The List

Oh dear.  It has been months again since posting.  Almost every day I think of topics but I just haven't been able to bring myself to write.  So I have been thinking about why this is.  I love writing this blog once I get going on a post.  And I have come to the conclusion that there is just too much that bothers me in the world at the moment:  

My fears about Trump are playing out - and then some.  Immigration, environment idiocy, war mongering, his general stupidity, his tweets, his attitude towards the rest of the world in general, the frankly endless list is horrific.

There is no sign that Brexit will be stopped.  Even in the current uncertainty about 'the deal' I have no real hope that the madness will be ended by us Remaining.  I actually feel sorry for Theresa May.  A new emotion to feel sorry for a Tory. 

The environment.  I have tried really hard at  home this year to do more recycling and buy less stuff and all of that.  But then you read articles and watch programmes which tell you that no progress is being made at all.  That most of what you think you are recycling is not being properly recycled.  That the Indian Ocean is flooded with plastic.  That we are losing species/forests/water ever day. 

Universal credit in the UK.  What a joke.  More people than ever are below the poverty line.  More people are homeless.  The NHS is collapsing.  Education is chronically underfunded.  But our government is spending billions on Brexit.  £4.5 million of taxpayers' money was apparently spent to renovate an apartment for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.  Imagine what £4.5 million extra could do for one Local Education Authority?  One tiny example amongst thousands...

I could keep going ad infinitum.  Do you see what I mean?  Depressing.

So I have been focussing a bit more on things closer to home.  On being grateful for what I already have.  On thinking about what small things I can continue to do to help, so that at least I can look my kids in the eye and say 'we tried to fix this'.

With that in mind, could I ask you to make a donation this Christmas to a cause which means something to you?  (Not your beer fund or your ASOS account (!) either.)  A food bank, a shelter, a wildlife charity, an age concern group.  Even a local church or school.  Or to the Remain campaign.  Or subscribe to a fact checking site online and help to keep fake news at bay.  Then send a card or email in support of that cause to your MP or council.

We can't change the world right now, immediately.  It's going to take time and planning for the big problems but I am determined not to be overwhelmed.  I hope you are too.

Plot Predictions

Thirty years ago I was doing Economics 'A' Level. Thirty years!  A good few lessons were devoted to ‘the ageing population’ and the looming pension, health and social care crisis in the UK.  I remember being shown predictions for, well, about now actually.  I remember thinking 'my own parents will be retired'. 

Let’s just say that again. Thirty years ago students were being taught about a well-documented and researched certain future event - our working population would not be able to provide for the increasing number of aged people. This was not hearsay or a teacher cutting an article out (remember that?!) from the press. It was part of our syllabus. 

  

A couple of years later I found myself in a British Politics lecture at university. One of the main themes was the excellent continuity our civil service provides.  The whole ‘Yes Minister’ culture of gently steering whichever party happened to be in government.

But where have we been steered to? Thatcher fell during my first year at Uni (oh the hangover after that) and huge damage had been done in terms of council housing, benefits, etc.  But there was still time for someone influential to say hang on, we are teaching about a looming crisis. How are we doing to deal with said crisis?  Sad to say, after John Major's floundering, Blair’s New Labour seem to have made little dent on social care, council housing, the NHS.  They went for private finance initiatives. And then the banks had their own crisis.

To say nothing of the feeble coalition years and the recent Tory disasters.  Simplified version?  Yes.  But the fact remains that this was expected to happen yet still we have hospital beds clogged with elderly people who desperately need full-time care.  In the midst of what may well turn out to be the worst winter in seventy years of the now teetering NHS.  

Thousands of people still have no real idea how they will fund their retirement.   Many probably don't realise how bad things are going to be.  Retirement ages have been increased but there have been decades of mismanagement.

We are in 2018. With a broken social care system, a breaking NHS and pension problems a go-go.  All predicted.  At least six Prime Ministers and thirty years ago.  Something has gone badly wrong with our system of government.

Kensington Revolution

This week we have been dealing, in the UK, with the awful tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire.  I send my heartfelt sympathies to all who have been affected in Kensington and huge admiration to all who have helped in the rescue effort and the continuing aftermath.  

If you look online, there are hundreds of articles and reports and comment pieces about this appalling event.  Many have excellent insights and background information.  I won't mention anything particular but following last week's post about getting out of our informations 'bubbles', I would highly recommend reading press and comment from all sides of the political spectrum.

Interestingly, none have attempted to deny that lack of funding is a major cause of the situation on such estates.  (And even the most virulent Right wing papers appear to have slightly toned down their anti immigrant rhetoric, given the backgrounds of many of those who have died or been affected.)

