Not Seeing The Wood For The Trees

 Not Seeing The Wood For The Trees

by Les May

THE juxtaposition of my article There’s No Pockets In A Shroud with articles dealing with the iniquities of local councils might be taken to mean that I think that this is the main issue to be solved with regard to the social care of those who require it due to age, infirmity or accident. That is not my view and I have some sympathy with local councils who have to implement a social care system they did not establish and are expected to do so without the necessary funding, by cutting their budget in other areas of operation. That some will resort to dodgy practices tells us more about the integrity of the officers and councillors involved than about how the flaws in the present system can be remedied.

As I tried to stress we have a system of social care in England which has a strong resemblance to the health system we had in the 1930s and which was found wanting. In other words our social care system is funded partially by central government, partially by local government, partially by individuals who are unfortunate as to need to make use of it, and partially by those who work in it via poor pay and poor conditions of service.

The 1930s health care system was swept away by the coming of the National Health Service in 1948. This was (and is) both universal and comprehensive. It is based upon the principle of shared risk and shared funding. In other words we acknowledge that we can all become ill or have an accident, and so all of us should pay our share to fund it. ‘Our share’ means not that we all pay the same amount, but that those who earn more, pay more. In other words it is redistributive. Some fortunate people will be able to boast they ‘never had a day’s illness in their life’ and some unfortunate people will have child born with chronic condition.

It is unrealistic to expect to fund a similar universal and comprehensive system of social care via further taxes on income so we must look towards implementing taxes on wealth, specifically taxes on inherited wealth. In this context the term universal means free at source to everyone regardless of income or wealth, and comprehensive means both residential and non-residential support. Universal means the rich, the poor and everyone in between.

For most of us our ‘wealth’ is tied up in the house we live in. House price inflation comfortably outstrips the general rate of inflation of the cost of other goods and services, and has done for many years. Hence those fortunate enough to be a house owner have had to do absolutely nothing as the cash value of their house increases, nor have their beneficiaries after they die, so I see little moral objection to a tax on inherited wealth. Unless that is you think personal greed is a virtue.

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UK to have two-week quarantine for air passengers

 Under the move, passengers entering the country will have to provide an address where they will self-isolate for 14 days.

Airlines UK, the trade body for UK registered airlines, has confirmed to Sky News that the move will be introduced by the government for anyone arriving into the UK other than from Ireland, to ease the spread of COVID-19.

The announcement on travel is reportedly set to be made by Prime Minister Boris Johnson when he sets out a road map for easing the coronavirus lockdown in an address to the nation on Sunday.

ACCORDING TO SKY NEWS today under the measures, which are expected to come into force in June, all passengers arriving at airports - including returning UK citizens - will have to provide an address where they will self-isolate for 14 days.

Ports will also be included, according to The Times.

The report states that authorities will carry out spot checks, and those found breaking the rules face a fine of up to £1,000 or even deportation.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "We do not comment on leaks. The focus remains on staying at home to protect the NHS and save lives."

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Ombudsman finds Havering council's failure

 to meet woman's care needs left her covering the shortfall with her own savings

By Charlotte Carter on January 17, 2020

A council breached the Care Act by setting an arbitrary upper limit for a woman’s live-in care that failed to cover the costs of meeting her needs, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has found.

The ombudsman found that Havering council in East London allocated Mrs Y, who has advanced dementia, its standard rate for live-in care in November 2018 in the knowledge that none of the agencies on its provider list met this rate. This meant she had to cover the shortfall using her own savings. This was in breach of the requirement under the Care Act for a personal budget to be sufficient to meet the needs a council is required to meet.


