Tag Archives: secretary

How is this new offer to health unions going to do any good?

A nurse: doesn’t this person deserve fair pay?

Apparently Health Secretary Steve Barclay is going to make a new offer to health unions, in his latest bid to end the NHS strikes in England.

But from the reports, it’s a rotten offer.

We’re hearing he’s offering a one-off payment – a bonus – of up to six per cent for 2022-23, coupled with a permanent pay increase of five per cent for the current financial year onwards.

That’s nothing like enough to cover all the money that NHS workers have lost since the Conservatives slithered back into office in 2010. Nurses have lost 20 per cent in that time.

And it won’t cover the increased costs that have been caused by inflation. You see, just because inflation goes down, that doesn’t mean prices do the same. Quite the opposite, in fact – they continue rising, just at a slower rate.

And nurses, together with all the other striking NHS workers, are struggling to make ends meet.

The impression This Writer has is that the government wants nurses to struggle and this is just another attempt to look reasonable.

Remember: MPs almost have parity with the level of pay they had in 2010 – they aren’t suffering in anything like the same way as nurses. And they get publicly-subsidised meals and drinks in the House of Commons facilities.

This Writer is glad to hear that not all of the 14 health unions are expected to support the new pay offer.

I’m aware that they may be tired of strikes, but derisory pay offers are an attack on the quality of healthcare and must be opposed.

Source: Government makes revised pay offer to health unions, reports say – UK politics live

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Why is the government telling an INDEPENDENT organisation what pay nurses should get?

Steve Barclay: sadly, none of the equipment behind him was able to jump-start his brain.

Remember before Christmas, when Tory spokespeople were all over the media telling us nurses couldn’t have the pay rise they were demanding because the “independent” pay review body had set the amount?

What do you make of this, then:

So Steve Barclay has told the “independent” pay review body it can only recommend a tiny pay rise for nurses. That doesn’t seem independent to This Writer!

Pay awards – most particularly when the government is doing the paying – don’t cause inflation.

So any pay negotiation – of any kind, including that supposedly offered by the Pay Review Body – must be fake, then?

Obviously, two per cent is nowhere near enough when inflation is much higher; it’s a real-terms pay cut for nurses who are already £10,000 per year worse-off, in real terms, than they were in 2008.

The result will be more nurses leaving the NHS and a further decline in the service – which Barclay will claim is because public medicine can’t work as well as private, profiteering healthcare.

People will die because of this decision – and Barclay should be held responsible.

Barclay himself seems entirely unsuited to running any kind of organisation, let alone the largest one in the United Kingdom.

After a recent visit to a hospital, he tweeted how he marvelled at a fantastic innovation in healthcare that frees up many beds.

This innovation is called a chair. It has been used in the NHS for very nearly 75 years.

Here’s A Different Bias‘s account of this weirdness:

Steve Barclay is an idiot.

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Why is the Transport Secretary trying to force ‘reforms’ on unions that want better pay?

Mick Lynch: he’s frustrated because the rail companies and Network Rail say they don’t have the power to negotiate meaningfully with him over pay and safety conditions for RMT Union members.

Transport Secretary Mark Harper reckons rail unions need to accept “reforms” that would free up money for pay rises.

Why?

On the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show, he said: “It is the reforms that free up the savings that then unlock the ability for the companies to make an offer to the trade unions on pay.”

But that is to assume no more money could be brought in – and that is a political choice by the Tory government.

He also said: “I do not have a bottomless pit of taxpayers’ money to throw at this problem.”

And he doesn’t, because taxpayers’ money doesn’t pay for any public services at all. Public money – created by the government – does. It’s time our politicians stopped trying to hoodwink us with this lazy lie.

The government can very easily create as much money as is needed to provide a “proper seven-day rail network” – also Harper’s words, and why doesn’t the UK have that network any more since privatisation anyway?

Taxation relieves inflationary pressures that may be created by investing money into public services – and may be used by progressive governments to re-balance the gap between the richest and the poorest citizens in the country, by taking money from those who can most easily bear it. Of course the UK’s Tory government is as far from progressive as one can get.

And Harper said any money saved through reforms would have to be split “fairly between the taxpayer and the people who work in the industry”. Why give savings back to taxpayers when so much needs to be done to improve the rail service? Is he looking for another tax cut for the rich?

The whole spiel strikes This Writer as self-serving claptrap.

