The state of the UK

[JimC]

A mole, eh. Is it trying to burrow into your bum?

[Svartalf]

too bad britain is a giant ulcer on the west ass cheek or Europe.

[Brian Peacock]

Bojo is going to lance that suppurating boil!

People were complaining on the radio today that they might not be able to take their winter break skiing holidays without a visa - and the chances of getting one in time are somewhat up in the air due to who-knows-what deal and the pandemic. What did they expect? Like that nice Mr Farage said, "Brexit means Brexit."

[Svartalf]

Oh, yeah, since he's part of the pus, if only he could what himself out in the process...

[Scot Dutchy]

Will all know where that money has gone; the chumocracy!

England's test and trace repeatedly failed to hit goals despite £22bn cost

NAO report finds scheme is failing to reach enough contacts and only returns 40% of tests within 24 hours

The government’s test-and-trace programme to combat Covid-19 in England has repeatedly failed to meet targets for delivering test results and contacting infected people despite costs escalating to £22bn, a damning official report has revealed.

The National Audit Office (NAO) has found that the centralised programme is contacting two out of every three people who have been close to someone who has tested positive, with about 40% of test results delivered within 24 hours, well below the government’s targets.

The report said a target to provide results within 24 hours of in-person testing deteriorated to a low of 14% in mid-October before rising to 38% in early November.

Call handler contracts for those working on test and trace were worth up to £720m but many staff had very little to do, auditors said.

[Scot Dutchy]

Nice shiny blue passports and nowhere to go.

How will the EU travel ban affect Britons who have booked holidays?

Covid rules on non-essential travel will kick in for UK when Brexit transition ends on 1 January

British holidaymakers will be barred from the EU from 1 January as the European commission has indicated there will be no exemption for the UK from Covid-19 safety restrictions, apart from for Northern Ireland residents travelling to the Republic of Ireland. What does it all mean for Britons with a holiday booked in 2021 – or sooner?


Is this all because of Brexit?

Yes. The fact that we are leaving the EU means that we join countries such as Albania and Turkey when it comes to entering the EU. On Thursday morning the Netherlands announced that all non-EU citizens would have to show a negative Covid-19 test result when entering the country by air or sea. This will affect British tourists from 1 January onwards. Arguably we can expect more of this in the coming months.

[Scot Dutchy]

Covid exposed massive inequality. Britain cannot return to 'normal'

The more deprived the area, the higher the mortality rate – for all causes of death. We have to rebuild a fairer society


In 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. The official number of casualties as a result of the storm is 64. But take into account the longer-term consequences – devastated infrastructure, overwhelmed hospitals – and the death toll rises to the thousands. When we look closely at these figures, we see something else too: two months afterwards, mortality had risen sharply for the lowest socioeconomic group, somewhat for the middle group, and least for the highest group. A huge external shock had thrust the underlying inequalities in society into sharp relief.

So it has been with Covid-19. Inequalities in health, and in the social conditions that lead to ill health, have been revealed and amplified by the pandemic and the response to it. Now, with vaccines coming onstream, there is talk of Britain getting back to “normal”. But the “normal” that existed in February 2020 is not acceptable. The Covid-19 pandemic must be taken as an opportunity to build a fairer society.

A new report that my colleagues and I at UCL have published today uses evidence to suggest how we go about doing this.

In February 2020, just one month before the UK entered a national lockdown, we published a review of what had happened to Britain’s health and health inequalities in the 10 years since 2010. The picture was bleak: stalling life expectancy and rising inequalities between socioeconomic groups and regions. Most remarkable was the bucking of a long-term trend of health improving year on year: a woman living in the most deprived area in north-east England, or other areas outside London, had less chance of living a long and healthy life in 2019 than she would have had 10 years ago. We made a series of recommendations, addressing the social determinants of health, for how things could and should improve.

Then, Covid-19 changed the world dramatically. But in England the changes have been entirely consistent with its state before the pandemic hit. England’s comparatively poor management of the pandemic was of a piece with its health improvement falling behind that of other rich countries in the previous decade.


