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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Leader of the Opposition is the toughest job in British politics. If Jeremy didn’t know it before, he knows it now.
The Bishop of Chichester George Bell was celebrated in a BBC Radio Great Lives programme a couple of years ago for a wartime speech in the House of Lords condemning the bombing of German civilians. Bell was no pacifist but he argued that “ to justify methods inhumane in themselves by arguments of expediency smacks of the Nazi philosophy that Might is Right.” The speech was made in February 1944, months before Allied boots landed on the ground in Normandy.
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Corrected.
Was Ken Livingstone's appointment badly handled? That depends on what you think the appointment was intended to achieve. If, as I think was the case, the appointment was intended to undermine, humiliate, and demoralise the Shadow Defence Secretary and others trying to hold the line against the Marxist infiltatrators who have taken over the party, then it was a great success.
The economy, police numbers, NHS, these are issues he should be hammering the government on, instead he is doing bizarre interviews where he talks about his personal hobbies and comes out with utter nonsense about shoot-to-kill (hey, I'm no fan of this policy but how else do you cope with a terrorist attack than by authorising the police to do whatever is necessary to protect public safety?).
Cue stirring duet from Adele and Sam Smith
I thought he'd have a honeymoon for a while, but this is turning into the honeymoon where your wife finds out you've slept with her sister, best mate, and her mother, concurrently.
Seven Principles of a Free Society
Individual Freedom
Personal and Family Responsibility
The Rule of Law
Limited Government
Free Market Economy
National Parliamentary Democracy
Strong National Defences
I share those views but its unlikely I'll ever be PM either.
New figures from NHS regulators revealed a deficit of £1.6bn, with projections the figure will reach £2.2bn by the end of the financial year.
Experts told the Telegraph that the situation is now so bleak that there are fears that over the next year, some hospitals will be unable to pay their staff.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/12005483/NHS-faces-worst-financial-crisis-in-its-history.html
After skipping the first eight paragraphs, we got to a bit of meat.
More brummy accents???
Ken Livingstone behaved appallingly, but the power grab was a smart idea from Jeremy Corbyn's perspective.
It's the hard-men around him that do all the bidding.
Richard Murray, director of policy at The King's Fund, said: "Today's figures show the NHS is in the grip of an unprecedented financial meltdown.
"Deficits on this scale cannot be attributed to mismanagement or inefficiency. Quite simply, it is no longer possible for the vast majority of NHS providers to maintain standards of care and balance their budgets.
"If the Chancellor needed a wake-up call ahead of next week's Spending Review, this is it. The scale of the deficits provides yet more evidence that the additional funding promised by the government is needed sooner rather than later. If this is not forthcoming, the government should be honest with the public that the outcome will be an accelerating decline in standards of care."
Awaits measured response (denial) from usual suspects especially to the 2nd paragraph
France's national gendarme service says about 50 elite police troops are en route from Paris to Bamako.
A spokesman for the service who was not authorized to be publicly named said they are heading Friday from two different units of special police forces trained for emergency situations. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/12006988/Mali-Bamako-terrorist-attack-170-hostages-Paris-live.html#update-20151120-1222
www.nationalhealthexecutive.com/.../provider-performance-crashes-as-s...
Longer term we need to look at ending life extending treatment on the NHS for very old people and looking at prescription charges for type 2 diabetics.
1. Any organisation which trains its own staff and then they leave and it employs them as temporary labour at vastly increased costs is grossly incompetent.
2. I recently spent 36 hours in A&E. The medical care was great. But I have never seen any organisation where so many staff walk from one place to another and then back again over several hours. The logistics of the hospital appear rubbish. (or they are shirking: my prior experience is that people who walk around all the time tend to avoid work).
and
If an organisation is running out of money it sets priorities and saves money by not doing the least important tasks. From what I see, the NHS does not attempt to.
Impressions only.. But no doubt you can tell me why I am wrong..
"Actor and comedian Robert Webb has revealed on Twitter he has cancelled his membership of the Labour party."
Pass the popcorn!
Why be so lenient on the other 47% of managers
I've spent time in the last month with a close relative who received shockingly awful treatment at the hands of the NHS.
They'd have died without the outstanding care they received privately.
And indifferent and uncaring Junior doctors have the brass neck to strike?!
Lots of 'efficiencies' to be had.
This is one of the NHS's biggest problems IMHO and frankly it is an f**ing disgrace that successive governments have got away with doing practically nothing about it except cut local government funding. We need a grown up conversation with the public about funding this is some sensible way.
I agree completely.
The French interior ministry says they have carried out 793 searches, 107 arrests leading to 90 people being remanded in custody since the start of the state of emergency on Saturday.
In all, 174 weapons have been found, including 18 "weapons of war", along with 64 drugs seizures and 250,000 euros in cash. Some 164 people have been consigned to their residence.
On the night of Thursday alone, police carried out 182 new raids, 20 arrests and 17 people were remanded in custody. Some 76 weapons were seized."
They've been busy...
More power to the French for blitzing here. I do like their SWATish moniker RAID - much better.
Jamie Jenkins @statsjamie · 51m51 minutes ago
Women in parts of Birmingham live 46.1 years in good health - lowest in England http://ow.ly/USD6G
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUQUV3RUEAAvk3X.png
Jamie Jenkins @statsjamie · 36m36 minutes ago
Women in parts of Westminster live 78.3 years in good health - highest in England http://ow.ly/USEzU
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUQX8g8WUAA_ogm.png
Jamie Jenkins @statsjamie · 22m22 minutes ago
Men in parts of Salford live 46.3 years in good health - lowest in England http://ow.ly/USH89
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUQblYZU8AAannc.png
Jamie Jenkins @statsjamie · 1h1 hour ago
Men in parts of Kensington & Chelsea live 80.2 years in good health - highest in England http://ow.ly/USAwD
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUQQpfiWcAEKez6.png
Those gaps are just astounding and appalling.
I loathed Sherlock with Ego Cumberbatch, so don't miss him in that at all.
#Conflictofinterest
I suppose thats a start
Generally their lack of credibility on the economy that directly results in the funding of the service but more specifically at the general election Labour refused to commit to the additional spending required to maintain the NHS.
Notwithstanding that the Conservative government needs to come up with some radical reforms and funding formula for the NHS and social care before the demographic time bomb detonates under the whole system.
I have had personal cause to deal with it in two different capacities - one as a patient - in the last six months.
I see processes, behaviours and communications which have no place in the 21st century; things that other less zealously defended parts of the public sector consigned to the dustbin twenty years ago.
I half expect to encounter people with quill pens and ink wells.
I'd target a 350,000 reduction in it's support payroll.
Just let me know if the left get too rowdy and I'll play the Wales card.
BJO - a better question given that you are the one who constantly brings it up is - what would YOU do?
Given that funding for the NHS is ring-fenced, and going up in real terms and the NHS has apparently made over £1Bn worth of efficiency savings, one has to as the question why all of a sudden are practically all Acute Trusts in deficit? What has changed?
Let's not get overly partisan about it and seek to identify the real causes and thereby find the real solutions.
One thing I do know though; a time of massive constraints on spending and budgets in the red all over the shop is not the time to be seeking any sort of pay-rise.
I totally understand luvvies who don't vote Labour being very quiet about it. You forgot Cilla and Gary Barlow - she got loads of stick for it. Why bother?
and it is now cheaper to make the pint, and your £1 has gone up above inflation.
' I think what the NHS needs to learn is that actually you don’t solve problems by throwing money at it, and not every problem actually needs money to solve it. That’s the first lesson. Secondly, to get out of their heads the idea that things have to take three years to do and get into the idea that there is a series of objectives that we need to do now, and that we’ve got months, not years to do it. Those two things, I think, would have the biggest single impact on the way that the Health Service is managed.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_Gerry_Robinson_Fix_the_NHS?
It follows that any spending plan for the NHS linked to inflation (including healthcare inflation) is doomed to failure because the problem is not so much one of inflation but of demography. But we don't seem remotely ready yet for a discussion about what level of spending we are willing to put into healthcare or how that is going to be paid for.
Majority of Admin Staff are at Commissioners, NHS England outposts,localities etc.
At least 30% of Finance staff in a hospital are prating about negotiating, raising invoices paying invoices, accounting for, the internal market that the reforms made worse.
Commissioners fine Acutes for missing targets they admit are not within the power of the Provider to meet in order to neet their own NHS Eng. target on fines.
Its a complete mess
Try looking here
GPs award £2.4bn deals to their own companies | The Times 11/11/15
Meantime you'll enjoy this:
http://youtu.be/ZtgPeNKpnyw
Nothing has ever topped Rory Bremner [was he a Tory?] taking the piss here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP13Oc8CDxo
I've S2 waiting for me - but it's a different cast and like True Detective - I'm wary of seeing another great start ruined. I didn't bother past E3 of TD2. It was boring and dire.
NHS remuneration packages have been affordable for 70 years and (reduced by 20% in real terms in the past 6 years.)
Yet the crisis gets worse.
Again I think you need to look at the internal market as to why pen pushing is more prevalant than it could be but less than 3% of my hospitals wage bill was spent on Admin staff.
In response to those on the previous thread commenting about why the left has such a blind spot about Islamism, I posted this - and I make no apologies about posting it again, given that Corbyn - whose blind spots would fill a whole galaxy - is the subject of the thread.
Albert Camus explained it very well:-
"Mistaken ideas always end in bloodshed but in every case it is someone else's blood. That is why some of our thinkers feel free to say just about anything."
Tony Judt, a marvellous (and, sadly, late) historian also described the phenomenon:-
"Totalitarianism of the Left, much like an earlier totalitarianism of the Right, was about violence and power and control, and it appealed because of these features, not in spite of them."
I think that we have to face the fact that for some on the Left, Islamism has precisely this attraction, even if the Left deludes itself into thinking this is all about them being against racism and intolerance.
Just as Islamism seems to have perverted Islam or is a perversion of it, so the Left, by claiming the word "liberal" has perverted what liberalism truly is. It is time for the rest of us to wrest liberal values - real liberal values - back from the left.