The last time that this lot were in, they tried to turn Police Authorities into bodies of central government appointees with "business experience", whatever that had to do with the local scrutiny of the Police. But today, even they have excelled themselves. Everything a bit big is to be taken out of the hands of local forces and given over to an agency of central government, while everything else is to be made subject to some local demagogue.
I used to be vaguely sympathetic to the idea of elected sheriffs. But there is really no need for them. We already have our own system of local accountability, if we could be bothered to use it. It is called Police Authorities, which should be made up predominantly - I do not say "entirely" - of local councillors, and which should ordinarily meet in public.
That Eric Pickles will be allowing councils to resume the traditional committee system marks a welcome return to our own way of doing things, and we may hope that, at the very least, there will be no more elected mayors, with the existing ones phased out as rapidly as possible. But whatever happened to joined-up government?
Get over imported cop shows. Then we would no longer have the ridiculous spectacle of cars careering through our quiet countryside adorned with imitations of the giant badge of the NY or LAPD. Nor would we have to endure guff either about elected sheriffs or about "a British FBI".
Monday, 26 July 2010
Sunday, 25 July 2010
Election Spending Balls
Like Zac Goldsmith and Chris Huhne, Ed Balls overspent in securing his seat. Is it because there is one from each party that no one is reporting this story? Balls should have been out of the Labour Leadership contest, and Huhne out of the Cabinet, at least a week ago. What a spineless lot the media are.
Meanwhile, one for the "wouldn't it be lovely to have a Leader with a seat in the North East?" prattlers. A fat lot of good the last one did us, didn't he? But here is another one for you: who is going to be the Labour candidate at South Shields in 2015, when the vanquished David Miliband stands down? If you are not already, then start positioning yourselves. It should be very funny to watch.
Especially when you are all told to clear off because you have the wrong chromosomes and because you have shockingly ever exhibited the slightest interest in politics. And then there is the fact that all the boundaries are going to be different, as is the manner of counting the votes. Some of us have already cottoned on to that one. Have you?
Meanwhile, one for the "wouldn't it be lovely to have a Leader with a seat in the North East?" prattlers. A fat lot of good the last one did us, didn't he? But here is another one for you: who is going to be the Labour candidate at South Shields in 2015, when the vanquished David Miliband stands down? If you are not already, then start positioning yourselves. It should be very funny to watch.
Especially when you are all told to clear off because you have the wrong chromosomes and because you have shockingly ever exhibited the slightest interest in politics. And then there is the fact that all the boundaries are going to be different, as is the manner of counting the votes. Some of us have already cottoned on to that one. Have you?
No Respite
Here:
Some of the most common operations — including hip replacements and cataract surgery — will be rationed as part of attempts to save billions of pounds, despite government promises that front-line services would be protected.
Patients’ groups have described the measures as “astonishingly brutal”.
An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered widespread cuts planned across the NHS, many of which have already been agreed by senior health service officials. They include:
* Restrictions on some of the most basic and common operations, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and orthodontic procedures.
* Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends.
* The closure of nursing homes for the elderly.
* A reduction in acute hospital beds, including those for the mentally ill, with targets to discourage GPs from sending patients to hospitals and reduce the number of people using accident and emergency departments.
* Tighter rationing of NHS funding for IVF treatment [a good idea], and for surgery for obesity.
* Thousands of job losses at NHS hospitals, including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages.
* Cost-cutting programmes in paediatric and maternity services, care of the elderly and services that provide respite breaks to long-term carers.
Dr Peter Carter, the head of the Royal College of Nursing, said he was “incredibly worried” about the disclosures.
Dr Carter said: “Andrew Lansley keeps saying that the Government will protect the front line from cuts – but the reality appears to be quite the opposite. We are seeing trusts making job cuts even when they have already admitted to being short staffed.
As Neil Clark puts it:
How disgusting. We have a government that is prepared to spend £4bn a year on an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, but not prepared to properly support the NHS.
On the contrary, they are actually planning for its destruction.
But while the vast majority of Britons will be adversely affected by the destruction of the NHS, we can be sure of one thing. That this government of multi-millionaires will never have to worry about their own health care needs.
Do you want an Opposition to this? Then you won't want a Leader of the Opposition who invented it all when he ran the Number 10 Policy Unit under a Prime Minister who longed with all his heart to destroy the NHS.
