Latest news with #bureaucracy
The Guardian
a day ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Travelling to Trump's US is a low-level trauma – here's what Africans can do about it
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, I reflect on the increasing difficulty of travel and immigration for many from the African continent, and how one country is plotting a smoother path. I have just come back from holiday, and I'm still not used to how different travel is when not using an African passport. My British citizenship, which I acquired about five years ago, has transformed not only my ability to travel at short notice but it has eliminated overnight the intense stress and bureaucratic hurdles involved in applying for visas on my Sudanese passport. It is difficult to explain just how different the lives of those with 'powerful' passports are to those without. It is an entirely parallel existence. Gaining permission to travel to many destinations is often a lengthy, expensive and sickeningly uncertain process. A tourist visa to the UK can cost up to £1,000, in addition to the fee for private processing centres that handle much of Europe's visa applications abroad. And then there is the paperwork: bank statements, employment letters, academic records, certified proof of ownership of assets, and birth and marriage certificates if one is travelling to visit family. This is a non-exhaustive list. For a recent visa application for a family member, I submitted 32 documents. It may sound dramatic but such processes instil a sort of low-level trauma, after submitting to the violation of what feels like a bureaucratic cavity search. And all fees, whatever the decision, are non-refundable. Processing times are in the hands of the visa gods – it once took more than six months for me to receive a US visa. By the time it arrived, the meeting I needed to attend for work had passed by a comically long time. Separation and severed relationships It's not only travel for work or holiday that is hindered by such high barriers to entry. Relationships suffer. It is simply a feature of the world now that many families in the Black diaspora sprawl across continents. Last month Trump restricted entry to the US to nationals from 20 countries, half of which are in Africa. The decision is even crueler when you consider that it applies to countries such as Sudan, whose civil war has prompted many to seek refuge with family abroad. That is not just a political act of limiting immigration, it is a deeply personal one that severs connections between families, friends and partners. Family members of refugees from those countries have also been banned, so they can't visit relatives who have already managed to emigrate. The International Rescue Committee warned the decision could have 'far-reaching impacts on the lives of many American families, including refugees, asylees and green card holders, seeking to be reunified with their loved ones'. A global raising of barriers The fallout of this Trump order is colossal. There are students who are unable to graduate. Spouses unable to join their partners. Children separated from their parents. It's a severe policy, but shades of it exist elsewhere by other means. The UK recently terminated the rights of foreign care workers and most international students to bring their children and partners to the country. And even for those who simply want to have their family visit them, access is closed to all except those who can clear the high financial hurdles and meet the significant burdens of proof to show that either they can afford to maintain their visitors or that they will return to their home countries. Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion It was 10 years before I – someone with fairly stable employment and a higher-education qualification – satisfied the Home Office's requirements and could finally invite my mother to visit. I broke down when I saw her face at arrivals, realising how hard it had been for both of us; the fact that she had not seen the life I had built as an adult. Compare this draconian measure to some countries in the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia, that have an actual visa category, low-cost and swiftly processed, for parental visits and residency. A new African model But as some countries shut down, others are opening up. This month, Kenya removed visa requirements for almost all African citizens wanting to visit. Here, finally, there is the sort of regional solidarity that mirrors that of the EU and other western countries. Since it boosts African tourism and makes Kenya an inviting destination for people to gather at short notice for professional or festive reasons, it's a smart move. But it also sends an important signal to a continent embattled by visa restrictions and divided across borders set by colonial rule. We are not just liabilities, people to be judged on how many resources they might take from a country once allowed in. We are also tourists, friends, relatives, entrepreneurs and, above all, Africans who have the right to meet and mingle without the terror, and yes, contempt, of a suspicious visa process. If the African diaspora is being separated abroad, there is at least now a path to the option that some of us may reunite at home. To receive the complete version of The Long Wave in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.
