More nurses needed by Paul Cotterill

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… »

Why we should support Brown’s push for a constitution and AV by Guest

contribution by Lisa Harker

Most of the reaction to today’s speech to the Prime Minister’s ippr speech on constitutional reform has taken the view that it was an exercise in political manoeuvring.

Far from ‘new politics’ it is old Gordon, out to ‘wrong foot’ and create ‘dividing lines’ between Labour and its opponents. Even those more sympathetic to the need for reform, have adopted a weary tone that these ideas, coming so late in the day, are going to make very little difference.

Some of this is fair enough. Laying out a new ‘constitutional settlement’ would have had much more moral force if the Prime Minister had made it when he was new to office and secure in power. Coming now, in the dog days of this parliament with the public still fuming at the expenses scandal, it smacks of expediency.

Of course, the real pity is that when he took over at Number Ten, Gordon Brown did have constitutional reform at the top of his agenda for change. The problem was that he didn’t act on it.
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Social Democracy lessons for Polly Toynbee and others by Don Paskini

For months, the right wing newspapers have been inventing horror stories about what the consequences of what they call ‘Harriet Harman’s equalities bill’ will be. None, however, have managed to come up with as ludicrous a suggestion as that of Polly Toynbee.

She wrote today in the Guardian that she thinks that providing free personal care for elderly people might contravene the government’s Equalities bill, which expects public bodies to consider the effect of their policies on inequality.

Presumably, by the same logic, the NHS, schools, child benefit, free bus passes and every other popular and effective public service which reduces inequality should be changed so they are free only for the poorest, with everyone else having to pay.

With friends like this…

This kind of imbecility is merely an extreme example of a set of beliefs which are widely held amongst the political elite, which can be summarised thus:
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Are banks finally losing their grip on the economy? by Guest

contribution by Adam Lent

The rather brilliant theorist of economic history, Carlota Perez, argues that after very large financial crashes, economies change their mode of operation.

Systems that have been run by and in the interests of financial speculation become far more focused on the ‘real economy’. Profits and wealth are generated less by playing around with money and more by the search for productivity and innovation in other sectors.

This process often begins with the banks and other financial bodies losing economic, political and popular credibility. Their sphere of influence and their freedom of activity becomes constrained not just by the fact that financial conditions have changed but also by a new regulatory regime and a political backlash.

That Perezian turning point may just have arrived. Darling’s bonus tax, Obama’s insurance levy, a growing campaign for a transaction tax and now, most strikingly, Obama’s new Glass-Steagall, suggest that something significant is finally happening over a year after the crash.
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Support the NoBonus4RBS campaign! by Guest

contribution by Stan Moss

Do you remember when the government bailed out the banks to the tune of £850bn? Didn’t Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling insist that conditions be attached, that it would all be very strict and that, with the government as major shareholder, the banks would not be free to slip back into past excesses?

“[The deal] will carry terms and conditions that appropriately reflect the financial commitment being made by the taxpayer” – said Darling in 2008.

Back to today, and neither Labour nor the Tories are saying a word to the scandal that is quietly unravelling before our eyes.

RBS, where the governments owns a stake of 84%, have announced that they’re about to dish up £1.5bn to £2bn in bonuses, with the board threatening to resign if not allowed to do so.
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How can we still push electoral reform? by Paul Sagar

Over the weekend I was invited to observe the campaign group Power2010’s “Deliberative Democracy” event in London.

Chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy, it was billed as drawing upon the work of Stanford Professor James Fishkin to pioneer methods in which ordinary people might “set priorities for electoral reform, MPs expenses and political scandals.”

My usual cynicism about these sorts of things was initially over-ridden by how impressed I was with the democratic process at the Power2010 weekend.

There was something actually inspiring about watching ordinary people debate on equal terms, get enthused about their political system and work in a sense of reforming solidarity.

But the more I reflect, the more my usual scepticism returns. Because it seems highly unlikely that Power2010 can bring about the reforms (whatever they turn out to be) it champions.
(Channel 4 report at the end)
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Productivity in public services: how the Tories lie by Guest

contribution by Margin4Error

Last week the Conservatives launched a new line of attack on the public sector. Phillip Hammond, the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, told Policy Exchange that the public sector was inefficient.

