Monday, 6 December 2021
Unite announces more independent inquiry into union collusion in blacklisting
Saturday, 20 November 2021
The BBC.Put up or shutup. By Les May
Tuesday, 16 November 2021
Tory sleaze allegations give Labour a six-point lead.
Saturday, 6 November 2021
If This Isn't A Spoof It Should Be! By Les May
Wednesday, 3 November 2021
All Is Fair In Love And Activism - by Les May
I’m member of the Community Branch of a Trades Union. A couple of week ago the regular newsletter dropped through my door. I found that I was being urged to attend a ‘demo’ on the subject of ‘Climate Change’ in Manchester. Inside was a summary of some comments made about the forthcoming COP26 meeting in Glasgow. One speaker had dismissed it as likely to be a ‘talking shop’. Just how fair are dismissive assessments like this?
In 1992 climate researcher William James Burroughs wrote; ‘… without a better understanding of natural variability of the climate, it will be much more difficult to reach early conclusions on whether man-made pollution is having a significant impact. Tackling the Greenhouse Effect involves massive adjustments in the nature of modern society. There is a natural inclination to avoid making what will be expensive and unpopular changes until the evidence of global warming is beyond doubt. But by then it may be too late.’
In his 2004 book Global Warming: the complete briefing, John Houghten, who co-chaired the Scientific Assessment Group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote;
‘’Predictions of the future climate are surrounded with considerable un-certainty that arises from our imperfect knowledge both of the science of climate change and of the future scale of the human activities that are its cause. Politicians and others making decisions are therefore faced with the need to weigh all aspects of uncertainty against the desirability and the cost of the various actions that can be taken in response to the threat of climate change. Some mitigating action can be taken easily at relatively little cost (or even at a net saving of cost), for in-stance the development of programmes to conserve and save energy, and many schemes for reducing deforestation and encouraging the planting of trees.’
It is against the background of cautious words like these, coming from people I think we can assume know rather more about climate change and global warming than the speaker referred to in the first paragraph, that the actions or inactions of successive governments should be judged. Activists may make whatever claims take their fancy; climate scientists do no have that luxury.
John Houghten went on to say: Other actions such as a large shift to energy sources that are free from significant carbon dioxide emissions (for example, renewable sources – biomass, hydro, wind, or solar energy) both in the developed and the developing countries of the world will take some time.’
So how does the UK rate with regard to promoting renewable resources?
Between the first quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2021 the installed capacity rose from 8,690MW to 48,140 MW. That’s 560% more in 2021 than we had in 2010.
Covid 19 And Climate Change - by Les May
In his 2001 book Climate Change, William James Burroughs heads the first chapter with a quotation from the American writer H. L. Menken ‘There is always and easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible and wrong.’ Two contemporary human problems are the Covid 19 pandemic and changes in the behaviour of the atmosphere due to our burning of carbon rich fossil fuels. In the UK Menken’s quotation is apposite to both.
According to Boris Johnson the way out of the pandemic is just to keep on vaccinating a greater and greater proportion of the population whilst ignoring the number of daily infections. According to the blurb which accompanied a fund raising ploy by one ‘green’ organisation that dropped through my door a couple of weeks ago, in the future we are all going to be driving electric cars and eating a plant based diet.
Vaccination has been very effective in reducing mortality or to put it another way reducing your chances of dying if you are unfortunate to become infected, by at least four and a half times, but if it were the only answer to beating Covid we would not have had 5,811 new cases in the first week of August 2020 and 188,695 in the first week of August 2021. If the problems of possible climate change resulting from global warming and what to do about it were simple, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports would not weigh 5½ lbs, or the book for non-specialists ‘Global Warming: The complete briefing’ by the then UK co-chair of the IPCC run to 380 pages. Difficult problems rarely have simple solutions.
We have had a noisy response in the form of street demonstrations from sections of the public who objected to governments taking action to reduce the spread of Covid and during the COP26 meeting we can expect an even noisier response from people objecting to what they see as a lack of action from governments. Those who think like the second group might like to ponder on how well the needed action will be received by those who think like the first group and feel their individual freedom of action trumps any call for collective solidarity.
They might also consider how well it will be received by the people committed to the cause and who think that being ‘Green’ means not eating beef because cows belch out methane, a potent greenhouse gas, or avoiding dairy by substituting oat milk for the real stuff. Leaks in natural gas pipelines and methane containing gases escaping from landfill sites are probably more to worry about. Substituting chicken or pig meat may make you feel ‘Green’, but if the food they were fed on is based on soya grown on land which was originally forest you are kidding yourself, because that forest had been removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequestering the carbon in the form of wood.
It is sometimes difficult not to conclude that for some ‘activists’ having the UK government declare a ‘climate emergency’ is an end in itself. The problem all
governments which take seriously the need to substantially reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being dumped into the atmosphere is how to do it and ‘keep the lights on’.
Greta Thunberg asserts that humanity is facing an existential crisis because of global warming and holds the current generation of adults responsible for creating the problem. As one of the present generation of adults I cannot help observing that Thunberg is from a rather more privileged background than I and most of my contemporaries. For example, how many of her 18 years were spent waking up on a winter morning to find feathers of ice on the inside of the bedroom window? Or living in a house in which only one room had a source of heating and that a coal fire? All mine were; I did not live in a house with central heating until I was 33. Keeping the lights on matters even if they will have to be a lot dimmer in the future.
As for global warming being an ‘existential crisis’, the Covid 19 pandemic and future pandemics caused by as yet undetected viruses coming from a similar source, are probably better nominees for that particular accolade; they really can terminate your existence. I rather think what she really means is that future weather patterns in Europe may be less benign than those we enjoy at the moment.
Extreme perhaps, but only the same as much of the world experiences every year. Early warning of hurricanes and tornadoes in the US, and the availability of cyclone shelters in Bangladesh testify to the effectiveness of mitigation measures in reducing fatalities during such events. It matters not whether the cause of the weather event is part of natural climatic variation or induced by global warning.
