« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Methadone saves lives, the Coalition’s plans would harm heroin addicts, argues Dr Richard Watson

20/07/2010, 02:42:04 PM

The management of drug misuse featured briefly in the leaders debates when David Cameron seemed to say that everyone should go into residential rehabilation, so it is no surprise that the Coalition seems to be trying to steer treatment policy. 

The National Treatment Agency, a Special Health Authority giving advice on the management of illicit drug misuse, has  new business plan that suggests that substitute treatment, usually with methadone or buprenorphine, should be time limited with patients “moved on” after a year or two.  As ever, their choice of words is revealing – they talk of patients being “parked” on methadone.  We don’t hear people complaining of diabetics being “parked” on metformin or insulin do we?

Up here in Scotland we have heard a lot of similar ill informed rhetoric for a long time now.  “Research” has shown that if you ask heroin addicts if they wish to recover and not be addicted to any drugs they nearly all say yes.  Who would have thought it?  This leads some people to say that patients treated with substitute drugs cannot be said to have recovered even if they are doing well and free of illicit drugs. 

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 3 Comments »

Julia Gillard has got what it takes to win, writes Sue Regan

19/07/2010, 05:40:40 PM

The Australian federal election campaign is already proving to be a hard fought contest. Australian elections tend to be volatile and unpredictable and it is far from certain who will come out on top on 21st August. But it does look increasingly promising that the current Labor government could be returned to power – a prospect highly unlikely less than a month ago. So what’s changed? Two bold moves have pushed Labor’s poll ratings from the doldrums to an election winning (just) lead.

The first move was a change of leader. On 24th June, Kevin Rudd, the then Prime Minister resigned in the knowledge that he had fatally lost the support of the parliamentary Labor party, the Labor caucus. Julia Gillard, the then deputy prime minister, stepped up and became Australia’s first female prime minister. It was the first time the Labor caucus had removed a leader in their first term as prime minister. The move was rapid, certainly ruthless and many would say premature. Polling released the day after the coup suggest Rudd could have won the coming election. But most commentators agree that the poll lead now enjoyed by Labor is the result of the Gillard-factor.

Julia Gillard (born in Wales and citing Nye Bevan as one of her political heroes) commands wide public support. Tony Abbot (most famously known for his choice of swimwear) is the leader of the opposition (a coalition between the Liberals and the smaller National Party) and consistently lags in double figures behind Gillard in ‘preferred prime minister’ polling. 

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 1 Comment »

Ignore the bookies, the Australian election will be a close run thing says Tom Cameron

19/07/2010, 05:36:36 PM

For the first time ever an Australian Prime Minister who’s not a bloke has taken the charming five minute drive from Parliament House to the Canberra residence of the Governor General and advised the Queen’s representative of a Federal election date.  That in itself is a terrific thing. 

Interestingly, for the first time since 1993 neither of the two main party leaders – Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott – have previously faced the people in their bid to become the nation’s leader.  It’s also unprecedented that a Prime Minister has challenged and successfully deposed their first term colleague as party leader and sought their own mandate from the people only a few weeks after such a coup. 

And this coming contest will be only the second August election in Australia’s history, the last being back in the 1940s.  So there are quite a few rarities on offer in this 2010 Federal election, but not nearly so many predictabilities. 

If there is one tried and tested way to smartly pick Australian election results at the start of the campaign, it would be to check the bookies odds.  Rarely if ever do the punters end up getting it wrong.  So it is some surprise to concentrate one’s attention Down Under now and find not just a swiftly changed political landscape of the post-Rudd type, but an election scene that the book makers believe Labour will dominate. 

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 1 Comment »

John Woodcock argues the defence spending row exposes Osborne’s spin

19/07/2010, 09:19:51 AM

George Osborne may be flavour of the month in Conservative associations and media comment pages, but the latest spending row between him and Defence Secretary Liam Fox has underlined a major weakness that Labour must exploit.

This appears to be an administration intent on learning from New Labour’s mistake of coming too slow to the table with fundamental reform. There is a speed and ferocity with which the Tories, aided and abetted by the Lib Dems, are seeking to embed a new presumption that public spending is bad while eye-watering cuts are wholesome and necessary.

What has been signalled so far surpasses the shrillest of Labour’s pre-election warnings – warnings that were rubbished as scare-mongering. Prior to victory, the Conservative leader gave the impression you could get spending back into balance simply by taking a Kim and Aggie approach to government waste.

Yet for all they could rightly protest to have been deceived, the public are hardly manning the barricades or demanding a re-run of the election. Attitudes may change substantially once the cuts begin to bite, but Labour cannot just sit back and wait for that to happen.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 3 Comments »

Clegg’s dream will crash and burn – Kevin Meagher predicts tears for the Yes campaign

15/07/2010, 04:28:39 PM

REFERENDUMS, the great Clement Attlee dismissively observed, are “devices for demagogues and dictators”.
 
