NHS and Public Sector Bosses: the modern-day ‘Fat Cats’
The week starts with another hodgepodge of ‘news’: Footie rumbles on, Hancock has been kicked out of the jungle, there are worries about our Sacred Cow – more on that below – and there are news from the East: protests in China demanding Xi to resign and a “beast from the East possibly being on its way, according to the compilation in the usual place (link).
It’s the Daily Star which howls about yon new ‘Beast from the East’. Phew. I’ve missed the weekly warning of blizzards which the Express used to delight us with! However, a quick look at the online front page of the DS shows that this “beast” cannot be that terrifying as of yet because one’s got to delve deep into the junk deemed to be ‘news’ by the DS editors before one finds the brief report on yon ‘Beast’.
It’s a nice little piece though, with a poetic quote from one of the Met Office’s forecasters: ‘The beast has opened its eyes’ (link). Am I especially horrid when I wish the Beast would blast off on the days the nurses and RMT picket lines are performing their strike ‘action’ so they’ll freeze off their well-padded behinds?
Staying with the NHS we find reports in the top spots of The Times, the DT and the Guardian.in yon compilation. The Guardian, for some inexplicable reason, has dropped their Remain-piece about 4,000 EU doctors having left the NHS “because: Brexit!” from their online edition. The DT on the other hand has kept their second lead article, on the NHS, in in the online edition. The headlines are a bit inflammatory:
“NHS employs more than 2,000 managers on six-figure salaries as executive pay soars – Highest earners in health service paid almost twice as much as Prime Minister at a time when nurses are due to strike over wages” (paywalled link)
The data for this report are published as ministers are reviewing NHS efficiency, in the hope that ever more of our money won’t be spent on ever more ‘layers of administration’. Some hope – but it’s a review sorely needed as nurses are planning their strikes:
“The Telegraph analysis reveals that the total number of NHS managers at local hospitals and commissioning bodies earning at least £100,000 has reached 2,056. The best-paid received £300,000 in 2020/21, almost twice the salary of the Prime Minister. In just 12 months, there has been a 15 per cent rise in the number of NHS board members earning at least £200,000, taking the total on such earnings to 632. Meanwhile, 1,305 received salaries of at least £150,000, with the number in this bracket surging by 12 per cent. In addition, more than 500 senior officials at NHS England, the Department of Health and its associated quangos are on such salaries.” (paywalled link)
We can all do the maths and calculate that the 19% rise demanded by the nurses, across the board, would add up to quite a hefty sum to the already bloated income of their bosses. Funny how the nurses’ campaign is addressed to the government but not to their fat-cat bosses … I also wonder if said NHS bosses are extremely relaxed about the nurses’ strike because they can expect a hefty increase to their already huge incomes if the government caves in.
Meanwhile over at The Times we read that the good old Army will come to the ‘rescue’ of the NHS during the nurses’ strike:
“Armed forces personnel would drive ambulances and fill frontline roles in hospitals under plans being drawn up by health and defence officials as they prepare for a winter beset by strikes. […] Officials are drawing up contingency plans for the government to invoke the military aid to civil authorities protocol, or Maca, to keep the NHS running if strikes are as wide as health leaders fear. […] The Ministry of Defence is already assessing the ways in which armed forces personnel could assist the NHS, although no formal request for assistance has been made by the Department of Health and Social Care.” (link, paywalled)
I’m sure the squaddies will be delighted to do the work for those striking nurses and NHS personnel, given the princely salary they themselves receive:
“The current rates for soldiers starting each of these roles are: Recruits (in initial training); £15,985 a year; Private: £20,400 a year; Lance Corporal: £27,326 a year; Corporal: £31,869 a year; Sergeant: £35,853 a year” (link)
No wonder the Armed Forces have a huge problem recruiting people! Over at the DT there was a comment piece by Liam Halligan yesterday, with the headlines:
“The bloated public sector is showing its contempt for taxpayers with plans to strike – Demands for double-digit pay rises fail to recognise the suffering felt by private workers” (paywalled link)
Mr Halligan observes that the public sector trade unions have become more belligerent, especially the medical and teachers’ unions, with e.g. the BMA balloting their members, asking for a 26% pay rise for doctors. Moreover, he writes, next month:
