranche of lawyers stood up to say the UK was under no obligation to halt sales and that there was no evidence that Israel was breaching international law. But yet more government secrecy: the Labour Party has called for the government to publish its legal advice about whether Israel has broken international law in Gaza but there’s no sign of it so far. No surprise there and the government will do exactly as it likes regardless of any amount of lawyers’ professional antler clashing.

Now we hear the government has effected what it must imagine to be a compromise position, which feels a bit like a sop and which an Oxfam staffer, speaking on Radio 5 Live last night, clearly disapproved of as being inadequate to the situation. ‘With the UK and US governments under intense pressure to halt arms sales to Israel, Downing Street said on Saturday that ministers would instead boost support for a planned new maritime corridor from Cyprus to Gaza, to channel “life-saving aid” by sea to a population in urgent need of basic food supplies’. It’s surely suspicious that the government still refuses to publish the legal advice on this situation, especially when it’s in the public domain. ‘Last week, the Observer reported Alicia Kearns, the Tory MP and chair of the foreign affairs select committee, as saying that the Foreign Office’s own lawyers had concluded that Israel was in breach of international law and that the UK as a result had to halt arms sales. This was not denied by the Foreign Office’.

It really doesn’t help that in the Sunday Times today ‘Lord’ Cameron has apparently repeated the narrative that ‘Hamas started this on 7 October’ and that paper tiger Sunak has once again agonised about the situation, using an expression we thought had been dumped after the pandemic. (Remember the government allegedly ‘bending over backwards’, ‘working night and day’ and ‘straining every sinew’ to get this or that done? To mark six months since the Hamas attacks, Rishi Sunak toughened his line on Israel, saying that while the UK stood by the state’s right to defend itself, “the whole of the UK is shocked by the bloodshed and appalled by the killing of brave British heroes who were bringing food to those in need….This terrible conflict must end. The hostages must be released. The aid – which we have been straining every sinew to deliver by land, air and sea – must be flooded in’.

https://tinyurl.com/wjnu33wy

Jonathan Freedland explores how things have changed over the six months since 7 October, suggesting that this war is making Israel a pariah state. He reminds us how there was immediate sympathy for Israel at that time, which has plummeted in recent times. ‘Israel has never been more isolated… Those governments (which have already withdrawn arms sales) are responding to a global mood they can no longer ignore. Because it’s not Israel’s perennial critics who are denouncing the country; it’s Israel’s friends…. Even those allies who, like Biden, accepted that Israel’s war on Hamas would come at an unbearably heavy price could see no logic or justification in a pattern of restrictions and obstacles that inflicts suffering not on Hamas, but on ordinary Palestinians… After Biden’s demarche, Netanyahu promised to change and to open new aid crossings into Gaza – though there was a promise of a “flood” of aid from Israel last month, and it never came. The result is that Israel, whose founders longed to be a light unto the nations, stands today as a leper among the nations’.

Crucially, he points out that Israeli media don’t show the war the rest of us see and deplore and that they’re also more focused on the plight of the hostages and the threats from Iran and from Hezbollah on their northern border. ‘There are no winners in this dreadful war. But Hamas can enjoy a wicked smile of satisfaction: it laid a deadly trap – and Benjamin Netanyahu led Israel right into it’. After the stern admonishment from the US, that took far long, I suspect Netanyahu will do just enough to keep the US on side, but no more.

https://tinyurl.com/27c2fy9z

Closer to home, we’ve seen, in addition to the Wragg new low, the spectacle of Thames Water not only polluting our waters but also going into unsustainable debt, which again serves to exemplify the foolishness of privatising such an essential resource. At least one commentator says ‘If Thames Water collapses in the weeks ahead, there is only one smart, long-term response: public ownership’. It’s Britain’s biggest water supplier, with 16m customers and although they’ll still get their water, it could be at quite some cost because shareholders, who haven’t minded benefiting from dividends for years, have said they’re not prepared to provide the £500m of emergency funding required. Yet again it’s likely to be customers picking up the tab, an outrageous situation when you think the false rationale for privatising back in 1989 was to raise the funds for much-needed infrastructure work. So this means we could be paying twice over and what happens at Thames might well be replicated across the sector. And don’t even think we can rely on Ofwat for anything: in this country we now have numerous ‘regulators’ which don’t actually regulate, Ofcom and Ofgem perhaps being the worst examples.

‘In Margaret Thatcher’s imagination, selling off this public asset was meant to bring about shareholder democracy, but it has instead resulted in a major wealth transfer to Thames Water’s nine shareholders – institutional investors that are mostly based overseas in places such as Abu Dhabi, Beijing and Brisbane. The result is a company buckling under the weight of unserviceable debt, which over the years had not had sufficient investment, and had value extracted in the form of dividends’. The writer makes the interesting and ironic point that the largest shareholder is a Canadian public pension fund from which his grandmother receives a pension, so he is, in a sense, paying his grandma’s pension. He describes the ‘morbid effects of institutional investor ownership’, found in other areas like care homes, surely a risky business model because investors take profits but also load the organisation with debt. ‘Water systems, care homes and chain stores are all transformed into assets to be squeezed of their value’. What will happen now? I can’t see the government coming up with any radical solution so after a temporary impasse we’re likely to see ever increasing bills and more pollution while investors continue to cash in.

https://tinyurl.com/2y2m599c

The beleaguered NHS is never far from the front pages and, while it’s good news that the consultants have now come to a deal with the government following its long pay dispute, the junior doctors’ dispute doesn’t look like ending any time soon despite the sanctimonious media appearances of our bird’s nest haired Health Secretary dropping hints of it. ‘The (consultants’) pay deal includes changes to the review body on doctors’ and dentists’ remuneration (DDRB) and a 2.85% (£3,000) uplift for those who have been senior doctors for four to seven years, said the BMA. The offer is in addition to the 6% awarded during the DDRB process last summer’. The news comes at the end of a week which has seen more alarming and shocking statistics than we’ve seen before:  up to 250 people are dying a week because of the long waits in A&E departments and the number of patients waiting for treatment is actually closer to 10m (rather than the 8m often quoted, which is bad enough) because of yet more cynical sophistry around how statistics are arrived at. The lower number was apparently for those waiting for treatment to start and the higher figure is for those awaiting treatment at any stage of their NHS journey.

https://news.sky.com/story/nhs-consultants-in-england-accept-pay-offer-and-end-pay-dispute-and-strike-action-13108351

But something not new but which seems new to the media: not only the high numbers of people awaiting mental health treatment but a focus on ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and autism, the diagnoses for which are very hard to obtain on the NHS. As these are increasingly common conditions this is another example of how under-resourcing is massively letting people down and preventing many from leading a more fulfilling life. A private mental health assessment can cost hundreds of pounds, which many simply can’t afford. A psychiatrist who himself has both conditions has found that, contrary to traditional views, both conditions can co-exist in the same individual. ‘One study by researchers at Duke University found that up to half of people diagnosed as autistic also exhibit ADHD symptoms, and that characteristics of autism are present in two-thirds of people with ADHD’. It’s now spawned a new label: AuDHD, allegedly affecting ‘a groundswell of people who say they recognise its oxymoronic nature, perpetual internal war and rollercoaster of needs’.

Neurodiversity umbrella organisation Embracing Complexity tells us that ‘both are lifelong neurodevelopmental conditions that affect how people think, perceive the world and interact with others. Both are legally recognised as disabilities, and neither are mental illnesses to be ‘cure’, although the knock-on effects can lead to mental illness’. It does indeed sound contradictory. Queries one patient: ‘How can you be extremely rigid and need routines and structure, but also be completely incapable of maintaining a routine and structure?’ Those experiencing it are aware of being pulled into apparently contrasting mindsets: silence v noise; structure v chaos; repetition v novelty; caution v risk-taking …”. These conditions matter not only for quality of life but also because a correlation between them and dying by suicide has emerged from research which analysed coroners’ records. What seems a major barrier to people getting the help they need (besides NHS under-resourcing, of course) is that medicine, policy and charities operate in separate silos for each condition and need to make the necessary adjustments to enable an overview of those affected.

https://tinyurl.com/bdd22dp7

If we didn’t already know it, recent events in the Royal Family have shown just how poor the Palace PR machine is and declining support for the monarchy means that this support cannot be taken for granted. Unfortunately, though, this is exactly what the royals appear to be doing, for example trying to have it both ways regarding disgraced Prince Andrew. Despite still trying to evict him from his home, Royal Lodge on the Windsor estate, they allowed him to take centre stage on Easter morning due to the absence of key family members. But customs need challenging in these circumstances: why on earth did Andrew have to ‘lead’ them into church? It’s as the royals are oblivious to the kind of message this sends out. Republic said: ‘Prince Andrew’s attendance at the royal Easter service has been branded a disgrace by campaigners. As many suspected, Andrew’s withdrawal from many aspects of public life is about PR, not standards or accountability’. I suspect most people, whether monarchist or republican or in between, are not happy about this attempt to rehabilitate him.

