Page 94: the Private Eye Podcast.

Andy: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94.

My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the Private Eye office with Adam

McQueen, Ian Hislop and Justine Smith.

we're here to discuss a few different stories that have been in the magazine and

in the news in the last couple of weeks.

Later on, we're going to be discussing a very exciting ombudsman, which

you may not have heard of, but which has been cropping up in the pages

of the eye, an enormous amount.

Genuinely scandalous the stuff that's been going on there.

We'll also be talking about the ongoing mayhem, uh, reach, uh, owner of the

mirror and much else besides, but firstly, the big political news of the week I

think we need to discuss is your party.

Ian: which is a party of the left, which they're searching for a name and they've

come up with the Judean people's front

ERs

and they've, there's been another split and apparently the others want to call

it the people's front of Judea, but then another group saying, you know,

mentioning Judea in the Labor Party, probably not as funny as it used to be.

Andy: It's a fantastic story.

It glads the heart

Ian: and it should be on a podcast called, um, page 94.

'cause literally this is going on forever.

If you want a cliche about the left, it splits immediately, but

this time it's split before it has a name, before it's got any funds.

they've just speeded up the news cycle.

It's incredibly annoying.

Adam: actually managed to split even before they'd denounced, or was it Zara

Satana initially announced the formation of this party and said she was gonna

be co-leading it with Jeremy Corbin.

He said, hang on.

No, you're not.

We haven't decided whether we're doing this or not.

I mean, it's literally almost from before they'd even set up, isn't it?

Andy: the planning for it, or the consideration started pretty soon after

Corbin was suspended from the Labor Party and it became clear he wasn't

gonna get back in and he, I think he and various colleagues wanted to.

Kind of found a new movement.

They wanted it to be very grassrootsy, very democratic.

, Enter Zara Sultana until recently a labor mp, and then she was suspended

from the party over, voting against the government on the child welfare cap.

So she and he have been kind of circling each other.

They're obviously very different in lots of ways.

Ian: except for not liking the other person in your party, in

which they seem to be quite similar.

Andy: do have that in common, but they, they sort of,

Ian: they hate each other.

That's, that's a good start,

Andy: Ian, according to the statements that they've released, some of

them through lawyers, they're the closest of colleagues and

they're very, very much reconciled.

Ian: Oh, I'm glad.

My closest colleagues aren't quite that loyal.

Justine: they want

you to appear on stage together on 9th of October, so they really

need to get it together before then according to the website.

Adam: this is gonna be like those tours of like the Eagles hell

freezes over tour, isn't it?

When none of them are speaking or when the police got back together and they

heat each other so much, they have to be go opposite ends of the stage

and different tour buses, isn't it?

The Oasis reunion will have nothing on this.

Justine: this.

Should

help sell tickets though, eh?

Andy: the current Weeks's Mayhem is all because Sultana, she

was, uh, raisin some money.

Thank you very much.

Ian: Uh, you are fired.

Andy: Who

Adam: Who else do we get to talk about current affairs

Andy: Oh my God.

Adam: Come on, Andy.

Read the prune.

Thank you.

Andy: you.

So she invited supporters to sign up as, as members via an online portal.

And, and she claimed that on the day of launch she got

20,000 new members signed up.

Now for an for any political party, that would be a great success.

That'd be a coup.

Corbin then issued a statement saying this, you may have received

an unauthorized email urging you to sign up to your party.

Don't sign up, cancel any direct debits.

the message was co-signed by the four independent Tempes,

who we haven't mentioned yet.

They are the independent alliance.

So that is Corbin Sultana, and four others.

Some ex labor mps one.

One of them is, is just new in a newly formed constituency.

Now.

Sultana has claimed she was frozen outta the accounts, and, and I'm

quoting here subjected to what can only be described as a sexist boys club.

I have been treated appallingly and excluded completely.

Ian: I know how she feels.

Andy: And she, she said this was an attempted coup, and, and, she simply said

she was trying to, you know, get members and that those funds would be held by

a company set up to safeguard the, the money until the founding conference.

They haven't had a starting conference yet.

I've signed up as one of these apparently 750,000 people who's declared an interest

in supporting or voting for the party.

, There are gonna be these big rallies, which we know is, is often Jeremy's.

Comfort zone is where he does well.

He, you know, he thrives on that.

He likes the, the mood in the room.

And,

uh mm-hmm.

Theoretically, it should be a great combination, He's

a man, she's a woman, he's

Ian: nitrogen and glycerine,

Andy: but you know, they should reach lots of different areas.

So he's 76, she's 31.

They're at very different ends of the political age spectrum.

he's white.

She's not like there, there should be this, if not a rainbow coalition,

then certainly an attempt to reach lots of different bits of the left.

But the problem really has been so far.

Huge schisms have emerged in, in policy terms

Ian: it's it's not even policy though, is it?

One is what should we call ourselves?

Two is, are we trusted with money with the economy?

Oh dear.

Um, I'll pay your direct debit back 'cause I she shouldn't have emailed you.

That doesn't bode well for a party of government, it?

Andy: but there is a already a huge policy range even within the six.

Mps who are broadly grouped together.

So for example, we haven't really talked about the other

four much, but shock at Adam

Adam: I love that always just sounds like the beginning of a

tabloid headline about me, doesn't

it?

Shock.

Andy: Shock at Adam Behavior.

