Month: November 2022

Local council and city mayors are elected in the polls, which are held every four years.

But these elections are also drawing global attention this year as Taiwan becomes a bigger geopolitical flashpoint between China and the US.

The Chinese government sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that will, eventually, be part of the country.

But many Taiwanese people consider their self-ruled island – with its own form of government and a democratic system – to be distinct.

This election also involves a referendum to lower the voting age to 18. Currently, only people above the age of 20 can vote. But more and more younger people appear to be becoming politically conscious, with turnout at the 2020 vote being the highest ever.

Young people have told the BBC they’re directly being driven by the “China threat” – an issue that has been a big part of the political conversation throughout their lives.

There are two main political parties in Taiwan and they have differing approaches to China.

The Kuomintang (KMT), a party of conservative business champions, are traditionally seen as pro-China “doves”. They have advocated for economic engagement with China and have appeared to be in favour of unification, though they have strongly denied being pro-China.

Their main rival is the governing Democratic People’s Party (DPP) whose leader Tsai Ing-wen won by a landslide in the 2020 national election. Ms Tsai has taken a strong stance towards China, saying Beijing needed to show Taiwan respect and that Taipei would not bow to pressure.

She was re-elected in 2020 on a promise to stand up to Beijing. Locals told the BBC at the time that protests in Hong Kong and Beijing’s subsequent crackdown on civil rights had raised concerns in Taiwan.

“The DPP is experiencing diminishing returns to its traditional brand of Taiwanese nationalism,” says Wen-ti Sung, a Taiwan politics analyst in Taipei who works for the Australian National University.

He says this year was full of national security events that should have been favourable to the DPP’s “rallying around the flag” sentiment.

Those national security events refer to US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan and China’s massive military drills in response, the war in Ukraine and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s commitment to make progress on cross-strait relations.

“Yet virtually all the polls indicate the DPP [is] failing to translate heightened nationalist sentiment into electoral support, unlike its big wins after the 2014 Sunflower Movement and 2020 presidential election post-Hong Kong crisis,” he said.

The government has claimed, ahead of the vote, that election meddling and interference from China was less than previously recorded.

Taiwan has accused China of repeated efforts to influence voters – through online misinformation campaigns, military threats and even offering cheap flights to Taiwanese living in China.

But Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said Chinese interference “was not as prevailing as [in] previous elections”.

He noted that Beijing might simply be “very busy in dealing with its own domestic problems”, referring to China’s soaring Covid cases.

According to the polls, the mayoral race is quite close in Taipei and Hsinchu, Taiwan’s Silicon Valley which is home to the country’s world-leading semiconductor and microchip businesses.

The races to watch out for are in six major cities, where 75% of the population live.

In Taipei, the KMT’s candidate is a man who says he’s the great grand-son of Chiang Kai-shek, who ruled Taiwan for several decades in the 20th century.

The family has rejected the claim but analysts point out that the KMT have often alluded to the link in their campaign.

Hsinchu is also considered a bellwether, Dr Sung says. It’s a three-way race for the mayorship, with the KMT and DPP candidates being challenged by a technocrat who is backed by the Taiwan People’s Party and Terry Gou, the founder of technology manufacturing giant Foxconn.

The incumbent DPP sees winning Hsinchu as critical to maintaining its electoral support in northern Taiwan.

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) said the consecutive days of action – split across every council in the country – would take place in January and February next year.

Teachers in two local authorities will strike on each of the 16 days.

The union’s general secretary Andrea Bradley said members had been “forced to escalate” measures.

A strike on Thursday closed nearly every primary and secondary school in the country, and many council nurseries.

A revised pay offer put to unions on Tuesday was rejected as “insulting”.

But Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said their demand for a 10% pay rise was “unaffordable”.

A new pay offer from employer Cosla – which would see rises of up to 6.85% for the lowest paid – was fair, Ms Somerville said.

She added: “Strikes are in no-one’s interest and we continue to engage with the unions to find a resolution.

“I recognise the strength of feeling within the unions but they also need to recognise that the Scottish government budget is fixed and is already committed. Any new money for teacher pay would have to come from elsewhere in education.”

One parent in Edinburgh told the BBC he was concerned about his son who is about to take exams.

He said: “I think it’s a difficult year. There’s a lot of strikes about and you’ve got to give some sympathy for them but it’s probably not the best time with them coming up to the prelims.”

The EIS had already announced further action on 10 and 11 January, with the latest dates taking place between 16 January and 6 February.

Meanwhile the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA) and the NASUWT plan to strike on 7 and 8 December.