But he’s a stain that won’t go away despite the best efforts of the royals and their numerous hangers on, not helped by the broadcast of the Netflix film Scoop, about That Interview. A BBC royal correspondent put it rather well: ‘This was the Rolls-Royce of car crash interviews. A purring engine of privilege collided with a barrage of perfectly timed questions. It used to be said that history is written by the winners. Now it’s the Netflix script… He comes across as needy, lacking in self-awareness, and emotionally dependent on his mother, the late Queen, and his private secretary, Amanda Thirsk…Scoop is intended as a celebration of holding power to account’. Neither the royals nor their PR will be pleased to see the Prince Andrew hashtag trending on Twitter this weekend.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68739026

Finally, an amusing article is scathing about Rishi Sunak’s much-criticised sartorial gaffes, focusing on a trendy shoe (I’d never heard of them) which is predicted to now take a nosedive in popularity because the Prime Minister has taken to sporting them. Headlined ‘Adidas Sambas were this year’s coolest shoes – until Rishi Sunak got a pair’, the article describes Sunak appearing in them for his interview on tax policies: ‘Listen carefully and you could hear the death knell tolling for the trainer du jour… The ubiquitous gum-soled, trio-striped trainers are beloved by everyone from rappers to supermodels. They’ve been hailed as “this year’s It-footwear”, “the official shoe of the season… but no more. Nothing kills off a sartorial item’s perceived cool like a widely reviled politician being snapped sporting it’. Never mind Prince Andrew: the PM’s ploy is another PR stunt gone wrong. ‘It didn’t help that Sunak’s Sambas were pristine and box-fresh. They looked squeaky, stiff and unconvincing, rather like the man himself – rubbing against the nation’s heel, leaving us red and sore’. What I don’t understand is why Sunak hasn’t addressed the half-mast trouser issue since cartoonists have had a field day with this for so long. It looks like the shoes are another blind spot. If the PM is determined to hang on till November we’re entitled to wonder what further gaffes he will commit in his attempts to ‘get down with the kids’ (or the ‘common people’).

https://tinyurl.com/5n6ct8pf

 

Monday 18 March

I am not alone in feeling that with each successive Tory lie, scandal, excuse and PR disaster, anger and unhappiness with this government are building to a crescendo which should result in a general election but which the PM has ruled out for May at least. While a number of Tories have privately admitted that the Conservatives are finished and 62 have announced that they’re standing down (but not until the election so they can continue collecting their inflated salaries till then), Rishi Sunak and Cabinet members continue to pontificate from their parallel universe, trying to convince us how good things really are. As Tory plotters over the weekend continued their efforts to oust Sunak, PM allies urged colleagues to ‘hold their nerve’: that’s a tall order as by now their nerves could be shot to hell – ours certainly are. Sunak himself will need some ‘nerve’ this week as the Rwanda Bill returns to the Commons and on Wednesday he appears before the 1922 Committee, the forum which has the power to eject him, the legendary ‘men in grey suits’. He assumes his robotic script about ‘our plan, Labour doesn’t have a plan’ works on the public but it won’t cut any ice with the 1922 bunch.

Incidentally, at least some of the resignation letters indicate misplaced confidence that anyone in their right mind would employ these departing MPs: one alludes to a ‘new career’ and another to ‘a new chapter opening’. Good luck with that – at least they’re entitled to taxpayer funded specialised career coaching when the general populace is on its own.

The recent news agenda has evicted the Budget from the spotlight somewhat, but it’s worth recalling that its flagship policy, the 2p cut in National Insurance, was presented as a great thing when many would rather pay and be sure of better public services. One commentator described it as ‘two thirds of a Liz Truss budget’ and most have stressed that the NI reduction is a bit of a nonsense because overall tax rates are the highest since 1948. Besides its general weakness this Budget will go down in history for the Conservatives, having long derided the idea, pinching Labour’s key taxing of non-doms policy.

If you haven’t heard it it’s worth catching up with Amol Rajan’s grilling of Pinocchio Hunt on the Today programme (7 March), describing the economy as ‘drifting’ and ‘stagnant’ and Hunt being the ‘fiscal drag queen’ due to high inflation and static tax thresholds. It’s cathartic to hear the normally smooth-talking, truth twisting Hunt become very heated at this and then to play the same card as Jacob Rees-Mogg and others, ie to threaten the BBC on grounds of ‘impartiality’. They’re so used to BBC client journalists schooled in the Robbie Gibb agenda that they’ve come to expect the chummy interview usually delivered. Hunt said the comments were ‘unworthy’ of the BBC and of Amol himself and good for this presenter for not being cowed. In fact he chortled at the veiled threat and said: ‘It’s not about what I think – these are the facts. It’s a bit rich for you to say ‘I’m not a guy who does gimmicks’. People want radical change and you are not delivering it’. Again, Hunt rolled out his usual spin, comparing the UK’s performance favourably with that of other European or G7 countries and when Amol said he was trying not to be cynical, another threat from Hunt: ‘I’m not letting you get away with that’.

https://tinyurl.com/yc84rjjc

Several journalists have written about the Tory ‘death throes’, one senior Tory calling their chances ‘zero and getting worse’ and yes, every day the Conservatives seem to be polling lower. Unbelievably, some senior figures have been plotting to remove Sunak and install their third unelected leader, some placing Penny Mordaunt in the frame, others Grant Shapps. Good luck with that and what an indicator of Tory desperation that they think these inadequates can save them from electoral oblivion. But the Party is hopelessly split on this strategy, as about so much else. ‘Over recent days, the Tories’ already dark mood has worsened perceptibly, adding to a sense at Westminster that they are now locked into an irreversible doom spiral in which discipline is abandoned as fast as hope. The idea that the budget would be a turning point has already been consigned to history. Disaster has followed disaster….Frank Hester, Lee Anderson, an unpopular budget … as the catalogue of Conservative disasters piles up, discipline seems to be breaking down, and any hope of election victory fading’.

The hopeful (deluded?) ones are pinning their hopes on inflation and interest rates coming down and on the Rwanda scheme taking off over the coming months, allowing Sunak to present what he imagines to be a more positive picture to the electorate, but many more say it will take much longer than this for the economy to turn around and the Rwanda ping pong between the two chambers looks set to continue.

https://tinyurl.com/yz6fjv28

More on the ‘fag end’ of this government comes from Tim Bale in the Observer (Of all the fag-end governments, Sunak’s must be the worst): ‘There have been plenty of occasions on which the proverbial swing of the political pendulum has seen us governed by politicians who have served their purpose yet remain doggedly determined to hang on, hoping against hope that something will turn up while their supposed supporters tear them down and tear themselves apart in the process. Whether, though, we’ve seen anything that quite matches the truly chronic combination of torpor and turmoil that we’re witnessing right now is debatable’. Various past administrations are cited, some where the leaders seemed to have no idea they were about to be booted out, but although the one he reckons come closest to Sunak’s ‘zombie government’ is John Major’s, he doesn’t ever remember it being so ‘poisonous and pointless, or quite so loathed, as Sunak’s’. It would be interesting to know whether most of the current lot have any idea how detested they widely are and why or whether it’s a big gaslighting act they’re putting on.

https://tinyurl.com/49e9ru7s

Yet another commentator describes ‘a kind of frantic listlessness prevailing’ at Westminster. So many MPs lament that they don’t know when the election will be: surely it’s a major fault in the system that this is the decision of one individual, the PM, who, in this case, seems to feel the need to stick it out despite the damage he’s inflicting on the country. I’ve long thought that there should be a system of the electorate being able to demand an election in extremis (of course this would have to be defined), but if this isn’t extremis I don’t know what is.

But of course what’s taken centre stage during the last week is the defection of Lee Anderson to the Reform Party (actually a company), the decision to redefine extremism (more Alice in Wonderland politics, where words mean what you want them to mean), and the furore over top Tory donor Frank Hester’s remarks about Diane Abbott. It was also shocking that during the strong exchanges of last Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions Abbott herself rose to speak numerous times but wasn’t called by the increasingly weak Speaker.

It took Sunak 24 hours to admit that these remarks were racist, the culprit claims to have apologised but there was no real apology as this was for ‘being rude’ about her, the refusal of the Conservatives to return the massive £10m and their refusal so far to confirm or deny that an additional £5m is in the pipeline. Hapless Tories appearing in the media, the latest being the underwhelming robot transport minister Mark Harper on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, have struggled to justify their stance on both donor and donation, but the Party is thought to need around £10m for election chest digital ads and mailed leaflets because of the marked decline in their campaign base at grassroots level. It’s not only the party donation, though: Hester is now known to have paid £16k for Sunak to take a helicopter to a meeting in Leeds and we know how keen our PM is on helicopter rides.

