Latest on SEATON HOSPITAL protest at County Hall … campaigners dressed as nurses will join me when I present our 9,151-signature petition to Dr Sarah Wollaston, Chair of Devon NHS, on the steps of County Hall, Exeter at 9.30 THIS MORNING.
BELOW is the letter I shall give to her with the petitions
Martin Shaw
Secretary, Seaton Hospital Steering Committee
For years the British government from the prime minister down has lacked a coherent economic strategy, according to a thinktank’s health check of UK prospects.
Phillip Inman www.theguardian.com
“We are not on course towards setting any such strategy – indeed, we are not serious about the task,” says the report, titled “Ending Stagnation – a new economic strategy for Britain”.
Funded by the independent Nuffield Foundation and pieced together from original research by the Resolution Foundation thinktank and the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, the report is forgiving of politicians who have faced a succession of global shocks, from Covid to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
However, the authors document a series of failures that have left the UK as a laggard among G7 economies and ill-prepared for the task of providing a decent standard of living for most people in the years ahead.
Rather than creating an economy where the number of high-skilled jobs is on the rise, the report says workers will be £470 worse off by the end of the decade. This loss comes after 15 years of flatlined wages, costing the average worker £10,700 a year in lost pay growth compared with the pre-financial crash trend.
A loss of international trade is one reason cited for the lack of growth, which the report partly blames on Brexit.
By 2023, UK trade as a share of annual national income was down 2.2 percentage points on pre-pandemic levels. This compares with a rise of 0.5 points across the rest of the G7.
A loss of market share across EU and non-EU markets, including the US, Canada and Japan, is to blame, said the report. With a loss of trade comes a decline in high-skilled jobs, it adds.
“UK manufacturing will change rather than grow, as high-productivity sectors like chemicals and electronics shrink even as lower-productivity food manufacturing expands,” says the report.
“Wages in London, Wales and the north-east will be hardest hit by the resulting decline in productivity, which, across the country as a whole, means workers will be £470 worse off by the end of the decade.”
Only a handful of cities have successfully made the transition to a services economy. All England’s biggest cities bar London have productivity levels below the national average.
“A strategy to turn this around is what an industrial strategy in a service-dominated economy looks like,” says the report. “This is not a strategy for the few; the UK may be a ‘green and pleasant land’, but 69% of the UK population live in cities or their hinterlands, compared with 56% in France and just 40% in Italy.”
Easing the pressure from sky-high interest rates could come from raising the Bank of England’s inflation target to 3%. This would mean interest rates could begin to fall next year, easing pressure on mortgage holders and the Treasury, which has about a third of its loans with the central bank.
A wealth tax would also ease the pressure on the government’s finances and allow ministers to reward work rather than the hoarding of assets.
Council tax should be reformed and the burden increased on higher-value homes, allowing stamp duty on property sales to be permanently cut on low- to mid-priced homes.
The share of the public citing poverty and inequality as one of the most important issues facing the country has risen sharply, from 7% in 2010 to 19% immediately before the Covid pandemic.
The report says a toxic combination of low growth and failure to shift the highest levels of inequality among any large European country has contributed to the lack of progress on living standards for lower-income households.
Cuts to benefits under the post-2010 austerity drive of Conservative-led governments have also fuelled poverty. The report says benefit levels have failed to keep pace with prices in 10 of the past 15 years. Along with wider cuts since 2010, this has reduced the incomes of poorest fifth by just under £3,000 a year.
If the policy measures recommended by the report were adopted, relative poverty would be cut by 1.3 million people rather than increase by 1.1 million, as currently projected.
Young adults have seen generational pay progress grind to a halt, according to the report, highlighting how those born in the early 1980s were almost half as likely as their parents’ generation to own their own home by the age of 30.
After 15 years of average wages after inflation remaining almost stagnant, it says almost 9 million younger Britons have never worked in an economy that has sustained rising average wages.
Meanwhile, almost a third of young people in the UK are not receiving any education by the age of 18, compared with just one in five in France and Germany.
As a result, the report says, improvements in household disposable income from generation to generation – something that was taken for granted throughout the second half of the 20th century – have slowed or ground to a halt. The average income for those born in the early 1980s is almost £1,400 lower at 30 than those born 10 years earlier.
They’re “analogue capabilities that it makes sense to retain”.
On the essential commodity of food we have already had Thérèse Coffey’s emergency advice: “let them eat turnips”.
“People should stock up on battery-powered radios and torches, as well as candles and first aid kits in order to prepare for power cuts or digital communications going down, the deputy prime minister reportedly said.”
Don’t forget the turnips! – Owl
Jamie Grierson www.theguardian.com
According to the Times, Oliver Dowden described the supplies as “analogue capabilities that it makes sense to retain” in a digital age during a visit to Porton Down, the UK’s military laboratory.
Dowden made the visit to coincide with his first annual risk and resilience statement, which he had promised to give last year when launching the government’s UK resilience framework.
As part of the statement, he announced the launch of a national “resilience academy” to help people and businesses prepare for future pandemics, natural disasters and cyber-attacks.