A council breached the Care Act by setting an arbitrary upper limit for a woman’s live-in care that failed to cover the costs of meeting her needs, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has found. 
The ombudsman found that Havering council allocated Mrs Y, who has advanced dementia, its standard rate for live-in care in November 2018 in the knowledge that none of the agencies on its provider list met this rate. This meant she had to cover the shortfall using her own savings. This was in breach of the requirement under the Care Act for a personal budget to be sufficient to meet the needs a council is required to meet. 
The failing was one of a number of faults by the council uncovered in the investigation including: 

• failing to meet Mrs Y’s eligible needs for home and day care following an assessment in September 2018, which resulted in her having to meet the costs herself and her daughter, Ms X, having to contact the council to say her mother’s condition had deteriorated; 
• failing to arrange overnight care for Mrs Y after a reassessment in October 2018 concluded she needed this, which led Ms X to set this up herself; 
• waiting six weeks to carry out an urgent assessment of her capacity to make decisions about her accommodation and care, during which she was left at risk;  
• not backdating payments for care Mrs Y should have received to the correct date; 
• causing Ms X “unnecessary stress and frustration” by requiring her to chase the authority numerous times for responses to communication, copies of documents, financial assessments and to start a direct payment application. 

Full reimbursement

Havering has agreed to the ombudsman’s proposed remedies: to establish how much Mrs Y has paid to cover the shortfall in her care and reimburse her in full; reassess her personal budget, taking account of the cost of available care and providing Ms X with a written apology and £250 for the failings and the trouble she had been put to. It also accepted his recommendation to consider whether other service users have been affected by arbitrary upper limits on care rates and take any necessary action to address this, and amend procedures to ensure it doesn’t set arbitrary limits on any care provision.  
Until July 2018, Mrs Y had privately funded her home care. Then her funds fell below the threshold for help with care fees, leading Ms X, who manages her mother’s paperwork and finances, to contact the council requesting an assessment.

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Ombudsman slams Tameside Council's 'top-up'!

 Criticism of council for ‘forcing’ resident to pay unlawful care home top-up

By Rachel Carter on October 3, 2014 in Adults, Residential care

A care home resident was forced to pay an unlawful top-up fee after Tameside Council made changes to the fees it paid her home, a Local Government Ombudsman investigation has found.

THE investigation, whose findings have been strongly disputed by the council, was launched after a man complained that his mother had had to pay additional costs for her care after the authority cut the fee it paid her home.
The woman, Mrs Y, who had dementia, moved into the care home in October 2010, in a placement arranged by the council. Under the contract, the authority was responsible for meeting the weekly fees of £470.70 a week, incorporating a £381.70 basic fee, £30 for an en-suite bathroom, £9 for a larger room and a £50 quality premium for the home. Mrs Y made an assessed contribution of £113.20.
In 2012, Tameside reviewed the rates it paid for residential and nursing care placements and decided to introduce a new quality framework for homes to address an oversupply of beds in the borough. Under the framework, care homes providing a high quality of care received an enhanced payment from the council.
Mrs Y’s care home was not admitted onto the quality framework, meaning it could charge council-funded residents what it chose. However, the council also reduced the fees it paid for her care to £382, from March 2013. The council told Mrs Y’s son, Mr X, that, as the home had maintained the same fee of £470.70 he would have to make up the £88.70 shortfall as a top-up payment – but as he did not have these funds he began paying the top-up from his mother’s savings from March 2013 and informed the council of this fact.
Though Mr X believed it was not in his mother’s best interests to move from the home, he asked the council to assess the risk of moving her to another home. However, the council said it would only reassess her needs if it had been decided that she should move, and Mr X appeared unwilling to consider this.
Failure to follow law
The ombudsman, Jane Martin, found that the council had failed to act in accordance with the law and government guidance on choice of residential accommodation arranged under section 21 of the National Assistance Act 1948.
The guidance states that a resident may only top-up their council’s fee if they have a deferred payments agreement or are subject to the 12-week property disregard, otherwise any top-up must be made by a third party. Neither condition applied to Mrs Y, but the top-up came out of her resources.
Also, Martin pointed to the fact that a top-up requires the agreement of all parties, but said it had been “effectively forced” on the family, as Mr X felt there was no option but to make the top-up because of the risks of moving his mother to another home.
The ombudsman also said the council was at fault for not reassessing Mrs Y’s finances after changing her care fees, to check willingness and ability to meet the new costs.
The report also said the council failed to adhere to the terms of the contract governing Mrs Y’s care, which contained a “legitimate and reasonable expectation” that the council would meet the contractual fees agreed on admission unless there was a change in her needs.
Mrs Y died in March of this year.
‘Significant injustice’
The ombudsman said that Mrs Y and Mr X had suffered a “significant injustice” because of the council’s actions, and recommended that it:

• reimburse Mrs Y’s estate for the full amount of the third-party top-ups that have been made;
• provide Mr X with a full written apology;
• pay Mr X £250 to recognise his time and trouble in pursuing the complaint.
  