The Sun
5 days ago
- Health
- The Sun
Crisis-hit NHS bosses raking in MASSIVE salaries as frontline services cry out for cash
SCORES of NHS bosses are raking in a combined £10million a year while patients endure lengthy backlogs for treatment, we can reveal. Some 65 health board chiefs take home six-figure salaries, with top earner Paul Bachoo, of Grampian, on £252,500 — almost £117,000 more than First Minister John Swinney. 4 4 4 Calling for wages to be slashed, Labour's Carol Mochan said: 'Millions is spent propping up a web of bureaucracy while frontline services are struggling to cope.' Our figures show that 65 of NHS executives' top earners make more than £100,000, with several clearing £200,000. And calls have been made for some of the £9,833,094 wage bill to be diverted to struggling frontline services after cancer treatment waiting times hit a record high. It emerged that 40 health execs earn more than First Minister John Swinney's salary of £135,605. While 17 rake in higher than Sir Keir Starmer's 2024 wage of £172,153 — as their patients face lengthening delays for crucial care. Caithness-based health campaigner Peter Todd has led demands for red tape to be slashed. I bet not many of these bosses, some of whom earn more than the PM, do a night shift in A&E, regularly meet patients and travel out of their Ivory Tower Peter ToddCaithness-based health campaigner He said: 'I bet not many of these bosses, some of whom earn more than the PM, do a night shift in A&E, regularly meet patients and travel out of their Ivory Tower. 'And who decides upon the make-up of health boards? Because some seem ridiculously bloated.' The Scottish Sun on Sunday's findings show 12 health board chiefs on around £200,000 or more. Acute medical director Paul Bachoo — also a consultant vascular surgeon — was top on £252,500 while his NHS Grampian colleague Dr Hugh Bishop earned £232,500. Ayrshire and Arran medical director Dr Crawford McGuffie was second-highest earner on £247,500. Borders boss Dr Lynn McCallum made £227,500 while Dumfries and Galloway's Dr Ken Donaldson and Fife's Dr Christopher McKenna each commanded £212,500. Dr Chris Deighan, of NHS Lanarkshire, earned £207,500. Others on £200,000-plus salaries were Greater Glasgow and Clyde's Dr Scott Davidson and NHS Lothian's Tracey Gillies. Six — health board chief execs Jann Gardner and Professor Caroline Hiscox plus directors Dr James Cotton, Tim Patterson, Dr Emilia Crichton and Boyd Peters — earned between £190,000 and £200,000. Other big earners include £142,500-a-year NHS Fife chief executive Carol Potter — who has faced calls to quit over the £250,000 cost of the Sandie Peggie employment tribunal. Meanwhile figures show waiting lists have doubled leaving the equivalent of nearly 900,000 adults awaiting hospital appointments. With cancer waiting times at a record high and patients struggling to get a GP appointment, there is no excuse for scarce resources being wasted on excessive bureaucracy Brian Whittle Tory shadow public health minister And spending watchdogs have underlined how the NHS remains strapped for cash despite huge funding boosts. Tory shadow public health minister Brian Whittle urged ministers to spend 'less on bloated management and more on frontline care.' The MSP added: 'With cancer waiting times at a record high and patients struggling to get a GP appointment, there is no excuse for scarce resources being wasted on excessive bureaucracy.' Vowing to cut the number of health boards if Labour wins next year's Scottish Parliament election, counterpart Carol Mochan weighed in: 'Scottish Labour will slash red tape so funding goes to frontline staff and services.' We totted up wages using mid-points of salary ranges provided by health boards. NHS Grampian emerged at the top with a £990,000 executive salary bill ahead of Greater Glasgow and Clyde's of around £862,500. Elsewhere Lanarkshire's five chiefs banked £812,500, six NHS Forth Valley bosses made £773,094 and five NHS Fife executives were paid £762,500 collectively. NHS FAT CATS EXPOSED Paul Bachoo - Salary £252k Acute Medical Director, NHS Grampian. Average surgery wait: 207 days. 1 in 10 waiting 792 days. Dr Crawford McGuffie - Salary £247k Medical Director, NHS Ayrshire & Arran. Average surgery wait: 150 days. 1 in 10 waiting 518 days. Dr Hugh Bishop - Salary £232k Medical Director, NHS Grampian. Average surgery wait: 207 days. 1 in 10 waiting 792 days. Dr Lynn McCallum - Salary £227k Medical Director, NHS Borders. Average surgery wait: 150 days. 1 in 10 waiting 472 days. Ken Donaldson - Salary £212k Medical Director, NHS Dumfries & Galloway. Average surgery wait: 166 days. 1 in 10 waiting 413 days. Dr Christopher McKenna - Salary £212k Medical Director, NHS Fife. Average surgery wait: 117 days. 1 in 10 waiting 340 days. Dr Chris Deighan - Salary £207k Medical Director, NHS Lanarkshire. Average surgery wait: 143 days. 1 in 10 waiting 466 days Dr Scott Davidson- Salary £202k Medical Director, NHS Glasgow & Clyde. Average surgery wait: 210 days. 1 in 10 waiting 651 days. Tracey Gillies - Salary £202k Medical Director, NHS Lothian. Average surgery wait: 181 days. 1 in 10 waiting 546 days. Jann Gardner - Salary £197k Chief Executive, NHS Glasgow & Clyde. Average surgery wait: 210 days. 1 in 10 waiting 651 days. Prof Caroline Hiscox - Salary £197k Chief Executive, NHS Lothian Average surgery wait: 181 days. 1 in 10 waiting 546 days Dr James Cotton - Salary £197k Medical Director, NHS Tayside. Average surgery wait: 199 days. 1 in 10 waiting 667 days. Nats previously guaranteed patients the right to an operation within 12 weeks, or 84 days, of treatment being agreed. But stats from March showed an average 167-day wait for inpatient or day case surgery. Worst was NHS Grampian — home to some of the country's top-earning health executives — where one in ten patients faced a staggering 792-day hold-up. Slamming the figures, Shimeon Lee, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, hit out: 'The NHS desperately needs to reduce its bloated bureaucracy. 