Category Archives: berkhamsted

Reported to HMRC:The £100,000 a year Treasury minister too poor to pay an intern

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David Gauke MP, the Treasury minister who wants his intern to work for free for at least six months

Today the website graduatefog reports that David Gauke has been reported to HM Revenue and Customs for being in breach of the minimum wage legislation for offering an unpaid ” training post” in his constituency. As readers of this blog know this is not the first time he has had advertised for a six month unpaid vacancy. So perhaps HMRC should take other recent appointments into consideration.+
Since this blog appeared Mr Gauke has attacked as ” morally repugnant” people who pay cash to builders, cleaners etc. if they beleive it is part of tax avoidance. But presumably this does not arise for his interns – as they work for free anyway.

After a Budget that gave  tax cuts for the rich and pay freezes and job losses for the poor, step forward, David Gauke, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, forced to answer questions on the pasty tax U turn today. He is the man who will oversee the tax cuts in the new finance bill and has overall responsibility for HM Revenue.and Customs. He is also in charge of policing the minimum wage when unscrupulous employers avoid paying staff ( you couldn’t make this up)

His big contribution to help Britain  moving is to offer one new personal job at his constituency office in Rickmansworth, Herts. There is only one problem. You need to either have rich parents ( who will give you an allowance) or a lot of inherited wealth.  There is no pay and you must be Tory inclined( and obviously believe working for free is a good Tory policy)

The advert is here. http://bit.ly/AlHBho

As a minimum condition you must work for him for  nothing for six months  if not a year or more and you better have at your own expense, learnt advance computer skills ( doesn’t sound that Mr Gauke is computer savvy).
As it says: “Duties will include administration, basic correspondence, diary management, fundraising, campaigning and related tasks. The intern will also have the opportunity to work one day a week in the Westminster office.”

Now I understand as his constituent that Mr Gauke is very hard up. He only has an income of just over £100,000 a year – with his £98,750 salary and he claims from the taxpayer a London living allowance of £3379.15 a year ( desperate problem for MPs having to pay for higher London prices except for the taxpayer paid subsidised food in Parliament)

Funnily enough his expenses paid by the taypayer for the last financial year come to almost the same £98,680.93 as his salary including some £78,000 on staff ( presumably in Westminster rather than Rickmansworth), another £9000+ on accommodation and £10,000+ on administration. So the poor man only has £200,000 going through his accounts.

Then there are his two homes to maintain by Tory standards well below any mansion tax level. But  poor man,since this terrible crackdown on  Mps expenses he has had to lose  such a lot.  He did grab £15,000 a year  in mortgage interest payments ,a  quarterly £687 maintenance charge and car parking fees- all paid  from the  taxpayer on his Westminster Bridge Road apartment in London which he paid  £285,000 in 2007.  Mind you he has had a £30,000 rise in his income since the coalition came to power.

Incidently none of this latest expenses information is on his personal website – which  on this issue doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2009. No doubt this will be done free of charge by his new employee.

What one might have expected from a government with one million young people on the dole – is that Mr Gauke might have just gone down to the Watford or Hemel Hempstead dole office- and given a leg up to some Tory inclined youngster on the dole. Or he might  like many other Mps in his party just decide to pay a minimum wage to one of the newly unemployed graduates. But obviously paying £6 an hour would send him and his wife to the bankruptcy courts. For Mr Gauke, it is not Greed is Good  but Exploitation is Excellent.

Perhaps as a resident of Berkhamsted in his constituency we should launch an appeal for the cash stricken Treasury minister or send food parcels to his new recruit so he can at least survive on an egg sandwich.

Internaware  who campaign at @internaware against exploiting interns are not impressed. Gus Baker said: “Revenue and Customs have set up a hit squad to enforce the minimum wage for interns and yet the minister in charge is refusing to pay the people in his own office.

“David Gauke… is also putting an opportunity out of the reach of the vast majority of young people who can’t afford to work for free.

“At a time of high youth unemployment when young people desperately need to demonstrate experience on their CVs, this is completely irresponsible.”

Mr Gauke is very comfortable with this. He told BBC News which followed this up : “It’s advertising for a post for volunteers. Lots of people want to do it. It’s good experience.

“It involves visiting my local Conservative Association, getting some experience of Westminster.

“I think that’s perfectly reasonable and those that have had the experience of working there have enjoyed it and found it very good experience.”

Anyway for those who want to tell him what they think his e-mail at Parliament is gauked@parliament.uk  and the constituency office address for food parcels is Scotsbridge House
Scots Hill, Croxley Green,Rickmansworth Hertfordshire WD3 3BB.

