SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Isn't it only private after the event? The polls the parties decide not to release to the newspapers once they see the results?
In Britain, the polling council rules prevent you partially releasing a poll to show the good bits - if you announce anything, the firm has to publish the full set.
I can’t see Hall winning under any circumstances. She’s not up to the job, and that will become clear under any sort of scrutiny.
The Tories are desperately trying to make ULEZ an issue, but it’s a core vote strategy. It won’t add much beyond it.
The Tories also fail to notice that there was a big swing against them in Uxbridge. They just need to make full use of their remaining year to loot the country as they won't get another chance in the foreseeable future.
Asked if he considered himself unlucky during his flight to the G20 summit in Delhi, Sunak laughed before rejecting the suggestion outright. He instead said he was “fired up” and “entirely confident” that the Tories can win, highlighting a series of new appointments in No 10 and the Tories’ recent by-election victory in Uxbridge.
“I am entirely confident that we can win the next election, you had a sense of that just a couple of months ago in Uxbridge,” he said. “In that by-election, when voters were confronted with an actual choice between us and the Labour Party on an issue of substance, what did they do? They voted for us."
Check out what John Major said in the run up to 1997.
Or what Neil Kinnock said in public/private in the run up to 1992
In both cases, private polling had told them what was going to happen.
It’s part of the “truths that can never be stated” in politics.
Was there private polling that Kinnock saw that suggested he would lose? Didn’t know that. I assumed ALL polling was wrong in advance of 1992.
I'm extremely sceptical when people start talking about "private polling" as if there is some kind of fundamentally more accurate type of special polling that is reserved to political parties and unavailable to the great unwashed.
Parties will do some polling in key seats, and may dig into greater detail on perceptions of them and others than published polls go into. They also canvass so get a broad impression when their vote is a bit softer than published polls suggest. But it simply isn't the case that, for example, Labour high command weren't surprised on the downside in 1992.
Take examples like the US Presidential election in 2016. Hillary Clinton had a seriously well-funded campaign which I am sure was not lacking in data. But their data was clearly as wrong as the published polls, since they wasted the late days of the campaign in states that weren't particularly competitive as it turns out.
The whole "private polling" as a higher grade of polling suggestion is for the birds.
Correct. Private polling exists to tell you things the public polls don't, not to second-guess them.
Isn't it only private after the event? The polls the parties decide not to release to the newspapers once they see the results?
Not usually. Private polling will be on much more precise questions, such as policy or personnel, that you may not want released at all.
Of course, the advantage of 'private polling' is that it can mean anything from 'a full survey from a BPC member' to 'our activist spent 5 minutes canvassing Acacia Avenue, to 'I've done a trawl of Twitter', and the journalist has no way to tell the difference.
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
How soon we forget those Thursday evening rock'n'roll sessions with saucepan lids.
It's always been a very mixed bag. I remember the first time my dad went into hospital with bacteraemia, about a decade and a hand back. He was put on the geriatric ward, where old coots seemed to be parked to die. Every day I was there visiting, they closed the curtains round the Ward beds to carry out at least one newly deceased. If the family hadn't gone in every day to feed him, he'd have starved to death, and wouldn't have got adequate (lifesaving) treatment had we not politely made ourselves pains in the arse.
The NHS is far from a terrible idea, but worship of it is delusional.
I can’t see Hall winning under any circumstances. She’s not up to the job, and that will become clear under any sort of scrutiny.
The Tories are desperately trying to make ULEZ an issue, but it’s a core vote strategy. It won’t add much beyond it.
The Tories also fail to notice that there was a big swing against them in Uxbridge. They just need to make full use of their remaining year to loot the country as they won't get another chance in the foreseeable future.
Asked if he considered himself unlucky during his flight to the G20 summit in Delhi, Sunak laughed before rejecting the suggestion outright. He instead said he was “fired up” and “entirely confident” that the Tories can win, highlighting a series of new appointments in No 10 and the Tories’ recent by-election victory in Uxbridge.
“I am entirely confident that we can win the next election, you had a sense of that just a couple of months ago in Uxbridge,” he said. “In that by-election, when voters were confronted with an actual choice between us and the Labour Party on an issue of substance, what did they do? They voted for us."
There is an interesting paradox on election timing.
Clinging on until January 25 will guarantee a rout for the Tories, however the chances are very high that they will lose at any time the election is held in 2024. So if you are PM, you will stay for as long as possible, since defeat of some kind is pretty certain, but delaying a) leaves at least a chance that something could turn up and b) you get to stay PM.
From the point of view of the Conservative party, while you would want to minimize the defeat and save as many seats as you can, nevertheless the hope that something will turn up keeps you at the government table for a few more weeks/months.
From the point of view of the country, however, the Conservatives move from being unpopular to becoming toxic waste and any chance the voters get they will kick the Tories as hard as they can: locals, by elections, anywhere.
By 2025 the voters go on a kill frenzy ("were you still up for Rees Mogg?") and it takes at least two Parliaments to recover, and maybe they do not survive in their current form...
Having fought one winter election in 2019, I would not want to do it again, but that does seem to be where Sunak is headed.
On the actual article linked to, I think it's the Sun who are putting the 2030 gloss on it and suggesting a January 2025 election is seriously on the cards. Indeed, even if there was a January 2025 election, it's possible but unlikely the next Parliament would run to 2030. It just reads better on a headline to say 2030 than 2029 because it feels much further away than 2029 even though it isn't much in reality.
Betfair has 2025 as a 5.1 shot if you think that's where it's going, but I don't.
Personally, I think the idea of Spring 2024 is underrated, but accept that the most likely thing is he either launches it at the Tory Conference or just before Conference season.
Very small straw in the wind was the questionnaire I received recently from Laurence Robertson. Bet a lot of constituencies were surprised to learn he was their MP, such is his normal level of somnolence.
That kind of thing is expensive, so it made me wonder whether we are close to an election. Spring 2024 may well be on then, although my money may would still be on the autumn.
Hanging on to the death is simply not feasible. They'd risk wipeout, even if events were somehow to turn in their favour.
A combination of boundary changes and lots of new build in Bishops Cleeve (now the largest settlement in the constituency) plus recent gains by the Lib Dems probably making Robertson feel a bit blind about things.
The Lib Dems seem pretty confident about Cheltenham and have been out in force in other places- notably Ciren and Cleeve and it led to big gains at the locals, They could fancy their chances. The Tories got whipped on the district council in May.
If I were Robertson I´d be trying to work the patch a bit more too- just in case.
Objectively, I now struggle to see why the Tories aren't favourites in mid-Beds (they're on 3.6 as I write). The starting line is 60/22/13 (Con/Lab/LD). Say the Tories lose 40% of their vote, with a fifth staying at home, and a tenth going to each of Lab and LD. That makes it 36/28/19. Now assume that the Lab/LD canvassing blitz persuades a third of the voters of the other party to give tactical support - surely the maximum given that both are trying so hard. That makes it either 36/35/13 or 36/19/28. A Labour win looks just conceivable, a LD win less than that, but surely a Tory win is the best bet at the moment?
On topic - the R&W London poll that got everyone excited shows the Tories getting a lower vote share than they have received in any London mayoral election since 2004. It also shows both the Greens and LibDems considerably outperforming their normal mayoral numbers. Khan is a very poor candidate but I would not be panicking yet if i were him. He will face months of brutal media attacks, though. If the Tories had a better candidate they'd have a very good chance indeed.
On a side note, one thing that seems to have had little attention is that the old STV voting system the Tories got rid of for entirely partisan reasons was approved by Londoners in a referendum. So, let's not kid ourselves that such referenda are requirements for voting system changes.
I've never thought they were. And the 'it was in the manifesto' pretext for this FPTP change is seriously weak (the manifesto did not say mayoral or other elections would change, it just talked about supporting FPTP generically), and even if it wasn't it opens the door wide open to Labour making changes without referenda so long as they include a line in their next manifesto.
It's different for Westminster elections I hear? Why is that?
I'm not sure they'll do it though. A Trudeau like convenient conversion to believing it is to too complex to be doing seems likely when there's a win, and it's not a unified position in the party anyway.
It says Astronomical Autumn begins on 23rd September. It does not say that there is 'no scientific basis for so-called' meteorological autumn either.
It's spurious (of you) to say that the seasons are governed 'scientifically' according to the way the earth spins on its tilted axis and circles the sun because meteorology in the UK is governed by a multiplicity of additional scientific factors.
I study the weather, admittedly as an amateur, and everyone I know using meteorological seasons.
It's already autumn and if it doesn't feel like it today, it sure as heck will a week from now.
The Met Office themselves analyse seasonal climate based on DJF, NAM, JJA and SON. The WMO classifies JJA as the boreal summer.
The whole Autumn begins on the equinox thing is bizarre because I don’t understand the point these people are trying to make. There is none. Unless it’s a subtle way of saying “nothing to see here, it’s hot in summer, nothing to do with climate change”. But I don’t even think it’s that.
It literally says there are two main definitions of summer. Why on earth is there an ongoing argument about the only definition of summer?
Next week on pb - two hundred and fifty belligerent posts to discuss whether a pound is a unit of currency or a measure of weights......
It is very simple: if I have to wear socks, wrist warmers and a snood (in addition to clothes on the rest of my body, just to stop any filthy minds on here) it is winter. Just socks: autumn. Long-sleeved dress or top: spring Sleeveless: summer
I am currently sleeveless: so it is summer.
There. Sorted.
How we see seasons is entirely psychological. In my mind I simply shorten winter down to late December to early February. Spring is first crocuses until mid June. Summer lasts till late September, autumn is late September to late December.
Some RWC predictions for today: Italy to easily beat Namibia by 20+pts Ireland to easily beat Romania by 20+pts Argentina to beat England by 10pts Australia v Georgia could be a banana skin match (betting opportunity). Georgia have a solid pack who will wear Australia down, and while you would expect Australia to have the superior skills, tactics, fitness etc - you have to factor in Eddie Jones who has generated a lot of bad feeling in the camp. I am not saying that Georgia will win - but it is possible. Bet accordingly. If they can win it will turn this group inside out!!
Thank you, Penddu2, I shall have a punt on those to liven up the day. I'll keep stakes small but you will nevertheless be hearing from my lawyers if they fail to reap a satisfactory return.
Btw, are you a Welsh-speaker? I ask because I am puzzled by the name of my young dog, 'Nia'. She's from Brecon. The Breeder apparently said it was Welsh for 'brightness' but I think he may have been bullshitting.
Objectively, I now struggle to see why the Tories aren't favourites in mid-Beds (they're on 3.6 as I write). The starting line is 60/22/13 (Con/Lab/LD). Say the Tories lose 40% of their vote, with a fifth staying at home, and a tenth going to each of Lab and LD. That makes it 36/28/19. Now assume that the Lab/LD canvassing blitz persuades a third of the voters of the other party to give tactical support - surely the maximum given that both are trying so hard. That makes it either 36/35/13 or 36/19/28. A Labour win looks just conceivable, a LD win less than that, but surely a Tory win is the best bet at the moment?
It's guessing stick time, but why not Con down by 50% or more?
In which case my £5 on Con in 3rd place at 20/1 with RCS looks interesting.
It says Astronomical Autumn begins on 23rd September. It does not say that there is 'no scientific basis for so-called' meteorological autumn either.
It's spurious (of you) to say that the seasons are governed 'scientifically' according to the way the earth spins on its tilted axis and circles the sun because meteorology in the UK is governed by a multiplicity of additional scientific factors.
I study the weather, admittedly as an amateur, and everyone I know using meteorological seasons.
It's already autumn and if it doesn't feel like it today, it sure as heck will a week from now.
The Met Office themselves analyse seasonal climate based on DJF, NAM, JJA and SON. The WMO classifies JJA as the boreal summer.
The whole Autumn begins on the equinox thing is bizarre because I don’t understand the point these people are trying to make. There is none. Unless it’s a subtle way of saying “nothing to see here, it’s hot in summer, nothing to do with climate change”. But I don’t even think it’s that.
It literally says there are two main definitions of summer. Why on earth is there an ongoing argument about the only definition of summer?
Next week on pb - two hundred and fifty belligerent posts to discuss whether a pound is a unit of currency or a measure of weights......
It is very simple: if I have to wear socks, wrist warmers and a snood (in addition to clothes on the rest of my body, just to stop any filthy minds on here) it is winter. Just socks: autumn. Long-sleeved dress or top: spring Sleeveless: summer
I am currently sleeveless: so it is summer.
There. Sorted.
How we see seasons is entirely psychological. In my mind I simply shorten winter down to late December to early February. Spring is first crocuses until mid June. Summer lasts till late September, autumn is late September to late December.
Why do we only have 4 seasons? I remember a 5 way split with an early spring and a late spring seasons.
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Would you like a bet on under/over mid teens if he stands?
On topic - the R&W London poll that got everyone excited shows the Tories getting a lower vote share than they have received in any London mayoral election since 2004. It also shows both the Greens and LibDems considerably outperforming their normal mayoral numbers. Khan is a very poor candidate but I would not be panicking yet if i were him. He will face months of brutal media attacks, though. If the Tories had a better candidate they'd have a very good chance indeed.
On a side note, one thing that seems to have had little attention is that the old STV voting system the Tories got rid of for entirely partisan reasons was approved by Londoners in a referendum. So, let's not kid ourselves that such referenda are requirements for voting system changes.
