Our Kingdom: Towards a new on-line politics
This is a contribution to the Liberal Conspiracy Mission Series
Sunny wants to build Liberal Conspiracy with more political strategy, activism and news. But it is not just content that he is after. What Sunny is attempting is ambitious, important for British blogland and on-line publishing and for OurKingdom, as we prepare a relaunch. He’s written three posts. I commented briefly on the first.
Liberal Conspiracy is immensely creative and refreshing. As well as tackling issues and being smart and forthright, it goes about things in a different way from your average lefty or liberal blog. It looks outwards to what is happening not inwards to what ‘line’ it should be taking. With this new development Sunny is trying to get us all to think with a similarly fresh spirit about our methods and how we resource them in the coming era of citizen journalism. continue reading… »
Open thread – tell us what you think
So Sunny has gone on holiday, and apparently I’m meant to be looking after Liberal Conspiracy in his absence.
I hope and am sure that our great team of writers will continue to keep a regular flow of quality articles, but in addition I wondered if there were any readers’ requests for the rest of the month:
Are there any topics that you’d like us to cover or write more about?
Are there any bloggers that you think we should ask to do guest posts?
Would you like to write an article for us?
More nurses needed
Put simply, stuff like this at Stafford hospital should not be happening in the 2010s, and it’s wrong to try and explain it away as ‘local management failure from which lessons need to be learned’, or any such nonsense. For a conscientious ex-nurse like myself, who would often stay on into the night shift to do the paperwork, it makes painful reading, but the worst parts do deserve a re-read:
Poorly trained health care assistants brought meals to patients without helping them feed themselves, elderly men were left to wander the ward in a confused state, vulnerable patients were left hungry, dirty and frequently in pain. Some patients were so thirsty they were reduced to drinking from the flower vases scattered around the ward.
“Patients were screaming out in pain because they could not get pain relief. Patients would fall out of bed and we would have to go hunting for staff,” she said. “It was like a Third World country hospital.
“Things were so bad on the ward that I started feeding, watering and taking all the other patients to the lavatory,” she said. “It felt like it was not just my mum I watched dying, but all the others as well.”
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The Healthcare Commission’s investigation found that during 2006/07 Stafford and Cannock Chase Hospitals were in dire need of extra nurses. Their complement was short of 120 nurses, 17 of them in A&E, 30 in the surgical division and 77 on the medical wards. By November 2008 they were still 40 nurses short in total.
The last paragraph is important , because it reflects where the priority should lie. More than half the shortages came in the medical wards. continue reading… »
The rise of the Skeptical Voter
Every month, in pubs and bars from Edinburgh to Bristol, hundreds gather to discuss unashamedly nerdy issues – from the resurgence of quack medicines like homeopathy, to the flaccid state of science reporting in the UK media. Every week, thousands more download the ‘skeptic’ podcasts Little Atoms and the Pod Delusion, while many others visit skeptically-minded blogs and websites.
Whether this reflects a growth in the number of people interested in these issues, or simply better organisation (helped along, doubtless, by the internet), skeptics today seem more vocal and visible than at any time that I can remember. continue reading… »
On Charity and other guilt-driven processes
The 7th of March marks the end of fair trade fortnight; and what a noble campaign it is too, not simply serving to allow indifferent middle class westerners to drop a couple of coins in a pot, but actually a way of addressing some of the pitfalls of our trade system in a way that promotes fair remuneration for hard work in the world’s most impoverished countries.
But the sort of indifferent charity that the fair trade campaign seeks to undercut is very much an ongoing, prevalent part of our society that, despite all of its pretences, must be challenged in a very particular way. continue reading… »
How can we increase the diversity of candidates?
Guest post by Mark Reckons
Iain Dale has a post recently entitled: “Why Don’t the LibDems Select BME Candidates in Winnable Seats?”. He makes the argument that the Conservatives have BME candidates in a number of winnable seats and estimates they will have between 11 and 16 BME MPs after the next election. He suggests there will be none on the Lib Dem benches.
In the comments, a number of people have taken him to task about his assumptions. LibCync points out that Operation Black Vote has identified 3 potentially winnable seats for the Lib Dems with BME candidates. He also points out that Nick Clegg has taken action to try and resolve this issue.
Iain has rebutted this by suggesting that privately Lib Dem friends of his have expressed concern about the lack of BME representation and that the 3 seats identified are unlikely to be won.
I don’t know if the seats cited will or will not be won by the Lib Dems but it is in the nature of the third party within our current electoral system to struggle to win seats. We have very few “safe” seats compared to the Tories who (certainly this year) will expect to have over 300 seats following the election. So comparing the raw numbers is pretty unfair. It strikes me that 16 BME candidates who have a shot at becoming an MP would be roughly 5% of the Parliamentary Conservative Party were they elected. 3 for the Lib Dems assuming we end up with roughly 60 seats again would also be 5% were they elected. Seems about the same to me and hardly a crisis situation.
But taking Iain directly up on his point about the chances of the 3 candidates OBV identified being quite low. That may be the case but it is not the Lib Dems fault that the electoral system is so stacked against it. We want to reform the electoral system to STV with multi-member constituencies. From the Electoral Reform Society, here is the second point from their website on advantages of STV:
With STV and multi-member constituencies, parties have a powerful electoral incentive to present a balanced team of candidates in order to maximise the number of higher preferences that would go to their sponsored candidates. This helps the advancement of women and ethnic-minority candidates, who are often overlooked in favour of a ‘safer’ looking candidate.
