Toby on Tuesday
'Miracles and Mayhem'
As we approach Good Friday and Easter Sunday, let me introduce
you to the excellent Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham. Alan is also a
Canon of my college at Oxford and so, when my friend Nigel Farage stood
as UKIP’s candidate at Buckingham in the 2010 General Election, I took
him to meet Alan. Both are men of complete integrity and undoubted
courage, so it was inevitable that the visit would be successful. I
also suspect that Nigel was the only candidate to have taken the trouble
to call on the Bishop in the run-up to Polling Day and also that Alan
would then have remembered him in his prayers. Now, you will remember
that on Polling Day itself, Nigel had his near-fatal plane crash. That
he survived to make a full recovery might well be seen as a miracle. I
have always been convinced of the power of prayer and the existence of
miracles, so I just wonder whether there could have been a connection
between all these events? My friends tell me that it will be a miracle
if UKIP takes Thirsk and Malton in May, but you just never know…!
Now, as Easter approaches, we should all be praying for a series of
miracles in the Middle East, where Christian communities who have lived
peacefully for almost 2,000 years are being subjected to simple genocide
by the malign combination of ISIS/ISIL, Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram. Not
since the days of the Roman Emperor Diocletian (284-305AD) have
Christians been hunted down as criminals with the threat “Convert or
die!” Yet despite the grisly images of black-shrouded assassins
holding aloft the severed heads of their victims, the Western liberal
media have had next-to-nothing to say about these atrocities. They
stand as a reproach to our folly and the failure of our politicians in
the past fifteen years. In Iraq, 600,000 Assyrian Christians were
recently driven out of their traditional homeland by ISIL, who have just
released photographs of their destruction of a statue of St. George
slaying the dragon – a message no doubt to England.
Harsh reality has exposed the delusions of our policy makers to whom
we have entrusted our country’s safety. The ridiculous pictures of
David Cameron preening himself in front of a mob in Libya in 2011 after
the fall of Colonel Gadaffi, in emulation of his hero Tony Blair, are a
stark contrast to the Foreign Office’s recent advice that the country is
now a “no-go area.” And it now seems well-nigh incredible that just
over 18 months ago it took a defeat in the House of Commons by 285 votes
to 272 votes to prevent our ludicrous Coalition from intervening in the
Shia-Sunni civil war in Syria by raining down bombs on Damascus in
alliance with ISIS and Al-Qaeda. They argued in part that, in this
way, they would reduce terrorist threats at home! They were firmly
opposed by UKIP, while tribute must also be paid to the 30 Conservative
and 9 LibDem MP’s who prevented Armageddon by voting against their own
front bench. David Cameron and Nick Clegg should now be hanging their
heads in shame. In a more honourable age, the Government would have
fallen at this defeat, but the present regime knows how to hang on
limpet-like to power, if nothing else. When the absurd Paddy Ashdown
heard that Parliament had prevented the destruction of Damascus he
declared, “I have never felt so depressed and ashamed,” embodying all
the conceit and self-delusion of those who rule us.
In the light of this, it seems incredible that the Conservatives,
LibDems, Labour and presumably the Greens are all still working for
Turkish accession to the EU. Turkey, an Asian country with porous
borders onto Iran, Iraq and Syria, and with a continuing war against its
own Kurdish population, is already in receipt of many billions of Euros
of “pre-accession funding” from the EU, i.e. the British taxpayer. By
seeking Turkish accession the EU, with its policy of free movement, is
literally signing its own death warrant and for this reason alone an
early UK withdrawal from the whole crazy project is now vital. It will
take a miracle to avoid this danger and restore our country’s safety,
but miracles do happen, as we saw from Nigel’s plane crash and as we may
just see in Thirsk and Malton on 7th May!
Have a very happy Easter!
