Tag Archives: advise

Johnson ADVISES on coronavirus containment – at what cost to businesses and people?

Boris Johnson has suggested that people might be well-advised to avoid their place of work, their local pub, and travel in his latest bid to stop the spread of coronavirus:

  • He has suggested – not ordered – that everyone should avoid public gatherings and places like pubs, clubs and theatres.

That’s fine if the pub has insurance to cover an interruption of business – and if the insurance company pays out. Johnson has only advised people to stay away, and interruption of business insurance is specifically to cover losses suffered by a business after a disaster. Considering the number of pubs that may have such insurance, and therefore the likely number of claims, it seems likely that the insurance companies might themselves go bankrupt if they pay out.

… That’s unless they have insurance too.

I don’t think they’ll pay. I think Johnson has deliberately tried to avoid forcing the insurers to take a financial hit by restricting his announcement to advice, and they will take advantage of that, no matter what it does to the economy in the long run.

Personally, I do much of my best work in pubs so this is a bitter blow.

  • He wants everyone who can work from home to do so.

That won’t go down well with some companies. One newspaper that formerly employed me (which shall remain nameless) refused point-blank to allow home working during normal working hours because the bosses were convinced that I would bunk off and enjoy myself instead.

That decision proved to be catastrophically myopic (although this firm didn’t actually go to the wall, like many others after I left them).

  • All “unnecessary” visits to friends and relatives in care homes should cease, he says.

How do you define a “necessary” visit to a friend or relative in a care home? I’m assuming that they’ll just close their doors to visitors.

  • People should only use the NHS “where we really need to” – and can reduce the burden on workers by getting advice on the NHS website where possible, he says.

This is transparent enough; he knows he and his party have ruined the National Health Service to the point where it cannot cope with a pandemic.

So he is loading the burden onto the general public to decide when they are sick enough to need professional treatment. I predict that people who aren’t really ill will clog up the hospitals while the genuinely sick will stay away – possibly until they are beyond help.

Oh, and

  • Schools will not be closed for the moment.

Why not? School pupils are among the most prolific transmitters of illnesses we know.

And what will happen if parents take the decision to keep their kids away? Will they face punishment?

Once again we say a weak figurehead – and a poor excuse for a leader – making confusing and contradictory pronouncements in a bid to look decisive. At what cost to the rest of us in the future?

Source: Coronavirus: PM says everyone should avoid office, pubs and travelling – BBC News

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Grenfell Tower fire ex-council leader launches consultancy for firms working with councils

Nicholas Paget-Brown, former leader of Kensington Council, has set up NPB Consulting [Image: Mark Kerrison/Alamy Stock Photo].

Let’s get this straight: The Tory politician who tried to hold a council meeting about the fire at Grenfell Tower in secret – and had to resign because of the ensuing row – is now advising businesses on how to work with councils?

The man who, as leader of Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council, allowed firms to get away with putting dangerous flammable material all over a housing block is now offering advice to firms on how to get what they want?

Does anybody else think it would be a bad idea to associate with him at all?

Still, it does show one thing:

Tories have no shame.

Nicholas Paget-Brown, the former leader of Kensington Council, has set up a consultancy service for organisations who wish to work with local authorities.

Paget-Brown, who was forced to resign last month in the wake of the council’s response to the Grenfell Tower disaster, has set up NPB Consulting.

According to his LinkedIn page, the company offers “policy analysis, seminars, briefings and drafting assistance”.

Source: Former Kensington Council leader Paget-Brown forms consultancy to work with local authorities | PR Week


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House of Lords ‘will not block Brexit’, Labour’s leading peer asserts

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Another opportunity to get rid of the House of Lords – lost. Oh, well.

At least the Conservatives won’t have an opportunity to flood it with another few hundred unwanted chinless wonders, just to see through their ill-starred ‘Brexit’ plans (whatever they turn out to be).

Baroness Smith is right to say the Lords will not block a democratic decision to leave the EU.

This still gives the Lords plenty of leeway for argument.

For those of you who like nautical metaphors, it has been suggested that the UK is sailing away from the EU and into stormy waters.

It seems likely there will be a few squalls before we even leave port.

