politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Burnham comes out against extending Sunday shopping hours

@KeirSimmons: Whitehouse intervenes in Greek crisis? U.S. President has called the Greek Prime Minister... More details soon.

Love to see the Europhiles explain this away.

https://twitter.com/Steven_Woolfe/status/618377116695064577

https://twitter.com/Steven_Woolfe/status/618377777146949633

@AFP: #BREAKING Merkel: 'still no basis' for talks on new Greek bailout

Chris123 said:

DavidL said:

Chris123 said:

TGOHF said:

MikeL said:

Could Corbyn actually win this?

If he does, what happens?

Expect a sharp increase in sales of champers, cigars and stitches for sides.

Possible but unlikely. If there is a perception that he will win, many will coalesce around the one person that is perceived to be most likely to beat him.

How will they know until it is too late? Remember Ed. He was astonished as everyone else when it was announced that he had edged out his brother. Without accurate polling the membership will be voting blind and if it turns out the Corbyn is in pole position it will be too late to do anything about it.

It is one of the many reasons that having unelectables like him in the contest was a serious mistake.

I'm sure there will be polls (lots of them) when the time comes and those polls will show who's best placed to beat him. For some voters this will be a consideration, they won't be voting blind... That's why it ultimately suits Andy to have Jeremy in the mix. (The moment Jeremy signed up was the time I started buying Andy.)

Who's going to pay for these polls (and who is going to believe them)?

Scott_P said:

@AFP: #BREAKING Merkel: 'still no basis' for talks on new Greek bailout

Who said that's "Breaking News"?
Anyone playing Summit Bingo?
http://www.politico.eu/article/summit-bingo-european-council-greece-bailout-negotiations-default-grexit/

@WilliamJHague: Pleased to start writing a regular column in The Daily Telegraph from September. Here's an example of what to expect http://t.co/CUFI8gNlS6

I think Friday is crunch day, my suspicion is that Tsipras will be forced to make a decision on that day.
Let's hope that he puts aside his infatuation with Europe and does the only decent thing, Grexit.

Paging MarqueeMark

@JamesClayton5: Wowzers - one of the reforms in the budget tomorrow is a real curve ball. More to be revealed on #Newsnight tonight.

Can you tell us what it is yet?

@Speedy:

I think Tsipiras wants out the Euro, but is too cowardly to actually put that forward as his platform to the Greek people. As a result, he is likely to get the Drachma in the most economically damaging way possible. But, hey, peoples' savings may be destroyed, and businesses go bust, but at leas he gets to blame someone else.

Chris123 said:

Speedy said:

Chris123 said:

Yvette won't win the race because her candidacy can't escape the fact that it's a twofer: Vote Yvette, get Ed. Back to the future as it were with Ed playing second fiddle not to Ed but to Yvette. Or vice versa? In any case, I can't see how Yvette would not be "the continuity candidate" in people's mind. How's she going to square that circle?

Every candidate has a problem:

Burnham's problem is the NHS.
Cooper's problem is Balls.
Corbyn's problem is too left wing.
Kendall's problem is too right wing.

Cooper is the only candidate that doesn't have a policy problem but a personal problem.

The personal is political. I don't think Labour will back a loser to win the next election, especially not the less charismatic part of the duo. Having looked at the NHS issue, I also don't think it's such a big problem for Burnham. The Mid Staffs scandal happened before Burnham was appointed. There was an independent inquiry not a full public inquiry but there was an inquiry nonetheless...

(snip)

Burnham was Minister of State (Department of Health) (Delivery and Quality) in 2006/7, a couple of years before he became SoS. (1). This is often ignored by his supporters.

His inquiry was hopeless, and did not get to the truth. In fact, it was almost as if it was designed not to get to the truth.

Worst of all, he regrets the Francis (public) inquiry as it hurt the trust's reputation. So he puts the reputation of a trust that utterly failed over the health, not only of Staffordians, but of all of us. For the Francis inquiry has at least told us much of what went wrong, and hopefully the government, along with good doctors and administrators, will learn from that.

Yet Burnham wishes the inquiry had never happened.

I've said it before and I'll say it again (however much some complain): he's scum.

(1): http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/commons/andy-burnham/1427

Abolition of pension tax free lump sum? If the government is going to do it, this is the budget to do it in.

antifrank said:

Abolition of pension tax free lump sum? If the government is going to do it, this is the budget to do it in.

That's a good guess. It's an anomaly, and makes even less sense than ever now that Osborne has introduced so much more flexibility in how you can use pension funds.

From a personal point of view, though, I hope you've guessed wrong!

JosiasJessop said:

Chris123 said:

Speedy said:

Chris123 said:

Yvette won't win the race because her candidacy can't escape the fact that it's a twofer: Vote Yvette, get Ed. Back to the future as it were with Ed playing second fiddle not to Ed but to Yvette. Or vice versa? In any case, I can't see how Yvette would not be "the continuity candidate" in people's mind. How's she going to square that circle?