I've never thought they were. And the 'it was in the manifesto' pretext for this FPTP change is seriously weak (the manifesto did not say mayoral or other elections would change, it just talked about supporting FPTP generically), and even if it wasn't it opens the door wide open to Labour making changes without referenda so long as they include a line in their next manifesto.
It's different for Westminster elections I hear? Why is that?
I'm not sure they'll do it though. A Trudeau like convenient conversion to believing it is to too complex to be doing seems likely when there's a win, and it's not a unified position in the party anyway.
Even Brexit only happened because the Conservatives won a majority on it in their 2019 manifesto not because of the actual 2016 Leave vote.
Referendums are in reality irrelevant in terms of changing the law.
Having said that Khan can still won even under FPTP provided he squeezes other leftwing parties
Reports starting to circulate of despondent Labour canvassers in Mid Beds
Oh, Theakes, give over. I'm not bothering to pass on the anecdotal stuff that I get about excited Labour canvassers - we both have biased sources, and I suspect that neither of us really know.
Labour paying for not playing the long-game on the doorsteps I suspect. They were distracted by Uxbridge but to no avail, now they gotta focus on Tamworth too.
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Would you like a bet on under/over mid teens if he stands?
Personally I do think he would do better than mid-teens, if not as well as this anti-corbynite predicts.
There's no possible universe in which Corbo would do worse in London than he did nationwide in 2019 (where he got 1/3 of the vote, even if inefficiently distributed). #MayorCorbo https://nitter.net/K_Niemietz/status/1700437884560416870#m
I can’t see Hall winning under any circumstances. She’s not up to the job, and that will become clear under any sort of scrutiny.
The Tories are desperately trying to make ULEZ an issue, but it’s a core vote strategy. It won’t add much beyond it.
The Tories also fail to notice that there was a big swing against them in Uxbridge. They just need to make full use of their remaining year to loot the country as they won't get another chance in the foreseeable future.
Asked if he considered himself unlucky during his flight to the G20 summit in Delhi, Sunak laughed before rejecting the suggestion outright. He instead said he was “fired up” and “entirely confident” that the Tories can win, highlighting a series of new appointments in No 10 and the Tories’ recent by-election victory in Uxbridge.
“I am entirely confident that we can win the next election, you had a sense of that just a couple of months ago in Uxbridge,” he said. “In that by-election, when voters were confronted with an actual choice between us and the Labour Party on an issue of substance, what did they do? They voted for us."
There is an interesting paradox on election timing.
Clinging on until January 25 will guarantee a rout for the Tories, however the chances are very high that they will lose at any time the election is held in 2024. So if you are PM, you will stay for as long as possible, since defeat of some kind is pretty certain, but delaying a) leaves at least a chance that something could turn up and b) you get to stay PM.
From the point of view of the Conservative party, while you would want to minimize the defeat and save as many seats as you can, nevertheless the hope that something will turn up keeps you at the government table for a few more weeks/months.
From the point of view of the country, however, the Conservatives move from being unpopular to becoming toxic waste and any chance the voters get they will kick the Tories as hard as they can: locals, by elections, anywhere.
By 2025 the voters go on a kill frenzy ("were you still up for Rees Mogg?") and it takes at least two Parliaments to recover, and maybe they do not survive in their current form...
Having fought one winter election in 2019, I would not want to do it again, but that does seem to be where Sunak is headed.
On the actual article linked to, I think it's the Sun who are putting the 2030 gloss on it and suggesting a January 2025 election is seriously on the cards. Indeed, even if there was a January 2025 election, it's possible but unlikely the next Parliament would run to 2030. It just reads better on a headline to say 2030 than 2029 because it feels much further away than 2029 even though it isn't much in reality.
Betfair has 2025 as a 5.1 shot if you think that's where it's going, but I don't.
Personally, I think the idea of Spring 2024 is underrated, but accept that the most likely thing is he either launches it at the Tory Conference or just before Conference season.
Very small straw in the wind was the questionnaire I received recently from Laurence Robertson. Bet a lot of constituencies were surprised to learn he was their MP, such is his normal level of somnolence.
That kind of thing is expensive, so it made me wonder whether we are close to an election. Spring 2024 may well be on then, although my money may would still be on the autumn.
Hanging on to the death is simply not feasible. They'd risk wipeout, even if events were somehow to turn in their favour.
A combination of boundary changes and lots of new build in Bishops Cleeve (now the largest settlement in the constituency) plus recent gains by the Lib Dems probably making Robertson feel a bit blind about things.
The Lib Dems seem pretty confident about Cheltenham and have been out in force in other places- notably Ciren and Cleeve and it led to big gains at the locals, They could fancy their chances. The Tories got whipped on the district council in May.
If I were Robertson I´d be trying to work the patch a bit more too- just in case.
Thanks, Cicero. You evidently know the area quite well. What brings you down this way, apart from the racing, of course?
Naturally I can offer some local support for your observations. Cheltenham is a nailed on LD win, which in one respect is a bit of a pity. Alex Chalk is an excellent MP and just the sort the Tories would need for a serious rebuilding after the anticapted rout.
Robertson (Tewkesbury) would be much less of a loss. He's not the worst in the House, but is normally characterised as being lazy, which is another reason why I was a surprised to receive an enterprising questionnaire from him. He has a huge majority so if he is in on the cusp, you could be talking of less than 100 Tory MPs in the next Parliament. There was some scandal involving excessive hospitality at the Cheltenham Festival, but it seems to have blown over and as Parliamentary misdemeanours go it was pretty small beer. So i guess he's safe.
It's true that the LDs have been making excellent progress at Council level. This is highly relevant for me as I have to decide which way to cast my anti-government vote. It isn't clear whether Labour or the LDs are best placed to cause an upset. Probably the latter, but I'll decide nearer the date.
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Would you like a bet on under/over mid teens if he stands?
Personally I do think he would do better than mid-teens, if not as well as this anti-corbynite predicts.
There's no possible universe in which Corbo would do worse in London than he did nationwide in 2019 (where he got 1/3 of the vote, even if inefficiently distributed). #MayorCorbo https://nitter.net/K_Niemietz/status/1700437884560416870#m
Plenty has changed since 2019. We’re more aware of the level of antisemitism among Corbyn’s supporters, his soft-on-Russia approach looks worse following the invasion of Ukraine and his uncertain stance on Brexit doesn’t suit current public opinion.
And he didn’t get 1/3 of the vote in 2019. Labour did. Corbyn without Labour is not the same thing at all.
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Would you like a bet on under/over mid teens if he stands?
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Would you like a bet on under/over mid teens if he stands?
Personally I do think he would do better than mid-teens, if not as well as this anti-corbynite predicts.
There's no possible universe in which Corbo would do worse in London than he did nationwide in 2019 (where he got 1/3 of the vote, even if inefficiently distributed). #MayorCorbo https://nitter.net/K_Niemietz/status/1700437884560416870#m
Plenty has changed since 2019. We’re more aware of the level of antisemitism among Corbyn’s supporters, his soft-on-Russia approach looks worse following the invasion of Ukraine and his uncertain stance on Brexit doesn’t suit current public opinion.
Which is why I can believe he would get less than a third even in London. But I think high teens is probable, and depending on campaigns 20s would be a possibility.
Is it possible that the public have little faith in either main party and that the Lib Dems will take both seats as a protest vote against the establishment parties
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
How soon we forget those Thursday evening rock'n'roll sessions with saucepan lids.
It's always been a very mixed bag. I remember the first time my dad went into hospital with bacteraemia, about a decade and a hand back. He was put on the geriatric ward, where old coots seemed to be parked to die. Every day I was there visiting, they closed the curtains round the Ward beds to carry out at least one newly deceased. If the family hadn't gone in every day to feed him, he'd have starved to death, and wouldn't have got adequate (lifesaving) treatment had we not politely made ourselves pains in the arse.
The NHS is far from a terrible idea, but worship of it is delusional.
Late last October I went into hospital for a rather nasty operation. The nursing staff, whether qualified or unqualified were efficient, friendly and helpful. Treated me as someone who was expected to recover, albeit someone in his mid-eighties. Went from there to a rehab unit which was a bit more mixed, although I felt I had as much support, Physiotherapy etc as people much younger. It might have helped that I was known to some of the older staff, having worked with them, and indeed run teaching for them many years earlier!
Is it possible that the public have little faith in either main party and that the Lib Dems will take both seats as a protest vote against the establishment parties
The LDs are an establishment party. They're the establishment approved protest party.
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
How soon we forget those Thursday evening rock'n'roll sessions with saucepan lids.
It's always been a very mixed bag. I remember the first time my dad went into hospital with bacteraemia, about a decade and a hand back. He was put on the geriatric ward, where old coots seemed to be parked to die. Every day I was there visiting, they closed the curtains round the Ward beds to carry out at least one newly deceased. If the family hadn't gone in every day to feed him, he'd have starved to death, and wouldn't have got adequate (lifesaving) treatment had we not politely made ourselves pains in the arse.
The NHS is far from a terrible idea, but worship of it is delusional.
Late last October I went into hospital for a rather nasty operation. The nursing staff, whether qualified or unqualified were efficient, friendly and helpful. Treated me as someone who was expected to recover, albeit someone in his mid-eighties. Went from there to a rehab unit which was a bit more mixed, although I felt I had as much support, Physiotherapy etc as people much younger. It might have helped that I was known to some of the older staff, having worked with them, and indeed run teaching for them many years earlier!
When the NHS is good it can be very good indeed. When it's not it can be dreadful, and challenging it an exhausting experience (impossible without help, if you're ill).
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Would you like a bet on under/over mid teens if he stands?
Is it possible that the public have little faith in either main party and that the Lib Dems will take both seats as a protest vote against the establishment parties
The LDs are an establishment party. They're the establishment approved protest party.
Indeed the LDs the only party which has been in government with the Conservatives and Labour. The Conservatives at Westminster and Labour at Holyrood.
The LDs in 2019 also got the highest share of their vote from graduates and higher earners of the main parties
I can’t see Hall winning under any circumstances. She’s not up to the job, and that will become clear under any sort of scrutiny.
The Tories are desperately trying to make ULEZ an issue, but it’s a core vote strategy. It won’t add much beyond it.
The Tories also fail to notice that there was a big swing against them in Uxbridge. They just need to make full use of their remaining year to loot the country as they won't get another chance in the foreseeable future.
Asked if he considered himself unlucky during his flight to the G20 summit in Delhi, Sunak laughed before rejecting the suggestion outright. He instead said he was “fired up” and “entirely confident” that the Tories can win, highlighting a series of new appointments in No 10 and the Tories’ recent by-election victory in Uxbridge.
“I am entirely confident that we can win the next election, you had a sense of that just a couple of months ago in Uxbridge,” he said. “In that by-election, when voters were confronted with an actual choice between us and the Labour Party on an issue of substance, what did they do? They voted for us."
There is an interesting paradox on election timing.
Clinging on until January 25 will guarantee a rout for the Tories, however the chances are very high that they will lose at any time the election is held in 2024. So if you are PM, you will stay for as long as possible, since defeat of some kind is pretty certain, but delaying a) leaves at least a chance that something could turn up and b) you get to stay PM.
From the point of view of the Conservative party, while you would want to minimize the defeat and save as many seats as you can, nevertheless the hope that something will turn up keeps you at the government table for a few more weeks/months.
From the point of view of the country, however, the Conservatives move from being unpopular to becoming toxic waste and any chance the voters get they will kick the Tories as hard as they can: locals, by elections, anywhere.
By 2025 the voters go on a kill frenzy ("were you still up for Rees Mogg?") and it takes at least two Parliaments to recover, and maybe they do not survive in their current form...
Having fought one winter election in 2019, I would not want to do it again, but that does seem to be where Sunak is headed.
On the actual article linked to, I think it's the Sun who are putting the 2030 gloss on it and suggesting a January 2025 election is seriously on the cards. Indeed, even if there was a January 2025 election, it's possible but unlikely the next Parliament would run to 2030. It just reads better on a headline to say 2030 than 2029 because it feels much further away than 2029 even though it isn't much in reality.
Betfair has 2025 as a 5.1 shot if you think that's where it's going, but I don't.
Personally, I think the idea of Spring 2024 is underrated, but accept that the most likely thing is he either launches it at the Tory Conference or just before Conference season.
Very small straw in the wind was the questionnaire I received recently from Laurence Robertson. Bet a lot of constituencies were surprised to learn he was their MP, such is his normal level of somnolence.
That kind of thing is expensive, so it made me wonder whether we are close to an election. Spring 2024 may well be on then, although my money may would still be on the autumn.
Hanging on to the death is simply not feasible. They'd risk wipeout, even if events were somehow to turn in their favour.
A combination of boundary changes and lots of new build in Bishops Cleeve (now the largest settlement in the constituency) plus recent gains by the Lib Dems probably making Robertson feel a bit blind about things.
The Lib Dems seem pretty confident about Cheltenham and have been out in force in other places- notably Ciren and Cleeve and it led to big gains at the locals, They could fancy their chances. The Tories got whipped on the district council in May.
If I were Robertson I´d be trying to work the patch a bit more too- just in case.
Thanks, Cicero. You evidently know the area quite well. What brings you down this way, apart from the racing, of course?
