Standard

Posted by

Posted on

26 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Comments

1 Comment

I’m going to make big decisions in the long-term interests of our country –

even if they’re difficult – Rishi Sunak

Some days ago our decisive PM declined to back the northern link of HS2.

Since then there has been intense speculation but no decision.

Anyone know what is going on? – Owl

Three days ago!

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

26 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Builder erects sculpture of council leader as Wiltshire planning row turns ugly

Most leaders have to wait until after they’ve died for the statues and monuments of them to go up. But all the Trowbridge town council leader, Stewart Palmen, needed to see his likeness in stone was a planning dispute.

Vivian Ho www.theguardian.com 

An angry builder in the middle of a three-year spat with local authorities has erected a stone gargoyle-like carving of Palmen on a roof in Trowbridge.

The sculpture of Palmen’s face, with his signature half-moon spectacles and the bushy beard he wore in his council photo, shows the council leader sticking out his tongue with a pointed expression in his stone eyes.

Photo Stewart Palmen

The sculpture, which is around a foot tall, sits perched on the corner of the building at the heart of the dispute, looking down a street in central Trowbridge, a parish with the population of just over 37,000.

Palmen suspected that the builder, 71-year-old Michael Thomas, had put up the sculpture “to wind me up”. “But I’m quite proud of it,” Palmen, 61, said. “I live just around the corner so I quite like it.”

The grotesque – a carving of monstrous features with no functional architectural purpose, as opposed to a gargoyle, which is a statue with a spout to convey water away from the sides of a building – went up about three weeks ago after nearly three years of dispute between Thomas and planning authorities.

Thomas had begun work in 2020 to convert the former one-storey pizza shop on Newtown into a three-storey building, telling neighbours that he was turning the shop into a multiple-bedroom house, Palmen said.

But Thomas had not applied for planning permission. Council enforcement asked him to stop work and apply for permission, but his application was rejected because of the size of the project and the fact that it was in a conservation area, Palmen said.

Thomas appealed against the decision but his appeal was rejected, and though he was ordered to return the building to its original state, he instead began work to convert it into two stories.

Thomas returns on 27 October to magistrates court, where he could face a heavy fine.

“He seems to have taken this all very personally and believes that I have set out to stop him from building his project and turned all the neighbours against him,” Palmen said.

Thomas, who could not be reached for comment, told the Wiltshire Times that the council doesn’t “follow the rules”. “They make them up as they go along,” he said. “If council officers are not following the rules, why should I?”

“I am going to carry on building against their order and allow them to take me to court,” Thomas said. “I am not afraid of going to jail, I have been jailed twice before and I’m told that these days they have toilets and televisions so I don’t think that it will be a hardship.”

Depending on what the enforcement team decides at his court date next month, the grotesque could stay up, should Thomas gain planning permission. If it does not, Palmen said he’d like to buy it off of Thomas. “It would be nice in the garden.” he said.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

25 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Planning applications validated by EDDC for week beginning 11 September

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

25 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

With talk of cutting inheritance tax, Rishi Sunak is beginning to look like a Liz Truss tribute act

Threatened by an electoral defeat, what’s a multi-millionaire Prime Minister to do?

Read the letter from Daren Jones, MP, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury below, spells it out!  – Owl

For something that hardly affects anyone, and is in any case paid only after one passes away, inheritance tax appears to hold a strange fascination for the Conservative mind. It is as though there is something in the psyche that refuses to accept the maxim “You can’t take it with you.”

Editorial www.independent.co.uk 

Scrapping inheritance tax is an old favourite, and is often floated when ministers are searching for an eye-catching initiative that could, they believe, help them to win a looming, somewhat difficult, general election. Sometimes, as now, it smacks of desperation.

Taxes on the estate of the deceased are certainly unpopular, if not macabre, and every so often the Tory spin machine will seek to capitalise on this resentment and put out the notion of abolishing the levy, or radically increasing the threshold at which it must be paid. This is indeed happening again now, as Rishi Sunak seeks to create more “dividing lines” between his government and the opposition.

The recent retreat on net zero is another textbook example of this strategy. There was no pressing need to smash the cross-party consensus on climate change; it was merely an attempt to confect a policy contrast for short-term electoral gain. Many more (almost arbitrary) populist policy proposals for the next Tory manifesto will be set out as campaigning gathers pace, and we have no doubt that migration, trans rights, and other “culture war” issues will be ruthlessly exploited. Whatever else, the British general election of 2024 promises to be an unusually dirty and bitter affair.

Perhaps because what used to be called death duties impinge on people’s lives only rarely – a fact that no one is complaining about – inheritance tax is widely misunderstood. Only 3.7 per cent of estates are affected, the equivalent of some 27,000 families in all. Where a couple is involved, the effect of a relatively high basic threshold (£375,000) combined with spousal exemptions means that they can pass on as much as £1m to their descendants entirely tax-free. That threshold should be viewed in the context of the value of the average UK home – £288,000.

There are also additional reliefs applicable to farms and businesses that are passed on; and increasingly, personal pension pots are being used as highly tax-efficient methods of avoiding taxes on bequests.

As ever, the rich can get richer by playing the system – and the super-rich, with access to lawyers and offshore trusts, can get away with paying zero tax. When an individual dies before the age of 75, funds remaining in their pension escape income tax entirely – there is income tax relief when the money is paid into the pension, and no income tax when it is taken out. Furthermore, any funds that remain in someone’s pension when they die (at any age) are not subject to inheritance tax.

In other words, a vast swathe of personal wealth is simply ignored by the state. The present set-up is extremely generous to the descendants of the already wealthy – a group concentrated in London and the South East who, unsurprisingly, tend themselves to be older “baby boomers” as well as Conservative voters.

Abolishing inheritance tax would deprive the Exchequer of some £6bn – one of the smaller tax takes, but a significant one. It seems an odd move when vital infrastructure schemes such as HS2 are being mutilated for a supposed lack of funds.

There’s little reason to think that getting rid of inheritance tax would raise the economic growth rate as effectively as capital investment. It would certainly create an even less equal society, adding in particular to disparities in housing. There is no case for raising the threshold. But some cuts in inheritance tax seem to be on the cards, as far as No 10 is concerned.

This is entirely consonant with the other story doing the rounds in the media, which is that the Conservatives will extend the “triple lock” on increases to the state pension. Once again, this is a measure that benefits the old at the expense of the young, and exacerbates the intergenerational divide that is scarring society.

It is also consistent with the easing of our CO2 emissions targets, which will affect those growing up now rather than their parents and grandparents. “Culture war” issues and Euroscepticism are additional sharp dividing lines, as much between generations as between classes. In this context, it hardly seems surprising that Labour beat the Conservatives by 43 percentage points among 18- to 24-year-olds at the last election (or that Sir Keir Starmer seems quite keen on enfranchising 16- and 17-year-olds).

