We’re publishing another guest post by Charlotte Niemiec, a freelance journalist. This one is about the unseemly haste with which the Government raised National Insurance earlier this week and the flimsy rationale for doing so. How can the Government ask us to fund a financial shortfall in the NHS when it has wasted so many billions of taxpayers’ money through its mismanagement of the pandemic?
Earlier this week, the U.K. Government voted to increase national insurance contributions by 1.25% from April 2022 – a “fair and reasonable” amount that will raise £12 billion a year in extra funding for the health and social care sector, according to PM Boris Johnson. It is hardly unexpected.
I suspect many of us would willingly contribute what we could to the public purse in the face of a serious humanitarian crisis. Most stoically accept year-on-year rises that reflect inflation and population growth, especially when that money is invested in services we or those we love use now or will one day. We’re told the hike is a regrettable consequence of an unforeseen pandemic that has served to reveal cracks in the system, most notably a lack of resources in our ‘world-beating’ NHS. This should sound perfectly reasonable.
Why then, if Twitter is anything to judge by, do so many people on both sides of the political divide feel totally shafted? Perhaps it’s because we don’t have bottomless pockets and altruism only goes so far when we see our money being wasted. Forcing us to pay more to deal with a backlog that is a direct result of the government’s own poor decision-making feels like something of a cheek. The NHS needs extra funds primarily because it chose multiple, short-term, ineffective lockdown policies instead of strategies that safeguarded public health, the NHS and the economy in the long-term. Alternatives, such as the Great Barrington Declaration or the Swedish model, have always been available, but never considered.
We are to pay – again! – for the Government’s bungling ineptitude over the last 18 months, for the public funds it washed down the sink, enriching themselves and their friends while the rest of us feared for our jobs. The Government purchased PPE to the tune of £18 billion, much of which turned out to be unusable. Next it coughed up – by some estimates – £530 million for the temporary ‘Nightingale’ hospitals it never used because it hadn’t realised the NHS didn’t have the manpower to staff them. (They did, however, inspire arguably the most Orwellian image of the pandemic so far, although this may not be a real photograph.) Its next brainchild was the £22 billion barely-fit-for-purpose ‘test and trace’ system, which ‘pinged’ those who hadn’t left their homes for weeks while the phones of those in direct contact with infected individuals stayed silent. The PPE scandal and test and trace disaster together cost around £40 billion. It will take more than three years to claw this back under the new tax rate.
We can add to the tally the £12 billion spent on the first two doses of ‘vaccines’ with results that seem to be, at best, disappointing. In the final week of August last year, England saw 46 deaths attributed to Covid, with no vaccine available. In the same week this year, that figure is 391, with a vaccine. What has been achieved? The Government will now spend more money on vaccines that don’t appear to be very effective to jab those who are not at risk from the disease and reinject those whose six-month vaccine loyalty card is running out. The ongoing plan seems to be to repeat this strategy, ad nauseam, with an ever-mounting bill. Are we getting our money’s worth?
How will these extra funds be spent? Maybe on more ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’ managers imploring white people to “be uncomfortable” in return for £50K salaries, while 13 million people wait for medical treatment. Perhaps it will be spent training and recruiting the estimated 190,000 new NHS workers we’ll need if the existing, fully-qualified-but-unvaccinated ones are forced to leave their jobs in the wake of the Government’s anticipated ‘No Jab, No Job’ policy. It could also be spent on the additional NHS workers we’ll need because of the shortfall we started with in the first place. The Government could scrap – or at the very least, defer – the ‘No Jab, No Job’ policy. But it probably won’t. Instead, it will choose to throw good money after bad.
Some of this cash, albeit allocated in name to the healthcare sector, could even be spent on the insidious ‘vaccine passports’ – the biggest threat to our civil liberties since the war, to go along with the biggest tax hike since the war – even though they have no medical justification.
Once again, those who have the least will lose the most. The higher tax will penalise the young, the working class and ethnic minorities, those who made the largest sacrifices to ‘protect’ their wealthier elders. They were the frontline workers, delivery drivers, rubbish collectors, shelf stackers. Many did not have the luxury of furlough but worked on regardless of any risk Covid posed them. Their reward is to be worse off – the Government will take from the poor and give to the rich.
