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Archive for April, 2011

How much does the government love the NHS?

11/04/2011, 10:35:33 AM

In an attempt to save themselves from the hands of voters, nurses, Norman Lamb, the BMA… Cameron, Lansley and Clegg have begun a desperate “listening exercise”. Just in case the cynical public weren’t sure they were really listening -and began to question if they really could trust big Dave with the NHS – they’ve published a pamphlet alongside the photo calls: Working together for a stronger NHS.

And just to make absolutely certain we didn’t get confused into thinking their rushed, ill thought out reforms were ideologically driven, the introduction tells us that they “love” the NHS. Four times. Four. That’s how much they love it.

“We love the NHS. The NHS is our most precious national asset. Every second hundreds of people walk through its doors. Every week it saves thousands of lives. Every year millions of us rely on it. We love the NHS because its there when the people we love fall ill. Because its there all the time. Because whoever you are, wherever you are from, however much money you have got in the bank, theres somewhere to go to get looked after. And because that says amazing things about our country. That’s why we love the NHS”

John Healey has written to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, to question the political nature of the cringe worthy photo calls and the “synthetic sentimentalism” of the sickening love letter.

John Healey – Gus O’Donnell

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Who the hell does Gus O’Donnell think he is?

11/04/2011, 08:06:21 AM

by Tom Harris

Revelations that head of the civil service, Sir Gus O’Donnell, blocked a judicial inquiry into allegations of phone hacking by the News of the World, prompts the urgent question: who the hell does he think he is?

According to the Guardian, O’Donnell considered that by the autumn of 2009, the general election was imminent and therefore an inquiry would be too politically sensitive, given that former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, was now spinning for David Cameron.

Well, so what? If something is so serious that it warrants investigation, then it should be investigated, irrespective of the political timetable. In fact, the proximity of Coulson to power at that point should have made an inquiry more imperative, not less. (more…)

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Monday News Review

11/04/2011, 07:00:11 AM

54% of NHS workforce cuts will be frontline staff

The RCN has been gathering evidence about the number of posts under threat in the NHS for nearly a year. It believes there are now 40,000 posts which could close in the next three years, a rise from 27,000 at the end of last year. Most of these will not be redundancies as the NHS tends to rely on natural turnover from people retiring or changing jobs. As part of its latest research, the RCN took an in-depth look at 21 trusts to see what sort of posts were being targeted. It showed that 54% of about 10,000 job cuts were clinical and, in total, more than a tenth of the nursing workforce could be lost in these areas. The union also said it had found examples of services being closed, including rehab centres, detox units and talking therapies. RCN general secretary Peter Carter said: “Clinical staff are the lifeblood of the NHS and it is haemorrhaging at an alarming rate. Many trusts are not being transparent by admitting the proportion of clinical jobs being list. “From our research we now know the truth – the majority of job losses are front-line clinical jobs, the jobs that matter to patients.” – BBC

More than half of the NHS posts being axed in spending cuts are those of doctors, nurses and midwives, it has emerged. The Royal College of Nursing has warned that hospital wards are becoming unsafe as there are just not enough frontline workers to look after patients or prevent the spread of infection. There are also fears that nurses are so overworked they are unable to carry out their most basic duties of care such attending to the needs of the vulnerable elderly. The latest estimates suggest that at least 40,000 posts at hospitals and health trusts will be lost over the next four years as the NHS tries to make billions of pounds of efficiency savings. New figures published by RCN ahead of its annual conference in Liverpool show that 46 per cent of these are nursing posts. A further 8 per cent involve doctors, midwives and other clinicians – meaning 54 per cent of posts cut are frontline workers. These findings sharply contradict the Government’s claim that any job losses in the NHS will involve bureacrats and backroom staff– so patient safety will not be affected. – the Daily Mail (more…)

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The Sunday Review: Left in the past: radicalism and the politics of nostalgia, by Alastair Bonnett

10/04/2011, 01:40:51 PM

by Anthony Painter

There is a tragic oscillation that occurs cyclically on the left between over-confidence and capitulation. It is summarised by a Christopher Lasch quote in Alastair Bonnett’s study of the complex relationship between nostalgia and radicalism:

“Their confidence in being on the winning side of history made progressive people unbearably smug and superior but they felt isolated and beleaguered in their own country since it was so much less progressive than they were”.

