It’s been a while I know – but I’m back

8^th July 2023 

I know – it’s been a while but ……

I started writing this blog post early in February, the aim being to answer a specific question put to me by one of my readers (you know who you are Mrs S), namely what did I consider to be a fair wage for teachers? Unfortunately the last 4 or so months have been nothing if not confused, personally and socio-politically. 

From a personal perspective we’ve both suffered some health issues – Karen broke her wrist back in April, which has still to recover completely, and I’ve had a couple of nasty infections that come with my handicap. We’ve also had to deal with vehicular issues, with both the spazvan and the car causing us problems.  The car is sorted but the van is still a problem as the ramp that gets me on and off has given up the ghost which means I’ve had to get on and off by the side door using a ramp – that Karen has to (wo)man-handle with her wrist strapped up.  Not easy.  Now to say that that is dodgy is an understatement as the ramp is quite steep – as I found out to my cost when the front left castor on my wheelchair drove over the side of the ramp and the chair stopped dead.  The sudden stop catapulted me off and I landed head first on a grassy slope and nutted a rock.  I cut my head over my left eye and ended up with a black eye for two weeks!  Fortunately I was none the worse other than a few cosmetic blemishes that soon healed. 

Besides all of the above we’ve had an almost endless stream of visitors, all extremely welcome of course but they all take up time and restricted the time available to blog.  To give you an idea of the demands made on us bear in mind that we’ve had Karen’s daughter Leighann with her partner Danny and our gorgeous little grandson Marshall for a week, my youngest son Mike with his partner Gabriella for the best part of a week, Karen’s sisters Jane and Anne, along with Anne’s hubby Pete (Pete O) came for a week (the ladies went off to a spa town for three days of pampering leaving me and Pete all the time in the world to catch up!) and then Karen’s brother Pete (Pete L) came with nieces Krista and KT and nephew Joe.  Why all these people keep coming is beyond me given all the work they do for us – but we are so glad they do because there are some things Karen can’t do and, not to put too fine a point on it I’m pretty much useless since my accident, which causes me real problems mentally and emotionally but heh ho! 

The truth is we’d be lost without visitors, friends and family, the work they cause us is nothing when compared with the help they provide, and our eternal thanks to you all. 

One thing I did notice when the Peters’ were here was how much they love the countryside and all its wildlife and birdsong.  When the girls were away Pete O and I spent a lot of time on the patio listening to the birdsong and looking out for the birds we could hear.  We have our regulars here – a cheeky Robin, spotted woodpeckers, cuckoos, blue tits, cormorant (helping itself to neighbour Andy’s koi carp) and buzzards but during the time Pete O was here we were also graced by a pair of hen harriers and a kestrel.  The male hen harrier is an absolutely beautiful creature. 

Pete L introduced me to a really good mobile app called Merlin which can identify birds visually from a picture database but also audibly from all the birdsongs it can access. One afternoon Merlin identified a golden oriole and the very next day a pair of them flew in front of us while we were on the patio.  These are a very brightly coloured bird but not easily spotted so we were very fortunate.  Since I’ve downloaded the app I’ve also heard the common or garden house sparrow but also a green woodpecker.  I’m hooked I’m afraid – but that’s what living in the heart in the heart of the wooded countryside does for you. 

The UK seems to be gripped in a politico – socio death spiral.  The legacy of Brexit and the looney Tories who drove the UK through their lies seems to have no end.  Johnson and his chicanery may well be long gone but his problems remain.  Trussonomics didn’t last but look at the damage she did – all I’ll say is thank God we don’t have a mortgage – but how on earth are our kids going to be able to afford one?  The Bank of England are pushing interest rates up and up whilst telly you to tighten your belts and not to ask for pay rises – a bit fucking rich coming from people on 6 0r 7 figure salaries and the closest they ever got to getting dirty hands at work was when their fountain pen leaked!  When you hear the Governor of the Bank of England trying to justify his actions just remember this:  the Bank of England has always, and will always do what is best for the City of London and that isn’t always what is best for the UK, its people and its industries.  The Bank of England grew in power as a result of its role raising capital to fund expansion in a rapidly growing Empire.  Put another way, like any other Tory, if its lips are moving and words are tumbling out the chances are you’re listening to lies! 

Industrial unrest in the public sector remains a real problem at home and this government don’t have any inclination to go the hard yards and do a deal.  I believe they are pursuing a deliberate policy, feigning concern but in reality more than willing to watch the NHS die a death of a thousand cuts.  I’m no great fan of Simon Jenkins but occasionally we agree on things – such as this Guardian article dated 5^th July 2023.  