Some of the most common operations — including hip replacements and cataract surgery — will be rationed as part of attempts to save billions of pounds, despite government promises that front-line services would be protected.
Patients’ groups have described the measures as “astonishingly brutal”.
An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered widespread cuts planned across the NHS, many of which have already been agreed by senior health service officials. They include:
* Restrictions on some of the most basic and common operations, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and orthodontic procedures.
* Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends.
* The closure of nursing homes for the elderly.
* A reduction in acute hospital beds, including those for the mentally ill, with targets to discourage GPs from sending patients to hospitals and reduce the number of people using accident and emergency departments.
* Tighter rationing of NHS funding for IVF treatment [a good idea], and for surgery for obesity.
* Thousands of job losses at NHS hospitals, including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages.
* Cost-cutting programmes in paediatric and maternity services, care of the elderly and services that provide respite breaks to long-term carers.
Dr Peter Carter, the head of the Royal College of Nursing, said he was “incredibly worried” about the disclosures.
Dr Carter said: “Andrew Lansley keeps saying that the Government will protect the front line from cuts – but the reality appears to be quite the opposite. We are seeing trusts making job cuts even when they have already admitted to being short staffed.
As Neil Clark puts it:
How disgusting. We have a government that is prepared to spend £4bn a year on an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, but not prepared to properly support the NHS.
On the contrary, they are actually planning for its destruction.
But while the vast majority of Britons will be adversely affected by the destruction of the NHS, we can be sure of one thing. That this government of multi-millionaires will never have to worry about their own health care needs.
Do you want an Opposition to this? Then you won't want a Leader of the Opposition who invented it all when he ran the Number 10 Policy Unit under a Prime Minister who longed with all his heart to destroy the NHS.
In The Shadows
Ed Balls could pull out in favour of David Miliband, but Milly could only make him Shadow Chancellor if he were elected to the Shadow Cabinet. There is no guarantee of that.
How priceless, if neither of them were to be elected to the list of those to whom Ed Miliband was to allocate portfolios. They would probably both announce that they were leaving Parliament at the next Election, as Tony Blair had been about to do until John Smith died.
As much as anything else, that would be one in the eye of the BBC, which has been campaigning for David Miliband ever since Blair announced that he was standing down.
How priceless, if neither of them were to be elected to the list of those to whom Ed Miliband was to allocate portfolios. They would probably both announce that they were leaving Parliament at the next Election, as Tony Blair had been about to do until John Smith died.
As much as anything else, that would be one in the eye of the BBC, which has been campaigning for David Miliband ever since Blair announced that he was standing down.
Or Have You Ever Been?
David Aaronovitch has some front, I have to give him that. Half an hour of Radio Four on what everyone already knew about Soviet infiltration of post-War America.
But not a word on the fact that he has never been a member of any party except the Communist Party, to which he belonged from childhood until its collapse in the early 1990s, extremely soon before the creation of New Labour by him and other Communist Party hands (John Reid, Peter Mandelson), International Marxist Group stalwarts (Alistair Darling, Bob Ainsworth, plus Geoff Gallop, Tony Blair's mentor at Oxford), Trotskyists generally (Stephen Byers, Alan Milburn), IRA fundraisers (Tony McNulty), legal advisers to the Paedophile Information Exchange and Paedophile Action for Liberation (Harriet Harman, Patricia Hewitt), and others who had likewise followed academic Marxism from economic to social, cultural and constitutional means to entirely unchanged ends: the destruction of the family, of private property, and therefore of the State. No wonder that at the funerals of Donald Dewar and Robin Cook, they sang, not The Red Flag, but The Internationale.
One of Ralph Miliband's sons has been endorsed by Frank Field, and by John Smith's widow. But the other has not. Vote for any other candidate. Yes, including Diane Abbott, who is not remotely as many people imagine her to be. But do not, under any circumstances, give even your last preference vote to David Miliband. What with AV on top of everything else, the Labour Party is finished anyway. Parties are only ever means, not ends. However, Labour at least deserves to be in a position to give way gracefully to something better.
