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IN an article on the NV blog a couple of weeks ago I referred to something I wrote at the end of June 2020. I commented that having read some of the abusive posts directed at Priyamvada Gopal, who had posted a ‘tweet’ which said “I’ll say it again. White Lives Don’t Matter. As white lives”, I thought you would meet nicer turds in a slurry pit.
A long article by Brendan O’Neill on the Spiked Online website graphically describes the vile abuse directed at author J. K. Rowling. From the context it appears that it came via her Twitter account, which of course means the brave authors could remain anonymous.
My own experience of anonymous communications is somewhat limited. I had one letter from an unknown ‘Christian’ in 1970 after I wrote to the local paper saying that I did not think that the Muslim children at the school I worked at should be made to attend what was in effect a Christian oriented morning assembly. I had another in 2010 after I had the temerity to point out in the same paper that Canada Geese were in a nearby park because their staple diet was grass which they got from the lawns and not the bread which they got to the visitors. Short of blocking my letter box there was nothing I could do to prevent them being delivered.
One of O’Neill’s concerns is the almost complete absence of people willing to publicly defend J. K. Rowling. He also took a few well aimed potshots at ‘Cancel Culture’ and ‘Identity Politics’. But it seemed to me that he was somewhat missing the point. If Rowling was distressed at what was being said about her on Twitter, the remedy was in her own hands, literally. All she had to do was switch off her smartphone or if that was too radical, delete the ‘app’.
Rowling, the footballers, Priyamvada Gopal and Sajid Javid are all in their own way ‘commodities’ where image matters. Keeping their names before the public is how they can both relish their present fame and make sure there they are putting something in the metaphorical bank for the future. Rowling may yet write another book; the footballers may think of taking a leaf out of the book of Lionel Messi and launch a premium fashion brand; judging by the Twitter post which led to the abuse Gopal evidently likes to be seen as ‘controversial’, and Sajid Javid is a politician who wants to be seen as ‘just like us’. He has learned the hard way that that there’s always someone who will make a grab the moral high ground if you dare use a word they don’t like.
It’s no use waiting for the government to solve the problems raised by social media by banning so called ‘hate speech’. If you find it unpleasant just stop it being delivered to your smartphone, because it will only hurt you if you let it and no one is forcing you to read it. This isn’t a ‘freedom of speech’ matter. None of the individuals I have used as examples would have the slightest difficulty in getting their voices heard in the UK media, something that cannot be said of the people who resort to vulgar abuse. I doubt the NV editors would turn down a piece on ‘transphilia’ by Ms Rowling.
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IN March 2015 a committee of the House of Commons produced a document summarising our national constitution and some options for reform. A key paragraph reads; ‘The United Kingdom constitution is composed of the laws and rules that create the institutions of the state, regulate the relationships between those institutions, or regulate the relationship between the state and the individual. These laws and rules are not codified in a single written document’. Nationally we do not have a written constitution, but local councils do. Amongst other things these regulate the relationship between the council and the individual.
As I have explained previously it took three requests to the Chief Executive of Rochdale Council to get an answer to the question of why the entry in the Register of Interest for Faisal Rana was not available on the council website. The answer I did get was; ‘In relation to the register of interest for Cllr Faisal Rana. The entries not shown on the website are due to the items being considered as sensitive by the previous Monitoring Officer of the Council. Any requests for such information should be submitted via the freedom of information process.’
So what does the written constitution of Rochdale Borough Council have to say on this matter of items being ‘sensitive’? On page 13 it says:
15. Register of interests: Subject to paragraph 16 any disclosable pecuniary interests or personal interests notified to the Monitoring Officer will be included in the register of interests. A copy of the register will be available for public inspection and will be published on the authority’s website.
16. Sensitive interests: This paragraph applies where you consider that disclosure of the details of a disclosable pecuniary interest or a personal interest could lead to you, or a person connected with you, being subject to violence or intimidation, and the Monitoring Officer agrees. In these circumstances, if the interest is entered on the register, copies of the register that are made available for inspection and any published version of the register will exclude details of the interest, but may state that you have a disclosable pecuniary interest, the details of which are withheld under Section 32(2) of the Localism Act 2011.
Unless Faisal Rana told the previous Monitoring Officer David Wilcock that he would be subject to ‘violence or intimidation’ and the present Monitoring Officer has confirmed this with Faisal Rana, then both officers have acted outside the terms of the Rochdale Council constitution by improperly allowing this councillor’s disclosable interests to be classed as ‘sensitive’. In both cases Rochdale Council should hold a written note of any meeting between the councillor and the Monitoring Officer(s) at which this claim was made and accepted as true.
It is more than six weeks since I submitted a Freedom of Information (FoI) request asking if the present monitoring officer has concluded that the disclosable information which should appear in the register of member’s interests for Councillor Faisal Rana is ‘sensitive’, why this information is considered to be ‘sensitive’ and on what date the decision was made. I assume that this is because the present Monitoring Officer, ex Labour councillor Asif Ibrahim, does not wish this question to be answered.
Two Monitoring Officers have acted in a way which they are not permitted to do by the Rochdale Borough Council constitution and have done so without censure from the Chief Executive Steve Rumbelow. If he will not put his house in order perhaps it is time that the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government was asked to intervene.
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FIRST a declaration of interests:
I spent 44 of my 49 years of working life in education; twenty five of them in secondary schools, hence my interest in the action, or more correctly, the inaction, of the National Education Union (NEU) in defending the teachers at Batley Grammar School.