The deputy prime minister announced the plans in the House of Commons, claiming the academy would help the “whole of society” prepare for the risks.
Dowden listed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, cyber-attacks, pandemics, the misuse of artificial intelligence and extreme weather among some of the risks the UK faces.
He said businesses would be offered training to deal with the impact of such threats, while a new website will provide the public with “practical advice” on how to be better prepared for future risks.
He told the Commons: “The government has a role in bringing all actors together and to give them the skills they need. Today, I can announce we are developing a new UK resilience academy that will improve the skills of those groups.
“It will provide a range of learning and training opportunities for the whole of society. For professionals, there will be a curriculum to build skills, knowledge and networks, and a centre for excellence for exercising. For businesses, there will be greater guidance and particularly assistance on threats to critical national infrastructure and cyber.
“And for citizens, there will be a unified government resilience website, which will provide practical advice on how households can prepare as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the simple steps individuals can take to raise their resilience.”
Dowden also said the government would develop a volunteer hub aimed at helping authorities draw on a single pool of volunteers who want to help in future events similar to the Covid pandemic, which he said “demonstrated the overwhelming community spirit” of the UK.
The Labour frontbencher Pat McFadden welcomed the measures but asked what the government was doing to bolster resilience in energy supplies and the “public estate”, as well as in elections.
He said: “Why is it that the government’s new policy is to roll back on the transition mandated by its own legislation for net zero, and prolong a reliance on international fossil fuel markets? For these failures, the British public has paid a heavy price.
“And how will the government increase resilience in the public estate? Schools’ capital budgets cut back under this prime minister’s watch while he was chancellor. School roofs falling in, disrupting children’s education.”
He also pressed ministers to implement recommendations of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, aimed at preventing Russia and other states from interfering with upcoming elections.
McFadden said: “With an election coming some time in the next year, I am sure the secretary of state would agree that we need to do all we can to ensure it is conducted in a free and fair manner.”
The deputy prime minister reminded the Commons that an election could be held in January 2025 at the latest.
Dowden said: “Indeed it is not just in this nation, in many nations around the world next year – or indeed in this nation it could be the year after – elections will happen.
“That is why we have instructed the democracy taskforce to make sure we are fully resilient.”
Background. The 2013 Tory administration set East Devon an eighteen year target to build a minimum of 950 houses/year (17,100 in total by 2031). This forms the basis of the latest government imposed targets.
Under government rules, EDDC also has to ensure a five year rolling plan to supply these houses. In 2020 Covid, unsurprisingly, resulted in a fall in housing completions and EDDC now has to play catch-up. _ Owl
Will Goddard www.sidmouthherald.co.uk
A new town in East Devon with 8,000 homes is to be built near the Devon County Showground at Westpoint.
East Devon district councillors have decided it is the best place for the settlement, which comes around 12 years after spades went in the ground at Cranbrook, around six miles away.
The new development will be on land between Exeter Airport and Crealy Theme Park, and 2,500 homes are expected to be constructed by 2040.
It is south of the A30 and north of the A3052, roughly west of Farringdon and east of Westpoint.
Councillors had three options, all within a small area at the western part of East Devon, but this location is seen as the most viable.
The chosen option on land to the north of A3052. (Image: East Devon District Council)
Cllr Geoff Jung (Lib Dem, Woodbury and Lympstone) thinks a new town is better than more development in existing communities. He said: “We are required by government to build 910 dwellings a year.
“A self-contained new community would be able to provide all the required facilities and connecting infrastructure in one location at a more acceptable cost, without the need to upgrade our district infrastructure throughout.
“Our already-failing infrastructure could not support our existing communities to grow substantially without the required increased education, health, utilities, sewage infrastructure, plus transport links that would be required spread throughout rural East Devon.
“Two thirds of our district is in protected landscapes. Plus, we have a heavily protected world heritage coastline, numerous floodplains and estuaries, so we have little choice.
“The only way to go is to complete Cranbrook new town and to build another community as well.”
The new town of Cranbrook is located six miles away. (Image: Chris Mills/Still Imaging) (Image: Archant)
But Cllr Jess Bailey (Independent, West Hill and Aylesbeare) said: “This is our open countryside, and our villages, which has evolved over hundreds and thousands of years. And we’re about to radically change it.”
She continued: “We’re being presented with it as being a really positive option because we won’t have to have estates on the outside of our towns, but we’re already getting estates on the outside of our towns.”
Councillors also had concerns about a potential impact on traffic in the Exeter area.
Cllr Kevin Blakey (Independent, Cranbrook) said: “It is going to be a dormitory for the city of Exeter, so transport is going to be a big issue there.
“One of the worries for me is that the only option for transport is the road. There are no railway lines that are near it or can get near it, ever will get near it, unlike Cranbrook.”
Cllr Olly Davey (Green, Exmouth Town) spoke about how although many do not want more houses, some do.
He said: “If you ask people in East Devon if they want to see further development, they’ll say no. Why would they? They’ve got a home. It’s only the people that are desperately still trying to find a home in East Devon who want to see further development.”
Plans for the new town will now be developed further, and another public consultation is planned towards the end of next year.
East Devon Watch 