Archive for June, 2009
Posted by michael on June 28, 2009
The NHS is likely to become a major battle ground in the forthcoming election. For a start it is possibly the area that affects more people in the UK than any other.
The PM has said that the NHS will not suffer from monetary cuts. This could only be true if the extra money is taken from other spending requirements or the UK debt levels are increased.
Of course this extra spending will be from the NHS budgets. It would be at the expense of other departments and treatments for other people.
We haven’t seen the details for this pledge that:
Patients in England suspected of suffering from cancer will have the right to see a specialist within two weeks
What does it actually mean? How long does a person suspected of suffering from cancer have to wait at the moment? Perhaps most people in that situation see a specialist within a week at the moment!
What is meant by a ‘cancer specialist’? It should certainly mean that the person is a qualified oncologist. It probably won’t be a consultant but one of his team instead. If I was a consultant running a department then I would make sure that this initial appointment was with very junior members of the team!!!
This two week deadline may keep consultant oncologists busy with private work. But every penny spent on private fees is money being taken out of the NHS system!
Seeing a specialist and then actually receiving any treatment are two completely different things!
And what happens if a person sees a private specialist because there was no one available on the NHS? Do they then get referred back to the NHS once the New Labour pledge of a private appointment has been met? Or do they stay in the private health system for all of their treatment?
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, Lib Dems, UK Economy, economy, labour, national health service, nhs, recession | Tagged: brown, cancer, conservative, debt, economy, gordon brown, government, health service, nhs, oncologist, recession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 22, 2009
It will be interesting to see what history tells us where the events that took the UK to war against Iraq.
It seemed to me at the time, and I feel no differently now, that Tony Blair knew why we needed to join in with the Americans. But he never managed to tell the public the reasons!
At first people accepted what he said about the risk to the UK. But when they started thinking about these reasons then they realised that they simply did not make sense.
To then discover that some of those reasons that had been given to the public came from the internet and was nothing to do with the security services, was for me confirmation that there were no good reasons for going to war!
In fact, this evidence and the attempts to claim that the UK could be bombed, were in my view, a cynical attempt to manipulate the public in what was a political decision, and not one based on a risk to the UK.
In fact Blair has a history of involving the UK in wars:
- 1999 Blair led the Nato countries into the bombing of Serbia to prevent ethnic cleansing
- 2000 Blair sent our military into Sierra Leone to end a civil war
- 2001 Blair took part in the US-led attack on Afghanistan against al Qaeda.
We have been given no justified reasons for going to war against Iraq. We are now fighting in Afghanistan against the enemy there.
The handover of power to Brown means that Blair has left the mess that he created to others to sort out.
The cost in lives for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been high and the war continues in both places.
Blair’s place in history is assured but he will not, in my view, be seen as a politician who has made changes for the good to the UK and to the world.
Posted in Blogroll, UK Economy, labour, recession | Tagged: afghanistan war, brown, gordon brown, government, iraq war, labour, tony blair, war | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 19, 2009
Interesting to see what happens now. As I have blogged before, there are very few MPs who have actually broken any rules.
Be fascinating to see MPs being prosecuted when they followed the rules for claiming expenses that were set by this government!
It would be a bit unfair to prosecute people for following the rules, especially when their expenses have been accepted by the officials running the system.
I already expect some claims for damages by MPs who have been chucked out and deselected for following the rules!
They must feel very let down by the government and they have certainly been damaged by what has happened.
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, Lib Dems, UK Economy, labour, mp expenses | Tagged: abuse, brown, conservative, economy, expenses, gordon brown, parliament, repossession, uk, UK Economy, whistleblower | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 19, 2009
to see that some relatives of some soldiers killed in Snatch Land Rovers in Iraq and Afghanistan are to sue the Ministry of Defence.
From the beginning of the fighting, I have been astonished by the continual use of snatch landrovers in an environment where the enemies main weapon were roadside bombs!
Clearly these vehicles are vital equipment, as the MOD claims, and they are appropriate for the jobs that they perform, again as the the MoD maintains.
In fact the only problem with them seems to be that they offer very little or no protection to being blown up! My personal view is that it is very cynical of the MOD to exclude this minor detail(!) when defending their use in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The use of theses vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan should, in my view, have been stopped as soon as it was realised that our soldiers were going to be targetted and that that there were going to be casualities (and I mean killed and injured).
The investigation into all aspects of the Iraq war must include the MOD reasoning in using these vehicles for as long as they did, and this whole debate should be in public.
My only concern is that if legal action is started by some of the families who have lost relatives, then this would give an excuse to Gordon Brown and the MOD to exclude this whole subject from the ‘public’ enquiry into the war.
to see that some relatives of some soldiers killed in Snatch Land Rovers in Iraq and Afghanistan are to sue the Ministry of Defence.
From the beginning of the fighting, I have been astonished by the continual use of snatch landrovers in an environment where the enemies main weapon were roadside bombs!