Um, but he's argued the new party shouldn't be anti wealth or anti uh,

business

and it shouldn't alienate landlords.

And I think probably Corbin and Sultana would.

Would quite like to alienate landlords.

basically Sultana has a lot of young, urban, very progressive left-wing support.

The others might have a little more support from potentially more socially

conservative supporters across the country who may be more interested in Palestine.

The other four out of the six are Muslim politicians and, and their,

you know, their policies on Palestine are, I think a substantial part

of what got 'em elected as mps.

Adam: Which is I thing that an awful lot of people would agree on

now, but I mean, it's not a lot to establish a rainbow coalition on,

especially when you've got, as you say.

Muslim blokes who in a lot of cases have pretty socially conservative

views, which are very much at the opposite of what Zara Saltar is saying.

And it's a bit like the, the other Rainbow Coalition that was, uh, George

Galloway's Respect Party, isn't it?

Which was kind of a, an alliance of the, the Socialist Workers Party

and an awful lot of, kind of Bengal politicians, East London that they

were, they weren't kind of comfortable.

Bedfellows feels like the wrong term, doesn't it?

Andy: Galloway has been sniffing around looking to affiliate with

your party, whatever it ends up being

Adam: more egos.

That's definitely, definitely what they need.

More egos and, and, and people who can't work with anyone else.

God brilliant.

Yeah.

Andy: if all this wasn't enough, potential fractiousness of the ranks early on,

what I found really interesting is.

It shows the difficulty of setting up a new party for one.

I mean, it's just very hard.

It obviously shows something about the left's love of factions and, and

you know, ever smaller divisions.

But I just love the sound of this.

I, so this is from, I now as one of the, as member number 750,001, I can

report to you what I looked up on their publicly available website.

They're gonna host huge regional deliberative meetings where thousands

of members come together to listen to each other, debate and revise

the founding documents face-to-face.

All members will be able to comment, suggest changes, and

track how each document develops.

That

is gonna be a heck of a shared document.

Justine: If they can't decide between two of them, even the most basic policy

or how they start or whether they can charge people yet, then it's gonna be a

bit tricky getting 680,006, doesn't bode.

Too well, does it?

Adam: it does seem like a lot of left winging politics always seems to go back

to, they're very, very fond of rallies and kind of people's assemblies and all

these ideas of doing things democratically and talking shop and things.

But actually getting things done is a bit of a problem and it, it

used to be serious for a second.

I think it is a. Shame because there is obviously a big gap in British politics

at the moment for a kind of populous left wing party because, I mean, Starr

seems to be attacking so far to the right that he's, he's took him a full

week to say it's a bad thing to have 150,000 racists on the street of London.

Which you think, you know, that's, that's a sort of fairly obvious from

where, where, where labor ought to be, uh, on, on these kind of things.

I mean, the, the problem I would suggest is if you are looking for a a, a decent

left wing party, the person to choose as a leader might not be the one who

has proved that he's not very good at leading a party to electoral victory.

Twice in the past already

Ian: he was betrayed Adam, he was betrayed and,

Adam: forget.

I forget.

It was our fault, wasn't it?

The press?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely.

Sorry.

Sorry about that guys.

Ian: And Andy Glibly says, you know, it's very difficult to set up a new party.

It isn't Nigel Ferage does it most weekends.

He

has no trouble at all.

Uh, what is it?

Friday, there's another one.

Uh, and the one he's set up at the moment is the one that's giving

everyone a massive headache.

So the idea that it is impossible to get people to abandon the old parties

and move to new party just isn't true.

So what is it about, say, Jeremy, that makes things very

difficult, this is a question.

I mean, Justine, you, you've been on the left, uh, you've,

you've worked for the Mirror.

I've seen you, um, tell me, who would back them,

Justine: Um, I think they're gonna have to get a long way down the line before they

get any major support from a major outlet.

I mean, if you look at Zara, Sultana was part of, enough is enough

in 2022, if you remember that.

It was very, very short-lived.

No, no.

She joined with Mick Lynch and the Green Party for a, a grassroots

left wing political movement.

Sound familiar?

Uh, they managed to get 700,000 people signed up in a very short space of

time and then disappeared without.

Trace.

Andy: and why is that?

Justine: Um,

well

enough

was

enough.

Yes.

So they got a few rally marches together and then it just fizzled out.

They just couldn't get the leadership together.

They couldn't agree on how it would work.

And then they eventually decided it was never going to be a parliamentary party.

and it just, yeah.

Disappeared, sank without trace.

if we're looking at your party, whatever.

A party is going to be called, at the moment they've got hundreds of

thousands of people, but they, again, can't agree even how they're going,

what mechanism their party's gonna be formed with, whether it's gonna be

an alliance, whether it's gonna be a parliamentary party, whether it's just

gonna be a grassroots kind of buildup.

Ian: The, the discussion about saying we are not going to be a parliamentary party

given our current parliamentary system.

How does, how does that work then?

Does that mean we're not going to be in power ever?

Andy: One of the beneficiaries of this is gonna be the Green Party who claimed they

got 2000 new members off the back of chaos among your party and how that was going.

so that's one element of it.

The other thing, just as we mentioned Farage, I think it's are

Farage and COR been more similar than we've let ourselves think?

I mean, there's a big thing about.

Jeremy falling out with people.

There's a big thing about Nigel falling out with people.

They're both absolutely cracking at a rally.