And the rise coincides with a record 12% hike in energy prices that may very well see the elderly and vulnerable we sought to protect die of cold this winter. This, combined with ill-thought-through ‘net-zero’ schemes designed to make the PM look good on the international stage at COP26 in November – to ‘Build Back Better!’ – will see us only building backwards.
But most disturbing isn’t that the Conservative party has broken its manifesto commitments, or that hiking taxes goes against Tory principles (to such an extent that many in the tax-loving Labour party balked at endorsing the idea) or even that so few Tories voted against the rise. No – it’s that this vote took place with only 24 hours’ notice, under threat of a reshuffle. It is yet another example of the many changes Boris and his closest cronies have pushed through without proper scrutiny. In June, the Government even had the gall to send press releases to the papers outlining plans for the Covid roadmap before it told fellow MPs what information they contained. An apoplectic Speaker Hoyle found it “totally unacceptable that, once again, once again, we see Downing Street running roughshod over members of Parliament”. Hear, hear, Hoyle.
Contempt for the House is one thing, but the Government now looks set to disregard the advice of its own medical advisors and proceed with vaccinating 12-15 year-olds. In doing so, it can no longer be said to be “following the Science”. It is on a dangerous footing, climbing the first few rungs of a totalitarian ladder.
Who will guard the guards? We, the people, must protest, protest, protest this Government’s hubris before we wake to find our wallets empty, our rights permanently eroded and our liberties held hostage.
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Dear God, I just read the UCU statement linked in the article. These people are completely mental.
And did you read the responses to that statement. The members of the union all seem to believe they are taking huge risks all the time and they are only objecting to the pohoto because it showed people sitting together not wearing masks.
It just shows how far we are from any sort of normality, and how terrified / self interested so many people have become after 18 months of government lies and propaganda.
“Terrified/self interested”, maybe.More like totally fucking lazy
They look like a collection of student union activists from some downtrodden polytechnic in the late 1970s. God knows what knowledge is being imparted to students paying thousands of pounds per annum to “study” for a degree or higher qualification taught by that rabble.
We always said that lectures were a method of transferring the lecturer’s notes from them to us without passing through the brain of either. Like home working, maybe this is the wake-up call that the system was due an overhaul anyway. But as with WFH, there will be unintended consequences. My main client is really struggling to get people back into the office because WFH is more convenient to the employee but that’s a very one sided view.
Doesn’t it just – that’s the worrying part of that. I’ve been tracking daily positive tests (aka “cases”) in my local town and they’re rising – currently about 2/3rds of the peak in Jan/Feb. Nobody is panicking and nobody is dying either – long may that continue. It’s almost as if the message should be “nothing to see here, move along” but as was always predicted turning off “fear” is way harder than turning it on.
Well, almost certainly they all read (and believe!) The Guardian!
I am sure you are meant to genuflect when you say The Guardian.
https://www.youtube.com/c/AndrewLawrenceComedy/videos
Andrew Lawrence has been great as always, help out and view his comedy as his sketches are banned from live gigs.
Staggering hypocrisy, but sadly not surprising or unusual levels of it for trade union mask and lockdown advocates.
Masks and lockdowns for thee, but not for me.
Panic for when it gives us more power and status, or political leverage, but not for when it interferes with our own convenience.
Fear for when others bear the costs, but not when we don’t feel like it.
Precisely
“Panic for when it gives …. etc”. Exactly right. I’ve noticed that whilst some are genuinely terrified there is a significant group of people who have no trouble ditching the rules when it suits them and seem completely unaware of the hypocrisy.
Muzzles are only for the peasants, not the barons.
Surely we’ve established this by now?
“I would like to close this piece by reminding readers that not all academic staff are UCU members, and in my experience a decent majority of lecturers are enjoying the return to proper teaching. Sadly, as so often in life, it is a relatively small but very loud-mouthed minority who are making things difficult for the rest of us.”
Pretty good summary and characterisation of most of the remnants of the British trade union movement.
As a left-winger, I unfortunately have to agree with you. I was a member of Unite for a number of years and cancelled my membership because their two principal interests were pushing pet political causes, and using their member lists to try to flog unrelated stuff to their members (PPI claims, etc).
Unite nearly shut Scotland in 2013, over a dispute at the Grangemouth refinery where their member had been fully guilty of what he was charged with.
“their two principal interests were pushing pet political causes, and using their member lists to try to flog unrelated stuff to their members”
Not unrelated, I suspect, to the development of the political left in this country that I discussed below, and the hounding out of those whom Peter Hitchens described as “anti-Communist trade union patriots and Christians”. They were replaced by people who saw the working classes themselves as embarrassing necessities (“awful, bigoted” people), and their organisations as mere vehicles for their own advancement and the advancement of their radical political fanaticisms.
Yes, didn’t Francois Hollande despise the French working classes as well?
Would it be such a terrible thing if we killed them all ??
I’m going to have to take the Fifth on that one….
I seem to remember that Arthur Scargill was not representative of many miners.
My wife works at a university as a science technician. For all the “our members are telling us they are worried …..” she is not aware of anyone being asked. Clearly, some members are expressing concerns, but the Union is making no attempt to find out what, overall, members actually think.
Might not get the answer they want that way! They know that those most likely to express opinions without being asked are the paranoid ones, which will fit their narrative.
Maybe the students could stop protesting about statues, and tackle this.
The students expect to get allocated A grades and skip exams etc.
Although employers may skip over their CVs and not risk employing them
Well, for completeness, I tweeted the image in reply to that statement. You know, just so that people can make their own minds up
Why should we be surprised? It’s just the same as with ecology where the disempowered are constantly berated by people who own multiple mansions, fly every other day in private planes, who invest in companies that promote deforestation, unsustainable mining, plastic production, yet more schemes to get people to buy more things they don’t need etc. etc. etc. The list could go on, and on, and on…
“ a decent majority of lecturers are enjoying the return to proper teaching.”
I was pleased to see this bit of balance at the end, reflecting what I know to be the truth about those that I know.
Undoubtedly, the UCU, like other teaching unions, has been a pathetic disgrace – certainly a poor advertisment for academic skills as a relevant advertisment for more than disappearing up your own arse.
… which is more than a local difficulty, given the current crying demand for reasoning skills.
(The age profile of that audience is interesting).
One thing … the address as an event at the Labour Party conference is a double whammy, since that event was notable for representing a dwindling membership as Starmer’s jackboot right-wing takes over from the traditional broad and argumentative base – notably by attacking and expelling jews who oppose the Israeli state and its assaults on rights on grounds of ‘antisemitism’. (The informed will know about the strong links between that state and repressive regimes, including our own establishment-in-the-shadows).
Well, ‘jackboot’ maybe, but I doubt if even Kneeler knows which wing of the party is graced by his presence!
Oh – he does – if you follow what’s been going on (and I don’t blame you if you can’t be arsed).
As I’ve pointed out before, Kier Starmer and the Blairites are only “right wing” to members of rival leftist sects such as yourself. They are “centrist” or “moderate” to those who are spoonfed their opinions by the establishment media, and hard left to conservatives. I don’t agree with Peter Hitchens on everything, but as a former Trotskyist himself and a lifelong journalist and observer of politics, he is excellent on the machinations of the political left:
“Your leading article (‘Comfort spending’, 28 November) makes the classic mistake about modern politics which prevents so many from grasping what is going on. You refer to Sir Keir Starmer as the leader of a battle against Labour’s left by its ‘centre’. Since Neil Kinnock’s pantomime battle with Militant in 1985, political journalists have been beguiled by a fantasy. They think that Labour leaders who attack villainous leftist factions do so in the cause of moderation. But this is in fact a battle by the sophisticated left — of post-1968 cultural revolutionaries — against the crude and embarrassing steam-powered left of Militant or Jeremy Corbyn. Each thinks the other is the wrong kind of socialist. Keir Starmer, like Anthony Blair himself, is a former Trotskyist who may not be that former. He recently told an interviewer who explored his dalliance with the fascinating tendency known as ‘Socialist Alternatives’: ‘I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind.’ And why should he? The group’s preoccupation with sexual politics and green issues has since then become the ideology of all the major parties. But the old Labour right of anti-Communist trade union patriots and Christians was hunted down and wiped out almost 40 years ago, and can barely be found any more. Labour’s struggle, like so much British politics, is a left vs left combat. If you want anything else, good luck. But you won’t get it from Sir Keir.”
