Letters to the Fenland Citizen editor – September 8, 2020
Blaming Public Health England is diverting attention
The Sunday Telegraph claims Health Secretary Matt Hancock will announce a new body modelled on Germany’s Robert Koch Institute.
Ministers have reportedly been unhappy with the way Public Health England (PHE) has responded to the coronavirus crisis. It is to be replaced by a new agency that will specifically deal with protecting the country from pandemics.
The Government was contacted by the BBC but declined to comment.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Public Health England have played an integral role in our national response to this unprecedented global pandemic. “We have always been clear that we must learn the right lessons from this crisis to ensure that we are in the strongest possible position, both as we continue to deal with COVID-19 and to respond to any future public health threat.”
The Telegraph reports that Mr Hancock will merge the NHS Test and Trace scheme with the pandemic response work of PHE.
A leaked memo seen by the BBC, written by the head of PHE to staff, said the aim of the new national institute for health protection was to boost expertise with “much needed new investment”. The new body could be called the National Institute for Health Protection and would become “effective” in September, but the change would not be fully completed until the spring.
The Robert Koch Institute, which the new body will reportedly be based on, is an independent agency that has taken control of Germany’s response to the pandemic.
Earlier this month, the Government brought in a new way of counting daily coronavirus deaths in England following concerns that the method used by PHE overstated them. The PM has also said the country’s response to COVID-19 could have been done “differently” and the Government needed to learn lessons.
PHE has been seen by some at Westminster as a convenient scapegoat for flawed decision making in the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis.
Blame for a failure to have put in place a mass testing capability as the pandemic virus began to spread has been laid partly at PHE’s door. But decisions at the time and in the months before the crisis were made across the Government, with input from SAGE.
PHE’s critics will argue that a shake-up is now needed. But supporters will feel that blaming PHE is diverting attention from others in Whitehall and Westminster. There is a logic to moving PHE’s coronavirus functions, including testing and surveillance, into a new health protection agency which also takes in the test and trace network and management.
But shaking up the defences with the virus threat still present is risky. Ministers will need to demonstrate they are doing so for the right reasons and not just playing to a political gallery.
You do not deal with the problem of an over-centralised, dysfunctional organisation by creating another over-centralised organisation which is what is being proposed.
John White
Wisbech
Don’t allow workers to be sold out of the NHS
Local people who’ve been patients cared for at hospitals in the region will be angered to hear that some of the frontline heroes of the coronavirus pandemic may now be sold out of the NHS.
It’s a slap in the face for workers who’ve been keeping us safe these last months of the health crisis. One minute they’re being clapped and cheered – the next their livelihoods are being threatened.
It’s another chapter in the running story of the creeping menace of privatisation.
More than 70 catering, patient services and logistics staff in Peterborough, Hinchingbrooke and Stamford and Rutland hospitals have been told their jobs are going to be outsourced.
Not only could they suffer as they’ll no longer be entitled to NHS pay and conditions, but patients will experience lower standards of care. That’s what often happens as a new private employer looks to save money and squeeze profits out of the contract.
Plans for the North West Anglia Foundation Trust’s award-winning catering team are particularly worrying because a new firm would no longer prepare fresh food at Hinchingbrooke.
Instead, they’d bring in pre-cooked food which unions fear will drive down the quality for patients, their relatives and staff.
The Trust wants the 70-plus staff to join more than 100 cleaning, portering and retail staff already employed by other outsourcers, bringing them under one employer.
UNISON and Unite unions believe that this single employer should be the NHS but so far the Trust is not even considering an in-house bid.
These workers have been caring for us. Now it’s our chance to care about them.
If you believe that selling them out of the NHS is completely wrong, bad for them and bad for us, then contact the NWA Trust at nwangliaft@nhs.net and tell them what you think.
Nick Williams and Amy Dodd-Broad
Wisbech, March and District Trades Union Council
‘Slavery’ is enduring idiots not wearing face masks
After reading Dick Lawrie’s concerns that ‘Britons are walking into a form of slavery’ because the BBC is dropping the lyrics to ‘Rule Britannia’ at the Proms this year, his fears are unwarranted.
Almost as soon as it was announced, the reasoning behind it was given.
There would not be the crowds to sing it, which would spoil the effect, so it would just be an instrumental, and there was a Government order that ‘singing should not be encouraged’.
I gather that this view has now been overturned and for other reasons the singing will be allowed this year, but at the time the organisers almost immediately said that the sung version would return in 2021 – assuming that things were back to normal by then and the public can attend.
As for face masks, well, our government took months to bring in the law to wear masks, which a lot of people thought was far too late.
We were in danger of becoming like Trump’s America, where he almost ‘shamed’ people who DID wear masks – he hasn’t worn one publicly himself and most of his ‘disciples’ follow suit.
Personally, I feel happier to go into shops, knowing that there is a double barrier between other customers and myself, so we are all helping each other in this.
My version of ‘slavery’ is to be subjected to irresponsible idiots who cough and sneeze or talk in your face willy-nilly without a face covering.
Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face, Mr Lawrie. We all want to get through this and live our lives normally again, and too many haven’t and won’t.
A scrap of fabric isn’t such a hardship if it’s the price we have to pay at the moment for our eventual freedom.
Carole Ransom
Chatteris
Why should shop staff be expected to uphold face mask law?
I felt compelled to reply to Toby North from August 26’s Fenland Citizen, and his questions over face coverings in retail shops and outlets, and the lack of enforcement by shop owners/workers.
The majority of Mr North’s letter I agreed with, like so many others will have done.
Last month, the Government made it law for face masks to be worn in enclosed spaces like shops, etc, to curb the spread of the coronavirus, and I agree with Mr North that we should all take the matter of protecting the health and safety of others seriously, but where I didn’t agree with his letter, is when he asked why shop workers are not enforcing the law?
The simple reasons are that those that work in shops are not police officers, they were never employed to enforce the law, that always has been the job of the police force.
Also, when the head office of a national retailer tells their staff not to challenge anyone then their jobs could be at risk if they go against the edict delivered from above, and also there is the very high chance of shop workers being verbally abused and physically assaulted for challenging some individuals, and is it worth being attacked, or worse, stabbed, over the rule?
The same with some shop owners. Mr North asked why they cannot put a sign in the window stating ‘No mask, no service’, but what if a shop proprietor DID this.
If they did, how long exactly does Mr North think these windows will remain in one piece for?
The law was made by the Government, so the first point of call should be the Government, and instead of harassing shop owners and workers about policing this law and putting themselves in a position of danger, people like Mr North should be putting the question to the government or the Police and Crime Commissioner, and ask what happened to all of the police officers and cars, the numbers of which had increased almost exponentially at the beginning of the lockdown, but now seemed to have disappeared.
Now, it’s back to the olden-days of pre-lockdown Britain, when your only glimpse of a police officer is when they’re in supermarkets buying their lunches, or in takeaways, eating more lunches.
The police should be here to uphold the law, but if laws are brought in, and we have no police to enforce them, then the only future is anarchic!
Ashley Smith
March
It is time to abolish the House of Lords
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced the appointment of 36 new peers to the House of Lords.
Infamous as the world’s largest unelected legislative body, Britain’s upper house is a rogues’ gallery of cronyism and sleaze.
The very fact of its unelected existence – let alone its endless grotesque inflation – is an affront to the principles of even liberal democracy.
But the ills of the House of Lords go far beyond this.
For many of its members, it is little more than a source of passive income, as well as providing numerous other perks and privileges.
In the past, our noble peers have claimed expenses for such things as piano-tuning, moat-cleaning, and even the refurbishment of a personal bell-tower!
According to the Guardian, our 36 newest ladies and gentlemen will likely cost the taxpayer an extra £1.1million per year.
And this is not including the £323 payment for every day they deign to attend a meeting. By contrast, statutory sick pay for workers currently stands at a measly £98.85, per week.
So rotten is the House of Lords, that even establishment mouthpiece the Financial Times described it as “a sitting invitation to sleaze and malaise”.
Likewise, the Economist described the recent appointments as “the smell of rot”.
It is time to abolish the House of Lords.
John Smithee
Wisbech