As Labour enters office, it is certain in its knowledge of how progressive the country is. It leaves office in despair at how reactionary it is. Having tried to buy it off with reactionary and authoritarian language and policies, it is generally also perplexed. Labour, meet reality; reality, kick Labour. Only neither perspective is true. Britain is neither predominantly progressive or reactionary. It is, however, deeply conservative, which is an entirely different proposition altogether.

Progressives look to the future with gleeful zeal. Conservatives warily eye the past, in part longing and part warning, and step into the future only tentatively. In that sense, they are more attuned to the default human condition. We are a species that is disconcerted by convulsive change. How strange then that we have built an economy and society around such change – a key part of the radical critique of where we are. And how predictable it would be if there were a social and psychological reaction to such change. As Ian Dyck writes of farm labourers in the early nineteenth century:

“They remembered a better life and they wanted it back”.

(more…)

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Sunday News Review

10/04/2011, 09:15:26 AM

Cable and Osborne clash on banking reform

An interim report by a five-member banking commission, headed by Sir John Vickers, is expected to recommend a series of measures to protect banks’ key functions at times of crisis. The moves are likely to cost banks an extra £5billion but are set to be supported by George Osborne, the Chancellor. However, the recommendations will be contested by Liberal Democrat cabinet ministers including Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, exposing a clear fault line at the top of the government. Mr Cable has in the past called for the big banks such as HSBC, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland to be completely split up into retail and investment arms- and Sir John’s report does not go as far as this. A senior Lib Dem source attempted to distance his party from the findings ahead of Monday’s publication of the commission’s interim report. – the Telegraph

Will Cameron capitulate and rush a reshuffle?

Calls for a reshuffle will have a willing echo chamber in the media: many a blog, news story, TV piece to camera outside Number 10, radio discussion or commentary can be fashioned from debating the misadventures of hapless minister X and contrasting them with the promising prospects of confident minister Y. For those ministers marked with the black spot, this threatens a very unhappy period until the blade falls on their necks or they find themselves reprieved. For those politicians tipped for ascent, this will be a very nervous period until the call comes through inviting them to Number 10 or the phone fails to ring. Rumours of an imminent cull will be fed by those Conservative and Lib Dem MPs who think that their outstanding talents are not being sufficiently recognised in the current ministerial rankings. Those tantalised by the prospect of promotion will find it hard not to encourage journalists to propagate the case for “fresh faces” to reinvigorate the government. If reshuffle speculation gets intense enough, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The prime minister eventually feels compelled to have a reshuffle for no better reason than fear of looking like a wimp if he doesn’t. – the Observer

News of the World apologises, kind of…

What was News International thinking when it released its statement of its intention to apologise on Friday? Getting an apology out of the News of the World has never been easy. Normally, after weeks of front-page splashes and sensational headlines, a tiny, mealy-mouthed apology appears in what feels like the gardening section. So the surprise announcement by News International that it had “decided to approach some civil litigants with an unreserved apology” raised the question of whether such apologies were also going to be in the usual house style. There are some serious qualifications to this “unreserved apology”. It is limited only to voicemail interception during the years 2004-2006. There is no admission or apology for anybody who believes that they were intercepted before that. To discover the full extent of interception before 2004 and after 2006, the civil actions and the latest Met investigation will have to keep pushing forward. In the excitement of receiving any admission whatsoever from News International, we could overlook just how narrow it is. – Independent

Labour’s top team are bezzie “mates”

