Britannia Radio

Jul 30, 2013

Britain’s most sacred cow totters once again

Posted by Melanie Phillips

Once again, we are left rubbing our eyes in disbelief at the utter shambles that passes for the administration of a public service.

The NHS 111 service, which answers non-emergency calls from the public, has been left close to collapse after its main provider pulled out.

NHS Direct, which originally won 11 of the 46 contracts to provide the service around the country, has abandoned them saying the deals were ‘financially unsustainable’. 

The 111 service has been a disaster from the very start. It is staffed by people who, sometimes after as little as two weeks of training, use a computer system to assess how unwell callers are and decide whether to issue advice over the phone, call a nurse or send for an ambulance.

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Jul 29, 2013

Immigration farce puts fresh fuel behind UKIP rocket

Posted by Melanie Phillips

Want to know how many people are currently living in Britain? Well, just put your finger up to the wind and pick a number. Any number.

Because that's pretty well as near as dammit the way the Government has been estimating the number of immigrants coming to the UK.

A report by the Public Administration Select Committee has said that migration figures used by ministers could not be trusted, and described the key measurement of migration as 'little better than a best guess'.

Migration estimates, it said, were based on random interviews of around 800,000 people passing through ports and airports, of whom only about 5,000 were actually immigrants.

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Jul 25, 2013

It’s time for generational jihadists to thank the elderly

Posted by Melanie Phillips

You can blame it on David Willetts. A while back, he published a book called The Pinch arguing that the older generation had swindled the young out of their rightful economic inheritance and should give it back. Baby boomers (those born soon after the war) had enjoyed free university tuition, affordable housing and a thriving economy. 

Yet the legacy they have left to the young was a crash, eye-watering tuition fees and a gargantuan national debt. The book drew a new dividing line between the young and the old. It was a manifesto for generational jihad.

It was, of course, a fascinating and original thesis which has attracted many followers. But it was also deeply misleading and perverse, and grossly unfair to boomers. Indeed, one might even coin the term ‘boomophobe’ (or possibly even ‘self-hating boomer’, since he is of a certain age himself, as indeed am I) to describe Mr Willetts and his acolytes. And we can already see the social divisions which this thesis has provoked