[Owls are night birds.]
Kwarteng replaced by Hunt (wasn’t the NHS stockpile of PPE and general preparedness for pandemic reduced on his watch?).
PM makes a speech, takes only four questions from Telegraph, Sun, BBC and ITV.
Robert Peston asks if she will apologise to her party, not to mention the rest of us. Apparently not.
Market reaction says it all:
This homemade crisis is set to run and run.
An “early bird” correspondent writes:
As a correspondent has written, Simon Clarke, the levelling up secretary, Simon Jupp’s new boss, threatens to water down affordable home requirements across England.
Simon Jupp writes “As your MP, East Devon will of course come first”. How many are now registered as in need of social housing in East Devon? In March 2021 there were more than 2,618 households and I can’t believe all these needs will be fulfilled in the near future. (not if Goodmores Farm is an example in Exmouth. 16 affordable houses in a development of 298 houses.)
How can Simon Jupp reconcile East Devon’s needs and his new bosses dictats?
For centuries the River Aller has been carefully controlled by the landowners and farmers of Exmoor, largely confined to a narrow channel and at one point squeezed under a medieval packhorse bridge.
[An interesting companion project to the Lower Otter Restoration Projects which is concerned with reconnecting the estuary to the sea. – Owl]
Steven Morris www.theguardian.com
Now in a pioneering project, said to be a first for the UK and inspired by schemes in the wilds of Oregon in north-west US, a stretch of the river is being liberated, the channel partly filled in, allowing the water to spill out and find its own way, creating smaller streams, more pools and boggy areas.
The idea of this “Stage 0” restoration project is to create the conditions for a landscape that is better for flora and fauna, with the slower water flow making flooding less likely.
“We don’t really know how the site is going to react,” said Ben Eardley, project manager for the National Trust, which is leading the work at its Holnicote Estate in north Somerset.
“And we don’t know exactly what habitats will be created. We’re just re-setting it and we’ll see what happens. Stage 0 floodplain reconnection resets natural processes – it’s like the ‘ctrl, alt, delete’ computer reset. We let the river decide where it wants to go really but instead of that single channel there will be a much more complex waterscape, pools, wetland, marshy, boggy areas.”
Just under 1km of the main river and “bits and bobs” of tributary – nowhere near homes or roads – are the focus of the project. Diggers are taking a shallow skim off the floodplain, 4,000 tonnes worth, to re-shape the valley floor, and using that earth to fill in the channel.
The river is being given some help. About 600 tonnes of timber sourced on the estate from the felling of non-native trees have been pinned or partially buried into the valley to help the river’s transformation. “The timber will help kickstart some of that complexity,” said Eardley.
Wildflower seeds such as ragged robin, devil’s-bit scabious and meadowsweet will be sown over the next few weeks. And next spring about 25,000 native trees such as willow, bird cherry and black poplar will be planted. The hope is that this restored landscape will be better for wildlife including dragonflies, brown trout, grass snakes, birds, bats, water voles and otters.
The reset has been trialled on a much smaller scale on the estate, at a spot called Mud Pool Meadow, through which a tributary of the Aller flows.
It was launched in 2019 but Eardley said the results had been “amazing”. “Even in the very hot weather this summer the landscape held on to the water. You put your hand into the grass and it felt soft and wet. There’s not much noise in the surrounding fields but at Mud Pool Meadow there’s a cacophony of insect sound. There are grasshoppers exploding out of your footsteps, butterflies everywhere. It’s early days but you can tell it’s much richer and more abundant and diverse.”
Another significant project at Holnicote is the re-introduction of beavers, with seven of the mammals living in two large pens.
Beavers are seen by conservationists like Eardley as “ecosystem engineers” that develop wetlands by thinning trees and building dams. An intriguing prospect is that if the “Stage 0” restoration works well on the Aller and the UK government allows the release of beavers into the wild, it could be a perfect landscape for them to thrive in.
The Aller project is inspired by the Fivemile-Bell restoration scheme in Oregon, where work has been done on rivers and streams to restore them to how they were before settlers drained the land. One effect there has been to boost the number of salmon.
