19 October 2017
Diary of a Corbynista
To the Conference and Beyond
by Don Urquhart
26 September
Theresa May desperately needs something before next week’s Tory Party conference. This week she is meeting Donald Tusk, the European Council President. If it looks as if she has achieved a breakthrough she can then proclaim herself a conquering heroine come the conference. In the background the “friends” of David Davis whisper that he is ready to take over while publicly he is insisting that everyone must stay loyal to Theresa.
27 September
Bombardier manufactures the C class aircraft in Northern Ireland. The USA has imposed a 220% tariff on the plane at the instigation of Boeing. As a result orders will be lost and Bombardier may close down in the Province. It makes you wonder what the handholding with Trump was in aid of.
29 September
The Royal College of Nursing asked 30,000 members in May about their most recent shift. Over half reported understaffing. There were many horror stories and the overall picture is damning.
30 September
On the eve of the Tory Party Conference, Boris reveals to Sun readers his Brexit red lines and advocates public sector pay rises. Theresa meanwhile extols austerity and claims that she is leading from the front on Brexit.
1 October
Developers are required to include a defined proportion of affordable dwellings in their plans, but can avoid building them through a number of techniques. One of these is a “viability assessment”. If they can demonstrate that building affordable homes renders the project unprofitable they can weasel out. Also they can pay councils to “finance building of affordable homes elsewhere”. Councils make bland statements like this one from Elizabeth Campbell, the head of Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council: “Grenfell has focused everybody’s minds on the issue of housing and we want to find solutions.” Do we need housing homilies from that particular source? The Government’s approach is to float schemes which will help people to buy properties. This might help some but does not touch the problems of those in bad or temporary accommodation.
3 October
In Las Vegas, a man takes a room on the 32nd floor, carries up 23 guns and uses them to kill at least 59 and injure 550. According to the FBI he was a suitable purchaser of as many guns as he could afford.
Before becoming President Donald Trump affirmed that he would never repeal the right to bear arms. The NRA maintains that the best defence against a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun. It’s pretty much Trump’s foreign policy in relation to North Korea.
5 October
There really is an organisation called NHS Improvement. Fans of the spoof documentary W1A will recall top executive job titles like “Better” and “Values”. Anyway NHS Improvement has placed Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust in special measures after too many people had died awaiting cardiac treatment or had gone blind waiting for an ophthalmological appointment. This comes a couple of days after Jeremy Hunt’s inspiring presentation to the Conservative Party Conference where he explained how he had single handedly turned the NHS into the jewel it is today. As ever he called for a round of applause for the underpaid employees as the nation passed round the sick bags.
6 October
Grant Shapps reports that 30 or so MP’s are keen for Theresa May to resign and for the party to hold a leadership election. You can put the mishaps of her conference speech down to bad luck or organisational deficiencies, but even so the content was very thin.
7 October
When worrying rumours are circulating about an organisation, the surest way to make them come true is to publicly condemn the gossipers. Ruth Davidson has told the Tories seeking to unseat Mrs May that they should put up or shut up. For her part she had every confidence etc. But Ruth is just making sure that her face gets on TV in competition with the Grant Shapps, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove type people whose opinions have to be heard at every turn for the good of the nation.
8 October
Assaults on staff in mental health trusts have risen by 25% in the last 5 years and are running at the rate of 800 per week. A Unison survey puts the deterioration down to staff shortages and increasing use of agency staff. The Department of Health said it was completely unacceptable for health service staff to face violence or aggression. And, presumably, someone ought to do something.
Theresa May has selected Mental Health as her own personal crusade.
10 October
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has issued its annual report on the state of health and social care. The system is straining at the seams and faces a precarious future. So far so predictable but the CQC Chief Executive, Sir David Behan adds the comforting rider that standards have been maintained so far due to the efforts of the staff. To make that statement he must had his arm and possibly other parts of his anatomy severely twisted or he may have mistakenly been reading from an audit of health and social care on the planet Tharg.
11 October
Carles Puigdemont is the Catalan political leader. He has taken the moral high ground by calling for mediation after declaring independence. The noises coming out of Madrid constitute ad hominem attacks and threats. The European Union simply states that an independent Catalonia would cease to be part of the EU.
12 October
The Local Government Association which is currently meeting in Bournemouth tells us that lack of funding is putting ever more children at risk.
Robert Goodwill is the Minister for Children and Families. Faced with the disintegration of children’s services he tells us how much money the government is putting in and that all children deserve the best possible support. Had he attended the Jeremy Hunt School of public service management he would have asked us to offer a round of applause for our social workers but instead he implied that the problems were down to councils not doing the job properly.
14 October
Philip Hammond was in Washington yesterday for a meeting with the IMF. In an interview he described the EU negotiators as the enemy and our opponents.
The EU people have expressed their frustration with the mixed messages emanating from the London Cabinet Room and that, rather than Hammond’s faux pas, will be their main concern.
“All get behind the Prime Minister” is an ever more frequent cry from those known to be seeking to undermine her. In 1940 we had Winnie to save us from incompetent leadership. Neville Chamberlain would be a better option than what we have now.
16 October
Andrew Bailey, the Chief Executive of the Financial Conduct Authority highlights the massive increase in indebtedness among young people. He says that he does not like high cost lending schemes, and just as I detest Tottenham Hotspurs but can do nothing to eliminate them, so are Andrew and his organisation bereft of strategies for dealing with loan sharks.
17 October
The Americans have done a super job training, equipping and generally propping up the Iraqi army. They have swept through ISIS held territories with air support from the US and its allies. So successful has been the transformation of the local military that they now feel emboldened to take on the Kurds, who have played a significant role in defeating ISIS. There are an awful lot of oilfields in Kurdistan so the US is torn between fears of another Middle East conflict flaring up and the need to do business with whoever controls the oilfields and whoever will be signing repeat orders for American weaponry.
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