Richard Littlejohn gets it wrong on NHS funding
It’s Richard Littlejohn fact-checking time again!
To be clear, we’re not doing this for sadistic reasons – otherwise this could become a full time job. I’m writing this up because these “facts” then become the subject of Conservative party speeches and reports.
Last week Littlejohn opined:
The NHS is always pleading poverty, despite its budget being ring-fenced by the Government. Ludicrous lies are being told about how the ‘Tory cuts’ are going to ‘destroy’ the Health Service.
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Unnecessary spending is rife. For instance, Bolton NHS is frittering £75,000 on a scheme which involves buying mobile phones for alcoholics. The idea is that health workers will send a daily text message to patients recovering from alcohol addiction.
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If they reply, they will receive an electronic pat on the back for staying sober. If they don’t, they will be assumed to have relapsed and a support worker will attempt to find them and persuade them to stay off the drink. Brilliant.No one seems to have thought through the obvious flaws in this plan. Have you ever seen a drunk trying to work a mobile phone? I have enough trouble sending a text when I’m stone cold sober. And how will they know where the patient is texting from? Answer: they won’t. For all the health worker knows, the ‘client’ could be recovering in the Dog and Duck, on his seventh large scotch.
Still, when it comes to NHS funding, it’s always trebles all round. So what’s seventy-five grand between friends?
Shocking isn’t it? Why try out incentives and ways to stop alcoholics getting back into the habit?
That aside, the researcher monkeys for Littlejohn once again didn’t bother checking their facts.
Tabloid Watch points out that the scheme is being funded by the Health Foundation, which is a charity.
They told Tabloid Watch that their funding comes from “perpetual endowment” and not the NHS. Will someone tell the Daily Mail’s star columnist?
ONS admits exaggerating women’s drinking stats
The Office for National Statistics has quietly admitted that it misrepresented statistics a few weeks back on how much alcohol women drank.
It claimed that the proportion of women drinking more than 14 units a week had increased by a fifth since 1998, leading to a greater stress on the NHS.
Naturally, this was followed up in the tabloids rather gleefully.
But the Straight Statistics blog points out that this rise was entirely down to a break in the data:
A change in methodology for measuring alcohol consumption in 2006 creates a break in the time series. If not allowed for, this gives the impression that the number of women who exceed 14 units a week has indeed increased. Plenty of anti-drink campaigners are happy to spread this false message but it came as a shock when the ONS did so.
The ONS has added a correction (PDF) to its report on productivity at the NHS.
They have also apologised to the Portman Group, the drinks industry organisation that champions responsible drinking.
In defence of Monarchies
My lack of interest in the forthcoming Royal nuptials is about as total as it gets. However, people will keep writing about it, and I don’t always look away from their articles in time…
So Johann Hari has written a fairly boilerplate piece about the monarchy, and why the UK shouldn’t have one. He sensibly and rapidly deals with the fatuous points that monarchists make about tourism and ‘defenders of democracy’.
But there’s also this:
continue reading… »
Climate Rush risk arrest on train fares protest
Calling it the Great Railway Adventure, fifty-seven environmental protesters travelled to Canterbury on Saturday 16th April, paying just £7.40 instead of the full £27.60.
The route for the fare dodge, organised by the non-violent direct action group Climate Rush, was chosen due to the high increase in fares for commuters on this line (12.7%), the highest of any fare hike in the country.
Musicians and well-wishers dressed as the Railway Children escorted the ‘unfair-fare dodgers’ to London Bridge station to wave them off. (pictures and video below)
Louise Ellman MP, member of the Transport Select Committee, said in support of the Climate Rush protest:
The Government should look again at its policy for ever increasing rail fares that are pricing people off the rail. Public transport deserves proper investment to help mobility and protect the environment
Tamsin Omond, founder of Climate Rush said:
In 2007, 79% of the distance traveled by people in the UK was done by car whilst only 7% was traveled by over ground trains. Our current government wants to hike fares a massive 31% – the biggest fare increase for a generation – by the end of their 5 year term. We will continue to be conscientious objectors to excessive rail fares until we see a freeze on rail fares and an improvement in our rail service.
Once on board the protesters completed a petition sewn onto a “protest train” of bunting, started by members of the Craftivist Collective group nationwide. A group of 15 cyclists also cycled to Canterbury in support.
Pictures
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Video
To join Climate Rush – see their twitter feed or website.
US study finds that recessions do increase suicides and mental illness
contribution by Richard Shrubb
The classic cartoon of executives jumping out of top floor windows during an economic crash may reflect reality. The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has published research in the American Journal of Psychiatry that suggested overall suicide rates “generally rose in recessions”.