They're both energized, the faithful a huge amount, but they're

very, very thin skinned in interviews and

tend to,

uh, not react well to, uh, constructive

Adam: criticism.

Andy: Have they been seen in the same room together?

That's all I'm saying is

You think it's a case of beard on, beard off?

Do you, are we, is someone misses doubt firing this whole situation?

So I think, I think the Greens will benefit.

Um, we should probably give an update on what the latest news

is as at time of recording.

I think that's only fair.

Salana has climbed down.

She said she won't be pursuing legal proceedings against the rest of her

nascent party, despite the baseless and unsubstantiated allegations against me.

This is all from her statement I should say.

So there are just a few cracking phrases in there.

Um, I really like this one.

I'm determined to reconcile and move forward.

She writes, I'm engaged in ongoing discussions with Jeremy, for whom

like all socialists of my generation.

I have nothing but respect.

Devastating dev, clearly very much.

Jeremy's old I'm not.

Yeah.

Um, and she finishes by saying we can all confirm that the conference

will go ahead as planned in November.

So very sorry to everyone who's booked that tickets 'cause it's evidently not.

There is kind of a genuine, I mean, Zara Saltana, I have talked to young

people about Zara Sana, and they do find her very, very inspirational.

And there, there is a sort of generation now kind of beyond coming

through to voting age, beyond that whole, that whole cor night thing.

When was 2019, he stepped down.

So we're talking six years back, aren't we?

Um, so there is, I mean, the potential for a kind of Alexandra Acaia Cortes

as she, , the De Democrat in, in America, a really sort of charismatic.

Figure to come through, um, and, and kind of inspire people.

you've gotta hope there

Adam: might

Ian: be, are you suggesting that Jeremy is not Bernie Saunders?

'? Um, because that, again, in itself is, is is typical of you

in undermining Jeremy's position.

Adam: more old men, be they, Bernie Saunders or Donald Trump or

Jeremy might not be what we need.

As, as going forward, really.

I mean, possibly we have one of these charismatic figures already.

I mean, we've got, um, Zach Polanski, the new leader of the Greens,

haven't we, who we profiled in the last edition of Private Eye.

I mean, he's, he, he seems quite good fun, didn't they?

Ian: Yes, and I, I'm interested that

Andy's party or your party as I shall, I shall now call it.

I mean, you used to be quite green, but then I think you were disappointed

that the Green Party was no longer interested in the environment.

It had moved on, uh, to other more important issues.

Andy: there is a, a long running spate of councils, whoever controls them, which

have declared a climate emergency, which is very easy to do and takes one meeting.

Uh, then saying, no, I don't think we're gonna have any wind turbines or Soler

panels in our, in our neck of the woods.

Thanks very much.

We get a lot of dog walkers who want a nice view of a field.

And so, so that I think is an ongoing thing and I, I think the greens are

gonna come up against that, you know, and it's is when you get people who,

for whatever reason, probably very good reasons, are unhappy with the

current government, want to register their disapproval in some party sense.

if your coalition expands, it sometimes expands beyond the

point at which, you are coherent.

And that's kind of the, uh, challenge that, um, that

Adam: Polanski's got, hasn't it?

Because I mean, you're talking about rainbow coalitions.

We are literally, I mean, the election results for the Greens last time was some

in rural communities, which is very much about kind of no pylons and restoring the

countryside and, and, and then one in, in, in sort of inner city Bristol, which was

very much about kind of much more radical politics and, and, and, and trans rights.

And, you know, it is quite difficult to kind of, these aren't things

that necessarily coalesce into a, into a coalition of people who

are willing to, uh, work together.

Do they?

Ian: if you are expecting coherence when you vote, then reform may not be for you.

Andy: But I do notice as well that the Green Party mps who were elected are still

all in the same party and have managed not to fall out spectacularly with each

other, which is something that neither, uh, the, uh, the, where we started

off with six reform mps, aren't we?

Where, where were we at now?

Four.

But they're mostly different ones, aren't they?

I

I think it's, yeah, it's much like the sugar babes in that they'll,

the numbers will remain the

same line, but the, there's, there's one cast member who does

remain the playing, which, which I, I think makes, uh, Nigel Frost.

The, the kesher of this, uh, this particular setup isn't

Right on.

We come to section number two now, as promised, it's ombudsman time.

So Justine, first of all, we should say welcome to your first

official appearance on page 94.

'cause you were on it last year when you were nominated for the pool foot

award, shortlisted effect, talking about children's mental health provision.

But that was, you were outside the tempt pissing in.

And so since you've joined the eye and you're inside the tempt, pissing out.

Ian: What's a charming metaphor,

Andy: you have been writing about.

lots of things in the back, predominantly, one of which is the Parliamentary

and Health Service Ombudsman.

Just for anyone who hasn't been paying attention, can you say what the PHSO is?

Justine: Well, you wouldn't be alone if you didn't know, because I think during a

survey, something like a third of people knew what it was and two thirds didn't.

Now, it does serve a very, very important function, people who have.

Used services, either within the health service or in government

services who've either had a very poor service, an unfair one.

Uh, if there's been maladministration and they've gone to the service

and the service hasn't listened to their complaint, the almost last

port of call they have is the PHSO.

now the PHSO is supposed to mediate between whichever organization is being.

Complained about and the complainant, it is supposed to then either

offer recommendations or in rare cases, financial compensation.

, It can also lay down reports before.

The government if it thinks it's really important.

this is important in two ways.

So for the people who are actually making the complaint, it's

their last place they can go.

And on a second level, they believe that they don't want

this mistake to be made again.

we all accept, especially within the NHS, mistakes are made.

Doctors are under pressure, they're human beings.

But if the same mistakes are being made.

By the same staff in the same units, then that is systemic.

And if that can be picked up by the PHSO early, perhaps we wouldn't have so

many huge scandals as we keep seeing.

Andy: one thing you point out early on is that it's a huge,

public service ombudsman.

It's the biggest in Europe.

It's got 600 staff, spends about 40, 45 million quid a year.

you'd think it would be powerful, but in the case of patients like.

Alison Brian, for example, it absolutely has not been.

So, she was a 78-year-old woman.

She needed an urgent operation.

She was promised emergency hip replacement surgery within a few weeks.

Then due to an administrative error, she didn't get the operation.

And after 10 months, her son-in-law said, you know, this is ridiculous.

And he, he stumped up.

He paid 40,000 pounds for a private, operation on her knee just to help

with the, you know, chronic pain.

She was in, I mean, really, really severe.

Now he assumed that he might be able to recoup some of the

money he was spending there.

he went to the PHSO

Justine: Well, first of all, they decided that he hadn't given the NHS

trust that was involved enough of an opportunity to come back on his complaint.

So he was told to go back to them.

They, um, obfuscated, so he went back and said.

Uh, we haven't got an answer from them by that time.

He timed out.

There's a 12 months, time out, after everything's been exhausted.

so they actually rejected his complaint on, on that basis.

they also said that if he had the option of taking legal action,

that they wouldn't consider it.

Now legal action, as we all know, is difficult and expensive.

Uh, and most people think the PHSO will be an alternative to legal action.

And do you know, I don't think that many people want to take

legal action against the NHS.

I think a lot of people feel very protective about it.

They feel very understanding.

They just want to be heard.

They just want to know that what happened to them won't happen to someone else.

And the PHSO should offer an alternative.

To expensive litigation, which is harrowing for people to go through.

It's difficult for, you know, it diverts resources from the front line for the NHS.

So why tell someone who's coming to you to ask for some kind of redress

to then take it through the courts?

It makes, no sense, does it?

Ian: The

idea that we we're actually paying 600 people to say I'd go to court if were you,

Yeah.

uh, gives me a bit of a heart attack.

Exactly.

Um,

Andy: I would add there in, you probably have been sued by 600 different people, so

it's a bit you, I suspect.

just while we're on the initial thing of talking about these cases,

talk about, um, Naomi Darling?

she was a cleaner from Hereford, and she went to the dentist.

She was told she needed some root canal work.

Justine: And it later emerged that she hadn't even had any,

uh, x-rays and may not have even needed the work in the first place.

She ended up losing all of her front teeth.

The Boulogne collapsed.

Got terrible stress about this as well.

She's in a lot of pain.

Terrible, terrible pain.

Ended up losing her job.

Um, so she went to the PHSO hoping they would help.

Now, the dentist had just appears, moved from place to place, gathering complaints

and just kept going to different places.

And they, they just said, you just have to go and find the dentist pretty much.

And, um, get him to get him to deal with it.

And they just, again, totally rejected her.

Her complaint, um, until, yeah, and then eventually they offered her a

very small amount of compensation.

400

Andy: pounds, 400

Justine: pounds.

It's gonna cost her 12,000 pounds to get some new teeth.

She hasn't got any front teeth.

Now, now, for anyone to have their teeth removed and not be able to

afford to replace them, uh, you know, the bones will disintegrated.

So it is not a question of her being able to just replace them easily.

So she's having to go through the rest of her life with no front teeth, a feeling.

Totally depressed.

Andy: in the article you wrote about it, she says, it's ruined my

Justine: she, did.

Yeah.

The whole process left her feeling demoralized.

She spent years trying to get some kind of justice and then just gave up.

And like many people who speak to me about this, they say they come

outta the process feeling a whole lot worse than when they started.

Not only has it not helped, it's traumatized them, it's demoralized

them and it's made them feel like their, their problem is not important.

Andy: And it, it is extraordinary.

I mean, the, the sort of tenacity these people would have to have

to get things to that stage.

Because as you say, you don't even end up with p hs O until you've exhausted

all avenues of complaint and all kind of official things with the initial body that

you, you, you, you are engaged with and, and their kind of complaints procedure.

Do you,

uh, and then when you get to the PHSO, I'm, I, in some of your pieces

you were saying, you know, it, it, it's sort of seven months even before

they assess your complaint and to see whether it's worth pushing ahead with.

And, and the numbers of, of complaints that are actually then

followed through are tiny, aren't

Justine: they?

Yeah, they are.

They are.

So, the PHSO gets about 120,000 inquiries a year.

Um, last year it accepted nearly 39,000.

To be considered okay, but it dropped three quarters

of them at the initial sift.

Just, just drops them.

It has a variety of excuses it uses to push back on them.

So it agreed to look into 10,000 of them.

Only 722 were given detailed investigations and of them,

of all of those complaints.

So down from the 38,000 or so, 464 resolved ending with

the complainant being happy.

Now that is about one in 80.

Yeah, and that's, um, you know, they're getting 42 million pounds a year and

one in 80 people walk away from there feeling happy with what's happened.

Ian: And you are suggesting that you can't account for that by the 79.