The ombudsman’s report also suggested that a further 160 residents may have been affected by the council’s changes to care commissioning, as they were resident in homes that were not admitted on to the council’s quality framework.
But Tameside council strongly disputed the findings and “categorically denied” that it failed to act in accordance with the law. A spokesperson for the council said that the report was fundamentally flawed and raised questions about whether the ombudsman herself had “unlawfully exceeded” her powers.
The spokesperson said: “The council reviewed its commissioning arrangements to ensure that only those homes that offered the highest standard of care get paid a quality premium rate. This was not about cost cutting.
“Tameside council continues to pay one of the highest care and nursing fees across the North West of England to support the most vulnerable in our community.  The purpose of this change, made in 2012, was to raise and maintain the quality of care in Tameside care homes whilst ensuring they remained financially sustainable.”

Claims rejected by council

The council also rejected the ombudsman’s claim that 160 other residents may have been affected. “This is inaccurate as the information provided by the council makes clear that the number at its highest is no more than 10, who we are in the process of writing to directly,” said the spokesperson.
“As the majority are in the same home, it is important this is kept in proportion, and that the poorer quality homes do not, as a result of this finding, believe they have been given the green light to charge what they like.”
Speaking in response to the case, Janet Morrison, chief executive of charity Independent Age, which campaigns strongly against the wrongful use of top-ups, said: “Too many families now find themselves paying top-up payments, sometimes amounting to be hundreds of pounds a week, for essential care. The root cause of this problem is a residential care system that is chronically under-funded.
“Families are increasingly having to subsidise local councils to meet the costs of care it is really the responsibility of councils to meet, so we need the government to protect people from paying unfair ‘top-ups’ as part of the shake-up of the rules from April 2015.”

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There’s No Pockets In A Shroud

by Les May

WHEN Theresa May called a General Election in 2017 one proposal in the Tory Manifesto was immediately dubbed a ‘Dementia Tax’.   At present councils pay for all or part of a person’s social care if they have less than £23,250 in capital. This applies if a person is in a residential home or nursing home. The cost is then recouped from their estate after their death.  May also wanted to recover from their estate the costs of care given to people in their own home, to raise the protected sum to £100,000 and axe the Winter Fuel Allowance for more affluent pensioners.

These proposals went down like the proverbial ‘lead balloon’.  They were attacked by both Labour and the Liberal Democrats.  The Tories could reasonably argue that this was a better deal for relatively poorer people who needed residential care and would mean that the costs of care given in the home would be recouped only from the more wealthy.  Strictly speaking of course that’s not quite true.  Until someone finds a foolproof, (and fire proof?) way of putting ‘pockets in a shroud’ it will be the beneficiaries of the estate who will have their inheritance reduced.

Social care today is in the same state as health care was in the 1930s, a hodgepodge of partly national and partly local provision, and funded partly by those who have the misfortune to need long term care, often with pressure applied to their spouse or family, and partly from the public purse.   Unlike the NHS which is ‘free at the point of delivery’ social care is not built around a ‘shared risk model’.

Such a model would recognise that throughout our life we all run a small risk of requiring social and residential care due to age, infirmity or accident, hence we should all make a contribution to funding that care for those who need it.

The simplest and most effective way of doing this is via the tax system.  But here we have a choice we can either raise the money through a tax on income or through a tax on wealth, specifically a tax on inherited wealth.  When the costs of care are recouped after someone’s death the burden falls on the estate not the deceased individual.   If you doubt this you might like to consider that a dead person does not own their own body, so how can they be said to own property or other assets?