There are only two forms of energy which are ‘clean’ and do not emit carbon dioxide at the point of use; electricity and hydrogen. But note the caveat, ‘at the point of use’. So the question is how do we produce enough electricity both to power our cars, heat pumps, manufacturing, agriculture, bulk transport, and to produce the hydrogen by splitting water into its two component elements, without using carbon containing fossil fuels? Will we be able to build enough biomass, wind, water and solar powered generating systems to meet all our needs in the next thirty years or will we end up falling back on nuclear power stations which don’t emit carbon dioxide, but hardly qualify as ‘clean’.
Even if we can how will we store the electricity for the times the wind is not blowing or the sun not shining? And how will continue to make steel from iron ore without using coke derived from coal to mop up the oxygen and liberate metallic iron? Eight percent of the carbon dioxide which goes into the atmosphere each year comes from this source. The first so called ‘green’ steel is just becoming available. The processes use electricity directly or to produce hydrogen which then mops up the oxygen in the ore, so we need to factor that into our thinking. Long distance air travel without burning fossil fuels? What a great sense of humour you must have!
In a recent Guardian article George Monbiot wrote that when people have money they like to spend it. He might have added that they also dislike the government taking any of it away from them in the form of taxes; especially to fund replacing carbon dioxide belching boilers with heat pumps, insulating other people’s houses or funding the infrastructure which will be needed to shift electricity to all those electric cars.
That’s why I’m not keen on the idea of a ‘climate crisis’. It gives the impression that we have to do just one thing and somehow it’s all over. The same applies to thinking of Covid 19 as something that will be over when we have vaccinated everyone in Britain or Europe or the world. We need to start thinking of a the future being a ‘Covid Era’ because the virus is now endemic in the human population, in other words it’s going to be with us long into the future and we need to adjust our thinking and our behaviour to take that into account.
Given the amount of carbon dioxide we have put into the atmosphere already we are going to have to live with the consequences as well as taking steps to stop adding to it, we need to think in terms of a ‘Climate Era’. Are we going to meet our target of ‘net zero’ by looking for a ‘technological fix’ whilst still pursuing ever greater economic growth or are we going to do it by learning to live from our income and not from our capital? The resources of the Earth, which includes the land, the oceans and the atmosphere are our deposit in the bank. Is it time to stop squandering our inheritance?
Monday, 1 November 2021
Family doctor's threaten industrial action.
Family doctors are threatening industrial action against government plans that would, inter alia, compel them to see patients face-to-face and force them to disclose their NHS earnings of at least, £150,000 per annum. They also oppose league tables that would show the number of face-to-face appointments carried out by GP practices. The Government's £250m "support package", has been denounced by the British Medical Association (BMA), as a "Bully's Charter."
According to NHS England, around 90% of GP's work part-time. The average age at which doctors now retire is 59-years and a GP's average salary in England is £100,700, roughly twice what a French GP earns. Professor Martin Marshall, Chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioner's, says: "Good, safe, and personalised care, can be delivered remotely and is not confined to general practice." He also thinks that criticism of GP's is "demoralising and indefensible."
Just 61% of GP appointments were carried out face-to-face in September, compared with pre-pandemic levels of 80% of consultations. Statistics also show that half of all appointments are now carried out by other practice staff such as a nurse, or physio, rather than a doctor. Difficulties in getting to see a GP, have led to more people using A&E, the NHS Helpline, emergency services, and the increasing use, of the private healthcare sector - access for cash, which has put the NHS under increasing pressure. Many doctors and nurses who work in NHS hospitals, have questioned why it's okay for them to deal personally with patients, but not mollycoddled GP's. In response, the GP's say their NHS contracts don't require them to do face-to-face appointments, unless its absolutely necessary.
Some critics, such as Alison Much, the senior coroner for Greater Manchester, have said that remote GP appointments may be a contributory factor in the deaths of people because important information can be missed during telephone appointment's, that may have been picked up if a patient had been seen in person.
David Nash, a 26-year old law student from Leeds, had four remote consultations with doctors and nurses at a Leeds GP practice over a 19-day period before he died on 4 November 2020. None of the clinicians spotted that he had developed mastoiditis in his ear, which caused a brain abscess that led to meningitis. He had presented four times in short succession with a range of escalating symptoms. He'd had a fever for nine days and despite a negative Covid-19 test, there was no clear diagnosis. His father told the press that mastoiditis is readily treatable with antibiotics.
The case of David Nash is not an isolated case; there have been many other such cases. Like all professions, the medical profession, has vested interest to protect that may not be in the long-term interests of their patients. Although GP's have contracts with the NHS, many GP practices are run as private businesses. We should not forget that when the NHS was first proposed, many doctors objected to the principal of a state run health care system that was free at the point of use. Apart from other things, they thought it would effect them financially. When, Aneurin Bevan, was asked how he'd got the doctor's to co-operate, he said: "I stuffed their mouths with gold." The National Health Service in Britain, is almost synonymous with the name of Aneurin Bevan, who was a Welsh Labour MP and socialist.
Thursday, 28 October 2021
Did Labour have an antisemitism crisis? Book review by Tony Greenstein
Book Review by Tony Greenstein
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are not necessarily shared by the Editors of Northern Voices.
It is an iron rule which allows few exceptions, that those who leave the SWP drift to the right. Dave Renton is no exception.
Renton joined the SWP in 1991, leaving in 2003 only to rejoin in 2008. In 2013 he left the SWP because of the rape scandal.[i]
The details of this scandal are well known. A woman who alleged that she had been raped appeared before the SWP’s Disputes Committee, which consisted of friends of the alleged rapist, National Secretary Martin Smith. Smith was cleared of all the allegations. Instead, it was the victim who was pilloried and questioned about her sexual history and drinking habits. A second woman who supported her was harassed and suspended. The victim herself wasn’t even allowed to attend the conference called to discuss the matter.
