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Ann

@agvbergin.net

Problems delivering the emergency water supply to a dialysis centre. Interaction of water infrastructure and management with what I'm guessing is NHS buildings infrastructure and management.

Q1262 Jayne Kirkham: We have read about some really quite sad situations—
people struggling with dialysis, dialysis not working and medical
interventions needed because people were unable to receive dialysis.
Incontinent people with bowel cancer were left struggling without water.
Some of those care homes, the dialysis centre, the doctors, the dentists
and the nurseries said that they had repeated failures—they could not get
hold of the water when they needed it. The Kent fire and rescue service
had to step in and support delivery.
Looking back, do you think that those hospitals, care homes and some of
those critical services did get suitable support? Was it resilient enough?
What would you do in future?
Tanya Sephton: Our priority when we have an outage is our tier 1
customers, which are hospitals. The two hospitals in Tunbridge Wells were
immediately transferred on to their pre-agreed emergency plans on the
Saturday, so they moved on to a tankered supply and remained on that
supply throughout the event so that they could continue to operate. That
is always one of the first steps we take. The next step from there is those
care settings, the care homes—
Q1263 Jayne Kirkham: What happened to the dialysis centre?
Tanya Sephton: The dialysis centre also had pallets of water provided.
When we had the previous event in the area, we had discussions with the
dialysis centre about being able to keep them on a continuous supply.
They need to have what we call a tanker injection point fitted. They have
not yet had that fitted, but that would have meant they could have kept
on a permanent supply of water via tanker.

January 6, 2026 at 7:28 PM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Example of the excellent content, this is quite well-known in the adult autistic community and am really glad to see this communicated to parents by expert dentists.

www.autismtoothcare.com/toothbrushin...

Overview

Many toothpastes foam up when you brush, and this is because of an ingredient called Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS). For children with sensory sensitivities, this foaming can be uncomfortable. If your child does not like traditional mint toothpaste, consider choosing one with a different flavour or even one with no flavour at all. Often, toothpastes that are SLS-free are milder in flavour.

January 5, 2026 at 6:57 PM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

This is really pathetic. Both Starmer's actions and lack of action on defending liberal multiculturalism and human rights has caused what may yet be deep and lasting harm.

Another polling director, who declined to be named, said of Starmer: “For a rather dull and inoffensive politician, Starmer does generate remarkable levels of hate.”

December 31, 2025 at 9:51 AM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Are there not better places for the puzzles?

Mock-up of a maths puzzle on a billboard that looks like a complicated powerpoint slide that faces at least two lanes of car traffic.

December 30, 2025 at 10:08 AM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

I feel like this would have been better reported by health specialists, as surely this paragraph should mention JCVI?

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Government ministers hope that adding the chickenpox jab to the childhood vaccination programme will protect some youngsters from severe complications from the virus. It could also reduce the amount of time parents take off work to look after their infected children.

December 29, 2025 at 12:35 PM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Winding down to listen to Nine Lessons and Carols. This year's commissioned carol is a setting of Thomas Hardy's poem, The Darkling Thrush.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

December 24, 2025 at 2:38 PM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

This is the doc for the South Cambs and Cambridge City shared waste service going to a four day week from 2023.

democracy.cambridge.gov.uk/documents/s6...

nsights from other council areas
29. Several councils across the country already successfully operate four-day week
waste collection services.
30. Locally Ipswich Borough Council have operated Tuesday – Friday collections since
2010, Peterborough City Council have operated Tuesday – Friday collections since
2014, and Fenland District Council has operated 4 days, over 5 collection days (i.e.,
Monday –Thursday, Tuesday – Friday shift patterns), for several years.
31. When researched these Councils reported that they experienced fewer disruptions
and financial savings from a reduction in overtime costs. Fenland crews work 37
hours over a four-day period on a rota basis. Peterborough and Ipswich work longer
days (up to 10 hours a day) as full-time hours are condensed into a shorter week.
The longer days have resulted in some negative feedback from staff.
32. From a residents’ perspective, once new routes are embedded these councils
reported a positive impact from the changes, as bins were still collected at the same
frequency and there was less confusion caused due to a reduction in bank holiday
changes.

December 23, 2025 at 12:32 PM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

This from chair Alun Francis in the Guardian write-up of the report seems like fair criticism to me.

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Francis said Labour’s skills policy and its industrial strategy were a step forward but that there was “no overarching narrative” to pull all these strands together. Without an overall strategy, he said, the government would “struggle to address some of those issues and have a clear-headed view about what we might do to improve things”.

He also warned that without a “universal view” of what social mobility means, it risked being subsumed by diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) policies – an agenda that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has characterised as “woke” and promised to dismantle. “To some degree it’s dropped into being a part of DEI because it does have some of those aspects,” he said. “But [social mobility] isn’t really a DEI policy. It’s more about an economic and social policy that’s about bringing the benefits to everybody.”

December 22, 2025 at 7:14 AM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

I am really fed-up and upset about poorly older people being blamed via this framing for mismanagement and a lack of foresight given that these trends have been predicted for a long time.