Toby
Toby on Tuesday
‘grace under pressure’
The definition of courage is said to be “grace under
pressure.” If this is true, then Anne McIntosh has behaved with
exemplary courage. A few days ago, she announced that she would not be
contesting Thirsk and Malton as an Independent in May, nor would she be
campaigning at all in the constituency, but would instead campaign on
behalf of Conservative candidates in marginal seats elsewhere. I have
often differed from Anne over the EU, the Climate Change Act and
Overseas Aid, but she has been an outstanding Chair of the Rural Affairs
Select Committee. Her work on flood defences and the threat of food
shortages has been faultless and I am happy to pay tribute to her record
in Parliament. Anne has endured much but she has never allowed her
many difficulties to dishearten her – perfect courage!
Courage is an old-fashioned quality. But old-fashioned qualities
have a habit of enduring, rather like the countless old buildings in our
constituency, many of them listed, which are among the glories of North
Yorkshire. I was reminded of this when reading about the regeneration
of Margate in Kent and the recent visit there by our much-loved Kate,
Duchess of Cambridge. There are lessons to be learned there for Filey
and many other of our old towns where the arts, heritage, hospitality
and tourism could combine to bring new prosperity to historic places.
Margate has used its links to the painter J.M.W. Turner, recently and
brilliantly portrayed by Timothy Spall in Mike Leigh’s wonderful film
“Mr. Turner”, to create a Turner Contemporary Art Gallery. Round this
have clustered hotels, cafes and gastropubs, so that tourism and the
arts have supported each other in a restored and thriving town. If we
can do something similar in Filey, alongside the reclamation of our
fishing grounds, then something extraordinary would have been achieved.
Filey certainly needs its all-weather visitor centre, an art gallery
or museum, as do so many of our historic towns. Malton’s Food Lovers
Festival is doing exactly the right thing and deserves every
encouragement. To support all these projects, UKIP now has a fine
Heritage Spokesperson in the very gifted William Cash, son of the
veteran Eurosceptic Conservative MP, Bill Cash. And William, who like
so many has simply given up on David Cameron’s Conservative Party, plans
to “weaponise heritage”, in his words, by creating a new Ministry of
Heritage and Tourism to champion tourism and bring heritage to the
forefront of national policy. UKIP plans to tighten and enforce
existing statutory heritage and landscape planning protections, as well
as introduce “Rural Conservation Areas” to prevent excessive
development. To protect our green spaces, new development would be
concentrated on infill and brownfield sites.
UKIP would reverse the long-term decline of our seaside towns. The
Coastal Communities Fund would be expanded to support the economic
development of towns like Filey. The red tape that is harming our
heritage tourism and hospitality industries would be reduced. And the
punitive 20% VAT rate on repairs and maintenance of listed buildings
would be scrapped and replaced by a simple 5% rate. Subsidies for
windfarms and solar parks would end, as would the plans for the
ludicrous HS2 project. Developments that threaten heritage sites of
national importance would not proceed and brown signs for unique
heritage attractions to support local tourism would be ensured. All
of these policies would serve Thirsk, Malton and Filey superbly. They
recognise the lasting qualities of our heritage and its ability to adapt
and survive. This historic constituency has learned to endure, it has
always shown “grace under pressure” and has the true Yorkshire
qualities of courage and grit, the supreme qualities that will ensure
all our futures!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
Toby on Tuesday
'Bureaucratic Displacement'
Just as Channel 4 is screening its four part series, “NHS: £2
billion a Week & Counting”, allow me to introduce you to Dr. Max
Gammon. Now Dr. Gammon is a long-standing UKIP activist who has fought
Council seats in London’s East End. He is also a senior doctor who
has devoted much of his life to studying our NHS. As long ago as 1976,
he wrote his seminal work “Health and Security: Report on the public
provision for medical care in the United Kingdom.” This created the
concept of Gammon’s Law, which he described as his “Theory of
Bureaucratic Displacement.” He wrote, “in a bureaucratic system
increase in expenditure will be matched by a fall in production…such
systems will act like ‘black holes’ in the economic universe,
simultaneously swelling in resources and shrinking in terms of emitted
production.” In other words, new investment tends to find its way to
administration and not to patient care. Since 1976, Gammon’s Law has
gone global, embraced by Milton Friedman and healthcare systems from
Australia to Saudi Arabia. The challenge for a UKIP Government will be
to ensure that scarce resources find their way back from administration
into patient care and somehow to reverse Gammon’s Law.