Switching to such a funding model would go much further than Labour’s 2010 proposal for a ‘National Care Service’.  Labour shied away from a fully tax funded system as being too costly to be a sustainable model on the basis that it would put too high a financial burden on the decreasing proportion of the population that is of working age (p126 below).  I fail to see that a tax based upon inherited wealth would not be sustainable.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/238441/7854.pdf

The distinction between social (or personal) care and medically required care is an artificial one.  Dementia is a chronic medical condition; it results in sufferers requiring social care in their own home.  Why should the necessary care for both the condition and its side effects not come from the same source?

May’s ‘crime’ was to try to have an adult conversation with people who prefer not to think about the problem of funding care for older people and send to parliament people who are similarly reluctant to talk about it.  In 2019 the lesson was learned, no one wanted a caning for talking out of turn.  The Tories pledged an extra £1bn, the Lib Dems £3bn and Labour £10bn by 2024 to fund in home social care for all who needed it and to ensure that carers were paid at least £10 an hour with no ‘zero hours contracts’.

These are significant sums of money, but even Labour’s proposals leave the question of funding residential care for those who need it unresolved.  This matters because the available funding has an impact on the quality of care which is provided.   Nothing illustrates this more sharply than the spectacle of the owners of ‘run for profit’ residential homes asking to be provided with kit to protect staff and residents against coronavirus, and being told it is their responsibility.

We need a politician with vision and determination to keep fighting for a universal and comprehensive care model for those who need it due to age or a chronic medical condition funded by a tax on inherited wealth, in the face of short sighted claims that it is a ‘death tax’ or a ‘tax on the sick’.  As I said earlier, ‘there’s no pockets in a shroud’.  Even though I am unlikely to be the recipient of inherited wealth it seems to me it would be better to have the certainty 80% of something rather than run the risk of 100% of nothing!

http://www.renewal.org.uk/articles/death-and-taxes

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2017/03/death-tax-social-care

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North West TUC: post pandemic workers' consensus

Introduction

The Covid-19 pandemic is the latest crisis to expose western economic and social orthodoxies as wholly inadequate for meeting modern global challenges which also include climate change, poverty, war and the mass displacement of people. In the UK, massive state intervention has been necessary, not least to ameliorate some of the effects of 40 years of austerity which intensified following the 2008 global financial crash. Our population has been exposed, not just to a deadly virus, but also to the importance of key - previously undervalued - workers (producers) and the impotence of markets.

The government’s initial laissez-fair response which sought to develop a Darwinian “herd immunity” has been forced to evolve quickly, take heed of progressive voices such as the TUC and now includes measures to underwrite the incomes of tens of millions of people – not out of benevolence but in order to maintain consumer demand and the stability of financial institutions in the short-term.

When organs of monopoly capital such as the Financial Times¹ begin speculating about a post-pandemic economy requiring “radical reform” in which “public services [are] investments rather than liabilities… [when we must] look for ways to make labour markets less insecure” and “redistribution” is necessary, it becomes obvious that conditions are ripe for fundamental change. Things probably will never be the same again but our movement needs to be clear that minor reforms do not represent the sum total of our ambitions – even if, in the early days of an anticipated backlash or intensified class conflict, they appear to represent a welcome alternative to the default prospect of a period of much longer and much harsher austerity.

Aims for a post-pandemic consensus

Many workplaces, from hospitals to warehouses, supermarkets to schools and mail depots to care homes are unable any longer to be managed through a system of strict command and control. Workplace pluralism has broken out and is now recognised as necessary to optimise organisational efficiency and safety which is essential for the effectiveness of the public response to a national crisis and represents an opportunity for a renaissance of trade union activity.

