Today the European Commission release their (Reuters-leaked) report under the ‘excessive deficit procedure’ warning the UK that it needs to get its deficit down towards 3% of GDP quicker than the government is currently planning.

Stephanie Flanders has a good article setting out the way in which the Tories have been talking a good game about all of this, while actually being a lot less specific about how they’ll do it than Labour have.

Here, though, I’ll focus on why the European Commission is producing this report, and what this tells us about the European Union as a whole. continue reading… »

This originally appeared on ‘Though Cowards Flinch’, here and here

It has come to our attention that the magazine ‘Total Politics’ is planning to publish an interview with Nick Griffin, the racist leader of the British National Party.

Yesterday, we made an initial call to bloggers to consider a boycott of this year’s ‘Total Politics Blog Awards’, in the event that this magazine chooses to publish as planned an extended interview with Nick Griffin, the racist leader of the BNP.

The initial call was greeted favourably by some bloggers who saw it, and we are therefore seeking to extend the call. continue reading… »

The editor of Conservative Home, Tim Montgomerie, is, I understand from the Financial Times, a “committed Christian”.

He is presumably familiar with the way in which the parable of the Good Samaritan warns us away from racist stereotyping, and perhaps also of the anti-racist message in the episode of the moneychangers in the temple.

He is also, according to the FT, a key influence on the thinking of the Conservative party hierarchy, his blog supposedly reflective of Conservative grassroots opinion.

In this guise, Montgomerie is now proposing that each Tory leaflet before the election should strip the content down to three key messages. Here they are:

(1) something on the economy, emphasising how Brown has failed on controlling debt, cutting waste and regulating the banks;

(2) something on crime and immigration; and

(3) something on protecting the NHS and the most vulnerable.

(My emphasis)

So Montgomerie is suggesting that around a third of the Tories’ overall ‘message-time’ should be spent conflating the issues of crime and immigration.

For him, and presumably for his readership, it is perfectly reasonable to insinuate/imply/spell out that crime is a problem because there are immigrants, and immigrants are a problem because there is crime.

In its way, this is actually much more shocking than Rod Liddle’s outrageous claims, because however revolting they are there is always the sense that it’s the desire to outrage that drives the racist message, rather than the other way round.

But Mongomerie’s casual, perhaps even unthinking racism, with its apparent willingness to victimise a whole section of an already victimised population (let’s not get into who’s an immigrant) is simply disgusting.

And this man calls himself a Christian.

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… »

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) ?

And I thought Nicholas Winterton was out of touch with ordinary working people!

Never fear, Nick, the BBC’s outdone you. Here’s BBC News (from 6 mins 45 secs in) commenting on Geoffrey Howe’s approach to post-recession fiscal management in 1981:

Then he planned to tighten the budget even as the country was coming out of recession.

And this was the reaction: a letter from the Times from 364 economists arguing he was doing the wrong thing. The eminent list of academics included Professor King, now Governor of the Bank of England.

History proved Geoffrey Howe to be more right than they were.

You fucking what? Try telling that to people who needed a job in the 1980s.
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As is well-known enough, I have no sense of humour to speak of. Indeed, Cllr Bob Piper contends that I am a “dour humourless git who can’t take a joke”. And he’s in the same party so I must be a right prattish killjoy.

So I’m perhaps not the best person to judge whether the Conservatives’ new foray into humorous anti-Labour posters (pictured) hits the spot, or not.

But as a self-important, pseudo-intellectual twat of a leftie analyst, I am in an excellent position to point out the following key aspect to the new campaign.
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Melanie Phillips has been foaming at the mouth again over ‘Neathergate’:

A covert policy to subvert the makeup of the country and change its national identity, an abuse of democracy, a stupendous swindle of the British people — more, an act of collective treachery to the nation: an enormous story, you might think? You would be wrong. Other than in the Daily Mail, I cannot find any reference to this anywhere else.

Tabloid Watch has done already done a good job debunking the assertion that Migration Watch’s latest ’revelations’ are only being covered in the Daily Mail, by pointing out that they’ve been covered in The Sun, The Express and the Telegraph.

A bit of background. Andrew Neather was previously a government advisor who last year wrote a comment piece claiming New Labour’s immigration policy was: “intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date”. He later clarified his point, but it was too late – by that time the right had assumed a huge conspiracy.
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I’m simply not clear on Conservative economic policy in relation to government debt.

Why is Cameron saying to business leaders one day that there is no need for big cuts in the first year of a Conservative government, while on the very same day one of his top MPs is going on about the ‘need to get to grips with public finances now’?

