Royal Mail, NHS, Rail, Junior Doctors & Other Strike Issues

Stunning. A classic example.

A riddle only to those of limited reasoning capacity and mental acuity.

Junior doctors vote to continue strike action..By Nick Triggle, Health correspondent.

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Junior doctors in England have voted in favour of continuing strike action in their pay dispute.

Some 98% of members of the British Medical Association who voted backed further walkouts on a turnout of 62%.

There have been 10 walkouts so far by junior doctors since the first one in March last year.

The British Medical Association (BMA) has asked for a 35% pay rise, but ministers have described the pay claim as unreasonable.

Two-thirds of junior doctors are members of the BMA.

The vote result means the union has a strike mandate for another six months.

Junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said:   "It has now been a year since we began strike action.

"That is a year of too many strikes. The government believed it could ignore, delay, and offer excuses long enough that we would simply give up.

"We ask the health secretary to come forward as soon as possible with a new offer - and make sure not a single further strike day need be called," they said.

Junior doctors received a pay rise averaging nearly 9% this financial year - and during talks at the end of last year, the option of an extra 3% on top of that was discussed.

But those talks ended in early December without a deal being reached.

The BMA is after a 35% pay increase to make up for what it says is 15 years of below-inflation pay rises.

There have been no formal talks since those negotiations ended and the BMA is boycotting the pay review process for next year, refusing to provide evidence to the independent pay review body that makes recommendations on pay rises.

Junior doctors in Wales and Northern Ireland are also involved in strike action.

But consultants in England are voting on whether to accept a revised pay offer from ministers after putting their strike action on pause.

More than 1.4 million operations and appointments in total have been cancelled because of strike action by health workers including doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals since December 2022.

The disputes involving the majority of the other health workers have been resolved.


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Now Les, as you have told us in your own words you are a gentleman in his 70's, high blood pressure is not a good thing especially at this age...

Les, you have also told us in your own words that one likes a tipple, maybe two, Les maybe it's a good idea to trim this a little, for the nerves...

Les, upsetting one's self can be reduced significantly with a little caution as to why one is getting upset and is it really worth it..?

Les, do ponder these thoughts, they will help with one's inner being and will bring more peace and tranquillity to one's life...

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Language Timothy !!!...Les, Appalling behaviour on your behalf, you have let yourself down with aplomb.

For a perceived doyen like yourself Les, a good long look at oneself is in order here, i for one pity you...

A favourite film of mine is on shortly, a pack of chocolate covered biscuits and a mug of milk will go down very well...

Have a good evening Les and do keep calm and carry on...

Actually
I may have made a mistake
Was it in fact the repeat of the Dick Emery shows?

You know the script
"Oh you are awful, but I do like you"

Is that you?

Oldie. Have you ever thought about writing a book? Let's call it "How to make friends and influence others". It could be a bestseller.

Mr Bates vs Post Office drama lost £1m, ITV boss says..by Ian Youngs, Entertainment & arts reporter.

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Toby Jones plays a defiant sub-postmaster running a shop in Llandudno, North Wales. Julie Hesmondhalgh as Suzanne 

ITV made a loss of about £1m on its agenda-setting drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, despite it being the UK's most-watched TV show of the year so far, the broadcaster has revealed.

The four-part drama, which aired in January, showed the human toll on hundreds of sub-postmasters who were wrongly prosecuted for false accounting and theft due to faulty software.

It sparked an outcry and led to plans for new legislation to clear their names.

The series has been watched by 13.5 million people to date.

But Kevin Lygo, ITV's managing director of media and entertainment, said: "Mr Bates has made a loss of something like £1m and we can't continually do this."

Broadcasters are facing big financial pressures, and often rely on overseas channels or streamers buying the rights to show a programme to help recoup its budget.

Last month, ITV said 12 foreign broadcasters had bought the Mr Bates drama. But Mr Lygo said it wasn't sufficiently appealing to foreign viewers to break even.

"Of course, some things are very profitable on the channel, and some things aren't," he told the Voice of the Listener & Viewer spring conference on Wednesday, according to PA Media.

