Darren McGreevey

At first sight, I thought “Glaswegian rapper tackles inequality” might be on a par with “Strictly star exposes third world hunger” - i.e. celebrity skimming over the surface of a good cause. Couldn’t have been more wrong. This is a tough, thoughtful series which includes more intelligent analysis per square minute than any other documentary you’re likely to see.

“The State We’re In” tackled UK inequality in three areas - justice, education and health - over three one-hour episodes. You can’t say it’s lacking in ambition. It’s also got a wide reach in terms of the evidence it examines. Obviously a lot of high-powered experts have seen this as the opportunity to share intelligent innovation, so we get three kinds of information - powerful testimony about the dysfunction of our current system, vivid examples of how they do it better in Scandinavia, and lively vignettes of the good practice that is nonetheless possible - against the odds - in the UK.

Holding it all together is McGreevey himself - warm, personal witty, but also driven by a passionate sense of justice, and anger at the consistent way in which that’s denied by our current government. So it’s a devastating indictment, but not a wallow in despair - there is light at the end of the tunnel, but we have to drag our leaders to see it for themselves. What more could you ask?

Action on Sewage

So here it comes at last. With the rising tide of critical coverage, it was inevitable that the water companies would look for some kind of response, to dig themselves out of the deep hole in which they have been wallowing. Here goes, then, a ten billion pound plan to sort sewage spills - stand back, and wait for the applause.

There is, of course, a catch. We’ll be paying for it. I mean, that’s where the money comes from, right? When they pay out massive dividends to shareholders and CEOs, they’re doing it wih he cash we gave hem for letting us have their precious water. so if we wan o see hings get better, we’ll have to pay for it.

The missing piece of this shit-covered jigsaw is regulation. Time was when government recognised that it had some responsibility for he state of our seas and rivers. But now we have Therese Coffey, who has worked really hard to make sure that we are no longer part of an EU drive o cleanse waterways by 2027. No, we’ll take back control, and do our wn thing, and get the water sorted out 2060. What does she make of the ten billion pound plan, and the way that will be funded? Don’t hold your breath.

Cleaning Up

The headline goes “Environment Agency head wants change to EU water law.” It doesn’t sound like the start of a revolution, but maybe it should. The Environmental Agency is responsible for the regulation of water quality, and it’s been systematically downgraded and deprived of resources for more than a decade. When she was in charge of DEFRA, Liz Truss prioritised rapid response to floods over normal maintenance, and saved money by asking water companies to regulate themselves. In 2008 they were responsible for 800 prosecutions; in 2021, it was 17.

Maybe that was because the situation had improved? Oh no it wasn’t. Users of the rivers have increasingly reported dramatic increases in pollution, and one of the reasons this hasn’t been more widely featured in the news is that the Environmental Agency has virtually given up on their main job of monitoring what’s happening. So if Rees-Mogg’s wholesale abolition of EU laws goes ahead, they’ll be let off the hook and have an easier life. Yet another tasty choice for Rishi Sunak. Does he let this particular Truss lunacy go ahead, or is he prepared to do the rational thing and throw it out? One sign that isn’t that hopeful is his choice for head of DEFRA: Truss’ buddy Therese Coffey, known opponent of regulation, and everything it stands for. Don’t hold your breath.

We Know We're Right

This week’s newspapers are understandably full of the arrogance of Truss and Kwarteng, who just know that their policies are right, so they don’t need any objective evidence to get in their way. They dismiss the old-fashioned assumption that nobody knows everything, that’s it’s helpful to look at someone else’s view before you take a crucial decision, that the OBR might have a role. .

That’s true of both of them personally, but it’s also been hardened into a principle of government. Sneaking under the radar is the less media-friendly figure of Therese Coffey, who’s another passionate believer in self-sufficiency, with an established track record of ignoring what other people know while she pursues what she wants to do anyway.

