Professionalism is to blame

Whatever criticisms can be levelled at this Government no one can say they haven’t reached deep into the State’s wallet to sub the NHS.

So today’s Healthcare Commission report into the horrendous state of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust should make every socialist weep.

90 patients lost their lives in filthy wards through contracting C.difficile - a bacterial infection of the gut which mainly affects the elderly.

But this scandal isn’t about a lack of funding. Or not enough nurses, doctors or radiographers.

It’s not even just about shitty management.

It’s about an organisational attitude that says “it’s not my job”.

Not my job to report dirty wards. Not my job to report a filthy toilet. Not my job to see that Doris gets a new nappy. Not my job to wash my hands before dealing with patients.

It’s about lazy nurses, arrogant doctors and fuckwit managers and the culture of underperformance they’ve cultivated for themselves. For years.

All the Government cash in the world won’t make a blind bit of difference to ‘clinicians’ who don’t have the wherewithal to report the disgusting state of the wards, on the basis of a clinical judgement about the potential risks to patient care.

But the big issue here is the failure of the Government to force the so-called ‘professional bodies’ to get behind an NHS run in the interests of patients first and foremost. Not those who work in it.

WCH was once squirreled into the Tory Party conference (clearly to destroy them from within) and checked out their exhibition area. Just which organisations were mad enough to splash out a big chunk of their marketing budget to attend this gathering of the walking dead in the vain expectation that Iain Duncan-Smith might one day become Prime Minister?

WELL, the BMA, and nursing unions were there. So were the education lot. And the Police Federation. In fact, all the ‘hidden’ trade unions (in all but name) who really run Britain.

You see, the greatest trick the ‘professional bodies’ have pulled is to create a political consensus for inaction. To make sure that whatever government is in power is too scared to act against their (invariably well-paid) members interests.

Bob Crow, Dave Prentis and Billy Hayes are mere amateurs in comparison.

And this is why public services never seem to get any better. Despite record amounts of money invested, we aren’t seeing big enough improvements in quality and reliability.

Until the Government gets serious about taking on the professional bodies, ending their "its not my fault guv" culture, efforts to improve public services for Mr. And Mrs. Bloggs will crawl along. It’s like driving with the handbrake on.

Anyway, back to the NHS...

Nye Bevan famously lamented that to get the consultants to buy into the very idea of the NHS in 1948 he had to “stuff their mouths with gold”.

Yet we still live with a system where GPs get 120k a year (same as a Cabinet Minister), but now work fewer hours than they used to.

Personally, I’d like to insert an anal probe in the form of my size 12’s into the back passage of the NHS to get a bigger bang for the bucks the Government has (undoubtedly) put in.

Before it is weighed down by so many horror stories the middle classes begin to take flight and demand a system of private provision.

Because, make no mistake, comrades, that’s where we’re heading.

Isn't it just the meek supposed to inherit?

Hark! The huddled masses from the housing estates of Sunderland to the sink estates of south London ring out hosannas of praise for Alistair Darling’s decision to raise the inheritance tax threshold to £600,000.

And lo, it came to be that the meek were elbowed out of the way for the greedy to inherit the earth!

Praise be that near-millionaires can now safely inherit money they didn’t earn for work they didn’t do.

From relatives they probably didn’t give a stuff about.

The short-term politics of appeasing Middle England’s grubby sense of entitlement may be smart after last week’s beasting by George Osborne (My God - Osborne of all people?!?!?); but the long-term ethical damage to the Brown brand makes this u-turn a pyrrhic victory.

Just what is a Labour Government for, may I respectfully ask, if the undeserving rich are not expected to pay more in tax for the common good?

Here’s a novel idea: The level of inheritance tax paid should be based on how much care and support families give elderly relatives.

People who care and support aged grandpa should pay less.

Meanwhile, the jackals and vultures who let grandma marinate in her own piss in some flea-bitten care home without so much as a Christmas card should forfeit the lot!

As soon as you're born they make you feel small...

Tomorrow is John Lennon's birthday (9th october 1940), after who's song, of course, this blog is nominally titled.

Just thought I'd let you know. In case you didn't.

Thanks to Paul for the heads-up.

The Return of Tony B...

Relax, that’s Benn, not Blair.

Yes the Grand Old Man of the Labour left has said he wants to stand for the new Kensington seat at the next general election after ‘retiring’ from his Chesterfield berth in 2001. Six years of daytime telly has clearly taken its toll.

When Benn stood down, he quipped that he was off to spend more time with his politics. He personified the “new politics” (that phrase again!) where being in Parliament was not the be all and end all to a political life.

This volte face simply reinforces the “old politics” view that all that matters in public life is parking one’s saggy old derriere on the green leather benches.

To put it bluntly, he’s in danger to countermanding his own, principled stand.

If he does end up on the ballot paper, then we will apparently see three generations of the Wedgewood-Benns standing for Labour.

Sonny Hilary continues to toil as environment secretary.

Now granddaughter, Emily, has been selected for the somewhat-less-than-a-socialist-bastion of East Worthing and Shoreham.