Others being whingers

who just,

who are just looking for money.

Justine: Exactly.

I think if they were looking for money, they'd be going to

the wrong place in the start.

Um, if they're looking for justice, it sounds like they're

going to the wrong place.

And this has been a problem for many years.

The patient's association looked at the PHSO 11 years ago and, , concluded

that it was just not fit for purpose.

. It's had some internal investigations, internal reviews that have also found

itself not to be fit in some cases, yet.

Nothing's changed.

It seems to have got worse.

If, if anything, people are still waiting far too long and then they're having

not getting the results they need.

I'm talking to a woman at the moment who's been fighting for 13 years to get some

kind of answers as to why her father died with the hospital, having missed four.

Clear opportunities to diagnose him for lung cancer.

she has been through four different ombudsman.

She's just written to the new one, Paula Sussex, who has come in in August

after a crazy protracted, effort to try and replace the previous one.

And, um, she hasn't had any joy with that either her MP's been involved.

Our mp, Rachel Maco, is really concerned about the PHSO and its ineffectiveness

and says, you know, this is a safety valve for the NHS and it's not working.

. So there is a parliamentary committee, which is supposed to oversee it, but

they just don't seem to do anything.

They hear one problem after another and nothing has been done.

It feels more like people say to me that they feel like its job is to bat them

away, not to help them and to reduce the number of compensation claims and.

Instead of actually really listening to them and taking on board the complaints

and trying to change the NHS for the better and ensure mistakes aren't

repeated, it's just to bat them away.

Andy: It strikes me that by hiss very nature, I mean, he's

so huge and unwieldy, isn't it?

Because I would've thought, I mean a, a a, a sort of one stop body that

deals with all complaints about the whole of the NHS and as you say,

dental services and things as well.

It's an enormous task enough already, but it also deals with complaints

about, um, you know, the parliamentary side of it, uh, uh, of its title,

all UK government departments, um, and other public organizations.

So I was looking at some of the sort of triumphs that, that

they're, they're talking about in the new section of their website.

They've been looking into recently the Windrush compensation scheme

that came under there per.

A student loans company.

The, the, the charity commission.

All this on top of the health service.

I mean, it's just, it, it seems sort of too, too huge for a

task for any organization to

Justine: I mean to, yeah, they brought together the health service and the

parliamentary services some time ago, and I think from that moment on, it was doomed

never to be able to do its job properly.

Really.

Andy: And

West Street is, is is kind of abolishing various different, I mean, we endlessly,

whenever a new government comes in, we have a bonfire of the wango, don't we?

But, um, he's getting rid of various, sort of, um, , lower levels in,

in, in the complaints procedure.

Is that

Justine: Yeah.

There've been lots of layers, but there's a lot of overlap as well.

For example, if you are.

using a service that is funded by the local government, you have to go

to the local government ombudsman.

If you are in a care home, you dunno whether you go to the

Health Service Ombudsman or the local government, OMB Ombudsman.

You might wanna go to the GMC first.

The NMC, the Parliamentary Commissioner.

off com, offstead, the, you know, there are so many different regulators that

just even working out where to start is the biggest, you know, is a headache.

And once you start, you can time out.

If you go to the wrong one first and then you get knocked about within

the system, you might end up timing out and, and not having any justice.

Andy: is part of this due to the long tail of COVID and you, from

what you say, it sounds like the problems go back many years.

Justine: COVID obviously hasn't helped.

There is a backlog.

There is definitely a backlog and everything slowed

down so much during COVID.

there was also a problem, as I said, with uh, finding a new ombudsman when the

last one ended, their seven year terms.

Rob Bains was coming to the end of his seven year term, nearly two years ago.

They'd had seven years to know this was gonna happen.

But they didn't find anyone in time.

So they put an interim in who's only allowed to stand in for one year.

Even by the end of that year, they didn't have anyone in place.

So there were several months where they had no ombudsman and

the whole thing had to freeze.

So, uh, they were already running behind due to COVID.

And then that just created even more delays and people

are waiting even longer now.

Andy: And as far as I understand it, the alternative to this hellish process

is trying to get a judicial review.

Is that right?

Justine: you could potentially have a lawsuit if that's what you wanted,

but in terms of going through the legal channels in order to try to

change what's happening, change policy, uh, have, have it looked at

so that, um, mistakes aren't repeated.

The judicial review is the next solution.

If you don't get what you want from the PHSO.

Um, but that, as you know, is a very unwieldy process.

Very expensive, prohibitively expensive and, and can be quite

traumatic unless you can afford to pay for very expensive, legal support.

Andy: normally these sections where we, we sort of diving deep on one particular

Failure, I try and end up by saying, are there any prospects for improvement?

I mean, I do.

Should I bother asking?

In this

Justine: I think you need to, we need to put that to the government,

but that's why I keep going back to, we keep going back to it, you know,

that's what we do well, isn't it?

We'll keep going back to it.

We keep talking to people and we keep going to back to the PHSO and

saying, what are you doing about this?

Um, they'll come back to us and say they've had, uh, an extraordinary increase

in the number of cases coming to them, but they have also had a 50% increase in

their funding in just the last four years.

Andy: And lots of these cases are rejected on the grounds of, uh,

lower severity injustice, which is quite the phrase, isn't it?

Justine: That was only brought in, in 2021 or two.

And I think that was really brought in as part of an effort

to clear the backlog from COVID.