Ms Bradley said: “We have been forced into the escalation of this action by the lack of willingness to negotiate properly and to pay teachers properly, by a government that says it wished to be judged on its record on education.

“The judgement of Scotland’s teachers on the matter of pay is clear, with the first programme of national strike action that we have engaged in for four decades.

“It is now for the Scottish government and Cosla to resolve this dispute, and prevent further strike action, by coming back to the negotiating table with a substantially improved pay offer for all of Scotland’s teaching professionals.”

The union hopes the mere threat of a further round of widespread industrial action in schools will lead to a pay deal.

Then again, it had hoped Thursday’s national strike would not have been necessary.

As things stand, every state school in the country is facing the prospect of two more EIS strikes in the New Year.

First there will be another national strike but it will be spread over two days – one day will target primaries, the other secondaries.

Then in the following weeks every school in each council area will face one strike.

Over the course of the action, each school will face the same level of EIS disruption. There is no sense of individual schools or areas being targeted, unlike the action in the 1980s which singled out some schools in the constituencies of government ministers.

Unions had rejected earlier pay offers of 5% before employer Cosla made its new offer on Tuesday in a last-ditch attempt to delay the strike.

It offered all teachers on the main pay scales either a 5% pay rise or a £1,926 increase in their salary – whichever resulted in the greatest increase in their annual salary.

However, the uplift was capped at £3,000 for those earning more than £60,000.

The EIS said this was unfair on people earning higher salaries who would receive a pay rise worth less than 5%.

Only the 20% of teachers earning less than about £40,107 would see their salary increase by more than 5%, the union added.

Scottish Labour’s education spokesman Michael Marra said the latest announcement was inevitable as the last offer had been rejected “so emphatically”.

He said: “The Scottish government has badly mishandled the most critical round of public pay negotiations in decades. Money should have been in the budget for public sector pay deals at the start of the budget year.”

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said the news was a sorry indictment of the government “pushing teachers to the edge”.

And the Scottish Conservatives education spokesman Stephen Kerr accused the SNP of a “dereliction of duty” that could have damaging consequences for pupils.

Scott Morrison – who was defeated at an election this year – has defended his appointments to several ministries as “necessary” in “extraordinary times”.

But an inquiry by a former High Court Justice found his conduct was “corrosive of trust in government”.

And current PM Anthony Albanese says it was “unprecedented and inexcusable”.

It emerged in August this year that Mr Morrison had become joint minister for health, finance, treasury, home affairs and resources in the two years before he lost power in May.

Most ministers were reportedly unaware they were sharing portfolios with Mr Morrison and he has been widely criticised, including by close colleagues.

Mr Morrison only used his extra powers once, to overrule the resources minister in a matter unrelated to the pandemic.

An investigation by the solicitor-general early this year found Mr Morrison had acted legally but had “fundamentally undermined” responsible government.

After a three-month inquiry, Virginia Bell came to a similar conclusion.

She ultimately found the appointments were “unnecessary” and three of five had “little if any connection to the pandemic”.

Mr Morrison’s rationale for swearing himself in to the ministries was “not easy to understand and difficult to reconcile,” she added.

The report also revealed that Mr Morrison also instructed his department to plan for his appointment to administer a sixth additional role, but ultimately decided not to proceed with it.

The report does not criticise Australia’s governor general who oversaw the secret appointments, saying he was acting on the advice of the government of the day.

Mr Morrison on Friday repeated his defence of his actions, in a statement posted on social media.

“These decisions were taken during an extremely challenging period, where there was a need for considerable urgency,” he said, noting critics were speaking with the “benefit” of hindsight.

He questioned the ability for “third parties” to draw “definitive conclusions” on the matter.

But Mr Albanese said report showed that the actions of the former prime minister were “extraordinary” and “wrong”, adding the previous government had operated under a culture of secrecy.

He said the Australian people were owed an apology after being “misled over the structure of their government”.

Mr Albanese accepted the report’s suggestions for reform, including new legislation that would require any appointments be publicly disclosed.

Earlier on Friday morning, former treasurer Josh Frydenberg spoke out for the first time, saying Mr Morrison’s secret ministries were “extreme overreach”.

Mr Morrison was a close political ally and still hasn’t apologised for secretly swearing himself into the treasury portfolio, Mr Frydenberg – who lost his seat at the election – has told columnist and author Niki Savva.

The Scottish government’s £515m deal will now be considered by unions.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Health Secretary Humza Yousaf were involved in “extensive” talks ahead of this latest proposal.

