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.
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.
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.