Clearly these vehicles are vital equipment, as the MOD claims, and they are appropriate for the jobs that they perform, again as the the MoD maintains.
In fact the only problem with them seems to be that they offer very little or no protection to being blown up! My personal view is that it is very cynical of the MOD to exclude this minor detail(!) when defending their use in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The use of theses vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan should, in my view, have been stopped as soon as it was realised that our soldiers were going to be targetted and that that there were going to be casualities (and I mean killed and injured).
The investigation into all aspects of the Iraq war must include the MOD reasoning in using these vehicles for as long as they did, and this whole debate should be in public.
My only concern is that if legal action is started by some of the families who have lost relatives, then this would give an excuse to Gordon Brown and the MOD to exclude this whole subject from the ‘public’ enquiry into the war.
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, Lib Dems, labour | Tagged: afghanistan, brown, conservative, david cameron, enquiry, gordon brown, government, iraq, labour, land rovers, snatch, soldier, soldiers, war | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 18, 2009
Brown told MPs on Monday in his announcement in the Commons the whole Iraq inquiry would be held in private for national security reasons.
So todays announcement (thursday) that Prime Minister Gordon Brown has told the man heading the inquirythat he can hold public sessions if he chooses is a public climbdown!
It was obvious to me that announcing a private enquiry was an own goal. Do Brown’s advisors actually think these things through properly?
On the back of the secrecy of MPs expenses, there was no way that Bown would get away with a secret Iraq enquiry without more damage to his reputation.
There are two main questions to be answered as far as I am concerned.
The first is why we went into Iraq and on what grounds could it be justified and were the grounds for war misrepresented to to the public.
The second is why so many soldiers died from being blown up whilst they were in vehicles with little or no body armour.
No grounds for secrecy on these questions, lets see them investigated publicly and openly!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, Lib Dems, credit crunch, labour | Tagged: blair, brown, david cameron, gordon brown, government, iraq, iraq war, parliament, war | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 17, 2009
Our local paper (Chronicle and Gazette in Essex) is carrying the following:
New Department of Health guidelines mean the families living illegally on land off Chelmsford Road, Blackmore, and any other gipsies stopping off in the borough could get preferential primary care treatment – just because they could be evicted and are considered a vulnerable group.
South West Essex PCT is considering giving staff “cultural awareness” training so they understand what it is like to be a traveller.
Fast-tracking travellers for specific services and telling doctors not to turn away any traveller who walks in without an appointment, even if all appointments are full, are also being considered.
If the guidelines are adopted travellers will get longer consultations with GPs.
Can I as an ordinary person do the same? We have to make appointments. We have to wait until the surgery has doctors available for an appointment.
So what is the difference between my family and the family of ‘travellers’?
Is this part of New Labour’s general bias against ordinary people? You know, those who live in ordinary houses, who have ordinary jobs, who send their ordinary children to ordinary schools and pay all their taxes!
Perhaps this highlights a way of getting treatment on the NHS when all the cuts forced on it by Labour giving the UK such high debt levels have to come int effect.
Those who want treatment in the future should just buy themselves a caravan and claim to be a traveller!
Posted in Blogroll, Lib Dems, UK Economy, credit crunch, labour, recession | Tagged: abuse, brown, conservative, david cameron, economy, families, gordon brown, health, household, nhs, travellers, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 17, 2009
The shadow home secretary Chris Grayling has said one of his party’s first acts, if they win the next general election, would be to scrap the ID card scheme.
This is to be welcomed. Why Brown continues with the massively expensive ID card system at the time when the UK economy is in a terrible state is to be seriously questioned.
Their answer that it will deal with terrorism is really not acceptable. It is simply scare tactics, used to avoid discussion on the subject.
Labelling every single person in the UK and storing their details in a massive database, which by the way will also incorporate details on health, criminal records, work records, bank details, tax details, travel records, every car journey we make, family details, housing details, benefit details etc. There are bound to be other databases which I have not included!
Effectively all the seperate government agencies databases will be linked to the ID database!
If this does not concern you then just look at the problems at the DVLA. The official line from the DVLA is that it is impossible for their computer systems to be wrong! This statement is absolute rubbish simply because the whole process involves human beings and people make mistakes! The statement is also rubbish because a lot of people have had serious problems with the agency. They have lost their driving licences, the vehicles they are permitted to drive have been changed, and some people have had to retake driving tests as a result!
Imagine similar problems with medical records, tax records, nationality, work details, membership to organisations etc.
There are approximately 60 million people in the UK. AN error rate of just 1% will mean that over half a million people will have wrong details on the database and will have tremendous difficulties in correcting the data when the errors are found.
But I would suggest that the error rate is more likely to be 2.5% with 1.5 million people with incorrect records!