Dave Renton has written movingly of his experiences in the SWP and about what happened in 2012/13.[ii] Together with others, he formed RS21.
Renton’s book makes it clear, though, that he has abandoned any form of Marxist or class politics in favour of a subjective identity politics which divorces the politics of race from class.
Renton, as his Wiki[iii] biography makes clear, was a prolific author of books on anti-fascism, racism and Marxism. He wasn’t a run of the mill member of the SWP whose political consciousness is low and confined to sloganeering activism. Possibly his weak point was an understanding of imperialism but the question I ask myself is how can he have been so comprehensively fooled by the false and confected ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign into believing that anti-Semitism was a genuine problem in the Labour Party?
How can Renton have got into bed with Stephen Pollard, the foul neo-liberal editor of the Jewish Chronicle who was a founder member of the Henry Jackson Society? This society’s membership includes Douglas Murray and others who support White Replacement Theory. It is genuinely and overtly racist, representing the far Right of the British Establishment – people like Islamaphobe Baroness Cox.
Does Renton really believe that someone like Pollard is genuinely interested in fighting anti-Semitism as opposed to tarring anti-racists with that brush? Renton’s Damascene conversion to the Right (because that is what it is) is a mystery. In the absence of a cogent explanation I can only explain it as being a return to his class origins.
Wednesday, 20 October 2021
Doctors advised to defy Governments stance on face-to-face appointments.
Medical practices that serve millions of patients across southern England have been advised to defy the Health Secretary's orders for them to see more patients face-to-face.
Recently, the Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, announced plans for patients to have the right to demand face-to-face appointments with their family doctor. But GP practices in Surrey, Sussex and south west London, have been told in a letter from Dr. Julius Parker, the head of the Local Medical Committee (LMC), that represents 3,300 GPs, "not to participate" in plans to improve access to GPs in the area. The letter from Dr. Parker, "advises all practices not to participate in any aspect of these proposals" and claims that the Government's £250m support package aimed at helping patients, is "politically motivated" and "panders to popular campaigns in the press."
Patient campaigners have condemned the advice as 'arrogant' and have called on the Government to step in and stop the revolt spreading to other GP surgeries across the country. The British Medical Association (BMA), have said they are 'deeply unhappy' with the government's proposals and are deciding what steps to take.
Before the pandemic, 80% of consultations were in person, but this has now plummeted to just 57%. GPs have been told they can only deny in-person consultations if there are good clinical reasons and the Government have warned that surgeries that fail to improve access for patients, will be "named and shamed" and will face direct intervention.
The letter from Dr. Parker advises GP practices not to engage with NHS England's 'disastrous plan' because it has no contractual standing and there is is no requirement to participate. Patient groups have warned that patients seeking a GP appointment are often referred to a pharmacist, physio, or nurse instead. NHS England figures show that nearly half of GP appointments are no longer with an actual doctor.
Although Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted, it's still not possible for many people to get to see a GP. Throughout the lock-down, you could still see dentists, opticians and other specialists. Since May of this year, you have been able to dine or drink inside and attend huge events, yet we still need someone to access our health over the phone. Many doctors and nurses who work in the hospitals, have questioned why it is okay for them to see patients but not GPs. Difficulty in seeing a GP has led to more referrals to A&E, the NHS Helpline 111, and increasing use of the emergency services.
Many GP practices say they are maintaining Covid-19 protocols ostensibly to prevent the spread of the virus. The number of permanent GPs has been declining steadily over the last five years. There has been talk of GPs "hanging up their stethoscopes" or of GPs being 'burnt out' or "scarred for life". Despite the hyperbole, from GPs, the Department of Social Health and Social Care, say a record number of people are training to become GPs with up to 4,000 new starters this year.
Some might see medicine as a calling and a vocation, but no doubt, many are attracted by the average GP salaries of £100,700 per annum, compared to UK average earnings of £31,431. According to NHS England, as many as 90% of GPs work part-time. The very high salaries paid to GPs in this country (roughly twice what a French GP earns) enable them to live very comfortably while working two or even three days a week. Some 40% of GPs now operate full or part-time as locums, where they can earn up to £200,000 a year.
Alison Mutch OBE, the senior coroner for Greater Manchester, has warned that remote GP appointments such as by telephone, are putting lives at risk because of the possibility that medical conditions do not get properly diagnosed. In the case of 16-year-old Hannah Royle, who died following complications arising from a twisted bowel, the West Sussex assistant coroner, said that Hannah's condition 'gastric volvulus' could not have been diagnosed over the phone by the NHS Helpline.
Saturday, 16 October 2021
DC Comics announce that Superboy is now bisexual.
Tuesday, 5 October 2021
Tameside school could be demolished after botched job by Carillion.
It's just over six years now, since Russell Scott primary school in Denton, had a £2.7 million refurbishment. But the school could now be bulldozed and completely rebuilt because the refurbishment was completely botched by the construction company Carillion who went bust in January 2018.
The Tameside primary school was forced to keep closing and the children were sent home on numerous occasions, because it was hit by flooding and other structural problems when the work was carried out by Carillion from 2013 to 2015. The school had been flooded by sewage and the playing field was left completely unusable after it was found to be filled with rubble, including glass, and ceramic material, which left it filled with craters. It failed fire safety checks and the school didn't comply with fire regulations. Despite never having issues with flooding, the school has been flooded on six occasions since the refurbishment. The new 'hyper-efficient' energy system also ended up costing the school an extra £30,000.
Steve Marsland, headteacher of the school, said it had been a nightmare. He told a local newspaper that the school had been forced to temporarily move into a disused secondary school while the work took place and added:
"The contractor was saying that everything was fine, while we were being flooded and even tested for explosive levels of sewer gas. We had sewage coming into the classrooms, we had to evacuate the building because we were paddling around in filth...We were continually monitoring the building. As soon as it rains the sandbags come out. In early summer we were flooded again - every time it rains heavily the school is under water. It costs tens of thousands of pounds to replace resources.