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Cash-strapped local councils’ inability to put in place the right social care package for patients who are medically fit to leave hospital is a key reason for the growing numbers of delayed discharges, but doctors and NHS leaders says the ageing population and advances in medical science that keep people alive for longer are also significant factors.

December 15, 2025 at 7:39 AM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Continuing to be very rattled and upset about this piece in Renewal, this part in particular.

If this is how people feel, they need to be told they are wrong.

renewal.org.uk/blog/a-unite...

Those of us on the centre-left must understand that the visceral need to ‘stop the boats’ stems from a deep, human desire to know who is in our group – who is British – and who is not.

December 11, 2025 at 10:54 AM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Systemic barriers to Accessible Information Standards implementation.

December 10, 2025 at 2:34 PM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

More from the main report on the lack of implementation of the Accessible Information Standard.

www.gov.uk/government/p...

4.3 Lack of implementation of the Accessible Information Standards in England

There was consensus among the 60 organisations, professional networks and experts we consulted that the AIS has not been consistently implemented and lacked means of enforcement.

Joint research by several charities found that:

67% of deaf people reported that they had no accessible method of contacting their GP
81% of patients reported having an appointment where their communication needs were unmet
one-third of staff were not aware of the AIS[footnote 105][footnote 106]

December 10, 2025 at 2:30 PM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

I am a Renewal subscriber and I am not impressed by this.

I think this paragraph is especially telling. This is another Mr Blobby Patriotism laundry list. Describing the Welsh language as a "love of consonants" is offensively belittling imv.

Britain is not a monolithic entity, made up of people and places that look or act the same. We are rooted in strong, distinctive local communities with their own traditions and quirks - from cheese rolling in Gloucester, Burns Night in Scotland, “me duck” in the East Midlands, “boss man” in London, the great jam-cream scone debate, the Welsh love of consonants, and the curry mile in Manchester (and London and Leicester). Each part of the United Kingdom is different, looks different, sounds different. We probably have more accents than any other English-speaking nation. It doesn’t matter if you wear a kilt or a suit, pronounce ‘bath’ with an “ah” or an “a”, need a lot of SPF or very little, we are still British because we believe in the same values and look out for one another.

December 10, 2025 at 10:22 AM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Inadvisably reading the Home Office Impact Assessment.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6937e6...

How
employers choose to adjust, the relative ease and length of time
taken to do so will depend on the specific characteristics of an
occupation and firms. These adjustments could include:
• Altering the ratio of labour to capital within the firm’s
production, such as automating the production line where
possible, and substituting capital for labour,
• Freezing recruitment, or substituting for domestic inflows
into the workforce
• Changing production levels.
• Changing location of production or outsourcing parts of
the production process
Each of these adjustments may come with a cost to the firm, either
in the form of higher wages, higher up-front investment costs or, in
some cases, lower output.
While it is not possible to quantify these as the ability of an employer
to respond through each of these avenues is highly firm-specific, it
is likely this policy represents, at least in the short-term, an overall
negative impact on business. The monetised impacts set out below
are likely to be small in comparison.

December 10, 2025 at 9:51 AM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Am interpreting Wes Streeting's Guardian op-ed as an attempt to get back to the "written off" labelling framing from the overdiagnosis framing, following in the same style as the PM's earlier piece.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I gave a simple answer, that yes, I did think there was overdiagnosis, that too many people were being written off, and too many people weren’t getting the support they needed.

December 7, 2025 at 8:04 AM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Too busy to write anything longer, but noting that the Health Foundation say that in 2024 the two most common work-limiting health categories were musculoskeletal and mental health conditions.

www.health.org.uk/evidence-hub...

Musculoskeletal and mental health conditions are the most common work-limiting health conditions reported by working-age people, both in and out of work. In 2023, around 2 million people aged 16–64 reported a work-limiting musculoskeletal condition as their primary condition, while an additional 2 million reported a primary work-limiting mental health condition.

December 4, 2025 at 8:55 AM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

This reporting on a water outage suggests the possibility that priority service registers have either not been used properly or that the service level specified wasn't reached.

(Unless I misunderstood what the service level is meant to be.)

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Bottled water stations are open around Tunbridge Wells as the water company scrambles to ensure no one runs out. Elderly people have reported having difficulties reaching these stations and having to rely on neighbours as the water company has not managed to do home deliveries.

December 2, 2025 at 8:05 PM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Some ground water sources are still declining.

Groundwater levels have begun to rise at around half of sites across England, with the rest continuing to recede. In faster responding aquifers like the Jurassic Limestone, groundwater levels have risen quickly and are now classed as normal for the time of year. In the chalk aquifers of the South Downs, levels have stabilised, while other aquifers continue to see declining groundwater levels. Chalk sites from Yorkshire to the Wessex and South Downs are below normal or lower for the time of year, while chalk aquifers in the Chilterns and east England are mostly normal.

December 2, 2025 at 7:58 PM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Really do think that the situation with water is not being explained properly to the public. Hopefully we get an at least normally wet winter, but maybe we won't.

www.gov.uk/government/p...