Currently, the NHS costs around £110 billion a year to run, a figure
that is growing rapidly. It is the World’s fifth biggest employer with
over 10,000 GP practices and 2,000 hospitals serving a population that
is both ageing and increasing remorselessly. Here in Thirsk and
Malton, the challenge is especially acute, as administrators draw
resources from rural areas, with their strong traditions of holistic
personal care, towards vast health centres and hospitals in urban areas
like York and Middlesbrough. If elected in May, I see the preservation
and continuation of medical services close at hand as a complete
priority. As one farmer has told me, “If my animal falls sick, the vet
is always close by. If I fall sick, that’s no longer the case.”
Now it is often said that the NHS has become our national religion.
UKIP is happy to be a full member of this faith, but we must still be
clear headed about how the system works. While NHS spending currently
represents some 6% of GNP, because of increasing demands, actual
expenditure per head of population is falling fast. The three old
parties are all proposing to lower expenditure per head over the coming
five years, from some £1,950 a year now to around £1,825 for the
Conservatives, £1,850 for the LibDems and £1,875 for Labour (Source:
The Nuffield Trust). Interestingly, it is only UKIP, with its
commitment to finding a further £3 billion a year in NHS investment that
will keep spending per head closer to its current levels. This will
be a critical number as Polling Day approaches.
This extra spending will become available from funds released by our
quitting the EU and reductions in middle management – again, we must
never, ever forget Gammon’s Law when new resources become available.
And the first principle that the NHS must remain free at the point of
delivery and time of need for all UK residents will remain sacrosanct. I
have received a good many emails from constituents calling for
additional expenditure on cancer treatments and I can safely say, yes,
cancer care is precisely where such new investment is needed, not least
because directly or indirectly we are all touched by cancer at some
stage in our lives.
Now, PFI (Private Finance Initiative) contracts are a classic area
where Gammon’s Law applies, with vast expenditure on initiatives that
could not be further removed from patient care. A UKIP Government will
stop further use of PFI’s in the NHS and will encourage local
authorities to buy out their PFI contracts entirely where this is
affordable. And we’ll ensure that the NHS is exempted from the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, so that aggressive
global corporations have no rights of access to the NHS. The risk to
our tradition of holistic care would simply be too great. For the same
reason, UKIP opposes the sale of NHS data, including patient data, to
third parties.
UKIP will also oppose any plans to charge patients for visiting their
GP and will ensure that GPs’ surgeries are open on at least one evening
a week, where demand exists. We will also ensure that visitors to the
UK have NHS-approved private health insurance as a condition of entry to
our country, while migrants will need to have paid National Insurance
Contributions for five years before having rights of access to the NHS.
This will help end the scandal of health tourism and save the NHS some
£2 billion a year. Of this saving, £200 million will be allocated to
the ending of hospital car parking charges, a matter that goes to the
root of holistic patient support. Likewise, UKIP will ensure that
foreign health service professionals coming to work in the UK are
properly qualified and can speak English to a standard acceptable to the
profession. And UKIP will amend working time rules to give trainee
doctors, surgeons and medics the proper environment to train and
practise. Properly resourced registered nurses and matrons with real
powers will replace administrators in a revitalised NHS. There will be
a duty on all NHS staff to report low standards of care.
And UKIP will replace Monitor and the Care Quality Commission with
elected county health boards to be more responsive scrutineers of local
health services. These will be able to inspect health services and
take evidence from whistle-blowers. And finally, as the pressures on
the NHS grow inexorably, the days of NHS-funded cosmetic surgery must
finally give way to more urgent treatments such as cancer care. Behind
all these reforms is the passionate wish to concentrate spending on the
needs of the patient, not of the administrator. Dr. Max Gammon is not
only an NHS visionary and UKIP activist, but also a committed Christian.