Both the school and Tameside Council, have had the school examined by experts and it seems that it would now be cheaper to knock it down and start again. Mr Marsland believes that the past six years have been spent 'throwing good money after bad', but accepts another rebuild won't come cheap.
Although Carillion had been criticised for carrying out sub-standard work across a range of national contracts, they were Tameside council's preferred developer. They had the contract to build the new council offices through 'Vision Tameside' and provided school meals for thousands of Tameside Children. They built schools in the borough and maintained council owned buildings and schools in Tameside.
In August 2017, the journalist Nigel Pivaro, wrote an article entitled: 'Carillion's survival critical for Tameside'. In the article, which displayed a degree of prescience and foresight, singularly lacking within Tameside Council, Pivaro posed the question as to what would happen if Carillion ceased to operate? How would it effect the still to be delivered new council offices, and the provision of school meals in Tameside? He wrote: "We asked Tameside Council if in the event of such circumstances they had a contingency plan in place? Tameside Council have declined to respond to our request."
In his article, Pivaro pointed out, that without a contingency plan the borough could be beset by chaos and increased expense at filling the gaps left by Carillion's demise. He seemed to think that if Carillion went down, it could take the council with it. He asked whether it had been wise for the council to put all its eggs in one basket with one firm on whom it depends on too much and if it was time, for Tameside Council, to divest itself from its exclusive relationship with Carillion.
When the Labour council in Tameside transferred jobs and services in 'Estates' and 'Facilities Management' to Carillion in 2011, they said the transfer would "safeguard jobs and services and cut costs." But Carillion didn't provide value for money for Tameside in several areas of its operations. The cost of school meals came in at 26 pence per unit more than the central government gives to councils to provide them. This left schools in Tameside, having to to meet the difference from their own budgets at a cost of a million pounds over the financial year. Moreover, the council officer who brokered the deal on school meals between the council and Carillion, went on to take up a management position with Carillion. It is also claimed by the governors of Russell Scott school that Carillion still owe the school £100,000 for energy costs incurred during the building of the new school. After Carillion went bust in January 2018, Tameside Council had to cough-up another £9 million from its useable reserves to get the 'Vision Tameside' development completed by another contractor.
While Tameside Council seem to have been taken by surprise by the demise of Carillion, the warnings signs were there to see long before its collapse. The smart money - the investors and hedge-funds, had been shorting Carillion stock as long ago as 2013. In April 2016, the trustees of the Carillion pension scheme, had highlighted how speculators were short-selling Carillion shares i.e. betting that Carillion's share price would fall. Six months before its collapse, one quarter of Carillion's shares were being used in 'short trades'. Carillion had debts of £850m and a pension fund shortfall for staff of £800m.
Despite the company issuing a profit warning in July 2017 that led to the resignation of the company's CEO, Richard Hanson, the then Labour leader of Tameside Council, Kieran Quinn - who was almost a cheerleader for Carillion and "proudly pro-business" - told 'Construction News' in September 2017, that he was in favour of a more direct and involved relationship between councils and contractors, because "If they come into partnership with us, it derisks it for them." Sadly, councillor Quinn, who was hailed as "a visionary," did not witness the collapse of Carillion or the debacle that ensued following its collapse, because he died a month before the company went into liquidation on 15 January 2018, at the age of 57.
John Bell, the Conservative leader on Tameside Council, at the time of Carillion's collapse, said that because there had been a total lack of scrutiny within Tameside Council, there had been no way to ensure if the council were getting value for money or whether Carillion was delivering efficiently. He said that both the political opposition and Labour council back benchers, had been kept in the dark.
Saturday, 2 October 2021
Something Must Be Done!
BY LES MAY
I don’t use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, TikTok etc, but it’s difficult not to hear the complaints from parents about the ‘harm’ being done to their teenage offspring by ‘Social Media’. Raking over someone else’s misery following a tragedy is always a good story for the mainstream media which runs stories along the lines of ‘Something must be done’. Politicians set up their committees in Parliament and wag their finger at Twitter, Facebook etc, but nothing happens. And if these big companies have their way, nothing ever will.
My own attitude has always been, ‘If these platforms are so harmful to your darling children, why on earth do you buy them a smartphone or give them a computer to use in their bedroom?’ In other words I am not brimming with sympathy when something unpleasant happens.
But stupid parents and my lack of sympathy for them, does not mean there is no case for trying to protect children from harm. The key word here is ‘children’. There are already plenty of precedents for doing just that. We try to prevent children from having sex before the age of sixteen, we won’t allow them to go into a pub and drink alcohol until they are eighteen, the same age as it becomes legal to make or view an image of them naked. In each case the assumption is that before the specified age the action will be ‘harmful’. The evidence that all of these thing are actually harmful isn’t overwhelming, it’s just that ‘all right thinking people’ say they are.
The advantage of using this widely accepted precautionary approach to protecting children is that the big media companies cannot use the argument that there is no proof that whenever a tragedy occurs it was a direct consequence of the child using one or other of these platforms.
This is essentially the case presented by Ross Douthat in a long article headed ‘Instagram should just be for adults’ which appeared in Wednesday’s New York Times. ‘Don’t get involved in arguments with these companies about whether what they offer is doing harm to teenagers and younger children, just tell them it is illegal to allow a someone under the age of 16 or 18 to use them and put the onus on the companies to police it’.
Parents would like this because it would allow them to offload responsibility for their children’s well being onto someone else. The companies would whinge about the difficulty of doing it, but given that Facebook can have up to 4000 snippets of data on account holders, which enable the company to build a detailed profile of an individual user, it should not be too difficult to spot that someone is too young to have an account.
Thursday, 30 September 2021
Crowdfunding now being used in UK to pay for medical treatment!
Millions of people across the UK are currently on NHS waiting lists. In England, 5.6m are queuing for treatment. Data shared with BBC Panorama, shows that on average, waiting lists have grown by 50% in most of the deprived parts of England since the start of the pandemic, compared with nearly 35% in the most affluent areas. The research shows that people on waiting lists are nearly twice as likely as those in wealthier areas to wait more than a year for treatment. As it becomes more difficult to see a GP or to receive hospital treatment as an NHS patient, many people are now turning in desperation, to private medical treatment.