Back in April I wrote a blog post called Doing The Numbers in which I looked at the huge money amounts which are bandied about when referring to football, films etc whilst we in the UK are constantly being told that money for hospitals, schools and housing is not available.

I argued that we are not a poor nation and that lack of funding for services is a political choice not a necessity.  Tragically, events like this tower block inferno bear this out in graphic detail.  Underfunded hospitals and emergency services are left trying to rescue some of society's poorest people from underfunded and clearly dangerous housing.

There is no excuse in a country like ours for money not to be spent where it is needed.  Our health  and social services, schools and emergency workers are looking after all of us in some way.  Only a tiny percentage of the population have a private GP for example.  No-one, to my knowledge, has a private ambulance, fire service or police force on private 24/7 standby.  And even if you could prove that you never touch public services in anyway (impossible but hey, give it a go if you have the money.  Good luck with rubbish collection, using the roads, etc.) who do you think looks after and educates all the people who you rely on to serve you, clean for you, blah  blah.

It took until 1918 for even most of our male ancestors to get the vote to say nothing of the women.  Austerity is a political choice which has been forced upon us.  It is not a necessity.  Hopefully the Grenfell Tower will begin a chain of events which will result in people finally understanding this.  We should not just accept what we are told.  The increase in the young vote was heartening earlier this month.  We need to keep that momentum. 

Kensington Popular Front*, anyone?

*with apologies to Citizen Smith fans!

Defence Spending

Despite the mass cyber attack, I currently (touch wood) seem to be able to use my laptop.  I am late working on it today but at least it is usable.  I hope you have survived the virus so far.

Whilst travelling to the hell hole which is Ikea earlier (I now go alone and beg strangers for help in lifting stuff rather than take my husband and plunge towards divorce at Aisle 1 of the warehouse), I was listening to the radio.  I think it was the Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2 but anyway, the talk was of how surprisingly unsophisticated the WannaCry cyber attack has been in its components.  Experts believe plenty of 'cyber gangs' are capable of much more.

In other words, at least half of the National Health Service has been brought to its knees by amateur attackers.  Showing the experts how easy it is to break the outdated systems.  Causing chaos for millions.  Spreading it around the world in a flash.

Operations cancelled, patient details inaccessible,  thousands of appointments not possible.  The list of trouble is endless.  Paper records are no longer kept.  In most surgeries, you don't even check in for your appointment by talking to a human being anymore.  You use a touch screen arrival system.

Then it took an amateur IT researcher to crack the virus and stop it spreading.

So could someone please explain why defence spending is to be 'ring fenced' if the Conservatives win the election?  And why successive governments - of all persuasions - have clearly not spent enough on the infrastructure of the NHS?  We knew there was not enough being spent on staff and treatments.  Now it turns out that the systems are so poor, the whole service could be broken by what may turn out to be a bunch of chancers.  And what does this mean for public services in general?  Is enough being spent to prevent us losing access to power stations?  To stop someone hacking air traffic control?  etc etc.  Of course, most of the other UK services have already been privatised.  How do we know if these companies are spending enough on their defences?

My family, like most, has benefitted from the NHS over the years.  In fact, being blunt, none of us were born in private hospitals so it is a fairly safe assumption that without the NHS, some of us would not even have made it.  You only have to watch a drama like Call The Midwife to get an idea of conditions for many people at the time of the NHS' inception.

At least a million people use the NHS every day.  This apparently unsophisticated cyber attack needs to be the final straw, the final wakeup call for our government to protect and enhance it.  All of it.

Doing the Numbers

Here in the UK, we do not live in a poor country.  We have infrastructure, facilities, services.  We can cope if there is a huge flood or some other disaster.  (Granted we don't have - so far - natural disasters on the scale dealt with by many countries but you know what I mean.)

Yet our government consistently tells us that there is no more money for the National Health Service, for education, for decent pensions.  Services like provision of care for the elderly or mentally ill are at crisis point.  But we have money for defence spending, for high speed trains to tear up the countryside, for the Royal Family.

How have we reached a point where we willingly accept that this is how things are?  Is it because once ministers and the media start talking in amounts by the million, it is so far-fetched that none of us can relate to the figures being bandied about?

My son regularly reports the price of expensive footballers to me.  He talks of figures in the tens of millions as if it is normal to pay that for the services of one, easily-injured human being.  And he does so because it is normal to him.  He cannot relate to the figures he is being given.