Naturally I can offer some local support for your observations. Cheltenham is a nailed on LD win, which in one respect is a bit of a pity. Alex Chalk is an excellent MP and just the sort the Tories would need for a serious rebuilding after the anticapted rout.
Robertson (Tewkesbury) would be much less of a loss. He's not the worst in the House, but is normally characterised as being lazy, which is another reason why I was a surprised to receive an enterprising questionnaire from him. He has a huge majority so if he is in on the cusp, you could be talking of less than 100 Tory MPs in the next Parliament. There was some scandal involving excessive hospitality at the Cheltenham Festival, but it seems to have blown over and as Parliamentary misdemeanours go it was pretty small beer. So i guess he's safe.
It's true that the LDs have been making excellent progress at Council level. This is highly relevant for me as I have to decide which way to cast my anti-government vote. It isn't clear whether Labour or the LDs are best placed to cause an upset. Probably the latter, but I'll decide nearer the date.
Atb.
Well greetings to you!
I have family who moved to the area 30 years ago and have been out delivering when I have been staying there. Agreed about Chalk, but it seems that he has decided against a chicken run, partly, I suspect, to top up his reserves by going back into legal practice for a Parliament before having another go where his jacket won´t be on such a shoogly peg. (the payoff for losing might also be on his mind I guess), but also probably to avoid the inevitably nasty fall-out of defeat and and the soul destroying slog of the (much less well paid) opposition front bench with no early prospect of power.
Robertson is, as you say, much less well liked, and the boundaries are making the Tewkesbury seat a lot more open. However Geoffrey Clifton Brown who at 70 you might have thought would stand down seems set to try for the new North Cotswolds seat, which must be giving Robertson pause for thought.
After taking overall control of the Cotswolds District and leading the NOC council in Tewkesbury the Lib Dems are on a bit of a charge in GLos. I would say that Stroud, Forest of Dean and City of Gloucester look like solid Labour gains, and Cheltenham a Lib Dem gain. For the other three seats, Cotswolds North looks like the most solid Tory seat with Labout the chllenger, while South Cotswolds and Tewkesbury would be more marginal and Lib Dems the challengers.
So depends on which of the new constituencies you end up in as to how you cast your vote I guess. Cotswolds North or City of Gloucester then Labour, Cheltenham, Tewkesbury or Cotswolds South then Lib Dem.
Still the Tories are set to go from holding all seven of the seats in Glos down to possibly three or... on a day of miracles... down to one.
Reports starting to circulate of despondent Labour canvassers in Mid Beds
Despondent labour canvassers = good news for Labour. Because it means a likely Lib Dem win and therefore not a Tory hold. And the last thing Starmer needs is a new comeback narrative for the Tories.
Give up Mid Beds and throw the kitchen sink at Tamworth.
I expect Labour to win Tamworth by around 3,000 votes.
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
How soon we forget those Thursday evening rock'n'roll sessions with saucepan lids.
It's always been a very mixed bag. I remember the first time my dad went into hospital with bacteraemia, about a decade and a hand back. He was put on the geriatric ward, where old coots seemed to be parked to die. Every day I was there visiting, they closed the curtains round the Ward beds to carry out at least one newly deceased. If the family hadn't gone in every day to feed him, he'd have starved to death, and wouldn't have got adequate (lifesaving) treatment had we not politely made ourselves pains in the arse.
The NHS is far from a terrible idea, but worship of it is delusional.
Late last October I went into hospital for a rather nasty operation. The nursing staff, whether qualified or unqualified were efficient, friendly and helpful. Treated me as someone who was expected to recover, albeit someone in his mid-eighties. Went from there to a rehab unit which was a bit more mixed, although I felt I had as much support, Physiotherapy etc as people much younger. It might have helped that I was known to some of the older staff, having worked with them, and indeed run teaching for them many years earlier!
When the NHS is good it can be very good indeed. When it's not it can be dreadful, and challenging it an exhausting experience (impossible without help, if you're ill).
I’m now having rehab work from what I think of as the Community team and while they are clearly overloaded everyone seems efficient and motivated. I agree though when the system goes awry people can very defensive and negative.
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
How soon we forget those Thursday evening rock'n'roll sessions with saucepan lids.
It's always been a very mixed bag. I remember the first time my dad went into hospital with bacteraemia, about a decade and a hand back. He was put on the geriatric ward, where old coots seemed to be parked to die. Every day I was there visiting, they closed the curtains round the Ward beds to carry out at least one newly deceased. If the family hadn't gone in every day to feed him, he'd have starved to death, and wouldn't have got adequate (lifesaving) treatment had we not politely made ourselves pains in the arse.
The NHS is far from a terrible idea, but worship of it is delusional.
Late last October I went into hospital for a rather nasty operation. The nursing staff, whether qualified or unqualified were efficient, friendly and helpful. Treated me as someone who was expected to recover, albeit someone in his mid-eighties. Went from there to a rehab unit which was a bit more mixed, although I felt I had as much support, Physiotherapy etc as people much younger. It might have helped that I was known to some of the older staff, having worked with them, and indeed run teaching for them many years earlier!
When the NHS is good it can be very good indeed. When it's not it can be dreadful, and challenging it an exhausting experience (impossible without help, if you're ill).
I think most of the good things about the NHS and most of the bad things about the NHS you allude to are facets of healthcare in general. They’re not especially tied to the NHS as a particular organisational structure for delivering healthcare.
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Would you like a bet on under/over mid teens if he stands?
Personally I do think he would do better than mid-teens, if not as well as this anti-corbynite predicts.
There's no possible universe in which Corbo would do worse in London than he did nationwide in 2019 (where he got 1/3 of the vote, even if inefficiently distributed). #MayorCorbo https://nitter.net/K_Niemietz/status/1700437884560416870#m
Plenty has changed since 2019. We’re more aware of the level of antisemitism among Corbyn’s supporters, his soft-on-Russia approach looks worse following the invasion of Ukraine and his uncertain stance on Brexit doesn’t suit current public opinion.
Which is why I can believe he would get less than a third even in London. But I think high teens is probable, and depending on campaigns 20s would be a possibility.
Here’s how a Corbyn campaign would go:
People are out campaigning for Corbyn The media identify them and look up their social media Their social media says Russia was just responding to NATO aggression and Jews control the media Corbyn is asked to disown them Repeat
I’m not saying that’s all Corbyn supporters, but there will be enough of them.
I can’t see Hall winning under any circumstances. She’s not up to the job, and that will become clear under any sort of scrutiny.
The Tories are desperately trying to make ULEZ an issue, but it’s a core vote strategy. It won’t add much beyond it.
The Tories also fail to notice that there was a big swing against them in Uxbridge. They just need to make full use of their remaining year to loot the country as they won't get another chance in the foreseeable future.
Asked if he considered himself unlucky during his flight to the G20 summit in Delhi, Sunak laughed before rejecting the suggestion outright. He instead said he was “fired up” and “entirely confident” that the Tories can win, highlighting a series of new appointments in No 10 and the Tories’ recent by-election victory in Uxbridge.
“I am entirely confident that we can win the next election, you had a sense of that just a couple of months ago in Uxbridge,” he said. “In that by-election, when voters were confronted with an actual choice between us and the Labour Party on an issue of substance, what did they do? They voted for us."
There is an interesting paradox on election timing.
Clinging on until January 25 will guarantee a rout for the Tories, however the chances are very high that they will lose at any time the election is held in 2024. So if you are PM, you will stay for as long as possible, since defeat of some kind is pretty certain, but delaying a) leaves at least a chance that something could turn up and b) you get to stay PM.
From the point of view of the Conservative party, while you would want to minimize the defeat and save as many seats as you can, nevertheless the hope that something will turn up keeps you at the government table for a few more weeks/months.
From the point of view of the country, however, the Conservatives move from being unpopular to becoming toxic waste and any chance the voters get they will kick the Tories as hard as they can: locals, by elections, anywhere.
By 2025 the voters go on a kill frenzy ("were you still up for Rees Mogg?") and it takes at least two Parliaments to recover, and maybe they do not survive in their current form...
Having fought one winter election in 2019, I would not want to do it again, but that does seem to be where Sunak is headed.
On the actual article linked to, I think it's the Sun who are putting the 2030 gloss on it and suggesting a January 2025 election is seriously on the cards. Indeed, even if there was a January 2025 election, it's possible but unlikely the next Parliament would run to 2030. It just reads better on a headline to say 2030 than 2029 because it feels much further away than 2029 even though it isn't much in reality.
Betfair has 2025 as a 5.1 shot if you think that's where it's going, but I don't.
Personally, I think the idea of Spring 2024 is underrated, but accept that the most likely thing is he either launches it at the Tory Conference or just before Conference season.
Very small straw in the wind was the questionnaire I received recently from Laurence Robertson. Bet a lot of constituencies were surprised to learn he was their MP, such is his normal level of somnolence.
That kind of thing is expensive, so it made me wonder whether we are close to an election. Spring 2024 may well be on then, although my money may would still be on the autumn.
Hanging on to the death is simply not feasible. They'd risk wipeout, even if events were somehow to turn in their favour.
A combination of boundary changes and lots of new build in Bishops Cleeve (now the largest settlement in the constituency) plus recent gains by the Lib Dems probably making Robertson feel a bit blind about things.
The Lib Dems seem pretty confident about Cheltenham and have been out in force in other places- notably Ciren and Cleeve and it led to big gains at the locals, They could fancy their chances. The Tories got whipped on the district council in May.
If I were Robertson I´d be trying to work the patch a bit more too- just in case.
Thanks, Cicero. You evidently know the area quite well. What brings you down this way, apart from the racing, of course?
Naturally I can offer some local support for your observations. Cheltenham is a nailed on LD win, which in one respect is a bit of a pity. Alex Chalk is an excellent MP and just the sort the Tories would need for a serious rebuilding after the anticapted rout.
Robertson (Tewkesbury) would be much less of a loss. He's not the worst in the House, but is normally characterised as being lazy, which is another reason why I was a surprised to receive an enterprising questionnaire from him. He has a huge majority so if he is in on the cusp, you could be talking of less than 100 Tory MPs in the next Parliament. There was some scandal involving excessive hospitality at the Cheltenham Festival, but it seems to have blown over and as Parliamentary misdemeanours go it was pretty small beer. So i guess he's safe.
It's true that the LDs have been making excellent progress at Council level. This is highly relevant for me as I have to decide which way to cast my anti-government vote. It isn't clear whether Labour or the LDs are best placed to cause an upset. Probably the latter, but I'll decide nearer the date.
Atb.
Well greetings to you!
I have family who moved to the area 30 years ago and have been out delivering when I have been staying there. Agreed about Chalk, but it seems that he has decided against a chicken run, partly, I suspect, to top up his reserves by going back into legal practice for a Parliament before having another go where his jacket won´t be on such a shoogly peg. (the payoff for losing might also be on his mind I guess), but also probably to avoid the inevitably nasty fall-out of defeat and and the soul destroying slog of the (much less well paid) opposition front bench with no early prospect of power.
Robertson is, as you say, much less well liked, and the boundaries are making the Tewkesbury seat a lot more open. However Geoffrey Clifton Brown who at 70 you might have thought would stand down seems set to try for the new North Cotswolds seat, which must be giving Robertson pause for thought.
After taking overall control of the Cotswolds District and leading the NOC council in Tewkesbury the Lib Dems are on a bit of a charge in GLos. I would say that Stroud, Forest of Dean and City of Gloucester look like solid Labour gains, and Cheltenham a Lib Dem gain. For the other three seats, Cotswolds North looks like the most solid Tory seat with Labout the chllenger, while South Cotswolds and Tewkesbury would be more marginal and Lib Dems the challengers.
So depends on which of the new constituencies you end up in as to how you cast your vote I guess. Cotswolds North or City of Gloucester then Labour, Cheltenham, Tewkesbury or Cotswolds South then Lib Dem.
Still the Tories are set to go from holding all seven of the seats in Glos down to possibly three or... on a day of miracles... down to one.
Leafy Shires... No More :-)
Thanks Cicero. Off to the garden now, so will confine myself to mentioning that one of the unlikely Independent wins in the locals recently was my near neighbour, a delightful lady who just tried her luck because she was sick to death of the local Tory lockout.
Another Korean culture snippet - they f@ckin love Chopin. 50% of all S Korean Muzak is reworked Chopin.
Also every other K drama soundtrack.
It might be an east Asian thing? If you can believe it there was an Japanese RPG called Eternal Sonata which was all about Chopin.
As it describes: The game is centered on the Polish romantic pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 39. The story envisions a fictional world dreamed by Chopin during his last hours that is influenced by Chopin's life and music, and in which he himself is a playable character, among others. The game's battle system centers on musical elements and character-unique special attacks...
The game features a selection of Chopin's compositions played by pianist Stanislav Bunin, though the original compositions were composed and arranged by Motoi Sakuraba.
And serves as a useful reminder to people that video games are not one size fits all as a genre!
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Disagree (I may regret this...)
You, @Leon, are Central London, which is different to Inner London.
Beyond that, there's London Suburbs, and then "Kent/Essex, actually."
Central London is the bits that other people might want to visit, either for prestigious work or pleasure. People don't want to visit Inner London, because it's scary, or London Suburbs because they're boring. And then the bits beyond that kid themselves that they've escaped London, when they haven't. (Odd that you get that on the East, Havering/Bexley/Bromley, in a way that doesn't happen for other compass points.)
