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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » SNP hold on to Aberdeen Donside with reduced majority – Fa
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » SNP hold on to Aberdeen Donside with reduced majority – Farage’s Scottish venture ends with lost deposit
Party shares in Aberdeen Donside by-election
SNP 42
Lab 33.3
LD 8.3
Con 7.7
UKIP 4.8
Greens 1.7
National Front 1
Christians 0.9
SDA 0.14
0
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Comments
But they left us with so many happy memories. Mostly false memories of things that never actually happened. Like the epochal "Stirling by-election", and that time Alex Salmond was thrown out of the Labour Party for being too left-wing -
http://news.stv.tv/politics/230185-ukips-christopher-monckton-in-alex-salmond-expelled-from-labour-gaffe/
The fact that the equivalent Westminster seat is safe Labour territory speaks volumes about just how poor a result this is for the party. With the SNP deep into mid-term Labour really should have been looking to win this seat.
SNP for being too left-wing.
I'm sure he's delighted people are reminded - the follies of youth eh?
Good result for SNP - not bad job by Labour - and neither coalition party can take any comfort from whether they were either (a very distant) third or fourth. UKIP continue to demonstrate their election winning prowess...
Meanwhile good digging by the Mirror on Farage's Off Shore play:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nigel-farage-set-up-offshore-1972988
Ah, the heady days of New Labour and the booming tax avoidance industry!
Actually he mentions it quite a lot, probably because it causes problems for anyone peddling the line that he's some kind of neoliberal. Strictly speaking he wasn't expelled for being left-wing - all internal groups regardless of ideology were proscribed by Gordon Wilson, who feared that the SNP risked breaking in two. Those who refused to comply with the demand to give up membership of the 79 Group were automatically expelled.
I suppose we could give UKIP's Scottish leader Lord Monckton (are they insane?) the benefit of the doubt and assume that he simply got his parties mixed up, but somehow I doubt it.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/714002393/artisanal-tinfoil-haberdashery
http://m.stv.tv/news/politics/230185-ukips-christopher-monckton-in-alex-salmond-expelled-from-labour-gaffe/
"The shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham told The Independent: “This is a cover-up that happened on this government's watch. It has got serious questions to answer.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/nhs-baby-deaths-scandal-former-watchdog-chief-cynthia-bower-and-deputy-implicated-in-suppressing-cqc-report-8666173.html
To which the answer is "the report published yesterday"
Just like you did at Mid Staffs, Andy.....
Alex Salmond "delighted that UKIP failed to retain their deposit" in the by-election. http://itv.co/11QcuaV
Pathetic line, negativity all the way, after all the locals have sod all to do with indy, although it held their vote up I guess.
This is a safe seat at Westminster for labour and they get 33%, not a good omen really against a mid term government that has been in for 6 years.
Tories at 8% and LD at 7% or so shows Scotland is a Two party system, just not the Tory/LD coalition.
I can see Labour saying vote for us (even if we are crap) to stop the SNP as we are the only option used as an election mantra.
Latest YouGov / The Sun results 20th June - CON 31%, LAB 39%, LD 11%, UKIP 14%
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/bkzpns9f2h/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-200613.pdf
29 JANUARY, 2009
"The Care Quality Commission has appointed the wife of its transition director to a board level position as director of engagement.
Jill Finney is married to David Lane, who has been overseeing the merger between the Healthcare Commission, Commission for Social Care Inspection and the Mental Health Act Commission. Ms Finney, who is strategic marketing and communications director at the British Library, starts her new role next month."
http://www.hsj.co.uk/news/wife-of-cqc-man-joins-its-board/1975188.article
http://www.scotsman.com/news/snp-fall-out-that-saw-salmond-expelled-but-put-party-on-new-path-1-1030419
"In a speech at University College Hospital, London, arranged before the scandal of watchdogs hiding baby deaths broke, Mr Hunt will say nearly 500,000 patients were harmed unnecessarily and 3,000 died last year."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2345522/NHS-blunders-cause-deaths-day-Jeremy-Hunt-speak-silent-scandal.html#ixzz2WpHATsjm
" In a newspaper article, Ms MacDonald said the French National Front leader ( Jean Marie Le Pen ) was "intellectually robust" while his "logic was difficult to fault". "
http://jackofkent.com/2013/06/grayling-grieve-legal-aid/
Never something we heard from Andy Burnham - how many requests for an inquiry into Mid Staffs did Andy Burnham turn down, was it 81 or 82?
