Blah blah blah….lessons learned…..monitoring……values driven….blah blah…..NHS…..envy of the world……

Stephen Pollard, editor of The Jewish Chronicle summed it up in a piece at the Telegraph

Mid Staffs inquiry: spare me the NHS drivel, please…… I really can’t take another second of the specious, misleading and hypocritical response to the Francis Inquiry into what happened at Mid Staffs.

Naturally the full force of venom is being directed at “the managers” with several people demanding that hospitals should be run by doctors and nurses. However, as one brave soul posted at Guido Fawkes

Let’s not forget that it is actually nurses who fail to provide basic care. Nurses are usually regarded as immune to criticism, whereas nobody likes beastly bureaucrats; nor do hospitals actually seem to be short of nurses, if the gaggles of chattering people milling around most NHS wards are anything to go by. We might need more doctors and orderlies and fewer ‘angels’.

Heresy – the nursing unions and the BBC won’t like that. But it was nurses and doctors who were actually on the wards ignoring patients, not “managers”

However we live in times rather similar to the early years of Imperial Rome where very few actually believed in the Roman gods – but most citizens made certain they were seen in the temples. In the UK in the 21st century it has been clear for years that the NHS is a blundering, inefficient and incredibly expensive monstrosity run almost exclusively for the benefit and convenience of doctors and nurses – a producer’s cartel very similar to those that, up until now, have controlled schools, police and the law. Yet in public we are required to make obeisance to this false god or face being burned at the stake..

prefacing almost every response to Mr Francis’ report has been the incantation that the NHS is our proudest institution and represents British values at their best.
If this is Britain at its best then God help us, because the NHS is an anachronism, a health system built on deference to authority, Whitehall knows best, government spends best and if you’re a patient then learn your place in the food chain, keep quiet and take what’s offered.

As one angry reader of Pollard pointed out

You can’t criticise the nurses, no matter how poor or uncaring they are, they are angels. You can’t criticise the doctors and consultants because they are better than us. You can’t criticise Whitehall because they aren’t listening. You can’t criticise the managers because they are counting the numbers given to them by Whitehall and you can’t criticise the NHS because its a National Treasure. The only people left to criticise are the patients and their families.

Sorry, Mr Francis – you’re just painting plague pustules with calomine lotion. The notion of a tax funded, “free” at point of entry health service is in itself the root cause of Mid Staffs and no amount of tinkering at the edges will resolves these endemic problems.

Time to put the customer in the driving seat?

After a decade of denials former Liberal Democrat minister and champion of wind farms Chris Huhne has confessed to being a serial liar

Chris Huhne, the former energy secretary, has quit politics and is facing a possible jail sentence after he pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice by asking his ex-wife to take speeding points for him.

Once seen as a serious alternative to current Lb Dem leader Nick Clegg the now disgraced politician is facing a probable prison sentence. But it only came about because maverick blogger Guido Fawkes clung to his case like a terrier. True, a couple of newspapers took an interest but it was Guido who kept his eye on this ball month after month.

Of course we would never have known anything if this rather seedy little man had not suddenly ditched his wife for his mistress in 2010 – yet another example of beware the fury of a woman scorned.

Schadenfreude – always a delight when a smug, liberal global warming fanatic who ticks every box for the BBC/Guardian chattering classes bites the dust….

Obama must be worried about David Cameron’s decision to hold an in/out referendum on UK’s membership of the EU – he is sending VP Joe Biden to London to issue a stern warning.

Wow

Joe Biden – the man who proves that getting into politics is a better way of making a family fortune than developing software or building a supermarket chain…..no risks, minimal effort and zero intelligence needed – just the right contacts.

Biden will apparently wag his finger at Cameron and emphasise how important it is for the USA to have a strong UK in a strong EU – that’s if he can get all those letters in the right order for Biden is the American version of John Prescott, a dim-witted blowhard who has risen to the top powered purely by his own methane.