If Harper really wanted to do some good, wouldn’t it be better for him to offer to give the private rail operators and Network Rail the mandate for meaningful negotiations with the RMT union that its general secretary, Mick Lynch, has been told they don’t have?

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Braverman’s migration failures: highest-ever number enter UK despite her closure of legal routes

Speechless: challenged to explain how a teenage refugee from an African country might legally gain asylum in the UK, Suella Braverman had nothing to say.

More than half a million people entered the UK from abroad in the year to the end of June – and Home Secretary Suella Braverman had a meltdown in a Parliamentary Committee when she was forced to try to explain the legal routes for refugees to do so.

So the highest annual migration into the UK since World War II has happened at a time when it should be impossible.

Here’s a news report:

Prime minister Rishi Sunak has said that his main priority is to help Home Secretary Suella Braverman stem the flow of migrants into the UK (despite the fact that they are both, themselves, from families that migrated into the UK).

But they also want to present the UK as a welcoming place.

The latter objective was blown to dust – by one of Sunak and Braverman’s own Conservative Party, Tim Loughton, in the Commons’ Home Affairs Select Committee, when he asked her a simple question.

The best commentary on it that I have found comes from Novara Media:

This is a government that is trying to do two mutually-exclusive things – and failing at both.

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How long can Dominic Raab continue to deny bullying as fresh complaints land?

Dominic Raab: he asked for an official investigation into bullying complaints against him – and now increasing numbers of civil servants are making fresh allegations.

He might be innocent, of course.

But that would require us to believe that senior civil servants were running a campaign against Dominic Raab – and that would be a very odd thing for such responsible people to do.

Then again, if they think it’s the best thing to do for the country…

The debate could run on and on.

Here’s the latest development, courtesy of the BBC:

The allegations against Raab first emerged earlier this month:

The government has appointed Adam Tolley KC to investigate two formal complaints made about Raab’s conduct.

But final judgement on whether Raab has breached the Ministerial Code will lie with prime minister Rishi Sunak – as it did with Boris Johnson when Priti Patel was accused.

Johnson ignored the evidence and allowed Patel to continue as Home Secretary. Will Sunak show the same corruption?

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Now DOMINIC RAAB is facing bullying accusations

Rattled: Dominic Raab trying to explain himself during a grilling by the Foreign Affairs committee in September 2021. Look at the way his hands were twisting as he tried to justify his failures. Does he look like the kind of man who treats others with respect and kindness?

First Priti Patel was accused of it, then Gavin Williamson. Now Dominic Raab has been accused of bullying civil servants during his spell as Justice Secretary, between September 2021 and September this year.

Raab was sacked as justice secretary and deputy prime minister by former PM Liz Truss – in possibly the only sensible move she made in that role.

But he was reappointed by Rishi Sunak following his election as leader by Tory MPs in what may be yet another entry in an ever-lengthening list of howlers by the new prime minister.

The Guardian has reported that staff in the Justice Department were offered “respite or a route out” amid concerns that some were traumatised by his behaviour during his previous stint:

The allegations raise further questions over Rishi Sunak’s judgement, which is already in question after he re-appointed Suella Braverman as Home Secretary despite concerns that she is more leaky than the migrant boats she is trying to stop crossing the Channel.

He also made Gavin Williamson a Minister Without Portfolio, only for him to resign within weeks amid an ever-growing litany of bullying claims.

Needless to say, there has been a bit of commentary about this – and about bullying in Parliament in general. Here’s Novara Media:

The revelations by Labour’s Charlotte Nichols are damning – she discussed a huge list of 40 MPs who are “known dangers”, from whom she had been told not to accept drinks and with whom she had been told not to allow herself to be alone.

Ash Sarkar discussed Labour’s Neil Coyle, who bullied a journalist with Chinese heritage (as mention by This Site after he asked a question during Prime Minister’s Questions). She suggested that he was treated as a credible source because he was an opponent of Jeremy Corbyn, with a blind eye shown to his (alleged) wrongdoing.

So it seems that bullying and intimidation are epidemic in Westminster.

But that is no reason for a UK prime minister to employ people who are known malcontents.

It seems that is exactly what he has done, not just with Gavin Williamson but also – we’re hearing – with Dominic Raab. And it is not good enough.

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Jacob Rees-Mogg is out of the government. Good!

Almost before Rishi Sunak could consider himself prime minister, the Cabinet resignations began – with some of the quitters leaving ahead of the boot, one suspects.