The last few months have been quite rocky for the SNP administration with many of their hostages to fortune coming home to roost. Salmond has looked a lot less comfortable and has been caught out several times. There have been repeated stories in the media about people having to go to England to get cancer drugs (a consequence of abolishing prescription charges) and a lot of unhappiness about the availability of university places for Scottish students (a consequence of the no fees policy).
Despite this Labour get nowhere. As a tory this would normally give me some satisfaction (despite yet another terrible tory result). As a unionist it is a worry.
It is undoubtely true that after 79 the SNP went more left wing. One of the mysteries of Scottish politics is that despite doing so they held onto their tory gains in places like Angus and Perthshire with some considerable comfort. It is a remarkable achievement.
Ah well 23 months to go.
The insanity was all Labour's. Allowing whistleblowers to be paid off rather than getting to the truth of what was going on in certain hospitals was not going to do patients much good, was it?
Who set up the inquiry that got to the bottom of what happened at Stafford? It sure wasn't Labour; their inquiry was criticised for its narrow remit by the chairman. And why was the remit so narrow?
But we all know that Labour are more interested in the NHS as an organisation than the welfare of patients.
BenM shows well the fingers-in-ears attitude of many (although thankfully not all) in Labour circles: 'possibly one death' at Stafford, and a relative trying to get to the truth is branded a 'loudmouth'.
But I daresay you'd prefer the NHS to go on as it was before June 2010 with no changes; covering up unnecessary deaths and lying to the public.
This Monckton fellow is a curious old cove. The sort of British eccentric that is an admirable fit in Ukip. Indeed I'm warming to Ukip and feel they should be officially nominated for national treasure status much like fine pies, bread and butter pudding, traditional nannies and Joanna Lumley in tight leather trousers and .......
Nurse !!!!!!
As a consequence everything without a target attached gets neglected. If you want to see whats wrong then look at these areas. Things such as follow up appiintments being timely, etc.
The interview of the current chairman of the CQC yesterday was incredible. At the time of the baby scandal "inspections" of hospitals were being carried out by people who had no relevant experience or knowledge. Many had previously worked in social care.
It is hard not to think that there are political imperatives behind this from both sides. Labour was determined that the most popular vestige of socialist Britain was not going to be criticised in any way and was more than happy to rely on what must now be regarded as highly dubious surveys of satisfaction. The tories are determined to show that the NHS needed the reforms that they have introduced and that much needs to be done to improve accountability and performance.
Of course in Scotland, in our socialist paradise, everything is wonderful and we have inspection systems and accountability that would have put the Labour CQC to shame. Still, it keeps the lawyers busy.
I'm sure many PBers have worked in organisations where outcomes aren't measured or valued because they're harder to assess/more complex to understand than time-and-motion et al/failing to do a good job would be exposed by them.
It's the sort of management style that is often associated with 'bean-counters' - the worst boss I ever had was an accountant by trade who really did know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
Just in case you want to know more:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n07/paul-taylor/rigging-the-death-rate
There are many issues that need addressing; this includes honesty from staff within the NHS and also some sane reporting in the media. We all want the best NHS we can get; it appears that the culture within parts of the NHS was not allowing us to get that.
I'm not surprised that UKIP didn't do well in Scotland, but starting in fresh pastures is always fraught with perils.
The good news is that south of Hadrian's Wall UKIP are picking up good percentages of votes and people are still moving to us.
And to tap it off Global Warming is officially dead, according to the Economist (see below)
-------------
@BoltonFMNews
NEWS: Labour have won the Horwich by-election. With 322 votes; UKIP with 224; Lib Dem with 103; and Con with 74.