They point to events such as the Great Depression (1929-1933), the end of the New Deal (1937-1938), the Oil Crisis (1973-1975), and the Double-Dip Recession (1980-1982).
continue reading… »
Met Office chief got death threats from global warming deniers
The Head of the Met Office revealed today that he got death threats just for doing his job, by global warming deniers.
John Hirst told an audience at Exeter University:
I said, ‘I get death threats too, it’s crazy. Why don’t we talk, because if we can take some of this small ‘p’ politics out of this conversation we might do a service to the world.
He was referring to Johnny Ball, who was reported in the tabloids as being the target of a hate campaign by environmentalists.
Odd that Mr Ball would be mentioned however.
First, several people raised doubts about claims that he was being smeared or had received threats. This blog post summarises them.
Then, the Guardian’s Leo Hickman reported that Johnny Ball himself denied he had said ‘climate zealots are ruining my career’.
His views had been twisted around by right-wing journalists. No idea why Mr Hirst giving credence to that theory.
John Hirst added in his lecture:
He might have a different point of view from me, his point of view might be valid, but only by talking about stuff in a calm and sensible way will we be able to take the politics out.
Firstly, the politics cannot be removed from this discussion because responses to global warming require political action.
Secondly, discussing the issue calmly when its dominated by the likes of James Delingpole is impossible. The only response to global warming deniers is ridicule.
Boris appoints ‘radical’ right-winger as deputy
Boris Johnson has appointed a ‘radical’ right-winger as his deputy Mayor and chief of staff, say even his supporters.
Edward Lister has been a councillor in Wandsworth since 1976.
And what has he been responsible for? According to his supporter Peter Bingle:
- Privatisation of street cleaning and refuse collection.
- Selling off of council estates and social housing (depriving people who need it most).
- A successful campaigns to abolish the GLC and ILEA.
Lister also previously planned to run as deputy Mayor when Jeffrey Archer planned to run as Mayor.
He is replacing Sir Simon Milton, who unexpectedly died last week.
Update: A spokesperson for Ken Livingstone’s campaign has issued a statement today:
Boris Johnson shows through this central appointment that his administration is deepest Tory Thatcherite blue. Eddie Lister is seen as a Tory radical, at the forefront of cuts, the privatisation of street cleaning and refuse collection, selling off council estates and campaigning for the abolition of the Greater London Council.
This right wing Tory pedigree will feel at home with a Tory administration at City Hall which is squeezing fare payers while cutting vital services like the police.
Bank threats to move ‘empty and unlikely’
The Financial Stability Board has dismissed the threat of British and American banks to relocate overseas if London and Washington impose stricter new banking regulations.
Big banks might not even be welcomed with open arms, said the FSB’s secretary general Svein Andresen because the new host countries may not want to bail them out.
Andresen made the comments at the IMF’s Spring Meeting in Washington this week, reports the Telegraph.
The Financial Stability Board was established earlier this year by the G20 to co-ordinate and monitor progress in strengthening financial regulation and drive policies to support global financial stability.
And he added another reason: if hosting a big bank was too risky for the new country, those banks would then be marked as more at risk, and may suffer a cut by credit ratings agencies.
He said: “You shouldn’t take it for granted at all that other jurisdictions would want the banks.”
Last week, the Independent Commission of Banking made a similar comment on threats of a British bank to move out of the United Kingdom.
Expect the ECB to take a similarly dismissive approach to threats by banks such as Barclays to move abroad.
Does right-wing economics operate in a Mirror Universe?
I’m something of a closet Star Trek fan, and like all true Star Trek fans I’ve always enjoyed the Mirror Universe episodes. These are a dark parallel to the ‘normal’ Star Trek Universe in which familiar characters exist but things are suitably different. Things we expect to be true no longer are: Spock, for example sports a rather fetching goatee beard.
I mention this because as I read the economic ideas and analysis coming from the right, I occasionally have to stop and ask – are we living in a Mirror Universe? They are using words and ideas that I’m familiar with but somehow they seem to think the normal chain of causation, of action and reaction has broken down.
continue reading… »
Why the NHS needs an independent statistics body too
contribution by Richard Blogger
It is clear that the government will bend the truth to persuade people that only their policy for the NHS is the acceptable policy. Rather shamelessly health ministers (and the Prime Minister) trot out misleading “statistics” even when leading academics have proven that the “statistics” are either wrong or being used misleadingly.
This is not new in British politics. The Major government misused statistics to such an extent that the 1997 Labour manifesto pledged to make the Office of National Statistics independent (however, this did not happen until 2006). Similarly, creative use of Treasury statistics by Gordon Brown lead to a manifesto pledge by the Conservatives to set up the independent Office for Budgetary Responsibility.
continue reading… »
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