Mr Sunak seems to be following an undeclared “core vote” strategy, seeking to consolidate the Conservative baseline vote – say about 30 per cent of the electorate – with the hope that an improving economy next year will add a few more percentage points and deprive Labour of a majority.

That may be Mr Sunak’s best hope, realistically, but it also means that he isn’t even trying to reach out to the wider electorate – the young and hard-pressed families who expect to inherit little, if anything, from their elders. Talk of prioritising unfunded tax cuts for the rich, along with significant and indefinite guaranteed increases in the state pension, is also inconsistent with the government’s claim to be pursuing a strategy of fiscal responsibility.

Only a few days ago, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, declared that it would be “virtually impossible” to cut taxes before the election. The country may well wonder why it got rid of Liz Truss for her recklessness a year ago if Mr Sunak, once thought so responsible and fair-minded, is just going to recycle her policies. The prime minister should think again.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

25 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Devon’s dangerous nightmare potholes need to be addressed

Prospective Tory candidate slams DCC record on highway maintenance – no it’s not ultra loyalist Simon Jupp (nor whatshisname for Exmouth and Exeter East)! – Owl

Devon County Council has been warned it is building up huge financial problems for the future by failing to maintain its road network. It’s been urged to make a special bid for Government funding to tackle its backlog of road repairs – or face ‘unmanageably high’ bills in a few years’ time.

Lewis Clarke www.devonlive.com

Drivers have become highly critical of the poor state of the county’s network of 8,000 miles of road – the largest network in the country. Devon County Council does have the largest road network in England.

The council will invest £66 million in highways and bridge maintenance in 2023/24. But concerns have been raised over the fact some rural roads are ‘dangerous to drive’.

Prospective parliamentary candidate Ian Liddell-Grainger says special efforts must be made to implement a wide-ranging programme of improvements. Mr Liddell-Grainger, who intends to contest the new Tiverton and Minehead parliamentary constituency for the Conservatives, has slammed the Conservative run Devon County Council and said the longer the problem was neglected the more serious would be the eventual outcome.

“From the point of view of road safety alone the county council must start addressing this issue urgently because quite frankly many stretches of Devon’s roads are now dangerous to drive,” he said.

“Tourists arriving from other parts of the country must be horrified to find themselves negotiating fracturing surfaces and massive potholes and although local drivers are probably resigned to all that as a fact of life it doesn’t hide the fact that substandard road surfaces can frequently be a contributory cause of accidents.

“Doing nothing is not an acceptable option. Any road engineer will tell you that if road surfaces are allowed to deteriorate past a certain point they can no longer be patched or repaired, they have to be rebuilt, which is a hugely expensive operation.

“If Devon County Council allows that point to be reached it will clearly be left with unmanageably high bills which are bound to impact massively on what it has available to spend on other services.”

In response, a DCC spokesperson said: “Road maintenance investment is a national issue. The backlog of carriageway repairs in England and Wales has reached £14.02 billion, and in Devon it is over £200 million. The Government’s additional £9.4 million announced at the Spring Budget to help tackle this has been very welcome.

“But given that Devon has 8,000 miles of roads, the largest road network in England, with more than half of these categorised as Unclassified and having evolved over time in rural areas, this only partially addresses the sheer scale of the challenge. These challenges are further compounded by inflation, and more frequent severe weather events.

“Despite these pressures, our Highways and Traffic Management Service has continued to focus on reviewing and improving current working practices to increase efficiency and reduce disruption.

“This has been highlighted in benchmarking data from the National Highway and Transport Network (NHT) which shows us to be an efficient highways authority which strives to squeeze the maximum from our limited resources while also taking a national lead on carbon efficiency.

“We are investing £66 million in highways and bridge maintenance in 2023/24, this includes the additional £9.4 million from Government and a further £500,000 from our own efficiency savings.”

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

25 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Rishi Sunak’s rollback on green targets gets thumbs up from Trump

“I always knew Sunak was smart, that he wasn’t going to destroy and bankrupt his nation for fake climate alarmists that don’t have a clue,” Donald Trump

Donald Trump calls Rishi Sunak ‘smart’ for easing climate targets

Annabelle Dickson www.politico.eu

LONDON — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s easing of green policies has won the backing of Donald Trump.

In a post on his Truth Social media account late Saturday, the former U.S. president congratulated Sunak for announcing last week that he is paring back his green pledges.

Sunak has confirmed a major roll-back of several key U.K. green policies, including easing the transition to electric vehicles and shifting a date for a ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 until 2035. He also promised there would be more time to transition to heat pumps.

“I always knew Sunak was smart, that he wasn’t going to destroy and bankrupt his nation for fake climate alarmists that don’t have a clue,” Trump wrote.

Trump, who is leading the polls in the contest for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination, said the U.S. “keeps rolling merrily along, spending Trillions of Dollars trying to do that which is not doable, while at the same time breathing in the filthy and totally untreated air floating over our once great Country from China, India, Russia, and Parts Unknown.”

Sunak argued last week that continuing with the current climate policies risked “losing the consent of the British people — and the resulting backlash will not just be against specific policies, but against the wider mission itself, meaning we might never achieve our goal.” But Sunak insists he is still committed to reaching net zero by 2050.

Trump added: “Congratulations to Prime Minister Sunak for recognizing this SCAM before it was too late!”

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

24 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Coogan and Vorderman back tactical voting calls at Lib Dem conference

The Liberal Democrats have kicked off their annual conference with a call for people to vote tactically in the general election to remove Conservative MPs, until proportional representation makes this unnecessary.

Peter Walker www.theguardian.com 

Gathering in Bournemouth for their first autumn get-together since 2019, a conference rally heard video addresses from Carol Vorderman and Steve Coogan. Neither are party members but they said people should vote in a way to ensure Tory candidates lost.

The Lib Dems have benefited significantly from traditional Labour voters and even disenchanted Conservatives switching their support to overturn big Tory majorities in a string of recent byelections.

Coogan, the actor and comedian, told the rally that while he normally voted Labour, he would switch to the Lib Dems in the marginal Lewes constituency where he lives to try to oust the incumbent Tory, health minister Maria Caulfield.

“I’m not a member of the Lib Dems, and despite the beard and the fleece I generally vote Labour,” Coogan’s video said. “But where I live in Lewes, the candidate best placed to kick the Tories out is the Lib Dem candidate, so I vote for them.”

He backed proportional voting rather than the current method of first past the post, which Coogan called “an electoral system that robs millions of people of their vote”.

Vorderman, the former Countdown co-presenter, already works with a tactical voting website called Stop the Tories.