This is clearly an important issue and I am glad Iain is raising it. I wonder though if he might take another look at the benefits of electoral reform (that he has often been quick to dismiss in the past) and how it could help improve the chances of BME candidates for all parties.
Sunder Katwala has also done a very detailed piece in response to both Iain and my posts here.
This post originally appeared at Mark’s blog
Tweeting to improve the NHS
Ed Miliband, or at least his tweetmeister, has been asking for suggestions on what should be in Labour’s health manifesto for the coming election.
Now in principle, I’m against this sort of thing. Policy should be developed in branches, in CLPs, in unions and debated on the conference floor.
Even so, I have to admit there’s something quite attractive about being able to bung an idea into 140 characters and send it direct to someone given ministerial authority to pretend to be a minister online.
I think it’s a good way of picking up the odd good, practical idea for change that fits within the broad manifesto statement and brings it a bit more to life than it might otherwise.
So an experienced but now ex-nurse, as an ex-Director of a Primary Care Trust, as an experience developer of social enterprises, and as a Labour leader on a small council, I tweeted six quick ideas, all of which I think would make a decent positive difference to the NHS’s work, and all of which have the virtue of not costing that much.
Here they are, in unadulterated tweet form:
@EdMilibandMP #health Set up local social enterprises to conduct local needs and opportunities research with funds top-sliced from GP commissioning budget
@EdMilibandMP #health Re-democratize PCTs, especially if Adult Social Care functions are moved to the NHS, by creating real veto power in Overview & Scrutiny
#health @EdMilibandMP Reinforce valuable role of walk-in centres by secondment of A&E staff and provision of further emergency capacity.
@EdMilibandMP #health Provide seed corn funding for replication in medical wards of brilliant acute psychiatry www.starwards.org.uk/ idea
@EdMilibandMP #health Reintegrate fully the career development path for care workers/nurses so that nursing degree becomes possible for all
@EdMilibandMP #health Provide ‘guidance’ on minimum nursing staff levels in acute medical/elderly wards & ensure this is priority over all else
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Don Paskini adds: Those are Paul’s ideas – now over to you. In 140 characters or fewer, which ideas do you think would improve the NHS (or any other area of policy) ?
New “coffee party” launched
In response to the right-wing Tea Party movement, a new ‘Coffee Party’ movement is being launched in America.
Its mission is:
“The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.”
More info can be found here.
“If you haven’t heard of the Coffee Party Movement, it’s a progressive alternative to the Tea Party that started less than a month ago on Facebook and has captured the attention and commitment of those who believe that our federal government is the solution, not the problem.
Local chapters are planning meetings in cities from Washington to San Antonio to Los Angeles (where there have been four in the last month.) The party (coffeepartyusa.org) is planning nationwide coffee houses for March 13, where people can gather to decide which issues they want to take on and even which candidates they want to support.
This summer, the party will hold a convention in the Midwest, with a slogan along the lines of “Meet Me in the Middle.” The party has inspired the requisite jokes: why not a latte party, a chai party, a Red Bull party?
But this is just the type of grassroots activism that can help Democrats offset the Astroturfing bought and paid for by corporate interests.”
Mugabe backs Cameron
It has been a difficult few weeks for David Cameron, but at least there is one international leader who hopes he will gain power:
“We have always related better with the British through the Conservatives than Labour,” Mugabe told journalists.
“Conservatives are bold, (Tony) Blair and (Gordon) Brown run away when they see me, but not these fools, they know how to relate to others,” he added.
Mugabe’s rant comes after Prime Minister Gordon Brown told South Africa’s Jacob Zuma in London that Zimbabwe’s targeted sanctions would not be lifted until progress was seen in the power-sharing government.
Zuma, who is the mediator in Zimbabwe’s fragile unity accord, wants the sanctions lifted.
“We have a better chance with (British Conservative leader) David Cameron than with Brown,” said Mugabe.
Anxiety Britain
Los Angeles, a city of some 4 million inhabitants, is enjoying a blindingly good few years for crime. It looks like LA might have only 230 murders this year. Less than one per day! They may have to outsource their dramatic reality cop shows. Nirvanna, for the Los Angelenos. Which means a murder rate of only 6 per 100,000.
This trend has been widespread in the US since the mid 1990s, so that now one or two cities even seem to have a rate as low as the UK. Yes, after a couple of decades of improvement, the USA might aspire to having a murder rate in one or two of its many cities as low as the UK as a whole.
Incidentally, this question naturally leads to another one: if the UK is so much more murder-free than its Anglo Saxon cousin, why is it apparently so much more violent? continue reading… »
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» Revealed: govt to restrict abortion counselling despite Nadine Dorries vote
» Would raising the tax threshold actually help the poorest?
» To win London, Ken Livingstone has to step outside his comfort zone
» This trade agreement with India will destroy thousands of lives
» UK debt hasn’t hit £1 trillion – mostly because of QE
» The benefits of being a “burden” on society
» Today’s economic figures will simply confirm UK’s “lost decade”
» Have Labour realised the election is more than three years away?
» Violence in the office
» Want a more responsible capitalism? Reform how pensions work
» The world is entering the third phase of the crisis, warns ILO
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