"But it's a challenge to be able to fund some of the things that aren't, obviously, of international appeal.

"We're hoping this may be, because it caused such a furore here that maybe sales will pick up, but there's no evidence of it yet.

"If you're in Lithuania, four hours on the British Post Office? Not really, thank you very much. So you can see the challenges here."

Another challenge for mainstream broadcasters is "getting enough audiences to turn up on the night" to watch a show, he said.

Five or six years ago, a programme like Mr Bates would have been expected to attract a live audience around six or seven million. The first episode of Mr Bates was watched by four million on the night, which is as "good as you get" now, he said.

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This is the full apology made by Paula Vennells just before questioning began at the Post Office Inquiry:

Quote Message: "I would just like to say how sorry I am for all that sub-postmasters and their families and others have suffered as a result of all of the matters the inquiry has been looking into for so long. I followed and listened to all of the human impact statements, and I was very affected by them. I remember listening to one postmaster whose name I noted who said he would like somebody to stand outside his old post office this weekend so he could tell them exactly what he'd been through. I would do that. I am very, very sorry.
"I would just like to say how sorry I am for all that sub-postmasters and their families and others have suffered as a result of all of the matters the inquiry has been looking into for so long. I followed and listened to all of the human impact statements, and I was very affected by them. I remember listening to one postmaster whose name I noted who said he would like somebody to stand outside his old post office this weekend so he could tell them exactly what he'd been through. I would do that. I am very, very sorry.

Quote Message: I would also like to repeat the apology, which is in my witness statement, to Alan Bates, to Ron Warmington and Iain Henderson from Second Sight and to Lord Arbuthnot. I, and those I worked with, made their work so much harder, and I'm very, very sorry for that.
I would also like to repeat the apology, which is in my witness statement, to Alan Bates, to Ron Warmington and Iain Henderson from Second Sight and to Lord Arbuthnot. I, and those I worked with, made their work so much harder, and I'm very, very sorry for that.

Quote Message: And my third apology is really about today, because I will answer the questions truthfully and I am very aware they will be difficult to listen to - for you and for me - and I ask for your understanding in advance of that."
And my third apology is really about today, because I will answer the questions truthfully and I am very aware they will be difficult to listen to - for you and for me - and I ask for your understanding in advance of that."

How much did Vennells earn at the Post Office?

BBC analysis estimates Vennells earned £5.1m during her time at the helm of the Post Office, peaking at an annual sum of £718,300 in 2018.
That year, her base salary was £253,800 and she earned £390,800 in bonuses (plus pensions and other benefits).
Based on company accounts, the people running the Post Office for the 24 years that the flawed Horizon system was in place earned a collective £19.4m between them.

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Counsel to the Inquiry Jason Beer

Beer quizzes Vennells on 'team of 100' investigating postmasters
Beer presses Vennells further on her claims that she wasn’t aware of the dozens of private prosecutions while she was in charge of the Post Office.
Vennells says she personally spoke to John Scott, the Post Office’s former head of security, after the feedback from Second Sight and the mediation scheme.
“When you spoke to John Scott about this, did you say John, I’ve been in the organisation for five or six years, I didn’t know you had a team of 100 people that were investigating up and down the country sub-postmasters and sending them to prison. How come I didn’t know?” Beer asks.
Laughter can be heard in the inquiry room as Beer poses the question.
She says she spoke to him seriously about the culture at the Post Office and that the sub-postmasters were really important to us.

Summary

Ex-Post Office boss Paula Vennells has been in tears at the inquiry into the Horizon scandal

She broke down when acknowledging that what she told MPs and colleagues in one meeting about prosecutions of sub-postmasters wasn’t true

Vennells also says she wasn't aware for several years that the Post Office was conducting its own prosecutions

She apologised at the beginning of her evidence and said her answers to questions "will be difficult to listen to"

It is the first time she has publicly spoken about her role in the scandal for nearly a decade - press play above to watch the session

Vennells was chief executive of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, which included the last few years of the scandal

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted because of the faulty Horizon system