She told the rally: “We desperately need to end a system where only marginal seats matter, end a system which delivers parliaments that fail to accurately reflect votes cast and end a system where only the winner’s votes count.

“It doesn’t deliver parliaments that properly reflect the will of the nation. It has to change. But how do we get there? Well, in my opinion, the first step is tactical voting.”

The introduction of proportional representation (PR) is a longstanding Lib Dem aim, and one the party is closely associated with. It hopes to use the conference – following three years in which it was scuppered first by Covid and then the Queen’s funeral – to set out more policies before an election very likely next year.

Plans being debated include a proposal for a £5bn a year guarantee of free care packages for all in England, set out by the leader, Ed Davey, before the conference.

One policy formally adopted on Saturday commits to a doubling of statutory shared parental pay from just over £172 a week to £350, and increasing the amount of time it can be claimed from 37 weeks to 46 weeks.

However, as well as the videos about PR, the conference-opening rally included other trusted Lib Dem favourites, such as criticism of the government’s record on sewage discharged into rivers and the sea.

In another crowd-pleaser, Davey posed with one of the party’s ubiquitous election props – a giant clock with the slogan “Time’s up for Rishi Sunak”, used after the local elections in May.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

24 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Manchester’s buses are back under public control: this is how to run local transport 

After nearly 40 years of Thatcherite deregulation and privatisation, the buses in Manchester are back under public control. On Sunday, 50 Bee Network electric buses will take their first journey across Bolton, Wigan and parts of Salford and Bury, with the full rollout across Greater Manchester scheduled to be complete by January 2025.

Cat Hobbs www.theguardian.com 

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, should be proud. He faced down his critics, and stood firm against the immense pressure of the private bus operators who challenged his decision but failed to overturn it in the courts. The role of local campaigners Better Buses for Greater Manchester in this result must also be recognised; they clearly made the case for why public control would improve services and put pressure on Burnham to go through with his campaign promise. Thanks to them, the chaos of bus deregulation in the city will finally come to an end.

Greater Manchester was the home of the first ever horse-drawn “omnibus” service. Set up by a tollkeeper in 1824, the service ferried passengers to and from Pendleton and Manchester. The city has seen public ownership and control before. From 1930, there was a patchwork of services across the city, with every council owning a different coloured bus fleet. In 1969 these were streamlined, with the creation of a new transport authority, Selnec, which covered the whole of Greater Manchester with its trademark orange buses.

Then along came Margaret Thatcher. Her 1985 Transport Act led to a mass sale of council-owned bus companies and the start of a free-for-all in how services ran in the city. The quality of vehicles dramatically declined. In the “bus wars” that followed, private companies fought for custom, even racing each other down the street to pick up passengers. One observer described it as “gangster warfare”. Most travellers unsurprisingly simply got the first bus that came along, rather than picking and choosing their favourite bus company, which left competition authorities scratching their heads.

As companies consolidated, Manchester’s privatised buses developed a terrible reputation for being expensive, unreliable and slow. The theory was that deregulation would lead to “new and better services”, but the opposite had happened. Buses became more expensive and more unreliable. Since privatisation, bus fares in the UK as a whole have nearly doubled in real terms since 1987, while 3,000 bus routes were cut in the decade to 2019.

We are all propping up the private operators in this broken system. Public money makes up 40% of bus company revenue, but the public has no control over fares, nor the vast majority of routes and timetables. And 10% of that public money is paid as dividends to bus company shareholders, instead of being reinvested in better services.

The contrast between the capital and the rest of the country is stark. While journeys in London, where bus services are regulated by Transport for London, doubled over the two decades before the pandemic, bus trips outside London halved. The UK lags behind other countries on productivity, and terrible urban transport in major cities outside London is a significant factor.

None of this is inevitable. The public want a better bus system, with one study showing that 57% of motorists would use their car less if bus fares were lower and services more reliable. Other countries show it is possible. Local public transport is 88% publicly owned in Germany, and in Switzerland, every village gets an hourly service thanks to proper funding, public ownership and planning.

And now Manchester is also showing the way. Using new powers from the Bus Services Act 2017, Burnham has introduced London-style regulation with private bus companies now bidding for contracts in a planned network.

Ultimately, we need full public ownership, but public control is still a gamechanger. It means Transport for Greater Manchester has the power to properly plan its Bee Network, with affordable area-wide fares, simple ticketing and a coordinated timetable.

It means that it will be able to redirect surplus profit from busy routes to subsidise less busy but essential buses. Overall cost savings due to lower profit margins can be used to expand the network, or provide better evening and weekend services. Public transport will be cheaper, more frequent, reliable and easy to understand.

A 2021 report on buses by a former UN special rapporteur on human rights found that the UK had “provided a masterclass in how not to run an essential public service”. But the tide is now turning. Thanks to Burnham and the campaigners who made the case, Greater Manchester could provide a blueprint for turning around our broken bus system.

With further campaigns being organised in cities and regions across England to take buses back under public control, and with Wales already planning to regulate its entire bus network, the reversal of Thatcherite deregulation and privatisation is in motion.

  • Cat Hobbs is the founder of We Own It, an organisation that campaigns for public ownership of public services
Standard

Posted by

Posted on

24 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

West Hill in ‘Brexit’ breakaway bid from Ottery St Mary

The East Devon parish of West Hill is looking to ‘breakaway’ and stand on its own two feet. At present, a joint Neighbourhood Plan exists which covers both the town of Ottery St Mary and the village of West Hill.

Daniel Clark www.devonlive.com

But an application has been made to create a new neighbourhood area for the parish area of West Hill only. If approved, it would remove the village from the current joint neighbourhood area.

Documents with the application which has been made to East Devon District Council say that it has been agreed between the two councils that each parish has its own needs and priorities, but that there are areas of mutual interest where it would be advantageous to have some joint working and discussion, e.g. a potential green wedge between Ottery & West Hill.

A statement says: “A joint Ottery St Mary + West Hill Neighbourhood Plan is currently in place. But West Hill Parish Council considers it appropriate to designate a neighbourhood area, focussed on the West Hill Parish Boundary, for the following reasons.

“As it is now over four years since the NP was made, it is timely to consider a review, which can also be in conformity with the emerging Local Plan 2020-2040. A review of the Neighbourhood Plan by West Hill Parish Council has shown that the interests and priorities of the two councils (Ottery St Mary and West Hill) have diverged.

“There are some policies in the NP which are working well and others which could be strengthened and made more specific for West Hill, and some new policies are needed. For these reasons, West Hill Parish Council’s decision is that they wish to re-define the Neighbourhood Plan Area and work on a separate Neighbourhood Plan for West Hill.