Prof Colin Thorne, the chair of physical geography at Nottingham University, said: “Around two dozen streams and rivers in Oregon have been successfully restored as complex and fully connected channel-wetland-floodplain systems known as Stage 0, producing remarkable benefits to river health, heritage, wildlife, sustainability and resilience.”
The National Trust is working on the Aller with a number of partners including the EU’s Interreg 2 Seas programme, the UK Environment Agency and Somerset Rivers Authority.
Cllr Mike Stanton, the chair of Somerset Rivers Authority, said he was excited by the Aller project. “It offers Somerset new possibilities for reducing flood risks, improving water quality and creating bigger and better habitats for wildlife. We must and will learn from this initiative with respect to other places in Somerset.”
Coronavirus rates in parts of Devon remain the highest in England – but are on their way down. Latest infection rates, for the seven day period ending October 8, show that West Devon has the highest rates of any of the 315 local authority areas in the country.
Daniel Clark Content Editor & Politics Reporter www.devonlive.com
Plymouth (4th) and Teignbridge (6th) are inside the top ten. The South Hams, Torbay and East Devon are also inside the top 20.
But there are signs that the most recent Covid wave might have peaked. While rates in West Devon at 204/100,000 are the highest in England, they are down on the 251/100,000 they were at earlier in the week.
Rates in Plymouth, Torbay and Teignbridge have also fallen slightly back on where they were earlier in the week. Only in North Devon and East Devon do rates appear to still be climbing, rather than falling or plateauing.
It comes as the number of patients in hospital following a positive Covid test in hospitals across Devon have fallen. While numbers of patients in Exeter and North Devon as of October 12 have risen to 100 from the 90 as of October 5, numbers elsewhere have fallen.
At Derriford Hospital, numbers of patients in hospital have dropped from 98 as of October 5 to 84 on October 12. While at Torbay Hospital, the numbers have fallen dramatically from 61 down to 24.
LATEST COVID RATES
West Devon (204/100,000)
Plymouth (188/100,000)
Teignbridge (183/100,000)
South Hams (163/100,000)
Torbay (163/100,000)
East Devon (160/100,000)
Torridge (151/100,000)
Mid Devon (147/100,000)
…The logic for investors is simple. People aged 65 and over in the UK now control 51% of Britain’s wealth, up from 42% in 2008, the year of the financial crash, according to the Resolution Foundation. A large minority of older people can afford £100,000-a-year care home fees because they have houses worth far more that they no longer need….
Robert Booth www.theguardian.com
With a spa, cinema and wood-panelled hall, Reigate Grange in Surrey, where Ann King was abused, is part of a growing trend for luxury care homes. Fuelled by global investors’ desire to capitalise on older people’s property wealth, luxury care applies a cruise-ship sheen to the grittier reality of dementia and the end of life.
The logic for investors is simple. People aged 65 and over in the UK now control 51% of Britain’s wealth, up from 42% in 2008, the year of the financial crash, according to the Resolution Foundation. A large minority of older people can afford £100,000-a-year care home fees because they have houses worth far more that they no longer need. A person in a £1m home who survives for the typical two years of a care home resident would still leave £800,000 in their will.
When Welltower, a US real estate investment trust, announced a deal this summer with the property billionaire Reuben brothers to co-own the UK luxury chain Avery Healthcare, David Reuben remarked that he was investing “at the precipice of unprecedented growth of the UK seniors population”. A joint press release described it as a “multi-year growth opportunity”.
Indeed, the Alzheimer’s Society forecasts that the number of people with dementia in the UK will increase from about 900,000 to 1.6 million by 2040, a huge “market” under the current UK healthcare system in which the NHS often does not fund dementia treatment.
Underlying profits are running at about 30% of revenue for a luxury chain such as Barchester, owned by the Jersey-based Grove Ltd, whose owners have been reported in the last year to include three Irish billionaires, Dermot Desmond, John Magnier and JP McManus, the annual LaingBuisson report into UK social care suggests. “There is plenty of money there and it will continue for a few decades,” said its author, the industry analyst William Laing.