At DWP she pursued a vindictive policy of harassing claimants, in the belief that making their lives miserable and cutting off their money would result in more of them finding jobs. The Select Committee weren’t convinced that this was actually working, so they asked her to carry out a review of the policy’s effectiveness. She did, but she then refused to publish the results. At Health, one of her first actions has been to cancel a thorough, necessary enquiry into the impact of inequality on illness and treatment. If it helps to absorb the unpleasant implications of this approach in light verse, see The Blinkered Dormouse in www.paulfranciswrites.co.uk/poemsfromthenews

The Changing of the Guard

And here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write. I almost feel sorry for Boris Johnson. In all the floundering, deceit and self-promotion of his final year, he did get one thing done. Spurred by the powerful experience of his own hospitalisation, he pushed through a range of anti-obesity policies, including calorie counts, a sugar tax and restrictions on the promotion of fat and salt. The Obesity Health Alliance, a combination of over fifty charities, welcomed this as a necessary, belated move towards a healthier population.

One step forward, two steps back. Therese Coffey, the new health secretary, has instituted a review which is “deregulatory in focus.” That’s Whitehall-speak for “Do not inhibit business in any way, or discourage it from making the maximum profit.” The economic argument, that obesity actually costs us massively in terms of work efficiency and NHS costs, apparently has no effect, and she will steadily reverse all the work in this area that his initiative had achieved..

Superficially, then, it’s a defeat for Johnson. But in the long-term it’s a total vindication of his style of government. Forget long-term interests, party policy or manifestos. Don’t look for what will benefit the country as a whole; just pick up the nearest prejudice that’s to hand, make an announcement, and get a buzz from the sense that you’re making things happen, winning the war against the woke.

Manual for Survival

I’ve previously mentioned the Ezra Klein show, and his delightful habit of asking his interviewees to recommend books they’ve enjoyed. I’m now following that up, and finding it a total treat. I’d never heard of Kate Brown’s “Manual for Survival”, a study of Chernobyl, but I now have it from the library and can hardly put it down.

She’s patient and careful, wary of all kinds of simplification - from politicians, east and west, and any number of self-important blokes with an axe to grind. She goes remorselessly though the paperwork, digging out ancient files which nobody else has looked at, but she’s also keen to talk to the people. That’s the people involved the people who got radiation, not just the people in charge.

Why am I not amazed that many of these are women, whose story has not been told before because it wasn’t deemed important or reliable? As I read, all kinds of rumour and self-justification drop away, leaving a heartbreaking, complex story unfolding, page by page. I don’t know why there hasn’t been more fuss about this book, or why I’d never heard of it before, but I’m so relieved to have caught up with it now.

Now or Never

This is the front page headline of today’s Guardian - ‘ “It’s now or never” if the world is to stave off climate disaster - IPCC. ‘ Of course they’re right, and of course it isn’t news. It’s been obvious for years, but somehow it never quite became the priority that it should have been.

At the time of COP 26 we claimed to be leading the world on this issue, but other things sort of get in the way. There’s Covid, and putting the economy back on track, and the Ukraine war, with the consequent need to sort out alternative energy supplies…You can hear the irritation of government ministers: “OK, I heard you! But I’m busy. I’ve just got to sort this out first, and then I’ll have a look at climate change…”

It’s never going to happen. Sunak produces his short-term economic plan without even an acknowledgement of its ecological cost, let alone a calculation of the impact his measures will have on our use of fossil fuels. We are heading for hell in a handcart, singing all the way, so we don’t have to listen to stuff we don’t like. Only a radical change of direction and priorities is going to alter any of this, and where are we going to find that?

Admitting Mistakes

Private Passions yesterday was a delight, and a corrective to crude simplification. The lefty version is that Test and Trace was a disaster, dependent on chumocracy and the private sector, while vaccination was a triumph for collaboration and the NHS. Part of that’s true, but the embarrassing complication is that Kate Bingham, chair of the vaccination board, was - like Dido Harding - the wife of a Tory MP, shoved into power without a competitive process, by a government to which she was close.

The difference is that Bingham is a talented and clear-headed operator, good at assessing problems, and skilful at working with others to develop solutions. So when Michael Berkley asks if there are things she wishes now that she’d done differently she’s got a clear, rational list - but she’s also rightly proud of the things they got right. It helps that she’s a scientist. The Guardian a couple of weeks ago had a page in which medical experts listed the things they got wrong in assessing the pandemic. They weren’t grovelling; just doing the necessary thinking, to try to be clearer next time. And part of that involves an honest look at what they got wrong.

