Mark Dolan: Care home and NHS staff shouldn't face sack over no Covid jab, no job

How strange, we're in a pandemic so bad, the government can afford to fire care home workers and potentially NHS staff as we enter a predicted winter crisis. With our care home sector already diabolically understaffed, how does it help the quality of life and health outcomes of very old, sick and vulnerable people to be in a medical or care setting with fewer staff.

I’m clear that no one should lose their job for their vaccine status, least of all those so desperately needed to care for the sick and elderly. But don’t take my word for it.

World renowned epidemiologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, biostatistician at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and scientific advisory to the Centers for Disease Control Martin Kulldorf has said So you’ve had my opinion and it's just an opinion of course – I’ve looked at the data - you've got Martín Kulldorf’s expertise and knowledge. But perhaps you would like to hear a personal account. Someone's story.

Someone in the front line of healthcare. May I do that? You know I love getting your emails, it's the best bit of my show – Mark@GBnews.uk

Well I received this from a viewer earlier this week. Worth a moment of your time Hello, I am a healthcare worker and I strongly object to anyone telling me what I should and should not put in my body. And I strongly object to being threatened by job loss for failure to comply. In the first lock down you sent people like me out to work on your behalf with no protection while you sat snugly behind your computer screen and told us what to do for your benefit.

As long as we turned up you did not care about us. Banging your pots and pans was utterly pointless. We were not NHS heroes we simply were not given the option of staying home. And now politicians and some of your panellists, people with absolutely no scientific or medical credentials, are telling me what to put into my body. You will lose people like me - those same people who got you through the pandemic and continue to deliver your healthcare services because bullying is exactly what this is.

Kind regards, Anne

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The impact of Brexit on the UK economy will be worse than that caused by the pandemic, according to the chairman of the UK fiscal watchdog. Richard Hughes said the Office for Budget Responsibility, the OBR, had assumed leaving the EU would hit UK growth by 4% as opposed to the 2% impact of Covid. Now I can't say whether the office for budget responsibility is chock-full of remainers.

I have no doubt their methodology is rigorous and fair, in the same way that their modelling for future economic growth carries plenty of weight. In fact having a neutral independent organisation like this is far better than before the downturn in 2008, when economic predictions came from a coterie of politicians, treasury civil servants and quangoes.

But it's pretty clear that the OBR is often and perhaps understandably, cautiously pessimistic in all matters, as we saw this week in the budget, where growth forecasts from the OBR were raised, giving the Chancellor a bit more, wiggle room.

So they’ve slightly underestimated economic growth in the last few months, but they have HUGELY underestimated the potential of Brexit. This reflects a wider of Remainer mentality in the country. Whether it’s the media, corporations or the civil service, Britain is institutionally Remain. But the fundamental promise of Brexit will change this, and Remain voices in the years and decades to come will ultimately be eating their words. I doubt they’ll say sorry though. It's not that Brexit CAN succeed, it's that it can't fail. No matter how many would love to see that happen. A country with control of its laws, its trade policy, its currency and its borders is inevitably stronger, than one trapped in a political union.

Ask Poland who are in a battle with Brussels over the supremacy of their laws. Ask the Irish who, following a change in the rules in Brussels, can no longer be a low tax haven, attracting the likes of Apple to their shores.

Ask the Italians, whose economy is hamstrung, by a strong Euro, which impact their trade exports and has done for years – they desperately need to devalue, and could if they were out. Of course Brexit wasn't only economic. It was cultural and political too. It was the resurrection of Britain as an independent sovereign state, where political accountability is to be found in Westminster rather than Brussels.

The many attempts to dilute Brexit or even deny it to the British people, via a second referendum, would have provoked a democratic crisis in this country ,from which we might never have recovered and I genuinely would have feared for the stability of our society if that vote in 2016, the biggest plebiscite in our history, was denied.

It was cultural too. Britain wanted to be Britain again and not be enslaved by silly and petty rules dreamt up by faceless bureaucrats and millions wanted to free of that omnipresent EU flag, a symbol of the dominance and far-reaching power of this political block.

I voted Romain, because I felt Brexit would make trade harder with our biggest export market, the EU. And that is the case. There is a downward correction. A price has and will be been paid. But I believe that many who wanted Brexit, if not all, accept that and accepted it at the time. Who thought it would be an instant bed of roses.

The British public are not stupid. An unfashionable view I know, but there you have it. It's about the bigger picture and voters got that. When it comes to our trade with Europe, there will be bumps in the road, but market forces will prevail, as they always do. We've already seen the EU give ground on that hated Northern Ireland protocol, which places an invisible border down the Irish Sea, splitting our country. I guarantee you in time it will go, or at the very least be fudged, so that it all but disappears, once the political tensions ease and common sense and mutual self-interest take over.

And the same will happen for trade with the block too. Because if it's harder for us to export to the continent, it will be harder for them to export to us. We run a trade deficit, which means we are a bigger customer to them, than they are to us.

The laws of economic gravity will prevail and these teething problems will in time resolve. That's before we've got to the future trade deals with other countries that will continue to come thick and fast. The ink is drying on a deal with New Zealand as we speak. Before the referendum we were collective hostages to the EU trade policy - you try getting 27 divergent nations to agree on one set of trade terms, with a country like America.

It's never going to happen. Every trade deal that we do with these great nations, can be tailored to the needs of our economy and our society. And we can be more nimble footed, as we were when we ditched the EU’s vaccine programme and went it alone. Mark my words, a US trade deal with the UK is coming.

Probably ten minutes after Donald Trump re-enters the White House in 2024. So the OBR are right to be cautious in all of their predictions - that's what makes them a trusted institution. But their glass is half empty and mine is positively overflowing.

It will take time, after a 47 year trading and strategic relationship with our neighbours across the channel. But if you don’t think we are lucky to be out, look at the behaviour of the French in our shipping waters as we speak. A nation to whom we famously came to the rescue in the Second Word war – short memopries, eh? So much for the entente cordiale.

Don’t underestimate the number of people who want Global Britain to fail, sadly, many in our own country. Look at the glee with which the Europhile commentariat seized on a global supply line crisis as though it were the fault of Brexit, when Poland, Italy and the United States ran out of HGV drivers. The number crunchers at the OBR have got this wrong - Britain will prosper mightily. And not in spite of Brexit, but because of it. And I’ll drink to that.