Maybe we need to start reporting what schools and hospitals need in terms which modern society can understand.  Here are a few examples I have come up with:

1)  If you Google 'how does it cost to build a new hospital in the UK', you get an estimate of around £90 million.  Last year, Manchester United paid just over £15 million for Paul Pogba.  Or, on a list of the top twenty highest paid footballers in the world, Ronaldo earned approximately £80 million in 2014 alone.

6 x Pogba's fee = hospital.

1 x Ronaldo's 2014 = nearly a whole hospital.  If that was 2014, he will have made at least £50 million a year since then, presumably (see how easy it is to bandy these numbers about?).

2)  Ed Sheehan is currently estimated to be worth around £50 million.  And in 2016, despite having the year off, the band One Direction made £89.9 million.

2 x Ed Sheeran = 1 hospital 

or

1 x One Direction's 2016 = 1 hospital

Now, if you are in demand and you work hard, of course you are entitled to your earnings, however madly out of proportion they might be.  I am not suggesting Ed should cash it all in and buy half a hospital or the One Direction boys should club together to do likewise.  These and the football numbers are just 'fun' examples.

Except, it is not fun.  Because we are being conditioned into thinking our country cannot afford the basics that such a developed country should be providing for its citizens.  And we are also being conditioned to believe it is acceptable for relatively few people to have immense amounts of wealth.  

This is not about communism, about taking away from those who have earnt or inherited (although taxes on the so-called super rich should definitely be increased).  It is about recognising the stupidity of accepting sub-standard services for the majority whilst reading - for entertainment - about huge sums of money being spent on sport, fashion, yachts, homes.  Even films are mainly spoken of in 'financials'.  How many millions they cost to make and how many they have recouped.  (£876.3 million globally for the new Beauty and the Beast apparently...)

Last July, the UK parliament voted to renew the Trident nuclear deterrent at a cost of £31 billion.  And 'just in case', the government has set aside another £10 billion in case of extra costs or over spending.  

That is around 344 hospitals for the budget, let alone the 'extra' £10 billion.  

Or how about this:

Research conducted by the Alzheimer's Society in 2014 for its report Dementia UK: Update shows that there would be 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK by 2015. This will cost the UK £26 billion a year.

Two-thirds (£17.4 billion) of the cost of dementia is paid by people with dementia and their families, either in unpaid care (£11.6 billion) or in paying for private social care. This is in contrast to other conditions, such as heart disease and cancer, where the NHS provides care that is free at the point of use.  (source: Alzheimer's Society)

Now there are some numbers to think about.

Ageism and the Age of Racism

I am coming to the end of a fortnight with my mother in law.  I will not bore you with the details - believe me, we would be here a while - but it has certainly focussed my mind on the many issues with how we are dealing with our ageing population.

Last week, we were told that the average life expectancy in the developed world will soon be ninety.  Whilst this is amazing, it brings with it a whole new raft of problems.  When I was sixteen and studying A Level Economics, I remember being told that in thirty years time, we would have all sorts of issues with not enough revenue or working-age people, pension deficits, etc.  And here we are in the midst of what was clearly so predictable that our education system was teaching it as fact.

Why are we not putting more energy and resources into dealing with this problem?  Besides it, immigration pales into insignificance as a 'problem'.  By the time my kids are their dotage (unless Trump has blown us all to kingdom come by then), life expectancy may well be nearing a hundred for the lucky majority.  Who will look after them?  Robots?

We have a responsibility to those who have worked and put into the system so far.  And we have a responsibility to future generations.  Our care system is broken.  Our precious National Health Service is at breaking point.  Despite the best efforts of very devoted staff.  Despite quite frankly a huge number of hard working immigrants who keep it from grinding to a halt altogether.

None of the people who voted for Brexit in order to get rid of immigrants seem to have thought about the many people who undoubtedly keep their lives running at the moment.  They certainly have not joined the dots to think about the future.  This is not just happening in the UK either.  The part of the world which has been clever enough to develop medicines and technology with its disproportionate wealth is now trying to pull up the drawbridge to those who provide the nuts and bolts of its privileged existence.  It's not just health. As another example, on a recent UK hotel break I worked out that if only the British-origin staff were available, there would be just one waiter, a maintenance man and a deputy manager from what I could see and hear of the staff and their accents.  Of course, if Trump, Le Pen and others have their way, we will not be able to welcome people from other countries to help us plug these gaps.  

Mind you, if you look at Nazi history, it was a relatively short step from restricting the Jews and others to 'solving the Problem' with killings.  Maybe we should also be worrying about the threat of ageism as well as the rampant racism and sexism from these people.