“[…] tens of thousands of civil servants are due to walk out, impacting the Home Office, Job Centres, passport and DVLA applications and the Border Force – with the military due to cover for border workers. Firefighters are voting on industrial action, with hundreds of security guards and London bus drivers also about to go on strike. And at least six more days of Royal Mail stoppages are scheduled during the pre-Christmas rush.” (paywalled link)
The Army clearly hasn’t got enough to do, being asked to ‘cover’ for the Border Farce as well as for NHS staff should the need arise. Halligan then reports that public sector workers are already paid 8% more than workers in the private sector, in addition to the pension schemes not available to public sector workers, even as:
“[…] public sector employees weren’t furloughed during lockdown, but stayed on full wages. Millions of private sector workers, in contrast, saw their pay drop by a fifth in furlough, while millions more – not least the self-employed army who keep our economy moving – lost almost all their wages but received little or no state support.” (paywalled link)
What could illustrate better that we, the plebs working in the private sector, are modern-day serfs! Our income is going to fall by 7% while our taxes rise – to pay for the bloated public sector. However, I very much doubt that, except for grumblings, Halligan’s warning, addressed to public sector trade union bosses, will translate into action:
“If they push their luck too far, public sector union bosses will discover that the massed ranks of non-state workers who create the wealth that pays for everything will very quickly lose their patience.” (paywalled link)
After all, there’s the footie, there’s Christmas coming, and there’ll be – perhaps – a really cold ‘Beast from the East’ Cold Spell’. It’ll be interesting to find out what Starmer and other Labour BigWigs will have to say about how they’ll afford those huge pay rises in the public sector should they get into No 10. Just blaming ‘Teh Government’ won’t be sufficient.
Meanwhile, we peasants, we serfs, better take care for ourselves, keep warm and try not to become ill …
Worth a read. TCW Out of touch Tories bow to BBC
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/out-of-touch-tories-bow-to-the-bbc/
Another article on inappropriate temperature measurements, likely carefully selected to suit the climate change propaganda.
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/11/27/fresh-doubts-emerge-about-40-3c-u-k-temperature-record-next-to-airfield-runway/
Norman 8.40am
Is that the Hancock who is responsible for the 20,000 extra deaths sustained in the public care system when they were chucking the elderly, the halt and the lame out of hospital during the Covid .
Seem to remember he was well identified by a certain Mr. Cummings at his examination by the select ( or whatever) committee.
Pity he “couldn’t produce the evidence” when it came to Hancock’s committee examination – irony I think it was a put up job and Cummings was denied access to his cell phones which had been impounded by the government.
I believe the government couldn’t allow Hancock to be associated with it, so got rid of him by a put up job too
Agencies (quangos) started under Thatcher as an attempt to inject private sector efficiency into government, but it accelerated greatly under Blair. The motive this time was to off-load responsibility i.e shield politicians. It reached a zenith, in the case of the NHS, under Lansley’s 2012 Health Act when the NHS became an independent self-serving bureaucracy. What was never off-loaded successfully was the belief in the public mind that ministers are still responsible.
There needs to be a sustained communication from ministers about how the NHS really operates, in the way Thatcher banged on about the failures and weaknesses of socialism – occasional media articles are not enough – and on what the money is actually spent on, admin v front line, followed by a new health act to radically reform health services. Of course, the problems will never be fully described because the Tories actually caused many of them and the government’s parlous state means nothing radical will be done not that they have any idea what to do. The NHS is an out of control monster and it is the flagship of the parasitic, extractive public sector. The massed ranks of the blob – civil servants, media, universities, other quangos, and a still too large a gullible section of the electorate – will never allow a government to deviate from more money for the NHS lest they become next.
It’s a little hard these days to be optimistic about the future.
The more he spoke of gloom the faster I invested in the indexes of emerging markets (excluding China!!).
Apologies to Ralph Waldo Emerson
A small error Stout, but Quangos predated Thatcher with various names.
A client who owned a steel firm, and later pulled together the political warfare of the Chunnel as chairman , became a friend and client several times on varying projects.
Sir ( Now ) Alastair Moreton, was given the jobs by Mrs Thatcher of selling Quangos. I was amused. to industrial giants etc. Always in demand as potential monopolies. But the complaint was her admin created more than he could sell.