Laing said there was so much property wealth that care companies could easily raise prices higher than the £2,000-a-week King paid at Reigate Grange, and still fill beds. He forecast an increase of 27,000 care home residents in the coming decade – requiring 400 new care homes, many of which are likely to be high-end. The elite market will not be much affected by recent policy changes limiting care fees to £86,000 a person because the “hotel costs” fall outside the cap and can comprise 70% of fees.
But does more money buy better care? Higher fees should, and in some cases do, allow operators to hire more care workers and to pay and train them better. But Laing has bad news: “There is no correlation between how much you pay and the care you receive.”
Signature Senior Lifestyle says it pays staff above average and everyone undergoes mandatory training. Overall, homes that are run for a profit perform less well on average in inspections by the Care Quality Commission regulator (77% good or outstanding) than not-for-profit homes (86% good or outstanding), his research shows.
Avery Healthcare’s current CQC ratings are 80% good or outstanding and 20% requiring improvement – the same as the average for all care homes in England.
Barchester said it was “committed to delivering the highest quality care” and 82.7% of its homes were rated good or outstanding by regulators. Avery was approached for comment.
Signature said CQC “rates our homes significantly above the sector average; 97% of our homes are rated as good or outstanding, of which 14% are rated as outstanding – placing them in the top 5% of care homes across the country”.
It said it split the fees “between offering luxurious accommodation and meeting the specific care needs of the people that choose to live with us”, adding its staffing level was higher than an average care home with “a far higher level of clinical expertise than average, with dedicated nursing and dementia managers”.
Figures this week have, meanwhile, exposed a desperate staffing crisis across the whole care sector. While 500,000 new staff are needed by the middle of the next decade to keep up with rising demand, the workforce shrank last year by 50,000 people, leaving 165,000 vacancies in England alone.
Average pay across the sector is £9.50 an hour, although luxury care firms often pay more. A fifth of care workers are considered to be in or on the brink of poverty. Care home residents’ groups have warned: “Lives and dignity are at risk.”
At the start of this summer, Richard Foord was happily working in the academic sector, having retired from the army, enjoying family life in Devon.
A hundred days on, he has won an historic by-election which helped trigger the downfall of Boris Johnson and become the LibDem spokesperson for Defence as the war in Ukraine rages. He has seen the sad passing of Queen Elizabeth II and the proclamation of King Charles III. He has witnessed the government acquire a new leader, followed by an immediate economic crash triggered by the “fiscal event”. Arguably few new MPs have ever entered Parliament at such an historic time.
Richard will be talking about his first hundred days, in conversation with East Devon District Council Leader and historian, Paul Arnott.
The event is to be held at Axminster’s Guildhall starting at 10.30am (doors opening 10.15am) on Saturday 22nd October 2022.
The event is non-political and open to the public. No charge, though contributions to cover hall hire welcome.
This old Etonian has been denigrating the: Office for Budget Responsibility; International Monetary Fund; Office for National Statistics and the Bank of England in only the way an old Etonian can. (All because they are not fawning over the other Etonian, Kwasi Kwarteng’s unfunded, unpublished “Growth Plan”). So much scrutiny is so tiresome. – Owl
Andrew Woodcock www.independent.co.uk
Downing Street has administered a slapdown to Jacob Rees-Mogg after the business secretary publicly denigrated the government’s official economic forecaster and suggested the chancellor might ignore its findings.
Mr Rees-Mogg’s broadside against the Office for Budget Responsibility was greeted with incredulity by economists, with one saying that its input was vital to the credibility of any statements made by chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
And today, Liz Truss’s official spokesperson said the prime minister had full confidence in the OBR’s ability to forecast accurately.
The spokesperson also said that the IMF – which came in for another tongue-lashing from Mr Rees-Mogg – played an “important role”, which was valued by Mr Kwarteng.