The National Education Union (NEU) is determined to avoid any scrutiny by the media of what is actually happening at the school by claiming that the matter is close to being resolved. Not only is scrutiny by the media unwelcome but the NEU is keeping its own members in the dark, members who pay their union subscriptions in the hope that if their livelihood and well being come under attack for any reason connected with their employment, the union will defend them.
The events which have led to one teacher going into hiding in fear of his life took place on 22 March. A group of parents demanding that he be sacked and they be allowed to determine the contents of the Religious Studies curriculum began to demonstrate in the days following as was widely reported at the time.
The May/June 2021 edition of ‘educate’ the magazine published bimonthly by the NEU contains a four page report of the online annual conference held between 7 and 9 April including a short 150 word piece which uses the words ‘free speech’ no less than four times, but no mention of the goings on at Batley Grammar School, though there was plenty of time for a piece to be included and members informed of the union’s stance.
Donald Trump was widely attacked in the media by those who uphold basic democratic values for his unwillingness to condemn those who peddle extremist philosophies. When it comes to making an unequivocal statement utterly condemning the behaviour of those who have brought about this threat to the life of one of the teachers concerned and who continue to try to dictate to our society what should be taught in our schools, the NEU has shown itself to be an abject failure and an apology for a union. Insisting that those of us who are not followers of Islam should be forced to follow any of its precepts is an extremist philosophy. It is not ‘Islamophobic’ to say so and it is time NEU said so.
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IN the early 1970s I worked on an island in the Outer Hebrides. The people who lived there were not the ‘Industrial Proletariat’ so beloved by those of a romantic turn of mind, but small scale ‘entrepreneurs’ who made their living working on their family ‘croft’ and organised into ‘townships’ which annually allocated to each crofter strips of Machair land on which was grown a mixture of rye and black-oats which was cut in late summer to provide winter forage for a few cattle. With sheep summered on the poorer land on the east of the island and wintered on the land close to the house which had been used for hay in summer it provided a living, but not a very luxurious one. My two closest neighbours lived in two room, single story houses with a roof of thatch made from Marram Grass. One had carpets laid on the bare earth floor. Both got water from a tap outside their house
I’ve been back a few times since and, as well as paying my respects at the graves of some of the people I knew, I’ve seen the much greater prosperity enjoyed by the Islanders. The single track road with passing places has gone, there’s a causeway linking six of the islands, there are jobs for women and the two room thatched houses are museum pieces. No wonder Scots voted to stay in the EU. (Incidentally you will see the same improved infra-structure on the islands of Madeira and Tenerife.)
At the time the Scottish Nationalists were described as ‘Tartan Tories’ and the constituency returned a Labour MP. Now it returns both a Scottish Nationalist MSP to Holyrood and an MP to London . The SNP has morphed into, what is in many respects, a social democratic party. Is it possible that Labour and the SNP are fighting over much the same political territory in Scotland, and the SNP is winning? Perhaps Labour should start asking why the SNP has been so successful at invading its territory in Scotland.
Is it possible that the SNP is drawing significant support not for enthusiasm for a ‘go it alone Scotland’, but for the party’s domestic policies? Tory governments in particular have tried to force on Scotland domestic policies which have been less than popular over the border, e.g. water privatisation and the introduction of the Poll Tax a year before it was forced on England. Repeated attempts were made by the Tories to find a way of privatising Caledonian MacBrayne, the ferry service which serves as a lifeline to 22 Scottish Islands. It is now a subsidiary of holding company owned by the Scottish Government.
Social care is funded differently in Scotland than in England. If you think that’s because we English are paying for it, think again. All governments have a limited amount of money to spend; Holyrood just makes choices which are different to those made in London. That does not mean everything is rosy over the border, education and health are areas which have drawn criticism.
At some time in the not too distant future Labour is going to have to confront the fact that the Scottish Parliament may vote to hold a second referendum on independence. It has a choice, it can fly the ‘Union’ flag along with the Tories and oppose a second vote or it can support it and risk there being a ‘Yes’ vote, Scotland becoming independent and no more Scottish MPs in the House of Commons which would effectively seal a succession of Tory government for the rest of time.
Johnson is a chancer. At present he is doing all he can to bypass the Scottish Parliament by means of a veto on its scope for action and by taking on powers which rightly belong with the Scots. The signs are that he is hoping that he can block a second referendum by legal means. He may think this will ‘save the Union’, but if he does he will kill it because it will no longer be a union by consent.
It has been estimated that about a third of Scots actively support independence, a third actively oppose it and the remainder are more ambivalent. Even if these estimates are not very close to the true figures it does suggest that there is some scope for persuading more of the electorate to vote to remain part of the UK. That persuading can only be done by Labour, if only for the selfish reason I alluded to above.
It was a Labour government that in 1998 introduced the Scotland Act which led to the setting up of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. Why then is Labour apparently doing so little to oppose Johnson’s power grab? By doing little or nothing it risks being tarred with the same brush as the Tories in the minds of the Scottish electorate. Labour could work with SNP MPs in the House of Commons to form a government. Without the Union and the Scottish MPs it brings there seems to me little chance that we will ever have anything but a succession of Tory governments.