Political implications- the Conservatives can win in London, but they need to line up the centre, suburbs and actuallies. As things stand, they only really have a secure grip on the last of these.
The other kicker is that the rings are gradually rippling out. Even Havering has pavement cafes. (No photos, because I'm in Children's Activity Limbo). But part of the appeal of someone like Andrew Rosindell is that he rails against the Londonisation of Romford. Plenty of people moved here to escape all that.
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
How soon we forget those Thursday evening rock'n'roll sessions with saucepan lids.
It's always been a very mixed bag. I remember the first time my dad went into hospital with bacteraemia, about a decade and a hand back. He was put on the geriatric ward, where old coots seemed to be parked to die. Every day I was there visiting, they closed the curtains round the Ward beds to carry out at least one newly deceased. If the family hadn't gone in every day to feed him, he'd have starved to death, and wouldn't have got adequate (lifesaving) treatment had we not politely made ourselves pains in the arse.
The NHS is far from a terrible idea, but worship of it is delusional.
Late last October I went into hospital for a rather nasty operation. The nursing staff, whether qualified or unqualified were efficient, friendly and helpful. Treated me as someone who was expected to recover, albeit someone in his mid-eighties. Went from there to a rehab unit which was a bit more mixed, although I felt I had as much support, Physiotherapy etc as people much younger. It might have helped that I was known to some of the older staff, having worked with them, and indeed run teaching for them many years earlier!
When the NHS is good it can be very good indeed. When it's not it can be dreadful, and challenging it an exhausting experience (impossible without help, if you're ill).
I think most of the good things about the NHS and most of the bad things about the NHS you allude to are facets of healthcare in general. They’re not especially tied to the NHS as a particular organisational structure for delivering healthcare.
Another reason to do our best to step back and eye it with a bit of cold calculation, for better and worse, not cultural mythologising. Even if it is on the whole excellent such an emotive defensiveness is not helpful.
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Would you like a bet on under/over mid teens if he stands?
Personally I do think he would do better than mid-teens, if not as well as this anti-corbynite predicts.
There's no possible universe in which Corbo would do worse in London than he did nationwide in 2019 (where he got 1/3 of the vote, even if inefficiently distributed). #MayorCorbo https://nitter.net/K_Niemietz/status/1700437884560416870#m
Plenty has changed since 2019. We’re more aware of the level of antisemitism among Corbyn’s supporters, his soft-on-Russia approach looks worse following the invasion of Ukraine and his uncertain stance on Brexit doesn’t suit current public opinion.
Which is why I can believe he would get less than a third even in London. But I think high teens is probable, and depending on campaigns 20s would be a possibility.
Here’s how a Corbyn campaign would go:
People are out campaigning for Corbyn The media identify them and look up their social media Their social media says Russia was just responding to NATO aggression and Jews control the media Corbyn is asked to disown them Repeat
I’m not saying that’s all Corbyn supporters, but there will be enough of them.
Pretty sure some of Trumper Susan Hall's supporters may have said similar things. Not everyone can manage the acrobatics of some on here who manage to be simultaneously pro Ukraine and Trump positive.
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Disagree (I may regret this...)
...
Well, according to Wikipedia, the London Government Act 1963 distinguishes between inner and outer London boroughs.
Brockley is in the borough of Lewisham, which is classified as Inner.
I don't think it's particularly dangerous. Excellent visibility from the Ca.3! Also, the F-35B is "easy" to handle in the hover unlike the Harrier where, when in the hover, we were operating in the top 3% of the engine's performance and within the margin of error on the fuel gauges.
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
How soon we forget those Thursday evening rock'n'roll sessions with saucepan lids.
It's always been a very mixed bag. I remember the first time my dad went into hospital with bacteraemia, about a decade and a hand back. He was put on the geriatric ward, where old coots seemed to be parked to die. Every day I was there visiting, they closed the curtains round the Ward beds to carry out at least one newly deceased. If the family hadn't gone in every day to feed him, he'd have starved to death, and wouldn't have got adequate (lifesaving) treatment had we not politely made ourselves pains in the arse.
The NHS is far from a terrible idea, but worship of it is delusional.
Late last October I went into hospital for a rather nasty operation. The nursing staff, whether qualified or unqualified were efficient, friendly and helpful. Treated me as someone who was expected to recover, albeit someone in his mid-eighties. Went from there to a rehab unit which was a bit more mixed, although I felt I had as much support, Physiotherapy etc as people much younger. It might have helped that I was known to some of the older staff, having worked with them, and indeed run teaching for them many years earlier!
When the NHS is good it can be very good indeed. When it's not it can be dreadful, and challenging it an exhausting experience (impossible without help, if you're ill).
I think most of the good things about the NHS and most of the bad things about the NHS you allude to are facets of healthcare in general. They’re not especially tied to the NHS as a particular organisational structure for delivering healthcare.
Another reason to do our best to step back and eye it with a bit of cold calculation, for better and worse, not cultural mythologising. Even if it is on the whole excellent such an emotive defensiveness is not helpful.
Sure, we can step back and eye the NHS with a bit of cold calculation. What we then see is that it is a broadly successful and efficient system hampered by Conservative underfunding and Conservative belief in “internal markets”.
I don't think it's particularly dangerous. Excellent visibility from the Ca.3! Also, the F-35B is "easy" to handle in the hover unlike the Harrier where, when in the hover, we were operating in the top 3% of the engine's performance and within the margin of error on the fuel gauges.
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Would you like a bet on under/over mid teens if he stands?
Personally I do think he would do better than mid-teens, if not as well as this anti-corbynite predicts.
There's no possible universe in which Corbo would do worse in London than he did nationwide in 2019 (where he got 1/3 of the vote, even if inefficiently distributed). #MayorCorbo https://nitter.net/K_Niemietz/status/1700437884560416870#m
Plenty has changed since 2019. We’re more aware of the level of antisemitism among Corbyn’s supporters, his soft-on-Russia approach looks worse following the invasion of Ukraine and his uncertain stance on Brexit doesn’t suit current public opinion.
Which is why I can believe he would get less than a third even in London. But I think high teens is probable, and depending on campaigns 20s would be a possibility.
Here’s how a Corbyn campaign would go:
People are out campaigning for Corbyn The media identify them and look up their social media Their social media says Russia was just responding to NATO aggression and Jews control the media Corbyn is asked to disown them Repeat
I’m not saying that’s all Corbyn supporters, but there will be enough of them.
Pretty sure some of Trumper Susan Hall's supporters may have said similar things. Not everyone can manage the acrobatics of some on here who manage to be simultaneously pro Ukraine and Trump positive.
Agreed. Which is another reason why I think Khan remains a strong favourite.
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Disagree (I may regret this...)
...
Well, according to Wikipedia, the London Government Act 1963 distinguishes between inner and outer London boroughs.
Brockley is in the borough of Lewisham, which is classified as Inner.
You are all quite correct. I live a few hundred metres from Brockley. It is most certainly Inner London. Part of Lewisham, an Inner London Borough. In Zone 2. Nine minutes by train from London Bridge. And a mile closer to the Tower of London than Camden is.
I don't think it's particularly dangerous. Excellent visibility from the Ca.3! Also, the F-35B is "easy" to handle in the hover unlike the Harrier where, when in the hover, we were operating in the top 3% of the engine's performance and within the margin of error on the fuel gauges.
Fckn hell, it's the length of time that they sustain the formation as much as anything!
RoKAF Black Falcons also fly amazingly tight and precise formations, admittedly with a more biddable steed than the Blue Angels' Super Hornets. Everyone else is just playing at it.
This guy who escaped from prison and now recaptured - is he really that dangerous? He is accused, but not yet tried, for a bomb hoax that seems to have been a practical joke, and for collecting names of some military personnel
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
I think more maternity scandals on the way. It has long been an area of difficult staffing and toxic relationships, not helped by the few set targets being poorly chosen.
On the other hand, all the above reached the light of day, albeit sometimes belatedly, so the reporting systems do work to a degree.
I was appalled to discover that we spend ca.£3.2 billion on maternity services and ca.£8 billion on negligence claims (approx 60% of the total bill of £13.3 billion in 2021 - 2022).
Some of the cases referred to above only reached the light of day because of patients pushing hard, often in the face of obstruction by the hospitals concerned. So I am not sure that I would agree that the reporting systems worked.
You could just as easily say this of finance but the fact that Libor and FX and many other scandals eventually came to light was not evidence of the system working. Quite the opposite. None of these problems - whether in the NHS or banks or the police or anywhere - started out as big scandals. They all started out small and should - if the reporting systems really worked as they should do - have been picked up at a very early stage.
That they weren't - or if they were- were not properly handled is evidence of the failure of the systems not its eventual success.
The cost of litigation is particularly high in obstetrics due to lifelong care costs for the disabled, and loss of earnings*. It is why there is only one hospital in the country doing private maternity care, and that is a private wing of an NHS teaching hospital.
One aspect of this is that the system awards large sums for a birth damaged by hypoxia, but nothing if equally disabled by fate, hence the long protracted cases. A system of no fault damages as per Scandanavia or New Zealand is both cheaper and kinder. Hunt has a chapter in it on his book Zero.
If there was one simple measure , it would be to stop scrutinising Caesarian rates. A common feature of maternity scandals is that midwives and obstetricians were in conflict, and in large part due to attitudes to operative deliveries. The fact is that for our skill mix and staffing levels, early section is often the safest option. In better resourced, better trained systems then more vaginal deliveries are safe, but we cannot safely force that by diktat.
*one shocking fact is that lifetime loss of earnings awards are determined in part by parental occupation, a defacto acceptance of social immobility.
I experienced a little of that conflict with my first child - not over delivery but in relation to breastfeeding, which I was unable to do. The health visitor kept insisting I keep going. I was in agony with mastitis, my son was not being fed and it was only when the GP got involved that it got sorted. He was furious at the health visitor. I can see how that sort of conflict at delivery stage can cause problems.
Elevating any mantra over the real need: a safe delivery of a healthy child, a properly fed baby etc is what causes problems. Mantras should never be an end in themselves. They should be one of the ways of remembering what the objective is. But that can easily be forgotten. And not just in health care.
Very true. The cost of doing so may be much elevated in health care, but it causes damage whereever it is found. People get fixated on what amounts basically to a slogan or mission statement, which might well be pretty good most of the time, and then warp things around it.
Mission statements are generally garbage. At best statements of the bleedin' obvious - banks must have "integrity" ("you don't say!") or platitudinous rubbish.
At one place I worked they wanted to have a mission statement for the Compliance Department. Some of the suggestions from staff were hilarious - if unrepeatable. Others included "Reminding you of the same damn stuff, every day" or "Cleaning your shit up". I suggested "Speaking truth to power". This was not taken up. The winner was in the platitudinous category and forgotten and ignored about 2 seconds after it was announced.
Some RWC predictions for today: Italy to easily beat Namibia by 20+pts Ireland to easily beat Romania by 20+pts Argentina to beat England by 10pts Australia v Georgia could be a banana skin match (betting opportunity). Georgia have a solid pack who will wear Australia down, and while you would expect Australia to have the superior skills, tactics, fitness etc - you have to factor in Eddie Jones who has generated a lot of bad feeling in the camp. I am not saying that Georgia will win - but it is possible. Bet accordingly. If they can win it will turn this group inside out!!
Thank you, Penddu2, I shall have a punt on those to liven up the day. I'll keep stakes small but you will nevertheless be hearing from my lawyers if they fail to reap a satisfactory return.
Btw, are you a Welsh-speaker? I ask because I am puzzled by the name of my young dog, 'Nia'. She's from Brecon. The Breeder apparently said it was Welsh for 'brightness' but I think he may have been bullshitting.
No problem anyway. She's a delghtful creature.
Other Welsh-speakers are invited to comment.
Nia is a common & pretty Welsh name - and is derived from 'bright' - but not a direct translation. Enjoy. What breed is it?
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Who cares about "inner" or "outer" in 2023? ULEZ covers the whole fucking city!
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Would you like a bet on under/over mid teens if he stands?
Personally I do think he would do better than mid-teens, if not as well as this anti-corbynite predicts.
There's no possible universe in which Corbo would do worse in London than he did nationwide in 2019 (where he got 1/3 of the vote, even if inefficiently distributed). #MayorCorbo https://nitter.net/K_Niemietz/status/1700437884560416870#m
Plenty has changed since 2019. We’re more aware of the level of antisemitism among Corbyn’s supporters, his soft-on-Russia approach looks worse following the invasion of Ukraine and his uncertain stance on Brexit doesn’t suit current public opinion.
Which is why I can believe he would get less than a third even in London. But I think high teens is probable, and depending on campaigns 20s would be a possibility.
Here’s how a Corbyn campaign would go:
People are out campaigning for Corbyn The media identify them and look up their social media Their social media says Russia was just responding to NATO aggression and Jews control the media Corbyn is asked to disown them Repeat
I’m not saying that’s all Corbyn supporters, but there will be enough of them.
Pretty sure some of Trumper Susan Hall's supporters may have said similar things. Not everyone can manage the acrobatics of some on here who manage to be simultaneously pro Ukraine and Trump positive.
Who's Trump-positive on here since MrEd left? LuckyGuy maybe? Leon would like to be but knows Trump is indefensible. Any others?