Taking the existing provisions of the TUC Campaign Plan, Charter for a new deal for working people and considering the spirit behind the motions submitted to the postponed 2020 Annual Conference of the TUC North West, the Executive Group has considered the appropriate immediate tasks. These assume that the TUC and affiliated unions will form a functional part of the interventions required from civic society if we are to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic with a renewed relevance and appetite to deliver progress for the people we represent:

A stronger voice at work

The producers in the economy have assumed a new significance and found renewed respect throughout the public health crisis. Medical and social care professions, shop and distribution workers, engineers and other workers in the fields of education, communications, sanitation and transport; public sector employees engaged in welfare, justice, housing, social work and beyond; and thousands of other jobs and vocations which were previously undervalued at best or exploited, and even demonised at worst, but are now held in higher regard by society at large. Their workplace voice is being heard more clearly and with more confidence than at any time since the peak of collective bargaining influence in the mid-1970s with examples including the demands for personal protective equipment in hospitals, the practical and academic arrangements for schools to remain open for those who need them but closed for the majority of students and the social distancing regimes which are now routine in factories, depots, warehouses and shops.

Going forward, a recalibrated industrial balance tipped in our favour is essential; backed up with a range of new and legally enforceable, collective workplace rights to secure effective mechanisms for regulating relations between workers and employers of any size. International Labour Organisation conventions and publications such as the Institute of Employment Rights’ Guide to a Progressive Industrial Relations Bill provide a template for such an initiative to be progressed by the TUC and supportive organisations, consistent with existing policy and in conjunction with affiliates.

Employment, security and flexible working

The lockdown announced on 23 March has exposed a range of inefficiencies in traditional ways of working and forced a reconsideration of how technology can assist workers rather than be used to replace them. Video conferencing and digital communications have become commonplace and have replaced physical meetings - saving time, stress and significant levels of pollution from unnecessary travel on congested transport networks.

The process of “furloughing” (Job Retention Scheme), introduced in no small part as a product of TUC lobbying, challenges a whole plethora of assumptions about the role of the state and its relationship with industry, incomes policy, the markets and maintenance of some sort of temporary order in the wider economy. Moreover, the scandal of precarious employment, bogus self-employment and casualisation more generally, now needs to force a fundamental re-think about job security – not least because as many as 11 million workers are expected to fall between the gaps in the government’s emergency provisions.

Globalisation and global markets have proven unable to provide an adequate response to the crisis, as exemplified by the absence of a domestic manufacturing sector capable of responding as quickly and effectively as required, for example, to produce medical ventilators, clinical gowns, masks and other types of PPE. With UK business investment² and productivity³ continuing to decline and global debt to GDP at historic levels⁴, the recovery from the crisis requires significant state intervention, specifically in respect of long-term domestic industrial development, research, skills and job creation, including new Green Jobs, towards a policy of full employment.

Flexible working and home-working have proven effective in ways that employers might not have previously thought possible and, with a few exceptions, unions have been able to secure pragmatic agreements on the use of discipline, capability, performance management, redundancy consultation and other Human Resource Management initiatives during the crisis. This reorientation needs to be secured after the crisis subsides with a transformation of management techniques and practices which are leveraged by confident workers with a better understanding of industrial relations.

Welfare, tax and public services

The fragility of social care provision has been brought into even sharper focus throughout the crisis – not least in respect of the lack of coordination around the provision of Personal Protective Equipment for an enormously undervalued group of professional Carers. Though just one example of the failure of market provision, this can provide the basis for a popular campaign of nationalisation and insourcing of a wide range services which have been removed from democratic control since the post-war consensus made way for neo-liberalism in the 1970’s but which have been demonstrated to be essential for societies to thrive and in reducing inequality.

This requires a new way of thinking about who contributes to society and how those contributions are valued. Hedge-fund managers and financiers were nowhere near the top of the list of “key workers” as identified by the government⁵ but to ensure that all citizens and corporations meet their social responsibility obligations it is necessary to re-evaluate how taxes on high salaries, profits and accumulated assets can contribute to a transformational programme of societal and economic reform. Such a programme does of course require sufficient numbers of trained staff to collect tax owed and circumvent domestic and international loopholes which currently allow and facilitate large-scale tax avoidance and evasion.

Reforms of the type described can provide a solid basis for root-and-branch social security reform in the interests of families; sick, disabled or retired workers and the professional staff who care for them.

Safe, satisfying and dignified work

1 Virus lays bare the frailty of the social contract - Financial Times, 3 April 2020

2 Net investment by UK financial institutions - ONS, March 2019

3 UK productivity shows weak growth before coronavirus hit - City AM, 7 April 2020

4 Global Debt-to-GDP Ratio Hit an All-Time High Last Year - Bloomberg, 13 January 2020

5 Guidance for schools, childcare providers, colleges and local authorities in England on maintaining educational provision - Gov.uk, 19 March 2020

Thank You Nye Bevan

by Les May

EVERY TIME I hear a Tory minister talk about ‘Our NHS’ I wince a little.  The National Health Service was the creation of the post war Labour government. But even that is not quite true; the NHS as we know it was the creation of one man, Aneurin Bevan, better known as Nye Bevan, which is why we have an NHS facility named after him in Rochdale.

Certainly there were other people who deserve credit, especially William Beveridge whose 1942 report fed the appetite for the state to take better care of its citizens.

Beveridge advocated a scheme that was universal in that it was to cover all people and comprehensive in that it would cover all needs.  He assumed that it would be run by local government and that it would be a social insurance scheme with a contribution from the government of the day.   Beveridge also favoured patients paying ‘hotel’ charges for their stay in hospital and charges for ‘appliances’.

His scheme would have replaced the one that had gradually evolved so that in the 1930s about 90% of the workforce had social insurance, which covered the of the GP service and sick pay.  The other 10% and all dependants either had private insurance or made full out-of-pocket payments.  The costs of hospital care were met by private insurance, such as workers' contributory schemes.  This met the needs of about 10 millions of the population and the rest paid means-tested charges. Local and national taxes funded public health, hospitals and the specialist clinics run by local authorities.

Bevan saw things differently and effectively nationalised the health service. He favoured a fully tax-financed system.  He did this because funding based upon national taxation is inherently more redistributive.  He also regarded free access to health care to be a citizen's right and not something conditional on the payment of contributions.  In addition a tax based scheme neatly sidestepped the problem of how, politically and administratively, the non-insured could be turned away from a universal service.

‘The collective principle asserts that... no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.’

— Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear, p. 100

We should be thankful that we have a tax based system. Imagine if you felt ill and found that your insurance would pay for a test for Covid19, but not for your treatment or care.   It has happened in the USA.   Imagine if you have just recovered from a stay in hospital being treated for a Covid19 infection and then someone starts chasing you for ‘hotel charges’.

What Bevan did not solve in 1948 was the question of who should pay for the care of the elderly. Should it be the NHS and its tax based system or local authorities who were free to make a charge.  No one else has shown the will to solve it since.

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What’s in the news in the internet in Venezuela.

 by Milton Pena

Editor:  The report below was sent by 

the author to John Wilkins of BOLD 

(Building Our Local Democracy}

YOUR request prompt me to look into the internet regarding what’s making the news in the internet in Venezuela.

Operación Gedeon.

I found it on google and didn’t know about it till 30 min ago! 

 

Guaido denies it. But apparently yesterday a group of anti Maduro Venezuelan military men from Colombia tried to enter the country via the Coast.  They came from Colombia, country that denied any involvement.  A gun battle took place and some were killed and other captured. 

 

An American mercenary went public to say that it was part of 17 similar groups already in Venezuela and their aim is to turn the arm forces against the government. 

 

No one on my household or in the neighborhood or in the media is talking about it. It’s only the internet and I suspect Main Stream media abroad!

Food and petrol

There is no shortage of food and people are not dying of hunger.  But it’s true that the prices have increased three fold since I arrived.  The government distributes a bag of food every month that helps a lot. 

 

Mangos are begining  to ripen and are plentiful.  They grow every where and generally not sold in shops but given free.  Speculation is ripe and difficult to control.  The petrol situation I don’t understand,  but there is enough for movement of goods and people.  Lately corrupted police  in charge at the pumps are charging in dollars for every litre, to those trying to avoid queues 

Covid 19

The statistics speak by themselves, only ten deaths till now, and only around 360 have contracted it.

 

This has been possible because very strict limitation of interstate movement, closing airports, quarantine and compulsory use of masks.  Also tracking every one suspected with the virus, known here as “pesquisaje”. 

Education 

University, secondary education continues via de internet.  This is a fact as I have witnessed myself by helping my nephews with their work.  I had to refresh my physiology and pathology and even maths (irrational numbers!)

Hope this account helps 

Jennie Formby quits as Labour General Secretary

 Matt Honeycombe-Foster of POLITICS HOME

JENNIE Formby is standing down as general secretary of the Labour Party, it has been announced.

The longstanding ally of Jeremy Corbyn, who took on the top Labour job in 2018, said it was the “right time to step down” following the election of Sir Keir Starmer as Mr Corbyn’s successor last month.

She said: “When I applied for the role of General Secretary in 2018 it was because I wanted to support Jeremy Corbyn, who inspired so many people to get involved in politics with his message of hope, equality and peace.

“It has been a huge privilege to be General Secretary of the largest political party in Europe for the last two years, but now we have a new leadership team it is the right time to step down.

"I would like to thank Jeremy, our members and my staff colleagues who have given me so much support during what has been a very challenging period, in particular when I was suffering from ill health.”
Ms Formby added: “I wish Keir and Angela the very best of luck in taking the party forward and leading Labour to victory at the next General Election”.


Ms Formby, previously a senior official at the Unite union and a long-serving member of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee, took on the role in 2018, in a move that was seen as significantly strengthening Mr Corbyn’s grip on the party.

She saw off a challenge from rival candidates including Momentum boss Jon Lansman and former NUT union boss Christine Blower to become only the second woman ever to hold the key party post.

Ms Formby announced last year that she had been undergoing treatment for breast cancer - but said in January that she was now “hopefully” cancer free after her treatment ended.

In a statement, Sir Keir said:   "I would like to thank Jennie for her service, and for the personal and professional efforts she has made in advancing the cause she has fought all her life for.

“Jennie has led our party's organisation with commitment and energy through a period of political upheaval, including a snap General Election last year. I wish her the very best for the future."

The party’s new deputy leader Angela Rayner meanwhile said: "As a trade unionist and party activist as well as General Secretary, Jennie has been a great servant of our movement for many years and blazed a trail as one of our highest achieving women. 

“She goes with our thanks and gratitude, and I've no doubt she will stand squarely behind us as we continue to fight for social justice and the Labour government our country so desperately needs.”

Labour sources said Ms Formby's resignation was with immediate effect, and her exit tees up the race to be Labour’s next general secretary, with the party saying a meeting of its NEC officers would be convened soon to discuss a timetable for the contest.

The vacancy comes amid a bitter row in Labour ranks over a leaked report into the party's handling of anti-Semitism allegations, with Labour last week naming barrister Martin Forde QC to head up and investigation into the dossier.
The document, prepared for party bosses amid an investigation into Labour by the Equalities and Human Right Commission, alleged that anti-Corbyn sentiment among staff at its headquarters had hindered efforts to tackle anti-Jewish abuse.
Responding to news of her exit, pro-Corbyn campaign group Momentum argued that Ms Formby had taken on the role of general secretary “at an incredibly difficult time”.

A spokesperson said: “She inherited a party bureaucracy that was often hostile to Jeremy’s leadership, with senior staff members allegedly misusing party funds and attempting to sabotage Labour’s General Election campaign in 2017. 
“Struggling against this while undergoing chemotherapy must have taken a herculean effort. 
“We thank her for everything and wish her well for the future.”

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*   INTERESTINGLY ON the 16 April 2020  GMB union members at Labour HQ backed a no-confidence motion in the general secretary, Jennie Formby.