The Kildea family from Strabane, Northern Ireland, had to raise £50,000 by crowdfunding to get treatment in Turkey for a 12-year-old son, with a dangerous and life-limiting spinal condition because he would have to wait two-years for an operation in the UK. This is not an isolated case.
It is extremely worrying that the Covid-19 pandemic might be used as an excuse to introduce an American style health system into the UK by the backdoor and by stealth. I am a supporter of the NHS but the Tory Government would certainly like to see the NHS totally privatized and the actions of some so-called health care professionals are leading us down that path. Just ask yourself why it is that so many of us have difficulty at the moment getting to see a GP but we can circumvent the problem of access by going private as many people are doing. Profits in private health are soaring. How many people are dying because of delays in getting treatment or even a diagnosis? Think of Sarah Harding of the female pop group, Girls Allowed, who died of breast cancer aged 40. It was reported in the press that one woman had paid £95 for a private appointment because her son couldn't get to see his own GP because of some excuse about Covid-19. But when he turned up for his private consultation, it was his own GP that he saw. Apparently the venal wretch refunded him the £95.
Automation is now giving us useless remote and virtual GP appointments - telephone, video, and Skype consultations, which the senior Coroner for Greater Manchester has said is leading to unnecessary deaths in some people as symptoms go undiagnosed. There have been instances of GP's asking patients to cough into the telephone. Don't believe that this is temporary or that the Covid-19 epidemic is the sole purpose for this. The doctors have been after this for years. NHS contracts with GP's do not compel them to do face-to-face patient interviews unless this clinically necessary.
I was told about Skype consultations at a meeting of the Tameside Hospital AGM, years ago. I thought the idea ludicrous at the time and challenged it at the meeting. A GP at the meeting asked the hospital top brass how they would do a chest examination of a person in a care home by Skype. Their answer was that they would train somebody in the home to do it. Sheer lunacy! If you can't get to see a GP in person, then why have them?
Naomi Klein, the Canadian author, has written a book entitled 'The Shock Doctrine: The rise of Disaster Capitalism.' She argues that national crises (disasters and upheavals) are used to establish controversial and questionable policies while citizens are too distracted to engage and develop adequate responses and resist effectively. The Covid-19 might be just such an opportunity.
Thursday, 23 September 2021
The Professor Who Refused To Be De-colonized
Saturday, 18 September 2021
Chubby Brown banned from performing in Sheffield.
Over the years, many British comedians have fallen foul to censorship of one sort or another. But rarely was it due to the kind of heresy hunting that we see all too frequently today, which has been dubbed the 'cancel culture'.
Max Miller, who was known as 'The Cheeky Chappie', and regarded as the greatest stand-up comic of his day, frequently got into trouble with the censors for his double entendre and risque jokes. Miller was banned by the BBC in the 1930s and 1950s, which only boosted his popularity and takings at the box office. The English northern comedian, Frank Randle, who also worked the music halls, was frequently banned by the police from performing at venues in Blackpool. In 1952, he was prosecuted on four charges of obscenity and fined £10 on each account. For over twenty years (1969-1989), the comedian Benny Hill, was hugely popular with his 'The Benny Hill Show'. But in 1989, his show was suddenly axed on the grounds that it "was passed its sell-by date.' Yet his shows have been sold to 140 countries and still attract audiences in the billions. Many of us know that show was really cancelled because Hill in the 1980s came under a concerted attack from feminist critics who denounced his comedy as sexist rubbish.
In 2007, the stand-up comedian Bernard Manning, told the Daily Mail that campaigning had had kept him off television for years. He added: "I don't think the Commission for Racial Equality will be holding a wake for me, nor will the Lesbian and Gay Rights lot or the feminists. They will always be banging on about how I was sexist or anti-gay..." Manning thought that the new breed of British comics were as funny as a dose of bird flue and their humour, equivalent to that of a funeral parlour.
One of the latest victims to fall foul of the politically correct brigade, is the 'fat bastard' himself, Roy Chubby Brown. 'Chubby' or Royston Vasey, has been banned from performing his live show at the Sheffield City Hall, on the grounds that his comedy does not reflect Sheffield's inclusive values. Just why it requires a ban, is intriguing because if you don't like his comedy or think it beyond the pale, then you don't have to pay to see him. It is as simple as that! One suspects that 'Chubby' has been banned because he's hugely popular and considered a funny man, in spite of his disgusting and vulgar humour, that panders to base instincts.
The new culture secretary, best-selling author, Nadine Dorries, believes that comedy is being killed off by 'leftwing snowflakes'. Whether she intends to wage a war on 'woke', remains to be seen. But already she's become the object of ridicule and vitriol. Matthew Anderson, the European culture editor for the New York Times, wrote: "Germany's culture minister is a trained art historian; France's wrote a book on Verdi. The new UK culture secretary...ate ostrich anus on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.'
Although comedians may have always been subject to some sort of sanction, it was mainly done by the authorities and not by some self-righteous, self-appointed, cancel culture brigade that we see today. It's said that the Puritans were the school-masters of the English middle-class, and the English left, is predominantly middle-class. Despite their socialist pretensions, they despise the kind of coarse working-class humour that comedians like Hill, Manning, and Roy Chubby Brown, epitomize. Whether you like Chubby Brown or loathe him, I tend to agree with one critic who said: "Fat bastards like Chubby need us to raise our standard" so as to "defend his audiences right to lower theirs."
At the time of writing, over 38,000 people have signed a petition calling for Chubby to be allowed to perform at the City Hall in Sheffield.
Tuesday, 14 September 2021
Doctor says criticism of 'virtual' appointments is "politically motivated garbage."