Britain has tried the austerity experiment. It did not work, if health and wellbeing are the markers of success. Phrases such as “maxing out the nation’s credit card” are neither helpful nor based on sound economics. At a time of zero interest rates, with a tax rate that is at the low end among European countries, and with control of its own currency, a nation can borrow and it can tax for the purpose of building a fairer society – it can even print money (quantitative easing).

We should not be asking if we can afford for our children’s wellbeing to rank better than 27th out of 38 rich countries, or to pay for free school meals during holidays so that eligible children do not go to bed hungry. Social justice requires it.

The problems we lay out are not unique to England. In the US, for example, the widening economic inequalities and the high mortality associated with race and ethnicity are also much in evidence. It was estimated that, from March to September 2020, the wealth of the 643 billionaires in the US increased by 29%, a staggering $845bn (£630bn). Over the same period the hourly pay of the bottom 80% of the workforce declined by 4%. Inequalities in Britain may be less dramatic, but it’s clear that our own level of inequality is not compatible with a fair and healthy society.

[Scot Dutchy]

[Scot Dutchy]

The "great" NHS. Only for some.

England's poorest get least GP time as rich get most, study reveals

Average time is 10.7 minutes in the most deprived areas, where residents are more likely to have underlying health problems

England’s poorest people have the shortest appointments with their GP and the richest get the longest, a study reveals.

People from the most deprived areas get the least amount of time when seeing their family doctor, despite having the worst underlying health in the population, researchers found. While those in the richest areas get 11.2 minutes on average, people in the most deprived neighbourhoods get 10.7 minutes, according to the Health Foundation.

The disparity underlines the inequality in access to NHS care, and has prompted concern that people on low incomes are missing out on opportunities to improve their health.

Health Foundation experts led by Mai Stafford, a principal data analyst at the thinktank, uncovered the gap from studying records of 1.2m consultations involving 190,036 patients from 2014-16.

In findings reported in the British Journal of General Practice, she and her colleagues said it was “particularly concerning” that people from deprived areas had shorter consultations.

They linked the situation to poorer areas having fewer family doctors than better-off areas, with GP surgeries having heavier workloads because patients are on average sicker than their richer neighbours.

“These findings add further detail to an already stark picture of health inequality in England. Those living in the poorest areas of the country already tend to experience worse health and have fewer doctors per patient,” said Stafford. “That they also tend to have less time with their GP, even when they have greater need, is especially worrying at a time when Covid-19 has further widened the gap in health between the richest and poorest.”

The inequity is so great that a patient from a deprived area who has underlying physical and mental health conditions gets the same amount of time with a GP – 10.9 minutes – as someone from a wealthy area who has no underlying health problems.

The researchers concluded that “there could be unmet need among patients with complex care needs, particularly patients living in deprived areas with both mental and physical health conditions.”

[pErvinalia]

Covid exposed massive inequality. Britain cannot return to 'normal'

The more deprived the area, the higher the mortality rate – for all causes of death. We have to rebuild a fairer society


In 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. The official number of casualties as a result of the storm is 64. But take into account the longer-term consequences – devastated infrastructure, overwhelmed hospitals – and the death toll rises to the thousands. When we look closely at these figures, we see something else too: two months afterwards, mortality had risen sharply for the lowest socioeconomic group, somewhat for the middle group, and least for the highest group. A huge external shock had thrust the underlying inequalities in society into sharp relief.

So it has been with Covid-19. Inequalities in health, and in the social conditions that lead to ill health, have been revealed and amplified by the pandemic and the response to it. Now, with vaccines coming onstream, there is talk of Britain getting back to “normal”. But the “normal” that existed in February 2020 is not acceptable. The Covid-19 pandemic must be taken as an opportunity to build a fairer society.

A new report that my colleagues and I at UCL have published today uses evidence to suggest how we go about doing this.