There’s a third ‘D’. Desperate. They are a means of papering over political cracks; which is why a plebiscite is being dumped on the British public next year on whether we should scrap our first-past-the-post electoral system and replace it with the PR-lite Alternative Vote model.
 
Attlee’s successor-but-one, Harold Wilson, is the only leader to have held a national referendum. In his case on whether we stayed in the European Economic Community back in 1975. In that instance, collective Cabinet responsibility was suspended to allow a divided government to campaign on either side of the issue.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 5 Comments »

To win back voters we must question the Coalition’s action, says Sunny Hundal

15/07/2010, 11:23:52 AM

Just when the Labour party was starting to turn the tables on the Coalition, especially on education, up pops Pat McFadden  to say that Labour needs to re-think its approach against the Coalition cuts.

The key line is this:

“Fight the cuts” is a tempting slogan in Opposition, and there are indeed some that must be fought. But if that is all we are saying the conclusion will be drawn that we are wishing the problem away.

I’m not going to disagree completely – saying the cuts aren’t necessary is not a position that chimes with the public (we lost the debate on that). Neither is it a position that will be electorally popular (voters aren’t as protective of the state as Labourites are).

But it’s unclear what line he would want the party to take instead. And here is where the speech falls down, because it fails to take into account the multiple problems Labour currently faces.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 10 Comments »

Sadiq Khan rebutts John Woodcock’s critique of Ed Miliband’s labour market views

15/07/2010, 07:49:16 AM

For those who say that there are no issues at stake in this leadership election, I strongly encourage you to read both Ed Miliband’s speech on the future of Social Democracy and John Woodcock’s critique on Labour Uncut.

They show that far from this being a contest of just personalities, there are real issues of substance beneath the choice that Labour makes about who leads it into the next few years.

Ed’s speech argued that whilst the economic model of the New Labour years delivered some important benefits for our country and our society, we must also accept its limitations. Particularly the impact which very flexible labour markets have on the type of jobs the UK attracts and the quality of life outside of work for hundreds of thousands of workers.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 2 Comments »

The man we loved to blame – Dan Hodges defends Peter Mandelson

14/07/2010, 10:11:12 AM

Soon after England’s  penalty loss to Germany in Euro ’96, (remember the days when we could still take people to penalties), a pizza advert appeared featuring Stuart Pearce, Chris Waddle and Gareth Southgate. Waddle and Pearce, who had missed similar penalty attempts during the 1990 World Cup, were seen coaching Southgate in how to come to terms with his own career-defining failure. The advert rebound as spectacularly as  the Aston Villa defender’s spot kick, with many criticising his tasteless attempt to cash in during a period of national trauma.

Gareth Southgate and Peter Mandelson are not two men who naturally meld in the consciousness. But as I watched Peter advertising his new memoirs whilst reclining in a deep leather chair, affecting the air of a Victorian gentleman successfully acquitted of poisoning his wealthy wife, meld they did. (more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 6 Comments »

Khalid Mahmood is not impressed with AV

12/07/2010, 11:41:28 AM

Nick Clegg made his pitiful address to the House of Commons on electoral reform as though it were the greatest package of constitutional reform since the Great Reform Act of 1832. The truth, however, is a little more prosaic. Of the three main changes he announced, two are very much the work of the Conservatives and suit their political prospectus far more than they suit Clegg’s.

Even the planned referendum on the alternative vote (AV) is hardly the stuff of Lib Dem dreams. For those idealistic Liberal Democrats who have battled for decades for the promised land of proportional representation, their leader’s announcement must have come as a bitter blow.

I oppose the alternative vote system. I should say that this is not because I think it will do me much harm come the next election. I was, after all, elected with more than fifty per cent of the vote in Perry Barr. I oppose AV because, for one thing, it compromises one of the very best aspects of our democracy: its simplicity. I have never met a single constituent of mine who cannot understand the physical action of voting: one cross in one box. (more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 2 Comments »

Tom Watson describes the moment that he lost it with Gove

09/07/2010, 11:30:45 AM

In the Commons chamber on Wednesday, Labour MP Tom Watson denounced Tory education secretary Michael Gove in terms so furious that he was obliged to withdraw them. It is already becoming a celebrated moment. One in which real anger at this government’s arrogance seemed, for the first time, to be articulated on our behalf.

If you haven’t seen it, you should first watch the video here. Then read Tom’s account, below, of how he got into that state.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Posted in Uncut | 26 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »