Do older people really need more NHS healthcare?
Unity’s post yesterday showed how Lansley’s proposals to weight NHS funding towards areas with higher percentages of older people will lead to massive budget cuts in poorer areas of the country at the expense of the richer ones.
As he points out, that is effectively a transfer of funding from ‘Labour areas’ to ‘Tory areas’. But it doesn’t get to the bottom of what exactly Lansley is up to with his argument.
Lansley is in fact correct to say that age is the principal determinant of healthcare need. As people approach being dead, their call on health services increases dramatically.
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The alternative: why Greece should NOT abandon the Euro
There are a striking number of self-declared British socialists expressing the view that Greece will be better off just defaulting on its debts and leaving the euro.
Leaving the euro, goes the argument, will be a victory for the Greek people, and a real slap in the face for the Merkelian forces of austerity.
This is total bollocks. Leaving the euro may well be exceedingly good for a few Greeks, but it will be very bad news indeed for the vast majority.
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The far left versus the far right: French election part deux
If you thought the French elections were over, think again.
On 10th & 17th June, we have a two-round electoral contest potentially as exciting, and as important for France, as the election of President Hollande.
That’s because Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the leftwing group Front de gauche (FG), has just confirmed his candidacy in the 11th circonscription of the Pas-de-Calais département, where he will go up against Front National leader Marine Le Pen in the legislative elections, at which 577 deputés are elected across France to sit in the Assemblée Nationale.
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How do we deal with the rise of the far-right in France?
Of course I’m delighted that Hollande has won, and that Sarkozy is gone. But I’m also worried what the next year will bring.
Marine Le Pen’s refusal to support her natural ally, despite the lengths he was prepared to go to in order to garner Front National votes, really only means one thing.
By consigning Sarkozy to defeat, she has kick-started the UMP infighting, and her very successful one year campaign detoxification campaign now puts her in prime position to pick up a large percentage of UMP votes in June’s parliamentary elections. That campaign started in earnest a couple of days ago.
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The Daily Mail and support for French fascists
Even by the Daily Mail standards, the decision to publish an article fully in support of Marine Le Pen as President of France is pretty extraordinary, given the paper’s support for fascism in the 1930s.
It is fairly clear that the author has had little recent contact with French politics, and the idea that France will be saved by withdrawal from the Euro and the defence of ‘national identity’ is little more than a sign of pitiful immaturity on the part of the author. But it causes concern when it’s passed through editorial hands at a mainstream paper.
What surprises me more is that relatively little attention has been paid by opponents of Marine Le Pen to what she really represents, and how recent acts continue to reflect this.
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How Labour could seize the initiative to radically reaffirm union links
The #cashforcameron scandal offers easy picking for Labour at the moment, but it won’t last long.
The Tories are already working hard to cast Labour’s union funding arrangements in an even worse light than its own, and a compliant media will ensure that, when the dust settles, it’s a score-draw.
Miliband and his team should now think strategically, not tactically.
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Workfare: the DWP lied about Clegg’s mandatory Youth Contract too
On Nov 25th 2011, the Department for Work and Pensions issued a press release about the new Youth Contract, announced with great fanfare by Nick Clegg.
The press release included this statement:
An extra 250,000 Work Experience places over the next three years, taking the total to at least 100,000 a year. This will come with an offer of a Work Experience place for every 18 to 24 year-old who wants one, before they enter the Work Programme.
Why is Cameron secretive about his Nursing & Care Quality Forum?
On 5th January Cameron visited a hospital, decided it would be a good tactics to be outraged about standards of nursing care, and announced the establishment of a Nursing & Care Quality Forum.
I care a lot about standards of care, so I have followed developments.
First, the health minister told us that the Forum will ”“not be made up of the great and the good, but is actually being made up of frontline staff”.
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Ken Livingstone and gay rights – it just isn’t an issue
There was “outrage” in the expected quarters yesterday evening about this from a Jemima Khan interview with Ken Livingstone:
Well, the Labour ones have all come out . . . As soon as Blair got in, if you came out as lesbian or gay you immediately got a job. It was wonderful . . . you just knew the Tory party was riddled with it like everywhere else is.
Now “riddled” does jump out from the page as an odd word to use, with its connotation of disease. But the key point is that Livingstone didn’t put it in a page – he said it in an interview.
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Cameron confusion on tick boxes and nurses
So Cameron has announced to great fanfare that he’s going to rid nursing of its “stifling bureaucracy”, and that nurses should do hourly rounds to improve patient care.
Yeah, that’ll work out well!
Below is just one example of one of the forms a nurse will have to fill in every hour for every patient in her/his care, instead of doing the caring. Note the 152 boxes per patient per day.
And here’s one (see final page) from a pilot study at Whipps Cross Hospital. Progress.
It’s only got 144 boxes per patient per day.
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» Robin Hood tax: backed by the rich AND the rest, says new poll
» Criticism of Obama for its own sake: a reply to Mehdi Hasan
» Do older people really need more NHS healthcare?
» There are alternatives to the reckless ‘Plan A’
» On Beecroft: it is already quite easy to sack people
» Why Cameron’s claim of 600,000 jobs created is plainly wrong
» By using age to allocate NHS funding, Lansley rewards Tory voters
» The rise in domestic violence deaths is not an “isolated” problem
» Adrian Beecroft highlights mindset of Tory right
» The US is now a model for the Eurozone to save itself
» The IMF plan to revive the economy doesn’t go far enough
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