-----------------------
Salford
Lab 785 UKIP 401 Con 260 Green 80 BNP 74 Ind 64 LD 58 Ind 15
-------------------------
@RogerHelmerMEP
Roll out the welcome mat. Three Rutland Councillors join UKIP. http://is.gd/zyZbHa . Well done gentlemen. Good call.
-----------------------------
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/climate-change?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/a_cooling_consensus
http://www.hsj.co.uk/news/wife-of-cqc-man-joins-its-board/1975188.article
"The woman accused of ordering a cover-up of the NHS watchdog’s failure to investigate baby deaths was a PR expert whose husband was helping to set up the regulator when she joined. Families and MPs demanded last night an investigation into how Jill Finney and Cynthia Bower — the two top officials at the Care Quality Commission — got their jobs, after an independent review concluded that they sanctioned the destruction of a critical internal report.
In March last year Ms Finney, the former deputy chief executive, ordered a subordinate to “delete” a report that criticised the watchdog’s failure to act over the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Trust, where mothers and babies died. Ms Bower, the former chief executive who had previously run the health trust responsible for the scandal-hit Stafford Hospital, was in the room when the order was given and supported that decision, a review by the consultants Grant Thornton found...
A spokesman for the CQC said that Mr Lane played no part in the decision to hire his wife, who was sacked by her new employer yesterday as a result of the controversy. She could not be reached for comment. Ms Bower, who resigned last night from her latest post as a non-executive trustee of the Skills for Health quango, said that she had “no note or recollection” of any order to delete the report and insisted: “Had I heard any such instruction I would have countermanded it”. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/news/article3796802.ece
I'd also add that seeing the Tories as "the establishment" is very unfair. The reality is that there is an establishment class that exists independent of a specific political party, though the leaderships of all our major parties are part of the establishment.
Surely you are intelligent enough to see that there is another counter spin-line that the coalition parties can use against Labour? That the NHS under Labour was fundamentally broken from the CQC down, and needed to be fixed? That a structure and organisation that let such things go on was not fit for purpose?
And that leads nicely into Stafford, Furness and the other places where deaths have occurred under the previous administration.
So to finish a comfortable fifth in a by-election, within striking distance of third and within a few dozen votes of holding their deposit is no mean achievement. UKIP have no significant history in Scotland and the party can be easily perceived to have something of an English feel to it. All in all, it's probably been a useful learning experience for Farage and team. I would not back against UKIP improving their Scottish Euro-election performance by five places next year.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00424/Morland_21_424571c.jpg
http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2013/06/20/comment-andy-burnham-s-responsibility-for-secrecy
And saying 'other countries may be doing the same' is an absolutely ridiculous argument.
This from Popbitch may amuse.
"Derek Jacobi has been complaining that he
received more fanmail after playing the
Master for three minutes in Doctor Who,
than for all of his other work."
Or there was 'possibly one death' at Stafford? (on an obscure blog by someone who misrepresents both statistics and the words of the expert).
When figures are being fiddled and whistleblowers paid off as they were (and probably are) in the NHS, then anecdotes matter. Because they can signal the truth that is being covered up.
IIRC at least one whistleblower has come forward to say they were pressured into marking 'the wrong sort of deaths' as another to hide poor performance. And their boss had previously used this form of massaging in her previous role. It was also alleged that this 'bright idea' had spread across several hospitals once others caught on too.
Not quite the form of practice sharing that we expect in the NHS. Using the argument that lots of people are at it really doesn't hold any water - LIBOR traders were doing it in another line of business and one is in the doc this week - but no one died as a result.
UKIP represent just shy of one-in-twenty Scots (based upon last nights results): Ergo their leader should be expelled from Caledonia.
SNP struggle to reach the giddy-hieghts of 2% of the UK electorate: Ergo the interweb pixel-queens (albeit somewhat "challenged") demand that the "Fat-One" must - I emphasise must - take part in a Prime-Ministerial debate.
Where is smukesh to explain this...?