Miles away, of course, from the world of politics. Early in the pandemic, when briefings had a whiff of originality, Matt Hancock earned brownie points by saying “…and if we get things wrong, we’ll admit it.” But he didn’t mean it. Later, a journalist (who’d done serious, sustained work on care homes, and knew what he was talking about) asked if the government had miscalculated. No way, says Hancock, we had our arms round them night and day. Yes, the political arena is tougher, and there’s always opponents who might take advantage, but we lose so much if people in charge aren’t allowed to say they got things wrong.

Everyday Corruption

There is a fast track for companies supplying PPE. If you’re on the fast track you have more chance of contracts, and will make more money. The press report that Lady Mone (Michelle Mone that was) has recommended Medpro, and got them on the fast track. This is vehemently denied by Lady Mone, and her lawyers. Following a freedom of information request, it turns out that she did in fact make this recommendation. Her lawyers insist that this was a “brief, single, solitary step” - you get the idea. Except that it wasn’t. There are e-mails in which she harasses Gove and Hancock on behalf of the said firm. Interestingly, it was only incorporated five days after her request. Presumably, if they hadn’t got the special deal, they wouldn’t even have bothered starting. No, they weren’t used to making this equipment. Yes, their gowns were substandard, and subject to subsequent argument with relevant government bodies. But they did get two hundred million quid of our money.

In normal times, this would be a front page scandal. Today, it’s routine, buried on the back pages. If you stopped people in the street and asked “Lady Mone?”, most f them couldn’t tell you she’s done. We’ve just got used to this cheating and chicanery as the way business is done.

Inside Facebook

Some good news about social media, where the US government seems finally to be getting in the mood to consider serious regulation. This is mainly thanks to Frances Haugen, a whistleblower who worked for Facebook, and has recently leaked crucial documents and testified to US senators. She was part of a unit hopefully called Civic Integrity, which was responsible for monitoring posts during the Us election - but was then closed down as soon as the election was over. Even more important, she’s leaked an internal document which shows that Facebook were fully aware that Instagram was having a harmful effect on the self-image of teenage girls, but refused to take any action because while the regular clicking may be doing harm, it continued to bring in the revenue. Haugen compares it to research on the impact of cigarettes - if you know it’s doing damage, you need to do something about it. So simple, but a huge step forward so far as dealing with Facebook is concerned. Maybe the online monsters won’t be left entirely free to make up the rules for themselves.

Social Care

This is the big one. Everyone in politics knows that social care has to be sorted. The analysis has been done, by Andrew Dilnot in 2011, but ever since then the politicians have nudged away from actually taking the plunge - deciding who gets what, how it’s paid for, how social care relates to the NHS. And then along comes Covid, lighting up the weaknesses that were there before, and we pay a huge cost in money and lives. So, what about it, guys?

Boris Johnson, who would always rather make an announcement than take a decision, breezily said it was already sorted when he became PM in 2019. He just hasn’t chosen to let us in on the details, and since Covid started that’s been a convenient excuse to keep kicking the can down the road. A “do or die” meeting was planned for June 21, between Johnson, Sunak and Hancock, but was then postponed. Nobody said why, or whether a new date had been agreed. But the next day government sources were busily briefing that an announcement would be made before the end of the year. So that’s OK, then. It’s all in hand.

"You cannot be serious!"

Every day, the antics of the Johnson government invoke the passionate disbelief of John McEnroe in his prime, outraged that a line judge could fail to match his own perception of the ball’s relationship to the thin white line. Right now, we’re all considering the possibility of an enquiry into the UK’s handling of the pandemic - who’d be on it, how would it work, and how soon should it be? None of these questions are simple, but it’s obvious that to Johnson this isn’t an intellectual exercise. We’re not dealing with the truth, or with analysis that might lead to a better outcome next time. He’s not governing, he’s still campaigning; this procedure has the potential to cause embarrassment, so the smart tactical manoeuvre is to delay it as long as possible. Peasy. Job done.

And of his personal comfort that’s true. Unfortunately, there’s other stuff - the need for professionals to plan their response next time; the sense of outrage felt by the families of people who’ve died; the future - even the survival - of the NHS, let alone the promised reform of social care…In a rational world, these would be important considerations. In Brexit Britain, they can be impatiently waved aside and nobody with power seems to mind.

