Following Guido’s exclusive yesterday, which revealed pay packets of up to £270,000 for 42 NHS executives, a spokesperson for No. 10 has defended the salaries to the Lobby:
“The public will rightly expect every penny raised by the levy to be spent on cutting Covid waiting times and finally fixing the care crisis … NHS England is already working to be more efficient and cut waste.”
The spokesperson went on to say that the evidence of NHS efficiency is the fact that there were initially “211 commissioning organisations”, so the 42 executives running the new Integrated Care Services ‘significantly reduce[s]’ the total number of managers.
No. 10 also pushed back on calling these managers “bureaucrats“, claiming “these individuals will be responsible for a population of around a million people with billion pound budgets, and so we want highly qualified people who can deliver for the public.” A reminder that some will earn 80% more than Boris himself…
Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government appeared on GB News this morning to talk about the National Insurance hike. When Tom Harwood suggested that “catch up funding does need to stop and the NHS budget would fall”, Reed agreed, stating:
“You would hope so but what we need is a timetable and a plan for delivering that”.
Things are getting confusing: Tories hiking taxes, Labour voting against them. Perhaps it isn’t so surprising to hear that Reed hopes to see the NHS budget fall…
In a recent BBC article on IKEA’s supply shortages, the Swedish furniture giant went all in on blaming Brexit for their inventory issues:
“What we are seeing is a perfect storm of issues, including the disruption of global trade flows and a shortage of drivers, which have been exacerbated by the pandemic and Brexit.”
The firm goes on to say that “10% of its stock, or around 1,000 product lines” have supposedly been affected by the Brexit-related shortage. In a separate statement given two days later to Dutch newspaper Dagblad van het Noorden, however, an IKEA spokesperson instead cited the exact same product shortage with a different excuse featuring one notable omission:
“There are major logistical problems worldwide. For example, there is a great scarcity of containers and container ships on important sea routes because the economic recovery from the corona pandemic is proceeding faster than expected. There are also congestion in ports due to the crowds and Chinese terminals were temporarily closed due to local corona outbreaks. Many IKEA products are made in China.”
Both articles list the same 10% stock shortage figure, only one mentions Brexit.
Remainers – and some parts of the media enjoying spinning the narrative on their behalf – are refusing to accept the lorry driver shortage is global: iron ore struggles to reach Australian ports; US petrol stations have run out of supplies after a 35,000 fall in lorry drivers; Asia reports a 20% fall in drivers. As the head of policy at the Road Haulage Association said in August:
“Even if we were allowed to recruit drivers from the EU, there’s a shortage of drivers there as well… The only place that doesn’t have a significant shortage of drivers is Africa.”
There are plenty of economic commentators this side of the channel – IKEA’s PR team included – who have more than a few screws loose…
Gavin’s week just keeps getting better: after his Rashford racism row yesterday, this morning he’s getting it in the neck for telling the conference of Universities UK to get back to teaching students in person – a speech he delivered via Zoom…
The survey shows that in-person teaching is now one of the top three areas singled out for improvement by students.
This is something we cannot ignore. While the switch to online teaching was a necessary and vital way of keeping young people learning in as safe a way as possible, we have now moved on and students quite rightly expect that they can study in person alongside other students.
Imagine trying to make sense of the subtleties of interpreting Chekov for the stage or carrying out complex molecular biology techniques over Zoom. I for one would need the full benefit of that in-person, world-class teaching that you and your members can rightly be so proud of.
Is Boris regretting chickening out of that reshuffle?
Always keen to make a splash, no nonsense Lee Anderson is leading the charge against Extinction Rebellion. Taking to Facebook he’s called on the Met to blast protestors with water cannons. Surely Boris could be persuaded – when he was Mayor of London he spent £320,000 on three of them…
In a statement Lee explained:
“Just last week over 2,000 Police Officers were needed in one day to control the demonstrations and over 500 people were arrested. What a waste of Police time and taxpayer’s money to police these protests that achieve nothing apart from damaging property, blocking roads, stopping people going to work and preventing emergency service vehicles getting to their destinations. Maybe it’s time to bring back water canons which would help disperse the crowds and give our streets a good clean whilst allowing our Police Officers to get on with the day job.”
Lee’s water cannon idea has multiple upsides: not only does it disperse the nuisance-makers, they’d also get a proper shower for once…
A classic morning media round bombing by care minister Helen Whately this morning. Asked by Nick Ferrari whether Gavin Williamson’s confusion of two black English sports stars was down to racism or incompetence, Whately defended him by saying “I don’t know”:
Ferrari: Is he racist or incompetent?
Whately: You’ll forgive for for saying, I again have probably seen no more of this than what you have seen
Ferrari: What more do you need? He’s mixed up two prominent English black sportsmen, he’s got them the wrong way round, I repeat my question – is this through incompetence or racism?
Whately: Honestly I don’t know
Ferrari: So it could be racism?
Whately: He’s put out his explanation and there’s really nothing more than I can say about it.
Looks like both Whately and Williamson should be grateful there’s no reshuffle today…