So they lifted the threshold rather than dealing with more cases.

Andy: Yes, they said, um.

we have decided to focus on the more serious complaints that people bring to

us where they may have faced a big impact.

For example, these may be about a potentially avoidable death or where

someone has suffered prolonged pain.

Surely losing your front teeth and having no way of readdressing

that is a significant injustice that causes significant pain.

Justine: Well, she, I think she has chronic pain now from that.

Right.

As well as the, you know, the side, you know, how she feels about

herself going out, you know, for anyone to lose their front teeth

and not be able to replace them.

It's devastating.

I mean, I don't, I really think it is, it's not just cosmetic, is it?

It, it, it makes her feel that she can't go for a job.

You know, she's embarrassed being at family events.

She thinks people would judge her and think, you know, she's been in

a, in a, in a fight or something.

So it's really affected her mentally as well as physically.

Ian: And the other case is an avoidable death.

which is one of the things they said they would consider and then they haven't.

Justine: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's just

Ian: a detail.

Yeah.

Justine: There'll be, there'll be more.

I've got more in the pipeline I'm afraid.

You know, I have a huge backlog of PHSO stories and behind every single one

is a story of suffering, injustice, and people not getting any kind of

audience from the body that they went to in the first place to help them.

Ian: So if anyone's writing in with a similar story and Justine

doesn't process it quick enough, um, I will be acting as the ombudsman

for the backlog

of

Justine: don't expect any response at all for at least a year.

And if you do, it won't be the right one.

Andy: so time for section number three now and, uh, it's good news caller,

we always like to end on a light note.

So Adam, what's going on at reach PLC?

Adam: Terrible,

Andy: terrible things yes.

Um, well, I wanna talk specifically, I mean, reach PLC for those who,

who, who don't know is an enormous newspaper, um, publishing empire.

Uh, it.

Was, formed from the, the combination of, uh, Richard Desmond's set of papers, which

were the Daily Express, the Daily Star, and various celebrity magazines like Okay.

And Trinity Mirror, which as the name suggests, uh, produced both the Daily

and Sunday Mirror, uh, and also had an awful lot of, uh, local titles as well.

So, I mean, sort of over 120 different newspapers and websites

around the country kind of come under reach PLC and ever since 2018

when that takeover took, uh, place.

They've sort of been wicking away at it, and there've been so many rounds of

redundancies, which we've been cataloging in successive, issues of private eye.

And, um, it, it does feel a bit like, I mean, , the latest round of redundancies

are falling particularly hard on the daily mirror, uh, where an enormous number of

people, including a lot of their top.

And I would say best say best journalists are at risk of redundancy.

the news from this week, the update from this week since the last edition

went to print, is that the NUJ Chapel at the Daily Mirror are saying that

nothing is off the table Now in the terms of the action they're gonna take

against it, uh, they said the n the mirror, NUJ Chapel demands that this

six week countdown to destruction must.

Be halted.

I mean, they're not messing about with all this.

Uh, so nothing is off the table.

Strike action is actually a possibility on that particular paper at the moment.

So this is the mirror.

This is the mirror.

This is the paper that has survived Megalomaniacs being in charge of it.

Like Cecil King who tried to lead an armed coup against the government in

the 1960s, uh, Robert Maxwell, who, uh.

Stole most of the money from its own pensioners.

Um, and, and of course Piers Morgan, probably possibly

the worst

of them

all.

Uh,

it got through all that, but um, it really does look to be in, or it's,

it's journalists certainly feel it's in rather dire straits at the moment.

So in the last issue of private eye, I think you said it was something

like 300 roles that were going,

it's 321 roles across the whole of reach, so, um, that's all the, all the

kind of local papers and things, but on the national titles, it's falling

disproportionately on the daily mirror.

This time around, I think it's 38 people who have been, got rid of

on the mirror and only one person on the Express, which, uh, they are

understandably not very happy about.

I should stay, actually, to be fair.

One of the last, um, redundancy rounds back in 2018 was almost

an exact mirror image of this.

Um, there was something like 70 people we got rid of on the express

and only one person on the mirror.

So maybe they're just thinking they're sharing things out fairly,

but um, the net result of it is that there's hardly anyone left

Ian: could one reason for this be that no one wants to buy any of their papers?

I, I'm just asking.

Andy: Well, a surprisingly

large number of people still do want to go

out

and

buy

the daily mirror, and kind of more to the point, um, even, uh, Reach's

own bosses admit that 75% of their revenue comes from actually selling

physical copies of newspapers every day.

People are still going out and buying copies of those papers, and that's the

only way they found of making things work.

I mean, the extraordinary thing about we always say, oh, the internet is the

future and news has gone online and, and the printed press is dead except for

1 1 1 1 Plucky Fortnightly magazine, um, uh, of Indomitable goals.

Adam: um, still,

Andy: Um, still, still fighting away as one, one for the asterisk fans.

Um, but, um, no one has yet found a way other than just charging for

content like you do with newspapers of making money off the internet.

So there, there is not the money in advertising.

To sustain any of these businesses and the solution at, um, at Reach

has been to keep on hiking up the, uh, cover prices of those newspapers.

They keep going, I mean, in incrementally sort of 20 p at a

time, uh, every six months or so.

Uh, but also reducing the stuff that's in there and some of the decisions

that have been made over the mirror.

I mean, the Mirror has really, I think it's 124 years old, is it now.