4. Public water supply

Water companies in drought continue to follow their drought plans. Several water companies have seen their water resource situation improve over the last week following recent rainfall. However, November rainfall has not been so high in the south-east and south-west of England. Many water companies remain concerned about recovery of water resources over winter if conditions result in lower than average rainfall.

Water companies report their drought response using operational drought levels, from drought level 1 escalating to level 4.

December 2, 2025 at 7:56 PM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

In my view, outsourcing to a single web developer in this way should have been a signal to management that further probing of this process was warranted.

Report does say that this was on the risk register.

OBR staff run the OBR’s website, including updating material and uploading newly published reports and other documents. The exception is (usually) three days per year – the days when the two EFOs and the summer Fiscal risks and sustainability report are published – when the amount of information that needs to be uploaded and the other responsibilities of the team mean an external website developer provides support with website updating and document upload. This web developer has been providing this service to the OBR throughout its history. The web developer also helps with any website development for new pages, accessibility requirements or functionality, as needed. Several re-designs have been made to the OBR’s website over its existence, with a focus on improving usability and accessibility.

December 1, 2025 at 7:04 PM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Misconfigured WordPress plugin, because the scale and importance of the task wasn't provided for adequately. I feel really sorry for the staff.

Despite its considerable influence and expertise, the OBR is, in organisational terms, very small, with a budget appropriate to a small analytical organisation. Examination of the OBR’s plans for publication of the November 2025 EFO and multiple related documents reveal a well-planned but significantly underpowered operation. The technology stack and the configuration methods used on the OBR website are some of the most widely used globally, but the tier of product deployed is more akin to that used by a small or mediumsized business (which of course in size the OBR resembles). One simple example of this that emerged during the investigation is the remarkably small file size to which the OBR is limited in publishing. Moreover, enterprise solutions might have embedded audit or review processes which would catch the sort of configuration errors that caused last week’s incident. Furthermore, the OBR’s own risk register notes the vulnerability of its publication capability to absences of single individuals like a web developer. This is in marked contrast to the scale of the Treasury’s capabilities to publish the rest of the critical Budget material, and there are numerous other examples in government of the sort of scale and capability needed to ensure successful publication of major government outputs, especially those with particular sensitivities around their publication. The OBR’s online capabilities, processes and procedures are insufficient for the vital and sensitive task it is entrusted to deliver.

December 1, 2025 at 6:54 PM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

The PM has used the word neurodivergent in a Graun oped. Hmm.

Economic renewal also demands that we must continue to reform the welfare state. We inherited a failing system that left children too poor to eat and which wrote off young people as too sick to work. We must not accept either part of that failing Tory system. That is why we will do more to help young people achieve their potential. Because if you are ignored in your early career, if you are not given the support you need to overcome your mental health issues, or if you are simply written off because you are neurodivergent or disabled, then it can trap you in a cycle of worklessness and dependency for decades.

December 1, 2025 at 7:27 AM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Was reading this article yesterday on reduced West Coast Main Line train services with weary resignation. Thought we got to the crux of the matter in paragraphs 14 and 15.

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

An Avanti spokesperson confirmed that its fastest service would still run with crew, but no passengers. They said: “We are disappointed with the Office of Rail and Road’s decision not to grant access rights from December for four weekday services that we currently operate, including the 07.00 from Manchester to London fast service, as well as requiring a Sunday service which currently runs from Holyhead to London to terminate at Crewe. This will clearly impact those customers who already use these services.”

The ORR said: “Our decision on the Manchester-London service was based on robust evidence provided by Network Rail that adding services within firebreak paths on the west coast mainline would have a detrimental impact on performance. We identified that this service would run in one of those paths.

November 30, 2025 at 7:23 AM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Feels like a good day to reshare this piece by Ciaran Martin apropos the reanimated discussion of the British Library cyberattack.

www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/blog/jaguar-...

And here’s the extraordinary thing: at that point, and at that point only, the HSE was required to report itself to regulatory authorities for failure to uphold its legal obligations. When the organisation was entirely unable to fulfil its core function of allocating healthcare, it hadn’t breached the law. But when it lost a few bits of personal data, it was time for full-on regulatory enforcement.

November 18, 2025 at 4:30 PM

Ann

@agvbergin.net

Had forgotten what this paper published last year concluded, but it supports what this report says about attainment for SEND pupils.

> The academic achievement gap between students with and without special educational needs and disabilities

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

ABSTRACT

Legislative frameworks in England have been designed to support children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Despite efforts from policy makers, achievement gaps persist between students with SEND and their typically developing peers. This study examines the extent and persistence of academic achievement gaps between students with various SEND classifications and their peers. Utilising data from the National Pupil Database, a comprehensive analysis of approximately 2.5 million Year 6 students across four academic years was conducted. The analysis focused on reading, mathematics, and writing achievements, exploring variations by SEND type and assessing changes over time. The findings revealed substantial, persistent gaps across all examined subjects, with the largest discrepancies noted in students with intellectual disabilities. Although some variability was observed based on the type of SEND, all students with SEND performed, on average, below their peers, with gaps widening over the examined period. The results underscore the need for a critical re-evaluation of educational practices and policies intended to support students with SEND.

November 14, 2025 at 6:22 PM

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