“As established during the process of creating the new parish of West Hill, the two settlements have separate and distinct identities and demographics. The priorities for a revised NP are different for the two settlements. It is agreed between the two councils that there will be joint discussions over matters of mutual interest, e.g. the green wedge, and that there may be a need for mirror policies in the two new NPs.

“The proposal to proceed with an NP review was discussed with residents during the consultation event for the Local Plan Review organised by WHPC. Residents were supportive of the proposal to proceed with a separate new NP for West Hill.”


West Hill Parish Council has applied for the whole of the parish to be designated as a new Neighbourhood Area. East Devon District Council is now consulting on this proposal. The closing date for comments is 9am Monday 30th October 2023.

West Hill is currently included in the Ottery St Mary and West Hill joint Neighbourhood Area, which is covered by the ‘made’ Ottery St Mary and West Hill Neighbourhood Plan. If the application is approved, a new Neighbourhood Area would be designated to cover West Hill parish, and the existing Neighbourhood Area would be amended to remove West Hill parish from it. This amended Neighbourhood Area would cover the parished area of Ottery St Mary only. The existing joint Neighbourhood Plan will remain in force across both areas until such time as it is replaced in either or each parish by a new Neighbourhood Plan.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

24 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Trouble for Sunak as Tory MPs in blue wall left ‘vulnerable’ by PM’s net zero U-turns

For southeast also read southwest? – Owl

Rishi Sunak’s decision to backtrack on key climate policies could leave Conservative MPs in blue-wall seats vulnerable, polling suggests.

Jon Stone www.independent.co.uk

Research by pollsters Survation found support for climate action particularly high in Tory-held constituencies in the southeast of England, where the Tories are facing a series of challenges by the Lib Dems and Labour.

The Tories are predicted to hold just 29 out of 52 seats in the southeast, according to analysis of over 20,000 voters by the firm.

It comes as Mr Sunak jettisoned a long list of net zero pledges, including delaying a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars until 2035, and introducing diluted targets for the phasing out of gas boilers.

He was also widely mocked for axing policies that did not exist – such as theoretical new taxes on meat or “compulsory” car sharing – topics which are often fodder for online disinformation.

In a blow for Mr Sunak, Survation found that the most marginal constituencies in Tory heartland seats overwhelmingly support almost all specific climate policies polled.

In addition, almost three in four of these constituents (72 per cent) said those policies would influence how they voted.

Georgia Whitaker, a climate campaigner at Greenpeace, which commissioned the polling, said: “Voters in the most hotly contested seats are saying that climate change matters to them, and they want bold policies to tackle it.

“But in a desperate attempt to play politics with the climate, Sunak risks haemorrhaging his party’s support in Tory strongholds and key marginals.

“This endless flip-flopping on such vital issues will not only leave people with higher bills and a damaged economy, but it could badly backfire against Sunak’s party at the next election unless the government changes tack.”

Some 85 per cent of voters in the blue wall want the government to provide more financial support to insulate homes, while almost four in five (73 per cent) want more government funding for heat pumps.

And 88 per cent want to see more investment in renewable power, while 79 per cent want rail travel subsidised to ensure it is always cheaper than driving.

Greenpeace has launched a campaign to encourage people to become “climate voters” at the next general election, expected next year.

They want voters to choose candidates who are committed to reducing the UK’s emissions in line with scientific advice and improving nature.

Activists said they were aiming to recruit at least 1 million climate voters and would be knocking on doors across the country but especially in marginal and blue wall areas.

The campaign has received support from high-profile celebrities including Stephen Fry, Olivia Colman, Mel B, Will Poulter and Joe Lycett, who have also put their signature to an open letter alongside 100,000 other people demanding politicians take stronger action on climate.

Actor Peter Capaldi, who is also backing the campaign, said: “It can feel overwhelming when you look at all the crises we are facing, like the cost of living, extreme weather, and pollution choking our rivers and seas.

“But none of this is inevitable and, although we’re clearly already suffering the effects of extreme weather, there’s still time to change direction.

“I stand with people all over the country who are demanding climate action for our NHS, our economy and our planet. A safer, healthier future for all is within our grasp if politicians can be bold and brave enough to deliver it.

“It’s up to us to demand that our political leaders listen, and deliver on what the country and our children deserve.”

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

24 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

What you need to know about Covid as new variant rises

The number of people in hospital has gone up. Google searches have doubled in a month and booster vaccines have been brought forward because of a new variant. It might all feel a bit 2021. But – these days – how much do we really need to worry about Covid?

By Jim Reed www.bbc.co.uk

Marjorie from Pembrokeshire had gone through the whole pandemic without catching the virus – until this month.

“I thought I had natural immunity,” she says.

“But I caught it from my granddaughter who had the same symptoms as mine.”

In her case, that meant a headache, muscle pain and a loss of smell and taste.

“I just didn’t realise I would feel so weak and lethargic,” she adds.

How many people – like Marjorie – are catching Covid this autumn is impossible to know for sure.

All those drive-in testing sites are long closed and those free boxes of lateral flow tests probably dried up months ago.

The Office for National Statistics infection survey, which used to test a random sample of the population, was scrapped back in March.

But we do still record the number of people who test positive in hospital across the whole UK, and that figure has been creeping up since the summer.

Chart showing patients in hospital with Covid

“What does it tell me about the virus? It tells me it’s spreading and it tells me it still has the ability to make people very unwell,” says Stuart McDonald, an actuary at the consultants LCP, who has studied the data closely since the start of the pandemic.

On 17 September, 3,019 hospital beds in England were taken up by someone with Covid. That number has tripled since July, but dipped last week, and is just a fraction of the 33,000 seen at the peak of the second wave in 2021.

About a third of those patients were being treated mainly for the disease, with most testing positive after they were admitted for another reason.

Why do some people get infected?

Hospital trends give us a very rough idea of how much virus is around and whether infection levels are rising or falling.

How likely we are to catch it, and how sick we get, then depends on a mix of complex factors – from genetics and age, to lifestyle and the environment in which we live.

Research published in the journal Nature this year suggests about 10% of the population carry a gene which allows them to identify and eliminate the virus before they even start to develop tell-tale symptoms like a cough, sore throat or fever.

Covid immunity in the UK

  • 93%aged 12+ have received at least one vaccine
  • 82%infected at least once by Nov 2022

Source: NHS Digital, ONS

We have all built up different levels of immunity over the last four years depending on our vaccine record and contact with the disease.

“There’s probably no two people in the country whose history of vaccinations and Covid exposure are alike,” says Mr McDonald.

“So I think it’s more difficult to predict what will come next than it has been at any previous point.”

That immunity starts to fall soon after an infection or a vaccine. This is where the virus differs from measles or polio, for example, where jabs in childhood can protect you for life.

Protection against catching Covid is likely to last just a few months – at best – although data shows protection against severe disease is more long-lasting.