Nicola Sturgeon is a demonstrably competent woman which suggests she is no fool. She must be aware that an ‘independent’ Scotland will face all sorts of difficulties; a long land border with England and the question of what currency it would adopt are just two obvious ones. There’s also the fact that much though she may say she wants to be part of the EU, it’s not a ‘done deal’ and its an aspiration for the future. Perhaps a greater degree of independence within the Union could begin to look a more attractive option. There’s an opening for Labour there.
https://theferret.scot/scottish-water-public-ownership/
NV can no longer embed links in the text of articles. To use this link copy the full text of the link into your browser (Startpage, DuckDuckGo or Google) and search in the usual way.
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MY Dad was born in Walsden, which is hardly deepest Yorkshire, and moved west at the age of two to spend all his life in Lancashire. But he liked to parade his ‘Yorkshireness’ by quoting what he claimed was the county motto of I’ tha’ dos owt’ for nowt, do it fo’ thi’ sen. Not exactly an ennobling aspiration, but a reminder that when anyone hands favours in cash or kind to a politician or their party, something is expected in return.
Boris Johnson may be telling the truth that he (eventually) paid for his change of décor, but if it is found that he initially approached someone else to foot the bill, there will be a quest to find out what favours Johnson bestowed in return. And irrespective of what emerges the aura of sleaze will envelope Johnson for the rest of his time in public life.
But even if those ‘favours’ turn out to be on an epic scale, will it be enough to tarnish the Tories enough to lead to the start of that long slide in public distrust which led to the demise of the John Major government’s support and his election defeat in 1997?
Speaking on Saturday’s BBC programme, Dateline London, the political commentator Steve Richards pointed out that in 1997 there was what he called a ‘dynamic alternative’ to Major and the Tories in the shape of Tony Blair.
Given what we now know about Blair it is easy to forget the enthusiasm and hope with which Labour people greeted his becoming Prime Minister with a huge mandate for change in the shape of his parliamentary majority. Whether you like Blair or not, Richard’s analysis is spot on.
So ultimately whether Johnson’s present little difficulties represent the beginning of the end for the Tories may depend on one thing; ‘Is Labour under Keir Starmer a dynamic alternative?’ Answers on a postage stamp please.
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MY interest in football peaked when I was eleven in 1953 and has been declining ever since. If professional football vanished from the face of the Earth I would not miss it. But I cannot help observing that the proposed formation of a European Superleague is just the logical conclusion of the ‘greedfest’ which led to the formation of the Premier League in 1992. Domestic and international television rights generates about £2 billion a year for the Premier League which is a corporation in which member clubs act as shareholders. A nice little earner one might say.
Clearly the owners of the six UK clubs which want to become founder members of the European Superleague can see the cash registers continuing to roll and even more money finding its way into their coffers. The remaining Premier League members now seem to be crying foul having themselves done much the same thing to the old Football League almost thirty years ago.
And who has stepped in to see fair play? It’s our free enterprise worshipping Prime Minister. Boris has suddenly discovered that markets sometimes need to be managed to bring about socially desirable outcomes. Though quite what he can do to block the European Superleague is still unclear.
Question: If Boris Johnson can find time to think up ways of taming the excesses of this particular market, why can’t he find time to bring some sanity to the housing market which continues to leave families homeless or living in very substandard housing while paying exorbitant rents a what is euphemistically called ‘the market rate’.
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ON 7 July last year Northern Voices published an article I wrote with the title ‘Why Black Lives Matter Will Fail’. In it I suggested that the proximate factor in the murder of George Floyd was that the USA has a militarised police force. I went on to say;
‘As of 30 June 2020 a total of 506 civilians were shot in the US, 105 of whom were black. In 2018, there were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 this figure increased to 1,004. For comparison the rate of shootings per million of the population was: black 31, hispanic, 23, white 13, other 4. These figures speak for themselves. By comparison the average number of fatal police shootings per year in England and Wales in the 15 year period 2004/5 to 2018/9 was less than 3 in a population of about 60,000,000, that is about 0.05 per million.’
‘Faced with a fatality rate from police shooting which is 200 to 600 times higher than in the UK one might have thought that saving lives, black, brown and white, by demilitarising US police forces, would be central to any widespread response to the murder of George Floyd. Seemingly it isn’t.’
‘Instead of attempting to attain measurable objectives like improving police training and making officers accountable every time they use a firearm, the emphasis is on "racism", something for which there is no objective measure and having all the explanatory power of asking ‘how long is a piece of string?’ It’s a popular badge to display because it allows the wearer to get a warm glow of satisfaction from ‘calling out’ racists. If by chance the murder of George Floyd causes anyone to remember their humanity and dare to say they think all lives matter, you can call that racist too!’
Anyone viewing the recent video of the events just before a female officer drew her gun thinking she was drawing her Taser, cannot fail to notice the abrasive, bullying behaviour shown by the male officer. It’s the attitude of the police to people they are arresting not the colour of the skin of the victim 20 year old Daunte Wright which led to his death.
If you still think that ‘racism’ is at the root of the problem with policing in the USA try typing the words ‘73 year old woman dementia’ into your favourite search engine. (Startpage, DuckDuckGo, Google) You’ll be presented with more than two dozen reports and a YouTube video relating to the story of a 73 year old woman suffering from dementia being thrown to the ground, and cuffed so violently that she had her arm broken and her shoulder dislocated when she was arrested in Colorado.
After the killing of George Floyd a group calling itself ‘Black Lives Matter; Activist Coalition’ received donations totalling £1.2 million from a gullible British public.
Question; Are Age Concern, Dementia UK and Alzheimer’s Society about to be beneficiaries of similar largess? I think not!