Unite and GMB have both suspended action by ambulance staff and confirmed that the offer will be put to members in a ballot.

Unite’s Scottish Ambulance Service members had planned a work-to-rule on Friday and 1,700 GMB members were scheduled to begin a 26-hour strike on Monday.

The RCN, which had delayed a formal announcement on strikes while negotiations took place this week, confirmed that its board members would consider the detail of an offer that “still does not meet our members’ expectations”.

It had asked for at least 5% above inflation, which is currently 11.1%.

However, the Scottish government said the new deal was a “record high pay offer” for front line employees, including nurses, paramedics, allied health professionals and healthcare support staff.

Annual pay rises under the latest deal would range from a flat rate payment of £2,205 for staff in Bands 1 to 4 and up to £2,660 for staff in Bands 5 to 7, backdated to April.

This represents an increase of 11.3% for the lowest paid workers and delivers an average uplift of 7.5%, a government spokesperson said.

An earlier version of this table was incorrectly labelled. This was due to an error in information supplied by the Scottish government.

The new offer for staff on Agenda for Change contracts also included a review into reducing the working week from 37.5 hours to 36 hours with no loss of pay.

Mr Yousaf said no stone had been left unturned to reach its “best and final pay offer”.

He said: “We have made the best offer possible to get money into the pockets of hard working staff and to avoid industrial action, in what is already going to be an incredibly challenging winter.”

This is a “final offer” to NHS workers according to the health secretary, who told me there is “zilch, nada, nothing left in the coffers” to improve it further.

Humza Yousaf has found an extra £35m to increase the uplift for middle earners and he’s agreed to work towards a shorter working week of 36 instead of 37.5 hours.

This feels like a potential breakthrough with the largest union, Unison, recommending it to its members, the GMB and Unite unions suspending industrial action and the RCN – while unimpressed – agreeing to consider it.

Ministers have prioritised trying to resolve this dispute because they believe NHS strikes would be “catastrophic” in an already overstretched service.

If the offer – typically worth 7.5% – is accepted there is also a hope in government that it might change the conversation with teachers who have been holding out for 10%.

There will be a huge sigh of relief that industrial action has been averted – for now.

The health service is already under severe pressure and any level of disruption would have both short and long term consequences. The health secretary has already described the impact of nurses, paramedics and other key healthcare workers walking out as “catastrophic”.

But what does this offer mean?

Pay for NHS Agenda for Change staff – including nurses, ambulance workers, physiotherapists and healthcare assistants – is negotiated by the Scottish government and the various unions that represent them.

They all say that they will consider whether this new offer is enough money. Until then strikes are off.

For some, particularly the lower paid staff, this will be seen as a good deal and the government has found extra money to bump up the pay of those in the middle bands. The likes of a charge nurse will now be looking at around a 6% pay increase.

A review into reducing the working week to 36 hours as well as other well-being measures will also be a morale boost to those on the ground who feel undervalued as well as underpaid.

Of course this doesn’t solve the long term problems of staffing for the NHS. One in 10 nursing and midwifery posts are unfilled. And we know demand continues to grow. Junior doctors are also continuing to press the government for an increase in their pay.

PPE Medpro won government contracts worth £203m during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Guardian has published allegations based on leaked documents that Conservative peer Michelle Mone financially benefitted from the company.

The Glasgow-born businesswoman, who joined the House of Lords in 2015, has been previously linked to PPE Medpro.

Emails released under Freedom of Information laws show her referring the company to a government minister during the pandemic.

Baroness Mone is being investigated by the House of Lords Standards Commissioner in connection to PPE Medpro. Properties linked to the company have previously been searched by the National Crime Agency.

Referencing the Guardian story during an urgent question in the House of Commons, Ms Rayner said it appeared “tens of millions of pounds” from the money awarded to the company “ended up in offshore accounts connected to the individuals involved”.

In response, Health Minister Neil O’Brien told MPs it had been widely reported PPE Medpro had an “underperforming contract” and the government could claim for damages, which can be followed by litigation if an agreement isn’t reached.

He said a satisfactory agreement had not been reached with PPE Medpro yet. He also stressed the urgency of securing supplies of PPE during the pandemic.

At the time, he said, the government was operating under “extraordinary circumstances” to quickly get PPE to the frontline.

Medpro has previously said that its gowns passed technical inspection and met the contractual requirements.

Baroness Mone has previously told the BBC through her lawyers she never had any role or function in the company, or in the process in which contracts were awarded.