Why is there a commitment to an emergency budget if there are aren’t going to be any significant cuts?

Would such a budget simply be about reducing corporation tax and therefore increasing the deficit?

Well, there is a track record for such economic stupidity by the Tories.

Under Thatcher, cyclical borrowing costs caused by the Tory response to recession – itself largely driven by fear of how the markets might respond – continued to ensure that the structural budget deficit continued at more or less the same level for a further four years beyond the actual recession (graphs at page 7 of this IFS report).

And the Tories are trying to instill economic confidence with international investors? Gawd help us.

I smiled a rueful smile when I heard David Cameron call for a ‘good clean fight’ in the forthcoming general election.

Let’s set aside for the moment the fact by pouring millions of Lord Ashcroft mega-wealth into marginal constituencies, the Conservatives are effectively buying up seats, while having the gall to suggest that it is the Labour party that prey to the agenda of its key financial backers.

What is new this time around is that the result of the election may be decided on the basis of a single, methodologically obscure decision by a single credit ratings analyst.

Let’s let Stephanie Flanders take up the story, in her ‘intriguing question for 2010’:

Everyone thinks that the markets will politely wait until Britain has gone to the polls to draw its verdict on the UK. Well, maybe. But if sovereign debt is indeed the new sub-prime – at least where the markets are concerned – it’s difficult to believe that Britain will get through the months before the election without at least one major market wobble.

Perhaps one ratings agency will put the UK on negative watch. Or investors will get seized with the idea of a hung Parliament. Or Britain will simply get caught in the crosshairs of a market panic over sovereign debt in Central and Eastern Europe. Who knows what the trigger will be. But my hunch is there will be something, this side of polling day. The question will be how the major political parties react.

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Iain Dale has the text of Cameron’s New Year speech up. Quite rightly the media will be paying particular attention to this short but important little snippet:

But let’s make sure the election is a proper argument about the future of the country, not some exercise in fake dividing lines.

Cameron recognises here what Tessa Jowell misses in her nonsense about ‘hideous’ ‘class war’. By playing the one nation card at this stage, he is effectively admitting the Tories are deeply rattled by the prospect of a Labour move towards a class-based electoral strategy.

He’s seen the opinion polls, he’s seen the financial context in which such a strategy might be implemented, and he’s afraid.
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Paul Clarke, the bloke gound guilty of firearms possession last month, will not be going to prison after all.

All the outraged nutjob bloggers and their commenters who went round saying that his conviction and fast-approaching five-year prison term were entirely reflective of Britain under ZanuLiebour will no doubt be blogging and commenting to say how wrong they were to jump to conclusions without first bothering to looks at any of the facts.

Yeah, I’m sure they will.

‘What we’ve go to do here is get people to understand it’s not a referendum it’s a choice and as a choice it has consequences,’ said Sean Woodward MP at the Labour party conference.

And the fast emerging electoral strategy, as reflected by Labour Matters, is all about ensuring that the voters see the clear blue water between Labour and the Tories.

The focus, say the electoral strategists and the PR people, should be on the way Labour is dealing with the economy, and the 1937-style disaster that may well ensue if the Tories get into power.

And as election strategies go, it’s pretty good one, especially as it’s starting to be sharpened up by a concentration on how the Tories will ‘target investment on a tax giveaway of £200,000 to the 3,000 wealthiest estates’; in general the focus is on reminding people that, in the end, it is the Labour party that is wedded to the interests of the working class, not the Tories.

Time then, for Labour members, you’d think, to get behind the message. Unless you’re Frank Field, that is.
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If I hadn’t, a quarter of a century ago, in the heat of the moment, cast aside the class-based distinctions, built into the NHS rules, which said I must wait upon a doctor’s order in spite of what we both knew or didn’t know, that diabetic gentleman slipping into coma would have suffered brain damage. Perhaps he would have died. Class could have killed him.

I used to work as a nurse. One evening, I was just doing a last walk round the ward, checking on anyone I had particular concerns about, having a laugh with one or two of the regulars, making sure people were settled before the night shift nurses came on.

As I came to the bed of the gentleman who’d just been transferred over from A&E a few minutes before, it took me a second to work out something was wrong.

His pyjama top was soaked and for a second I looked to see if he’d dropped the water jug as he fell asleep.

