Sorry to start 2026 on a pessimistic note. No doubt the Government was not doing a bit of bad news management when it released the multi-year funding settlement to Local Authorities on 19 December, just before the Christmas and New Year break. It set out the level of resources available to Local Councils over the period 2026-27 to 2028-29. We face a cash reduction on the current level of resources that enables the Council to deliver services. This is at a time when inflation has for a number of years has seen significant increases (which are baked into our costs) and inflation is currently running at just over 3%. So we are experiencing a cash reduction up to 5% over the next 3 years at a time when inflation is at 3% annually. The settlement (core spending power) has already taken into account the assumption that the Council will take advantage of the Government’s announcement that Councils can increase Council Tax up to the maximum threshold available. I fear councils will be blamed, as usual, for failing to do what central government has ensured that we cannot afford.
Daffodils at Bickle 1.1.26
Last Monday already seems a long way away. That morning the Guardian ran a front page story about Nigel Farage’s violently racist language when he was a pupil at Dulwich College. The accusations of many fellow-pupils were backed up in detail by a teacher. Farage’s racism was first reported by Michael Crick: “One Jewish pupil recalls a climate in which it wasn’t unusual to hear anti-Semitic or racist comments in school. ‘I got it,’ he says. ‘Kids from India or Pakistan got it.’ He specifically remembers how Farage would sidle up to him and say, ‘Hitler was right’, or ‘Gas ’em.’” On an inside page the Guardian ran a story about the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, now at last reunited with his family in Brighton, and the furore over shocking social media posts of his (‘kill the Zionists, kill the police’) from over ten years ago. Alaa Abd el-Fattah apologised for his violent, now deleted, words. Nigel Farage has not apologised for his. While Farage is a real and present danger to our democracy, el-Fattah is not. So which story did the BBC run with for the next three days? - el-Fattah, of course. And who was Chris Philp, shameless Tory shadow Home Secretary, referring to when he said ‘Deport this scumbag’? Not Farage, of course.
Primroses at Bickle 1.1.26
We seem to be sleepwalking towards a Farage-led Reform government. On Wednesday Australia took a step we should emulate as soon as possible: it passed a Bill that will limit the total spending on a party by billionaires like Elon Musk to just $50,000. That same day Israel stated its intention to revoke the license of 37 humanitarian organizations to operate in Gaza, including Doctors Without Borders, ActionAid and Oxfam, over what it said were violations of security and transparency standards. While the BBC invited the UN’s Tom Fletcher on to explain the devastating consequences of this, no government minister was asked to explain what action would be taken in response. This continued the deeply depressing pattern of the BBC’s failure to challenge government ministers on Israeli war crimes. This is what the Israeli paper Haaretz had to say: ‘Israel’s decision to prevent 37 international aid organizations from continuing their work in the Gaza Strip is the latest step in a policy that has been both cruel and amateurish in its treatment of Gaza’s civilian population. Like other dark regimes around the world, the Israeli government has spun a web of lies and conspiracies around international organizations in an effort to blur responsibility for its own grave failure’.
I’d like to end with something more uplifting in every sense. The picture above shows a murmuration of hundreds of Linnets we saw and heard when taking a walk near Codden Hill on that fabulously sunny and clear New Year’s Eve. It seemed to be an act of collective exuberance akin to what we humans have also been doing at midwinter. And a suggestion for New Year reading. I can’t recommend highly enough the new anthology of poetry by young Palestinians, mentored by by the wonderful Alice Oswald and others, titled From Dust We Rise - info here: https://www.handsupproject.org/shop/from-dust-we-rise
Thank you for reading and a Happy New Year.