First among these was former Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, who had described Sunak as a “socialist” during the summer, when he refused to commit himself to the kind of tax cuts proposed by his then-leadership rival (subsequently prime minister) Liz Truss.

And now we have seen the result of Truss’s former Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, merely announcing those tax cuts: an economic disaster.

In his resignation letter, Rees-Mogg backtracked on his “socialist” comment and said he would do all he could to support Sunak from the back benches.

Here’s a news clip:

I’ll try to produce an article on Rees-Mogg’s career, just to remind us all of the kind of man he is.

The fact that such a leading figure in the European Research Group (ERG) – the arch-Brexiter wing of the Conservative Party – is out should not give any of us cause for comfort; the government is still riddled with these politically and economically illiterate headbangers.

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Suella Braverman quits as Home Secretary

Suella Braverman has resigned as Home Secretary, in part because she shared secure information on a private phone.

Here’s Sky News:

(Stick out the video through to Yvette Cooper’s speech because the first part of it really is an excellent takedown of the Truss administration.)

What was the second reason she had to go?

This Writer would like it to be her loose-lipped rants in the Commons chamber and media interviews.

Only yesterday, she accused Labour, the Lib Dems, Guardian readers and people who eat tofu of conspiring with Just Stop Oil against the government’s draconian attempts to crack down on protest:

Previously, she spoke about her “dream” of putting refugees and asylum-seekers onto planes to Rwanda.

These outbursts are not acceptable behaviour for a UK government minister; they belong more closely with some of the totalitarian governments of the first half of the 20th century.

But I don’t believe they are the second reason the lunacy of Braverman has been banished to the backbenches.

I look forward to finding out what it really was.

In the meantime, I note that in her resignation letter Braverman has attacked Liz Truss for reversing the insane economic policies that created so much economic instability over the last few weeks – and more.

She wrote: “I have concerns about the direction of this government.

“Not only have we broken key pledges that were promised to our voters, but I have had serious concerns about this government’s commitment to honouring manifesto commitments, such as reducing overall migration numbers and stopping illegal migration, particularly the dangerous small boats crossings.”

Braverman is the second Cabinet loss for Truss within a week and becomes the shortest-serving home secretary since World War Two, having lasted only 43 days in the job.

Her replacement is Grant Shapps.

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Therese Coffey made an idiot of herself on the morning media round

“I’m a member of the government. We have a government view. That view has yet to be established,” said Therese Coffey on the possibility of benefits being linked to inflation.

So the government doesn’t have a view, then?

What an absolute imbecile.

Told that refusing to link benefits with inflation is a de facto benefit cut, she started talking about taper rates rather than deal with the issue – indicating that a benefit cut is on the cards.

What a moron.

Those of you who like to play the Tory Party Drinking Game will enjoy her mention of “Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine,” also.

Here’s a clip – and it’s only the first:

Now let’s have a montage showing the deputy prime minister saying she doesn’t know what’s going on in her own government:

Pathetic.

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Jacob Rees-Mogg revealed: the Business Secretary is anti-worker

Jacob Rees-Mogg in Parliament.

Gratitude to Open Democracy for putting together a video clip showing Jacob Rees-Mogg demonstrating his extreme antipathy towards working people.

He believes that no employee should have paid holidays; that the minimum wage should not be raised, even in the face of rampant inflation; that national pay bargaining should be abolished so that wages in the UK can become a postcode lottery; and that the Victorian Age was one of the finest in British history.

This man is now the UK’s Business Secretary. You see the problem?

Check out the clip for yourself – along with Maximilien Robespierre‘s commentary:

Oh, and this is on-point too:

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Tag Archives: secretary

How is this new offer to health unions going to do any good?

Like this:

Why is the government telling an INDEPENDENT organisation what pay nurses should get?

Like this:

Why is the Transport Secretary trying to force ‘reforms’ on unions that want better pay?

Like this:

Braverman’s migration failures: highest-ever number enter UK despite her closure of legal routes

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How long can Dominic Raab continue to deny bullying as fresh complaints land?

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Now DOMINIC RAAB is facing bullying accusations

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Jacob Rees-Mogg is out of the government. Good!

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Suella Braverman quits as Home Secretary

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Therese Coffey made an idiot of herself on the morning media round

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Jacob Rees-Mogg revealed: the Business Secretary is anti-worker

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