He said that in the last twelve years its productivity had grown a lot slower than the private sector. Then he concluded that had it kept pace we could have had the same services for £60billion less tax each year.

There are a lot of inferences intended. One is that Labour is wasteful. Another is that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector. Another is that voters can expect something for nothing from the Tories, or “more for less” as the official line goes.

But the most important inference is that the Tories can cut the deficit by cutting waste rather than by raising taxes or sacking nurses.

£60billion?
So let’s start with the £60billion annual saving that Labour cruelly denied us.

First of all I have to acknowledge a weakness in my article. I can’t break down their figures for you. I can’t break them down because I don’t have them. In fact no one seems to.

The Conservatives don’t appear to have referenced their assertion anywhere. As such, other than the mouth of Phillip Hammond, we don’t know where £60billion came from.

That problem aside, we are talking about a fairly modest rise in productivity over twelve years.
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The vision thing by Guest

Guest post by Matt Sellwood

“The very least you can do in this life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyed nor the destroyers.” – Barbara Kingsolver

British politics is in a mess. That much is obvious to anyone who has spent any time speaking to people about politics over the last year. The issue of expenses was simply an explosive symptom of a much deeper-rooted cause, rather than the cause itself.

The cause, simply, is that very few people are inspired by politics any longer – and even fewer believe that electoral politics has any transformatory potential to offer. This is not limited to the left or the right – politics as a whole is being damned by millions of people. The most common reaction that canvassers of all parties in my constituency receive is “not interested, mate”, followed closely by “what’s the point?”.

And who can blame them? British politics has, it seems entirely lost the understanding that politics is about vision. Its about improving people’s everyday lives, yes – but its also about being able to look to the horizon, and beyond, for a promise of something better. It’s about being able to identify with a party because that party embodies what you believe in – your ideals. continue reading… »

What is the future of social democracy? by Guest

contribution by Arjun Singh-Muchélle

When social democrats write about the future of social democracy, there is a conspicuous absence in their writing of ownership. They make references to elusive ‘social democracy’ and ‘social democrats’, without ever referring to themselves.

I am a social democrat, avowedly so. This offers my final cry on the future of our ideology.

Our ideology is in need of an intellectual renaissance. When the first and second ways of our ideology faltered, we created a third way, branded it ‘new’ and sold it, en masse. This however, was a momentary lapse in judgement. This third way has now failed, with its intellectual foundation in tatters.

It is our imperative, as social democrats, to dispense of this third method in to the dustbin of history.
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Britons want: to reform, regulate and redistribute by Don Paskini

Thanks to tim f for drawing our attention to this recent BBC / GlobeScan poll. The top findings…

1. Most British people (57%) think that the problems associated with free market capitalism can be addressed through regulation and reform; however, 19 per cent think that capitalism is fatally flawed, and only 13% think that it works well as it is.

2. Four in ten (40%) believe that the government should play more of an active role in owning or controlling major industries, 31 per cent believe that the government should play a less active role, and 23 per cent believe that it should continue to play the same role it does now.

3. Two-thirds (67%) of respondents say the government should do more to distribute wealth more evenly, while 20% say it should maintain its current level of involvement and only 10% say that it should do less.

4. A majority (56%) favour increased government regulation of businesses, compared to 23% who favour the status quo and 16% who favour less regulation.

More information, including comparisons with 26 other countries, can be found here.

Reforming English Libel Law by Robert Sharp

There is a growing consensus that English libel laws are not fit for purpose. The list of libel cases that seem to defy common sense grows longer every day. Bloggers are threatened by vindictive vested interests, and football fans on chat-rooms are bullied by their own clubs. Regional newspapers are intimidated into timidity, and publishers punt on commissioning the investigative journalism that is supposed to keep our democracy strong. Scientists who challenge the claims of alternative medicine are hit with writs.

And then there is the problem of forum shopping, or “Libel Tourism”:

Britain is a pariah state, shunned by its allies and exploited by the unsavoury. The state of English libel laws (Scotland’s provisions are a little better) is so embarrassing that a number of US states have enacted legislation to protect their citizens from our courts. London is the global centre of libel tourism. From Middle Eastern potentates to Russian oligarchs, the rich and powerful use our legal system to bully people who try to hold them to account.