[Peter Hitchens, letter to Spectator December 2020]
The recent history (past half century or so) of the Labour Party is of the decades old utter rout and substantial exclusion from almost any influence or access to office of the old left that represented indigenous working class interests (what Hitchens referred to as “anti-Communist trade union patriots and Christians“), and a subsequent civil war between two rival wings of the ideologically radical left, which is characteristically “woke” (or “politically correct”, as they were called back in the 1990s).
The Blairite wing of radical woke leftists (rather than the other, Corbynite wing of radical woke leftists) has essentially been the political establishment, and largely the social, business and cultural establishments, in this country for decades, and took over the “Conservative” Party in the early 2000s That’s why they are invariably misrepresented as “moderate” and “centrist” by the establishment media. They don’t adhere to the old state socialist nostrums of the Corbynite wing, but share pretty much all the other radical goals of overturning all traditionalist resistance to their radical social agendas and Rebuilding Mankind (and Society) Better, by virtue of their own Cleverness – the definitional feature of leftism.
Apart from the obvious hypocrisy it looks like she may be a raving alky as well – have you seen the size of the glass of wine in front of her? If she drinks like this when she’s working then it’s no surprise she can’t think straight.
Yes but the virus can tell your political affiliation so this is following the science or some other such fucking rubbish.
Yes but this is a highly sophisticated crowd: you can tell immediately by looking at the two people with vaginas at bottom right!
Omg they are so fat that they’d have get a third party opinion on whether they have a vagina down there or not.
why don’t these massive fatties do something about their own risk factors first?!
Fart & give us a clue?
What a shower. Whenever a union or Labour Party conference descends on Brighton, the obesity profile must go up tenfold. If these people are ‘unsafe’, it is no one’s responsibility but theirs.
Study the photograph carefully, it backs up what I’ve observed in Hull – the majority of mask wearers are young men.
i think its actualyl a bit like fashion you know like the stupid beards and stuff masks cannot make those people look sillier
I agree 100%, maybe the baby faced ones do it as a surrogate beard.
Whats their weird hard to figure out agenda im stumped .No one benefits from this sort of disruption
i think its ironic that they are “fighting for jobs pay and conditions” whilst doing fuck all whats to complain about ?
Unfortunately, the university lecturers I know all believe the covid propaganda and look surprised when I offer a different (more objective) perspective. I feel thoroughly disappointed in them, that they don’t seem to have made any effort to actually examine the subject beyond listening to the mainstream news (or reading the guardian!). If this lot are “educating” and setting an example for our next generation of adults, god help us. I was meant to be doing some uni teaching myself but I turned them down when I saw the list of crazy covid rules including masking of students at all times. No thank you.
A grey haired group of Harvard alumni representing different professions, including academic, were meeting weekly via zoom to discuss the “pandemic.” I tried to introduced them to this site, to The Great Barrington group, Yeadon, Bhakdi, Iannides…. You get the idea. They nervously refused to consider any of these. Conformity is at its worst amongst the “intellectual” class.
Sadly that doesn’t surprise me. I think we need to redefine the terms “intellectual” and “academic”.
It always has been.
You can always tell a Harvard man. You just can’t tell him much.
And is it any wonder that the vast majority of the UK population believe all the government propaganda when ‘university teaching’ is in the hands of such academics?
It’s not surprising that most Unions just say BS to bring down democracy and capitalism. What has shocked me is that the Tory Party seem hell bent on it too.
I’m not anti-union. They are important when they serve the worker’s fair rights to stop the excesses of some employers but most unions are more focused on the political agenda of forcing socialism and communism even at the expense of the workers.
I have the sixteen page risk assessment from my Son’s university. It basically attempts to reimpose all the restrictions that were lifted months ago. To make matters worse, this was only sent to students the day before term started (once all cheques were safely cashed and rent paid).
Scared of a virus or scared of the ire of students? It’s students they won’t face.