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IN Great Britain the common law offence of blasphemy was abolished in May 2008. Which suggest that the recent BBC News headline ‘Batley Grammar School: Blasphemy debate leaves town at crossroads’ is not simply misleading but mischievous. For more than 150 years before that it had been restricted to protecting the "tenets and beliefs of the Church of England". It has not been missed as the last case in which anyone went to jail was in 1922 when John William Gott was sentenced to nine months hard labour for comparing Jesus with a circus clown. There is no record of whether God thought this was necessary.
A late amendment to the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 contained a clause which reads "Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system."
The legislation has been attacked by a number of Muslims on the basis that it is too rigidly drawn, and that the scope of the offence of incitement to religious hatred is too narrow. The amendment noted above was inserted after campaigns by religious and secular groups, and comedians and satirists who were concerned that as originally drafted the act to hinder free speech.
In an Australian case brought by the Islamic Council of Victoria citing the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001, which applies to public behaviour not personal beliefs, the outcome was a statement agreed to by both parties which affirmed everyone's rights to "robustly debate religion including the right to criticise the religious belief of another, in a free, open and democratic society".
In a nutshell the actions of the teacher in the Batley Grammar School case were not unlawful in the UK. Had the intension been to vilify Muslims rather than to discuss blasphemy it would have fallen within the scope of the act.
The protests outside Batley Grammar School are an attempt to introduce a new blasphemy law by stealth.
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APART from the disastrous Operation Midland investigation into the lurid claims of a ’toffs’ paedophile and murder ring which resulted in substantial payment of damages to those accused and whose reputations were ruined, the police service has a pretty good record in dextrously handling the various ‘moral panics’ which beset us from time to time.
It kept out of the witchcraft stories of Geoffrey Dickens MP, he of the famous ‘dossier’ which he handed to then Home Secretary Leon Brittan. Whilst the NSPCC made a fool of itself over ‘Satanic Abuse’ and would now like us all to quietly forget its role, the police service avoided deep involvement. More recently it emerged with a great deal more credibility than Simon Danczuk with its investigation into his claims about the unsavoury goings on at Knowl View school.
A quick arrest after the murder of Sarah Everard has ensured that, whilst politicians from all parties pledge their desire to ‘do something about violence against women’, the police service has been seen to be doing its job.
But what do you do when a lot of schoolgirls anonymously share their claims of ‘sexual harassment’ on a website? Does anyone really want to have to interview all these girls and the lads they are accusing, with the ever present possibility that at the end of the investigation someone will have to declare that some of the claims are really ‘porky pies’ encouraged and made possible by the anonymity of the WWW? So what to do?
I know; lets wheel out a senior office who talks about ‘victims and survivors’, code for ‘we believe you girls, just as we said we believed Carl Beech’s claims that led to Operation Midland’, that should divert any criticism that we don’t take these claims seriously, then let’s get into Pontius Pilate mode and suggest a public inquiry to sort out the mess.
QED
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THE Times recently carried a piece with the headline ‘Let women use weapons against abusers, urges QC’. Dame Vera Baird, the ‘Victims Commissioner’ wants Priti Patel to change the law to allow victims of domestic abuse to use disproportionate force in self defence. At present a domestic abuse victim can lawfully use only strictly proportionate force to protect themselves.
This woman is a QC and one might expect she would have given some thought to the possible consequences of such a change. Aside from the problem of a woman murdering her husband under the guise of self defence, it has the potential to change a violent, but non-lethal, attack upon a woman into a killing, if the perpetrator feels himself threatened with a weapon being wielded by the victim.
Any competent defence lawyer make the most of this.
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WHILST I think the claim that the ‘No Wrong Door’ approach, quoted by someone speaking for Rochdale Council in the original report by Nick Statham, as being ‘highly effective’, might be ready for some reappraisal after the report by Ofsted which resulted in yet another entry for the town in Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs column, I am not unsympathetic to the problems that any town will face in trying to care for recalcitrant teenagers.
It should be noted that no one at this home, or any other, has the power to detain these children against their will. When the ‘grooming scandal’ came to light there were claims that at least one parent had been unable to control his daughter’s movements and had felt it necessary to approach Social Services for assistance. It is by no means impossible that had the parent exercised the control he thought necessary to protect his daughter, Social Services would have been expected to intervene to protect her from deprivation of her liberty by her father.
As a society we demand two sometimes incompatible things; that young people up to the age of 18 be treated as ‘children’, which by definition implies that they be given special protection, and that young people always be treated as independent agents able to make rational choices. As the case highlighted demonstrates a tension exists between what we expect and what we will allow.
Until we as a society find a satisfactory way of resolving this tension we will continue to read of many more cases like this.
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IN a recent piece I quoted the response of Councillor John Hartley to someone who contacted him highlighting the fact that Rochdale’s Chief Executive, Steve Rumbelow, is being paid a salary for doing a second job whilst supposedly working full time for Rochdale MBC and that this had been sanctioned by councillors. His response was effectively: ‘you could have been at the Council meeting which did this, if you were not you have no reason to complain now’.
We seem to have a man here who fails to understand the nature of representative democracy. If you vote for a particular policy, then being asked to justify your action to that part of the electorate which think that policy is wrong, is part of the job.
Not picking up e-mails, failing to respond, querying why they have been contacted, responding with platitudes, terminating exchanges when pressed, are stock in trade for some Rochdale councillors. Nationally Governments of all political stripes come under pressure from the broadcast and print media. That pressure is absent in Rochdale because the print and on-line media in the town function in the political sphere as little more than outlets for press releases originating from publicity aware local councillors.