A letter which was circulated by NHS England calling on all GP practices to ensure they are offering face-to-face appointments, has been strongly condemned by GP leaders. They have warned that GP practices are not contractually required to offer face-t0-face appointments to patients unless there is a clinical need. The GP's say that the NHS letter risks fueling negative media coverage of access to general practice. The NHS letter also says that practice receptions should be open to patients to ensure that patients who do not have easy access to phones or other smart devices are not disadvantaged in their ability to access care.
While some NHS patients are struggling to get face-to-face appointments with their GP's, it seems it might be less difficult if you're prepared to pay and go private. On newspaper reported that a mother from Suffolk had paid £95 for her son to see a doctor because he'd been unable to get a face-to-face appointment with his own GP. However, when he arrived for the consultation, he discovered much to his surprise, that the private consultation was with his own GP. Much embarrassed, the GP referred him to hospital and refunded the £95.
As we recently reported, Alison Mutch, the Senior Coroner for Greater Manchester, has warned that the inability of some patients to see a GP, was contributing to unnecessary deaths. Yet, Nick Grundy, a doctor from Middlesex, recently told 'GP Online that demands for face-to-face appointments were "politically motivated garbage."
Saturday, 11 September 2021
Coroner warns GP 'virtual' appointments will increase unnecessary deaths.
In March 2020, NHS England instructed family doctors to adopt a "total triage" approach and to see patients in person, only after a video consultation, to reduce the risk of spreading coronavirus. This May, NHS England wrote to GP's telling them to "ensure they are offering face-to-face appointments" adding that remote appointments "should be done alongside a clear offer of appointments in person." But despite lockdown restrictions having been lifted, many people are still struggling to see their GP in person. In July, in-person appointments made up up 57% of total appointments, compared with 80% in the same month in 2019.
Alison Mutch, the Senior Coroner for Greater Manchester, has warned that the inability of some patients to see GP's in person, was contributing to deaths. The Health Service Journal reported that the Coroner had preside over five inquests during the Covid epidemic and had said that patients should have better care, as some could have been referred more quickly for vital treatment had they been seen face-to-face.
Once case that Alison Mutch investigated was that of retired welder, Brian Mottram (79), who died after collapsing at home in Hyde, Greater Manchester, just two days after his GP failed to spot he had symptoms of Coronavirus during a telephone appointment. A lung cancer survivor, who also suffered from diabetes, he complained of shortness of breath and a tight chest. According to the Coroner's report, he was prescribed antibiotics. His 76-year-old widow Jean, said: "It's time for doctors to get on and do what they're paid for and see patients properly, which means face-to-face. What's the use of them otherwise?"
Despite tragedies of this kind, a survey of family doctors - who earn an average £100,000 per annum - by Pulse magazine, found 79% of GP's saying that a return to pre-pandemic levels of in-person consultations was unnecessary. Some 61% of GP's also said that they feared they may be putting their own health at risk if they offer more face-to-face appointments.
It may seem bizarre to many people, but NHS contracts do not require GP's to do face-to-face interviews with their patients. There have been reports of GP's asking patients to cough into the phone. Similarly, how do you examine a person's chest over the phone or check their blood pressure? If you do a Skype consultation, do you check to see if a patients' tongue is heavily pixelated?
Despite being strapped for cash and there being a shortage of doctors and nurses, the NHS are currently recruiting 42 "monstrously overpaid bureaucrats", Chief Executive Officers, on salaries averaging £223,000 per annum. While many GP's seek to avoid contact with their patients, those courageous doctors and nurses who work in our NHS hospitals, have little choice in the matter. I take my hat off to them.
Friday, 27 August 2021
Unite elects its first female General Secretary
Saturday, 14 August 2021
The Cinderella MP
Tuesday, 3 August 2021
Nothing About us with us! by Andrew Wastling
Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957) A magnificent classic of world cinema .The most visceral religious response to the plague we see is through the flagellants, who are so fearful of death and the plague that they turn to self-inflicted violence as a form of public penance. Death is constantly on their minds. When they arrive in the nearby town, the leader of the flagellants accosts the townspeople by reminding them that death could come for them at any time. The flagellants represent a religious extreme – piety turned fanaticism. The musical cues underscoring their arrival and the frantic camerawork make them appear horrific, almost zombie-like. Bergman aimed to bring about revulsion for this extreme response to the plague, and thus implicitly condemned religious fanaticism as a whole.
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UNISON Regional Organiser Paddy Cleary has recently stated that: “Alternative Futures Group's treatment of its care workers is nothing short of shameful. It is clear that “A Chance for Change” is nothing more than a chance to cut costs- with the burden being felt by front-line workers.“All contractual terms are set to be reviewed, leaving open the prospect of AFG cutting their occupational sick pay scheme during a pandemic. This would pose a public health risk- putting both care workers and service users at increased risk, as care workers are forced to choose between health and hardship.”/i> (1)
At the same time Alternative Futures Group CEO, Ian Pritchard, was hit with a scathing open letter signed by 21 MPs and 63 councillors, condemning the proposals.
The letter from the MPs and councillors also criticised AFG for setting an "ambition" to pay all its staff the living wage, rather than making a binding pledge. (2)
The letter from MP’s points out that: ”It says 84 percent of commissioned providers in Rochdale accepted the increase in funds to pay the living wage.” This begs the question: why is the Local Authority still commissioning services from the 16% of providers (including Alternative Futures Group) who didn’t?
Incidentally proving the maxim that 'all publicity is good publicity' one only needs to spend a few minutes online to see the number of current adverts for new recruits to Alternative Futures Group who despite everything are obviously acquiring new residents to support across the Northwest who need new staff to support them. It’s self-evident that people with personal Budgets are being treated as ‘cash-cows’ by a diaspora of private health care providers who in some cases employ staff based on being able to use a mobile phone & drive a car regardless of any experience at all in the sector. When advertisers state (as they often do) : ‘No experience necessary‘ for Social Care jobs yet mandate a range of necessary skills & experience for shelf stacking jobs ( no that there is anything less worthy in the dignity of labour of a shelf stacker comrades ) it begs the question what value do we as a nation place on the safeguarding & care of our most vulnerable community members ?
