Table of Contents
March 27th, 2022.
Well, the Chancellor had his spring economic statement last week, which was a complete waste of time. He confirmed the rise in National Insurance from 11% to 12.5% which is portrayed as a 1.5% rise. In actual fact, it is a 10% increase in the tax take. The 1.5 is the percentage point increase. He did climb down from the annual earnings threshold before this is imposed.
To help with the cost of fuel and energy he reduced fuel duty by 5p per litre. This is now 52.9p per litre.
In January I paid £1.07 per litre for 95 octane petrol. Yesterday this had risen to £1.69 per litre. In January the VAT was 18p per litre. In September because of the wholesale price increases in oil and petrol, this had risen to 28p per litre. Allowing for the 5p reduction in fuel duty this means that the tax take from fuel is potentially 81p per litre as opposed to 76p per litre in January. This is a 6.6% net increase in tax take from petrol.
Yesterday I got my power bill, £770 for electricity and £150 for gas. This is for the quarter just ended. My previous power bill was for £620. It came with a warning that there will be a 50% increase in this bill by the end of the year.
Grocery prices are going through the roof with the RPI (retail price index) showing a 9% increase year on year. Housing is even worse with house prices increasing by 12.6% year to February 2022.
This is even worse where I live where house prices have increased by 17.7%. This has important ramifications. Most of the increase is fuelled by incomers buying second homes, thus restricting opportunities for locals to buy their own home. This part of the UK is a low wage blackspot.
In St. Agnes, a picturesque coastal village there are currently 252 Airbnb properties, 22 properties for sale and 1 (ONE) property for rental. The locals can’t afford to buy and can’t find places to rent. There are 15,000 family units on the Council waiting list for accommodation. This has impacted on the provision of services. Treliske hospital, the major hospital in Cornwall has difficulty in recruiting staff, and when they are recruited they can’t find accommodation or are priced out of the property market. As a result, the hospital regularly goes into emergency measures.
Reports from food banks say that people are refusing free root vegetables because they can’t afford the fuel to cook them.
In a scandal of a different kind, the report into the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust is due on Wednesday. This is the final report into the conduct of the maternity unit at the trust where mothers to be (am I allowed to say that?) were coerced/ encouraged (bullied) into avoiding c sections in favour of natural childbirth. This was allegedly the result of midwives operating their own agenda with the support of the national council of midwives to avoid c-sections.
Three hundred babies died or were left brain-damaged due to inadequate care at an NHS trust, according to reports.
The Sunday Times has reported that a five-year investigation will conclude next week that mothers were denied caesarean sections and forced to suffer traumatic births due to an alleged preoccupation with hitting “normal” birth targets.
The inquiry, which analysed the experiences of 1,500 families at Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust between 2000 and 2019, found that at least 12 mothers died while giving birth, and some families lost more than one child in separate incidents, the newspaper reported.
Donna Ockenden, an expert midwife who led the inquiry with the input of more than 90 midwives and doctors, said her team had been “shocked and saddened” by the scale of the tragedy.
Donna Ockenden, the former senior midwife who led an independent inquiry into baby deaths at the trust.
The Ockenden report is expected to reveal that hundreds of babies were stillborn, died shortly after birth or were left permanently brain-damaged while many had fractured skulls or broken bones, or were left with life-changing disabilities.
Ockenden, who has more than 30 years’ experience in maternity services, told the Sunday Times: “There were numerous opportunities for the system to wake up and realise that there was a problem at this trust.
“There have been a number of occasions where families tried to be heard over many years and were silenced or ignored.
“We have seen families that have been split apart, families where relationships have been broken, cases of trauma and PTSD that have persisted for years after the event as well as terrible, terrible sadness.
“At times, after meeting families, I went back to my hotel room and I cried.”
Source The Guardian March 26th, 2022.
The BBC went on to report
Numerous babies now suffer long-term health complications after their mothers were forced to undergo traumatic forceps deliveries at the Shropshire hospitals, which left them with fractured skulls and broken bones. This is allegedly due to a culture of trying to avoid c-section deliveries. In 2013, one baby died after two doctors repeatedly attempted to deliver with forceps. Four years later, another baby suffered skull fractures and cerebral palsy after a forceps delivery. Neither of these cases were investigated at the time.
Similarly, several infants now live with life-long brain injuries caused by labour complications, the majority of which could reportedly have been avoided if the staff recognised prematurely, according to an interim report. The same report also stated instance whereby maternity ward workers had on numerous occasions mixed up the names of dead babies and, in one case, referring to a deceased child as “it”.
Another report released to the public last year described a total of 13 women having needlessly lost their lives due to unnecessary childbirth complications between the years 2000 to 2019. It read, “These included a number of maternal and baby deaths and many cases where babies suffered brain damage. Families have told us of their experiences of pregnancies ending with stillbirth, newborn brain damage and the deaths of both babies and mothers. These families have shared with us their accounts of the overwhelming pain and sadness that never leaves them.”
The initial report also claimed that in many cases, midwives had failed to raise the alarm when there were potential problems and, on the occasion that they did, doctors in turn failed to act on them properly.
West Mercia Police have also confirmed they’d be exploring whether to bring a criminal case against either the trust or staff in connection with maternity care.
Source BBC Panorama 23rd February 2022.
All these are symptoms of the way society is developing here. The governing elite is out of touch with us the citizens and in the case of the maternity unit, there appears to have been a disproportionate major influence by a natural birth clique within the Midwifery Council knowing what is best for us.