In part that is because the virus itself is constantly changing.

Previous waves have been driven by different forms – or variants – which have undergone multiple genetic changes.

Those mutations can alter the virus’s behaviour – making it spread faster, for example.

But crucially they might also make it harder for our immune systems, which have been primed to respond to those older versions, to recognise and fight off.

In late 2021, the Omicron variant did just that and infected millions, although that wave did not lead to a huge spike in hospitalisations and deaths.

“Being exposed to the virus, either through vaccination, infection or a combination of both, is undoubtedly reducing the severity of disease when we get it,” says Alex Richter, a professor of clinical immunology at the University of Birmingham.

More recently we have seen a series of smaller waves driven by close relatives – or subvariants – of Omicron.

BA.2.86 Covid variant

  • 18countries with confirmed cases
  • 54cases detected in the UK
  • 28infections at Norfolk case home
  • 0residents needed hospital treatment for Covid

Source: GISAID, UKHSA, PHS

In August 2023, scientists around the world started tracking the spread of yet another version with a large number of mutations.

Just 54 cases of BA.2.86, as it is now called, have been confirmed in the UK, including a large outbreak at a care home in Norfolk. Early lab tests appear to be reassuring – with signs it may be less contagious and immunity dodging than some originally feared.

How well protected are we?

The emergence of BA.2.86 meant a decision was made to bring forward the autumn Covid booster to better protect the most vulnerable this winter.

But the new jabs are only available to people over 65 years old – it was the over-50s last year – and those with certain health conditions. That is a tactical decision, says Dr Adam Finn, professor of paediatrics at the University of Bristol.

He explained: “When younger people who’ve already had infections and vaccines get Covid [again], they get a cold and a cough and might be off work for a few days.

“There’s no real value in investing a lot of time and effort immunising them again when there are so many other things for the health service to be doing.”

The reality is then that most under-65s will now end up boosting their immunity not through vaccination, but through catching Covid many times.

How worried should we be?

Prof Richter says it is now time to start thinking of Covid more like flu, where new forms of the disease, some worse than others, appear every year and new vaccines are rolled out for the latest winter strain.

Covid will still be a problem for the most vulnerable, she adds, and hospitals, which will still need to deal with new infection waves.

“We have bad flu years and good flu years,” she says.

“There’s a good chance that once every four or five years, we’re going to have a bad dose [of Covid] and we are going to need to go to bed for a few days, otherwise most of the time, for most of us, I think it will be OK.”

Every dose of the virus is not completely without danger, even for the healthy, with some research suggesting an increased risk of long-Covid symptoms like fatigue, shortness of breathe and brain fog.

But – in general – Prof Finn says each new infection should feel milder with the length of time you are sick reduced.

“Each time you catch it, your immunity gets stronger and broader,” he adds.

Short presentational grey line

Sam, an IT worker from north London, managed to pick up infection number three on a trip to Turkey with her family this month.

“The first time was really horrible, the second time it felt like flu, but by the third time I didn’t really think about it,” she says.

“I just had a stinker of a cold and was all bunged up.”

This is maybe what scientists meant when, at the very start of the pandemic, we were told that, one day, we would have to learn to live with Covid.

The virus is not going away.

But perhaps it is starting to become part of the background to our everyday lives.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

24 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Home energy efficiency taskforce – I’m scrapping it!

The “real Rishi” continues to reveal more of himself. – Owl

Rishi Sunak scraps home energy efficiency taskforce

The government’s energy efficiency taskforce has quietly been disbanded, the BBC can reveal.

By Ione Wells www.bbc.co.uk

It comes after Rishi Sunak scrapped energy efficiency regulations for landlords in an overhaul of green policies.

The taskforce was set up in March to speed up home insulation and boiler upgrades.

Improving energy efficiency is seen as a key way to get household bills down and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

The UK is often described as having some of the oldest and least energy efficient housing in Europe.

In 2020, BBC research found 12 million UK homes were rated D or below on their Energy Performance Certificates, which means they do not meet long-term energy efficiency targets.

This year a BBC investigation found six out of 10 recently inspected UK rental homes failed to meet a proposed new standard for energy efficiency.

The prime minister has now pledged to scrap policies that would force landlords to upgrade energy efficiency in their homes, after pressure from landlords about the costs of doing so, but said the government would “encourage” households to carry out the work.

‘Accelerating insulation’

The old policy was that from 2025, new tenancies would only be possible on properties with an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) of C or higher – from 2028, this would apply to existing tenancies as well. Both have been scrapped.

The government’s energy efficiency taskforce was first announced by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt at his last Autumn statement.

It was asked by ministers to come up with a plan to reduce energy demand by 15% from 2021 levels by 2030 across domestic and commercial buildings.

When it was announced, the government said this would cut bills and help push down inflation and would include “accelerating household insulation and boiler upgrades.”

It was chaired by Alison Rose, who was chief executive of Nat West bank at the time (she was forced out of the bank in July after a row over Nigel Farage’s bank account).

‘Another U-turn’

The taskforce’s membership included: the chair of the National Infrastructure Commission Sir John Armitt; head of leading housebuilder Barratt Developments, David Thomas; and leading experts from the University of Salford, the UK Green Building Council and National Energy Action.

Energy efficiency minister Lord Callanan wrote to members of the group on Friday saying co-chair Dame Alison Rose would not be replaced and the group would be dissolved.

In the letter, seen by the BBC, Lord Callanan says the group’s work would be “streamlined” into ongoing government activity.

The minister writes that the ideas and discussions that had come from the group had been “hugely valuable in supporting the ambition to reduce total UK energy demand by 15% from 2021 levels by 2030.”

He adds that the work to date had not been “wasted” and that “draft recommendations will be instrumental in driving forward this important agenda.”

In response, energy analyst Jess Ralston at the non-profit organisation, the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, told the BBC: “This appears to be yet another U-turn that could lead to higher bills, just like the prime minister’s decision last week to roll back landlord insulation standards that could leave renters paying an additional £8bn on energy bills.

“The gas boiler and petrol car phase-out weren’t set to have any impact on cost of living for struggling families for more than a decade, but insulation programmes could have a more immediate impact, yet the prime minister ditched that policy last week and now the government seems to be turning its back on experts and ideas that could help boost energy efficiency.”

She added: “Is government giving up on energy efficiency and those living in leaky homes unable to make the improvements that would keep them warmer?

“Experts like Citizen’s Advice are clear if you want to bring down bills you do energy efficiency, you help people to stop wasting heat through rooves, windows and walls.”

The group also said the government “could have easily replaced Alison Rose, there are lots of business people who feel they have a stake in how homes can be improved.”

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

23 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Rishi Sunak urged to stop attacking Climate Change Committee

Scientists have written to Rishi Sunak asking him to stop “politicising” and attacking the Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent body that exists to advise the government on five-year “carbon budgets” necessary to meet its 2050 target.