It's highly disappointing (although not entirely surprising!) that only TWO Rochdale Councillors signed the letter from councillors given the importance of social care provision to so many of their vulnerable constituents across the Township. Particularly noticeable by its absence was Rochdale Councils Portfolio holder for Social Care, Iftikhar Ahmed, who by all accounts is a splendid chap but so obviously floundering out of his depth amid a Social Care crisis (3). Perhaps the absence of an impending election explains their reticence & lack of enthusiasm to speak out?
Urgent questions also need to be asked (but no doubt won’t be!) of Westminster decisions to cut back on Public Health as new research from the Local Government Association points out: “Public health funding has been frozen or cut for 100 councils. Those hit by public health cuts for the 2021/22 financial year include Doncaster, Rochdale and Wakefield, which have all seen above-average levels of COVID-19 cases.” (4).
The perceived wisdom of cutting funding to Public Health during a global health pandemic which places Rochdale 33 highest out of 315 locations nationally for Covid transmission also needs serious scrutiny. Clearly the pandemic is not yet over. Simply reducing the number of 'pings' from the Covid Smart phone app is the twenty-first century equivalent of removing the clappers from the handbells carried by medieval lepers so as not to alarm the local peasantry of the disease’s proximity!
Incidentally the reported news that local Tory Leader Ashley Dearnley ( and Covid-Idiot ! ) claimed making people wearing a mask was akin to adopting Socialism at a recent Full Council Meeting shows us the superstitious DNA of our forebears still courses through the veins of some less well evolved Englishmen. As we know in medieval times a cult of fanatics called Flagellants travelled from village to town beating themselves with whips & sticks to act as penitents for perceived sins
Working themselves into mad fits of hysteria terrified of the Black Death they spread the Plague around Europe! Dearnley and our local twenty-first century tory Flagellants have got it half right – only this time the pain they inflict is on the rest of us rather than themselves & instead of whips & sticks they use more subtle implements of torture in the form of austerity cuts to the poor, the sick, the old & the vulnerable.
Expectations that The North will continue indefinitely to wear a Tory cilice whilst the likes of Boris Johnson & Carrie Johnson ( previously only famous for being sacked for fiddling her expenses ! ) squander £850 on a single roll of wallpaper are doomed to failure whilst Johnson buggering off to Chequers like some latter day Henry VIII whilst the plague ripped through the slums of Tudor London show like nothing else that the ruling class are totally bereft of new ideas & offer no solutions for the long suffering working -class – whoever or whatever they might actually be in post Brexit Britain ?You’d have thought funding cuts to Public Health locally would be a major local news story, wouldn’t you? Especially when we learn from
insider sources that Rochdale’s Director of Public Health Andrea Fallon believes it was a mistake to unlock at Christmas and as a result lives have been lost as a direct consequence.
The shocking breakdown of deaths in Britain’s Care Homes makes grim reading. The Care Quality Commission released details of Covid deaths in Care homes across the UK listing them on a town by town & home by home basis (5).
Hancock was obviously otherwise engaged in other affairs when he failed to throw a circle of steel around Britain’s Care homes!
Nothing illustrates the powerlessness of Britain’s vulnerable when their wellbeing is handed lock stock and barrel to a faceless & unaccountable State more starkly!
Riding roughshod over the views & feelings of vulnerable clients with varying degrees of brain damage, their families & their support staff should act as an alarm bell for those who believe in the oft cited mantra: “Nothing about us without us“
Our local Social Care Dystopia, it is clear, has twisted this wonderful aspiration into: “Nothing about us with us!”
It’s almost as if someone somewhere would much rather, we weren’t told what was going on?
APPENDIX:
(1).https://www.unisonnw.org/care_provider_afg_slammed_by_mps_and_councillors_for_callous_cuts_to_carers_working_conditions
(2). https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/care-firm-refuses-pay-living-21204816
(3). Please see email Attachment
(4). https://www.localgov.co.uk/Public-health-funding-frozen-or-cut-for-100-councils/52137
(5). https://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/141963/people-with-acquired-brain-injuries-left-feeling-%E2%80%98worthless%E2%80%99-by-a-council-consultation-that-led-to-closure-of-lifeline-care-service
(6).https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiOGE1YTZlODItYzA2Ni00MmUxLTkyZjQtYjk3OTg0ZmYwMTIyIiwidCI6ImE1NWRjYWI4LWNlNjYtNDVlYS1hYjNmLTY1YmMyYjA3YjVkMyJ9
ATTACKS ON SHARON GRAHAM
IN THE OBSERVER on Michael Savage reported on Sun 27 Jun 2021
The only woman running to be the next leader of the powerful Unite union has revealed that she received “disgraceful” online abuse for refusing to stand aside for two more prominent male rivals.
Sharon Graham, who has attracted an unexpected level of grassroots support, said she experienced a “rough ride” after refusing to end her campaign. She said troll accounts had mocked up pictures of her as Margaret Thatcher, and she had warned her family that she might lose her job because of the row.
Graham has been criticised for refusing to engage in talks to agree on a single leftwing unity candidate to replace Len McCluskey, a key supporter of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership. Howard Beckett, a vehement critic of Keir Starmer, has pulled out to support the frontrunner, Steve Turner. The left is determined to defeat Gerard Coyne, seen as more supportive of Starmer. Graham, however, remains in the race.
“Being a woman in the trade union movement, and obviously a woman who has gone up against some of the most hostile of employers, I’m really used to being in difficult situations – so it takes a lot to rock me,” she said. “But I can understand why people don’t run against the establishment. We’re not in a playground picking football teams. This is the leader of one of the most significant unions in Britain and Ireland.
“I was never going to be involved in doing deals. This is the problem we have in the movement. There’s a moment in time, right now, where the union needs to be doing what I’m suggesting – it needs to go back to the workplace. And I believe that the membership wants this choice.”