But then it clicked. I grabbed a lancet and the blood test strip tube from my pocket and stabbed for blood, but even before the blood was on the strip I knew there was no sugar in there to change the colour; the sudden drenching of sweat could only mean he was in hypoglycemic shock and heading swiftly for coma. continue reading… »

There’s a revelatory short post at the Adam Smith Institute yesterday. Here’s the most salient part:

You will never streamline the public sector by Treasury ministers bullying departments over money. Instead, you need a complete review of what government does, what it has to do, what it can do better, and what can be done better by other people and by the public. All departments need to buy into that, and it needs a reform, not a finance minister in charge if everyone is going to trust the process and be a part of it. After all, the process may find that spending in some areas should be increased, even if other departments are found to be doing a lot of pointless stuff.

In other words, the influential Adam Smith Institute wants to see an immediate post-election push towards savage public spending reductions in every single government department.

In one respect, of course, none of this is new. We know that the Conservative will cut public services, even if they are not as explicit as the Adam Smith Institute about the range of cuts.
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Until recently I was only barely aware of a magazine called the Spectator and its accompanying website, but I’ve noticed it a lot just recently.

I’ve noticed it because everything in it seems to be such utter nonsense, and the trolls even worse than elsewhere.

Yesterday its columnist David Blackburn takes the plaudits for the new ’most woefully inaccurate journalist of the week award’, with not one but two entries – posted within a couple of hours either side of lunch? – which are simply wrong with a capital W.

First, at 12.43pm, is his suggestion that a political party, well the Labour party anyway, trying to maximise postal votes might be illegal in some way, and that Labour is bound to be up to no good. That brought the trolls out for sure.

Chris Paul’s already dealt with that one, and got the following comment published:

This seems to be speculative nonsense. People with PVs are about three times as likely to vote as those without. Weather doesn’t intervene. Holidays don’t. Illness doesn’t. Work doesn’t. Can’t be bothered less likely. Which is why all parties in close run seats try to get their known or likely supporters on PV. Conflating a perfectly logical optimisation exercise with cheating seems sloppy and ignorant. I repeat: sloppy and ignorant.

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Localism is such a hard thing to argue against. Either you’re genuinely in favour of devolving power and resources, or you can’t really say you’re not.

That’s why the Tories are using it as cover for their plans to introduce, ‘within weeks of coming to power’, says Cameron, sweeping legislation that will allow councils to sweep away a raft of commitments to their residents, and start to compete gleefully with each other for which one can deliver the LEAST services.

I’ve been banging on about this for a bit. Fortunately, John Denham MP has heard my faint call, and we may still be saved.

In that spirit, I have written to John, and this is what I’ve said.
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Following my recently popular Top 10 Tory ‘out of touch’ gaffes, I thought I would follow it up with a focus on the golden boy David Cameron.

So here is an incomplete list:

10. Not knowing how many houses he’s got, only a while after John McCain made the same mistake.

9. Being photographed by Dave Osler.

8. Getting embroiled in a doctored photo fiasco in relation to some now embarrassing pictures of him being an arrogant-looking git at university.

7. Pretending he’s all green on his bike, when it’s total bollox.
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Because I love lists, here is my list of top 10 pieces of real documentary evidence that the Tory hierarchy by virtue of their privileged upbringing, are incapable of government which takes account of ‘real people’s’ experiences. The top 10 is limited to Tory parliamentarians or wanabee parliamentarians, as it would have to be a top 100 otherwise.

No. 10 Anthony Steen, soon to be ex-MP for Totnes, on his inordinate expense claims:

‘You know what it’s about? Jealousy. I have got a very, very large house. Some people say it looks like Balmoral. It’s the photographs that make it look like Balmoral, but it’s a merchant’s house from the 19th century.’

A fairly obvious one in for starters, only down at No.10 because he’s not going to be an MP.

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The couple of times I’ve ventured on to LibCon turf to have a rant about international credit rating agencies, I’ve been told I had no idea what I was on about, what with not working in financial markets, and then that I am a nutjob conspiracy theorist who think the world’s controlled by white cat-stroking evil dudes.

To be fair to the second commenter (Giles), it was very funny and he has since softened his line commendably. He now suggests that, while I may not be a total nutjob, I’m wrong to see what the credit rating agencies have been up to as a systematic abuse of power, rather than occasional rank incompetence.

Since those little contretemps, the US House Committee on Oversight and Government reform has been investigating what the credit rating agencies have been getting up to for the last 70-odd years, and has discovered that for the last thirty five years of those they have been tailoring their credit ratings so as to maximize income from the very people whose financial products they are rating. (backstory here)

That is, they have been acting corruptly.
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