Some commentators have pointed out another key issue – the symbiotic relationship between Hester’s donations and his ‘healthcare’ company, Phoenix Partnership, winning more than £400m of public contracts during the last 8 years. ‘Tom Brake of Unlock Democracy, commenting on the current system where donors can also be government contractors, said: “To avoid any suggestion of impropriety, the Conservative party treasurer and individual MPs and constituency parties should decline any donation from a company or individual who has benefited from government contracts.” An X user tweeted: ‘No one is talking about the far bigger scandal which is that this awful man’s huge donations are a reward (if not bribe) for being awarded the massively profitable NHS data contract. Basically a twist on insider trading’. And Lady Warsi (who must now be a painful thorn in the government’s side) told Times Radio: ‘They’ve got to give the money back. You don’t build election campaigns and you don’t build political parties on the back of money where an individual has these views’. Well done to the Guardian for digging out this Hester scandal. How many more are there waiting to be uncovered?

https://tinyurl.com/2cyaje7j

Hot on the heels of news (no surprise there) that levelling up mostly hasn’t delivered, the minister responsible, Michael Gove, attracted further attention for his culture wars stoking redefinition of ‘extremism’. I’m not the only one who can’t bear to listen to his pretentious, mincing voice, especially when it delivers unadulterated waffle on such a ridiculous policy. Besides resorting once again to the race card in a bid to gain support, it seems it will be up to Gove to decide which organisations fall into the ‘extremist’ category. ‘Deep concern’ was expressed byJonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent reviewer of state threat legislation, who referred to a lack of safeguards and the labelling of people as extremists by “ministerial decree”. There’s apparently no right of appeal and the only way to challenge the arbitrary decisions would be to go through the courts, which the government knows not many organisations can afford to do. An X user said: ‘Surely the most worrying, extreme aspect of the new definition of extremism is the complete refusal of the right to challenge the ministerial decision to label you an extremist? We really are flirting with totalitarianism-lite in the UK’. Another addressed the nonsensical and undemocratic nature of this measure: ‘It is the duty of any government to protect its people, but the new definition of extremism is problematic. The ‘guidance’ is ONLY for government, not for other public bodies, the wording is DELIBERATELY vague, decisions ONLY made by Secretary of State and there is NO right of appeal.’ We have to wonder what impact this half-baked strategy will have apart from sewing further division to satisfy the Far Right.

‘Their political trump card has always been low taxes and the sound management of the economy. But Liz Truss blew out of water any claim the Tories had to superior economic competence, and taxation is now at its highest sustained level on record. So the only card the Tories have left to play is the race card, and they are going to play it ruthlessly.’

https://tinyurl.com/mr2c5p9r

Another issue still rumbling on (in fact the Twitter I Stand With Catherine hashtag was still trending yesterday) is the debacle over the Princess of Wales’s doctored family photo felt to be necessary to mark Mothers Day but which, like so many Palace PR stunts, backfired spectacularly. Clearly intended to quell the incessant speculation over the Princess’s health following her surgery in January, it’s only created more. Although it’s hard to credit that so many seem obsessed with her whereabouts to the extent of wild conspiracy theories, the speculators have a point that the lack of information is no longer acceptable. It’s trying to have it both ways.

The Princess gamely took the blame when the key news agencies ‘killed’ the photo but in my view both she and her advisers should have known better. What the ‘leave Kate alone’ brigade aren’t getting is that there’s much more to this issue than a bit of harmless photoshopping. The Princess’s lighthearted dismissal shows a worrying lack of understanding of this episode and indicates typical royal arrogance that it had been ok to do it in the first place. ‘Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day. C’.

Determination to look perfect when the surgery could have resulted in an appearance less than perfect equates to determination to further emphasise the difference between the royals and their ‘subjects’. These days people are far less willing to accept this, as evidenced by growing support for Republic. Commentator Simon Jenkins gets to the core of what was wrong: ‘The iron law of celebrity states that there can be no such thing as privacy. There may be sympathy. There may be understanding. But there is no secrecy’. The royals’ celebrity status relies on truth and trust and its lack, as seen in this case, will cause us to ask what else is being hidden. The royals have long cultivated the press and its massive publicity machine yet now appear to be flouting the principle of truth their status depends upon.  ‘The moral of the editing of the royal picture is simple. Tell all. The princess has now admitted she edited the photograph but not why or what she edited out. At this stage, privacy does not work. It breeds rumour, gossip and fabrication. When fake news and fake pictures are rampant, secrecy is the enemy of truth. Just say what the matter is. It is more likely to generate respect’.

In response to those wanting sympathy for the royals as ‘real people’ one X user tweeted: ‘The problem is that they don’t want to be treated as real people. They don’t want to hear criticism, they don’t want to be challenged, and they don’t want to do anything substantial or be held to account for their actions. They want adulation and luxury and to be left alone’. The difficulty of the royals is that during the late Queen’s time this stance was essentially accepted but it no longer is, not least because of the power of social media.

https://tinyurl.com/33cf7c2c

It’s worth listening to Radio 4’s When It Hits the Fan podcast, featuring a discussion between two who were previously on opposite sides of the fence: former editor of The Sun David Yelland, and the late Queen’s first communications secretary, Simon Lewis. ‘In this special episode, they bring everything they know about how Palace PR works to shed some light on the events surrounding Kate Middleton’s absence and the controversy surrounding her Mother’s Day family photo. What’s really going on behind the scenes? And does a failure to master 21st century communications pose a genuine, real danger to the Royal Family’s survival?’

These two point out how the media reaction in this country (eg ‘lay off Kate’) is very different from that elsewhere in the world. The feed from Associated Press went to every single working journalist in the world: ‘the reputational damage that this (the Princess’s manipulation of the image) does is huge….the British tabloids are part of the problem…this is a very humbling moment…the fact is the Royal Family can only survive if we believe them..this photo is not real. Without trust they are nothing..this is a 16th century organisation trying to play 21st century games..if you don’t know what a crisis is and you can’t tell when a crisis is happening you should not be advising the royal family or anybody else’. Oof. It will be interesting to see where all this leads…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001x546

BBC radio has come in for some flak since announcing schedule changes which we listeners have not been consulted on but which the Radio 4 controller Mohit Bakaya insists represent giving listeners ‘more of what they want’. One example to have caused huge consternation is the moving of the Archers Omnibus from 10 am on Sunday to 11 am, which you might not think is a big issue but it is to those who have long maintained a lively ‘tweetalong’ amongst those who have long tuned in at that time. Bakaya was interviewed by BBC Feedback last week and in my view displayed the same arrogance we’ve previously seen from BBC editors and controllers who have repeatedly refused to admit any error or lack of consultation. When the timing difficulty was put to him, he said it would be available on Sounds from the previous evening but not everyone has access to Sounds and it completely ignores the potential loss of the sense of community the time shift could result in. It will be interesting to see how this pans out because some BBC decisions have had to be reversed – maybe such a volte face wouldn’t be necessary if the BBC properly paid attention to listeners.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2023/bbc-radio-4-refreshed-schedule-new-commissions

Finally, health experts may not be best pleased to see that high street chain Greggs has delivered another ‘impressive’ set of results, sales increasing by nearly 20% and profits up by 26% to £188m. Customers’ love of their sausage rolls is a major factor but the bakery has also worked to keep prices low and has also been extending hours. Half its sites are open till 7 pm or later, a clear win in areas where everything shuts at 4 or 5 pm, and in London’s Leicester Square  a ‘flagship site’ open till 2 am from Thursday to Saturday. The Week calls this ‘a very British success story’!

Sunday 3 March

What a week, culminating in lots of pointless speculation about the forthcoming Budget when the main player, Jeremy (Pinocchio) Hunt, ‘can’t’ say in advance what will be in it but still colludes with the media by taking up plenty of air time. Needless to say, especially given all the big talk of recent months about tax cuts, these looking less likely given the state of the economy (‘technical recession’ etc), this hasn’t stopped numerous commentators having their say about what should be done (or not) and they’re interesting to read whether you agree with them or not. Whereas the main economic organisations like the Institute of Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation have warned Hunt of the unsuitability of tax cuts, which would mean already threadbare public services being cut even more, you might know that the right-wing think tank Institute of Economic Affairs (regularly platformed by the media) predictably said Hunt ‘should exercise some meaningful spending constraint to pave the way for the tax cuts he yearns for but appears incapable of delivering. Instead of highlighting one or two tiny tax cuts which are trumped by less transparent tax rises, he should commit to an overall reduction in the tax burden’. Here we see the ideological narrative in plain sight, that funding for vital public services is a ‘burden’.