It wasn’t always like this in the town. In the 1970s RAP, the Rochdale Alternative Paper, edited by David Bartlett and John Walker, did hold local politicians to account. It was RAP, not Simon Danczuk, which revealed in 1979 details of Cyril Smith’s behaviour at Cambridge House. The present incumbents at Number 1 Riverside are perhaps fortunate that their antics are not subject to similar scrutiny and it appears that some of them want to keep it that way.
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IT would seem that my puzzlement about Councillor Blundell’s standard response to messages sent to his council e-mail address has been clarified and we now know we are in the land of ‘porky pies’. The fact that he has been allowed to get away with this for so long does not reflect well on either the Council Leader or the council officer responsible for Governance. Perhaps one of these people will be kind enough to tell us just how residents are supposed to raise with this councillor matters which are of concern to them; by snail- mail?
It’s not just Blundell who doesn’t want to be troubled by awkward questions. This is what someone received when he tried to raise questions about 'Two Jobs Rumbelow' with Councillor John Hartley:
Dear Mr ****, Sorry I missed your call today as I was giving my services as a volunteer at the vaccine centre which I think was far better use of my time than speaking with you on the telephone. Now regarding your constant emails, all I am going to say is that the council decision was made in an open and transparent manner and you could have been at that full council meeting as a member of the public to check it out had you of wished to do so. I am not your councillor and do not wish to make any further comment on this matter and I will not responding any further.
Regards XXXX.
A borderline rude response from someone who seems to have an inflated sense of his own importance.
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'TWO-JOBS RUMBELOW' - A GIANT AMONG PYGMIES
or is he MILKING the MASSES in the Land of Gracie Fields?
SOMETIME in the future, the city of Metropolis is home to a Utopian society where its wealthy residents live a care free life. One of those is Freder Fredersen. One day, he spots a beautiful woman with a group of children, she and the children quickly disappear. Trying to follow her, he is horrified to find an underground world of workers who apparently run the machinery that keeps the Utopian world above ground functioning. In Metropolis the citizens are sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working-class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
In one of the film's most memorable scenes ( one of many ) Freder Fredersen sees an exhausted worker in overalls desperately struggling with the mechanical hands of the clock measuring the passage of long and arduous shifts. In a scene redolent of recurring memes in literature such as , The Prince & The Pauper, or A Tale Of Two Cities, when Sydney Carton’s sacrifice of his own life on behalf of his friends Charles Darnay on the guillotine of Revolutionary France, Fredersen asks to swap places with the worker to give him some respite from his torturous labours and the brutalisation of long repetitive shifts seemingly without end.
Freder arduously working a ten-hour shift on the clock machine. Freder is like a Christ figure, crucified on the clock. From Fritz Lang's sci-fi silent classic.Metropolis (1927).
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Free the Riverside One!' Further to Mark Birkett & Les Mays articles by Andrew Wastling
LIKE all readers of Northern Voices I have also been following the issue of Steve 'Two-Jobs' Rumbelow with growing disbelief and anger. Some might argue that in a town where a councillor is allowed two votes it was surely only a matter of time before a subtly illogical extension of this Orwellian Double-Think culture would eventually mean we were always destined to arrive at a situation where the Councils Chief Executive Officer would have two full-time jobs, draw two full-time salaries and presumably have twice the number of holidays of your typical worker whilst achieving only half the expected outcomes.
Steve 'Two-Jobs' Rumbelow can sometimes be seen in the background of our local NHS CCG Zoom meetings resplendent in his natural habitat of silent participant in yet another interminable online meeting where anything of value is not discussed until the cameras and microphones are switched off and the Public Excluded from what very little remains of the democratic process. The online meeting remains nonetheless by far the best environment in which to see him exhibiting the superhuman powers which enable Steve to hold down two full time jobs at one and the same time . His masterful grasp of both of his employment remits and Zoom meeting technology can be clearly observed to maximum effect each time he remembers to unmute his laptop to share his valuable pearls of wisdom with the assembled participants. You only have to observe him in action to see that he is worth so clearly worth every penny of both his salaries.
I pride myself as something of an advanced multi-tasker myself I can generally deal with obstructive Council sycophants via email , make a mental note of the kick-off times of the away day match, remember to test the fire alarms, keep all my case notes in (more or less) order all whilst mopping the office floor and singing a happy song as I go along but even I'm forced to admit defeat and acknowledge that Steve's innate prowess leaves me merley lumbering along on the hard shoulder of life. In fact we are all left running on the spot in the starting blocks as Steve effortly transcends life's many insurmountable hurdles.
When work ethics and motivation was being handed out to the rest of us humble members of the British proletariat Steve was clearly out there at the front of the queue - a pole position he has endeavoured with very fibre & sinew to maintain ever since. He is after all clearly an elite member of Britain's famed meritocracy. Whilst many local workers struggle to meet ends meet and are forced onto the charity of foodbanks & mutual aid food networks despite juggling several part time or zero-contract jobs Steve's Patrician countenance it seems bareley needs to break into a sweat.
Like so many of us, I naturally assumed at first the whole thing was a scam reflecting the very worst elements of the local nepotism & cronyism we have all come to expect. How wrong I was!
I have been informed on good authority that Mr.Rumbelow has been gifted the necessary personal qualities and transferable professional skills which us lesser mortals can only dream of. He is one of the select few. Why else would he be in Rochdale after all?
