In case you missed it, the UK has extended transition again, until Summer 2022. This is in response to shortages across the food and drink industry that have hogged the headlines for the last few weeks: No chicken in KFC No lager in Wetherspoons No milkshakes in McDonalds No pasties in Greggs GP surgeries don’t … Read more
The Government announced this week it is increasing NI to raise £11.5bn for the NHS and social care. This gives Boris Johnson the record for the highest levels of tax and spend of any post war Conservative PM. He is currently spending more on public services that Corbyn promised in 2019, and nearly as much … Read more
Only a few days late. The usual format: 12 multiple choice questions
Barely a week goes by without someone telling me about another imminent threat from the Tories to privatise the NHS, and introduce American style healthcare. As you might have spotted after 30 years of these stories I am pretty sceptical. The NHS is still as it ever was. I do understand people’s anxieties. Hospitals that … Read more
This week the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee published it’s report on the 21st anniversary of Lord McPherson’s report into the death of Stephen Lawrence. I always thought it should have been called the Lawrence report, but apparently thats not how things work https://committees.parliament.uk/work/347/the-macpherson-report-twentyone-years-on/ The committee concluded, correctly that a huge amount of progress has … Read more
A year ago I wrote a rather gloomy blog about US healthcare in which I compared their failure to tackle Covid, with their failure to eradicate human plague – the Black Death The US is still the only developed country in the world to regularly record new cases of the Bubonic Plauge, which was eradicated … Read more
Trump’s failure in the Presidential election and his subsequent retreat into self pitying conspiracy theories may have reduced his number of supporters, but it hasn’t made them less weird. Last year I tried to engage with Trump voters to find out what motivated them to support him, mostly what I found was loneliness, random anger … Read more
I’m currently in Slovenia and Croatia, finalising the delivery of our new Whisky stills. It’s the 30th anniversary of the Yugoslavian civil war, and the horror of the 90s makes it too easy to forget what a unique country Yugoslavia was. Although Yugoslavia was part of the Communist world it followed it’s own path, equally … Read more
This week a report by the Conservative-dominated Commons Education Select Committee said that children from white working class backgrounds have been “let down for decades” by the education system. 17.7% of white British pupils eligible for Free School Meals eligible achieved at least a strong pass (grade 5 or above) in English and maths at … Read more