Counting the Pennies

Five years ago, if George Osborne had said we couldn’t afford to give the nurses more than 1%, there would have been a kind of logic to it. He was mean and vindictive to a wide range of people, so it wasn’t a surprise. But this outfit, with their track record? And within a week, they announce that they’re raising the cap on our stockpile of Trident nuclear warheads. They don’t actually put a price on it, but we can assume that it’s a lot. Why more warheads now? Apparently, it will help to counter cyber threats, although I’ve yet to hear of any cyber threat being prevented because a politician threatened to dispatch a nuclear warhead. And if you asked a hundred people in the UK at random, looking back over the last twelve months, to decide expenditure priorities between “nurses” and “warheads”, I think I know what the answer would be.

We can only guess at the cost of the warheads. But we know the cost of test and trace. According to the public accounts committee, £22 billion of our money went on a scheme where “there is no evidence that it contributed to the fall in infections”. So if the brains responsible for that decision are telling us we can’t afford more money for the nurses, that maybe needs to be taken with a generous pinch of salt.

The Johnson Case

I fear it is incurable. On Tuesday there’s a gloomy heading in The Guardian “No guarantee schools will reopen after Easter, government warns.” You can see Allegra Stratton, desperately trying to hold the line. “It’s tricky, it’s uncertain…make sure people know that.” But he just can’t help himself. A couple of days later, here he goes: ““The first sign of normality: schools could be open on 8 March, says Johnson.”

Well, they could. But they also could not, and none of us really knows, so to open up that glimmer of hope without foundation is just criminal, but he can’t help it. Whatever the facts of the situation, he has to exude optimism.

Yes, he can do serious, and contrite. Under massive pressure, and the evidence of the figures, he will insist that he’s really, really sorry, and he takes full responsibility…but no, he didn’t actually make a mistake. Yes he did, and in her usual clear, analytical fashion Devi Sridhar spells out five of them in a Guardian article (Five fatal errors that led to the UK’ 100,000 covid deaths, 28 Jan 21) . But that doesn’t fit with the optimistic bluster, so he simply can’t or won’t take it in. How on earth can things get better, while he stays in charge?

Devi Sridhar

Six months ago I’d never heard the name. Then, as the virus got closer, I kept meeting these articles in The Guardian, clear, detailed analysis of what the threat was, and how it might be combatted. She’s a public health professor from Edinburgh and it now turns out - surprise, surprise - that she’s been advising the Scottish Parliament on their covid response. There was already a difference in political expertise between Johnson’s swaggering improvisation and Sturgeon’s clear consistency, but the clarity of Sridhar’s arguments, backed up by research and extensive international contacts, helps spread the gap even wider. This is what intelligence in action looks like, if you apply it to a complex problem. Saturday’s Guardian had the six article of hers I’ve seen in recent months, and they’re collecting in a folder in my filing cabinet, so that when I’m driven to despair by the posturing of our leaders I can sit down and go calmly through what we might have done instead. But it’s a shame that I know there’s no possibility of our own government paying any kind of attention.

What about the workers?

It was bound to come. This kind of unreal honeymoon where we are all, in some strange suffering way, in it together couldn’t be expected to last. The men with money are beginning to feel restless, and offering warnings about workers getting too cosy in their current idleness, and needing top be weaned off the baby’s milk of furlough support which a kind - but probably misguided - government has been offering. In other words, getting back to normal means returning to situation in which a small number of rich people have total say about how and when a large number of poor people will contribute their labour. That’#s life, some will say, but it’s also death, as we’ve learn in far too many cases over the past month, where poorly paid people have been refused protective equipment and been pressured into working in dangerous conditions which have then killed them. It’s not usually brought home to us as clearly as that, but in this instance - as in so many others - Covid is spelling out the truth with a thick black marker - and we really ought to be paying attention before we simply say “sure. Let’s go back to how things were.” Interesting times.