The presence of DNA data in this huge national database gives serious cause for concern. One thing that many people don’t realise about DNA is that it includes information that we don’t know about ourselves.
For example certain genes in our DNA show that we may suffer from potential future illnesses. There are a lot of discoveries to be made regarding DNA but a future government could control who is allowed to have children, who is or is not suitable for certain jobs, or higher education etc.
Posted in UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 15, 2009
We have just come through a period when the electorate showed Gordon Brown exactly what they thought of the system of MPs expenses. Brown and New Labour suffered badly in the recent elections. Clearly the electorate blamed the government for the problems.
So how does Brown think that the electorate will react to the inquiry on how we got involved in the Iraq war being held in secret and for the results to take such a long time to come out!
Brown declared that it will take so long because so much was being investigated. Well Mr. Brown, we don’t need so much to be investigated!
What we need is to know how we got into the war in the first place and on what basis!
And we need to know why so many deaths resulted from road bombs on unarmoured vehicles.
Everything else can take as long as it needs. But seperate the above two points so that we get the results in time for the next election in 12 months.
In my view this enquiry is a cynical attempt to delay the results to give Labour a better chance in the next election! Hopefully the people will respond in the same way as they did on the expenses issue.
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, Lib Dems, UK Economy, economy, labour | Tagged: brown, conservative, david cameron, iraq war, labour | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 14, 2009
The UK economy was already in a bad way when the recession started. It was caused by a worldwide recession caused by failures of many governments to regulate the financial industries properly.
Brown was in charge as chancellor and then prime minister and was responsible for ensuring that the financial regulation was done properly in the UK. He doesn’t seem to like accepting responsibility for his actions if it might cause him to look bad, but he was in charge. It was his responsibility and he failed!
Gordon Brown and New Labour have been in control of the UK for a long time. They cannot blame anyone else for the parlous state of the UK economy.
It is a bit rich for Brown to accuse Cameron of planning to cut services when so much of the money spent on them was borrowed in the first place!
The next government has to pay back these debts. The cupboard is bare. We don’t have the money to repay the debts let alone find the money for new services, schools and hospitals etc.
Whoever wins the next election will have to reign back on spending and increase taxes to pay back the debts that New Labour have accumulated during their time in power.
Brown has borrowed billions to get us out of the recession (that he is arguably responsible for!) . We now have to pay that money back from our taxes (don’t forget that we have to pay back the interest as well!)
It is obvious that something has to change in the way that the economy is being run. The UK cannot keep borrowing money!
We are going to have to have increased taxes just to repay the existing debt. That is unavoidable and it will take many years of high taxes to clear these debts.
So where will the money come from to maintain the cost of the public services (including the NHS) ? No government, including New Labour, can carry on spending money that they don’t have.
When I hear Brown attacking Cameron with accusations that the Conservatives will cut spending on public services, then I do wonder how desperate he is to cling onto power!
Can Brown really keep people from realising that the UK is saddled with so much debt that that it is too poor to keep spending money?
Can Brown really make enough people in the UK be more scared of what Cameron might do, than New Labour and Brown have already done to the UK economy?
How happy are people going to be with New Labour if they have to pay extra taxes and suffer reduced services for many years just to clear the debts incurred by Gordon Brown and New Labour?
And it is not inconceivable that Labour will again end up having to seek help from the International Monetary Fund as it did in 1976.
Posted in UK Economy | Tagged: borrowing, borrowings, brown, conservative, cost of living, credit crunch, david cameron, debt, gordon brown, government, imf, recession, tax, tax increases, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 10, 2009
First, just to be definitive on this, I do not like the BNP and I do not like what they stand for.
But I cannot abide the extremists who are attempting to break up all BNP meetings and news conferences etc.
I don’t care how bad political parties are! We are in a democracy and they have a right to be heard! The law exists to stop all political parties from extremist behaviour!
Those extremists who are anti-democracy and who want to stop the BNP from holiding political meetings and even holding press conferences are worse than the BNP (or at least as bad as them!).
Free speech is a hard-won freedom. Many people have died fighting in wars for our right to have free speech! No one should be allowed to take that away from our democracy or we will lose our freedoms and our democratic society!
It is not good enough gor these extremists to justify suppressing free speech and attacking a political party because they don’t like their policies!
What next, perhaps the Members of Unite Against Fascism might decide that the Conservatives or the anti-European parties are not good for the UK.
Perhaps I or my family could get pelted with eggs and attacked in the streets because I dare to question what these extremists do!
Is there really a difference between members of Unite Against Fascism and the BNP? They come from the opposites side of political ideals but they are both extremists and they both bad for a democratic society!
And both views should be allowed to be heard!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, Euopean Union, Lib Dems, UK Economy, credit crunch, economy, labour, recession | Tagged: abuse, bnp, conservative, david cameron, extreme, extremist, extremists, gordon brown, recession, UK Economy, unite against fascism | Leave a Comment »