His inscrutable Zen -like online demeanor was simply Steve approaching the nirvana of Bureaucratic Enlightenment as he silently mentally calculates his rate of pay per hour whilst doing two appointed tasks simultaneously whilst deducting precisely any personal expenses which might impact on his personal yearly tax rate minus anything he can possibly avoid under Gift Aid legislation - that or he'd fallen asleep through sheer exhaustion!
One can only marvel at the mathematical genius needed to calculate the mileage allowance whilst performing two different job descriptions for two seperate job roles whilst driving to two different meeting destinations in the same car . . . or is it two-cars?
The man is nothing short of inspirational! He presumably prepares for two Monthly Target Reviews with his employer(s) and completes two sets of yearly Continuing Professional Development training courses and contends with double the hangover from two Office Christmas parties. One wonders how he finds any time left to run the Council?
That is the spanner in the works for poor old Rumbelow.
I have only recently been reliably informed of the Gulag conditions Steve endures whilst incarcerated in No1 Riverside, his tortuous hours ,the selfless separation he is forced to endure from his family and loved ones whilst he slogs through his brutal work life balance in his ascetic near monastic isolation. One can only marvel at his strength of character, his enduring stamina and dedicated selfless commitment to Public Service he exhibits in his daily working regime?
I can only suggest Steve joins a union as a matter of urgency to avoid the need to work such excessive hours to feed and clothe his family and we as socially concerned citizens and trade unionists launch a 'Free the Riverside One!' campaign to see this cruel exploitation of a fellow worker is not allowed to continue an hour longer than absolutely necessary.
After all comrades we would all I'm sure do the same for any other victim of indentured or sweatshop labour brutalized into slaving away for eighty plus hours a week anywhere else on the planet? Quite how Steve will be able to join us on two separate picket lines at the same time should he go on strike and withdraw his labour simultaneously from two separate employees to improve his working conditions in two seperate locations remains anybody's guess?
Workers of the world Unite !
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ON November 2019 I tried to bring something to the attention of Councillor Blundell using his Rochdale MBC e-mail address John.Blundell@Rochdale.gov.uk. Back came the response:
'This email is checked periodically due to lack of suitable access.'
Though it struck me as rather strange that a (supposedly) active councillor who, even if he did not have internet access at home, could certainly access e-mails from his Council office, should be using this as an excuse for not responding, I did not pursue the matter further at the time,
Quite by chance someone mentioned in a recent telephone conversation that they had received an identical e-mail within the last few days when they had tried to bring something to the attention of Councillor Blundell. Which struck me as rather odd.
Odd, because there hasn’t been any face to face Council meetings for some time and I think we must assume that Council business meetings are being transacted via an Internet based tool like Zoom. Which raises some interesting questions.
Is Councillor Blundell still drawing his full allowance whilst not being able to transact any Council business due to ‘a lack of suitable access’? Or is he taking part in these virtual meetings and his response to people who try to contact him using his Council e-mail is in the realms of being a bit of a ‘Porky Pie’, intended to shield him from having to answer any potentially embarrassing questions?
Over to you Councillor Blundell?
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WHILST it's important that everyone in Rochdale hold their respective ward councillors to account for their WHOLESALE lack of oversight regarding Rochdale MBC Chief Executive Steve Rumbelow's pay abuse, it's important NOT to end up in cul-de-sac arguments about whether he Mr Rumbelow 'worth it' or not. Though public-sector pay at the higher echelons of Rochdale Council and elsewhere in the UK is pretty clearly out of control, that is a SEPARATE and ultimately distracting argument.
The TRULY SALIENT points regarding Mr Rumbelow's paypacket in Rochdale are:
1) NO-ONE can do two full-time jobs at once, not even Mr Rumbelow. Yet that is PRECISELY what Mr Rumbelow is being paid for. TWO full-time jobs.
2) Yet on July 18th 2018, the entire Labour and Tory councillor groups VOTED IN FAVOUR of Mr Rumbelow doing these two FULL-time jobs without giving the slightest consideration to the real ramifications of the sheer impossibility of such. Rumbelow is paid £140,000 per year as a FULL-TIME CEO, and a further £45-50,000 / year as a FULL-TIME 'Accountable Officer' in the NHS.
3) That Mr Rumbelow refuses to answer what PROPORTION of his working day is now spent working for the NHS (and thus demonstrably NOT spent on his full-time role as RMBC Chief Executive). That is a TRAVESTY of democratic accountability
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4) Most damaging of all for Rochdale Council's tattered reputation, is that we now know that Rochdale MBC's 60 x councillors have been TOLD by the Borough Solicitor "not to respond" to constituent queries about the matter. Instead of the Borough's most senior legal advisor keeping his advice within a LEGAL remit, he has interfered with DUE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS. No explanation has been provided for him singling out THIS issue for councillors 'not to respond' to, nor even what time limit might apply to this absurd advice to them all, despite him being asked (twice).
This advice to Rochdale MBC councillors is one the key reasons no-one can get any straight answers from ANY councillor regarding their failure to scrutinise this executive pay package and associated dual duties properly, and is perhaps also why Mr Rumbelow feels ZERO obligation to tell taxpayers what he does all day long. Let's be clear: neither the NHS nor Rochdale MBC are benefiting from the so-called 'efficiencies' due to the integration of health care commissioning and social care. The ONLY person benefiting here is Mr Rumbelow.