His next job was as Chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority, In which capacity I produced for him, an full detailed Strategic plan for a Circular Rail Line to connect all North and Midland Industrial towns such as Brum, Manchester Wolverhampton, Derby etc ( Altogether some 50 industrial world leaders ). To weld together a competitor for rhe USA and China etc. An abbreviated version from memory, lies as a article with ID.. It was hidden by EU subservient Civil service. Later to reappear as The Northern Powerhouse abbreviated abortion.
If Thatcher had to appoint someone to sell them, then they cannot have been as numerous as they later became or intrude into daily life as much as they now do, at the time she took over. Nor would whatever have existed before her and Blair have consumed so much money as they now do.
PS “… the good old Army will come to the ‘rescue’ of the NHS during the nurses’ strike:”
Is it too fanciful to say that the strikes are being stoked up by TPTB partly to give the armed forces a pretext for “fusing” with the NHS? Part of the ongoing creation of the totalitarian state? Gettting us used to seeing the military on the streets?
I’ve just been watching this from 4 years ago, showing the laying out of the foundations for what’s happening now. Government functions are being fused as part of the creation of a totalitarian state.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-28th-march-2018-fusion-doctrine
Looks like the only kind of growth resulting from 12 years of Tory Government is that of the public sector, immigration, government debt, spying on its citizens, corporatism, globalisation, population increase, crime, homelessness, attacks on free speech and the culture wars.
A big thank you to all those who foolishly play the rigged game of musical chair establishment party politics. It’s just a Ponzi scheme to funnel power and money to the corporations, bankers and Uber wealthy.
Far too many voters are distracted from reality, the world cup being the foremost distraction just now. Add to that the tribal voters and we face a huge challenge in escaping that Ponzi scheme.
Jack……..I don’t in fact think that too many of the population are in fact that interested in the Football World Cup. I don’t know what the true reason for this is, but maybe more people would be interested if it had been held in the summer months. I was in a Wetherspoons pub the other day where for some unknown reason they had a giant screen playing matches. An overwhelming number of people weren’t even looking at this screen at all. And to have that fool Lineker appear on screen talking absolute twaddle adds insult to injury. For all the use it was, they might as well showed some old Sooty and Sweep Shows, as at least that might have engendered some interest of those present.
Bloated is not the word for it, there are 5.74 million employed by the public sector and the NHS has 1.2 million making it one of the largest employers in in the world with an additional 31.000 recruited since this time last year. Here in St. Mary on the Wold you can wait 7 hours for an ambulance and spend the same time waiting for treatment in the ‘ local’ A & E department. I have no idea what the extra 31.000 are doing but it seems here at least they are not on the ‘front line’ But still all is not that bad Matt Hancock is being treated as a hero by the press since his attendance in some reality T.V show so there is a least something we can be proud of as we sit in the cold and dark this month
What does it say about the Conservative Association of West Suffolk who have still not deselected this Tory clown?
On reflection, maybe it best to leave Hancock in place to give voters an in-your-face example of the sheer rotteness the goes right to the heart of the Tory Party.
I could not agree more, and as they begin to decamp hopefully it will become more obvious , not that they are any differant from many of the other lot,
Jake………I entirely agree with you insofar as Matt Hancock is concerned. Here is a man who is paid quite handsomely to represent a constituency in Suffolk as their MP, and is approached by the makers of I’m a Celebrity, accepts the payment of £400,000 and chooses to go half way around the world to waste his and everybody else’ time sitting in a mock jungle in Australia for six weeks and leaving his constituents in the lurch for the duration. Yes, he has lost the Conservative Party whip as a result of this shameful debacle, but his hopeless local party association should have investigated the possibilities of instigating the ‘Recall of an MP’ depriving him of his seat and call a by election to elect a more suitable candidate. Hancock, has not only brought his party into disrepute, but also his status as Member of Parliament. Instead, a senior official in his constituency association made light of the whole matter, and stated he hoped Hancock would be forced into eating the testicles of a Kangaroo. Both Hancock and the person who said this are disgusting creatures, and the former has no business to be in the House of Commons any longer in my humble opinion. No doubt when he arrives back in the UK with his pockets bulging with that £400.000 fee, he will plead forgiveness and the whip will be restored to him. It just about sums up the Conservative Party these days. They and all that serve in it are not worth a light to be honest. It is just another reason for genuine ‘conservatives’ to leave the sinking ship before it’s too late and join forces with Nigel Farage to set up a new party.