Graham, who received a surprising 349 nominations from some of the union’s most powerful branches, said that none of her supporters had asked her to pull out. She said troll accounts had been sending her abuse, including disparaging mocked-up pictures, after her refusal to stand down. “I thought it was disgraceful,” she said. “If you’re a woman in a leadership role, it’s all the usual sexist stuff that you hear. It will never deter me. Maybe they’re a bit worried I might win.”
Graham said that the union movement had reached a “crisis point” and a non-established figure was needed to return Unite to its main cause of representing workers and end “an obsession” with the Labour party.
“I absolutely feel that we are at a crisis point in the trade union movement,” she said. “I don’t think I’m over-egging that. The union movement is on life support. For way too long, and it has happened over years and years, we have moved away from our core business. We have got to get back to the workplace. It is absolutely critical that we get back to doing what is on the trade union tin. If we cannot do that, then I think the union movement will be irreparable in years to come.”
She added: “I don’t have any regional secretary backing me. That’s the machine,” she said. “Every person supporting me has gone against their region. They’re doing it against the regime. We’re in this to really make change.”
Unite remains Labour’s biggest donor. Graham said that there would be no “blank cheques” for Labour under her leadership, but that the party would have “no problem with me” if it pursued policies that improved the condition of workers.
“This obsession at the moment with the Labour party, almost like we’re a branch of it, has made us weaker, unfortunately. Yes, politics matters. But the Labour party has effectively almost become the centre of discussions, when in fact jobs, pay and conditions should be the centre.”
She said women had been “let down” by unions, who had failed to adapt to the new industries in which women are over-represented. “This is not pin money that women are turning out for,” she said. “They’re often doing more than one job. Without a shadow of a doubt, in the post-Covid world, they will essentially lose their jobs more [without union help]. I genuinely feel that we have let women down.”
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Monday, 2 August 2021
Political Correctness & the Death of God by Andrew Wallace
THE scourge of Political Correctness has been with us now since the 1980s, a distinctively curious modern syndrome of angst marked by critical examination of language and custom. Something of this brouhaha has been with us over longer tracts of history if we care to survey cultural innovation and evolution across the centuries. However the present discomfiture visited upon the heads of our chattering classes, whereby seemingly innocuous linguistic chatter has recently become problematic and in many cases deemed reactionary, speaks to a novel juncture of intellectual frenzy and insecurity.
Our distinctive period of ferment has been variously labelled the late modern, the post-modern and the Anthropocene. Characterised in part by a waning optimism from the European Enlightenment and the giddy new world of neoliberal globalisation, our gilded benevolent post war progress has given way to precarity and anxiety as we attempt to grapple with the complexities of our new multi-spectrum information age.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) is arguably the first modern philosopher and progenitor to articulate the ‘post-modern’ conundrum. Nietzsche’s arresting idea of the ‘Death of God’ is the lynchpin to his unrelenting ‘anti-foundationalism’. As Terry Eagleton has persuasively reasoned, Nietzsche seems to have been the first ‘real deal’ atheist, as all the other atheists up to this point had surreptitiously smuggled in the old Judeo Christian metaphysics and teleology amidst their loud affirmations of the secular. God had now become Reason or Humanism or some other such spurious unfounded belief in progress.
Nietzsche is seen by many as the singular uncompromising figure who primed a metaphorical slow reaction colossus of a nuclear bomb under the rickety infrastructure of Western philosophy. Pushing atheist Enlightenment thought to its apotheosis, Nietzsche spelled out in theatrical bravura the cataclysmic implications of the way ahead. The masses could no longer recoil and refuse to understand the stupendous shift in our world view.
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
Nietzsche’s dethronement of the Almighty was also the shattering of Western philosophy and its epistemological and ontological foundations. He would spell out the radical new existential realities for the multitude up till this point largely oblivious to the anti-foundational revolution that had upended the cosmos. A terrifying paradigm shift and cultural shock, vertiginous and exhilarating, would have to be digested by the post-modern.
With the prime mover dethroned along with all the attendant metaphysical ballast, society’s loss of its elaborate meaning system in placating our existential fears and buttressing our sense of selves, our identity and our moralities, Nietzsche had foregrounded the nihilistic conundrum at the centre of modernity. Without recourse to transcendental authority and legitimacy, uncompromising contingency would issue in an intense anomic turbulence.
The realm of normalcy destroyed, regarded as oppressive and socially constructed. Scientific knowledge is now suspect, provisional and relativised. What was once taken as God given and natural is now arbitrary and suitable for deconstruction by suitably qualified post modern scholars well versed in the radical new indeterminism. All traditional ‘centrics’ of language and culture must be prised apart accordingly.
God is dead alongside the Enlightenment belief in Reason. Patriarchy is dead, the family is dead, heterosexuality is dead, the novel is dead, the symphony is dead, the author is dead. Political Correctness is the manifestation of this modern discomfiture played out in our daily lives, an incessant Nietzschean comedy of manners as we scramble to find an acceptable form of parlance stripped of any perceived historical provocations.
Our nomenclatures betray certain socially conservative proclivities and a Christian lineage which a majority of the populace had no alternative but to acquiesce to and defer to a level of fitting observance. This may now have given way to little more than functionality, devoid of the metaphysical fervour of the devoted. Yet as cultural conservatives, the new Political Correctness is seen as an idiotic and unnecessary intrusion into a shared domain of vocabulary considered innocuous.
Nietzsche’s politics defy easy pigeonholing. Clearly not of the left himself although certainly not a textbook conservative or libertarian either. How far his heroic and affirmative existentialism stands as a viable solution and corrective against the bleak nihilist terminus remains questionable, not least because of his hostility to the universal and to the masses at large. It is also doubtful whether Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists have charted a convincing path ahead to steer us beyond the anarchy of the wasteland.
References –https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche
Terry Eagleton – Culture and the Death of God (2014) – especially relevant is Chapter 5 :
The Death of God.
Also very useful is the related Terry Eagleton lecture uploaded to Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=ka-HG-WeW_U
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