To add insult to injury, Mr Rumbelow just received a WHOPPING 25% pay rise to the NHS element of his vast income, yet as we speak Rochdale Council is seriously proposing that care home fees to the vulnerable elderly in the Borugh be hiked by 5% next year ... all in order to 'save' the Council £80,000 per year -ironically almost exactly the same sum Mr Rumbelow has trousered since July 2018 for this impossible second role at the NHS.
It MUST be stopped.
The Budget Council meetings on 3rd and 10th March 2021 are where this appalling abuse of the public purse COULD be called into question and reviewed from scratch. But that will only happen IF councillors are all pressured to do so.
By you. Today.
And they WILL listen to you. After all, the local elections are coming soon enough (vaccines permitting). So it is VITAL for Rochdalians to threaten not to vote for ANY councillor who refuses to stop this pay abuse, or who refuses to call a motion to review Mr Rumbelow's ridiculous dual role, or who continues to take part in refusing to provide answers to legtimate queries form constituents on this matter.
Remember:
This is YOUR money at stake here. Thousands in Rochdale have lost their jobs, their businesses and their incomes due to COVID. And old people do NOT want to be forced to pay even more for their care in care homes to save the council money whilst the Chief Executive waltzes off with an eye watering pay packet AND a 25% pay rise in one year to boot .
And this is YOUR democracy at stake here too. Councillors must be FORCED to answer legitimate constituent queries, or be removed from office.
It's up to ALL of us to deal with this.
Mark Birkett, Resident, Kingsway, Rochdale
A RECENT article on the BBC news website was headed; ‘Covid: Teachers "not at higher risk" of death than average’. But buried within it was a more interesting take on who in the working age population, that’s 20 to 64 year olds, are at the greatest risk of death from Covid 19.
The ONS looked at death rates from coronavirus in England and Wales between 9 March and 28 December 2020. It found 31 in every 100,000 working-age men and 17 in every 100,000 working-age women had died of Covid-19. This equated to just under 8,000 deaths among 20-64-year-olds. (Which you will note is rather higher than the ‘Anti-lockdown brigade’ would have us believe) Two-thirds of these deaths were among men.
The same pattern emerged among teachers when primary and secondary staff were taken together. There were 18 deaths per 100,000 among men and 10 per 100,000 among women. These figures are of course both less than for the whole population. Breaking that down by role, the figures for secondary school teachers were 39 deaths per 100,000 people in men and 21 per 100,000 in women. These figures are of course both more than for the whole population.
Amongst nurses the same pattern appeared, 79 male nurses per 100,000 and 25 female nurses per 100,000. For care workers it was 110 men per 100,000 and 47 women per 100,000.
Even if secondary teachers were at higher risk than some other professional jobs where few or no deaths have occurred it is nothing like the risks faced by non-professionals.
Per 100,000 men aged 20-64, the figures were 119 restaurant and catering staff, 106 metal-working machine operatives, 101 taxi drivers and 100 security guards. These compare with a figure of 31 per 100,000 for the working age male population as a whole. In approximately comparable roles for women the figures per 100,000 were 27 retail and sales assistants and 22 cleaners. In summary people working in insecure, low paid have suffered a higher death rate than ‘professionals’ and amongst them men have been significantly more at risk than women.
There’s nothing new in this. This is what I wrote in an article for Northern Voices last June with the title Levelling The Gradient. ‘There is little appetite in the UK for recognising the effects of our very unequal society on the lives of our citizens, irrespective of their skin colour. Even when studies to examine the impact of inequality are done, their findings are ignored. And it’s not just the Tories who are wilfully blind. In February two of the candidates for the Labour leadership felt that a Jewish pressure group and a ‘trans’ pressure group needed their public support, but when the Marmot review which looked at differences in health outcomes appeared later in the month it had zero impact on the campaign.
The media gave prominence to only one finding; that 'Female life expectancy declined in the most deprived 10 percent of neighbourhoods’ and ignored both the large disparity in life expectancy (LE) between people of higher and people of lower economic and social status, and that, irrespective of economic status women tend to live longer than men. (see page 18, Figure 2.4) reported in the review. (my emphasis).
http://www.instituteofhealthequity.org/resources-reports/marmot-review-10-years-on/the-marmot-review-10-years-on-full-report.pdf
These disparities also exist with regard to the disability free life expectancy (DFLE), i.e. the number of years of life someone will have free from disability. The review referred to these differences as forming a ‘social gradient’.
What the review showed was that in England, the difference in life expectancy at birth between the least deprived 10% of the population and the most deprived 10% was more than 9 years for men and more than 7 years for women. Life expectancy at birth for men living in the most deprived areas in England was 74 years, compared with 83 years in the least deprived areas; the corresponding figures for women were 79 and 86 years in 2016-18. (see pages 15-17, figures 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3) in the review.’
The British Left has become obsessed with ‘Institutional Racism’. I would like to see more attention paid to ‘Institutional Inequality’.
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I AM responding to the piece by Will Jones taken from the ‘Lockdown Sceptics’ website.
Let us start with a few statements which I think are sufficiently well established that we can call them facts.
1. The cause of the disease known as Covid 19 is a virus.
2. The virus has the ability to infect humans.
3. The virus can be transmitted between humans.
4. The virus can enter the body via our eyes, our nose and our mouth.
5. Infected people carry virus particles in their upper respiratory tract.
6. Speaking, singing, coughing, sneezing and breathing cause infected people to shed into the air virus particles in droplets and aerosols which do not settle immediately, but may do so after a time depending on their size.