Every candidate has a problem:

Burnham's problem is the NHS.
Cooper's problem is Balls.
Corbyn's problem is too left wing.
Kendall's problem is too right wing.

Cooper is the only candidate that doesn't have a policy problem but a personal problem.

The personal is political. I don't think Labour will back a loser to win the next election, especially not the less charismatic part of the duo. Having looked at the NHS issue, I also don't think it's such a big problem for Burnham. The Mid Staffs scandal happened before Burnham was appointed. There was an independent inquiry not a full public inquiry but there was an inquiry nonetheless...

(snip)

Burnham was Minister of State (Department of Health) (Delivery and Quality) in 2006/7, a couple of years before he became SoS. (1). This is often ignored by his supporters.

His inquiry was hopeless, and did not get to the truth. In fact, it was almost as if it was designed not to get to the truth.

Worst of all, he regrets the Francis (public) inquiry as it hurt the trust's reputation. So he puts the reputation of a trust that utterly failed over the health, not only of Staffordians, but of all of us. For the Francis inquiry has at least told us much of what went wrong, and hopefully the government, along with good doctors and administrators, will learn from that.

Yet Burnham wishes the inquiry had never happened.

I've said it before and I'll say it again (however much some complain): he's scum.

(1): http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/commons/andy-burnham/1427

You're entitled to your opinion, of course. From my understanding, Burnham ordered an inquiry against civil service advice so that there was no suppression... The (later) public inquiry by Francis found that "there is no evidence that any minister received or ignored advice that would have led to safer outcomes. No criticism of the conduct of any minister is intended in this report's findings." Thus, I fail to see scandalous behavior by Burnham in this matter.

MarqueeMark said:

Scott_P said:

Paging MarqueeMark

@JamesClayton5: Wowzers - one of the reforms in the budget tomorrow is a real curve ball. More to be revealed on #Newsnight tonight.

Can you tell us what it is yet?

Oh, I am so tempted... But I don't know how easy it would be to identify my source. So best not....!

Is it something very 'brave' or just unexpected?

Morris_Dancer said:

Only slightly into tennis, which is a good thing because I think I'd be bored with Serena Williams' continual victories. Even as a Schumacher fan (at the time) I got bored when he was cruising to title after title.

It says it all that Sharapova is in many ways the biggest rival Serena has, yet she hasn't beaten her in 11 years(!!).

Hat tip to the Speccie for this Guardian gem, one of the finest in the series:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/04/barbecue-american-tradition-enslaved-africans-native-americans

Chris123 said:

You're entitled to your opinion, of course. From my understanding, Burnham ordered an inquiry against civil service advice so that there was no suppression... The (later) public inquiry by Francis found that "there is no evidence that any minister received or ignored advice that would have led to safer outcomes. No criticism of the conduct of any minister is intended in this report's findings." Thus, I fail to see scandalous behavior by Burnham in this matter.

You miss the point. It is not what happened at Stafford; although his supporters are disingenuous when they say: "it happened before he was in the department."

It is about the inquiries. The first inquiry was not good enough; that is why the public inquiry came up with so many more useful recommendations. A major factor in the Stafford scandal was about cover-ups (yet alone the mistreatment of locals trying to get to the truth), so it was obvious only a public inquiry would get their trust.

Francis held the previous, limited, inquiry, and he criticised its remit. This led the coalition to start the public inquiry.

But the real thing that damns Burnham were his comments at the end of last year. Whilst he calls for an inquiry into Hilsborough (rightly), and even into parts of the miners' strike, he regrets the reputational damage to the trust that the public inquiry caused.

You know what? The trust can go f**k itself. It failed. It deserves all the bad reputation it gets.

And so can Burnham, a piece of scum who puts a trust's reputation before our health.

(BTW, it is well worth reading both reports, and especially the patients' stories).

antifrank said:

Abolition of pension tax free lump sum? If the government is going to do it, this is the budget to do it in.

No way,Osborne has done so much to improve pension arrangements, but a final and total abolition of tax relief on contributions is possible.
They have been whittling it down for years, so a final break could be.
Personally I took huge advantage of this tax break,always surprised it lasted so long,and still at a reasonable level.

Richard_Nabavi said:

HYUFD said:

Depends on how contracts are drawn up and measures to ensure no-one is required to include extra hours in their contract on a Sunday if it goes against their beliefs

They will be drawn up in EXACTLY the same way as now.

You do understand that businesses already operate on Sundays, right? There is no new principle here.

That depends if there are extra hours to be filled and a shortage of staff to fill them, any contractual protection to respect religious belief must be automatically extended to cover these extra hours even if they cannot be made up elsewhere in the week. If the Government does not explicitly guarantee that there may also be a breach of the Unfair Contract Terms Act