One thing is for certain – public sector pay is set by government, so its rate at which any increase is set is purely and simply a political choice.  The current shower have deliberately squeezed and reduced the spending power of public servants for over 12 years and that alone is the reason why every imaginable public service is fighting for pay rises that try to mitigate the cost of living crisis,  that in itself is the result of DELIBERATE government policies.  The Tories screwed their workers (theirs in that they are the employers) and then, through the sheer cruelty / incompetence / just couldn’t give a fuckness of Tory Chancellors from the George Osborne days.  Why Ed Balls sits down with him to podcast is beyond me – all any true socialist should want to do is punch the fucker in the mouth!  Count me in on that by the way!   

The Tories have totally and utterly screwed the UK and it’s time for them to go.  Unfortunately the control-freaks who run the Labour Party are driving people away.  I’m at a loss politically – not that my single vote matters so much but that isn’t the point.  

Fortunately the problems in France haven’t reached us, or anywhere near us.  What was a demonstration against Police brutality in a certain part of France soon boiled over, when it became more and more simply just plain criminality.  It’s true that ethnic minorities here are not policed with any degree of subtlety and racism runs deep in parts of French society, similarly to parts of the UK.  I believe that those most disaffected should have more and easier access to the people who determine policy.  If you don’t fully understand the issues – such as education, housing, jobs and opportunities – how can you possibly make the right choices? 

So how could I possibly put a figure on that given UK regional costs differences for things like housing and transport but I would expect someone who has dedicated their working life or the benefit of society as a whole to be able to afford somewhere to live, a balanced and healthy diet, a warm home and a few creature comforts for them and their families, to name but a few things.  Teachers are public sector workers, in other words ‘civil servants’, their efforts come into play very early on in an individual’s development and play a fundamental role in helping build and develop the basic building blocks of a functioning society – educated, rounded individuals with an understanding of how their contribution to society helps all of society. 

Public sector work is good work.  It is the foundation of a functioning, welcoming and good civic society that we all, workers and employers, rely on.  If we are robbed, assaulted, watching our house burn down, ill or have an accident ‘who you gonna call’ – 999.  Without these people we’d be left with anarchy – and the Tories current answer to that?  Remove our democratic right to demonstrate when we don’t like what they’re doing.  The planet is on the verge of choking to death, petrochemical giants are making billions in extra profits and the Tories don’t want us to shout ‘enough’.  These war profiteering bastards won’t want Putin putting away any time soon while they can cream us all by charging excessive prices for the gas we need to power our electricity grid. 

Good roads and railways mean people and commerce can get about, earning and contributing to the wider economy.  Before the Tories roads and railways were the domain of public sector workers, they weren’t paid handsomely but they knew that they would be looked after in work and that after 40 years they could leave on a pension that wouldn’t leave them destitute in retirement.  The Tories screwed that up. 

Education and the NHS were within the domain of Local and Regional administrative bodies based around Local Council boundaries, so were in some way answerable to the people they served.  Now, after so many years of deliberate Tory policies and cack-handed mismanagement the whole system is on the verge of collapse.  Have you really wondered why the current shower of twats aren’t engaging with the NHS Unions?  It isn’t hard to fathom.  For years they have been underfunding the NHS to position it so all it can do is fail. And then they’ll invite the insurance industry of the USA to step in and save us all!  Yeah right!!  I actually think that the NHS strikes play right into their neo-liberal game plan and I can only hope that the British public – and that means you lot in the supposed ‘red wall’ seats who ‘lent’ them your votes for Brexit and ultimately for the shit-show that has followed.  Attempting to sell off the NHS could only ever be counter-productive for the Tory party though.  They rely on the votes of lots of retired people who, if they went along with selling off the NHS would see them having to fund their own healthcare.  Add these costs – here in France Karen and I shell out about 2,000€ a year for our health insurance – and they’ll soon find themselves looking at a year stretch for supergluing themselves to the road outside Downing Street! 

The problems lies firmly in the court of the English government – the Tories – who unashamedly hang on to the belief that Joe Public will get fed up of Railway staff, NHS workers and Teachers.  Wake up Sunak! It’s your lot of craven, crooked twats we’re fed up of. 

The NHS needs overhauling, but sensibly and – dare I say it – Regionally.  It needs to be answerable to the people it tends to but also all joined up so it can maximise the use of shared resources – patient data and high tech systems be they administrative or specialism specific.  