That’s John Kampfner, former editor of the New Statesman and Chief Executive of Index on Censorship, introducing the Index/PEN report into English libel laws. The report is the result of a year long inquiry that took in the opinions of publishers, lawyers, journalists, novellists, NGOs and bloggers, and identifies ten challenges for libel reform.

First amongst these the problem of burden of proof, which in libel lies uniquely with the defendant. The report recommends reversing this, and requiring claimants to demonstrate falsehood and damage. We also recommend reducing damages in libel to £10,000 and establishing a low cost libel tribunal that would allow bloggers, and others of slender means, to defend libel actions without having to re-mortgage their children.

You can read the rest of our recommendations at www.libelreform.org, a new hub that will co-ordinate the campaign for libel reform, in collaboration with Sense About Science. We need to lobby MPs to sign an EDM calling form reform, and to pressurise both the Tories and Labour to join the Liberal Democrats and make libel reform a manifesto commitment. The campaign for libel reform has already attracted the support of writers such as Monica Ali and Andrew Motion, and makes bedfellows of newspaper editors Alan Rusbridger and Peter Wright. If you are fed up with the wealthy and big corporations using English laws to suppress free speech, then we urge you to join them, and sign-up to the campaign.

Where is the left’s new economic map? by Guest

contribution by Adam Lent

Imagine this scenario. You’re driving to a vital meeting in a part of the world you’ve never visited before. The roads are winding and there are lots of unexpected turns. So you are relying very heavily on your map of the area, which begins to appear increasingly divorced from reality. Bu in the absence of anything better you plough on.

You only realise quite how bad the map is a few minutes later when you and your car end up bonnet first in a ditch. In disgust and anger you decide to tear up the map. It is then you notice the thing was printed forty years ago.

Those with a pathological inability to analyse a situation might believe that they just need to stick to the map even more closely. Most of would probably chuck it and look for a more up-to-date map.

Long metaphor but this pretty well summarises where we are on economic policy at the moment. The old neo-liberal economic paradigm has clearly dumped us into the mother of all economic ditches.

For groups like the Taxpayers Alliance and increasingly the Conservative Party, the problem originates not with the paradigm but because we drifted too far away from it.
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Reform parliament: abolish the three-line-whip by Guest

contribution by Josh Plotkin

The Power 2010 campaign is asking people for ideas to refom our democracy. Here is one proposal.

The idea that British politics needed a radical shake-up; and that this time – unlike any time before – the politicians themselves knew it, gained enormous currency in these heady months. Things were going to change: Brown said so, as did Cameron, as did Clegg, as did almost every other MP with a public profile. Maybe, just maybe, they meant it.

The closest we got was Gordon Brown’s speech, and that was deeply unimpressive on reform. Labour are such pussies that even in the almost certain knowledge that they wouldn’t actually have to live up to anything they proposed, the best they could come up with was a referendum. At some unspecified point in the future. On alternative vote. It’s a stunning lack of ambition, especially since Labour promised a similar referendum in 1997 and never delivered.

This is not good enough. So time for some wishful thinking: perhaps the most obvious and, at the same time, the most seismic of parliamentary reforms would be the end of the three-line whip.
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What might a 21st century Libel Law look like? by Unity

I don’t usually do requests, but as libel law reform is a particular interest of mine and a subject I’ve blogged on previous occasions, I’m more than happy to rise to the challenge set by ‘organic cheeseboard’ in comments under Sunder’s commentary on yesterday’s events.

but for god’s sake could SOMEONE writing about this stuff PLEASE offer an idea of what those reforms might actually look like?