On the NHS, it's very noticeable that Tories seize on every item of bad news to try not only to pin it on Labour but to suggest that the system itself needs to be replaced. It's a dangerous habit since rightly or wrongly the polls are quite unambiguous: people like the system and trust Labour more over it - and that IMO is because they rightly suspect that many Tories would like to get rid of it and are only just restraining themselves from saying so. I do take the point about target cultures, but "just leave it to the professionals" doesn't always work well either, as we see now with A&E waiting times. My personal preference would be something like the BoE's inflation targeting - you're allowed to break the target, but you have to explain the reasons each time.
"I agree with much of this, ar. The communications of the Coalition Government's economic policies have been sub par.
Much of that (and you will have to agree not to let Mr. Brooke know I have said this) is due to an incoming Chancellor not knowing what to do when running the Treasury. All the preparation of policies in opposition and all his or her economic training or achievements will not prepare for office. Walk across the threshold of No 11 and the Treasury mandarins take over, at least for the first half of any parliamentary term.
This is both good and bad. The good is that it enables a PR Officer of the Cairngorms to perform superlatively as Chief Secretary and, conversely, it would clip the wings of any qualified or eminent economist as Chancellor.
The bad is that the politicians who find themselves behind the door probably don't know what it is they are really doing until it happens. And then they are asked to communicate to the public what is happening and where we are going. A task made more difficult by external events and influences beyond control of the office. That is why most chancellors are rated on their performance on the economy rather than their ability to sell policy..
Osborne's strengths are his ability to simplify policy and stubbornly stick to key goals. He is not so good at selling policies and performance to the electorate except in a partisan and adversarial context. Ironically the best economic evangelist in the Coalition is Vince Cable but he would never have matched the brutal simplicity of Osborne's policy implementation.
So we all live and learn. And Osborne has matured in office. His star is on the rise in conjunction with the economy.
If I disagree with anything in your post it is your advocacy of extreme medication. Economies are almost organic and properly nurtured are generally self-healing. Gradualism is all. It is just getting sustained policy direction right over long cycles that is difficult to achieve. Give Osborne ten years and he will get much closer to where you want to be than any substitute. It is not his innate skills that will count though: it will be his experience, which is fast becoming worth the weight of all the gold sold by Gordon."
I think you're wrong on this 'self-healing' and 'gradualism' line.
Britain's problems are too fundamental and the way the world is changing is too extreme.
Five years ago I first asked this question at PB - We're now competing against counties which are as intelligent and educated as we are but who are willing to work harder for less money and with fewer regulations. How will we maintain the higher living standards than they have?
I've never received an answer and I can't see one myself.
It is this effect of globalisation which is driving the economic stagnation, increasing debt and growing inequality in western countries.
And as each year passes and our debt increases and we become more addicted to our current levels of wealth consumption the harder it becomes to face the changes which at some point will be forced upon us.This is why accepting a plateau in retail spending is so dangerous - in 2008 we had had a single year of 'peak' retail spending, now we have had six years and what was in 2008 a bubble induced peak has become an 'austerity' period minimum.
As the saying goes 'tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat' and a strategy is what we lack to deal with a changing world. All we have is endless tactics, whether from the policial class playing their narrow games or, with respect, their fanclubs with their 'the news keeps on geting better and better' cheering and sneering.
Quis custodiet custodios ipsos ?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2345522/NHS-blunders-cause-deaths-day-Jeremy-Hunt-speak-silent-scandal.html#ixzz2WpHATsjm
"4 weeks to do X" is usually a bad target because it leads to diversion of resources.
I'd rather see a general measure of patient outcomes (of course the devil is in the detail) rather than time based targets
Good morning, everyone.
(SO: just to be clear 'suffering harm' and 'patient death' are important measures but they are *not* the same as 'patient outcomes' which has a very specific meaning in the industry')
Good to see UKIP find their level. I think Iain Martin (who's capable of just about any sort of tittishness on Scottish politics) said that Farage's Royal Mile stushie was worth 3 points to UKIP, so let's assume 1.8% is the 'adjusted' figure.
As for the CQC debacle: let us not lose sight of the most important thing. The dead children. Which occurred under a Labour government.
As for the CQC: who set it up, who initiated the culture, who appointed most of the people?