Labour’s leader in the House of Lords has said the party’s peers “will not block” Brexit, in what could be a boost for Theresa May.

Baroness Angela Smith said peers had to be “adult” in approaching the issue and that threats over blocking Britain’s EU withdrawal only gave Brexiteers reason to cry foul.

She said: “We will scrutinise. We will examine. But my Lords – we will not block.”

Explaining the approach, the shadow Leader of the Lords added: “We have to be adult about this.

“We can’t have the most enthusiastic Brexiteers crying foul every time Parliament asks for more details or seeks to scrutinise.”

She said few Lords did not have “genuine concerns” about what she claimed is the government’s “confused and unsettled approach” to negotiations.

Baroness Smith also said that while Labour peers would not block Brexit, they did take seriously their responsibility in “assisting the Government to make the best possible arrangements for the UK”.

She said peers would use their “expertise and knowledge” to fully understand the implications of Brexit and try to advise the Government on how to address problems.

The peer added: “It’s complex, it’s difficult and the Government should see this House as an asset and not try to avoid helpful scrutiny.”

Source: House of Lords ‘will not block Brexit’, Labour’s leading peer admits | The Independent

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Has Chuka Umunna taken leave of his senses?

Ill-judged: Blue-scarved Chukka Umunna should remember that Michael Heseltine did much to destroy the UK's communities as part of the Thatcher and Major governments.

Ill-judged: Blue-scarved Chuka Umunna should remember that Michael Heseltine did much to destroy the UK’s communities as part of the Thatcher and Major governments.

After the story in The Guardian there are only two things required of Chuka Umunna: Repudiation – or his resignation.

The article states that Blue Labour stalwart Umunna would call on Conservative heavyweight Michael Heseltine for advice if Labour wins the general election. If this is true, it is madness.

Heseltine was a leading member of the Thatcher and Major Conservative governments of the 1980s and 90s, pioneering the disastrous ‘Right to Buy’ initiative that sold off the majority of council houses without replacing them, leading to the current housing crisis and the Bedroom Tax.

More recently he authored the ‘No Stone Left Unturned’ plan which made 89 recommendations on ways of stimulating local growth – 81 of which were adopted by the Coalition Government, with little effect. The UK economy has been stagnant for many years, with productivity at around the same level as it was when the Coalition came into office; it seems any boost in GDP has come from other areas – possibly the reduction in wages brought about by the widespread abuse of zero-hours contracts to rob working people of their rights to a steady job and entitlements to holiday and sick pay.

Yet it is in this area – revitalising the cities and regions – that Umunna wants Heseltine to advise. It would be an utterly pointless exercise.

For any stimulation policy to work, it has to put money where it can be most effective – in the hands of the people who actually need it to pay for things they need. But Heseltine is a Tory – they take money away from the proles; they don’t hand it out to them. He’ll devise something that makes towns look very pretty in order to hide the rot inside as local businesses and residents go to the wall.

Not only that, but it seems Umunna has not learned the overriding lesson of the Scottish referendum campaign: Voters will not tolerate a Labour alliance with the Conservatives on any level at all.

One of the main reasons the SNP is polling so well north of the border is because of a myth propagated by its candidates and supporters, that Labour and the Conservatives are “in bed”, “in cahoots”, “in alliance” – choose the phrase you prefer. It isn’t true – Better Together was an alliance of convenience because both parties wanted Scotland to remain in the union; they have very little else in common (although the SNP has exploited the very few examples of common ground to great effect, also).

Now along comes Chuka, thinking he’s clever with a plan to be inclusive and revive the “big tent” policies of Tony Blair – another figure who is now widely reviled by the electorate – and confirming everything the SNP whisperers have been saying!

Is he trying to stab Ed Miliband in the back?

If not, then now is the time to deny the Guardian story and put Heseltine back in his box.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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Mandelson seeks caution on tuition fees – is it wrong to doubt his motives?

Know your enemy: If you want to know why Labour was so soft on business between 1997 and 2010, here's your answer - Peter (now Lord) Mandelson was in charge of Trade, Industry, and Business at various times throughout those Parliaments.

Know your enemy: If you want to know why Labour was so soft on business between 1997 and 2010, here’s your answer – Peter (now Lord) Mandelson was in charge of Trade, Industry, and Business at various times throughout those Parliaments.

Labour’s former Business Secretary, Peter Mandelson, wants the party to hold fire on any announcements about tuition fees until after the general election, making its policy known if Labour wins.

The reason stated in the BBC article is that “he recognises that any cut in tuition fees announced before the election would raise searching questions about how it would be funded”.

There’s just one problem with that.

We’ve all heard too many politicians say one thing before an election, only to do something completely different afterwards. David Cameron is a master of the pre-election lie. Undoubtedly there have been many more.

If no announcement is made at all, then no word has been given, so the party can’t go back on it.

Add to that the fact that Lord Mandelson is – well – Lord Mandelson, and Ed Miliband would be very ill-advised to pay him any attention on this.

Young people were bitterly betrayed when the Liberal Democrats turned their backs on the promise to abolish tuition fees and instead supported the Tory rip-off plan to make students pay, and pay, and pay.

Labour’s offer is only a drop in fees from £9,000 to £6,000 per year – it is not, therefore, the total abandonment of fees that students would welcome, so the party is on thin ice.

Let us hope this is one case where Mandelson cannot pull strings from behind the scenes.

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The perils of pandering to PricewaterhouseCoopers

Margaret Hodge: A principled stand against corruption of politics by corporate influence.

Margaret Hodge: A principled stand against corruption of politics by corporate influence.

This is something that broke while Yr Obdt Srvt was still recovering from a recent illness, but is still worth covering because Labour really needs to understand the danger of association.

Margaret Hodge, Labour’s chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, broke ranks to warn the Shadow Cabinet against accepting – shall we call it – “help” from accounting firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers on Friday. She said it was “inappropriate” and she was right to do so.

It’s the political equivalent of accepting “help” from the Mafia – you end up in their pocket, owing them favours.

According to the BBC, Labour MPs including Ed Balls (Shadow Chancellor) and Chukka Umunna (Shadow Business Secretary), along with Rachel Reeves (Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary) have received more than £540,000 in research assistance from the firm in the past 18 months alone.

PwC is one of the ‘Big Four’ accountancy firms – the others are Ernst & Young, KPMG and Deloitte – who also advise the Conservative-run Treasury on tax policy. It should not be beyond anybody’s wit to see there’s a clear conflict of interest if the firm is advising both Labour and the Tories on tax policy.

Furthermore, PwC – if not all the others as well – is known to advise businesses on ways they can legally avoid paying tax. This means that, while working for the government, they are actively campaigning to hinder its effectiveness at collecting revenue that is due to it and using that money for the good of the UK as a whole.

Labour’s official line is that “PwC have provided long standing support to all three major political parties on a non-party basis, as happened for the Conservatives and Lib Dems before the last election. Given the complexity of government and that opposition parties do not have significant access to civil servants, the support provided by organisations such as these helps ensure that there is better scrutiny of government policy.”

PwC said its staff provided “limited and fully disclosed technical support to the main political parties” but added: “We do not develop policy on their behalf.” Staff on secondment might make “observations on the improvement of legislation or proposed legislation”, the firm added in a statement.

Isn’t this exactly the problem? Staff make “observations”, and before we know it, all our political parties are carrying out PwC policy instead of their own.

If Labour was serious about getting the advice it needed, then it would be employing advisers who have nothing to do with any of the other political parties. That’s the way it has to be. Anything else courts betrayal of the public.

Then there would be no opportunity for these firms to create embarrassment when their activities “promoting tax avoidance” on an industrial scale were revealed by the Public Accounts Committee

PwC said it disagreed with the Public Accounts Committee report (it would, wouldn’t it?) and denied claims by Mrs Hodge that the firm had misled her committee when its executives gave evidence in January 2013. Who do you believe?

Mrs Hodge herself told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One: “You have to be very, very careful when you’re in opposition whom you take money from”.

Absolutely correct.

This is why Vox Political supports the removal of all private company advisors from government. The private sector has no place in decisions about public services.

That is why we have a Civil Service.

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Housing association speaks out over Bedroom Tax

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It seems the chief executive of a local housing association has taken issue with yr obdt srvt over the Bedroom Tax.

Shane Perkins, of Mid Wales Housing, wrote to the Powys-based County Times after I used that paper to expose an illegal action by the county council’s ruling group, aimed at preventing discussing of a motion for the council to adopt a ‘no-eviction’ policy.

The motion asked the council not to evict tenants who fail to pay their rent because of the Bedroom Tax. Councillors who are also private landlords were forbidden from speaking or voting on the motion as they stand to benefit if social housing tenants are forced to seek accommodation with them as a result of the vindictive policy, and this meant 30 councillors had to leave the chamber.

Members of the ruling group, realising there was a real possibility of the motion being carried, then claimed that any councillors who are social housing tenants should also be barred from taking part – a move that is against the law (to the best of my knowledge). My understanding is that a ‘general dispensation’ allows councillors who are council tenants to take part in debates on, and vote on, matters relating to council housing.

Mr Perkins, writing in the paper’s December 20 edition, suggests that it is almost impossible to establish whether or not a tenant has fallen into rent arrears solely as a consequence of the “pernicious” (his word) Bedroom Tax, and claims that the motion was “a meaningless ‘political’ statement”.

He makes the point that it may be possible to apply the policy where the tenant has never previously been in rent arrears, but this would be unfair on other tenants who are similarly affected now but had fallen into arrears for other reasons in the past. He asks why tenants who struggle to meet their rent payments should not receive a financial subsidy or reward for being a good and conscientious tenant; and also points out that the cumulative effect of other regressive changes to benefits is also likely to affect the rent payments of vulnerable people and, to be consistent, Labour’s motion should encompass them also.

He says all social landlords, including the council, will seek to advise and support tenants who are in financial difficulty, but “in the final analysis, if a tenant fails to pay their rent, the ultimate sanction has got to be eviction.

“To do otherwise would be irresponsible, as ultimately the cost of one tenant not paying their rent is borne by all those tenants that do pay, and spiralling arrears will ultimately affect the viability of the council’s housing, which will serve none of its tenants.”

It would be easy to pick holes in his arguments. The whole point of government policy is to make sure that nobody gets a penny more than the Conservative-led Coalition decides they should have – and this government wants to drive people into poverty – so there will be no rewards for hard work. The Labour Party, and non-political groups, has campaigned ceaselessly to force the government into assessing the cumulative impact of its changes to the benefit system, but the government has refused all such calls, knowing as it does that such research would reveal the monstrous truth about its attack on the poorest in society.

If Mr Perkins is really interested, then he should encourage his own MP to support the call for such an assessment in the debate on the ‘WoW’ Petition, due to take place in the House of Commons in the New Year. I helped write that document, which calls for (among other things) “a cumulative impact assessment of welfare reform”. Labour is supporting the motion. I would suggest, therefore, that any criticism of Labour for making a “meaningless ‘political’ statement” is unfounded.

As for the difference between tenants affected by the Bedroom Tax who have never been in arrears before, and those affected by it who have – this should be something a social landlord can track, especially if they are actively seeking to “advise and support” tenants. This support should include examination of a tenants income and outgoings, before and after the Tax was imposed.

The simple fact is that Mr Perkins would move offending tenants into smaller houses if he had any, but he doesn’t. He would not be talking about eviction if he did. He never built them and we must conclude that he never saw the need. Perhaps he believed that the welfare state would continue to support his tenants.

William Beveridge, the architect of that system, in the report that bears his name, said the British government should fight what he called the “giant evils” of society, including Want.

How could Beveridge know that, 70 years later, the British government would be actively increasing Want, wherever it could. That is what the Bedroom Tax, and the benefit cap, and all the other cuts brought in by this spiteful Conservative-led Coalition are about.

These measures are crimes against the citizens of this country – citizens who have paid into the State, generation after generation since the 1940s, believing that it would look after them if the spectre of Want cast its shadow at their door.

Mr Perkins describes the changes as “pernicious”, but if he allows a single tenant to be evicted then he will be a willing accomplice.

That is what he is saying when he tells us he is prepared to use this “final sanction”.

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