Several economists like the RF’s James Smith cite Hunt’s ‘fiscal fictions’: ‘The chancellor should show he’s not all about short-term giveaways by addressing the “fiscal fictions” in his post-election spending plans. He should announce a one-year spending review before the summer so government departments don’t go through an election without knowing the budgets for public services just a few months ahead’. Jargon like ‘fiscal rules’ and ‘headroom’ has done a lot of heavy lifting for the Tories recently, one purveyor, Treasury Minister Laura Trott, being embarrassingly called out on Radio 4’s PM programme effectively for substituting jargon for economic understanding. An X user tweeted: ‘Scrabbling around for a tax cut in the wasteland of Tory austerity, fiscal idiocy and wild corruption is not the life-saver Sunak and Hunt hope. People see it for what it is. Another blow to public services. A salting of the earth. A cynical bribe. Ugly politics from ugly people’. Another indicator of Hunt’s desperation was the possibility of pinching Labour’s policy on non-doms, 68,800 of them including Sunak’s wife. Whatever emerges on Wednesday, you can bet that the Budget will be presented with the usual aplomb and spin, however damaging it is to some sections of the electorate.

https://tinyurl.com/yeuddt28

You would have thought that any government would be keen to properly resource HMRC so that there’s less tax remaining unpaid, but no. The cuts started under David Cameron but what a false economy: now people are talking of waiting more than 45 minutes to talk to HMRC customer services according to data from the cross party Public Accounts Committee. A significant aspect of the problem is ‘fiscal drag’ drawing many more into paying tax. ‘The tax office is trying to cope by weaning service users off speaking to a real person on the phone in favour of having them make do with YouTube videos and chatbots, the report found. Since the PAC’s last report in January 2023, HMRC’s performance “has continued to deteriorate”, and it has now resorted to closing customer support channels to prevent people from contacting it to sort out their tax affairs’. This is so unfair, especially to first time taxpayers who won’t normally fit into the category of those able to pay clever accountants to effect tax avoidance. Of course there’s the usual evasive response from HMRC officialdom: ‘We’re making strong progress improving our customer services, with a focus on encouraging people to deal with us online where they can by providing quicker, easier and always available digital services’. How often do you find yourself helped by an organisation’s FAQ or a chatbot?

https://tinyurl.com/ae2rdex3

But what of course has taken centre stage is George Galloway’s spectacular win in Rochdale and its aftermath, a response to public frustration at the main parties’ continued support for Israel and refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Galloway overturned a Labour majority of more than 9,600 (Labour had held the seat for 14 years) and will now become the Greater Manchester constituency’s MP for the Workers Party of Britain. Galloway seems a bit of a ‘Marmite’ operator, some saying he cynically attaches himself to whatever cause is going to benefit him personally, others commending his courage in refusing to be cowed by authority. I look forward to seeing how he performs in the Commons and whether he will remove his signature hat in that hallowed setting. Whatever we think about him, there’s no doubt that his election has interrupted the predictable two party system at least temporarily, and it’s this wakeup call which prompted the Prime Minister’s embarrassingly bad ‘democracy’ speech on Friday evening. The PM tried to whip up the election of Galloway into a massive crisis – such was his desperate response to his party coming third. You could almost see him still reeling.

Of all the projections Sunak’s government has been guilty of, the most outrageous is this ramping up of fear and hatred about non-existent ‘mob rule’ when he and his colleagues have done the most to undermine democracy in recent times. Of course it’s a false rationale in order to reinforce even more his draconian ‘public order’ legislation. It’s worth reading John Crace’s splendid evisceration of Sunak’s speech: There was no real argument to Sunak’s speech. Nor was there any real rhetorical power. He is a prime minister unfortunately blessed with levitas. It’s almost impossible to take what he is saying seriously. What shone through his words was the absence. There was a hollow, a vacuum at the core of his message. Because what he was really crying out for was for someone – something – to come and take control… as a Prime Minister he’s a fraud…Weirdly, it never seemed to have occurred to Sunak to ask himself why this all might be happening on his watch. Such a lack of intellectual curiosity in a man who prides himself on being clever is breathtaking’. A real own goal for the Tory PR machine.

https://tinyurl.com/mra3wdte

Yet he doesn’t seem to get that his government’s increasingly repressive policies have led to so many of the protest marches and demos taken to extremes: whereas no MP or anyone else should face threats to their safety, the removal of legitimate avenues of protest has seriously contributed to the febrile political environment. Although Sunak belatedly removed the whip from Lee Anderson following the latter’s  incendiary comments (to what effect we don’t know as he took his usual place for PMQs on Wednesday amid much backslapping from colleagues), others guilty of whipping up the ‘mob rule’ frenzy like Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick and Liz Truss are left in post. And now we have the irony of Home Secretary James Cleverly allocating £31m for MPs’ police protection – something which would have been unnecessary had this government listened to the electorate’s concerns instead of endlessly placating its right wing. And the whole pantomime serves to distract us, the Tories imagine, from their appalling record in office.

‘Something fundamental has changed’, intoned an increasingly theatrical Nick Robinson on the Today programme last week: absolutely and a key aspect is George Galloway’s challenge to the status quo. I’m not sure how much water the argument holds that this win was only facilitated by Labour not fielding a candidate. That could be too simplistic. The Today podcast discussed the effects of this change and speculated as to how Galloway would operate in the social media age. Apart from that rare moment of insight in the last podcast, though (about journalists’ contribution to MPs being placed in danger) Nick and others don’t see how their own client journalism has contributed to the prioritisation of the Tory narrative. Observed an X user: ‘Whether you agree with George Galloway or not, you must be able to see the state of journalism in this country, embarrassing lickspittle government operatives pretending to be journalists are a big threat to our democracy’.

The ‘mob rule’ narrative drivers have been shown as factually wrong in any case: although there are some firebrands present at the marches, they’re a minority, protests have been mostly peaceful, attended by people from all walks of life, also including Jewish groups, and it’s been shown that crowd violence is actually very rare and that any violence tends to be committed by authorities including the police. It’s a cynical strategy in plain sight: ‘The spectre of ‘the mob’ has long been summoned to limit freedom… the language (and the idea) of the mob paints a false picture of crowds, of crowd violence and of violence in society more generally. The gathering of people in protest does not indicate the imminent outbreak of violence and excess. It cannot, in and of itself, be taken as evidence of intimidation. It is not a threat to our democracy. On the contrary, crowds and protests are an essential dimension of our democracy. The mark of a healthy society is when everyone feels safe to participate in protest’.

https://tinyurl.com/yrevfc4t

Further to previous discussion of Physician Associates in the NHS, Monday evening saw the passing by the Lords (under the radar, no proper parliamentary scrutiny) of ‘orders’ which will lead (in the face of doctors’ opposition) to the GMC regulating thousands of PAs despite their training being only of two years duration. Numerous clinical errors committed by PAs have been identified, they’ve been recruited in response to this government’s failure to train sufficient doctors and so far there’s been no plan either for clinical supervision or for how patients are to be informed. Many will already be seeing a PA without knowing it and although services are supposed to make clear that the clinician is not a doctor, there are plenty of examples of when this practice has not been followed. In my view even the nomenclature is unhelpful: ‘physician’ is an American term, not in common use here, yet the PA title could sound impressive to some.

The BMA and many of its members are up in arms about this development, seeing it as a risk to patient safety. It also undermines their own status, which they trained for years to achieve. I listened to the debate, which lasted several hours, and was struck by the friendly and polite atmosphere of this chamber – very unlike the Commons.  Several baronesses argued impressively and strongly against the passing of these measures but they did not prevail: one of those speaking for the government was the discredited former health minister Jim Bethell (yes, he of PPE VIP lane fraud and one of those who ‘lost’ his phone containing incriminating WhatsApp messages), who transparently conveyed the government’s desire to get patients seen and clear waiting lists, but at what cost? So here we see another measure passing into law which hasn’t been properly discussed and publicised but which constitutes another plank of the government’s policy of deprofessionalising the NHS, one which could seriously affect our healthcare. You can find out more about this on the BMA website – below is a link to their press release which preceded the Lords debate. To be continued: we need to know what plans will be put in place to inform patients, to monitor this new system, to roll out the regulatory framework and to supervise PAs.

https://tinyurl.com/3bphj9u8

In recent times we’ve heard much about work, worklessness and the ‘economically inactive’, often held to blame by this government for the poor state of the economy. The ‘economically inactive’ label was initially applied to those in their 50s and 60s but now a large number are under 35 and the bill for incapacity benefits, already up in one decade to £25.9bn, is expected to rise to £29.3bn by 2030. While, understandably, poor mental health is cited as a major factor, back and neck pain another (1m sufferers),the government consistently fails to acknowledge how many of those not working are on the 8m long NHS waiting list and how many have had to give up paid work in order to care for sick children or elderly or disabled relatives. Ministers fail to join the dots, two major ones being the lack of social care policy and of mental health service provision and their impact on the working population. Instead they just put in place short-term gimmicks like the mid-life ‘MOT’ – it would be interesting to hear people’s experiences of this.

