bullying

Hidden under the debate about whether bullying has gone on at Number Ten; whether throwing your weight around a bit when you have a difficult job at a difficult time is allowable; whether the focus on alleged individual conduct, rather than policy impact distorts politics, or whether all this is just the Tories having a go: hidden behind all this is the miserable reality of workplace bullying. It's miserable in a number of ways. Firstly, if you have a full-time job, you spend more time at risk of being bullied by whoever it is than you might do with your own family. The second thing is that despite Trade Unions, health and safety at work, quality standards and all these bulwarks against bullying, it is likely that most bullying is reported to no-one. In the same way as much domestic violence goes unreported. Except that gradually solutions are being developed here that take into account what it's like to face this.

So what we need are solutions that take into account how it can totally wring out your normal abilities to confront, speak out and seek redress that you might normally be capable in other situations. If we want to stamp this out, we should assume it's perhaps going on at Westminster; in your local betting shop; in your great auntie's old people's home; in the surgical unit that fixed your dad's knee or in some of your local Council offices. Anywhere, in fact. But we need more research, to identify patterns and triggers, to spell out solutions and define how bystanders can help. There are economic consequences of doing nothing, bearing in mind the damage this problem does to productivity, the sickness it may cause, such as headaches, insomnia and anxiety and how it stalls the career development of worker capable of moving up. So, we need some a consensus that this is important. It is, after all, about fairness. And we need serious action to put a stop to it ... whatever we feel about this week's media furore.

Misfortune and blew it

I feel real dismay at the actions by Hewitt and Hoon today. The appropriate thing for people leaving their job is to all they can for a seamless handover to their successors. If Labour were to narrowly lose in June, it could clearly be their fault.

No Labour leader is without weakness, but the focus now should be on campaigning and getting our message to voters, not on questioning whether the person at the helm is the right one.

Their arrogance is clear. But what this shows - about two former ministers whose achievements seem negligible to me (eg bringing in private provision into health services: NOT a good thing) - is a misunderstanding about what a democratic political party should be. Party comrades like me who have given freely of our time year after year for nothing to get a better deal for ordinary people are treated with utter contempt. We need to change the Labour Party to create more of a bottom-up accountability so members' views, observations and experience are treated more seriously. More like a mutual than a multi-national, in fact. And less of this top-down approach, in which party members have as much say in what policies ministers pursue as Town Hall cleaners have in the policies adopted by the Council. If Patricia Hewitt had got her priorities right, she might have thought more about the contribution made by hospital cleaners to fighting infection and brought them back in-house.

I am left thinking that Hoon and Hewitt must be Cockney rhyming slang for someone who messes up for a large number in a group - like misfortune and blew-it.

Shopping for schools

What an eye-opener it is that parents from our region are paying more than £5,000 extra for houses that will put them in the catchment areas of the best primary schools in order to ensure a place for their child. The economic pundits will find it reassuring that that some families are so mobile, against the backdrop of the difficult economic circumstances that make holding on to a home a challenge for others.

Of course, only some households can pull this off. The 34% of tenants across our region are certainly less likely to do this, despite having the same rights as anyone else to good primary education, being often unable to specify precisely where they will accept rented accommodation. Others would not dream of moving to an unknown area, having roots in their own neighbourhood, whether it is their church, an elderly parent or a sports club perhaps.

Such mobility has consequences for other schools. Those at the bottom of league tables will find their rolls falling and this would eventually lead to the school closing which will affect the wider community (the many), causing more disadvantage as a result than the benefits to the upwardly mobile (the few).

There are pitfalls in reading too much into a single year’s league tables, which do not spell out the whole story for each school. A parent may not know in advance what kind of school will suit their child best. School results often reflect the intake of a particular year or an outstanding teacher – and teachers eventually move on. However, a child spends seven or eight years in a primary school and there are likely to be stronger and weaker periods within the total time a child spends there.