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Would you like a bet on under/over mid teens if he stands?
Personally I do think he would do better than mid-teens, if not as well as this anti-corbynite predicts.
There's no possible universe in which Corbo would do worse in London than he did nationwide in 2019 (where he got 1/3 of the vote, even if inefficiently distributed). #MayorCorbo https://nitter.net/K_Niemietz/status/1700437884560416870#m
Plenty has changed since 2019. We’re more aware of the level of antisemitism among Corbyn’s supporters, his soft-on-Russia approach looks worse following the invasion of Ukraine and his uncertain stance on Brexit doesn’t suit current public opinion.
Which is why I can believe he would get less than a third even in London. But I think high teens is probable, and depending on campaigns 20s would be a possibility.
Here’s how a Corbyn campaign would go:
People are out campaigning for Corbyn The media identify them and look up their social media Their social media says Russia was just responding to NATO aggression and Jews control the media Corbyn is asked to disown them Repeat
I’m not saying that’s all Corbyn supporters, but there will be enough of them.
Pretty sure some of Trumper Susan Hall's supporters may have said similar things. Not everyone can manage the acrobatics of some on here who manage to be simultaneously pro Ukraine and Trump positive.
Who's Trump-positive on here since MrEd left? LuckyGuy maybe? Leon would like to be but knows Trump is indefensible. Any others?
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Disagree (I may regret this...)
...
Well, according to Wikipedia, the London Government Act 1963 distinguishes between inner and outer London boroughs.
Brockley is in the borough of Lewisham, which is classified as Inner.
What was Brockley like in the 1970s? Probably not a lot of cafes with tables outside.
On topic - the R&W London poll that got everyone excited shows the Tories getting a lower vote share than they have received in any London mayoral election since 2004. It also shows both the Greens and LibDems considerably outperforming their normal mayoral numbers. Khan is a very poor candidate but I would not be panicking yet if i were him. He will face months of brutal media attacks, though. If the Tories had a better candidate they'd have a very good chance indeed.
On a side note, one thing that seems to have had little attention is that the old STV voting system the Tories got rid of for entirely partisan reasons was approved by Londoners in a referendum. So, let's not kid ourselves that such referenda are requirements for voting system changes.
I don't think the voting system (SV, not STV) was approved in any referendum, merely the establishment of the Mayor and Assembly:
This guy who escaped from prison and now recaptured - is he really that dangerous? He is accused, but not yet tried, for a bomb hoax that seems to have been a practical joke, and for collecting names of some military personnel
Definitely foreign though, and you can't be too careful with foreigners.
Ok - sorry - not actually foreign, but according to press reports there is a touch of the tar brush in there somewhere.
On topic - the R&W London poll that got everyone excited shows the Tories getting a lower vote share than they have received in any London mayoral election since 2004. It also shows both the Greens and LibDems considerably outperforming their normal mayoral numbers. Khan is a very poor candidate but I would not be panicking yet if i were him. He will face months of brutal media attacks, though. If the Tories had a better candidate they'd have a very good chance indeed.
On a side note, one thing that seems to have had little attention is that the old STV voting system the Tories got rid of for entirely partisan reasons was approved by Londoners in a referendum. So, let's not kid ourselves that such referenda are requirements for voting system changes.
I don't think the voting system (SV, not STV) was approved in any referendum, merely the establishment of the Mayor and Assembly:
Re. the Corbyn 2017 ‘youthquake’ - worth noting that seven years is a long time when you’re young - and it’s not been uneventful either.
I daresay a fair few ‘oh Jeremy Corbyn’ types are a little more jaded these days and would be happy with an optimistic ‘Red Tory’ over the actual useless Blue Tories.
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Would you like a bet on under/over mid teens if he stands?
Personally I do think he would do better than mid-teens, if not as well as this anti-corbynite predicts.
There's no possible universe in which Corbo would do worse in London than he did nationwide in 2019 (where he got 1/3 of the vote, even if inefficiently distributed). #MayorCorbo https://nitter.net/K_Niemietz/status/1700437884560416870#m
What a ridiculous fallacy.
Corbyn didn't get 1/3rd of the vote in 2019, the Labour Party did.
Millions voted Labour despite Corbyn, and because they dislike the Tories more, not because of Corbyn.
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Disagree (I may regret this...)
...
Well, according to Wikipedia, the London Government Act 1963 distinguishes between inner and outer London boroughs.
Brockley is in the borough of Lewisham, which is classified as Inner.
Inner London is defined by being the area which was the LCC before the creation of the GLC in 1965. (This is the melancholy date marking also the death of Middlesex.)
This is easier to answer than the vexed question in the frozen north: Is the new Cumberland a county or not, and if not, what is it?
It says Astronomical Autumn begins on 23rd September. It does not say that there is 'no scientific basis for so-called' meteorological autumn either.
It's spurious (of you) to say that the seasons are governed 'scientifically' according to the way the earth spins on its tilted axis and circles the sun because meteorology in the UK is governed by a multiplicity of additional scientific factors.
I study the weather, admittedly as an amateur, and everyone I know using meteorological seasons.
It's already autumn and if it doesn't feel like it today, it sure as heck will a week from now.
The Met Office themselves analyse seasonal climate based on DJF, NAM, JJA and SON. The WMO classifies JJA as the boreal summer.
The whole Autumn begins on the equinox thing is bizarre because I don’t understand the point these people are trying to make. There is none. Unless it’s a subtle way of saying “nothing to see here, it’s hot in summer, nothing to do with climate change”. But I don’t even think it’s that.
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Disagree (I may regret this...)
...
Well, according to Wikipedia, the London Government Act 1963 distinguishes between inner and outer London boroughs.
Brockley is in the borough of Lewisham, which is classified as Inner.
Inner London is defined by being the area which was the LCC before the creation of the GLC in 1965. (This is the melancholy date marking also the death of Middlesex.)
This is easier to answer than the vexed question in the frozen north: Is the new Cumberland a county or not, and if not, what is it?
For one awful moment I thought you were going to start a discussion about who is a northerner and who is a southerner. It will never be settled, and is most unjust to midlanders, who are a breed apart.
This guy who escaped from prison and now recaptured - is he really that dangerous? He is accused, but not yet tried, for a bomb hoax that seems to have been a practical joke, and for collecting names of some military personnel
Definitely foreign though, and you can't be too careful with foreigners.
Ok - sorry - not actually foreign, but according to press reports there is a touch of the tar brush in there somewhere.
He may have escaped but his case is still sub judice so its rules and and the presumption of innocence applies.
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
How soon we forget those Thursday evening rock'n'roll sessions with saucepan lids.
It's always been a very mixed bag. I remember the first time my dad went into hospital with bacteraemia, about a decade and a hand back. He was put on the geriatric ward, where old coots seemed to be parked to die. Every day I was there visiting, they closed the curtains round the Ward beds to carry out at least one newly deceased. If the family hadn't gone in every day to feed him, he'd have starved to death, and wouldn't have got adequate (lifesaving) treatment had we not politely made ourselves pains in the arse.
The NHS is far from a terrible idea, but worship of it is delusional.
Worship of any institution is delusional. Valuing it is fine. But no institution should think itself beyond challenge and when it does - or a part of it does - trouble happens. It is unsurprising to see the police and NHS having problems because they have - too often - been uncritically supported.
What makes it worse is that, combined with this, many of those working in it are also un- or under-appreciated, stressed out and expected to make up for the institutional failings. So they feel unfairly criticised. So we have an unhealthy combination of insufficient challenge of the right type and lots of unfair criticism.
This guy who escaped from prison and now recaptured - is he really that dangerous? He is accused, but not yet tried, for a bomb hoax that seems to have been a practical joke, and for collecting names of some military personnel
Definitely foreign though, and you can't be too careful with foreigners.
Ok - sorry - not actually foreign, but according to press reports there is a touch of the tar brush in there somewhere.
He may have escaped but his case is still sub judice so its rules and and the presumption of innocence applies.
Quite. Though that presumption has been pretty difficult to discern in the press over the past few days.
Re. the Corbyn 2017 ‘youthquake’ - worth noting that seven years is a long time when you’re young - and it’s not been uneventful either.
I daresay a fair few ‘oh Jeremy Corbyn’ types are a little more jaded these days and would be happy with an optimistic ‘Red Tory’ over the actual useless Blue Tories.
And the flip side, too. 18 years olds voting in London next year were 9 years old when Corbyn won the Labour leadership and 14 when he resigned. How much of an impact would he have had on them?
I think it's fair to say the country has largely moved on from Corbyn. The polling shows that many, many people are content with the idea of voting for a Labour party that doesn't include Corbyn as one of its MPs.
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
I think more maternity scandals on the way. It has long been an area of difficult staffing and toxic relationships, not helped by the few set targets being poorly chosen.
On the other hand, all the above reached the light of day, albeit sometimes belatedly, so the reporting systems do work to a degree.
I was appalled to discover that we spend ca.£3.2 billion on maternity services and ca.£8 billion on negligence claims (approx 60% of the total bill of £13.3 billion in 2021 - 2022).
Some of the cases referred to above only reached the light of day because of patients pushing hard, often in the face of obstruction by the hospitals concerned. So I am not sure that I would agree that the reporting systems worked.
You could just as easily say this of finance but the fact that Libor and FX and many other scandals eventually came to light was not evidence of the system working. Quite the opposite. None of these problems - whether in the NHS or banks or the police or anywhere - started out as big scandals. They all started out small and should - if the reporting systems really worked as they should do - have been picked up at a very early stage.
That they weren't - or if they were- were not properly handled is evidence of the failure of the systems not its eventual success.
The cost of litigation is particularly high in obstetrics due to lifelong care costs for the disabled, and loss of earnings*. It is why there is only one hospital in the country doing private maternity care, and that is a private wing of an NHS teaching hospital.
One aspect of this is that the system awards large sums for a birth damaged by hypoxia, but nothing if equally disabled by fate, hence the long protracted cases. A system of no fault damages as per Scandanavia or New Zealand is both cheaper and kinder. Hunt has a chapter in it on his book Zero.
If there was one simple measure , it would be to stop scrutinising Caesarian rates. A common feature of maternity scandals is that midwives and obstetricians were in conflict, and in large part due to attitudes to operative deliveries. The fact is that for our skill mix and staffing levels, early section is often the safest option. In better resourced, better trained systems then more vaginal deliveries are safe, but we cannot safely force that by diktat.
*one shocking fact is that lifetime loss of earnings awards are determined in part by parental occupation, a defacto acceptance of social immobility.
I experienced a little of that conflict with my first child - not over delivery but in relation to breastfeeding, which I was unable to do. The health visitor kept insisting I keep going. I was in agony with mastitis, my son was not being fed and it was only when the GP got involved that it got sorted. He was furious at the health visitor. I can see how that sort of conflict at delivery stage can cause problems.
Elevating any mantra over the real need: a safe delivery of a healthy child, a properly fed baby etc is what causes problems. Mantras should never be an end in themselves. They should be one of the ways of remembering what the objective is. But that can easily be forgotten. And not just in health care.
Very true. The cost of doing so may be much elevated in health care, but it causes damage whereever it is found. People get fixated on what amounts basically to a slogan or mission statement, which might well be pretty good most of the time, and then warp things around it.
Mission statements are generally garbage. At best statements of the bleedin' obvious - banks must have "integrity" ("you don't say!") or platitudinous rubbish.
At one place I worked they wanted to have a mission statement for the Compliance Department. Some of the suggestions from staff were hilarious - if unrepeatable. Others included "Reminding you of the same damn stuff, every day" or "Cleaning your shit up". I suggested "Speaking truth to power". This was not taken up. The winner was in the platitudinous category and forgotten and ignored about 2 seconds after it was announced.
I agree they are often garbage but I have also found that in managing a department or team it can be useful to get the team to create (with guidance) their own mission statement. Sometimes it's quite informative to find out little team members have considered what they are there for.
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Disagree (I may regret this...)
...
Well, according to Wikipedia, the London Government Act 1963 distinguishes between inner and outer London boroughs.
Brockley is in the borough of Lewisham, which is classified as Inner.
Inner London is defined by being the area which was the LCC before the creation of the GLC in 1965. (This is the melancholy date marking also the death of Middlesex.)
This is easier to answer than the vexed question in the frozen north: Is the new Cumberland a county or not, and if not, what is it?
For one awful moment I thought you were going to start a discussion about who is a northerner and who is a southerner. It will never be settled, and is most unjust to midlanders, who are a breed apart.
No views on this, living in England 120 miles north of Manchester. But if Midlanders are defined as Mercians and vice versa they have a byelection coming up in their ancient capital.
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
How soon we forget those Thursday evening rock'n'roll sessions with saucepan lids.
It's always been a very mixed bag. I remember the first time my dad went into hospital with bacteraemia, about a decade and a hand back. He was put on the geriatric ward, where old coots seemed to be parked to die. Every day I was there visiting, they closed the curtains round the Ward beds to carry out at least one newly deceased. If the family hadn't gone in every day to feed him, he'd have starved to death, and wouldn't have got adequate (lifesaving) treatment had we not politely made ourselves pains in the arse.
The NHS is far from a terrible idea, but worship of it is delusional.