It was certainly set up sort of way, way, way back at the

beginning of the last century.

Um, it's got a hell of a history behind it as, as a campaigning

and labor supporting newspaper.

Um.

And it just appears to me that they, the current management just don't

seem to understand any of that at all.

I mean, this time around.

I was gobsmack to see Nick Summer Lad, who's the investigations

editor on the Daily Mirror, who's been bringing in scoop after scoop.

For him, it was him that broke the story about how Nigel Farage financed

or didn't finance the sale of his house.

And, his partner's mysterious money that she had to, uh,

buy and register in her name.

and it comes a few years after also they got rid of, um, Andrew Penman, who

was their brilliant kind of consumer investigations guy who was out there.

scam buster was how he described himself.

He was kind of out there, you know, finding people who were defrauding

pensioners on the doorstep and dodgy timeshares and all these things.

So all of the stuff that I think made it a great paper, they just seem to have

absolutely, I mean, less than no careful, they seem to be actively opposed to it.

Adam: Justine.

Yes, you are.

You are an expert, expert journal.

When, how do you feel?

When I,

Justine: when I got to the mirror, I think it was in 1995, there was a team

of off diary reporters, four of them dedicated to investigations, which was

appropriate for the paper that, you know, had Hugh cud lip and, you know, private

eyes and poor foot at the heart of it.

Uh, so to get rid of their, only if they do get rid of their only

investigative report, you know, he has been told his job is a threat.

It's, uh, not confirmed yet.

Um, but if they do get rid of that, that's a very, very sad day for that newspaper.

And it's, it's long and, distinguished history.

I'm also very, very sad to hear there are some, there are some

incredible talent at the mirror.

There really is, and it's been held together by love and prayer, really

by, uh, some very dedicated journalists who are ideologically committed to it,

which I don't think you find on all other newspapers, they could have easily

gone off and made more money elsewhere.

They're there because they respect their readership and they care about them.

And among them, the, some of the photographers, Phil Coburn, Phil

Coburn's, a fantastic photographer In 2010, he and colleague Rupert Harmer

were in Helman Province in Afghanistan.

The convoy they were in hit an IED and um, sadly, Rupert was killed in it.

Phil lost both his legs beneath the knee.

He went back to work.

He's worked ever since.

For them, he is a. Multi-award winning photographer, he

finds himself on the list too.

And I'm quite frankly

disgusted

Andy: And it's also, I mean, you look at the, what the plan is for replacing all

of these people, it's effectively, um, there is an argument to be made if you

own 120 different newspapers for a certain amount of kind of sharing of resources

and, and possibly even copy between them.

But the plan at the moment seems to be that, uh, maybe the first

15 pages of the Express and the mirror will be their own stuff.

Uh, and the rest of it will just be shared copy.

Um, then they're not touching the politics teams, so.

Mean that would be complete insanity because the, the express is still

really sort of rabidly Tory.

Pretty much the only rabidly Tory paper out there at the moment 'cause

the male and the, um, the, the, the telegraph seem to be lunging more

and more in the direction of reform.

But, uh, and the mirror of course is at least it's labor supporting a critical

friend to labor pretty coming slightly to the left of where the Labor party is now.

So they have had the sense so far.

Not to try and meld those two things together and just have the same political

outlook, um, a across both of them, but the rest of it is gonna be largely

shared copy across all the papers.

Can I just ask, are they deep in the red?

I know you say that lots of people are still buying it, but.

I'm sure it's expensive to run.

What, what are the accounts looking like?

Pretty good if you ask

Adam: the

shareholders.

Justine: Indeed, uh, shareholders are paid more than 11% dividends, which

is higher than any FSE 100 company.

Ian: and

the money sloshing around in there is dependent on sales

of the physical product.

I just wanna make this absolutely clear.

The print version is sustaining a profitable organization.

Andy: what is the rationale that's been given for these

300 roles under Threat 3 21?

effectively it's more money for shareholders.

But what have they said?

What have they said?

The reason is, is it that we are, we are integrating and we're, you know, we're

making things better for the future.

What is it?

Justine: they believe the future's digital and they believe the future is in video.

So they want much more video content.

Is that right, Adam?

Andy: Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There was a big thing that happened in about 2015 when a lot of newspaper

organizations, media organizations across the board pivoted to video very famously

because the Facebook algorithm changed and supposedly video was the great future.

And, and no one seemed to stop to question whether a load of sort of print hacks,

uh, who'd been writing for a living for the whole of their careers would actually

be the best at producing videos or maybe.

Maybe we could sort of leave that to broadcasters and

people who actually do that.

Uh, but, um, as ever with a lot of reaches um, tactics, they seem to have

caught onto this about 10 years later.

So yes, they've decided that video, podcasts, I mean, I'm not

gonna snag off podcasts being is how, how I'm here doing one.

They've decided, oh, which obviously are a growth area.

So they're doing a lot of that, but also a lot more video reporting rather

than concentrating on, as we say, to reiterate again, the written words

that bring in 75% of their income.

So

Justine: So they are creating new jobs, aren't they, in the kind of video arena?

Andy: They are.

And they will be much much lower page jobs as well for younger people,

which I'm sure is also an attraction.

But the other thing they decided is the future is, is just the number of

clicks they get on website stories.

And that leads to what, uh, makes the bosses at, um, at Reach Piers

North and David Hickerson very cross when we call it click bait.

But honestly, it really, really cannot be described as anything else.

you any examples?