7. Virus particles can be inhaled as droplets or aerosol.
8. Droplets settle out of air more rapidly than aerosols.
9. People who are infected may shed the virus without showing clinical symptoms.
10. Virus particles settling on surfaces remain capable of causing infection for variable amounts of time depending on the nature of the surface.
11. Virus particles can be transferred to our hands by touching a contaminated surface.
So what do these tell us about how we can reduce the spread of infections?
Point 4 suggests we should so far as possible avoid touching our eyes, nose or mouth.
Points 10 and 11 suggest we should take steps to decontaminate surfaces regularly or if this is not possible place anything entering our house in quarantine for a period.
Points 4, 10 and 11 suggest we should wash our hands regularly.
Points 3, 5. 6, 7 and 9 suggest we should try to encounter as few people as possible.
Point 7 suggests that if we do encounter people we should attempt to keep as far away from them as possible and that a physical barrier such as a mask, worn by them and us, may help to protect us from inhaling droplets, but unless produced to n95 specifications will not fully protect us from aerosols.
All the above methods of reducing the spread of infections are ‘non pharmaceutical’ methods. Taken alone, none will guarantee that we will remain free of infection, but each incrementally reduces the likelihood of picking up the infection. That’s why hospitals implement similar, but more stringent methods. In other words, contrary to what Will Jones claims, non pharmaceutical methods do work.
Will Jones may not like what the government is doing, but however flawed their methods are they are simply an attempt to use what we know about the virus and how it spreads, to reduce the number of infections.
The restrictions which have been implemented will cause economic damage, and they will restrict children’s education, but not making any attempt to halt the number of infections also has its costs.
Is he suggesting that in order to allow hospitals to continue functioning as they did before the pandemic they should effectively close their doors to Covid 19 patients? Is he suggesting that it is acceptable to expect nurses and doctors to treat a continuing stream of Covid 19 patients when any one of them may be the cause of their death? Is he suggesting that an increase of more than a million (1,013,190) new infections in the three week period 19 December to 9 January will not have economic and social costs? Is he able to assure us that the behaviour of himself and his lockdown sceptical friends has not resulted the death from Covid 19 of anyone who had the misfortune to encounter them?
He claims that it would be ‘inhumane to expect the vulnerable to shut themselves away’. These are fine words. I am one of the ‘vulnerable’ as is my wife and most of our friends. Since last March the only time I have been more than 200m from my house taking exercise, is a visit to the doctors for a flu jab. And one reason for that is because I don’t know when I am going to meet someone who does not take the guidelines on distancing and the other non pharmaceutical interventions seriously, in other words a ‘Lockdown Sceptic’. One could say their ‘freedom’ is my ‘prison’.
In his autobiographical account of the development of British radar during WW2 Robert Watson-Watt says that when under pressure to improve the equipment he always accepted the 3rd best solution. His reasoning was that the 2nd best would be too late and the best would never arrive. Lockdowns may be a third rate solution to controlling infections, but they may also be the best we are ever going to get until, people like Will Jones recognise that their behaviour may be contributing to prolonging the pandemic.
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A REGULAR THEME of what I have written for Northern Voices is the threat to freedom of speech posed by those who try to prevent people whose views they disagree with from presenting them to others. When this happens in universities and colleges it is commonly called ‘no platforming’. It’s a staple tactic of those who engage in the politics of identity.
It is the antithesis of how George Orwell defined liberty when he said ‘It is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’. So is the decision by Twitter to refuse to allow Donald Trump to post on the social media platform an attack on liberty?
The Twitter decision does not prevent Trump saying whatever he likes. Twitter is under no obligation to provide space on it’s servers for the outpourings of Trump, myself or anyone else. If he wants to use some form of social media to enlighten his followers with his wisdom, he is entirely at liberty to set up his own version of Twitter.
Veteran Trump watchers will recognise the irony of his complaint. There are many instances at his press conferences of his refusing to answer questions he does not like and denigrating accredited journalists.
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WHEN I first became interested in left wing politics in the early 1960s the people I met were primarily interested reducing inequalities of income, wealth, power and influence. Times change; being ‘of the left’ today frequently means an obsession with identity politics. Inequalities between groups which can be attributed to differences of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, you name it, are all seen as grist to the mill. Inequalities of income, wealth, power and influence within these different groups are largely ignored.
Today the BBC reported; ‘Three quarters of employers want large firms to be forced to release data on the pay gap between staff of different ethnicities, a leaked report shows. The findings, seen by the BBC, came from a consultation exercise on ethnicity pay gap reporting launched by Theresa May in October 2018. The then PM promised to 'help employers identify the actions needed to create a fairer and more diverse workforce'. But two years later, the government has yet to respond’.
The news report included an interview with someone who was described as a ‘consultant’, which presumably means they were being paid quite a lot of money for doing this very important job. Now it happens that the interviewee was a woman and she was black. But the question which occurs to me is should I get more excited that in some big company someone who happens to be black and/or a woman is being paid a paltry £110,000 when her white male counterpart is being paid £120,000, or should I be more concerned that the same company has a proportion of it’s staff on zero hours contracts being paid minimum wage.
If we are going to have big companies forced to report the pay gap between staff of different ethnicities and sexes, then by the same token companies should be forced to report the differences in remuneration between executives, managers, shop floor workers and toilet cleaners.
One of the ways I shall judge Keir Starmer is whether he shows any sign of a commitment to reducing income and wealth inequalities. Signposting his willingness to support mandatory reporting of the pay gap within companies would be a good start.
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