Tories in damage-limitation over Hannan
Senior people at Conservative HQ have moved rapidly into damage limitation mode after the tabloid press turned on people bashing the NHS.
After a strong condemnation by shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley was not deemed enough, David Cameron was forced to issue his own response.
Update: A full statement has now been posted on the Conservative Party blog:
Millions of people are grateful for the care they have received from the NHS – including my own family. One of the wonderful things about living in this country is that the moment you’re injured or fall ill – no matter who you are, where you are from, or how much money you’ve got – you know that the NHS will look after you.
That’s why we as a Party are so committed not just to the principles behind the NHS, but to doing all we can to improve the way it works in practice. So yes, we will spend more on the NHS, but we will also improve it so that it is more efficient and responsive to patients. People working on the frontline will actually be able get on with the job they signed up for, without getting tied up in a web of targets. And we will put more power in the hands of patients by giving them better information about the care they can expect to receive.
Underlying these reforms, and our whole approach to the NHS, will be one big ambition – that future generations will be even prouder of the NHS than we are today.
(Image via the Tory Fail blog)
But not everyone is sticking with the party line, as Paul Waugh points out.
Then again, the Tories’ Online Communities Editor Craig Elder has now made plain his own views, backing a blog that states that “we love the NHS…like hostage victims love their hostage takers”.
Coverage in the Sun and Daily Mail today has been very negative for the Conservatives.
Professor Stephen Hawking has defended the NHS after its severe criticism during the American political debate over health care reforms. The physicist spoke up for the NHS after the Republican Right claimed it was ‘evil’ and ‘Orwellian’ in a direct attack on Barack Obama’s plans to overhaul health care in the U.S.
Critics of the president have said his plans would introduce a ‘socialist’ system like Britain’s.
A Sun comment piece today said:
They reckon our health care system is uncaring, unfair and unbelievably bad. Trump card? Joker more like. True, in the UK the NHS is a political football. And NHS-bashing is a national sport among both doctors and patients.
But that’s because the health service has become a victim of its own success. Many people weren’t around before it was formed – or their memories don’t stretch that far – so they’ve no recollection of the bad old pre-NHS days.
More media coverage
Daily Mirror: Tory MEP in rant against British NHS
Evening Standard: Twitter army goes to war for NHS
Daniel Hannan is a national disgrace
Only the most cold-hearted of cynics could expess disdain for the many extraordinary achievments made in Britain throughout history. Those who have struggled for freedom and justice have shaped a country safe and civilised, without fear of oppression, tyranny, death or disease in which nearly everyone is represented and enfranchised.
The human right to good health and protection from, and provision for, injury and sickness, are all enshrined in the National Health Service. It is an entity admired the world over, and one that many now could not imagine living without.
(image by Beau Bo D’Or)
So to see a British politician roaming the USA, frequenting the most biased, unreasonable and willfully ignorant news outlets in existence, spouting misinformed drivel to screeching hate puffed lummoxes like Glenn Beck about the imaginary horrors of ‘socialized’ health care is almost obscene.
Watching Daniel Hannan speaking as a supposed representative for Britain on Fox News, bleating about how our country has been rendered feral and crippled by the NHS is enough to raise a sudden, unexpected swell of patriotism normally reserved for the success of a British icon on the global stage or spectacular sporting defeats.
continue reading… »
Tory Health Secretary strong condemns Hannan
The Tory MEP Daniel Hannan was today condemned in strong terms by the shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley for his remarks to Fox News about the NHS.
He said:
There are millions of people who are grateful for the care they have received from the NHS.It does them and the NHS a disservice for Daniel Hannan to give Americans such a negative and partial view. That we can access healthcare free at point of use, based on need, is something others envy.
Our task is to ensure that the quality of care is consistently excellent. And the service is efficient and responsive to patients. Choice, competition and information, focused on outcomes, will deliver this.
The remarks were seen as unusually strong, even by Fox News’ sister station Sky News.
Journalist Naill Paterson said:
I’d say this was quite a powerful intervention by Lansley – certainly it serves to distance CCO from their maverick MEP. I still wonder, however, how much effect these words will have, unless backed by private words from the party leader.
Let us not forget, Daniel Hannan has forced the Shadow Health Secretary to denounce a party colleague, and one elected to office under the Tory banner. Where do Mr Hannan’s loyalties lie, to his new-found neo-con admirers or to his party?
