New Year; nothing’s normal – part 1

New Year – and time to look forward rather than back.  To be honest, I’m not a ‘hail fellow well met’ Christmas and New Year person.  Most of the false bonhomie does little for me and neither does the thought of yet another ministerial broadcast or the prospect of visiting what some Sage member called the Boxing Day Sales. Just what planet do these people live on? Probably the same planet that somebody called JVT does who inferred that the non-elite gong awarded residents of technocratic land would rush off, after leaving their pigeons and whippets so they could play bingo at their local hall.

Actually, I thought JVT was a soft drink but anyway sales started in late summer here, Mate, and the shops that are still open are teetering on the brink of disaster, thanks in part to the hysteria that you and your mathematical genius modelers foisted on a gullible media and often terrified public all year long.

Perhaps the all-seeing, all-controlling mathematical modelers who have been proven wrong – so wrong – over the last decade or so would like to take a moment and walk away from the spotlight of the broadcast media and see in real world terms what their scenarios and projections have done, not just to the confidence and morale of the nation but to the financial welfare of millions who have had either their livelihood or business destroyed.

Here’s a projection for our hapless Prime Minister and his cabinet and advisers: no footfall in town centres means no business and no jobs, no tourism means no hospitality sector and no jobs, less industry fewer jobs, which translates into less economic activity which means less national and local tax revenue.  Tax rises already mooted by the Chancellor to meet the shortfall translate into irate taxpayers and the non-furloughed, along with the newly unemployed, asking why the private manufacturing and service sector has taken the full force of the covid misery, while public sector workers have seen no job insecurity, no financial hardship or indeed job losses.  Boris and his modellers may do well to project that sort of scenario and how it will impact on the already disillusioned ‘northern red wall voters’ and the now tens of thousands of people who are facing life on Universal Credit payments, that’s if they can navigate the wall of bureaucracy facing applicants.

In fact, several local authorities are now warning that community taxation will rise, including one Police and Crime Commissioner who is asking for a £15 increase in the council tax to increase ‘police visibility and accessibility’.  Judging by the over-the-top selective policing by badly-trained uniformed officers, often looking like ill-disciplined rabble, that has been in evidence this year, I can’t see that being a popular vote winner, that’s if our ruling elite actually allow any elections this year.

The National Health Service has had billions thrown at it, much, it would seem if the example of the Nightingale hospitals is anything to go by, misused and wasted.   Just look at the bureaucratic nightmare created by administrators to make life as difficult as possible for retired health professionals volunteering their services either in hospitals or as vaccinators. Many, apparently, are annoyed and dismayed which is a polite way of putting it, but not  as dismayed as the tens of thousands of people who willingly volunteered last spring when we were all told that the NHS was about to be overwhelmed and who were never actually called on to do anything by their local NHS Trust which, you might have thought would have been glad of the assistance, having shouted from the rooftops for decades that they were understaffed or underfunded or overwhelmed.

In December 2018, national media outlets carried stories of ambulances queuing at Accident and Emergency Departments, of patients waiting for hours on trolleys in corridors.  Twelve months and billions of taxpayer pounds later and the chancellor assuring the nation and NHS management that they can have what it takes to deal with the pandemic, we hear that volunteers, willing, able and professionally-qualified, are not being ‘called upon’ to help and when it was reported last week that tens of thousands of hospital staff were either absent because of illness or having to ‘self-isolate’ having been in contact with an identified covid ‘case’, which, let’s face it cannot be difficult either for ambulance personnel or accident and emergency staff.

So, more goodwill turned into a morale-sapping exercise and thwarted by inaction by either ministers or the bureaucratic NHS ‘blob’, at a time when it’s widely reported that Primary Care Network GPs are to be paid an extra £10 for every vaccination they administer in care homes on top of the £12.58 already paid for each jab administered elsewhere.

GPonline which is a publication for ‘health care professionals’ reported that Primary care medical director Dr Nikki Kanani said she:

‘was aware that rolling out the vaccinations to care home ‘takes up a lot of time and energy and our staff are tired. So, we’re really pleased that we’re able to say that you will be able to claim an extra £10 per vaccination. ‘

This is apparently payable for both the first and second dose of the vaccine and to make sure that staff are in place so the most vulnerable residents are protected. Who would argue with that, but there is quite a difference in paying a doctor over £20 each injection and the £9 to £11 an hour that Health Care Assistants who make up the majority of Care Home staff are paid (according to jobs.nhs.uk).

Dr. Kanani went on to say that ‘staff were hard-working and tired’ which is undeniable in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, but what many find tiring is the never-ending moaning and groaning from operational managers in the public services that they and they alone have responsible, tiring and stressful jobs, often made worse because the ungrateful taxpayer does not want to see a government throwing more and more of what they term ‘resources’ at them only to see it wasted by incompetence, mismanagement or both.

New Year; nothing’s normal – part 2 will be published here tomorrow.