Of course if he had been a Republican he would have been Dan Quayled years ago but we all know that a complicit US media never goes against Democrats who are also drunks, druggies, thieves , sexual predators…..or, in Joe’s case, brainless.
After all this is the man who plagiarised a speech from ……Neil Kinnock!!!!!

What a wonderful world……

£30b, 20 years to completion – see what happens when politicians get seduced into vanity projects like HS2. Plenty of photo-ops of ministers poring over maps, futuristic graphics, promises of reviving the north….don’t they just love it.

Of course we can predict the reality – costs will double/treble, incompetent management will cause delays, unions will blackmail progress and, by 2032 technology might well have made the whole caboodle outdated.

But just, for a moment, imagine what we could do to improve our shambolic infrastructure with £30b over five years – improve thousands of choke point road junctions with right turn lanes, mini roundabouts, traffic lights. Upgrade existing track and signalling on our existing railway network. Above all convert the A11 into a motorway into the heart of East Anglia. Ensure that the pathetic A303, supposedly the main route between London and South West England, becomes a dual carriageway along its entire length with no roundabouts or junctions. Do the same with the A30 and A38 into the heart of Cornwall and, while you’re at it create a south coast expressway using the A27 and A35.

Our road network has remained frozen for the last thirty years – nothing much has changed (apart from the completion of the M25) since 1980 – which was the year I first began driving regularly in France. In those days the Autoroute network was fairly limited and centred almost exclusively on Paris – and few towns had a bypass. Since then the French have embarked on a steady programme of motorway development and traffic circulation projects that has transformed the whole transport system – as well as a state of the art intercity rail network.

Meanwhile Britain has been asleep at the wheel – often literally.

Still at least we can maybe invest now in a ticket to Leeds by HS2 and bequeath it to our heirs yet unborn to enjoy at some vague time in the future.

That sound? Don’t worry – its Brunel turning in his grave….

There is a time in politics as well as in all things when one must eat one’s words (or some of them) and give credit where it is due. David Cameron’s speech was a good one, carefully crafted to bring out some home truths without sneering at our European partners as a bunch of Johnny Foreigners smelling of garlic and trying to seduce our women and steal our silver. By offering a straightforward in/out referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU in 2017 on the basis of a negotiated repatriation of certain powers he made a bold, and honest, commitment. There are none of the familiar weasel word which politicians conventionally use when making public promises – “almost certainly”, “certain circumstances”, subject to these conditions”.

There are always voices saying “don’t ask the difficult questions.”
But it’s essential for Europe – and for Britain – that we do because there are three major challenges confronting us today.
First, the problems in the Eurozone are driving fundamental change in Europe.
Second, there is a crisis of European competitiveness, as other nations across the world soar ahead. And third, there is a gap between the EU and its citizens which has grown dramatically in recent years. And which represents a lack of democratic accountability and consent that is – yes – felt particularly acutely in Britain.

For once it was Cameron as Thatcher, not Cameron as Blair.

It‘s a canny move. It might well have for the moment shot the UKIP fox, which had been threatening to bite at Tory heels – though I suspect that puttting a bet on predicting Nigel Farage’s political demise would not be the wisest of moves.Indeed one could argue that Cameron’s offer has been forced on him by the impact of Farage And UKIP. However Dave has left Labour in complete disarray. As for the Liberal Democrats, who in 2007 were supporting a referendum, they are busily backpedalling, calling the idea unhelpful.

This must be sweet music to Tory ears – those champions of the “people” Clegg and Milliband boxing themselves into a corner and saying actually we, the great and the good, not the public, should decide these matters.

The fact that political has beens like Mandelson, Clarke and Heseltine are against a referendum is clearly a badge of honour considering that all three were once fervent advocates of joining the Euro. Add the French and President Obama to the mix and it must be drinks all round.

The only voice that matters in all this is the one that emanates from Berlin and Cameron must be pleased that Angela Merkel is not going negative on the idea of having a second look at the power relationship between the EU and member states.

Maybe, just maybe, Dave might have a bit of backbone after all……

Unbelievable – why is it that when some people get into a car they immediately lose every shred of rationality, common sense and awareness of the needs of others?