Adam: funny

Andy: you

should ask Ian.

I wondered whether you might like a quick reach PLC clickbait quiz.

What the hell are they talking

Adam: about?

Yes.

Yes.

Andy: Okay.

Question number one.

This is a recent headline which went across all of the uh, local

papers, uh, in reaches stable

drivers told to place conquers in car in September or face 2,500 pound fines.

Conquers, what the hell are they on about?

uh.

They deter spiders, don't they?

Adam: We have

Andy: winner.

This

is

incredible.

I think this is probably best expressed the convoluted process by which someone

got to that as a clickbait headline is perhaps best explained by the correction.

They were obliged to publish exactly

a week later,

and they said, um, in fact, the potential fine relates to dangerous driving.

If a driver should react on spotting a spider in their car while driving.

And experts, there's a lot of experts who appear in stories like this.

Unnamed experts.

Experts had suggested placing a conquer in the vehicle, which

is believed to deter spiders.

And then the corker, we are happy to clarify 'cause.

I don't really believe the thing about conquers.

I know a lot of people swear by it.

I do do it myself, and I have actually crashed my car when

an insect landed on me, so,

Adam: okay.

Yeah.

I mean, really?

Andy: Yeah.

Were you fine?

Uh, no.

I did pay the damages to the other person's car.

It was a really big insect in my defense.

Let's carry on.

Let's on.

Okay.

The next one is also a pretty scary headline.

It's, if you haven't, um, yet faced your 2,500 fines for not carrying

your conquer with you, then you should be warned that Lloyd's, Barclay's,

and NatWest customers are urged to close account within 48 hours.

Customers of some of the nation's, most frequented banks have been.

Issued a 48 hour notice to close their account.

Did you get this notice?

Uh,

Justine: no.

I am with one of those banks and I missed that.

Do I need to go now?

Andy: I

think you are.

All right.

Because it turns out that actually all it is was a press release from a price

comparison website pointing out there are some better savings rates available.

From other banks.

There is no 48 hour notice.

Nothing has been issued.

It's just complete.

And it was a very, very boring financial press release,

stressed up as that warning.

I do find that these stories, they do, um, they do engage me quite a

lot because I read them thinking.

Wait, this isn't, this isn't at all what the headline promised me.

So maybe they're trying to drive deeper reading play.

If the headline tells you accurately what's in the article,

you sort of know it already.

And at the end of that deeper reading, do you think, well, this is

clearly, clearly

a quality news

site that I want to read more stuff from, or do you feel slightly

cheated and like they're taking the mickey out of you a bit?

Ian: Well, I'm quite interested in the idea of Andy crashing a car

because

a giant insect landed on him.

I mean, if this podcast was about anything interesting that would be headlining it,

Andy: it's such an embarrassing memory and it's from the last two years as well.

Let's just, let's plow on.

On we go.

Potatoes will stay sprout free for months and the months is an inverted commas.

I'm not sure whether that's relevant or not for months by storing them

in an unusual kitchen location.

Can you guess what that unusual kitchen location might be?

Justine: is it

Andy: It is the fridge.

And I, can tell you that the mirror, because this one was actually from the

mirror, the mirror was so thrilled with this life hack that they ran it in May

and then again in June and again in July.

And presumably the potatoes from May are still looking fantastic

in that unusual location.

Ian: I, I think I take things too, literally, I thought if the potatoes

are sprout free, it means you just store them not near any sprouts

Andy: and you're away.

just quickly.

Wasn't there a thing about.

Was this reach, it was them having to link to other articles,

or was that someone else?

Oh no, that was extraordinary.

That was one of the many brilliant editorial in innovations that

have been brought in by reach.

Um, they said, um, that every story that went, every news story that went

on the website had to contain a link in the third paragraph to another story.

Nothing unreasonable about that.

You know, you wanna keep people on your site, send 'em to another relevant story.

The word relevant, not the case.

This was not just a story that the editor might think, uh, was, was relevant.

It was one from a list that was sent out by management every day.

Didn't matter what it was, you just had to cram it in there.

So it ended up with some extraordinary juxtapositions.

My favorite one of all of them was, a story about a family who was stopped

from boarding at East Midlands Airport because, uh, the passport was damaged.

And paragraph three began.

This comes after an octopus, climbed out an aquarium tank

and tried to eat boys six in

front of his

mom, not

at Eastern Airport,

I

think

in

Adam: Florida.

Andy: but but it just It just came you go.

It came after, which literally temporarily is

Adam: true.

Andy: I think journalism's safe,

they have, I would like to say, abandoned this plan now possibly because

three issues of private eye running.

We, ran examples of quite how, how silly this was.

Uh, and it has now been abandoned in that one

Spoil sport.

Okay, that is it for this edition of page 94, which comes after a man

is eaten by a Wasp in Midlothian.

Um, thank you so much for listening.

If you'd like to get, uh, more fantastic stories, mort stories like

Justine's brilliant ones about the PHSO.

The magazine can be found on newsstands.

You can either go to private hyen.co uk if you're willing to, uh, make

the commitment to an extremely reasonably priced subscription.

Or you can just go to your nearest news agent and get a copy of

private eye, lots of jokes, lots of cartoons, lots of stories.

It's great.

Go and do it now.

thanks to all of today's contributors.

Thanks to Matt Hill of Rethink Audio for producing.

And thank you to you for listening.

Bye for now.