The morality of work was the subject of last week’s Radio 4 Moral Maze, one ‘witness’ opining that it’s a moral failure if you’re taking more than you’re putting in. One panel member was hugely at pains to get the ‘witnesses’ to demonise those not working, as he does himself. A Telegraph article recently tackled Working from Home – originally held up as a means of boosting productivity but more recently found to have question marks hanging over it. It seems numerous employees are reluctant to comply with their organisations’ requirement for them to return to the office at least three days a week, if not full time. Workers need to remember that trying to insist on WFH could lead to their redundancy although some public sector organisations seem to find it difficult, if not impossible, to sanction or sack persistent avoidants.

At the opposite end of the scale there are encouraging examples of those continuing to work into their eighties and even nineties – partly seeing this as helping to keep ‘old age at bay’. ‘Our experience is that people in their 70s and 80s who are still working are usually doing so through choice rather than necessity,” said Stuart Lewis, the chief executive of Rest Less, an online community for older people. “They are fit, driven and highly capable and have a strong sense of purpose and good reason’. One of these workers said: ‘People resign inwardly in their older age because it’s what they’re expected to do – to shut down and focus on their hobbies – but working on is entirely natural…We need to readdress what older age is and what many of us are still capable of. We need to move expectations of older people from being passive spectators to active participants’. Another said: ‘My view on retirement is that you need to stay active for as long as possible…That’s how you keep the horrors of extreme old age at bay. You need to be curious and keep learning’. Absolutely – commitment to remaining curious and to lifelong learning are crucial in maintaining a healthy lifestyle but these people had choice in the matter: we also have to bear in mind the mental health effects of working in an uncaring environment, possibly for a bullying boss and/or in tasks which are repetitive with no opportunity for autonomy of decision making.

https://tinyurl.com/sv5tkj9c

There’s no doubt that work and worklessness are complex issues which the government tries to reduce to stigmatizing platitudes, issues which need complex, not short term solutions. But hey – MPs don’t need to worry because special taxpayer funded help not granted to the hoi polloi has been set up for those leaving Parliament at the next election – those not returning to hedge fund management, of course. It’s interesting that the BBC only obtained some details of the proposal via a Freedom of Information request. MPs could be offered  “on-demand” career coaching and access to “networking opportunities”, access to a career coach to help them identify their transferable skills and write a CV “that stands out in the crowd”. This could be helpful to those who’ve never had a proper job in the past.  The amount allocated per MP was blanked out by Commons authorities. It will certainly be interesting to see how these people fare after the election.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67629470

A syndrome particularly noticeable in recent weeks is the volume of speculation over the whereabouts and welfare of the Princess of Wales, with the Royal Family, Catherine and so on trending on social media. We were told that following her abdominal surgery, it was expected that she wouldn’t be back to public duties before Easter, but this has done nothing, it seems, to dampen down the speculation about her absence. Seriously, have these people got nothing better to do than focus obsessively on this? What’s surely more serious is the way complicit media keep going with the speculative articles and interviews with ‘royal correspondents’ and other hangers on about how hard people like Camilla (who’s recently jetted off on holiday) have had to work during the health issues of the King and the Princess. There’s been no shortage of risible language in these sources, alluding to William, Camilla and others (even Andrew and the Duchess of York) ‘shouldering’ the burden, ‘holding the fort, ‘stepping up’ and so forth when in fact they are largely irrelevant to the running of the country. I hope the speculators can contain themselves till Easter, because it looks like they’ll hear nothing more till then.

Finally, we’ve heard a lot lately about food price inflation, shrinkflation and so on, so it’s good to hear that Pret A Manger, which had been accused of profiteering, has now reduced the price of its egg mayo sandwich from £3.40 to £2.99. I wish the National Trust would do the same – its own version has long been £3.50, containing far less egg and clearly not freshly made!  

Sunday 25 February

If you thought our politics were turbulent before, they’ve hit rock bottom now, the epitome being the debacle in the House of Commons on Wednesday and its continuing aftermath. The Conservatives suddenly started caring about democracy when they’ve done their best to wreck it over recent years and not everyone is buying the weak Speaker’s rationale of MPs safety concerns for his improper intervention. Yes, MPs should be able to go about their business without threats to their safety and yes, besides the shocking Cox and Amess murders there have been recent threats to MPs, but it seems to me these are being exaggerated and are mostly London-based. In a rare moment of insight, Amol Rajan, in their endlessly plugged Radio 4 Today podcast, suggested that they journalists need to reflect on their role in making MPs’ lives intolerable. Another major incendiary factor is demagogues like Suella Braverman and Lee Anderson wheeling out their racist bile in right wing media like the Telegraph and GB News. It took a while but at least we heard on Saturday afternoon that the Whip was removed from Anderson, giving rise to speculation that the Conservative party will split even more, with some defecting to Reform and Sunak being forced to call an election. This tweet captures how these issues go way beyond politics: ‘It’s a Molotov cocktail of polarisation, a nosedive in the quality of public debate, and an erosion of trust in institutions meant to serve the public good. This isn’t just about politics; it’s about the integrity of our societal fabric being shredded by those at the helm, who seem more interested in weaving a narrative of division than in stitching together a tapestry of diverse voices’.

But what’s also being overlooked re threats to MPs is that people are increasingly frustrated at elected representatives not listening to them (quite a few have AWOL MPs who don’t respond to communications and have zero constituency presence) but especially because draconian ‘public order’ legislation has removed or weakened legitimate avenues of protest. Stella Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow (N E London) wrote a reasonable account of the challenges in the Guardian but she seems an example of a conscientious and hardworking MP, not one of the disengaged ones. ‘Public life is drowning in hate, and violence and harassment towards political representatives is increasingly being normalised. Unless we take responsibility for addressing this, the outcome will not simply be that the loudest voices and largest wallets win: democracy will lose’. Lose even more, perhaps she should have said.

Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak, still robotically trotting out soundbites about sticking to his ‘plan’ and Labour going back to ‘square one’, has had to dodge missiles and negative evidence of his government’s performance from numerous quarters including the recent byelection results and news that we are now in recession (which ministers and some media sources called ‘light’ or ‘technical’ recession). He soon has Rochdale to navigate and possibly another because Scott Benton, MP for Blackpool South, lost his appeal against the 35 day Commons suspension for offering to lobby ministers on behalf of the gambling industry.

Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch’s sacking of Post Office chair Henry Staunton is mired in controversy following Staunton’s fightback with his own recorded version of events surrounding the government’s intentions for sub-postmasters’ compensation. Liz Truss is an embarrassment to UK, in Washington spouting far right rhetoric and deep state conspiracy theory, the latest Tory Sunak is too weak to rein in. Commentator Matthew Stadlen tweeted: ’Liz Truss had done enough damage already but she’s becoming a menacing figure. A former British Prime Minister cosying up to Steve Bannon is a dangerous moment for British politics’. This tweet sums up the situation pretty well, I thought:’Sunak is PM in name only. Cameron dominates the air waves whilst Anderson, Mogg, Badenoch, Braverman & co run amok. Truss struts her stuff in the US with the Bannon brigade -whilst Sunak & his PR team desperately channel Disneyland fantasy via promo videos’.

It’s not only his promo videos, of course: it’s also Sunak’s tv interviews and appearances, the most egregious of which must be his recent ‘People’s Forum’ on GB News (itself contrary to Ofcom rules though this toothless regulator will do nothing about it). This claimed that its audience was a general selection of the public but later it emerged that they were mostly Conservative voters but even they weren’t impressed with the way Sunak had dealt with their questions, some saying they would not vote Tory at the general election. Journalist John Crace summed up his performance: ‘An hour that had passed quite quickly. If totally pointlessly. Because we hadn’t learned any more about Rish! than we already knew. That he’s just not very good at this sort of thing. He can’t connect with people. He lives in a parallel world to the rest of us. Whatever the questions, he gives the same boilerplate answers. He doesn’t believe what he’s saying, so why should we? He’s merely going through the motions. Someone should have a word. For his sanity as well as ours. It’s going to be a long eight months. Not all of us are going to get out of it alive’.

It’s noticeable, especially at Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons, that Sunak relies heavily on the slippery politician’s technique of stressing how important an issue is (which does succeed in buying some challengers off, like Laura Kuenssberg with Therese Coffey this morning) without actually saying what he/she is doing to resolve the problem in question. This is the technique he used when challenged about the postmaster compensation payments and in yet another challenging sphere, when he turned up, suited and booted, of course, at the National Farmers Union annual conference. Farmers have long felt ignored by this government yet ‘Sunak told farmers: “I have your back” and waxed nostalgic about the bucolic British countryside and his experience milking a cow. But after years of very unpopular post-Brexit trade deals and a bungled agricultural transition from EU farming payments, it didn’t feel like this charm offensive landed. The response from the farmers in the hall was muted at best’. Given this technocrat’s conduct, I’d dread to think what he’d be like if he didn’t have whoever’s ‘back’.

http://tinyurl.com/bdfjpczb

Given the flak rightly directed at him in recent times, wouldn’t you have thought Rishi Sunak would have been less proud of publishing his tax return which showed him paying effectively only 23% on income of £2.23m? Of course people in his position can afford clever accountants to access all manner of loopholes not necessarily apparent to the rest of us, but in this case it seems the low amount was due to low capital gains tax rates and investment funds being US-based. ‘The tax return will raise questions about why Sunak appears to hold much of his wealth in the US rather than the UK…. Sunak’s personal wealth and his links to the US have been a sensitive issue for the prime minister. A former Goldman Sachs banker and hedge fund manager, he joined one of India’s richest families when he married Akshata Murty, the daughter of Narayana, the billionaire founder of Infosys. Robert Palmer, the executive director at Tax Justice UK, blamed the UK’s ‘broken tax system’, whereby income from wealth is taxed at a far lower rate than that emanating from work. Quite so, and perhaps commentators should use the term ‘unearned income’ more rather than alluding simply to a beneficiary’s ‘earnings’.

http://tinyurl.com/wnnz8wha

If the state of the microcosm UK is dire, that of the macrocosm (the global situation) is nothing short of alarming, with the Ukraine war entering its third year, the Gaza conflict still raging and the worsening uncertainty brought about by climate change and so on. Although we could speculate as to why it took so long, the death of Russian dissident Navalny still came as a shock, prompting further challenges as how the world deals with dictators like Putin. Added to which a Trump victory in the next US election looks quite likely. None of this is good for our mental wellbeing.

Back in the UK, the NHS is never far from the news. The junior doctors began their 11th strike and despite the health secretary’s desperate attempt to get the public on the government’s side, many patients, even those waiting for treatment, are sympathetic to the doctors and not towards the intransigent government. According to the latest Ipsos poll, one third of Britons feel that the NHS is the most pressing issue, ie not immigration/’small boats’, which the Tories are fond of quoting being the major concern from their mostly fictional ‘doorstep’ exchanges. Besides Labour leaping onto these latest findings, the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey (who’s been largely silent since his role in the Post Office scandal came to light) captured what many must be thinking: ‘The Conservative party can never be trusted with the NHS after their appalling legacy of record waiting lists and crumbling hospitals. The country is crying out for more GP appointments, yet Rishi Sunak spends his time peddling culture wars to keep his own MPs happy’. On a separate point, no article or interview about the NHS seems to be considered complete without a handwringing comment from the head of NHS Providers, NHS Employers or the NHS Confederation: I’ve long wondered why on earth three separate bodies are thought necessary. Job creation?

http://tinyurl.com/5fshxnx4

Besides the doctors’ strikes, there are several issues profoundly worrying to those who care about NHS standards and about it remaining in the public sector. One is (previously discussed in this blog) NHS England’s determination to ramp up the use of unregulated and inadequately trained ‘physician associates’ in order to plug the gap fully qualified medics should be filling. Bad mistakes made by these PAs have been recorded but the government and NHS seem committed to PA recruitment, going against the spirit of the NHS Constitution because there’s no information for patients about them. If you ever get an actual appointment with a GP, how do you know they’re a doctor or just a PA? You don’t unless you ask.

Still on the subject of GPs, a substantial study (apparently previous ones have been much smaller scale) has now shown what we’ve surely known all along – that seeing the same doctor regularly (as per the old ‘family doctor’ practice) has much better outcomes for patients than (as now) seeing someone different every time. This clinician’s quote illustrates how current government policy actually works against best practice: ‘Currently, the intense workload and workforce pressures GPs are facing – as well as political agendas prioritising speedy access to GP services above all else – greatly limit the level of continuity we can offer’.

http://tinyurl.com/b4m79y29

Besides the mother of the child who died, the launch of Martha’s Rule this week (a policy of facilitating a second medical opinion if a relative is concerned about the state of the patient) also saw Health Secretary Victoria Atkins feature in another series of car crash interviews. A less convincing interviewee and Cabinet minister it would be hard to imagine. She wrote about the government’s alleged ‘commitment’ in a Torygraph article, of which even the first paragraph is lies and cynical narrative, projecting failures onto the NHS rather than her ideological government which underfunds it and which wants to destroy it:

‘In 2019, we commissioned the first ever NHS patient safety strategy and we established the Healthcare Services Safety Investigation Body last October to help make sure lessons are learned when mistakes happen to better prevent those mistakes happening in future. We know there is more to do. As health secretary, it is my ambition and my responsibility to ensure that the NHS is one of the safest healthcare systems in the world. To do that, we need to focus on making our NHS faster, simpler and fairer. We cannot be blind to its failings. We must learn from its mistakes and work hard to fix them’. 

Martha’s parents said: ‘We believe Martha’s rule will save lives. In cases of deterioration, families and carers by the bedside can be aware of changes busy clinicians can’t. Their knowledge should be treated as a resource. We also look to Martha’s rule to alter medical culture: to give patients a little more power, to encourage listening on the part of medical professionals, and to normalise the idea that even the grandest of doctors should welcome being challenged’

I hope the media and clinicians will monitor how Martha’s Rule goes and whether it is indeed rolled out in every hospital. A mystery to me is why we never hear any more about the NHS Constitution, which championed patients’ rights and responsibilities and which I’m pretty sure gives this right to a second opinion. Yes, Martha’s Rule will formalise this and give it a much higher profile, but patients and relatives need properly informing about it because it can’t be taken for granted that they know.

http://tinyurl.com/yak5z4hz

If physical health care is precarious in this country now, mental health services are even worse, and hardly a week passes without news of underfunded services and severely ill patients falling between the ever-widening cracks. Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust has been in the news before, but the inquest into death of Ellie Woolnough is one of many that have occurred with grim regularity for people under this trust’s care. Again, as with the seeing one GP issue, we see the NHS and government engaged in the opposite of good care, rushing to discharge patients prematurely and limiting contact with the when it’s well known that severely ill patients are often at greater risk of self-harm and suicide on discharge from hospital. Stretched resources will be a substantial reason for this but the opacity of this system was flagged up by the coroner – significant when one of the key changes following the mid-Staffs scandal years ago and the ensuing Francis Report was commitment to a ‘duty of candour’.

‘The coroner said the trust’s evidence had “more holes than Swiss cheese”. He said its failure to retain the recording of the call amounted to a “very serious” breach of its duty of candour… The Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk says the trust continues to be in a crisis sparked by austerity driven cuts in 2013. Its calls for a public inquiry into the trust’s failures were amplified last year when a review found 8,440 “unexpected” deaths among its patients or those it recently cared for’. These numbers are just shocking. ‘An NSFT spokesperson said the trust is on a rapid and much needed journey of improvement’, for example they have a new Chief Executive with a good track record. But the Care Quality Commission needs to be regularly monitoring this trust’s performance – it’s unfair that friends, relatives and mental health campaigners have to endure terrible losses and keep making the same points.

http://tinyurl.com/bd5parce

Last week saw the broadcast of ITV’s dramatisation (by palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke and award-winning dramatist Jed Mercurio) of Breathtaking, Clarke’s powerful account of how NHS staff were failed during the pandemic. Clinicians were struggling with intense workloads, lack of PPE and suffering burnout when (as we later learned) the PM, ministers and staff were partying and doing corrupt deals on PPE which wasn’t even effective. ‘The Department of Health and Social Care issued a statement asserting that: “Throughout the pandemic the government acted to … prevent the NHS being overwhelmed.” This oft-repeated lie about the NHS having been protected by Boris Johnson’s government is perhaps the most egregious of all. All of this poses uncomfortable questions about the role of NHS England in facilitating the government’s pandemic narratives. You expect politicians to dissemble, but the NHS is meant to have a statutory duty of candour. So how could some of its most senior figures have stood up and denied the self-evident PPE shortages and the traumatising breakdowns of normal care?’

http://tinyurl.com/bdec59sz

So many, despite it being a tough watch, praised this series to the skies and had strong emotional reactions, especially those who lost someone close to them. The Times reviewer, Johanna Thomas-Corr said: ‘…watch it. Just watch it. It is precise, controlled, enraging and moving and, despite its smaller focus — a dozen doctors and nurses in one hospital over three timeframes — opens out into something much larger. It is based on Rachel Clarke’s memoir of her experiences as an NHS consultant and the two other writers, Jed Mercurio and Prasanna Puwanarajah, both have medical training, which lends it palpable realism…The medics realise quickly that there is a chronic shortage of PPE, then that a situation is developing in care homes and, eventually, that misinformation about empty hospitals is spreading over the internet. Again and again they are ignored by managers who insist they are following “national guidance”, that cursed refrain. Once again we have monolithic top-down leadership disregarding the experiences of people on the front line.. A tough watch, but one that deserves to win all the awards’.