In February 2020, just one month before the UK entered a national lockdown, we published a review of what had happened to Britain’s health and health inequalities in the 10 years since 2010. The picture was bleak: stalling life expectancy and rising inequalities between socioeconomic groups and regions. Most remarkable was the bucking of a long-term trend of health improving year on year: a woman living in the most deprived area in north-east England, or other areas outside London, had less chance of living a long and healthy life in 2019 than she would have had 10 years ago. We made a series of recommendations, addressing the social determinants of health, for how things could and should improve.

Then, Covid-19 changed the world dramatically. But in England the changes have been entirely consistent with its state before the pandemic hit. England’s comparatively poor management of the pandemic was of a piece with its health improvement falling behind that of other rich countries in the previous decade.


Britain has tried the austerity experiment. It did not work, if health and wellbeing are the markers of success. Phrases such as “maxing out the nation’s credit card” are neither helpful nor based on sound economics. At a time of zero interest rates, with a tax rate that is at the low end among European countries, and with control of its own currency, a nation can borrow and it can tax for the purpose of building a fairer society – it can even print money (quantitative easing).

We should not be asking if we can afford for our children’s wellbeing to rank better than 27th out of 38 rich countries, or to pay for free school meals during holidays so that eligible children do not go to bed hungry. Social justice requires it.

The problems we lay out are not unique to England. In the US, for example, the widening economic inequalities and the high mortality associated with race and ethnicity are also much in evidence. It was estimated that, from March to September 2020, the wealth of the 643 billionaires in the US increased by 29%, a staggering $845bn (£630bn). Over the same period the hourly pay of the bottom 80% of the workforce declined by 4%. Inequalities in Britain may be less dramatic, but it’s clear that our own level of inequality is not compatible with a fair and healthy society.

Fairy data.

[Scot Dutchy]

A third world country?

Unicef to feed hungry children in UK for first time in 70-year history

UN agency will help fund food parcels for those affected by coronavirus crisis in Southwark, south London

Unicef has launched a domestic emergency response in the UK for the first time in its more than 70-year history to help feed children hit by the Covid-19 crisis.

The UN agency, which is responsible for providing humanitarian aid to children worldwide, said the coronavirus pandemic was the most urgent crisis affecting children since the second world war.

A YouGov poll in May commissioned by the charity Food Foundation found 2.4 million children (17%) were living in food insecure households. By October, an extra 900,000 children had been registered for free school meals.

Unicef has pledged a grant of £25,000 to the community project School Food Matters, which will use the money to supply 18,000 nutritious breakfasts to 25 schools over the two-week Christmas holidays and February half-term, feeding vulnerable children and families in Southwark, south London, who have been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

The food delivery firm Abel & Cole will also provide 1.2 tonnes of fruit and veg worth £4,500 to include in the boxes.

So long as the 1% dont have to pay.

[Brian Peacock]

I'm absolutely amazed that the Labour party hasn't mentioned this at all. If there's anything an opposition party should make noise about it's something like this. I guess the Labour leadership are now so frightened of the billionaire press that they'll do anything to avoid rocking the boat. The Tory media might be giving the Labour party a relatively easy time at present, because Kier Starmer doesn't actually say anything consequential, but they'll stick a roasting fork in his ass come next year's local elections for sure. It costs the Labour party nothing to say, "Unlike this government we don't think hungry children in the UK should have to rely on international food aid programs."

[Scot Dutchy]

Does not the top of the Labour Party belong to the 1% these days?

[Strontium Dog]

The problem is, nobody can seem to decide if British children are starving hungry, or if they're the fattest in Europe. Opinion seems to vacillate between the two, sometimes in the same week.

[Brian Peacock]

Of course, it couldn't possibly be both. I mean, that would be ridiculous. Being fat and being hungry are mutually exclusive aren't they, so British children can't be both fat and hungry - it has to be one or the other. Oh my, that's a really funny joke because it's sooo true.