The domestic news today is that Andy Burnham has invited other party leaders to a discussion on an all-party basis on the dilemma on how to organise and to fund social care costs. Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, will only participate in talks on the condition that no taxes will rise which, in effect, is not participating in the talks. It has emerged in the last few days that Andy Burnham’s own father has dementia, is in a care home and does not know that his own son now occupies the role of Prime Minister. As it is in the very earliest days of the new government, I do not envisage how a fully worked out and costed plan can be presented to the nation to consider, but after this issue has been ‘kicked into the long grass’ by governments for about the last 15 years I am not very hopeful of anything very substantive emerging in the course of the day. Today should turn out to be a quiet day and my normal visit to the Methodist Centre has been put into abeyance whilst the centre is closed for refurbishment as is normal during the summer period. I have received new details about the Philosophy group in which I am due to participate at the end of the week but there will be one another new member joining the group as well as myself so am intrigued how the session will work out. All I can say at this stage is that the convenor is going out of her way to give full details of the venue and the organisation of the programme and I anticipate that it may prove to be a ‘listen and learn’ experience for me. The evening before last, I walked with my American friend in the park and we enjoy the fresh evening air, the stroll round the lake and the sharing of the frustrations of life we may have experienced during the day. We may well be experiencing the last of the series of heatwaves during the day and although temperatures have moderated somewhat from the highs of a week or so ago, there is still no prospect of any rainfall for another week. All of this means that us regular grass mowers have been spared this task for the past few weeks and the whole townscape has taken on a crisp look as the green verges have been replaced by a yellowy-brown straw colour wherever one looks. I normally go shopping mid-week and my domestic help has given me notice of some new lines in fresh fish that my local supermarket may well be stocking. On the occasions that I buy wet fish, I pan fry it lightly for about 3 minutes a side and then serve it on a bed of lettuce which sounds a bit odd but which is actually tastier and more appetising than it sounds. I must say that I am getting slightly fed up with a diet of salad or salad variations but when the weather has been so hot, there is a strong disinclination to prepare hot meals. When I did my usual weekly shop, then six items which were on my shopping list were either not on the shelves or sold out and although the items were hardly esoteric, I have to make a decision whether to do without, postpone my purchase or choose a substitute. To be charitable to the supermarket concerned, it could be that going at a quiet time of the week is also going at a time when the shelves are not well stocked. Almost on principal, I avoid the units where shoppers check out their own provisions and in a queue of about three of four baskets with well-laden trollies as there is typically only one manned till. When I got home, I cooked myself a meat-and-veg type meal, just for a change as much as anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The much heralded speech by Andy Burnham revealed three policies none of them earth shattering. During his speech on social care, the prime minister set out three key commitments: he brought forward the review into social care to summer 2027, he pledged to reform the social care workforce ‘to lift it closer to NHS standards’ and also to work more collaboratively on the issue. But all of this is not saying very much and the really big question of finance for the sector is avoided. I really think that the time has come for a big initiative and not for tinkering around the edges as it were, but as successive governments have ‘de facto’ forced more families to sell their family homes in order to fund the residential care for their aged relatives, cannot see how this is going to be redressed without a major initiative of the type I have outlined previously where the whole population get used to contributing to a fund for about thirty five years to fund the undoubted expense of care in later life. In the meanwhile, there are some massive iniquities built into the system because if one is diagnosed with cancer then curative or palliative care is offered on the NHS whereas in the case of dementia, the NHS practically denies this as a ‘social’ and not a medical need and hence support for dementia patients is extremely limited. I occasionally let YouTube offer me the results of liberal American media podcasts in which senior members of the Trump administration are often attacked by vociferous and well informed Democrat members of Congress. Almost inevitably, the members of the Trump administration acquit themselves very badly by prevaricating, refusing to answer the questions directed at thenm truthfully or counter-attacking with irrelevancies. But then the Democrat members run out of their allotted time for questioning and no adverse consequences seem to flow. Th contrast between these hearings and the UK Parliamentary select committees is stark because in the UK system a minister refusing to answer a question truthfully or massively evading would be called in contempt of Parliament. However, even the UK sanctions are applied. What is more, if any committee were to report to the House that it believed a contempt had been committed, and the House agreed, it remains unclear what sanctions it would have at its disposal. Historically, those found guilty of contempt could be fined or imprisoned, but those sanctions have not been used by the Commons since 1666 and 1880 respectively. For all sorts of practical, legal and constitutional reasons, it is highly doubtful that the modern House would seriously consider this but in the US, in contrast to the UK, it appears that congressional committees are flouted almost with impunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The domestic news today is that Andy Burnham has invited other party leaders to a discussion on an all-party basis on the dilemma on how to organise and to fund social care costs. Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, will only participate in talks on the condition that no taxes will rise which, in effect, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8451,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8450\/revisions\/8451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}