In a magazine interview last week that has already achieved notoriety, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, said David Cameron was not a personal friend. Does Mr Miliband regard Mr Balls, recently described by the Prime Minister as “the most annoying person in modern politics “as a “mate”? “Absolutely. I think he is a brilliant shadow chancellor and our relationship will be a foundation for the next Labour government because we know each other well and we admire each other.” The Labour leader also insists the pair will not be subject to the same damaging psychodrama as their predecessors as Labour opposition leader and shadow chancellor, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. “We had front-row seats at the Blair-Brown movie and we are not about to repeat it.” – the Telegraph

Nurses to warn of cuts danger

Nurse leaders will warn this week that poor morale and job cuts threaten to derail the government’s reform programme of the NHS in England. The issues will be key themes of the Royal College of Nursing’s annual conference in Liverpool. RCN leader Peter Carter has said nurses were being pushed to the limit, working extra hard to keep services going. A Department of Health spokesman said an extra £11.5bn of funding was being ploughed into the NHS. The Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, is not expected to give a speech at the conference but will meet delegates. It is understood he is attending the conference as part of the government’s “listening exercise” over its shake-up of the health service. Dr Carter told the BBC he accepted the NHS had to save billions of pounds over the next four years but said it was wrong to cut front line staff. “We are seeing not just nurses, but cleaners, doctors and speech therapists’ posts being cut. That is the reality,” he said. – BBC

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The week Uncut

09/04/2011, 10:20:56 AM

In case you missed them, these were the best read pieces on Uncut in the last seven days:

Ed Balls says this week saw another black Wednesday for millions of Britons

Ex gen sec Peter Watt offers some advice for interested applicants

Dan Hodges asks why don’t we try and find out why we lost?

Tom Watson says letter from director of public prosecutions discredits Met testimony

Atul Hatwal offers up an Old Politics case for AV

Recovering intern, Sabrina Francis, thinks there must be a better way

…and Tom Harris takes aim at Ollie Letwin in this weeks half a minute Harris

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Saturday News Review

09/04/2011, 09:00:04 AM

News International admits liability over phone hacking

Rupert Murdoch’s News International has issued a public apology to eight victims of phone hacking, including the actor Sienna Miller and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, and admitted for the first time that the practice was rife at the News of the World. In a move likely to cost the company many millions of pounds, it said it would offer compensation to some of the 24 high-profile figures who have started legal proceedings against the paper in the high court for breach of privacy. It also admitted its previous investigations into hacking had not been “sufficiently robust”. The unprecedented statement of contrition is a remarkable volte face for the country’s most powerful news organisation that was claiming until the start of this year, in the face of growing evidence to the contrary, that hacking was the work of a single reporter. – the Guardian

News International’s admission that it was responsible for the hacking of the phones of public figures ranging from a former member of the Cabinet to a Hollywood actress represents a seismic moment for the management of Britain’s biggest newspaper publisher, reverberating all the way back to Rupert Murdoch. The acceptance of liability on a grand scale has implications which stretch across the Atlantic to the heart of News Corporation. Why, Mr Murdoch will surely ask himself, didn’t he take a personal grip of this situation before it reached such a pass? At Dow Jones & Co, the publishers of Mr Murdoch’s prized Wall Street Journal, the chief executive Les Hinton might ask himself why, as executive chairman of News International (NI) throughout the period in question, he presided over an organisation responsible for such behaviour, but told MPs that “there was never any evidence delivered to me” suggesting that phone hacking went beyond Clive Goodman, the royal editor of the News of the World jailed in January 2007. – the Independent

The biggest question is for the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who was poised to wave through News Corporation’s bid for full ownership and control of BSkyB, thereby creating the largest and most powerful media company Britain has ever seen. It is now apparent his predecessor as culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, had her phone hacked. Imagine if a bank had hired investigators to hack the chancellor of the exchequer’s phone. It is difficult to imagine that Mr Hunt could possibly allow the bid to go through in the circumstances when so many unanswered questions hang over the company and where so many documents have yet to be revealed. Only a full judicial inquiry can now answer the many unresolved issues. – the Guardian