But not a word on the fact that he has never been a member of any party except the Communist Party, to which he belonged from childhood until its collapse in the early 1990s, extremely soon before the creation of New Labour by him and other Communist Party hands (John Reid, Peter Mandelson), International Marxist Group stalwarts (Alistair Darling, Bob Ainsworth, plus Geoff Gallop, Tony Blair's mentor at Oxford), Trotskyists generally (Stephen Byers, Alan Milburn), IRA fundraisers (Tony McNulty), legal advisers to the Paedophile Information Exchange and Paedophile Action for Liberation (Harriet Harman, Patricia Hewitt), and others who had likewise followed academic Marxism from economic to social, cultural and constitutional means to entirely unchanged ends: the destruction of the family, of private property, and therefore of the State. No wonder that at the funerals of Donald Dewar and Robin Cook, they sang, not The Red Flag, but The Internationale.
One of Ralph Miliband's sons has been endorsed by Frank Field, and by John Smith's widow. But the other has not. Vote for any other candidate. Yes, including Diane Abbott, who is not remotely as many people imagine her to be. But do not, under any circumstances, give even your last preference vote to David Miliband. What with AV on top of everything else, the Labour Party is finished anyway. Parties are only ever means, not ends. However, Labour at least deserves to be in a position to give way gracefully to something better.
Who, Me?
Two extraordinary comments last night. First this one, submitted anonymously:
People dredging up the Martin Miller fantasy should be bloody careful. That made it into print once. On the day that Mr. Lindsay was undergoing one of his bouts of major surgery the people who wrote and published it were visited by both the police and the social services on two unrelated but extremely serious charges. Mr. Lindsay has some very powerful friends and they obviously act to protect him with [I assume that this means "without"] him having to ask them or being in any position to do so. Those were just kids by the way. Imagine what they would do to grownups. Don't go there. Mr. Lindsay is off limits.
Leading to this, by one "RON":
I am glad that someone is finally saying these things, Anon.
We seasoned Lindsay watchers have marvelled for years at the strangely stunted careers of people lined up for great things until they fell out with him and were shunted into obscure sidelines for years on end. For that to happen once or a few times would be understandable, but it is a real recurring theme across a quite wide range of fields. [Does it not occur to "RON" that that says something, not directly about me, but rather about the sort of people who "fall out with" me?] I hope the editor of the Northern Cross enjoys being nothing more than the editor of the Northern Cross until he retires. [What's wrong with that?]
There have been the positions handed to him on a plate at unnaturally early ages, less likely to happen now that he is getting on a bit but very remarkable in his youth. Two school governorships while still a student, that sort of thing. Distinguished people have been moved without explanation to make room for him and least one proper, day job career has never recovered. Collateral damage?
Then there is how rich and powerful institutions and organisations always make peace with him in the end. it is never the other way round, he never needs to make the move. They always do in the end, too. Somehow they feel compelled to. This will not apply to the Telegraph because both sides give every impression that relations are still more than cordial. [Whoever said otherwise?] As so often with David Lindsay, it is all very complicated but all entirely in his favour.
The student newspaper that crossed him is now being taken over by his protégés although he will deny all knowledge of a plot. He is probably telling the truth when he says that he does not read it but that is not the question. He has a long and ridiculous history of incredulously denying that he cultivates protégés but who else do you know who kept a court of them at all of 20?
You are right about how protective his friends are and how "uncompromising" some of the most protective are. One of my favourite David Lindsay stories (I did not hear this from him) concerns someone now in the House of Lords who once said to him "You don't only dress like the Mafia, do you?" [All right, that one really happened. I am naming no names. You would be very surprised...] That was when he was still at school! Within about four years he was a governor of that school [an institution wholly unconnected to this anecdote]. Plus another one.
I have always been immensely and intensely proud of my enemies...
People dredging up the Martin Miller fantasy should be bloody careful. That made it into print once. On the day that Mr. Lindsay was undergoing one of his bouts of major surgery the people who wrote and published it were visited by both the police and the social services on two unrelated but extremely serious charges. Mr. Lindsay has some very powerful friends and they obviously act to protect him with [I assume that this means "without"] him having to ask them or being in any position to do so. Those were just kids by the way. Imagine what they would do to grownups. Don't go there. Mr. Lindsay is off limits.
Leading to this, by one "RON":
I am glad that someone is finally saying these things, Anon.
We seasoned Lindsay watchers have marvelled for years at the strangely stunted careers of people lined up for great things until they fell out with him and were shunted into obscure sidelines for years on end. For that to happen once or a few times would be understandable, but it is a real recurring theme across a quite wide range of fields. [Does it not occur to "RON" that that says something, not directly about me, but rather about the sort of people who "fall out with" me?] I hope the editor of the Northern Cross enjoys being nothing more than the editor of the Northern Cross until he retires. [What's wrong with that?]
There have been the positions handed to him on a plate at unnaturally early ages, less likely to happen now that he is getting on a bit but very remarkable in his youth. Two school governorships while still a student, that sort of thing. Distinguished people have been moved without explanation to make room for him and least one proper, day job career has never recovered. Collateral damage?
Then there is how rich and powerful institutions and organisations always make peace with him in the end. it is never the other way round, he never needs to make the move. They always do in the end, too. Somehow they feel compelled to. This will not apply to the Telegraph because both sides give every impression that relations are still more than cordial. [Whoever said otherwise?] As so often with David Lindsay, it is all very complicated but all entirely in his favour.
The student newspaper that crossed him is now being taken over by his protégés although he will deny all knowledge of a plot. He is probably telling the truth when he says that he does not read it but that is not the question. He has a long and ridiculous history of incredulously denying that he cultivates protégés but who else do you know who kept a court of them at all of 20?
You are right about how protective his friends are and how "uncompromising" some of the most protective are. One of my favourite David Lindsay stories (I did not hear this from him) concerns someone now in the House of Lords who once said to him "You don't only dress like the Mafia, do you?" [All right, that one really happened. I am naming no names. You would be very surprised...] That was when he was still at school! Within about four years he was a governor of that school [an institution wholly unconnected to this anecdote]. Plus another one.
I have always been immensely and intensely proud of my enemies...
Hard, Wise, Calculating
Peter Hitchens writes:
For those of you who say I never have a good word for David Cameron, here’s one. He’s pretty much right about 1940, even if it was by accident.
When a politician is accused of committing a ‘gaffe’, it almost always means he has told the truth.
And 1940 was in fact the year that Britain became America’s very junior partner, a sad role we have followed ever since. I know, I know, the USA didn’t enter the war against Germany until 1941 (and then only when Hitler declared war on them).
But Franklin Roosevelt took great advantage of our desperate position in 1940. As the Germans advanced through France in early summer that year, he offered one of the most unfair bargains in the history of diplomacy – 50 worn-out, ancient destroyers in return for nine rent-free US military bases in British colonies.
He had already insisted on hard cash for war supplies, which rapidly depleted Britain’s gold and currency reserves. And Britain only finished paying for ‘lend-lease’ wartime aid – down to the uttermost ?farthing, plus interest charged for late payment – on December 29, 2006.
Post-war loans and Marshall Aid came at the cost of pledges to relinquish what remained of the empire, not least the bits we had just fought so hard to get back from the Japanese, and to open up colonial markets to U.S. competition – plus unrelenting pressure to join the European Union, which still goes on.
These weren’t the acts of besotted friends, but of a hard, wise, calculating politician who wanted the best for his own country, not for ours.
It seems to me that we have sentimentalised this for far too long. I don’t blame the Americans for using our weakness and desperation to displace us as Top Nation. This is how great powers behave (and how we used to behave ourselves when we still could). And I think that, when China becomes the supreme world power, many people who now sneer at America will yearn for the happy days when the globe was run from Washington.
But every time I hear the words ‘Special Relationship’, I feel faintly sick. And I yearn for a British Prime Minister with the self-confidence of Charles de Gaulle, who could tell the Americans to get lost from time to time, especially when they want us to join in their crazier military ventures.
They would respect us more, and treat us better, if we weren’t constantly snuffling round their shoes with our tongues lolling out, like a pack of servile spaniels.
Although I disagree with him about whether the undoubted innocence in this case should have had any bearing on this executive decision (where would that end?), he goes on:
Can those who fuss about the release of alleged Pan-Am bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi at least mention the fact there is no evidence that he committed this crime?
Also that the U.S. government has been sucking up to Libya for years, in gratitude to Colonel Gaddafi for getting rid of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that he never in fact had.
Anyone who actually knows what is going on in the world must find the current dim, sheep-like credulity of most of the Western media almost unbearable.
Still, as one of the last right-wing commentators, possibly the last of all, to be a thoroughgoing Unionist rather than an English nationalist, he will be pleased to see that this whole Lockerbie business has killed off once and for all any prospect of the slightest further concession to Scottish separatism. Even with what that tendency has already managed to obtain, it has turned David Cameron's ancestral home, and his actual home since he has a house there, into the world's most corrupt petro-statelet, where the man who is legally its worst ever mass murderer is released on wholly specious grounds because a multinational oil company commands it.