Like the NHS the Education system is riddled with extraordinarily well and, in a lot of instances exceedingly highly paid administrative Head Teachers, who have surrounded themselves with another layer of extraordinarily well and, in a lot of instances excessively highly paid Deputy Head Teachers each probably with their own secretarial support.  Tory education policy has in incentivised lucrative administrative positions (a pound to a pinch of the proverbial that they don’t teach and probably haven’t done for years) at the expense of teacher and classroom assistance numbers.  A progressive, well lead schooling system is a national imperative.  Without a firm base of well rounded, well-educated and learned school kids and University graduates the UK will never be able to compete with the rest of the world.  As the world spins dying underneath us we will need all the expertise we can develop. 

I was fortunate to go to a good Grammar School, as did my wife and all my siblings and we had but one Head Master and one Deputy Head master who shared a single Secretary, all for a school which at its maximum catered for 1,500 pupils.  Yes there were Heads of Department for English, Science, Maths and the Arts but they all taught and contributed to the good of the school and its kids.  I’m not advocating a return to Grammar Schools but Schools are centres of learning and development, not profit centres and open wallets for connected educationalists.  Again I believe that all Education up to Secondary and Further Education level should be regionally responsible and answerable to those they serve.  I’ll not pontificate on where Universities lie in all of this as I have very little experience of them, other than from what I Have seen and read they too are now no more than income generators, at the expense of those who deliver their ‘product’. 

So let’s get back to the original question asked of me – how much should we pay teachers and NHS staff – and I must add all public service employees? 

The current shower in charge will say, are saying, that there’s no money left on the money tree.  Well for a start that’s a lie.  They can print as much money as they want and turn it into Government Bonds or even borrow it.  Yes I know, borrowing isn’t necessarily a good thing but borrowing to invest in sound infrastructure and social projects is always a solid investment.  They create jobs which bring wages and then tax revenues, in part funding the repayment of any loans taken out. 

The lunacy of Trussonomics, borrowing to give it away as tax cuts to those who don’t need it scuppered the neo-liberal manifesto of ‘Britannia Unchained’ – co-authored by, amongst others Truss, Kwarteng and Raab at the expense of the UK economy and the fiscal responsibility reputation of the Tories, which was actually always smoke and mirrors but that’s another story. 

It is a fact though that public sector pay rises, NHS and Education rebuilding plans will require funding.  So here goes: 

Public Sector professions need to be able to retain and recruit people.  To do that they need to offer good terms and conditions of employment, good and safe working environments and a belief that they are wanted and valued.  In truth that’s all any of us want in a job but the Tories plans to rip up EU regulations will strip away many safeguards we have learnt to take for granted. 

I would reinstate immediately the bursary that trainee nurses used to receive.  This was there to help them with accommodation and living costs while they were studying.  When I was in Stanmore there was a young lad training on the ward, doing 12 hour shifts with the rest of the nursing staff (for no pay), travelling to and from Ipswich (where he lived with his parents) and trying to keep up with his studies.  A routine of 3 months at University and then 3 months in a hospital on a rolling basis left him no time to even think about getting a part-time job, never mind doing one.  

My next step would be to identify all those Public Sector jobs that require a degree qualification – Nurses, Teachers, Social Workers etc. – the type of job not usually found in private industry – and scrap tuition fees for those prepared to commit to working in their chosen Public Sector profession for 15 years.  Karen and I have discussed this a number of times, Karen thinking 10 years is enough and me thinking 20 is better.  I don’t think it’s an outrageous suggestion to expect someone publicly funded to earn a respected and life-long qualification to commit to paying back to the society that supported them.  Those Public Servants who are still working in that sector and who have had to borrow to attend University would have the obligation to repay their student loans quashed. 

A policy like this would, I believe, help recruitment and retention.  I’ve not included Doctors in this scheme, not because trainee Doctors don’t deserve the same consideration (they do) but because their career paths often include the opportunity to grub around in the murky world of ‘private’ medicine.  Any of you who have read ‘The Five Giants’ will know how much Doctors resisted the foundation of the NHS, believing it would strip them of their money-making side-lines.  Not much has changed in truth.  Private hospitals use NHS trained Doctors and Nurses and whenever something goes wrong they call an NHS ambulance to take ‘their’ patient to an NHS A&E Department.  Not only do they leech off the tax-payer for their skilled workforce they depend on the tax-payer to fund their fuck-ups.  

A private hospital provider has never trained a Doctor or Nurse (as far as I can discover) so here’s an idea – any Doctor, of whatever grade, moonlighting in a private hospital should be made to pay tax at 75% of their fee.  Draconian – yes, dead right.  Any Doctor who committed to work solely for the NHS for 20 years would get their student loan quashed, where applicable and then be allowed to earn in private practise at then normal tax-rates. 