Berkhamsted goes live – community TV launched

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View of Berkhamsted's Grand Union Canal- Dee TV's HQ is alongside it. Pic courtesy http://www.localauthoritypublishing.co.uk

Today (Sun) sees the launch of Dee TV – a community web TV station- covering Dacorum – that for those who don’t know their Roman history- is Berkhamsted, Tring and Hemel Hempstead plus a host of Chiltern villages in Hertfordshire.

 It has been set up as a private initiative by mum and daughter, Lindy  and Mischke Weinreb, two of the more colourful people in the town, with local web and graphic designer, Alistair McDowall. Expect it to be an interactive TV station reporting on local events. Its initial site has lots of short films on it-  a couple from local schools, interviews with local artists and musicians and a report of a local rock concert on The Moor at Hemel. It also provides a lot of coverage for local charities.

 I have no personal interest in the site  – but am really pleased to see  more community activity and journalism in the area. So far it  is feel good rather than controversial but there’s room for everything. You can see for yourself at http://www.deetv.tv.

Does the train take the strain? East Coast good, London Midland bad

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A helpful East Coast express: pic courtesyLocoPix

An unhelpful London Midland train

Travelling around with a recovering fractured shoulder  is not much fun. Particularly if you have to load your heavy luggage on a train. But fortunately there is a free public service offered by the rail companies to get assisted help if  you are disabled. Or is there?

I had two opposite experiences going on holiday from Berkhamsted to Edinburgh. One showed the worst aspect of rail franchise companies, the other the best.

I contacted both London Midland and East Coast Trains by e-mail in advance for help. East Coast trains replied by return, saying my e-mail did not make it clear how much help I needed and giving me a number to ring them for more help. London Midland did not respond and never did.

When I rang East Coast they could not have been more helpful. They took details of the trains, the seat reservation, and because I wasn’t sure how we would arrive at Kings Cross where to go to get assistance on the station.

I then rang London Midland on a freephone number on their website. No reply, not even an answering service and finally a member of staff disconnected the call.

So no help for the journey from London Midland. East Coast – despite the train being overcrowded because of two other cancellations at Kings Cross – kept their bargain. With the luggage space full, the porter obligingly moved the cases to the guards van. At Edinburgh Waverley there was a porter to meet us as we got off the train ( they wanted the seat reservations so he could meet us at our carriage). On the way back to Kings Cross exactly the same experience – the porter even found one case after another passenger had moved it.

Is there a political point in this?  East Coast is state owned, and seems to train its staff to beleive in public service. London Midland is not. It is a state subsidised profit making private operation – whom I have already  crossed swords with issuing ” ghost tickets” at different prices from Berkhamsted. (see earlier blog on this site).

My suspicion is that London Midland’s  disabled help service is a fake, just a cyberspace invention on their website invented by their pr department, to make it look as though they care. Or perhaps their training programme for staff centres on how to lose e-mails and put down phones on customers, thus saving them any inconvenience or cutting into their large proft margins.

Either way East Coast deserve congratulations, the managers of London Midland  need their shoulders breaking.

London Midland’s  response is  attached as a comment to this piece ( see above).

Misdiagnosis,bad prognosis then last minute brilliance: my treatment by the NHS

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preparing to go under the knife(not my operation)

Being treated by the NHS is like riding a rollercoaster or watching England play in the World Cup ( even as a non football fanatic).

One minute you cannot believe professionals can make such errors, the next you can’t quite believe how they brilliantly they got their act together.

I had the misfortune to trip over a rock on a remote headland path on the Isles of Scilly – falling flat on my face with my arm outstretched skidding across another rock. I was unable to get up unaided.

 I should have known not to do this except on Tuesdays between 2.0 pm and 4.0pm – the only time there are X ray facilities on these  islands some 30 miles from the Cornish mainland. I was later to find that while Scilly has  brilliant first aiders and paramedics who use a jet ambulance boat, its cottage hospital at St. Mary’s is a one man and a dog operation.

And unfortunately for me this was a Thursday afternoon- so no x ray without calling in an air ambulance to Penzance. I was diagnosed as to have nothing wrong with me except  sprained and badly bruised muscles and sent home with Paracetamol and Ibuprofen.

For the rest of our holiday we spent quietly on Tresco. Only after visiting my GP in Berkhamsted nearly a week later and being sent off to casaulty at Watford General Hospital, did I find I had fractured my shoulder in three places. But never mind, the prognosis was that the bones would heal by themselves. I would be sent to the fracture clinic at Watford to arrange physio.

A week later and seen by orthopaedic doctors at the clinic, it suddenly emerged that I needed an operation to restore my shoulder and upper arm to full mobility. And worse still there was only a week left to do  it, because my bones were well on the way to trying to heal themselves  in the wrong position.