Late last October I went into hospital for a rather nasty operation. The nursing staff, whether qualified or unqualified were efficient, friendly and helpful. Treated me as someone who was expected to recover, albeit someone in his mid-eighties. Went from there to a rehab unit which was a bit more mixed, although I felt I had as much support, Physiotherapy etc as people much younger. It might have helped that I was known to some of the older staff, having worked with them, and indeed run teaching for them many years earlier!
When the NHS is good it can be very good indeed. When it's not it can be dreadful, and challenging it an exhausting experience (impossible without help, if you're ill).
I think most of the good things about the NHS and most of the bad things about the NHS you allude to are facets of healthcare in general. They’re not especially tied to the NHS as a particular organisational structure for delivering healthcare.
Another reason to do our best to step back and eye it with a bit of cold calculation, for better and worse, not cultural mythologising. Even if it is on the whole excellent such an emotive defensiveness is not helpful.
Sure, we can step back and eye the NHS with a bit of cold calculation. What we then see is that it is a broadly successful and efficient system hampered by Conservative underfunding and Conservative belief in “internal markets”.
But as report after report has shown, these were not the reasons for the failures detailed in those reports. So thinking that if only you fix these issues, the problems detailed in those reports will go away is another delusion.
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Disagree (I may regret this...)
...
Well, according to Wikipedia, the London Government Act 1963 distinguishes between inner and outer London boroughs.
Brockley is in the borough of Lewisham, which is classified as Inner.
What was Brockley like in the 1970s? Probably not a lot of cafes with tables outside.
Brockley was a bit of a hole as late as the 1990s, there used to be a NF pub close to the bucolic scene that my neighbour Tim posted. Nowadays Brockley's gentrification is almost complete although it hasn't gone full on Clapham yet - nor do I think it will, the SE postcode will keep out the rugger top set, thank God. I think a lot of people's mental geography of our patch of London is woefully out of date, like Leon's view that we're some dreary suburb, or the Del Boy gags. I was out in Peckham last night having a birthday meal for my daughter with the family, at a fantastic, bustling and buzzing Bao restaurant. The streets were heaving, with people sat outside bars and restaurants up and down Rye Lane. SE14/SE4/SE15 have become really very nice places to live for meterosexual centrist dads like me. Personally I can't think of another place on earth I'd rather be living right now.
It says Astronomical Autumn begins on 23rd September. It does not say that there is 'no scientific basis for so-called' meteorological autumn either.
It's spurious (of you) to say that the seasons are governed 'scientifically' according to the way the earth spins on its tilted axis and circles the sun because meteorology in the UK is governed by a multiplicity of additional scientific factors.
I study the weather, admittedly as an amateur, and everyone I know using meteorological seasons.
It's already autumn and if it doesn't feel like it today, it sure as heck will a week from now.
The Met Office themselves analyse seasonal climate based on DJF, NAM, JJA and SON. The WMO classifies JJA as the boreal summer.
The whole Autumn begins on the equinox thing is bizarre because I don’t understand the point these people are trying to make. There is none. Unless it’s a subtle way of saying “nothing to see here, it’s hot in summer, nothing to do with climate change”. But I don’t even think it’s that.
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Disagree (I may regret this...)
...
Well, according to Wikipedia, the London Government Act 1963 distinguishes between inner and outer London boroughs.
Brockley is in the borough of Lewisham, which is classified as Inner.
Inner London is defined by being the area which was the LCC before the creation of the GLC in 1965. (This is the melancholy date marking also the death of Middlesex.)
This is easier to answer than the vexed question in the frozen north: Is the new Cumberland a county or not, and if not, what is it?
For one awful moment I thought you were going to start a discussion about who is a northerner and who is a southerner. It will never be settled, and is most unjust to midlanders, who are a breed apart.
No views on this, living in England 120 miles north of Manchester. But if Midlanders are defined as Mercians and vice versa they have a byelection coming up in their ancient capital.
Indeed. And a lot of people may be Midlanders without knowing it:
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
I think more maternity scandals on the way. It has long been an area of difficult staffing and toxic relationships, not helped by the few set targets being poorly chosen.
On the other hand, all the above reached the light of day, albeit sometimes belatedly, so the reporting systems do work to a degree.
I was appalled to discover that we spend ca.£3.2 billion on maternity services and ca.£8 billion on negligence claims (approx 60% of the total bill of £13.3 billion in 2021 - 2022).
Some of the cases referred to above only reached the light of day because of patients pushing hard, often in the face of obstruction by the hospitals concerned. So I am not sure that I would agree that the reporting systems worked.
You could just as easily say this of finance but the fact that Libor and FX and many other scandals eventually came to light was not evidence of the system working. Quite the opposite. None of these problems - whether in the NHS or banks or the police or anywhere - started out as big scandals. They all started out small and should - if the reporting systems really worked as they should do - have been picked up at a very early stage.
That they weren't - or if they were- were not properly handled is evidence of the failure of the systems not its eventual success.
The cost of litigation is particularly high in obstetrics due to lifelong care costs for the disabled, and loss of earnings*. It is why there is only one hospital in the country doing private maternity care, and that is a private wing of an NHS teaching hospital.
One aspect of this is that the system awards large sums for a birth damaged by hypoxia, but nothing if equally disabled by fate, hence the long protracted cases. A system of no fault damages as per Scandanavia or New Zealand is both cheaper and kinder. Hunt has a chapter in it on his book Zero.
If there was one simple measure , it would be to stop scrutinising Caesarian rates. A common feature of maternity scandals is that midwives and obstetricians were in conflict, and in large part due to attitudes to operative deliveries. The fact is that for our skill mix and staffing levels, early section is often the safest option. In better resourced, better trained systems then more vaginal deliveries are safe, but we cannot safely force that by diktat.
*one shocking fact is that lifetime loss of earnings awards are determined in part by parental occupation, a defacto acceptance of social immobility.
I experienced a little of that conflict with my first child - not over delivery but in relation to breastfeeding, which I was unable to do. The health visitor kept insisting I keep going. I was in agony with mastitis, my son was not being fed and it was only when the GP got involved that it got sorted. He was furious at the health visitor. I can see how that sort of conflict at delivery stage can cause problems.
Elevating any mantra over the real need: a safe delivery of a healthy child, a properly fed baby etc is what causes problems. Mantras should never be an end in themselves. They should be one of the ways of remembering what the objective is. But that can easily be forgotten. And not just in health care.
Very true. The cost of doing so may be much elevated in health care, but it causes damage whereever it is found. People get fixated on what amounts basically to a slogan or mission statement, which might well be pretty good most of the time, and then warp things around it.
Mission statements are generally garbage. At best statements of the bleedin' obvious - banks must have "integrity" ("you don't say!") or platitudinous rubbish.
At one place I worked they wanted to have a mission statement for the Compliance Department. Some of the suggestions from staff were hilarious - if unrepeatable. Others included "Reminding you of the same damn stuff, every day" or "Cleaning your shit up". I suggested "Speaking truth to power". This was not taken up. The winner was in the platitudinous category and forgotten and ignored about 2 seconds after it was announced.
I agree they are often garbage but I have also found that in managing a department or team it can be useful to get the team to create (with guidance) their own mission statement. Sometimes it's quite informative to find out little team members have considered what they are there for.
They are garbage, and along with Vision Statements, Action Plans, Benchmarking, KPIs, Pivoting, Synergy, Low Hanging Fruit, Heads Up, New Normal are signs of outfits that don't know what they are for, or don't want someone else to know.
Another such sign is frequent name and title changing.
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Disagree (I may regret this...)
...
Well, according to Wikipedia, the London Government Act 1963 distinguishes between inner and outer London boroughs.
Brockley is in the borough of Lewisham, which is classified as Inner.
What was Brockley like in the 1970s? Probably not a lot of cafes with tables outside.
Brockley was a bit of a hole as late as the 1990s, there used to be a NF pub close to the bucolic scene that my neighbour Tim posted. Nowadays Brockley's gentrification is almost complete although it hasn't gone full on Clapham yet - nor do I think it will, the SE postcode will keep out the rugger top set, thank God. I think a lot of people's mental geography of our patch of London is woefully out of date, like Leon's view that we're some dreary suburb, or the Del Boy gags. I was out in Peckham last night having a birthday meal for my daughter with the family, at a fantastic, bustling and buzzing Bao restaurant. The streets were heaving, with people sat outside bars and restaurants up and down Rye Lane. SE14/SE4/SE15 have become really very nice places to live for meterosexual centrist dads like me. Personally I can't think of another place on earth I'd rather be living right now.
This is fair. I’m not sure I’ve ever actually BEEN to Brockley. I just look at it on the map and think “ugh”
I have been to Peckham but it was decades ago in pursuit of William Blake. I remember it as extremely multicultural; with hints of promise and maybe the first signs of gentrification
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
I think more maternity scandals on the way. It has long been an area of difficult staffing and toxic relationships, not helped by the few set targets being poorly chosen.
On the other hand, all the above reached the light of day, albeit sometimes belatedly, so the reporting systems do work to a degree.
I was appalled to discover that we spend ca.£3.2 billion on maternity services and ca.£8 billion on negligence claims (approx 60% of the total bill of £13.3 billion in 2021 - 2022).
Some of the cases referred to above only reached the light of day because of patients pushing hard, often in the face of obstruction by the hospitals concerned. So I am not sure that I would agree that the reporting systems worked.
You could just as easily say this of finance but the fact that Libor and FX and many other scandals eventually came to light was not evidence of the system working. Quite the opposite. None of these problems - whether in the NHS or banks or the police or anywhere - started out as big scandals. They all started out small and should - if the reporting systems really worked as they should do - have been picked up at a very early stage.
That they weren't - or if they were- were not properly handled is evidence of the failure of the systems not its eventual success.
The cost of litigation is particularly high in obstetrics due to lifelong care costs for the disabled, and loss of earnings*. It is why there is only one hospital in the country doing private maternity care, and that is a private wing of an NHS teaching hospital.
One aspect of this is that the system awards large sums for a birth damaged by hypoxia, but nothing if equally disabled by fate, hence the long protracted cases. A system of no fault damages as per Scandanavia or New Zealand is both cheaper and kinder. Hunt has a chapter in it on his book Zero.
If there was one simple measure , it would be to stop scrutinising Caesarian rates. A common feature of maternity scandals is that midwives and obstetricians were in conflict, and in large part due to attitudes to operative deliveries. The fact is that for our skill mix and staffing levels, early section is often the safest option. In better resourced, better trained systems then more vaginal deliveries are safe, but we cannot safely force that by diktat.
*one shocking fact is that lifetime loss of earnings awards are determined in part by parental occupation, a defacto acceptance of social immobility.
I experienced a little of that conflict with my first child - not over delivery but in relation to breastfeeding, which I was unable to do. The health visitor kept insisting I keep going. I was in agony with mastitis, my son was not being fed and it was only when the GP got involved that it got sorted. He was furious at the health visitor. I can see how that sort of conflict at delivery stage can cause problems.
Elevating any mantra over the real need: a safe delivery of a healthy child, a properly fed baby etc is what causes problems. Mantras should never be an end in themselves. They should be one of the ways of remembering what the objective is. But that can easily be forgotten. And not just in health care.
Very true. The cost of doing so may be much elevated in health care, but it causes damage whereever it is found. People get fixated on what amounts basically to a slogan or mission statement, which might well be pretty good most of the time, and then warp things around it.
Mission statements are generally garbage. At best statements of the bleedin' obvious - banks must have "integrity" ("you don't say!") or platitudinous rubbish.
At one place I worked they wanted to have a mission statement for the Compliance Department. Some of the suggestions from staff were hilarious - if unrepeatable. Others included "Reminding you of the same damn stuff, every day" or "Cleaning your shit up". I suggested "Speaking truth to power". This was not taken up. The winner was in the platitudinous category and forgotten and ignored about 2 seconds after it was announced.
I agree they are often garbage but I have also found that in managing a department or team it can be useful to get the team to create (with guidance) their own mission statement. Sometimes it's quite informative to find out little team members have considered what they are there for.
They are garbage, and along with Vision Statements, Action Plans, Benchmarking, KPIs, Pivoting, Synergy, Low Hanging Fruit, Heads Up, New Normal are signs of outfits that don't know what they are for, or don't want someone else to know.
Another such sign is frequent name and title changing.
This guy who escaped from prison and now recaptured - is he really that dangerous? He is accused, but not yet tried, for a bomb hoax that seems to have been a practical joke, and for collecting names of some military personnel
Those were his first two arrests. This is the third:
"After that appearance in court, there was a delay in his case being sent to crown court while another far more serious allegation was prepared. Mr Khalife is now accused of committing an act "prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state", contrary to the Official Secrets Act. It's alleged that between May 2019 and January 2022 he obtained, collected, recorded, published, or communicated information which was useful to an enemy - a spying offence. The BBC understands that the allegation relates to Iran."
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
How soon we forget those Thursday evening rock'n'roll sessions with saucepan lids.
It's always been a very mixed bag. I remember the first time my dad went into hospital with bacteraemia, about a decade and a hand back. He was put on the geriatric ward, where old coots seemed to be parked to die. Every day I was there visiting, they closed the curtains round the Ward beds to carry out at least one newly deceased. If the family hadn't gone in every day to feed him, he'd have starved to death, and wouldn't have got adequate (lifesaving) treatment had we not politely made ourselves pains in the arse.
The NHS is far from a terrible idea, but worship of it is delusional.