Fair enough, lets start with an internet specific reform which, as a blogger, is number one on my own shopping list of reforms, and a measure that we absolutely do want to import from our cousins over the the other side of the Big Pond.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Acy specifies simply that:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Under English libel law, at present, web hosting companies may treated as the publisher of, and held liable for, [allegedly] defamatory content published to their servers by a third party despite having had no absolutely part in in, or prior knowledge, of the that material’s publication. Likewise, bloggers and forum operators can be sued over comments, posted to their blog/forum  by visitors, over which they will have had no control whatsoever unless they actively pre-moderate all such comments. continue reading… »

A social democrat is a conservative with some research by Don Paskini

A while back, I wrote that:”One criticism of the welfare state is that once you include tax credits, child benefit, housing and council tax benefit and so on, a lone parent who is not in paid employment and has two children has roughly the same income as a single person who works and gets the average wage.”

One possible reaction to this is “that’s a disgrace, and it shows that benefits are too high.” This is the one which you will read a lot in the newspapers.

Fraser Nelson, Thatcherite editor of the Spectator, wrote something similar a couple of weeks ago:

Take, for example, a British girl leaving school and imagining a life of lower-paid work. The UK government presents her with two options: employment or pregnancy. If she has one child and no job, the benefit income of £207 a week is more than the average wage for a hairdresser or teaching assistant. With two children, it is £260 a week — more than a receptionist or library assistant earns. With three children, it is £324 a week, more than a lab technician, typist or bookkeeper.

Fraser is not, however, arguing that benefits need to be slashed.
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So what is Tory policy on tax havens? by Paul Sagar

Left Outside recently wrote a solid deconstruction of the Conservative International Development paper, also cross-posted to LC. The conclusion? One World Conservatism is a well intentioned but fatally flawed scheme.

But I want to go further and ask what the Tory policy on tax havens is.

Tax havens – or as they are more accurately termed, secrecy jurisdictions – facilitate mass capital flight from developing nations. Capital flight is the number one reason developing nations cannot grow their economies and develop out of poverty.

It is, in turn, seconded and worsened by corruption (which tax havens also facilitate) and its effects exacerbated by a lack of secure, constant and domestically-accessible tax revenue (ditto).
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We should focus our anger on Standard & Poor’s by Paul Cotterill

The slightly heady days of the initial financial crisis, when there was a naïve hope around that radical change might somehow come of its own accord, seem a long time ago now. We should still be angry at what’s happened, but what can we actually do? Where can we focus our anger in a way that actually changes things?

Well, here’s one suggestion for where we should focus our anger.

I and others recently picked upon the still startling notion that Standard & Poor’s (S&)P, the biggest international credit rating agency, should have been both instrumental in bringing about the financial crisis, but is now proceeding to throw its weight about, telling us all how we’re going to have slash spending in order to keep the country ‘creditworthy’.

Not content with playing a major part in bringing unemployment and financial pain S&P published, in March 2009, ‘Toward a Global Regulatory Framework for Credit Ratings‘. In what must be the understatement of the year, the report says:
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Is Attlee relevant to our economic troubles? by Carl Packman

noticed a letter in the Guardian this weekend written by Michael Bath of Rochester, Kent, which read:

Instead of interviewing four monetarist ex-chancellors [on the subject of public spending cuts], why don’t you explain how Attlee funded his programme of nationalisation, and founded the NHS, when the country had been virtually bankrupted by the second world war?

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Uninformed criticism of Child Poverty bill by Don Paskini

The government will be introducing a child poverty bill, which aims by 2020 to ensure that no children are growing up in relative poverty.

Grassroots Tories have attacked this plan, because they claim it is mathematically impossible to achieve this. They combine this with amusing jokes about how the government is full of maths clowns, before going a bit quiet when it turns out that it is, in fact, they who are the maths clowns.
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Is James Purnell using Sen? by Paul Cotterill

Amartya Sen and his capabilities model is all the rage in cabinet, and ex-cabinet. Gordon Brown’s read all about it, Liam Byrne’s been quoting Sen in the Guardian, and now James Purnell’s been using him as the basis for his attempt to portray himself as a leading left thinker, ready to lead Labour and the left out of the electoral wilderness with his new best think-tank mate Jon Cruddas.

So what are we to make of the adoption of a piece of thinking which dates from the 1970s, and set out most famously in Sen’s seminal 1979 Tanner Lecture ‘Equality of What’? Like Stuart at Next Left, I’m not a little worried about how Sen’s being used and abused.
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