He had earlier added that Hannan had the potential to do great damage to the Tory party.
The different ways newspapers can make money
Almost all the discussion of how newspaper should make more money has been based on the implicit assumption that the only business model available is ‘put some content behind a login that requires people to pay‘.
Up against that is the argument ‘but lots of other news is available for free, so why would anyone pay?‘
But there are actually quite a wide range of business models.
The existing model
Both the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times have shown how paywalls can work. It hasn’t worked for some, but is there any reason to believe the current demarcation is set in stone with no scope for future changes? No. The Guardian looks to be thinking about a variant on this where the paid-for content is more like the benefits of club membership than the specialist news approach of the FT.
continue reading… »
The Tories who want to cripple the NHS
Senior people within the Conservative party and conservative ‘movement’ are stepping up their attacks on the NHS. We know at least where this stems from: Obama is trying to extend healthcare coverage to everyone in the United States (a key promise he campaigned and won the election on!), and wingnut Republicans there are using Tories here to bolster their case.
Yesterday Don Paskini pointed to a US magazine claimed: “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.”
Hawking hit back saying: “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS…I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.”
And yet this sort of wing-nuttery has become mainstream within the Conservative party here. Why doesn’t Cameron say anything about it? Why don’t the media hold him to account for his own people’s views?
continue reading… »
Watch: Alan Duncan MP back-pedals
Yesterday saw Tory MP Alan Duncan furiously backpedaling after comments by him came to light in the media.
The video capturing Duncan’s comments was recorded by Heydon Prowse of Don’t Panic magazine. We posted it here on Libcon weeks ago when it was first released.
It only came to light yesterday.
In the video Tory MP Alan Duncan says:
I spend my money on my garden and claim a tiny fraction on what is proper. And I could claim the whole bloody lot, but I don’t. … [I spend] about £2,000 a year [on the garden] and this was £1,000 a year on expenses, you know. … It’s just, I’m afraid the world has gone mad.No one who’s done anything in the outside world or is capable of doing such a thing will ever come into this place ever again the way we’re doing… Basically it’s been nationalised. You have to live on rations and you are treated like shit.
Update: Cameron responds
More recently, Prowse caught people at the restaurant Nobu lying about Blue-fish Tuna.
Real Women – Really Patronising?
The Lib Dems have now released the full version of their conference policy paper on women’s issues, ‘Real Women‘ (pdf), which is the one that’s recently grabbed a bit of media attention over what seem to be some fairly anodyne proposals to limit the use of digital retouching in adverts aimed at children and young people.
I do have one rather big problem with it – it looks absolutely abominable.
MI6 and collusion over torture
One of the more cutting criticisms made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights last week was that while the head of MI5 had no problems in talking to the media, he seemed to regard it as an unacceptable chore to have to appear in front of a few jumped-up parliamentarians.
This week the head of MI6, “Sir” John Scarlett appeared on a Radio 4 documentary into the Secret Intelligence Service, where he naturally denied that MI6 had ever so much as hurt a hair on anyone’s head, or more or less the equivalent, as Spy Blog sets out.
This would of course be the same MI6 that passed on information to the CIA regarding Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna which resulted in their arrest in Gambia and subsequent rendition to Guantanamo Bay, and indeed the same MI6 which along with MI5 interviewed Binyam Mohamed while he was being detained in Pakistan, where we now know he was being tortured.
continue reading… »
Republicans and the Peak Wingnut Theory
Last October, American blogger John Cole suggested a new theory called ‘Peak Wingnut’.
Peak Wingnut theory states the extremism and sheer volume of anti-progressive rhetoric, and attempts to mainstream slander into the mainstream media, by the American conservative attack machine is peaking or had peaked.
The idea behind this theory was that American conservatives had seen their ideas turn out to be a total disaster, and that this would discourage them.
Ten months later, roughly a quarter of Americans answer ‘no’ or ‘not sure’ to the question ‘do you believe Barack Obama was born in the USA?’; there are angry and violent demonstrations against attempts by the government to provide better healthcare; and Investors’ Business Daily claims that “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless”.
But then it is not surprising that Peak Wingnut theory didn’t work out, since just one day after Cole first wrote about it, Republican activists were writing about how Obama had “an underage, gay affair with a pedophile”.
Watch: Clinton annoyed at conference
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