Ice gritting trucks are being targeted by impatient motorists – who have been pelting their vehicles with rocks.Staff at Northamptonshire Council revealed they have come under a barrage of missiles while out on their rounds.
They said disgruntled drivers stuck behind their vehicles have been pulling over to throw stones and bricks at them – because they’re driving too slowly.A spokesman for Northamptonshire Highways said there had been a number of attacks:
“Unfortunately, some of our drivers have had stones and bricks thrown at them.“Our drivers are out two to three times day, trying to keep the county’s roads safe.”Unfortunately, people have been getting impatient and started to throw things at the vehicles.

In true Z list celebrity style some even try to justify this attitude.

‘They are such a pain. They scratch the paintwork on my car and they drive so slow. They should go out in the middle of the night when nobody is around.’

Could it be that constant exposure to The X Factor, Big Brother and similar TV fare has, in some cases, shrunk the brain to the size of a peanut and shifted it to the rectum?

Or maybe the Neanderthals never really died out but just stayed out of sight until gritting lorries appeared.

I think we should be told…..

h/t for pic

It couldn’t have happened to a nastier guy – pompous, self righteous media slimeball Piers Morgan (aka Piers Moron) only had a day or so to enjoy the plaudits of his Tina Brown/BBC/Guardian groupies after radio wingnut oddball Alex Jones imploded on his CNN show when the Moron himself was skewered and toasted by Breitbart.com’s Ben Shapiro

As Roger Kimball pointed out

Morgan is, as Ben says, a bully of the first water, a man whose delight in mud slinging was too much even for the bottom-feeding British tabloid the Daily Mirror, which fired him for publishing fake photos of British soldiers supposedly abusing Iraqi prisoners. Morgan is one of those liberals whose unshakable self-infatuation compels him to treat disagreement as a sort of moral heresy. His contemptuous—and contemptible—treatment of his guests makes for intermittently entertaining, if also cringe-making, television. But as Ben demonstrates, Morgan’s habit of contempt renders him a pathetic, deeply unserious mountebank.

Very true, Roger….which is why his departure from our scepter’d isle to the further shores of CNN was such a day of jubilation over here….

Well, just when the great and the good were hoping that UKIP might be losing momentum because Dave was going to make His Great Speech about having a vote on renegotiating that EU directive on turnips rather than a straightforward in/out referendum the genie jumps out of the lamp and grants Nigel Farage and his party three golden opportunities.

The speech is still some way off but already dire warnings have been issued by “business leaders” (bankers – yeah, they have proven to be so upright honest and businesslike) – CBI (aka big global corporations) – and assorted suits. “We will lose out on exports to the EU” they cry. Excuse me? Presumably EU countries buy our stuff because it meets their needs, not out of charity for the UK.

Then some smooth US State Department poobah says that President Obama wants us to stay in the EU as a bagman for the USA since the French and the Germans, who actually run the EU, have never been fond of America. Also, of course, Obama and his henchmen are still wedded and glued to that old 1950s shibboleth of regional superstates – after all they are working hard to undermine the powers of the individual US states and upgrade federal power (Obamacare, Stimulus, gun control etc). A Washington/Brussels Axis would be so much easier to manage with no pesky politicians upsetting the apple carts – just the bureaucrats and diplomats codifying and making deals in cosy conferences.

Then, of course, the entry of the ultimate cartoon character, the German..

Gunther Krichbaum, chairman of Germany’s European affairs committee and acting as Angela Merkel’s ventriloquist’s dummy, used a visit to Britain to condemn Dave’s referendum tactics. “Ve distrust allowing ze voters to have any say in ze way ze EU is run. Ve know vot ze people vant much better than zey do und ve vill not be blackmailed into renegotiating ze EU Turnip Directive” (well he didn’t actually say that but it sums up the gist of his blathering)

With the carpet being pulled away from under Dave’s feet his Master Plan (kick in/out into the long grass by waffling on about renegotiation) is already looking like last weekend’s pizza. Several of the Tory government’s big guns have noticed UKIP snapping at their heels in recent polls and are leaning towards a referendum on in/out rather than one on a cobbled together list of renegotiated powers.