With schools’ offering more than just teaching, they can transform whole communities. But by the Kennedy principle, it can be just as much “what you can do for your child’s school” as what it can do for children. Children’s development is coloured both by their experience within the school gates, their home life, wider family and community relationships. If there is chaos at home, even the best school in the world is not going to iron that out.

Ultimately, there are two contradictory forces at play within the education system: firstly aspiration and the push for higher standards from parents who compete with one another for places at good schools. The contrasting model would be to set high standards to be reached by all primary schools in every neighbourhood then allocate resources according to what is needed to produce those results. For example, struggling schools would attract salary supplements to teachers and class sizes reduced. A memorable TV advert from some years ago for tinned salmon said “It’s the ones John West reject, that makes John West the best”. If applied to education, it seems to reflect well a nonsensical situation, where high-demand and low-demand schools emerge. But, at the end of the day, it’s the children that matter, and getting left behind at primary school has far-reaching consequences for those children, their families, the communities where they live and the economy as a whole, which will also affect, therefore, the upwardly mobile shopping elsewhere for schools.

Older people and the NHS

It is reassuring that the government is to address age discrimination in the health service. It is hardly surprising that this has developed, given the rate of change in the NHS over recent years. The sharp increase in the pensioner population, the over 85s in particular - ie the patient – represents a radical change and the service has not adjusted to keep pace with this. Not only this, but it is hard for doctors to make appropriate assumptions and predictions about their older patients. After all, neither have they been old themselves, nor are they familiar with a world where the number of older people is growing so rapidly. None of us are. Doctors have a degree of authority as professionals and do not always deal in the right way with older people who are often less assertive because they grew up in more hierarchical, less egalitarian times.

But just because it is older people that have been disadvantaged, that does not make this any less serious a sort of discrimination. A survey of doctors earlier this year found that over half were worried about how the NHS would serve them in their old age. Over two-thirds said that think older people are less likely to have their symptoms fully investigated. 72% said older people were less likely to be considered and referred on for essential treatments. Researchers have also found, for example, that elderly stroke patients received less adequate care than younger counterparts and a watchdog has warned the over-65s lose out on mental health services.

Mental health services are even more essential to older people. Mobility and transport difficulties may make keeping in touch with friends and family harder, so isolation can be a factor. Then there is the problem of outliving loved ones. Having less money to spend can impact on diet and anxiety about the future can also play a part in the development of poor mental health. Finally, retirement can be a very long period as more people reach their eighties and nineties than ever before. What is clear is that many older people have more health problems in old age than younger, generally fitter people. My mother, for example, sees one doctor about her heart and her blood; one about her memory and one about her mobility. It's a sad fact that she - like many older people - ends up exhausting herself going to see a doctor several times a week much of the time, with all the stress of the return journeys too. What we really need is a service shaped to meet the needs of older people, rather than one designed to suit the doctors. The systems should enable the doctor – the specialist - to go to the older patient, and not the other way round. That ought to be possible, given the IT support that is available, and be the right way for the NHS – (From cradle to grave) to develop. The proper tests and treatment should be offered patients, no matter how old they are.

It's only October

The leaves are falling fast off the horse chestnut trees opposite my house. The chances are that the branches will be thickly green again by the time we reach the General Election. That interval is a significant opportunity for Labour to get its message out properly. Hardly getting any recognition in the media today is that the net effect of the conference season is that Labour's polling rate is up and the Tories' down. So the threats to destroy public services are not having quite the desired effect.

The Daily Telegraph which I read in order to know how the enemy, how the establishment really thinks, is truly insufferable right now. Today's front-page photo - a contrived [one year old] picture of Jacqui Smith at a youth centre - with theft scrawled above her head. At least I think it's theft, and not The FT. The expense stuff is not party political anyway. It only seems to be more of a Labour thing because we have over 50% of parliamentary seats. We therefore should be striving for most of the positive messages in the media. Messages about taking the right steps as we edge out of recession and understanding the value of properly-funded public services. Today's accounts of increases in recorded cases of child neglect reaffirm that this is no time for slash and burn.