Now we just need to do something about Cameron's strange, repeatedly stated indifference as to the constitutional status of Wales, where his party has long commanded a much higher share of the vote than in Scotland, and where it is doing rather well at the moment, though with a credible UKIP threat to its natural core support. Whereas perhaps half of the Labour No vote to devolution in 1997 has since come round to it (though by no means necessarily to anything further), the almost entirely No-voting Conservative base from that year remains almost entirely as opposed as ever even to what there already is. With a UKIP MEP from Wales, something that the Lib Dems have never managed, it is not as if there is nowhere else for them to go. But Cameron seems not to notice any of this. Why not?
For those of you who say I never have a good word for David Cameron, here’s one. He’s pretty much right about 1940, even if it was by accident.
When a politician is accused of committing a ‘gaffe’, it almost always means he has told the truth.
And 1940 was in fact the year that Britain became America’s very junior partner, a sad role we have followed ever since. I know, I know, the USA didn’t enter the war against Germany until 1941 (and then only when Hitler declared war on them).
But Franklin Roosevelt took great advantage of our desperate position in 1940. As the Germans advanced through France in early summer that year, he offered one of the most unfair bargains in the history of diplomacy – 50 worn-out, ancient destroyers in return for nine rent-free US military bases in British colonies.
He had already insisted on hard cash for war supplies, which rapidly depleted Britain’s gold and currency reserves. And Britain only finished paying for ‘lend-lease’ wartime aid – down to the uttermost ?farthing, plus interest charged for late payment – on December 29, 2006.
Post-war loans and Marshall Aid came at the cost of pledges to relinquish what remained of the empire, not least the bits we had just fought so hard to get back from the Japanese, and to open up colonial markets to U.S. competition – plus unrelenting pressure to join the European Union, which still goes on.
These weren’t the acts of besotted friends, but of a hard, wise, calculating politician who wanted the best for his own country, not for ours.
It seems to me that we have sentimentalised this for far too long. I don’t blame the Americans for using our weakness and desperation to displace us as Top Nation. This is how great powers behave (and how we used to behave ourselves when we still could). And I think that, when China becomes the supreme world power, many people who now sneer at America will yearn for the happy days when the globe was run from Washington.
But every time I hear the words ‘Special Relationship’, I feel faintly sick. And I yearn for a British Prime Minister with the self-confidence of Charles de Gaulle, who could tell the Americans to get lost from time to time, especially when they want us to join in their crazier military ventures.
They would respect us more, and treat us better, if we weren’t constantly snuffling round their shoes with our tongues lolling out, like a pack of servile spaniels.
Although I disagree with him about whether the undoubted innocence in this case should have had any bearing on this executive decision (where would that end?), he goes on:
Can those who fuss about the release of alleged Pan-Am bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi at least mention the fact there is no evidence that he committed this crime?
Also that the U.S. government has been sucking up to Libya for years, in gratitude to Colonel Gaddafi for getting rid of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that he never in fact had.
Anyone who actually knows what is going on in the world must find the current dim, sheep-like credulity of most of the Western media almost unbearable.
Still, as one of the last right-wing commentators, possibly the last of all, to be a thoroughgoing Unionist rather than an English nationalist, he will be pleased to see that this whole Lockerbie business has killed off once and for all any prospect of the slightest further concession to Scottish separatism. Even with what that tendency has already managed to obtain, it has turned David Cameron's ancestral home, and his actual home since he has a house there, into the world's most corrupt petro-statelet, where the man who is legally its worst ever mass murderer is released on wholly specious grounds because a multinational oil company commands it.
Now we just need to do something about Cameron's strange, repeatedly stated indifference as to the constitutional status of Wales, where his party has long commanded a much higher share of the vote than in Scotland, and where it is doing rather well at the moment, though with a credible UKIP threat to its natural core support. Whereas perhaps half of the Labour No vote to devolution in 1997 has since come round to it (though by no means necessarily to anything further), the almost entirely No-voting Conservative base from that year remains almost entirely as opposed as ever even to what there already is. With a UKIP MEP from Wales, something that the Lib Dems have never managed, it is not as if there is nowhere else for them to go. But Cameron seems not to notice any of this. Why not?
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