Alarmingly, councils are being urged to sell off assets in order the plug the massive holes in their budgets, prompting a Financial Times journalist, Edwin Heathcote, to lament the loss of civic pride involved in this process. Symbols of civic identity he cites include the Old War Office in Whitehall, now yet another luxury hotel, Admiralty Arch soon to follow suit and all over the country libraries, public loos and magistrates’ courts are all up for grabs. ‘Talk about short term thinking’, he opines: ‘Helsinki is building huge public libraries, Tokyo is commissioning architects to design public loos – but we are asset stripping the public realm for a quick buck… when amenities in which citizens have pride are stripped away, a sense of alienation fills the void’. And clearly this is very bad for our mental wellbeing. Just in the last few days we heard about the sale of the famous Post Office tower in central Londonfor £275 million to MCR Hotels, a group that already owns around 150 hotels. But why on earth do we need yet another luxury hotel in central London?

Finally, the Museums Association reports the good news that 57 community-based projects have been chosen by Historic England from 380 applications made in the latest round. We often hear about large projects and institutions getting funding but these are small projects likely to be very meaningful in their areas. ‘Historic England chief executive Duncan Wilson said: “There are so many hidden histories to uncover here in England. Every community has a story to tell and we want to hear them. This is the strength of our Everyday Heritage grant programme, which funds projects that are community-led and really engage with local people by empowering them to research and tell their own stories.” The projects funded in the latest round include a scheme to co-create a touring exhibition telling the story of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) communities living in Greensand Country in Central Bedfordshire. The year-long project will take place on three local sites, where children and families from GRT communities will be creating content alongside visiting artists, forming a body of work to be shared with the public’. Amongst those London-based will be the story of the 1984 nursery workers strike in Islington, the community-focused history of Kingswood House in Dulwich – a Victorian ‘castle’ in the middle of a council estate, the Old Fire Station in Stoke Newington and the history of a Canning Town pub which became a leading live music venue, playing host to Iron Maiden and Dire Straits and helping launch music careers including Depeche Mode and bands like Paul Youngs’ Q-Tips.

http://tinyurl.com/mr265fa

Sunday 4 February 2024

As the days pass things are looking worse and worse for Rishi Sunak: the Tories are doing badly in the polls; he hasn’t succeeded on any of his pledges from last year; the Rwanda Bill he’s nailed his colours to will face more challenges in the Lords; he’s been warned by the IMF about the much trumpeted tax cuts and he comes over as increasingly out of touch in the Commons and in the media. He’s also being increasingly challenged by rebels in his party. Last weekend there was the attack by ‘Sir’ Simon Clarke, others including Kemi Badenoch plotting on the sidelines. As sketchwriter John Crace said: ‘What’s the purpose of Rishi Sunak’s government? It clearly isn’t to govern. The Tories have long since given up on that. Nothing really works any more and Sunak has little to offer but the promise of a few general election giveaways’. A tweeter identified 53 ‘cowardly’ Tory MPs planning to stand down at the next election – ‘too corrupt to stand down immediately.’ At PMQs Penny Mordaunt’s face showed a mix of embarrassment and boredom as Tories were forced to listen to their boss repeatedly dodge questions from Keir Starmer and lie his way out of challenges from Opposition MPs. In highly curated media interviews he tends to bounce around like an excited toddler, not least about this misguided policy of using of pharmacists to compensate (except they don’t) for GP appointments by offering advice on ‘common conditions’.

He told one interviewer 8 times that his father was a GP and his mother a pharmacist (who knew?), as if somehow this conveys some kind of personal authority. The availability of antibiotics over the counter is one of the bad ideas – as we know GPs have been trying to reduce consumption as they can lead to medication resistance and too many patients still mistakenly think they’re effective for viral infections. It’s worrying when the Chief Executive of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard, demonstrates how she’s been bought by the government, presenting this pharmacy policy as increasing choice for patients when it’s actually about papering over the severe cracks in our primary care service such as access to GPs.  

It’s on life support. ‘The NHS is in such a dire state the next government should declare it a national emergency, experts are warning, as it emerged that record numbers of patients are being denied timely cancer treatment. It is facing an “existential threat” because of years of underinvestment, serious staff shortages and the demands of the ageing population, according to a group of leading doctors and NHS leaders’. Of course, this is what the Tories want, so they can rationalise that it’s ‘not working’, close it down and privatise the lot but we mustn’t let this happen. One leading oncologist said the UK was facing the ‘deepest cancer crisis ‘of her 30 years of treating cancer patients – ‘since 2020 more than 200,000 people in England have not received potentially life-saving surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy within the NHS’s supposed maximum 62-day wait’.

If anything the state of NHS mental health services is even worse, highlighted recently by the case of Valdo Calocane, a paranoid schizophrenia patient who stabbed and killed three people but who also refused to engage with the mental health team. In this case the police were also much at fault but what’s a nonsense is trusts discharging patients ‘back to the care of their GP’ when a patient doesn’t engage and they don’t meet the criteria to be detained under the Mental Health Act. This is such a cop out because GPs are already overloaded and aren’t equipped to deal with such cases, meaning that patients like Calocane fall between the cracks and there’s no oversight or responsibility for them. This is an extreme case but not uncommon: meanwhile more than 1.8m people are on the waiting list for mental health treatment, a figure which has grown markedly since the Conservatives came to power. No surprise there, because of austerity policies, marked health inequalities and public services in crisis. Pathetically and misleadingly, the Department of Health and Social Care said: “We’re providing record funding for the NHS, we’ve met our pledge to recruit 50,000 more nurses early, and we’ve put in place the first ever NHS Long Term Workforce Plan to make sure the NHS has the staff it needs in the years ahead’.

http://tinyurl.com/ysc8t45z

Related to this is the shocking state of British dentistry, with people resorting to DIY. We are truly returning to pre-NHS times, if not the 19th century. So many people are complaining of being unable to find an NHS dentist prepared to take them on and private dentistry is simply beyond the means of many. Lest this be considered a trivial or simply cosmetic issue, it’s worth noting that dental problems are the biggest cause of child hospital admissions and the marked rise in oral cancers (which dentists check for) over the last ten years is attributed to lack of access to dentists. The Guardian reported this sobering statistic: ‘More than 3,000 people in England died from mouth cancer in 2021, compared with 2,075 in 2011, according to figures by Oral Health Foundation (ORF) first reported by the BBC, representing an increase of 46%’. Typically misleadingly, the DHSC said: ‘The NHS is also treating more people for cancer at an earlier stage than ever before and we have opened 127 community diagnostic centres to speed up checks, including for cancer’. But you need a GP referral to these places and I don’t believe they routinely check for oral cancer. Of course the Tories aren’t that bothered because they will seek private treatment as a matter of course.

Despite the Rwanda Bill passing its second reading in the Lords (enabled by Labour’s incomprehensible abstention), commentators point out that this plan was not in the 2019 manifesto (how much of what’s going on was?), some predicting that Sunak will get it passed but that it will still get snarled up in legal challenges. As we know he’s been positioning the Lords as the hindrance in flouting ‘the will of the people’ when it’s the nature of the Act itself which is problematic, especially given that last week four Rwandans were granted asylum here on the grounds of safety. Rwanda has already received £240m from the UK – what this could have been spent on… The Daily Express kept up the momentum by headlining that 5,600 migrants had been ‘identified’ for deportation, though Home Secretary James Cleverly was quick to say he couldn’t ‘speculate’ about how many would actually be sent. Perhaps one of the most chilling aspects is the government having hired an aircraft hangar so that enforcement officers can practise getting migrants onto the planes. As they’re likely to obstruct this or even resort to violence, it’s been estimated that five officers will be needed for each deportee.

As the Post Office Horizon scandal rumbles on, increasingly alarming findings emerging at the public inquiry, Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch flexed her muscles via the vacuous performative gesture of sacking the Post Office chair, Henry Staunton. Of course this is meant to look like tough action but it does nothing whatsoever to address the deep-seated and intertwined issues which brought about the entire debacle. Calling for criminal investigations, victims’ lawyers have slammed PO and Fujitsu staff called to give evidence as a ‘chorus of cowards… a parade of liars, bullies, amnesiacs and arrogant individuals’ Those criticised ranged from the European boss of Fujitsu, Paul Patterson, with his vague promises of compensation, to the middle-ranking Post Office staff who privately discussed shredding damning evidence and the incompetent investigators who were said to have bullied their targets for financial gain… Evidence has been heard that it was known from the start that Horizon was riddled with bugs and defects but that this was kept from the post office operators being prosecuted and from the courts, with the brand’s reputation and financial considerations taking priority over justice’.

