Hewitt and her NHS go critical
The political career of health secretary Patricia Hewitt is lying on a trolley
in some dark hospital corridor, very probably labelled “Do not resuscitate”.
In a couple of weeks, Dr Brown is expected on his rounds to put Hewitt out
of her misery. But until then she must put up with the pain.
She’s already been attacked in recent weeks by midwives and junior doctors.
Last week hospital consultants joined the fight by accusing Labour of
crippling the health service.
Dr Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the British Medical Association’s consultants
committee, said the service had been harmed by botched reforms. “Political
meddling has brought the NHS to its knees,” he told the association’s annual
consultants’ conference.
He was speaking despite an announcement by Hewitt that, as a patient, the NHS
was showing a modest recovery. After running up debts of £547m last year,
the latest accounts showed a £510m surplus.
How has this been done? According to NHS figures, 17,000 jobs have gone in the
past year and training budgets have been trimmed. And, according to critics,
the cuts are endangering the government’s drive to cut waiting lists. “Half
a million hospital patients could be waiting more than a year for
treatment,” The Times reported.
Andy Burnham, the health minister, defended the government’s record, saying
all but eight trusts have reduced waiting times.
Not everybody does so badly. There is one area of the country where 98% of
patients are treated on time. That’s Leicester – whose MPs include Hewitt.
number of children born to women over 40 has almost doubled in 10 years.
A baby boomlet
It won’t be long before we’ll need even more houses: the country is enjoying a
modest baby boom. “Fertility is at its highest in 26 years,” says Keith
Spicer from the Office for National Statistics. There were 669,531 live
births in England and Wales last year, enough to populate a city the size of
Glasgow. That’s an increase of 3.7% over 2005.
Immigrants and older mothers are mainly responsible (not to mention older
fathers). There was a 10% rise in the number of children born to migrant
mothers, who now account for 21.9% of all births. The Pushed off the housing
ladder
The news drew a mixed response. As the average number of children per mother
edges towards 2.1, this would mark the first time in decades that births
would outstrip deaths.
Experts had feared a shrinking working population could harm the economy. But
others say large families are bad for the environment. David Nicholson-Lord
of the Optimum Population Trust said: “We advocate that people should stop
at two or have one fewer child than they planned for environmental reasons.
The current population is unsustainable.”
Pushed off the housing ladder
If you are young and struggling to buy your own home, there was some small
consolation last week. For the next generation, the struggle is going to be
even worse.
The average home in England already costs seven times annual earnings. But the
first-time buyers of 2026 will have to find 10 times their salary, says a
government agency.
The National Housing and Planning Advice Unit estimates that just 40% of 30 to
34-year-olds will be able to step onto the housing ladder in 2026, compared
with 57% today. That figure has already fallen from well over 60% in the
late 1990s.
The government – against fierce opposition – already wants to build 190,000
homes a year, but is struggling to keep up with demand. That’s because an
estimated 223,000 new households are created each year.
The advice unit was set up following a 2004 report into housing by Kate
Barker, an economist who then put the housing shortfall at 600,000 homes.
Graham Searjeant of The Times showed how timid modern ministers have become
about this issue. “In 1951 the Conservatives swept to office partly on a
promise to build 300,000 houses a year, up from 200,000 shortly before the
war.”
Searjeant suggested that, secretly, many of us would resist any change.
“A shortage suits so many people,” he asserted, “including existing
homeowners, all the main banks, and the mortgage brokers and estate agents.”
Now even villains must be right on
The world has become so politically correct that it’s almost impossible to
invent fictional villains, says author Anthony Horowitz.
Horowitz’s work for television includes Foyle’s War and episodes of Midsomer
Murders, but he says he has struggled to provide adversaries for Alex Rider,
the teenage hero of a series of spy novels.
“I’ve found it increasingly difficult to create someone for him to fight,”
Horowitz wrote last week. “A bad guy who won’t give offence, who won’t break
some new piece of politically correct legislation, who won’t, in short,
damage my career.
“I sweated over Alex’s next adversary. Obviously he couldn’t be black,
religious or homosexual. If I made him a woman, would that be sexist? Unlike
Captain Hook, it might cause upset if he were disabled. I doubted I could
even make him fat.”
So in Snakehead, Alex will face Major Winston Yu, a Hong Kong Chinese gang
leader who drinks English wine and suffers from osteoporosis. “I dare say
I’ll be upsetting two minority groups,” says Horowitz, “albeit ones who have
not been known for the violence of their protests.”
Biofuel blowback
The drive for biofuels has already been accused of pushing up food costs in
poorer countries. Now Opec says it could send oil prices “through the roof”.
Producers are considering cutting investment in new production as the
developed world moves to use more biofuels, the Financial Times reports.
Supporters of biofuels, which are made from agricultural crops such as corn
and sugar cane, say they will help the fight against global warming and
offer greater energy security to countries like Britain and America.
But Abdalla El-Badri, secretary-general of the Organisation of Petroleum
Exporting Countries, warned: “If we are unable to see a security of demand
we may revisit investment in the long term.” Julian Lee of the Centre for
Global Energy Studies said: “On the one hand, Opec is asked to produce more.
On the other, Washington and Brussels are telling the cartel, ‘We don’t want
to rely on you’.”