It follows the leaking of an internal report, which included emails and private WhatsApp messages.
The motion calls on Ms Formby to "personally apologise to the current staffers named in the report".
Among its findings, the report claims factions opposed to former leader Jeremy Corbyn hampered efforts to tackle anti-Semitism.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has ordered an inquiry into why the report was commissioned, its contents, and how it came into the public domain.
But in its motion, the GMB, which is the largest union at Labour Party headquarters, accuses Ms Formby of leaking the report, the BBC's Iain Watson reports, and criticises current, as well as former, party managers.
The motion says that by "trawling the emails and instant messenger logs, the general secretary has effectively unilaterally placed all members of staff under investigation" without due process.
And it adds: "Staff can no longer be confident that the general secretary has the safety and welfare of staff as her top priority, and [she] has allowed the mental and physical wellbeing of staff to be put at risk with the creation and leaking of this report."
The motion also refers to a "hostile environment created post-2015", when Jeremy Corbyn was first elected leader, "in which staff who did not appear to support the new leader were marginalised, ignored, harassed and hounded out of the party".
The Unite union, headed by key Jeremy Corbyn ally Len McCluskey, also has a branch at Labour HQ.
It has released a statement saying the report should not have been released unredacted, according to the LabourList website.
But the branch describes as "shocking" the allegations in the report that an anti-Corbyn faction at party HQ worked against a Labour victory at the 2017 general election and warns against the investigation being "kicked into the long grass".
The GMB and Unite branches have previously clashed over their respective responses to the leaked report's contents.

Faking The News

by Les May

I HAVE no great enthusiasm for China as a country or its politicians. Perhaps it is its history and culture which make me feel that some of its leader think of we Westerners as barbarians or perhaps they are truly racist in outlook. But this suspicion does not lead me to accept without good evidence that China failed to alert the rest of the world to the dangers of the SARS-Cov-2 virus which arose in the country and hence is responsible for what is happening to us.

It is instructive to look at the delay between a country becoming aware of the presence of the virus and imposing a ‘lockdown’. But first let’s clear up the story about the doctor being ‘silenced’ when he revealed the story.

‘Dr Li raised the alarm about novel coronavirus on 30 December when he sent a message to his medical school alumni group warning them to wear protective clothing.

Dr Li told them seven patients from a local seafood market had been diagnosed with a SARS-like illness and were quarantined in hospital.
A screenshot of the message went viral on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, and he and seven others were accused of "rumour-mongering" by Wuhan police who tried to silence him.’

https://news.sky.com/story/chinese-doctor-li-wenliang-who-was-punished-for-early-coronavirus-warning-dies-of-disease-11927777

But that does not mean that no action was being taken in China. This what the European Centre of Disease Control (ECDC) has to say:

On 31 December 2019, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission in Wuhan City, Hubei province, China, reported a cluster of 27 pneumonia cases (including seven severe cases) of unknown aetiology, with a common reported link to Wuhan's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a wholesale fish and live animal market.

The market was closed down on 1 January 2020. According to the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, samples from the market tested positive for novel coronavirus. Cases showed symptoms such as fever, dry cough, dyspnoea; radiological findings showed bilateral lung infiltrates.
On 9 January 2020, the China CDC reported that a novel coronavirus (later named SARS-CoV-2, (the virus causing COVID-19) had been detected as the causative agent for 15 of the 59 cases of pneumonia. On 10 January 2020, the first novel coronavirus genome sequence was made publicly available.
On 23 January 2020, Wuhan City was locked down – with all travel in and out of Wuhan prohibited – and movement inside the city was restricted

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/novel-coronavirus/event-background-2019

This suggests that the time between the first cases of Covid 19 being identified in China and a ‘lockdown’ being imposed was 23 days.

So what happened in the USA and Western Europe? These figures for the delay in imposing a ‘lockdown’ include also the cumulative number of deaths in the country at the time it was imposed. In the case of Germany and the USA, which each have a federal system, I have used the first date when it appears to have been imposed in the country.

Austria 22 days, 3 deaths; Netherlands 28 days, 276 deaths; Italy 37 days, 366 deaths; Spain 44 days, 294 deaths; France 51 days, 175 deaths; UK 51 days, 379 deaths; Germany 52 days, 31 deaths; USA 60 days, 522 deaths.

NB These figures were compiled for several sources which do not always agree with each other.

How well do these figures for Western Europe compare with China moving from first cases to lockdown? We still have a lot to learn about the origins and early spread of this virus. If western leaders made mistakes in their response to this pandemic it is they who are responsible for what is happening not China.

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