As for a real pay-rise, I do believe that it would be impossible to recover all the money lost due to the Tories ongoing austerity campaign but something needs to be done to keep those we still have left working in the Public Sector and try to attract back those who have left.  An article in The Guardian dated 13/02/2023 indicates that thousands of Nurses have left the profession early – not retired but given it up literally as a bad job!

 If it was up to me I’d offer a 10% increase across the board in an attempt to draw a line under the current wave of industrial action.  This would come with a guaranteed overarching review of terms and conditions, staffing levels and sector specific issues to identify and then try to resolve the damage done over the last decade or more.  Hospital shifts of 12 hours (which actually mean nearer 14 hours in work for taking over and then handing over a ward) hide the fact that the shortage of staff was stupid before Covid-19 and that the current cost-of- Conservatives crisis is exacerbating.  Staff up for 3 x 8 hour shifts per day I say and let the people get a decent rest between stints.  

Similarly for Teachers – class sizes of 30+ are ridiculous.  A class duration of 45 minutes gives the Teacher maybe 1½ minutes per kid per lesson!  How can that be good for anyone?  And then we have to think of the time Teachers spend in their evenings, weekends and holidays marking essays, marking exams and preparing for classes.  Karen was a Teacher for 30 years and we’ve often discussed the pressures they are under.  My view conflicts with her view that teaching is a vocation.  The government (all governments) fall back on that excuse and then take the piss out of all the front-line staff in a school.  Teaching is not a 7 day a week, 16 hour a day job and they shouldn’t tolerate it.  Staff up to 20 kids per class and encourage, recruit, train the people and build the schools needed to enable that target. 

The government make much of the fact that they listen to the Independent Pay Review bodies – but how much notice do they actually take of them?  Not a lot! 

Whitley Councils have been around since 1919 in Australia and serve to promote proper, meaningful industrial relations and played a part in industrial in non-industrial UK public services since 1919.  They still exist and I believe their role as a mediator between Trade Unions and employers should be strengthened – how I’m not sure, but it seems to me that a government that causes the pain being suffered should be made responsible and, held to account and put right the damage they have done.  Pay rises, better terms and conditions of employment and realistic recruitment and training plans to ensure career paths and retention should all be included. 

How do we pay for all of this? 

This is where the Tax Man comes in: 

The whole tax-system in the UK needs changing. 

It is a disgrace that unearned income is taxed at a lower rate than that earnt by the sweat of someone’s brow. Share dividends, rental incomes, anything where profits have generated excessive bonuses (bankers for instance) should be walloped – 50% Tax as a minimum I’d say. 

Non-Dom status should be scrapped – if you live in the UK and want to work in the UK you must pay UK taxes, end of argument. 

Similarly, where people employed by an organisation (as a ‘consultant’ working for a massive multi-national or even government) but get their salary paid into their company account (usually off-shore? Maybe, probably!) so some smart-alek accountant can drastically minimise their tax liability should be stopped.  Again – if you work in the UK you must pay UK taxes, end of argument. 

Tax exemption for Public Schools needs to be scrapped.  Why should the normal tax-payer fund the education of the privileged elite?  If daddy is rich daddy can pay – and none of this dodging the issue by offering ‘scholarships’ for the lower class erks to make themselves feel good.  They’ve sponged off the workers for long enough. 

All the bogus PPE contracts should be called in and the monies recovered and where criminal doings are uncovered people should go to prison. 

There’s so much more that should be done to close all the loop-holes in the system. 

At the end of the day we need to make a choice.  The good of the country depends on a healthy and well educated population to innovate and drive production.  Only then will the growth that Trussonomics and now Sunak dreams of be realised.  

Taxes used to invest in education, training, health and social care can only be of good.  Anything less just perpetuates decline.  Do you really want to live in what’s becoming a Third World economy ruled over by a self-serving elite?  You don’t think I’m talking sense?  Have you seen how much Johnson has ‘earned’ since he was unceremoniously booted out of Downing Street?  Millions!! For talking his own brand of gob-shite!  At least his political career is over and, hopefully, the future of the current Conservative Party.  I must own up to a feeling of delight watching that shower of greedy, inept and in some instances corrupt bunch of bastards drowning in their own mess. 

Before I go please spare a thought for those in a far worse place than the UK.  The war in Ukraine has been with us for 16 months or more now, with no sign of coming to an end.  We can only hope that it doesn’t escalate into an even larger conflict but Putin cannot be allowed to get away with his naked, murderous aggression. 

My apologies for any issues you might have had reading this post, I’ve cobbled it together from the original February post in an attempt to get something out and it probably doesn’t read as well as I’d like.  I’ll try harder next time. 

So until the next time, stay safe. 

Jem 

08/07/2023