Late last October I went into hospital for a rather nasty operation. The nursing staff, whether qualified or unqualified were efficient, friendly and helpful. Treated me as someone who was expected to recover, albeit someone in his mid-eighties. Went from there to a rehab unit which was a bit more mixed, although I felt I had as much support, Physiotherapy etc as people much younger. It might have helped that I was known to some of the older staff, having worked with them, and indeed run teaching for them many years earlier!
When the NHS is good it can be very good indeed. When it's not it can be dreadful, and challenging it an exhausting experience (impossible without help, if you're ill).
I think most of the good things about the NHS and most of the bad things about the NHS you allude to are facets of healthcare in general. They’re not especially tied to the NHS as a particular organisational structure for delivering healthcare.
Another reason to do our best to step back and eye it with a bit of cold calculation, for better and worse, not cultural mythologising. Even if it is on the whole excellent such an emotive defensiveness is not helpful.
Sure, we can step back and eye the NHS with a bit of cold calculation. What we then see is that it is a broadly successful and efficient system hampered by Conservative underfunding and Conservative belief in “internal markets”.
But as report after report has shown, these were not the reasons for the failures detailed in those reports. So thinking that if only you fix these issues, the problems detailed in those reports will go away is another delusion.
There have been a lot of reports(!), so it depends which ones you mean, but by and large the problems detailed in them are not specifically to do with how the NHS is set up versus alternative national healthcare systems. They are not problems with the NHS qua NHA, but problems you see across the health and social care sector in multiple countries.
They are very important problems and we should try to do something about them.
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Disagree (I may regret this...)
...
Well, according to Wikipedia, the London Government Act 1963 distinguishes between inner and outer London boroughs.
Brockley is in the borough of Lewisham, which is classified as Inner.
Inner London is defined by being the area which was the LCC before the creation of the GLC in 1965. (This is the melancholy date marking also the death of Middlesex.)
This is easier to answer than the vexed question in the frozen north: Is the new Cumberland a county or not, and if not, what is it?
For one awful moment I thought you were going to start a discussion about who is a northerner and who is a southerner. It will never be settled, and is most unjust to midlanders, who are a breed apart.
No views on this, living in England 120 miles north of Manchester. But if Midlanders are defined as Mercians and vice versa they have a byelection coming up in their ancient capital.
North/midlands/south can be divided up into blocks of 4° latitude:
UK's most northerly point: N61° 51' (Out Stack, Shetland) North-midlands transition: N57° 51' (in line with Dornoch Firth) Midlands-south transition: N53° 51' (just north of Blackpool) UK's most southerly point: N49° 51' (Pednathise Head)
I live in the midlands (albeit on the northern end). The exact middle, N55° 51, cuts right through Celtic Park.
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Disagree (I may regret this...)
...
Well, according to Wikipedia, the London Government Act 1963 distinguishes between inner and outer London boroughs.
Brockley is in the borough of Lewisham, which is classified as Inner.
Inner London is defined by being the area which was the LCC before the creation of the GLC in 1965. (This is the melancholy date marking also the death of Middlesex.)
This is easier to answer than the vexed question in the frozen north: Is the new Cumberland a county or not, and if not, what is it?
For one awful moment I thought you were going to start a discussion about who is a northerner and who is a southerner. It will never be settled, and is most unjust to midlanders, who are a breed apart.
No views on this, living in England 120 miles north of Manchester. But if Midlanders are defined as Mercians and vice versa they have a byelection coming up in their ancient capital.
On a point of pedantry, it was *one* of their ancient capitals.
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
I think more maternity scandals on the way. It has long been an area of difficult staffing and toxic relationships, not helped by the few set targets being poorly chosen.
On the other hand, all the above reached the light of day, albeit sometimes belatedly, so the reporting systems do work to a degree.
I was appalled to discover that we spend ca.£3.2 billion on maternity services and ca.£8 billion on negligence claims (approx 60% of the total bill of £13.3 billion in 2021 - 2022).
Some of the cases referred to above only reached the light of day because of patients pushing hard, often in the face of obstruction by the hospitals concerned. So I am not sure that I would agree that the reporting systems worked.
You could just as easily say this of finance but the fact that Libor and FX and many other scandals eventually came to light was not evidence of the system working. Quite the opposite. None of these problems - whether in the NHS or banks or the police or anywhere - started out as big scandals. They all started out small and should - if the reporting systems really worked as they should do - have been picked up at a very early stage.
That they weren't - or if they were- were not properly handled is evidence of the failure of the systems not its eventual success.
The cost of litigation is particularly high in obstetrics due to lifelong care costs for the disabled, and loss of earnings*. It is why there is only one hospital in the country doing private maternity care, and that is a private wing of an NHS teaching hospital.
One aspect of this is that the system awards large sums for a birth damaged by hypoxia, but nothing if equally disabled by fate, hence the long protracted cases. A system of no fault damages as per Scandanavia or New Zealand is both cheaper and kinder. Hunt has a chapter in it on his book Zero.
If there was one simple measure , it would be to stop scrutinising Caesarian rates. A common feature of maternity scandals is that midwives and obstetricians were in conflict, and in large part due to attitudes to operative deliveries. The fact is that for our skill mix and staffing levels, early section is often the safest option. In better resourced, better trained systems then more vaginal deliveries are safe, but we cannot safely force that by diktat.
*one shocking fact is that lifetime loss of earnings awards are determined in part by parental occupation, a defacto acceptance of social immobility.
I experienced a little of that conflict with my first child - not over delivery but in relation to breastfeeding, which I was unable to do. The health visitor kept insisting I keep going. I was in agony with mastitis, my son was not being fed and it was only when the GP got involved that it got sorted. He was furious at the health visitor. I can see how that sort of conflict at delivery stage can cause problems.
Elevating any mantra over the real need: a safe delivery of a healthy child, a properly fed baby etc is what causes problems. Mantras should never be an end in themselves. They should be one of the ways of remembering what the objective is. But that can easily be forgotten. And not just in health care.
Very true. The cost of doing so may be much elevated in health care, but it causes damage whereever it is found. People get fixated on what amounts basically to a slogan or mission statement, which might well be pretty good most of the time, and then warp things around it.
Mission statements are generally garbage. At best statements of the bleedin' obvious - banks must have "integrity" ("you don't say!") or platitudinous rubbish.
At one place I worked they wanted to have a mission statement for the Compliance Department. Some of the suggestions from staff were hilarious - if unrepeatable. Others included "Reminding you of the same damn stuff, every day" or "Cleaning your shit up". I suggested "Speaking truth to power". This was not taken up. The winner was in the platitudinous category and forgotten and ignored about 2 seconds after it was announced.
I agree they are often garbage but I have also found that in managing a department or team it can be useful to get the team to create (with guidance) their own mission statement. Sometimes it's quite informative to find out little team members have considered what they are there for.
They are garbage, and along with Vision Statements, Action Plans, Benchmarking, KPIs, Pivoting, Synergy, Low Hanging Fruit, Heads Up, New Normal are signs of outfits that don't know what they are for, or don't want someone else to know.
Another such sign is frequent name and title changing.
You missed out Health & Safety, paid holiday, toilet breaks and heated offices.
Serious question here: is there any reason why I should care about the London Mayor contest? Given that I live in the north of Scotland and extremely rarely visit London (not been for about 4 years; have no plans to go any time soon).
Is there some effect on my life other than the waxing and waning political fortunes of this and that person or party that I should care about? The only thing I can think of is the counter-terrorism function, but am I missing something?
It is an opportunity for betting on politics. I know the PB commentariat prefer to talk about ancillary subjects but every now and then we do have to get our hands dirty... 😀
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Corbynites celebrating because the man they claim could have been PM is polling mid teens in his political heartland.
Would you like a bet on under/over mid teens if he stands?
Personally I do think he would do better than mid-teens, if not as well as this anti-corbynite predicts.
There's no possible universe in which Corbo would do worse in London than he did nationwide in 2019 (where he got 1/3 of the vote, even if inefficiently distributed). #MayorCorbo https://nitter.net/K_Niemietz/status/1700437884560416870#m
Plenty has changed since 2019. We’re more aware of the level of antisemitism among Corbyn’s supporters, his soft-on-Russia approach looks worse following the invasion of Ukraine and his uncertain stance on Brexit doesn’t suit current public opinion.
Which is why I can believe he would get less than a third even in London. But I think high teens is probable, and depending on campaigns 20s would be a possibility.
Here’s how a Corbyn campaign would go:
People are out campaigning for Corbyn The media identify them and look up their social media Their social media says Russia was just responding to NATO aggression and Jews control the media Corbyn is asked to disown them Repeat
I’m not saying that’s all Corbyn supporters, but there will be enough of them.
Pretty sure some of Trumper Susan Hall's supporters may have said similar things. Not everyone can manage the acrobatics of some on here who manage to be simultaneously pro Ukraine and Trump positive.
Who's Trump-positive on here since MrEd left? LuckyGuy maybe? Leon would like to be but knows Trump is indefensible. Any others?
A friend has recently joined the Cumbria police. It took the best part of a year for all the pre-employment checks to be done. He's doing his training in Penrith and, so far, enjoying it. Came home for the weekend and said the hatred of and contempt for the Met among the senior officers was quite something. They hate being tarred with the same brush. As well they might.
Meanwhile - and this feels almost bizarrely karmic (given the way both institutions are stupidly hero worshipped by political parties), were it not so depressing - there are currently 7 police investigations into various hospital trusts:-
1. Alleged abuse at Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust 2. Alleged abuse at home for men with severe learning disabilities and autism run by the Surrey and Borders Partners Foundation Trust 3. Derby NHS Trust investigation into a Dr Hay - police working with them to see if criminal offences committed. 4. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital: nurse under investigation re possible poisoning of baby. 5. The investigation into a possible cover up into mother and baby deaths at the Nottingham Trust. 6. Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton - police investigation into patient deaths allegedly caused by medical negligence. 7. Nurse under investigation over baby deaths at Birmingham Children's Hospital
2 trials: 1 of some nurses at Blackpool's Victoria Hospital for alleged ill treatment of stroke patients and the recent charges of North East London Trust for corporate manslaughter / gross negligence manslaughter.
I think more maternity scandals on the way. It has long been an area of difficult staffing and toxic relationships, not helped by the few set targets being poorly chosen.
On the other hand, all the above reached the light of day, albeit sometimes belatedly, so the reporting systems do work to a degree.
I was appalled to discover that we spend ca.£3.2 billion on maternity services and ca.£8 billion on negligence claims (approx 60% of the total bill of £13.3 billion in 2021 - 2022).
Some of the cases referred to above only reached the light of day because of patients pushing hard, often in the face of obstruction by the hospitals concerned. So I am not sure that I would agree that the reporting systems worked.
You could just as easily say this of finance but the fact that Libor and FX and many other scandals eventually came to light was not evidence of the system working. Quite the opposite. None of these problems - whether in the NHS or banks or the police or anywhere - started out as big scandals. They all started out small and should - if the reporting systems really worked as they should do - have been picked up at a very early stage.
That they weren't - or if they were- were not properly handled is evidence of the failure of the systems not its eventual success.
The cost of litigation is particularly high in obstetrics due to lifelong care costs for the disabled, and loss of earnings*. It is why there is only one hospital in the country doing private maternity care, and that is a private wing of an NHS teaching hospital.
One aspect of this is that the system awards large sums for a birth damaged by hypoxia, but nothing if equally disabled by fate, hence the long protracted cases. A system of no fault damages as per Scandanavia or New Zealand is both cheaper and kinder. Hunt has a chapter in it on his book Zero.
If there was one simple measure , it would be to stop scrutinising Caesarian rates. A common feature of maternity scandals is that midwives and obstetricians were in conflict, and in large part due to attitudes to operative deliveries. The fact is that for our skill mix and staffing levels, early section is often the safest option. In better resourced, better trained systems then more vaginal deliveries are safe, but we cannot safely force that by diktat.
*one shocking fact is that lifetime loss of earnings awards are determined in part by parental occupation, a defacto acceptance of social immobility.
I experienced a little of that conflict with my first child - not over delivery but in relation to breastfeeding, which I was unable to do. The health visitor kept insisting I keep going. I was in agony with mastitis, my son was not being fed and it was only when the GP got involved that it got sorted. He was furious at the health visitor. I can see how that sort of conflict at delivery stage can cause problems.
Elevating any mantra over the real need: a safe delivery of a healthy child, a properly fed baby etc is what causes problems. Mantras should never be an end in themselves. They should be one of the ways of remembering what the objective is. But that can easily be forgotten. And not just in health care.
Very true. The cost of doing so may be much elevated in health care, but it causes damage whereever it is found. People get fixated on what amounts basically to a slogan or mission statement, which might well be pretty good most of the time, and then warp things around it.
Mission statements are generally garbage. At best statements of the bleedin' obvious - banks must have "integrity" ("you don't say!") or platitudinous rubbish.
At one place I worked they wanted to have a mission statement for the Compliance Department. Some of the suggestions from staff were hilarious - if unrepeatable. Others included "Reminding you of the same damn stuff, every day" or "Cleaning your shit up". I suggested "Speaking truth to power". This was not taken up. The winner was in the platitudinous category and forgotten and ignored about 2 seconds after it was announced.