Here despite a horrendous reputation trying to run a busy overstretched hospital on a  shoestring (West Herts having closed down our nearest  a&e hospital Hemel Hempstead), fingers were (metaphorically) pulled out.

Within two hours, I had a CT scan, bloods and swabs taken in case I was carrying MRSA without knowing it. Within 24 hours the hospital found me an orthopaedic surgeon, South African Andrew Irwin, who specialises in smashed shoulders and upper arms.

They had a problem- no bed. A hospital administrator -Jane Ward- came to the rescue ( remember those people politicians despise because they don’t  do front line care) and three hours before I was due to come in-had found one.

My 44 hr stay on Flaunden  general surgery ward was a minor miracle -with almost every NHS cliche in the book. The surgeon turned out to be the typical no bedside manner type – in the one minute consultation- it was simply  “you have a smashed shoulder. We’ll fix it.” The nursing care-despite staff shortages- was superb with one staffer, Trish, doing a double night shift and staying on an extra hour to  complete unfinished tasks. And while the operation took six hours -described as ” a tricky one” by a junior surgeon the next day, I actually did feel safe before and afterwards.

Slight shock at being turfed out with one hour’s notice the next day- but I suspect that with one or two patients with undiagnosed infections surrounding me, it was for my own good. Yet they managed to get me to see a phsyiotherapist, get a final X ray ( when I discovered I have a metal plate and a long pin in my shoulder), get some drugs and talk to a pain nurse and after a strong representations from my anxious wife, arrange for patient transport home.

The experience suggests -despite Labour’s spending boom –  an NHS much on the edge trying to provide best patient outcomes. My shoulder is starting to recover. All I can say is that if David Cameron or Nick Clegg – start thinking of squeezing the NHS in any way- I shall use it to thump them when I meet in the House of Commons as part of my job.

Ghost Ticket from Berkhamsted

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A Ghost ticket

A real London Midland train: Picture courtesy Daily Mail

You will all know about ghost trains – those services that run but do not appear to exist on the timetable.

London Midland  have gone one step further – they may be the first railway in Britain to sell ghost tickets.

For the last five months the company has offered us oldies an extraordinary deal if we want to travel in peak times and have the freedom to travel round London.

If you purchase a ticket from the company’s two ticket machines at Berkhamsted station  for a London travel card – you have been able to get a £7.20 reduction on a £22 peak time rail journey.

 But don’t ask for such a ticket at the booking office – because until January they will tell you that no such fare exists and they can’t sell you such a  ticket. As a result by word of mouth hundreds of oldies have been getting a secret third off rail fares to London before 9.30 am.  Up to January tickets were legal, issued by the company and they work all the  entry gates to the tube in London. No one  published the deal in case the foolish London Midland changed its mind and withdrew the ticket.

 London Midland obviously decided they did not want to spend the money altering the ticket machines so  ghost tickets continue to be spewed out of the machine .

Now with the new fare rises the reason has become clear. London Midland had programmed Berkhamsted to accept the a new Anytime £14.80 peak travel card five months before it existed.  It was to be linked with higher fares for those using evening peak trains. No wonder they weren’t going to remove them from the machines.

The extraordinary thing  is this  the now £7.60 reduction is still  available after the fare rise and before 9.30 am from the ticket machines – though the booking office insist it  is now an illegal ticket if you travel before 9.30 am. 

 I don’t know what trading standards would make of it. According to Passenger Focus, the independent consumer group, rail companies are not allowed to issue differently priced tickets to the same place from booking offices and machines at the same station.

The company is recouping any savings for early travellers by charging 30 per cent more if a passenger  goes in after 9.30 but needs to return from London between 4.45pm and 6.45pm. In this case for oldies the fare rises from £11.15 to £14.80.

But if you do travel before 9.30 am on the ticket – the booking office say they will get you.

They say travellers will be stopped at the barrier at Euston – if caught using it -as it won’t work the machines there . However many of the rush hour trains do not use platform 8 to 11 and there not a barrier in sight on other platforms to stop you.

 This is going to make an interesting test case if they do pursue people – for the name on the ticket is Anytime – which if there is any restrictions on travel is a breach of the Trades Description  Act.

Berkhamsted

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The aim of this  section will be to highlight issues affecting my home town Berkhamsted. It will be a mixture of citizen journalism and a resource for people looking for local campaigning organisations.

The decline of an active local press means that a lot of  events go unscrutinised. This gives more power to those in authority to take  decisions affecting people’s lives without being challenged.

This is not healthy for a local community or democracy so expect issues to be raised here that might not get coverage elsewhere or are now ignored by official media.

Eventually if I  can  grapple with all the possibities of  new technology I would like this pcategoty to become  more of an inter active forum for local debate.

In the meantime watch this space.