Now George’s business buddies make U-turn on growth

Some of the UK’s most prominent business leaders, including individuals who gave their personal stamp of approval to the chancellor’s aggressive spending cuts, have said they have growing concerns about the state of the economy, warning of weak growth and rising inflation ahead. Archie Norman, the former Tory MP who now chairs ITV, said the government’s growth targets were too optimistic. The former Asda boss Andy Bond, Carphone Warehouse founder Charles Dunstone, Tory peer Lord Wolfson, who runs Next, and Yell chairman Bob Wigley predicted tough times ahead as soaring inflation dents consumer spending power, although they continue to support George Osborne‘s austerity strategy. Bond expressed doubt about the ability of the private sector to create as many jobs as hoped. “I don’t think the private sector is going to be able to pick up the slack in this climate,” he said. Bond, who ran the UK’s second largest supermarket chain for five years, forecast a two-year “retail recession” earlier this week. He was one of 35 bosses who signed a letter to the Daily Telegraph six months ago supporting George Osborne’s plan to slash the deficit and arguing that businesses “should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector”.- the Guardian

Clegg to make AV plea

Nick Clegg is to compare proposed changes to the system for electing MPs to giving women the vote and lowering the voting age to 18. The Lib Dem leader will say arguments against the alternative vote (AV) will look as “nonsensical” in the future as those against female suffrage now do. But one senior Labour politician said his reading of history was “dodgy” and the current first-past-the-post system had “stood the test of time”. Voters will be asked whether to retain first-past-the-post or switch to the alternative vote – where voters can rank candidates in order of preference – in the UK-wide poll. Putting the case for AV in a speech in London, Mr Clegg will say it is a “very British reform” and represents an “evolution” of the existing system. Referring to the series of legislative steps which extended the voting franchise in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, he will say a switch to AV would fit into a pattern of constitutional change “by instalments”. – the BBC

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News International statement

08/04/2011, 03:58:09 PM

News International statement with regard to voicemail interception at the News of the World during 2004-2006:

Following an extensive internal investigation and disclosures through civil legal cases, News International has decided to approach some civil litigants with an unreserved apology and an admission of liability in cases meeting specific criteria.

We have also asked our lawyers to establish a compensation scheme with a view to dealing with justifiable claims fairly and efficiently.

This will begin the process of bringing these cases to a fair resolution with damages appropriate to the extent of the intrusion.

We will, however, continue to contest cases that we believe are without merit or where we are not responsible.

That said, past behaviour at the News of the World in relation to voicemail interception is a matter of genuine regret. It is now apparent that our previous inquiries failed to uncover important evidence and we acknowledge our actions then were not sufficiently robust.

We continue to co-operate fully with the Metropolitan Police. It was our discovery and voluntary disclosure of this evidence in January that led to the re-opening of the police investigation.

With that investigation on going, we cannot comment further until its completion.

News International’s commitment to our readers and pride in our award-winning journalism remains undiminished.

We will continue to engage with and challenge those who attempt to restrict our industry’s freedom to undertake responsible investigative reporting in the public interest.

ENDS

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Cameron’s holiday from political common sense

08/04/2011, 03:50:36 PM

by Kevin Meagher

So Dave and Sam have bid “Adios!” to miserable old Blighty and jetted off to Granada for a sneaky break to celebrate the missus’s 40^th.

In our belt-tightening times, Downing Street spinners are keen to point out the first couple flew by easyjet and that they are staying in a “mid-market” hotel.

Of course, if you’re a couple of minted minor blue-bloods, staying in a three-star family hotel is more “downmarket” than “mid market”. Still, I can’t quite see them draped across a couple of sun loungers like the middle-aged swingers in Benidorm.

Or perhaps that’s precisely how Dave expects to reconnect with beleaguered Brits. Taking a budget holiday that may still be just about affordable to many. Not the swinging bit.

But when he’s finished there’s the return to think about. Will he come back like Jim Callaghan, tanned and refreshed from an economic summit in Guadeloupe in 1978 and utter something to rival: “Crisis, what crisis?”