I agree they are often garbage but I have also found that in managing a department or team it can be useful to get the team to create (with guidance) their own mission statement. Sometimes it's quite informative to find out little team members have considered what they are there for.
They are garbage, and along with Vision Statements, Action Plans, Benchmarking, KPIs, Pivoting, Synergy, Low Hanging Fruit, Heads Up, New Normal are signs of outfits that don't know what they are for, or don't want someone else to know.
Another such sign is frequent name and title changing.
You missed out Health & Safety, paid holiday, toilet breaks and heated offices.
Don't be silly.
The problem is not having a clear understanding of what your team etc is doing and how - that is essential to good leadership. Rather, it is that all too often management focuses on lots of lovely statements and redesigns, thinks that this is enough and does not focus on the hard work of changing the reality.
SKS fans fuming because the man they claim is an electoral liability is so popular that Labour can't win the London mayoral election without his voters.
Confirms the idea of a party within a party. Shame Corbyn is no longer in the party within the party.
Saturday morning on Brockley’s Coulgate street. The two cafes present contrasting versions of inner London middle class hipsterdom. Both serve good coffee and pastries. (Nb this isn’t a summer/heatwave thing, you’d see the same scene on a sunny Saturday in February).
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Brockley is not Inner London. For those of us actually in “inner London” it’s basically Kent
Disagree (I may regret this...)
...
Well, according to Wikipedia, the London Government Act 1963 distinguishes between inner and outer London boroughs.
Brockley is in the borough of Lewisham, which is classified as Inner.
Inner London is defined by being the area which was the LCC before the creation of the GLC in 1965. (This is the melancholy date marking also the death of Middlesex.)
This is easier to answer than the vexed question in the frozen north: Is the new Cumberland a county or not, and if not, what is it?
For one awful moment I thought you were going to start a discussion about who is a northerner and who is a southerner. It will never be settled, and is most unjust to midlanders, who are a breed apart.
No views on this, living in England 120 miles north of Manchester. But if Midlanders are defined as Mercians and vice versa they have a byelection coming up in their ancient capital.
North/midlands/south can be divided up into blocks of 4° latitude:
UK's most northerly point: N61° 51' (Out Stack, Shetland) North-midlands transition: N57° 51' (in line with Dornoch Firth) Midlands-south transition: N53° 51' (just north of Blackpool) UK's most southerly point: N49° 51' (Pednathise Head)
I live in the midlands (albeit on the northern end). The exact middle, N55° 51, cuts right through Celtic Park.
Performing a similar east-west analysis (Lowestoft, Rockall), leads us to the dead centre of the UK, which is a cemetery on Jura, Kilearnadil. 55°51′N 5°58′W.
Comments
I remember the first time my dad went into hospital with bacteraemia, about a decade and a hand back.
He was put on the geriatric ward, where old coots seemed to be parked to die.
Every day I was there visiting, they closed the curtains round the Ward beds to carry out at least one newly deceased.
If the family hadn't gone in every day to feed him, he'd have starved to death, and wouldn't have got adequate (lifesaving) treatment had we not politely made ourselves pains in the arse.
The NHS is far from a terrible idea, but worship of it is delusional.
The Lib Dems seem pretty confident about Cheltenham and have been out in force in other places- notably Ciren and Cleeve and it led to big gains at the locals, They could fancy their chances. The Tories got whipped on the district council in May.
If I were Robertson I´d be trying to work the patch a bit more too- just in case.
It's different for Westminster elections I hear? Why is that?
I'm not sure they'll do it though. A Trudeau like convenient conversion to believing it is to too complex to be doing seems likely when there's a win, and it's not a unified position in the party anyway.
Btw, are you a Welsh-speaker? I ask because I am puzzled by the name of my young dog, 'Nia'. She's from Brecon. The Breeder apparently said it was Welsh for 'brightness' but I think he may have been bullshitting.
No problem anyway. She's a delghtful creature.
Other Welsh-speakers are invited to comment.
In which case my £5 on Con in 3rd place at 20/1 with RCS looks interesting.
In the foreground Browns of Brockley. Slick, professional, quite expensive. Muted browns and beiges in the decor. A Starmerite and Lib Dem clientele. A smattering of FBPEs. Gen Xs and Millennials who yearn for the good of days of Blair.
In the background the Broca. Plastered floor to ceiling with sweary political stickers and posters. Trans and queer imagery, cheerful cafe manager has a ponytail and eyeliner and a fetching singlet, vegan menu, posters bemoaning capitalism and the patriarchy. Corbynites and Green clientele (plus me today, I alternate depending on seating availability).
Fascinating the wide spectrum that the woke metropolitan remainer hipsters actually span.
Post Mt Hallasan hike soju.
Referendums are in reality irrelevant in terms of changing the law.
Having said that Khan can still won even under FPTP provided he squeezes other leftwing parties
There's no possible universe in which Corbo would do worse in London than he did nationwide in 2019 (where he got 1/3 of the vote, even if inefficiently distributed).
#MayorCorbo
https://nitter.net/K_Niemietz/status/1700437884560416870#m
Naturally I can offer some local support for your observations. Cheltenham is a nailed on LD win, which in one respect is a bit of a pity. Alex Chalk is an excellent MP and just the sort the Tories would need for a serious rebuilding after the anticapted rout.
Robertson (Tewkesbury) would be much less of a loss. He's not the worst in the House, but is normally characterised as being lazy, which is another reason why I was a surprised to receive an enterprising questionnaire from him. He has a huge majority so if he is in on the cusp, you could be talking of less than 100 Tory MPs in the next Parliament. There was some scandal involving excessive hospitality at the Cheltenham Festival, but it seems to have blown over and as Parliamentary misdemeanours go it was pretty small beer. So i guess he's safe.
It's true that the LDs have been making excellent progress at Council level. This is highly relevant for me as I have to decide which way to cast my anti-government vote. It isn't clear whether Labour or the LDs are best placed to cause an upset. Probably the latter, but I'll decide nearer the date.
Atb.
And he didn’t get 1/3 of the vote in 2019. Labour did. Corbyn without Labour is not the same thing at all.
Is it possible that the public have little faith in either main party and that the Lib Dems will take both seats as a protest vote against the establishment parties
It might have helped that I was known to some of the older staff, having worked with them, and indeed run teaching for them many years earlier!
When it's not it can be dreadful, and challenging it an exhausting experience (impossible without help, if you're ill).
Post truth indeed, if this is accurate.
The LDs in 2019 also got the highest share of their vote from graduates and higher earners of the main parties
I have family who moved to the area 30 years ago and have been out delivering when I have been staying there. Agreed about Chalk, but it seems that he has decided against a chicken run, partly, I suspect, to top up his reserves by going back into legal practice for a Parliament before having another go where his jacket won´t be on such a shoogly peg. (the payoff for losing might also be on his mind I guess), but also probably to avoid the inevitably nasty fall-out of defeat and and the soul destroying slog of the (much less well paid) opposition front bench with no early prospect of power.
Robertson is, as you say, much less well liked, and the boundaries are making the Tewkesbury seat a lot more open. However Geoffrey Clifton Brown who at 70 you might have thought would stand down seems set to try for the new North Cotswolds seat, which must be giving Robertson pause for thought.
After taking overall control of the Cotswolds District and leading the NOC council in Tewkesbury the Lib Dems are on a bit of a charge in GLos. I would say that Stroud, Forest of Dean and City of Gloucester look like solid Labour gains, and Cheltenham a Lib Dem gain. For the other three seats, Cotswolds North looks like the most solid Tory seat with Labout the chllenger, while South Cotswolds and Tewkesbury would be more marginal and Lib Dems the challengers.
So depends on which of the new constituencies you end up in as to how you cast your vote I guess. Cotswolds North or City of Gloucester then Labour, Cheltenham, Tewkesbury or Cotswolds South then Lib Dem.
Still the Tories are set to go from holding all seven of the seats in Glos down to possibly three or... on a day of miracles... down to one.
Leafy Shires... No More :-)
I agree though when the system goes awry people can very defensive and negative.
https://twitter.com/WarbirdsNews/status/1699854333179801742
Also for Miyazaki fans.
People are out campaigning for Corbyn
The media identify them and look up their social media
Their social media says Russia was just responding to NATO aggression and Jews control the media
Corbyn is asked to disown them
Repeat
I’m not saying that’s all Corbyn supporters, but there will be enough of them.
More anon.
50% of all S Korean Muzak is reworked Chopin.
Also every other K drama soundtrack.
As it describes:
The game is centered on the Polish romantic pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 39. The story envisions a fictional world dreamed by Chopin during his last hours that is influenced by Chopin's life and music, and in which he himself is a playable character, among others. The game's battle system centers on musical elements and character-unique special attacks...
The game features a selection of Chopin's compositions played by pianist Stanislav Bunin, though the original compositions were composed and arranged by Motoi Sakuraba.
And serves as a useful reminder to people that video games are not one size fits all as a genre!
You, @Leon, are Central London, which is different to Inner London.
Beyond that, there's London Suburbs, and then "Kent/Essex, actually."
Central London is the bits that other people might want to visit, either for prestigious work or pleasure. People don't want to visit Inner London, because it's scary, or London Suburbs because they're boring. And then the bits beyond that kid themselves that they've escaped London, when they haven't. (Odd that you get that on the East, Havering/Bexley/Bromley, in a way that doesn't happen for other compass points.)
Political implications- the Conservatives can win in London, but they need to line up the centre, suburbs and actuallies. As things stand, they only really have a secure grip on the last of these.
The other kicker is that the rings are gradually rippling out. Even Havering has pavement cafes. (No photos, because I'm in Children's Activity Limbo). But part of the appeal of someone like Andrew Rosindell is that he rails against the Londonisation of Romford. Plenty of people moved here to escape all that.
Brockley is in the borough of Lewisham, which is classified as Inner.
This is brass arsehole required territory.
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1697598375015727532
At one place I worked they wanted to have a mission statement for the Compliance Department. Some of the suggestions from staff were hilarious - if unrepeatable. Others included "Reminding you of the same damn stuff, every day" or "Cleaning your shit up". I suggested "Speaking truth to power". This was not taken up. The winner was in the platitudinous category and forgotten and ignored about 2 seconds after it was announced.
Anyway, a Scottish health cock-up to add to the list - https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/politics/scottish-politics/4708591/eljamel-shona-robison/.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Greater_London_Authority_referendum
Ok - sorry - not actually foreign, but according to press reports there is a touch of the tar brush in there somewhere.
I daresay a fair few ‘oh Jeremy Corbyn’ types are a little more jaded these days and would be happy with an optimistic ‘Red Tory’ over the actual useless Blue Tories.
Con 39%
Lib 27%
NDP 19%
BQ 8%
Green 4%
People's 2%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_45th_Canadian_federal_election#Pre-campaign_period
Corbyn didn't get 1/3rd of the vote in 2019, the Labour Party did.
Millions voted Labour despite Corbyn, and because they dislike the Tories more, not because of Corbyn.
This is easier to answer than the vexed question in the frozen north: Is the new Cumberland a county or not, and if not, what is it?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/66742038
(Ok I added alien but who knows?)
*grabs tinfoil hat and ducks*
(Why ducks? Before people go quackers.)
What makes it worse is that, combined with this, many of those working in it are also un- or under-appreciated, stressed out and expected to make up for the institutional failings. So they feel unfairly criticised. So we have an unhealthy combination of insufficient challenge of the right type and lots of unfair criticism.
I think it's fair to say the country has largely moved on from Corbyn. The polling shows that many, many people are content with the idea of voting for a Labour party that doesn't include Corbyn as one of its MPs.
I think a lot of people's mental geography of our patch of London is woefully out of date, like Leon's view that we're some dreary suburb, or the Del Boy gags. I was out in Peckham last night having a birthday meal for my daughter with the family, at a fantastic, bustling and buzzing Bao restaurant. The streets were heaving, with people sat outside bars and restaurants up and down Rye Lane. SE14/SE4/SE15 have become really very nice places to live for meterosexual centrist dads like me. Personally I can't think of another place on earth I'd rather be living right now.
Another such sign is frequent name and title changing.
I have been to Peckham but it was decades ago in pursuit of William Blake. I remember it as extremely multicultural; with hints of promise and maybe the first signs of gentrification
Still fuckin Sarf Lunnon tho, innit
"After that appearance in court, there was a delay in his case being sent to crown court while another far more serious allegation was prepared.
Mr Khalife is now accused of committing an act "prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state", contrary to the Official Secrets Act.
It's alleged that between May 2019 and January 2022 he obtained, collected, recorded, published, or communicated information which was useful to an enemy - a spying offence.
The BBC understands that the allegation relates to Iran."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66756393
They are very important problems and we should try to do something about them.
(I told you it was the best way from Ross to Gloucester.)
UK's most northerly point: N61° 51' (Out Stack, Shetland)
North-midlands transition: N57° 51' (in line with Dornoch Firth)
Midlands-south transition: N53° 51' (just north of Blackpool)
UK's most southerly point: N49° 51' (Pednathise Head)
I live in the midlands (albeit on the northern end). The exact middle, N55° 51, cuts right through Celtic Park.
The problem is not having a clear understanding of what your team etc is doing and how - that is essential to good leadership. Rather, it is that all too often management focuses on lots of lovely statements and redesigns, thinks that this is enough and does not focus on the hard work of changing the reality.