It is in this spirit that he has approached the future of the NHS.
If it is now to be our national religion, let’s focus on healing the
sick, and not submit to the demands of assorted bureaucratic jobsworths
who stand in the way of a revived NHS!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
Toby on Tuesday
“The dog ate my homework…”
I am one of those who believes that Middlesbrough is still a
proper part of old North Yorkshire, and its people are Yorkshiremen and
Yorkshirewomen. So I was thrilled last month to read that Dr. Richard
Spencer, who teaches biology at Middlesbrough College, was on the short
list for the Varkey Gems Foundation Global Teacher Prize. Worth a
million dollars over 10 years, the prize is for teachers who make an
outstanding contribution to their profession. Dr. Spencer inspires
creativity in his pupils through experiments, videos, models, games,
poems, songs and dance. This is a huge achievement in a challenging
environment and he must carry all our good wishes for the prize. He
has already visited the Vatican to meet good Pope Francis.
Yorkshire schools have certainly come a long way since Charles
Dickens’ devastating attack on them in Nicholas Nickleby. They were a
national scandal then and Dickens’ portrayal of the sadistic Wackford
Squeers at Dotheboys Hall did much to ensure their reform. Dickens
located his fictional establishment in the neighbouring constituency of
Richmond and described it in passages such as, “With this, and wholly
disregarding a piteous cry for mercy, Mr. Squeers fell upon the boy and
caned him soundly: not leaving off indeed, until his arm was tired
out.” That Yorkshire schools should now be known for teachers of the
quality of Richard Spencer and not of Wackford Squeers is impressive, to
say the least!
I was blessed with teachers who were of the quality of Richard
Spencer, who saw their role as instilling a genuine love of learning and
then letting their pupils do the rest. I was at Westminster School,
which has always concentrated on the humanities, in the shadow of our
old Parliament, now diminished and trashed by EU membership. There, it
has produced 7 or 8 Prime Ministers, men of courage and conviction, and
politicians of all parties from Nigel Lawson, Mrs. Thatcher’s great
reforming Chancellor and now a fervent opponent of the EU, to the late
Tony Benn, the kindest and most courteous of Parliamentarians, always a
fervent opponent of the EU, and the one and only Nick Clegg, who has
done such heroic work consigning the LibDems to permanent oblivion!
Then I studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Christ Church,
Oxford, where I founded the Edmund Burke Debating Society in memory of
Malton’s greatest MP, Edmund Burke, whose whole life was based on the
now-forgotten concept of government by consent of the electors. The
same spirit of trust and encouragement continued there too and this is
the spirit that we are now seeking in all of Thirsk and Malton’s
schools.
This underlying trust in our teachers and their pupils underscores
UKIP’s education policy. To ensure that a truly academic education is
available to all, irrespective of means, existing schools will be
allowed to apply to become grammar schools and select according to
ability and aptitude. Selection ages will be flexible and determined
by the school in consultation with the local authority. UKIP supports
the principle of Free Schools that are open to the whole community and
uphold British values. UKIP will also introduce an option for students
to take an Apprenticeship Qualification instead of four non-core GCSE’s
which can be continued at A-Level. Students can take up
apprenticeships in jobs with certified professionals qualified to grade
the progress of the student. To give comfort to parents, schools will
be investigated by OFSTED on the presentation of a petition to the
Department of Education signed by 25% of parents or governors. And
UKIP will scrap the target of 50% of school leavers going to university.
Subject to academic performance, UKIP will remove tuition fees for
students taking approved degrees in science, medicine, technology,
engineering and maths on condition that they live, work and pay tax in
the UK for 5 years after the completion of their degrees. And students
from the EU will pay the same student fee rates as international
students. These are all sensible ideas, predicated on confidence in
the teaching profession and its heartfelt wish to inspire creativity in
pupils wherever it can be found.