Of course Sunny Jim never actually used that particular formulation. It was paraphrased tabloid-speak. But it was the symbolism that mattered. As it does now. In a week that saw “Black Wednesday”, when the full putrid blast of the coalition cuts hit the public for the first time, there’s a question mark over Cameron’s political common sense.

What does he think people will make of his little jaunt? “Good on the multimillionaire politician who’s just trebled my kid’s tuition fees. I’m sure all that doctrinaire right-wingery takes it out of you. Put your feet up son”. (more…)

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Join the Labour heist on the Tory crown jewels: Trafford

08/04/2011, 12:00:22 PM

by Andrew Leask

The past few weeks have been a difficult time for communities across the country. But none more so than Greater Manchester. It has been said before, that the PM’s politics may well have been developed on the playing fields of Eton. In recent years Cameron has flirted with Manchester: there was the getting to know you PM direct session, spending the night during party conferences and even gifts: Greater Manchester will soon become the country’s first combined authority. But he is now performing the parliamentary equivalent of pulling Manchester’s hair, spreading rumours about it on the bus and calling it names in the playground. It seems that what they say about Cameron’s politics is true.

So how has the Tory-Lib Dem government got away with its repeated accusations that Manchester (in particular) is subjecting its citizens to politically motivated cuts. Cuts entirely of their own making and not due to anything the national government may have done or wanted. Well, obviously there is outright propaganda and spin. But beyond that, the Tories have sought to use their “jewel” in the north, their only council in the entire Greater Manchester region: Trafford.

Time and again, Conservatives have used Trafford as a comparison piece when trying to claim that national cuts do not have to mean job losses or reduced services. But regardless of the differences of need, resource and actual funding allocations of Manchester and Trafford, it is fundamentally untrue that services are not suffering and that people will not lose their jobs. For example, in the ward I’m fighting in, Broadheath, our local park wardens have already lost their jobs. Not only does this add to the skyrocketing unemployment statistics, but it has a real effect on our local community. Without park wardens, our green spaces are slowly falling into a state of disrepair and being used for all sorts of anti social behaviour. The Trafford cuts are real, and they are affecting all of us in the local community.

So the Labour group in Trafford is fighting hard in every ward. But to win Trafford, we need to win Broadheath. We’re up against the sitting mayor, so not only will a victory help push the council back towards a Labour majority, but will be a great PR victory too. But to win here, we’ve decided to do things a little differently.

Building on the stunning work done by people like Caroline Badley, we have built our campaign on the principles of community organising. We are seeking to equip and empower our volunteers and truly understand our local community. Whilst we’ve not quite reached Obama like levels of efficiency, we are taking huge strides. And we have been kept focused by one guiding principle: to reconnect with our volunteers, and through them, the community at large.

We have spent a long time going to churches, community groups and people’s homes and simply asking what can we do to help keep this area great. We’ve asked people to let us work with them to solve the problems they face. Already, we are starting to have an effect. Quite apart from the broken streetlights and awful potholes that we have got fixed, there’s the residents who have told us again and again, that no one has ever bothered to ask their opinion. By the simple fact we’ve done even that, they feel valued, respected and ready to engage again with the political process.

I love the community that I’m standing in. I believe the people of Trafford deserve better than a Tory council cheerleading national cuts. Looking at the voting history, we know that an extra 800 votes or so will be needed to win in my ward. We have a modern, dynamic strategy that is learning from the best political movements across the world. We are engaging volunteers by giving them responsibility, building around their skills and interests and engaging with a broad base of supporters and residents to make a positive difference in their lives.

But we don’t yet have enough people to ensure a Labour victory in May. So we’re asking activists from across the country, and particularly the north, to come and join us. To help us rob the Tory northern crown jewels.

We will be campaigning every day between now and 5 May. But in particular we want to encourage activists to come and get involved at the weekends, when we can spend the most time talking to residents and ensuring that they turn out to vote. We’ll also be phone banking Monday to Friday. So if you’re interested in helping, please email me or visit our website for more information.

Andrew Leask is the Labour candidate for Broadheath