Labour's lies on the NHS have been discovered.
On Lansley's watch two Labour era placemen at the CQC were replaced, and the new regime commissioned then published, in under a year, the report into the CQC failings yesterday.
How very different from Andy "81 times no inquiry into Mid Staffs" Burnham.
F1: the Tribunal of Terror reports today. Could have significant implications.
It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to see that, just like the absence of money left, the Iraq war lies, the spending plans, that the degree to which Labour was in denial and duplicitous was far far greater than even avowed political opponents could ever have imagined.
What on Earth were Labour doing? There's barely anytime for the staff to do anything in between scrapping one body and starting another.
It is events like this and Stafford and Morecambe which are proving ever more the need for fundamental reform. Far from airbrushing out Lansley, it is vindicating what he wanted to do. As for the polls, well, they can shift in response to events and to persuasion.
The blog you try to dismiss as "obscure" was subject to media interest (from Private Eye and others) which suddenly waned when the analysis Mr Walker did (ie. there was not "1200 deaths" at Stafford) was supported by the facts.
Stafford is shocking enough without indulging in myths. As is the current alleged CQC cover up scandal.
There certainly is a meme of the NHS being 'safe in Labour's hands' - well, I think their last period in office has managed to hole that one below the water line.
That the regulator was hiding the issues, and filled with the likes of Ms Bower/the culture of cover-ups and Nicholson/gagging clauses...
It'd be hard to make up a worse set of scandals - unflattering reports into the deaths of mothers and their babies deleted on the order of MODERATED The horrors of Stafford and several other trusts?
One wonders what else is about to come out of the woodwork. All the CQC's reports must be reviewed in light of this - and all the inquiries they conducted and never published...
Whilst that deserves to be the case the public still trust Labour more than the Conservatives on the NHS. Whether that's due to a partial media, a disinterested/entrenched public, good PR/spin from Labour or bad PR/spin from the Coalition/Conservatives can be debated.
"...In a speech at University College London Hospitals, Mr Hunt will also reveal that 325 "never events" were recorded last year - incidents so unacceptable that they should never happen.
He is expected to say the UK has become "so numbed to the inevitability of patient harm that we accept the unacceptable" and call for a more open culture where errors are constantly revealed and reduced.
"The facts are clear," Mr Hunt will say.
"Last year there were nearly half a million incidents that led to patients being harmed, and 3,000 people lost their lives while in the care of the NHS.
"It is time for a major rethink - a different kind of culture and leadership, where staff are supported to do what their instincts and commitment to patients tell them.
"We must make sure that patients know where the buck stops and who is ultimately responsible for their care.
"And above all, we must listen more to NHS staff, so we can design systems that encourage them to act safely whatever pressures they face."
Your attempts to blacken the name of the relatives of the Stafford dead are duly noted. It must be very inconvenient for you that some relatives had the temerity to question whether their loved ones should have died.
How dare they!
You are the one trying to peddle myths, such as 'perhaps one death'. Your inability to realise that is false is quite alarming.
By the way, how are your plans to get the unemployed digging canals with shovels coming along?
The structural advantage Labour have on the NHS is their monopoly of its employees whom they always place first before patient concerns. This allows them to run scares when unions and doctors claim the world will come to an end if 2pence is cut from the NHS budget. Parties looking to break this hold have to either get a chunk of NHS employees onside to enable a sensible debate or establish clear blue water between being on the side of patients versus NHS employees.
"Five years ago I first asked this question at PB - We're now competing against counties which are as intelligent and educated as we are but who are willing to work harder for less money and with fewer regulations. How will we maintain the higher living standards than they have?"
Five years ago the only answer was innovation and technology. Now that may no longer be true. The UK's education system has declined against the global standards and we struggle to find properly qualified and experienced employees from the UK nationals. At the same time the UK has a quickly growing army of unemployed and unemployable due to them being ill-educated.
We have to cut our costs and incomes dramatically and do more with less people. This includes all child benefits, public sector pensions (private sector is already in tatters) and only allow self-supporting immigrants. This policy will not attract votes.