Which is why Nigel Farage’s UKIP has been given this good fairy gift. A banker, an American and a German telling us that we shouldn’t even have a referendum on our relationship with the EU? That will make most of us even more determined to demand one – because, oddly enough, what is good for global banks, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel does not always align with what is good for Britain.

That notorious latin windbag and fiery drama queen Cristina Kirchner, President of Argentina, is back in the headlines with yet another “demanding the return of the Falklands” tantrum in a feeble attempt to distract the rest of the world from her administration’s rather dodgy accounting.

The British government’s response has been succinctly robust (even US website Hot Air is impressed) and if any Foreign Office mandarins, after quiet chats with the US State Department have been smoothing out the wrinkles of UN supervised “joint sovereignty” agreements, just to please Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and all the other “usual suspects” in Washington, not a whiff of it has seeped into the UK media.

Good job, too. British blood was spilt driving the Argentinian invasion force off the islands in 1982 and there would be deep public disquiet for any backroom deal that would mean their sacrifice was in vain.

Recently published papers show that the invasion took Margaret Thatcher and her ministers completely by surprise. Initially there was a degree of confusion about what should be done.

‘There was great concern about what could be done about it. Our forces in the area were very scant confined to a small troop of marines and the HMS Endurance.
‘If there was going to be an invasion there was little we could do to stop it. People were sitting round wondering what on Earth one could do about it. Sir Henry Leach came in and listened to what people were saying – then he said he could have a task force on the water by Monday. That transformed the situation

Margaret Thatcher was always impressed by people who offered solutions rather than dwelling on problems.

“She was undoubtedly seeking positive factual data on which to make her own mind up. Could we do it, against all the risks we’d discussed? I said, yes we could and, in my judgment, we should – which was not my business. That was a political matter.
“She was on to that in a flash. ‘Why do you say that?’ I said if we don’t, or if we do it half-heartedly and are not completely successful, we should be living in a different country which counts for very much less [in the world].” It was the turning point, not only of the meeting but of the entire Falklands crisis. As Nott admitted in the same programme, Leach’s intervention “helped our self-confidence in a very difficult situation”, even if it had been typical “Nelsonian gung-ho”.

From that moment she resolved that force would be met with force and her determination never faltered. As The Heritage Foundation suggests Britain’s reaction astonished the world.

Once Argentina invaded, Britain had to respond. What was remarkable was that it responded with force. No one—certainly not the Argentines—believed that Thatcher’s Britain would fight back or that it could do so effectively. They were proven wrong on both counts

What also shocked the world was the fact that Thatcher had public opinion behind her. Media pundits were convinced that casualties and body bags would weaken resolve – that a post WW2 generation would be dismissive of military action…..far from it. It showed once again the value of decisive political action and the power of political will.

Sorry, President Kirchner – you need to perform your tango on someone else’s dance floor…

Hey, folks – President Obama and his team do not like all this stuff happening in Britain about the rise of UKIP and growing support for the UK getting the hell out of the EU.

They don’t like the Eurosceptic signals being given out by a David Cameron who is very worried that many conservative voters outside the Notting Hill metro elite bubble are abandoning his party and shifting to UKIP.

“It is important to state very clearly that a strong UK in a strong Europe is in America’s national interest,” said a senior US administration official. “We recognise national states but see the EU as a force multiplier.”

Well, Mr President, surprisingly enough we feel that serving America’s interests is not the primary function of any UK government. We would dearly love to have a government whose lodestar was always putting the interests of the British people at the top of it’s agenda

Funny isn’t it that an American administration which has consistently failed to pay due regard to our shared political and cultural traditions should be putting pressure on us to stay in the EU for the sake of the USA.

The EU is a bloated bureaucratic monstrosity, inefficient and corrupt

Maybe that’s why Obama loves it so much….after all he did cut his political teeth in Chicago….