Cameron: I'd rather have a macaroon

The Cameron conference pitch to voters reflects opportunism. The recession could hardly have come at a more convenient time for the Tories, tossing unfamiliar scenarios and alarming statistics into the public arena. Anxiety is widespread and people look for reassurance.

The Tory argument is as follows: Firstly, they make the case that Big Government has caused a broken society and Britain’s economic problems. But Labour achieved a landslide in ‘97, because Thatcher’s policies had created some rather Big Problems. The decimation of heavy industry: coal, steel, print, engineering and manufacture devastated parts of our region, abruptly ending employment that had brought security and identity for as long as people could remember. Initiatives, such as New Deal, were an important part of rebuilding a battered Labour Market. Sure Start – a different face of Big Government (and one which meets the Tories’ approval) - was developed to address the long-term health and pre-school learning issues for children in poorer neighbourhoods, as well as helping parents take responsibility for their families more effectively.

A different face of Big Government is about driving up health and safety standards. The Herald of Free Enterprise disaster was an infamous example of why government should intervene, but deaths on building sites today sadly remain common.

A second part of Cameron’s message was to argue that public services intrude into family life, as well as cost too much. From a Gateshead perspective, this does not ring true. Tory councils have always stressed the importance of cutting Council Tax, rather than promote support for hard-pressed communities. So rolling back Big Government to target popular services like leisure and sports, breakfast clubs, meals on wheels, adult learning and extended schools for cuts and pay freezes expresses their indifference to the impact of such cuts on families and communities and on jobs, especially where jobs are thin on the ground. To this I must add other proposals from Cameron’s team, such as cutting Child Tax Credits and sickness benefit.

The high level of debt faced by the UK Treasury reflects the size of our financial sector but our national debt does not present future challenges very different from other EU states. The effectiveness of decisions made in response to the collapse of banking is already evident from the modest improvements in house prices and performance in the business and finance sectors. The Tories’ zeal for cuts in the public sector shows how removed from the European mainstream they are today. It further shows a keenness to punish poor and middle-income households in the short-term, presumably in order to hasten tax cuts later on. Without a mechanism to ensure our regional needs are met, the impact of Tory cuts in the North could be worse than elsewhere.

Finally, the need for reassurance is widespread. But it is important to look objectively at the detail, at the small print. Cameron said that it was character, temperament and judgement, not policies and manifesto that really make the difference. If the General Election campaign is really a protracted job interview for the post of Prime Minister, we must be sure that the candidates know the answers to our questions. It’s not enough to make a confident, ambitious impression and perform well on TV. Voters will make decisions on the day as to which party understands our problems because they have the right experience and which will be more on our side.

Farewell Sir Bobby

Maybe it's because I'm a Robson, that I feel so keenly the passing of Sir Bobby Robson. Football seems to bring out the unsportsmanlike in so many of its celebrities. As a manager - from Tractor Boys back to the Toon via the world - he was a unifier, an enthusiast for the game and inspired true respect: not just Respect.

Raising money for charity to support the health service raises some interesting questions. Years ago when I ran the Great North Run, I came face-to-face with the myriad of causes: Great Ormond Street Hospital, children's hospices, research charities for specific conditions. It's then that it hits you: the NHS does not and cannot fund these. It's left to people like Sir Bobby to raise the funds: otherwise the money isn't there. Through this tireless work, we learn how the some of these gaps are plugged. Sometimes it's more urgent that the funding is raised. Sometimes, there is a greater need to reach a true assessment of the NHS. It is rightly held up as a powerful force for Labour and for Britain. But we cannot countenance its imperfections: the distance between primary and secondary health; the wasted funding of organisational change and, for example, that dentistry is unaffordable for many. But while recognising these issues, the placing of patients and carers at the heart of the service represents a historic breakthrough and the adjustments which will follow to make the NHS more attuned to the needs of older patients who use it most extensively will bring further improvements. It's a shame that Sir Bobby will not see this come to fruition.