The business secretary’s highly unusual criticism of the independent budgeting watchdog came just days after the OBR delivered its initial assessment of the impact of the chancellor’s 23 September mini-Budget to the Treasury.
His comments sparked speculation that the findings are damning and that an effort is underway to undermine faith in them before the eventual release of their final verdict on 31 October.
Speaking on ITV’s Peston on Wednesday, Mr Rees-Mogg said that the OBR’s “record of forecasting accurately hasn’t been enormously good”.
He added: “The job of chancellors is to make decisions in the round rather than to assume that there is any individual forecaster who will hit the nail on the head…
“There are other sources of information. The OBR is not the only organisation that is able to give forecasts.”
But asked on Thursday whether Ms Truss has confidence in the OBR’s ability to deliver accurate forecasts, the PM’s official spokesman replied: “Yes.”
The spokesperson said: “The OBR is the Government’s official forecaster and the prime minister has said on a number of occasions that she values their scrutiny and respects their independence. They are a highly-regarded body worldwide.”
Asked which alternative forecasts are available, the official said: “It is true to say that other forecasts are made and it’s important to consider all available evidence and views when making these sorts of important decisions, but the OBR remains the government’s official forecaster.”
Pressed on whether it was helpful for Mr Rees-Mogg to disparage the OBR, he said: “The OBR are very transparent and recognise those are the challenges when you are making forecasts themselves. But, nonetheless, their work is highly respected worldwide.”
Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, said that it was clear that economists could never be entirely accurate in their predictions about the future.
But he said that, contrary to Mr Rees-Mogg’s implication, the OBR had previously had a record of painting an overly rosy picture of the economy, rather than being excessively gloomy.
“The OBR has historically been over-optimistic consistently on the economy,” said Mr Johnson. “The economy has actually done worse than the OBR has suggested”.
He added: “Of course they matter. It’s really important for credibility, which has become so important over the last few weeks, that we have these official forecasts and the chancellor responds to that by saying: ‘This is how I see my fiscal policy’.”
Earlier in the day on Thursday, Mr Rees-Mogg said that figures from the Office of National Statistics could not be relied upon and suggested that the Bank of England might be to blame for the market panic which followed the chancellor’s mini-Budget.
His views were given short shrift by economic experts.
Nigel Peaple, director of policy and advocacy at the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, said the market turmoil was “caused mainly by the mini-budget (and) uncertainty about the government’s plans”.
Deutsche Bank’s chief UK economist Sanjay Raja said the mini-Budget was the “straw that broke the camel’s back”.
And Financial Times US editor-at-large Gillian Tett, responded to Mr Rees-Mogg’s remarks by telling Channel 4 News: “To use a non-technical term, that’s pretty much bollocks.”
Resolution Foundation chief executive Torsten Bell said: “If you spend the summer telling people you are intending to abandon fiscal orthodoxy, if you then announce a package that dumps fiscal orthodoxy, then if you say on Sunday you are going to keep doing it, then I don’t think it should be a surprise to any of us that this is where you end up.”
to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
From now on we can expect Simon to become an even more loyal supporter of this shameful government. Especially with its selective policies on levelling up and growth:
emphasising growth through investment zone tax breaks rather than long-term investment in the infrastructure we are all crying out for;
deregulation across the board to encourage “build,build, build” housing development at all costs [loose talk from Kwarteng having spooked the bond markets, causing interest rates to rocket and kicking the housing market over a cliff];
local government chronically starved of cash, with Devon County on the brink of bankruptcy.
Despite this “eyes and ears” appointment being unpaid, Simon has de facto accepted Truss’ shilling and joined the sinking ship.
Not a good time, nor a good cause, to start climbing the greasy pole.
From Simon Jupp MP’s web page:
I have been appointed a Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. It’s an unpaid, non-ministerial role. With a new PM, there’s a lot to cover – including levelling up, national planning policy, overseeing local government, and introducing more devolution with deals being discussed in Devon and Cornwall. As your MP, East Devon will of course come first.
East Devon Watch 