Peter Rhodes on fuggy classes, NHS finances and movie heroes who die early
From one of those newspaper calculator panels, I discovered that after last week's Budget I would be £19 a year better off. Let there be dancing in the streets and joy unconstrained.
This week the council-tax bill arrived. It's £107 more than last year. Taxation: the art of putting money in your left pocket while taking it from your right pocket.
As the kids return to school, health experts are stressing the need for classrooms to be well ventilated. My sympathies are with any teacher trying to deprive kids of their basic human right to be educated in the traditional sub-tropical classroom fug. Please, sir, we're dyin' of cold at the back.
What does the BBC's polar thriller The Terror have in common with Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror film Psycho? I'm not going to spoil the Beeb's drama series for you. But remember that the big-name attraction in Psycho, Janet Leigh, took that fatal shower only 20 minutes into the action. Sometimes, big stars don't even make it to the interval.
The Government says it cannot afford to give nurses more than a one per cent pay rise. Maybe that's partly because the NHS finances are facing a black hole of claims for medical negligence. In a letter to the Prime Minister, senior doctors and insurers point out that existing negligence claims amount to a whopping £84 billion – that's equivalent to £3,600 for every household in England, up from £700 per household ten years ago. And before the latest pandemic is even over, legal firms are queuing up to pursue Covid claims against NHS staff and trusts.
Lawyers will be claiming, for example, that some individuals were denied treatment for Covid-19, cancer and other conditions, or accidentally exposed to infection. Money awarded in compensation will come out of the NHS's overstrained budget. As the letter claims, this is “money that could otherwise be spent on more and better service for patients.” Underpaid nurses always make good headlines and attract public support. But the public is never going to stand on the doorsteps and bang dustbin lids to the chant of: “We demand reform of the NHS negligence-claims process.” Yet until this issue is tackled the health service will limp ever further into the red and one day there won't be pay rises for anybody.
Talking of lawyers, from this week new sentencing guidelines mean some teenage murderers can be sentenced to 27 years in prison compared to the current limit of 13 years. So how long before the human-rights lawyers (whose young clients are never “teenage murderers” but “children”), get this law kicked into touch?
What goes first on your fish and chips – salt or vinegar? That question, posted by “Joe of Warwick,” has created a Twitterstorm of opposing views. But there is another way. Forget the salt, ditch the vinegar and make a sauce of mustard mixed with mayonnaise. Behold, a snack becomes a feast.