Questions and Answers

So Boris is back. Recovered from Covid, welcomed little Wilfred into the world, and now he can get back to battling the pandemic. And there is a change straight away. We’ve missed the frantic search for verbal colouring, to make dreary politics exciting, as Boris picks on the spicy image or memorable phrase to light up what he has to say. Whether or not that is necessary or appropriate is another matter. And the other thing that struck me, going through the transcript of the briefing he ran on Thursday April 30th, is how seldom he answers a question. He’s not a good listener at the best of times (my poem Mileage-gate in SONNETS identifies a crucial faux pas at this event) and in his return to action people were very happy to give him an easy ride, so he wasn’t fending off critical attacks. But even so. One Cabinet source passionately asserted this week that Boris had been seriously changed by his experience of the virus. A reporter asked him to elaborate bu no - grateful to the NHS, we keep fighting the virus, our vigour remains unabated. Pesto asked him what lessons he had learned - lots of potential there for honest analysis. Lots of lessons, learning lessons all the time…was he going to actually offer an example? No, of course he wasn’t. If you’ve got the appetite for more of this in detail, there’s my poem “Press Conference” in Poems from the News.

Welcome to Wonderland

Finally, a woman is trusted to run the daily briefing, but it’s Priti Patel, so don’t expect anything to change. “I’m sorry if people feel there have been failings”, she says, as if there’s any doubt. What is that “if” doing there? It’s part of the current Toryspeak instruction, where mistakes aren’t actually made, they’re just illusions in the eye of the beholder. So “I’m sorry if you thought we got it wrong; (actually we didn’t, so it doesn’t matter).” But it does. Thousands of people have died, as a result of an incompetent government which can’t listen to warnings, take necessary precautions, make decisions or communicate with its people. Just a glance round the rest of Europe (let alone South Korea or New Zealand), and a look at the numbers of deaths, tells you that our lot do not have a clue.

I was amazed last week when someone in The Guardian praised Matt Hancock for bringing a new honesty to the daily briefing. But Hancock didn’t say “we got it wrong.” He said “We might get it wrong in the future, and if we do you’d be right to tell us.” But it’s all hypothetical, it hasn’t happened yet. If only that were true.

Fogeys on the Fringe

Even I know that healthy seventy year olds in detached houses in Much Wenlock aren’t the heart of the story. Even so, I’m intrigued by how we’re regarded. Back in the early days (three weeks ago, say), there was a double pronged strategy: fogeys stay at home for three months, schools stay open. It wasn’t hard to work out the logic: money. Schools staying open lets people keep working; fogeys don’t hurt the economy, so take them out of the picture. Fair enough, but i’m not sure anyone in government seriously thought about what it means to prepare for three months in isolation. If there was stockpiling going on, some of that was me - meat, fish and booze for the next three months does involve a bit of extra spending.

Now, of course, the rules have changed. Everyone’s at home, and the suspense is - how long for? Three weeks? Four weeks? When can we all get back to normal? And I want to timidly ask - what about us, the over seventies? Are we still booked in for the full fourteen weeks?

Last week Grant Shapps said people should limit themselves to one shopping trip a week. Almost immediately, he was chewed up by No. 10, who said that was nonsense. So what is the proper pattern? And if it matters that much, why wasn’t it discussed by cabinet before Shapps had the chance to get it wrong? Part of the problem, I suspect, is that this is all being done by blokes. If there was somebody there who was actually responsible for a weekly shop, we might get more consistent policy.

"Our NHS"

You can see Dom’s definitely in control. Don’t say “the NHS”, say “Our NHS.” Touchy-feely. We’re all in this together. Which we obviously are, but it’s galling to be told that by the Prospective Tory candidate for Henley who regaled members with a self-regarding anecdote about scoffing his wife’s toast when she was in hospital - the point of which was that the NHS must be opened up to private finance. And there was the lie on the bus, and the apparent disowning but actual acceptance of Farage’s xenophobia, which helped clear hundreds of workers out of the NHS.

We also get Jeremy Hunt reinventing himself as a sage, the wise dog who’s not falling for the government’s new tricks. Less than four years ago, he was the puppy prancing in front of the Tory Party conference, assuring them that sure, the NHS could get by with an all-Brit worksforce.

I don’t expect these people to resign. I know they have to ask us to support the NHS, and we do. It would just be nice if they’d be honest enough to admit they got it wrong.