The two KCs defending the victims didn’t mince their words, one saying ‘Phase four has pulled back the curtain on the decades of the great Post Office cock-up and covering up because, and I quote from a Post Office investigator, they are ‘all crooks’ and another (based on the finding that investigators were financially incentivised to frame the victims): ‘the inquiry must ask whether those responsible at the Post Office and Fujitsu and in government did not, could not or would not hear any warning that Horizon lacked integrity because their ears were stuffed with cash’. Astonishingly, too, Post Office lawyers are still behaving in a persecutory manner towards the sub-postmasters around the issue of compensation: last week Channel 4 News interviewed several who’d received letters from these lawyers which used technical and intimidatory language they knew would not be readily understood. It’s as if they can’t bear to let go of the unjustifiable stance they adopted towards these victims.

In the Sunday Times Robert Colville made an interesting point, attributing blame partly to Tony Benn and suggesting that via ‘the perils of the government picking favourites…the state’s bad decisions can cascade through the generations’. He’s talking about the former ICL being favoured despite its computers being ‘second rate’, pushed to champion the UK’s export market, but it would have been too expensive to ditch ICL when it failed in 1981 and this is when the tie-up with Fujitsu took place, with the Japanese giant taking later it over entirely and gaining a very solid foothold in the UK market. ‘It’s also a reminder of just how terrible the state is at spending money…. poor public procurement is ripping all of us off. We need to give it a hell of a lot more attention’. And this should lead us to once again question what seems to be a similar path being smoothed for Infosys, the company owned by Sunak’s father-in-law.

Two other important developments seem to have gone under the radar: that Michael Keegan (husband of Cabinet member Gillian) who had been a Fujitsu CEO, stepped down from his Cabinet role (a fact gleaned by journalists only from the CO website so clearly intended for hushing up); and during the lead up to the powerful Panorama documentary in 2015, the Post Office threatened and lied to the BBC in a failed effort to suppress key evidence that helped clear postmasters in the Horizon scandal. ‘This was just the latest in a long line of lobbying, misinformation and outright lies that had faced a small number of BBC journalists trying to uncover the truth about the Post Office scandal’. It feels as if we will struggle to penetrate the numerous layers of this particular ‘onion’ especially given the determination of multiple vested interests to thwart the investigation and exposure of those responsible.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67884743

We hear that phases 5 and 6 of the public inquiry, which will hear evidence from top PO execs including Paula Vennells and from politicians like Ed Davey and Jo Swinson, will be run together and start in April. But why the two months break? It seems that there needs to be more time to go through the evidence and to prepare, but it’s a shame there has to be this long, not least because Fujitsu is saying it won’t be issuing compensation until the Inquiry is over (December!). Let’s hope the Inquiry and the media again pick up the cudgels and maintain the momentum from April onwards.

http://tinyurl.com/2tvv9c9h

Besides the unwelcome news that our water bills will be going up 6%, much attention this week has been directed to another inflationary pressure – council tax hikes. As we know, over the years this government has markedly reduced Westminster funding for local government, and besides the eight English councils having declared themselves effectively bankrupt since 2018, including four in the past 12 months, many more are in deep trouble and planning severe cuts to avoid the same fate. Councils are in crisis because of reduced central funding combined with the pressures of fulfilling their legal obligations (primarily social care, services for special education needs and disabled children, child protection and being forced to use increasingly expensive private sector accommodation for the homeless).It makes the ongoing lack of social care policy seem even more appalling. It will get worse for strained household budgets as the unfortunately named Levelling Up department has directed councils to apply a 4.99% hike, which will apparently add about £100 to a band D bill, at the same time as the government plans more public service cuts to facilitate tax cuts. This is such an appalling decision, especially as it’s one of Sunak’s desperate ploys to win votes. Councils are cutting important services like libraries (undervalued resources which act as educational and community hubs) and are being advised to sell off assets.

The knock on effects (which the shortsighted government never thinks about) will be considerable as so many depend on neighbourhood charities like Citizens Advice (two closed, more under threat) and on community bus services, for example. A cross party group of MPs have said £4bn is needed to head off this crisis but the government is only grudgingly giving £600m and this only after lobbying from backbenchers. But we also have to ask what role councils themselves have played by way of corruption: 36 local authorities are accused of financial crime during the last decade and ‘many other councils are being scrutinised for potential financial mismanagement leading to huge losses in councils’ funds. One of those is Thurrock council, found to have recklessly put hundreds of millions of pounds into commercial investments, where an accountant is being investigated by the Financial Reporting Council.

http://tinyurl.com/yckx995u

It’s been good news to see Stormont up and running again but it does seem quite fragile, not least because of the longstanding intransigence and obstreperousness of the DUP. I wonder how long they will tolerate this groundbreaking situation of a nationalist becoming First Minister. We’re given to understand that the deal which brought the unionists back to power sharing has resolved major difficulties arising from Brexit, the Windsor Framework and so on, but problems still remain and sometimes Westminster politicians and the media fail to convey the complexities, instead resorting to a ‘job done’ stance. Martin Kettle spells out the positives of the deal: ‘The new Northern Ireland plan unpicks some of the economic and political damage inflicted by Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. It makes the return of devolved power-sharing government possible. It ends the DUP’s two-year democracy boycott. It compels the rival parties to work together again, in line with the 1998 Belfast Good Friday agreement. It also releases a £3.3bn sweetener from the UK Treasury that Northern Ireland’s battered public realm badly needs’.

He also makes the key point that the DUP’s Geoffrey Donaldson made several key demands two years ago (no restrictions on trade between Britain and Northern Ireland across the Irish Sea, and an end to any suggestion that post-Brexit Northern Ireland was not a full part of the UK) but the new deal doesn’t satisfy these as firmly as Westminster is implying. ‘According to some reports, the party officers also divided only by 7-5 in Donaldson’s favour. The deal, therefore, remains vulnerable to a unionist backlash’.

It was interesting that last night on Radio 5’s Stephen Nolan programme (1.15 minutes in) he was challenging an obdurate unionist activist, Jamie Bryson, over his continuing opposition to this deal, and it sounded to my mind that Stephen was regularly picking him up on aspects of his narrative which were simply untrue. What this news has also brought out again is the ignorance and lack of understanding about Ireland in general and Northern Ireland in particular amongst mainland dwellers. This is not wholly their fault as the teaching of Irish history in schools has been appalling in many cases, causing quite a few to opine about the Troubles and Brexit that this troublesome and expensive province should just be floated off from the UK. One tweeter recently said: ‘What’s the point of Northern Ireland? Why don’t we just give it back to the Irish?’ Time will tell, but I was impressed by First Minister Michelle O’Neill’s gracious opening speech and hope it will set the tone for the months to come.

http://tinyurl.com/3eudpnkp

Recently we’ve been inundated (by royal correspondents and other hangers on, the mainstream media colluding) with non news about the state of Royal Family members’ health, following the hospitalisations of King Charles, Princess Kate and ‘concern’ expressed about Prince Edward needing to take a break from royal duties. Today’s Telegraph piece must take the biscuit – ‘King waves to crowds in first public appearance since leaving hospital’. The fact is that whatever the royals do makes not one iota of difference to this country’s ability to get on with its business (or not) and this press coverage is yet more gaslighting, trying to brainwash us into believing these people are important. Let’s hope we hear less about them now that Charles has emerged from Sandringham to wave to crowds.  

As the Oscars approach, film and cinema come increasingly under the spotlight and an interesting piece of news was something I could really identify with. I’ve missed parts of films, notably Oscar contender Oppenheimer, not because of the volume but because of actors’ poor diction, which hearing aids can do nothing about. In Australia deaf and hard-of-hearing filmgoers say technology issues and lack of film screenings with subtitles make cinema sessions inaccessible so they’re campaigning for cinemas to provide closed captioning. Some cinemas here aren’t bad at screening subtitled versions but this doesn’t seem widespread and those screenings are often at unsociable times. I’d have thought this was a clear equalities issue. Whereas some research suggests that cinemagoers find subtitles off-putting because they interfere with their ‘immersive experience’, Netflix figures showed that a high proportion of viewers use subtitles at various times. Something to keep an eye on!

http://tinyurl.com/yc32j25z

Finally, the Week summarises an article about restaurant trends for 2024, telling us, for example, that tasting menus are on the way down, and also about ‘confrontational dining’. Sounds terrible – it’s about food ‘staring right back at you’ for example at Fowl in central London, described as a ‘beak to feet chicken shop’, where the signature dish of hearts, livers and cockscombs has a chicken’s head complete with beak emerging from the pastry. Another venue serves a pheasant leg with the foot still attached. I suspect some of us will be passing on these innovations!