Helena Horton www.theguardian.com

This week Sunak spoke about his plans to weaken his government’s environmental policies. When asked about comments from Chris Stark, the chief executive of the CCC, saying that the government would not hit the carbon budget with its current plans, Sunak replied: “I am very happy to get opinions and advice from everybody, and everyone’s entitled to their view.”

He added: “For those who disagree with me … the question’s for them – they should explain to the country why they think it’s right that ordinary families up and down the country should fork out five, 10, £15,000? … I don’t think they need to, and if someone disagrees then they should explain why.”

Subsequently Conservative headquarters wrote to journalists outlining measures from the CCC and asking them to demand that the Labour party reveal whether it would adopt them in government.

Bob Ward, the director of communications at the Grantham Institute for Climate at Imperial College, said in a letter to Sunak, seen by the Guardian: “My primary concern is a document that was circulated to journalists by Conservative campaign headquarters after your speech, which attempted to politicise the advice of the Climate Change Committee.

“Although this document was described as ‘Questions to Labour on Net Zero’, it included a section on ‘New measures which the CCC has said would need to be introduced …’ It cited issues described as ‘road taxes’, ‘flight taxes’ and ‘diet change’.”

Ward continued in his letter: “While your government is perfectly entitled not to accept advice from the committee, it is extremely unhelpful to politicise its role and its advice in this way. I hope that you will find an opportunity to acknowledge this mistake and to reaffirm the importance of the committee offering robust and rigorous independent advice on compliance with the Climate Change Act.”

Prof Martin Siegert, a co-director of the Grantham Institute, said this was a “cynical move” to openly add criticism to the body that offered independent advice, adding: “I have listened with concern in recent days. The PM’s focus, and those of cabinet and other ministers and members of government, on claiming the CCC is recommending policies that are unaffordable to the general public. They are clearly not government policy, and can only become policy under this government. When asked where these ideas came from, the response has been that the CCC recommended them.”

The government is in charge of appointing the new chair of the committee, and there are fears among the scientific community that Sunak will choose someone who allows him to weaken the next carbon budgets, or that the prime minister will stoke public distaste for the committee in order to change the carbon budgets in parliament.

A spokesperson from No 10 responded by sending comments Sunak made to broadcasters earlier in the week in which he said: “Lots of people will have lots of different views on this. We’ve been through the numbers. we’re confident that we are on track to deliver all our targets. And I would point out people have predicted we would miss our carbon budgets in the past, but we’ve actually met every single one of them.”

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

23 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Politics’ podcaster warned off sewage swim

Alastair Campbell took to Budleigh Salterton waters anyway

Former New Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, who’s a marathon runner and cold water swimmer, was warned off taking to the sea off Budleigh Salterton when he appeared at the town’s literary festival this week.

Josh Tate www.radioexe.co.uk

Mr Campbell, who was in Budleigh to promote his latest book, But What Can I Do? ignored the words of foreboding, to take a dip nonetheless.

Speaking to the festival media sponsor Radio Exe, Mr Campbell lamented the state of much of the country’s infrastructure, which he claims began under former prime minister David Cameron and chancellor George Osborne’s ‘austerity’ programme.

He said it was so remarkable that the two trains he took to reach Devon were on time, he sent a message home to tell his family he “didn’t quite believe it…it’s a bit of a shock” and suggesting that’s indicative of the low standards many people now expect.

He continued: “Even going down to swim in the sea today, people were going ‘ooh, you’ve got to watch out for the sewage.’ And I’m thinking, ‘You come to a beautiful place by the seaside and you’ve really got to worry about whether there’s brown stuff floating alongside you as you swim. And they [the Tories] have allowed this to happen.”

Go to www.radioexe.co.uk to listen to Alastair Campbell’s full interview with Radio Exe (approx 6 mins)

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

23 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

EDDC source explains origins of Rishi’s “seven bin” myth

The real story behind PM’s claim that he has scrapped a government diktat to sort your rubbish into seven different bins is revealed.

An EDDC source looks for the origins of the “seven bin” myth.

After deconstructing the semantic difference between “Consistency in Collections” and “Simpler Recycling”, and pouring over statements from DEFRA clarifying Rishi’s speech, it seems to come from no less an authority than the Daily Mail.

Every local authority has been awaiting 3 years now for a ministerial  decision on how to go forward with critical key aspects of the Environment Act 2021 on recycling.

Maybe they will have to wait even longer to find out whether Rishi wants to sift through the rubbish and find more “diktats” to scrap. Some of them carry cost implications! – Owl

What’s the real story of the Prime Minister’s 7 Bins?

There is a lot of publicity regarding a change in Government Policy on Recycling and Waste. 

Present policy and clarification after PM’s speech

The present policy that local authorities such our own East Devon District Council (EDDC) need to comply with is.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2021/30/section/57/enacted

Officers and Councillors have gone through the follow up statements from DEFRA after Wednesdays 20.09.2023 speech by the PM but cannot find any changes or clarifications.

The only difference that was spotted is that “Consistency in Collections” now becomes ‘Simpler Recycling’. (Just a change in title but unfortunately no details on what it means.)

There are some assurances that there will be no top-down dictated requirements and that Local Authorities will continue to have local decision making on recycling systems as long as they collect the “mandatory materials” which EDDC do. (So basically, it seems there isn’t any change)

What is the origin of the reference to seven bins?

But the question remains where this mythical “seven bins” come from? The only reference seems to have come from a recent ridiculous Daily Mail story, but a spokesman for East Devon District Council says that in numerous meetings in the last 3 years the idea of 7 bins was never an agenda item with DEFRA. If it had, the spokesperson for the Authority said they would have obviously strongly objected to this unworkable and totally impractical change in householder and operational practices!

Do we have clarity on helping reduce household waste?

So where are we with Government changes to the Recycling and Waste Policies? Are we any clearer on the direction of travel that this Government wants us to travel down, to help reduce household waste? We were told that the Prime Minister was going to make an “enormous announcement on Climate Change” and a substantial part of improving carbon emissions is how we deal with our waste.

Unfortunately, the only information provided was that we will not all be forced to have 7 bins!! Which wasn’t a consideration anyway!!

Every local authority has been awaiting 3 years now for a ministerial  decision on how we go forward with critical key aspects of the Environment Act 2021. Only this Tuesday  (the day before the PMs announcement) it was reported that the Environment Secretary will release more information ‘soon’ on the key changes required within the Environment Act 2021, including:

 Extended Producer Responsibility (Waste packaging producers paying for collections.)

This massive shift in government thinking will change the way Recycling and Waste will be financed. Rather than the funding from Council Tax and Government subsidy the funding will partly  come from the packaging companies.