'Despite staffing taking up a huge chunk of the budget, it isn't turning into enough doctors and nurses. "Instead, it's going to an ever-expanding layer of management.' Some earnings calculations do not include other payments such as pension benefits. Former NHS Tayside chief Catherine Cowan received an £70,347 exit package on stepping down from her £217,500-a-year role in 2023. Bosses in Ayrshire and Arran, Fife, Grampian, Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Lanarkshire, Lothian and Tayside stressed some executives and directors also have frontline clinical duties. And they told how salaries are overseen by a national performance committee. Labour last January proposed cutting the number of health boards from 14 to three with the Tories also open to the changes. Then-Social Care Minister Maree Todd, said at the time the idea was 'being bounced around'. A Scottish Government spokesman said: 'Salaries of NHS chief executives and senior staff are independently assessed and reflect their roles as leaders of large public sector organisations. "Medical directors are NHS consultants paid on consultant terms and conditions. 'We've committed to reforming our public services, making them more efficient, high-quality and effective. 'We are investing £21.7billion, including £200million to reduce waiting times and ensure patients get the right care.' 4
Telegraph
7 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
This data omnishambles is merely the high water mark of MoD ineptitude
If Britain retains one superpower, it is its talent for building useless bureaucracies. No government department epitomises this quite like the Ministry of Defence. Once among the nation's most reputed institutions, inheriting the prestige of the victorious British Armed Forces when it was formed after the Second World War, the MoD has grown bloated and unaccountable. What senior politicians now regard as the most opaque of all departments seemingly holds public accountability in contempt. The UK defence 'blob' has reached a point where it is imperiling national security. There must be a reckoning. The MoD's omnishambles embodies everything wrong with the British state. It has abused both the legal system and its position as the guardian of national security to conceal an extraordinary error. The marine who leaked the list in question was working out of the headquarters of the elaborately covert Directorate of Special Forces. And yet its protocols for email security apparently fall short of those enforced at British blue-chip firms. One insider tells me it would be 'shockingly easy to be a Snowden in the Ministry of Defence'. The blunder is not a freak occurrence, but rather the high water mark of the MoD's institutional failure. This is not the first major Afghan-related data leak. From laptop thefts to unclassified documents being left at bus stops, breaches have been all too common. The MoD's dysfunction extends beyond the cybersphere. It is grotesquely overstaffed: Finland, which commands a larger wartime force than Britain, has just 150 defence civil servants, yet the MoD has almost 38,000 on its payroll. Bureaucratic judgment has become pathological, swinging between 'indecision, decision by default, and terrible decisions'. It is not just in the realm of cyber technology that the MoD excels at building elaborate but inept administrative units. The department is a Frankenstein's monster, possessing the worst attributes of both the military and civil service. The British Armed Forces seldom punish failure, in contrast with American forces, which routinely remove commanding officers who fall short. 'In Britain you are more likely to be removed from post for having romantic relations with a subordinate than presiding over a blunder that endangers lives,' one former Navy officer tells me. The MoD is equally imbued with the patrician impulses of the civil service. As the historian David Vincent tells me, the civil service's ethos of 'honourable secrecy' goes back to the 19th century, summed up by the mantra: 'A secret may be sometimes best kept by keeping the secret of its being secret.' It won't be easy to bring an end to the chaos at the Ministry of Defence. Perhaps more than any other department, it has proved impervious to reform. The Tories failed miserably at the task – and may have made things more toxic. Insiders wonder whether a tacit arrangement set in, whereby politicians went along with officialdom's strategy for dealing with administrative blunders, while civil servants and senior military officers became 'spinmeisters' for a cash-strapped government in crisis, 'bigging up' its achievements, even as it allowed military capacity to be dangerously run down. The chilling culture shift under the Conservatives is even said to be reflected in the changes to the design of the MoD's headquarters, which used to be open-plan but has, over the last few years, morphed into a 'kind of souk, with certain floors hived off for niche things and enclaves locked off'. Labour came to office vowing to get a grip on the MoD behemoth – but it has achieved little. Much of the dead-weight that Defence Minister John Healey tried to get rid of when he first got the brief were placed in lucrative holding posts – and are now being brought back