Finally, I have received a good deal of correspondence from teachers
concerned about the increasing workload under which they find
themselves, in large measure due to recent reforms and the impact of
immigration on class sizes. Their union is calling for a reform of
accountability so that it is based on a greater degree of trust. For
my part, I have always been a profound believer in bottom-up, rather
than top-down, solutions. Every school is different and I am happy to
endorse the need to establish that trust so that model teachers, like
Dr. Spencer in a difficult area such as Middlesbrough, can be relied on
to exercise their own judgment in the interests of their pupils.
Teaching needs fewer Wackford Squeers, or his modern equivalents, and
many more Richard Spencers!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
Toby on Tuesday
'And the award goes to….'
My chief reason for wishing to leave the EU has always been a
belief that we Brits remain the most original and creative people on the
planet and the EU is determined to stifle all that genius. This
theory was proved right yet again last week at the Hollywood Oscars,
when Eddie Redmayne won the Best Actor Award for his portrayal of
Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything”, the Best Adapted
Screenplay Award went to “The Imitation Game” with Benedict
Cumberbatch’s performance as Alan Turing, and the Best Live Short Action
Film Award went to Matt Kirkby’s and James Lucas’ “The Phone Call”,
starring Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent.
But in this galaxy of talent, we mustn’t forget that our corner of
North Yorkshire has given us another of the screen stars of our time,
the excellent James Norton. James is from Marton, outside Pickering,
where he spent what he has called “an idyllic childhood.” Recent
screen appearances include roles in “Rush”, “Belle”, Happy Valley”,
“Death Comes to Pemberley”, “Grantchester” and “Mr. Turner”. And later
this year, he will star as the unfortunate Sir Clifford Chatterley in a
new BBC film of D.H. Lawrence’s not all that romantic “Lady
Chatterley’s Lover.” Holliday Grainger plays Lady C and Richard Madden
plays the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors, with whom she has a right old
carry on!
I thought of these things last week when the really marvellous
National Gamekeepers Organisation, which has over 16,000 members across
the country, held a major meeting of gamekeepers from the North York
Moors in our house. I can vouch for there not being a single Oliver
Mellors among them! And I thought of what our gamekeepers really do.
They are out in all weathers, creating the conditions for the harvest
of the best, locally-sourced, completely healthy organic food at a time
of increasing food shortages, they protect our iconic little birds, our
beloved songbirds, from many of those species that predate on them, they
patrol and protect our countryside at a time of burgeoning rural crime
and they are responsible for bringing literally millions of pounds every
year into the countryside, not least in the hills where employment
prospects are so sparse. With the number of available farm tenancies
now almost non-existent, gamekeepering is a fine alternative career for
those from farming backgrounds who want to work in the countryside.
And I was reminded of a press release about our cherished moorland
wading birds put out just before Christmas by the North York Moors
National Park. What it said was, “The number of golden plovers
recorded on the moorland of the North York Moors could be at its highest
level for 18 years. The picture looks promising for other wading
birds too with no further decline in breeding lapwing and populations of
curlew holding steady, bucking a national declining trend. The
National Park Authority praised the good work carried out by landowners
and gamekeepers to maintain the conditions that benefit these nationally
and internationally important birds.” So there was definitely not a
single Mellors within this fine group. Rather, this was a meeting of
true country people, conservationists who were passionate about their
work and the places in which they lived. It is worth remembering all
this when Lady C hits our screens later in the year however good the
performances, not least James Norton’s.
Now I have always thought that D,H. Lawrence’s novel would have been a
better book if there had been a bit less of Lady C’s canoodling with
Mellors and a bit more about what our wonderful gamekeepers do to bring
nutritious organic food to the pot, to protect our beloved songbirds, to
police our countryside and to bring prosperity to rural areas. Just
as a fortnight ago, I saluted our farmers, so today I salute those other
champions of the countryside, our gamekeepers!
Until next Tuesday!
Toby