The theory is the makers of the packaging will pay a fee to a new (yet to be set up) Authority to administer the payments to be paid to each Council to cover some of the cost of collecting and processing.

Deposit Return Scheme (on bottles and cans) The latest news on this will be only on plastic drink bottles over 49mm to 3Lte and drink cans which will have a deposit amount of probably 20p. Glass bottles will now not be included. To claim your deposit back you will be required to return it to your retail outlet who will refund it over the counter or a return vending machine. This in theory will remove the majority of plastic and cans from curb-side collections, and the retail companies will be required to handle the returned bottles and cans and send them for processing for recycling.

Consistency in Collections (now called “Simpler Recycling”) In East Devon we are processing all the materials required by the act, but it is expected that light plastic rapping will be included later. The only outstanding issue that early discussions included was a free Garden Waste bin for every household. At present East Devon provide the service at £50 per year for a 2 weekly collection that makes a small provide which goes towards funding the general recycling costs for the district.

These new initiatives are still in development by DEFRA with implementation originally planned for next year, but now moved to Oct 2025 (but this is now looking very unlikely!!)

It had been expected that the Prime Minister would have provided clarity on these vitally important changes, but no! the only news was we will not be required to have 7 bins!!

East Devon’s  Recycling and Waste operations are considered one of the best in the country, but the unending uncertainty is making it very difficult to forward plan the strategy and council finances. An extension to the current business partnership with Suez is now being finalised, but a new contract must be agreed and actioned by the summer of 2026 (less than 3 years away!) In that time the changes that the Government require needs to be embedded and in operation to provide an understanding of the physical and monetary changes, plus the added budgetary  plans to decarbonise the 60 vehicles with the probable electrification of the whole fleet.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

22 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Did Simon Jupp share this image of “seven bins” with Rishi?

Behind Simon Jupp’s Exmouth office (yes the prospective candidate for Sidmouth still has a presence in Exmouth) is a line of bins. 

Obviously not belonging to Simon’s office, it’s not just open long enough to generate this much rubbish.

But did the image sow the seed of an idea? – Owl

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

22 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Factchecking Rishi Sunak’s claims on the net zero transition

Rishi Sunak said on Thursday that there had not been enough honesty and transparency about what is involved in the transition to net zero. And he has done various media appearances since his speech on Wednesday doubling down on the government’s U-turn on net zero policies. Here we examine five of Sunak’s key claims.

Sandra Laville www.theguardian.com 

1. Climate targets

The claim: Sunak said he was not slowing down on climate targets and that the government had consistently overdelivered in meeting its targets so far.

For many years, the UK was a world leader on the climate, cutting greenhouse gas emissions further and faster than any other G7 economy. However, much of this was achieved long before this government, as a result of structural changes in the UK economy stretching back to the 1980s. The “dash for gas” took place in the 1990s and 2000s, replacing coal-fired power generation with North Sea gas, and accounts for most of the 50% fall in UK emissions since 1990.

Emissions from the power sector have continued to fall as more renewable energy is installed, helping the UK to meet its five-yearly carbon budgets to date, but carbon from transport, housing and farming has barely budged in the past decade.

Those are the key areas that would have been addressed under plans such as the switch to electric vehicles and heat pumps. Weakening those policies puts the UK’s current and future carbon targets in doubt. According to the statutory Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the government was already off track to meet the fifth and sixth carbon budgets, running from 2028 to 2032 and 2033 to 2037. Its experts are now considering whether the changes in policy are likely to make that worse.

2. Costs to consumers

The claim: Sunak said people who disagreed with him must explain why they want families to have to pay an extra £5,000, £10,000 or £15,000.

It was unclear, but Sunak may have been referring to the cost of installing heat pumps over gas boilers. The average cost of installing heat pumps is coming down, however, something the prime minister acknowledged when he said the cost of transition was falling faster than anyone had thought.

Octopus Energy has just unveiled a heat pump for a three-bedroom home that would cost £3,000 after the government’s boiler upgrade grant. Octopus said that with the increase announced by Sunak of the boiler upgrade grant from £5,000 to £7,500, an average home could get a heat pump for as little as £500 – not a figure mentioned by Sunak.

Mark Maslin, a professor of climatology at University College London, said: “His excuse again and again … is not to put the cost burden on the public – as if it is individuals that have to pay for the net zero transition. The prime minister seems to forget that government is there to enable major infrastructure changes, and the switch to renewable energy, electric cars and heat exchangers should be supported because all of them in the long run save people money and improve people’s health.”

3. Taxes and compulsory behaviour change

The claim: Sunak said he was scrapping various proposals for encouraging behaviour change – “for government to interfere in how many passengers you can have in your car”; “that we should force you to have seven different bins in your home”; “to make you change your diet and harm British farmers by taxing meat”.

None of these have ever been government policies or been about to become government policies. Sunak appeared to claim on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday that the CCC had proposed a meat tax, but it has never proposed one. The committee has recommended a reduction of meat and dairy intake by 20% by 2030.

Sunak claimed he had scrapped rules requiring households to have seven bins for recycling. In 2021, new regulations said local authorities should arrange for collections of seven different types of waste – paper, plastic, metal, glass, non-recyclables, food waste and garden waste – but there were never plans for households to have a bin for each. The recyclable waste could still all go in one bin.

His own officials reassured stakeholders hours after Sunak’s speech, saying: “It was never the case that seven bins would be needed by households.”

Companies involved in car sharing said they were surprised that Sunak appeared to be scrapping a policy to force people to car share, because it did not exist. “It would appear that the prime minister has just killed a policy that no one knew they had,” said Julie Furnell, of Mobilityways.

4. Boilers

The claim: Sunak said households would never be forced to “rip out their existing boiler and replace it with a heat pump”.

Until Wednesday, there was a 2035 target to phase out the sale of gas boilers. It would not have forced people to rip out their boiler at that date and replace it, however. In reality, only those who needed to replace their boiler from 1 January 2035 would have had to replace it with a non-fossil fuel option.

Boilers often last about 15 years, so the 2035 date gives enough time for most boilers to be gone in time for net zero in 2050.

The phasing in of heat pumps allows consumers to stop relying on ever-more expensive gas, and encourages the industry to come up with cheaper and more efficient options. It also incentivises insulation, which enables heat pumps to work more effectively. When properly installed in a home with sufficient insulation, a heat pump is already cheaper to run today than running a gas boiler.

The policy to allow gas boilers to continue to be sold for longer ultimately benefits the fossil fuel industry rather than consumers.

5. Proportionate and pragmatic

The claim: Sunak said he was taking a middle road between “eco-zealots” who want to go further and faster on cutting emissions, and climate denialists who say there is no problem.