in. The 'blob' has allegedly already neutered the consultants Healey has hired to drive reform; officials have manoeuvred to ensure that these disruptors will now merely 'manage' the reform process. Top military brass nonetheless hope that Healey can get a grip. One adviser told me that they are encouraged by the contents of his reform strategy and the leadership team that he is bedding in. The incoming Chief of Defence Staff, Rich Knighton, is held in high esteem. Labour needs to get its act together and drive root-and-branch reform. Nobody has yet been held accountable for the Afghan blunder. All those implicated in a cover up must answer for their conduct. Super-injunctions need to be abolished so that it is no longer possible for officials to use them to shield themselves from basic levels of scrutiny. Healey must reverse the incredible disintegration of professional standards within the MoD. One former employee recalls that even 20 years ago, sending an intelligence document with a single wrong digit was a sackable offence. Apparently today, a mistake that costs taxpayers billions of pounds and puts national security and fragile social cohesion at risk only warrants a shift in posts. It's bad enough that intelligence services of hostile countries are dedicating ever-greater resources to penetrate this country's security, without our inept bureaucracy giving our secrets away for free. It is bad enough that public trust in the political class is at an all-time low, without officialdom resorting to celebrity-style gagging orders to cover up its errors. Put simply, it is fundamentally unacceptable that those who are charged with minimising the dangers facing the realm should show such an impressive capacity to simultaneously aggravate all of the country's pressing problems. Keir Starmer is being sucked into a civil war with his party's far-Left as he seeks to re-establish discipline after the welfare reform fiasco. But he needs to turn his attention to the insubordination and chaos at the MoD. It is time for the Prime Minister to show some mettle and take drastic action.
CBC
7 days ago
- General
- CBC
P.E.I. landlord taking stock of damage as tenants with 10 children move out after eviction process
After months of stress, disappointment and bureaucratic back-and-forth, Thamara DeVries finally has her house in Wheatley River back. But it looks a lot different from the fully furnished house she rented out back in February. CBC's Sheehan Desjardins walked through the house with her to look at the damage.
Telegraph
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The HS2 farrago shows we're a country that can't get its act together
It's not often one wishes for Communism or to live in a full-blown dictatorship, but Derailed: The Story of HS2 (Radio 4, all week) just about had me there. Kate Lamble's terrific 10-part series – available in 15-minute daily bursts if you're squeamish or to be guzzled in one go on BBC Sounds if you're a masochist – portrays a Britain that is neither Orwellian nor Kafkaesque, but a bureaucratic basket-case plucked from the pages of Joseph Heller's Catch-22. It may not fully get to the bottom of why HS2 has been such a monstrous debacle, but it shows how in the most gruesome detail. In Monday's opening episode, Lamble began with perhaps the most damning thing of all. In 2009, the year HS2 first rumbled into life, the West Coast Main Line upgrade had finally finished – years late, billions over budget, with more money spent on compensation than on the actual infrastructure. In other words, the perfect manual for how not to run a railway project. HS2, as we all know too well by now, has made that project look like Swiss clockwork. Lamble spoke to an impressive roster of those involved in HS2, from engineers to MPs, and found a project riven with division from the off, and one so in love with the idea of itself, it was incapable of seeing a yard in front of its face. Some of the details amounted to a national embarrassment: the budget updates tied doggedly to 2012 prices, key figures sacked for providing realistic costings (HS2 Ltd deny this), the wrong trains purchased, trees chopped down on land they didn't own, thousands of properties bought that they still don't know what to do with. One key figure stated that the original budget (around £15bn – current estimates have it going northwards of £80bn) was drawn up when they knew 'three to four per cent of the facts' about the project. The use of guesstimates is stunning. According to the podcast, one necessary piece of land attached to a golf course was valued by HS2 at £3,800. They agreed to buy it for £7m. It's not so much a case of trying to work out who knew what – no one seemed to know anything. In 2014, when the first of the bills passed in parliament, the transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin believed that was tantamount to the planning application being approved. Since then, HS2 has required more than 8,000 further permissions from local councils and other agencies. Yet for all we've completely ballsed it up, Lamble hits upon a key truth. The obsession with the cost and with the speed meant that HS2 had failed to tell the right story. As a result, said Lamble, 'the public got the impression we were about to spend billions just to knock 30 minutes off a trip to Birmingham'. In a country obsessed with the railways, we'd got the narrative wrong, failing to convince the nation that HS2 could be something discussed in 150 years the way we discuss the golden age of Victorian railways now. In 150 years, HS2 will certainly be discussed – as a prime example of the little country that couldn't.