At the same time there has to be a vast leap in education standards and in public sector efficiency if we have any hope to drag ourselves out of this self-imposed mire.
Firstly the figures are nearly always meaningless. they are usually met by whatever means are necessary so don't represent anything. And secondly when introduced by politicians, thEy can be guaranteed to be used purely for political ends, so accuracy is irrelevant anyway.
Targets pervert good practice in the name of headline figures. How can that ever be useful?
It's possible to argue the "fault" issue either way (set up under Labour/if the CQC was that bad, how come the Coalition didn't change it?), but that's not really the point. There is actually a fundamental divide here: Labour and most of the population think the NHS works generally well, albeit with occasional disasters that need to be addressed, the Tories think it's basically unfit for purpose, illustrated by occasional disasters. It's an unhealthy position for them in political terms, but one that they seem to feel so strongly that they can't resist.
Whoever was in charge when the NHS scandals took place the Tories are going to carry the can......
1. No one trusts them with the NHS (particularly the staff) and
2. Because they have a Minister of Health who has GUILTY written all over him (for the reasons stated above)
"The NHS sees nearly three million people a week. About 0.4 per cent suffer harm and 0.003 per cent die – better rates than France, Germany, Sweden, Norway and the US."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2345522/NHS-blunders-cause-deaths-day-Jeremy-Hunt-speak-silent-scandal.html#ixzz2WptluJm3
Would the CQC cover up have been exposed under Andy Burnham?
Of course there are some hardcore Labour loyalists in the particularly unionised parts of the NHS but most of them are so far to the left of the post-John Smith Labour party that they were as aggressively opposed to the changes of the 1997-2010 Labour government as they are to those of the Coalition. I don't think that there's a co-ordinated, choreographed NHS staff programme of opposing the Tories when in government and supporting Labour when in government. Neither the People's Front of Judea, nor the Judean People's Front are that organised. The strongest thing you can say is that most NHS staff are not-particularly-well-off British citizens, and as NickPalmer points out, most of them are stubbornly enthusiastic about an NHS that runs on roughly the model that has applied for the last few decades. To the extent that's a vested interest it's a consumer interest, not a producer interest.
I must admit Roger, I'd have a look of surprise if the assembled paparazzi flashed me leaving the Post Office let alone a gay bar.
Why can't they just stick to taking photos ?
"People should not be taken to court just because a tweet or online message is “bad taste, controversial or unpopular”, according to the guidelines from Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions. Nor should they be prosecuted just because an online comment is unpopular or unfashionable or may cause offence to specific communities or individuals.
Prosecutors should proceed with “considerable caution”, and only when comments are grossly offensive and where it would be in the public interest to bring about a prosecution. Mr Starmer said that messages online would have to pass a “high threshold” before those posting them were prosecuted...
A distinction was made between communications that are likely to be prosecuted — those that amount to a credible threat of violence, a targeted campaign of harassment against an individual or which breach court orders — and those that may be considered offensive, indecent, obsecene or false. In addition, prosecutors must recognise the right to “freedom of expression” and only proceed with a prosecution when a communication is “more than offensive, shocking or disturbing, even if distasteful or painful to those subjected to it”. As a general rule, threats that are not credible should not be prosecuted, unless they are part of a campaign of harassment specifically targeting an individual. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/law/article3796819.ece
Worse, whistleblowers have been paid off.
This shows that we do not know what is going on in the NHS. I cannot say whether it is fit or unfit for purpose, but the signs are not good if the CQC was so incompetent and/or criminal.
Whatever, it is a far cry from what Labour were and have been claiming.
I have some sympathy with hospitals on this. The human body is an exceptionally complex machine, and diagnosing - yet alone fixing - problems can be very hard. Mistakes will happen even with the best care. However, if mistakes occur then they need to be investigated and lessons learnt.
Trends of performance are key: hospitals, doctors, nurses or surgeons who show patterns of poor care. Instead it looks as though the culture in some parts of the NHS is totally against uncovering such patterns and prefers instead to look after their own.
If transparency is the key, then the lock is the media and people analysing the transparent data properly.
(Edit: loom=look)