Sunak’s new stance does not appear so pragmatic when measured against the likely economic impacts. Although many carbon-cutting measures require upfront investment, the savings in efficiency, fossil fuels and from adopting more productive new technology can rapidly pay back the cost. There are also frequently “co-benefits” to green measures, which are harder to quantify, such as improvements in health and quality of life from eating less meat, cycling or walking more, and the cleaner air from taking more cars off the road.

For the UK to be economically successful, new business investment and new or upgraded infrastructure is constantly needed – so the question is not whether to invest at all, but whether to invest in clean and green ways of doing business, or in old high-carbon ways. The government can help with this by setting out regulations that private companies must follow. If it does not do so, British people may be stuck with high-carbon infrastructure in a future low-carbon world – for instance, with roads instead of public transport, air travel instead of high-speed trains, gas-fired boilers instead of modern heat pumps.

The Office for Budget Responsibility calculated in 2021 that the low-carbon investment needed to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 would cost about £1.3tn in total. About £1tn of this will be offset by savings in fossil fuels and efficiency. The £300bn remaining, spread over 30 years, is now even less, the OBR said in its updated report in July, because of high gas prices – in fact, relying on gas for longer will now be more expensive than going low-carbon, it found.

Sunak, as a former chancellor of the exchequer, must have read the OBR reports, so the question is: if he is a pragmatist and economist, why is he failing to follow pragmatic economic advice?

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

22 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

Tory donor gets £137m in hidden Gov. payments

Good Law Project

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has paid £137m in hidden payments to a firm owned by Frank Hester, the healthcare tech tycoon. Hester, who was found to have given a £5m donation to the Conservatives earlier this month, has received around £800,000 a week to his company, Phoenix Partnership. 

The enormous scale of the payments to Hester’s Phoenix Partnership has not previously been reported.

Good Law Project calculated the size of these payments by combing through four years of the department’s data on official payments.

The contracts under which the payments were made have not been published on the Government’s official procurement website, Contracts Finder, but the DHSC claims the payments were made under a published ‘contract framework’ and that there is no requirement to publish individual contract awards.

The accounts of the holding company, which is 100% owned by Frank Hester, reveal that he was paid £10m in dividends last year. In December last year Frank Hester wrote: “We are here for our NHS. We are here to help, not drive profits for shareholders or to grease revolving doors.”

The VIP lane – a system for fast-track access declared illegal in a Court case brought by Good Law Project – saw many controversial contracts given to Conservative donors, without competition.

“We’ve been shining a light on the donors’ money-go-round since the pandemic,” said the Good Law Project Executive Director, Jo Maugham, “but the huge size of Hester’s donation makes this stand out for its sheer ugliness.”

Frank Hester was approached for a comment. 

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

22 Sep 2023

Posted under

Misc

‘On the verge of collapse’: Local government in crisis with bankruptcy fears across the UK

Just in case Simon Jupp is still in denial about this. – Owl

Over the past few weeks I have travelled across England speaking to leaders in local government – from Maidstone and Gravesend, in Kent, to Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire, and then Surrey Heath and Woking in Surrey.

Anushka Asthana www.itv.com

Everywhere I went, whether it was Conservative voices, Labour ones or Lib Dems, the message was the same – that local government is in crisis.

The reality is that councils are on their knees financially and services everywhere are under threat. 

ITV News embarked on this project after revealing earlier this summer that huge councils across the country were being hit by massive equal pay bills.

This includes Birmingham, which admitted liabilities of up to £760m because of legal cases accusing it o discriminating against female staff.

These claims come on top of a decade in which local government finance has been stretched to the limit following spending cuts through austerity, changes to the funding formula and now inflation. 

It was that financial context that meant when Birmingham was hit by equal pay it basically toppled over, effectively declaring itself bankrupt by issuing a section 114. 

This forces the council to stop any non-essential spending, including lots of things that you or I might consider pretty critical like youth services, or leisure centres and libraries. 

Rishi Sunak accused the Labour administration in Birmingham of driving the council to bankruptcy, but the reality is a crisis that spans the country and all political colours.

At the biggest Conservative council in the country, Kent County Council, the leader Roger Gough told me things were “unsustainable”.

His deputy Peter Oakford, who is in charge of finances, painted an even bleaker picture.

“I think all of local government across the country is heading for a death spiral unless the issues around the funding of social care are resolved,” he warned.

He said that 70% of the council’s budget was now coping with spiraling demand for social care and children’s services – leaving a diminishing pot for everything else.

For example the roads budget, was squeezed despite Kent suffering record potholes in freezing weather last year, he said.

And Kent is not a council where there have been questions about bad financial decisions.

The same is true to a large extent in Stoke-on-Trent. There, leader of the council Jane Ashworth admitted she can’t promise they will balance the books next year.

They need to find £25 million and could be forced to issue a 114 notice. 

She criticised the old Tory administration (that was voted out in May) for a bad decision to build a car park costing £15m but said mainly this was a national problem. 

She warned that getting to that stage wasn’t a help to a council. 

Stoke-on-Trent council leader Jane Ashworth Credit: ITV News

“In your stomach you tend to think that will sort it out. Well it doesn’t,” she said.

“All it does is limit your own spending powers. But as we’re limiting our own spending powers anyway.

“It doesn’t seem to be a particularly helpful device. It’s not like it brings with it a sack of money.

“It doesn’t bring any money at all – it just brings government commissioners telling you that you can’t do what you weren’t going to do in the first place.”

Stoke-on-Trent suffers with deprivation, which means it has a lower ability to raise council tax and a higher social care need.

The council argues a change in funding means less money follows need. 

In Woking, where the borough council was accused of poor financial investments under the Tories, a new Lib Dem administration is looking at some dire cuts.

From parks and playgrounds, to closing public loos, the local swimming pool, and youth services, all these social services are being hit.

Next door is Surrey Heath, the backyard of Tory MP and levelling up secretary Michael Gove, whose job it is to make sure councils are operating effectively.

The Lib Dems accuse him of pushing their council to bankruptcy with a funding formula they feel is unfair to their much more affluent area.

There, they want to keep more of the business rates they raise. They don’t think they will issue a 114 notice soon but believe it could happen in two years. 

The problem is everywhere – 60 council leaders and chief execs across England have spoken anonymously to the Local Government Information unit – which has shared some findings with ITV News.

“It’s the worst it’s ever been,” says one.

Councils are reduced to a “blue light service” says another.

There are warnings “libraries are gone, GP surgeries are gone”, and that they “can’t maintain roads and parks”.

Another admits: “We are on the verge of collapse…”

Meanwhile new research from the IPPR shows that councils have sold off £15bn of public assets since 2010 because of the financial strain.

The top five include: Birmingham, City of London, Westminster, Southwark, and Camden.