Only problem is that she is seventeen.

Now, I don’t particularly mind voting for a ‘mature’ candidate, but I’m buggered if I would demean the process by voting for a slip of a kid. Not WCH being po-faced you understand; it’s just a silly trivialising of public office. Also has an unfortunate dynastic pretension.

Anyway, back to the old boy...

As a fully-fledged National Institution his move to re-enter the Gentlemen’s Club is a sad change of heart, even if the seat is a no-hoper.

If need be, the members of Kensington CLP should save him from himself!

Memo to GB...

Dear Gordon,

What to do next:

1) The Numero Uno task is to ensure last week's fiasco is a blip rather than a ‘paradigm shift’ from your otherwise successful handover and three months’ worth of good government.

2) Use Monday’s Commons statement on Iraq to emphasise ‘Statesman Brown’. Project “business as usual”. Diffuse the situation. Concentrate on the Big Picture. Difficult for the Tories to make much hay on grown-up foreign affairs.

3) Use the Pre-Budget report on Tuesday to announce a fresh look at non-domicile status, with a view to a light fleecing of these tax-dodging parasites. Yes, it’s dancing to the Tory tune; but it’s a bit too weird to be outflanked by them on this issue. May as well take all the humiliation in one week.

4) In the longer run, this will help give both barrels to the Tory fox. Squeezing the “Non Doms” – and thus spending George Osborne’s nest egg on something socially useful - will blow a complete hole in their spending plans.

5) Get ready for a bruising PMQs on Wednesday. Need to inject a bit of spark into proceedings and knock seven bells out of Cameron at the start of a new term. This will help draw a line under the current shambles. A few good jokes are needed, especially after the telephone directory Leader’s speech a fortnight ago. Something self-deprecatory would be good.

6) Longer term there needs to be a more general debate about the role of taxation, as urged by Will Hutton in this morning’s Observer. It’s an ill omen that a Tory sop to allow near millionaires to avoid inheritance tax should be seen as a Great National Scandal and bounce The Evil Ones in the polls. The failure to popularise issues around taxation and fairness over the last decade has been a big mistake and is now coming home to roost.

7) Hopefully the hubris of the past few weeks will now be purged from the system and people who really should know better will knuckle down to business, learn the lessons about allowing speculation to get out of hand and avoid any silly repetition the future.

Yours in supplication,

WCH

NO GENERAL ELECTION: CONFIRMED

Ta-da!!

As confidently predicted on this blog (well before the shilly-shallying johnnie-come-latelys) there is to be no imminent general election.

Don't like to say we told you so, but...WE TOLD YOU SO!!

Nick Robinson of the Beeb is predicting there may not be an electon until 2009 in order for the PM to hold a "verdict election" on his (by then) three years as Top Dog. Sounds about right.

David Cameron will be able to relax his bottom cheeks for a while although he is still going down to defeat. Seems that it took a bit of old fashioned Tory tax bribery to the middle classses to turn the tide. George Osborne is this week's big winner as Cameron's fluffy ethno-environmentalism is repudiated.

But how old will Ming be by 2009?! Given the Lib Dems are fast being written out of the equation in all the polls, we confidently predict he will long gone by then. Nick Clegg in place by the summer recess?

To all our dear readers, the next time you want something more than the bog standard predicitons and political commentary, available on the hordes of inferior blogs out there, you know where to come!

As George Bernard Shaw used to say about economists, if you laid them all end to end they still couldn't reach a conclusion.

We can.

New, Old Labour, not old, New Labour...

We’ve been asked, by our many observant readers, to explain what 'new Old Labour' means...

Well, once upon a time, New Labour was explained to us as being socially left wing and economically right wing. Thatcher, we were told, had won the economic arguments of the 80s, so we would instead focus on social equality.

Silly old Old Labour, in contrast, had things the wrong way round. We were deemed to be socially conservative and economically radical. Precisely what shiny, new, tax-averse, selfish middle class Britain didn’t want.

This gross over-simplification received a curious validation with the graduation of many of the one-time loony left to the upper echelons of the Labour Party.

It seems half the New Labour Cabinet had ‘form’ as 1980’s municipal or pressure group headbangers. The types who always cared more about trendy social equality than economic redistribution.

Put simply, if your cause can fit on a students’ lapel badge you’re in the club.

But if you call women ‘ladies’, think a civil partnership is a firm of good mannered accountants and want to squeeze the rich until their eyeballs pop out, then you’d better go somewhere else comrade!

Your correspondents at this blog have emerged blinking from our bunker, unscathed by a decade’s worth of wish-washy New Labour centrism.

We are resolutely Northern. Unashamedly working-class. Defiantly old fashioned. Contemptuous of political correctness. Exercised about the redistribution of wealth (it’s ALWAYS the economy, stupid). And now we’ve mastered this blogging lark, there’ll be no stopping us raising the scarlet standard high.

So if you’ve had enough ‘old’ New Labour, then watch out for new, improved, ‘new’ Old Labour instead.

‘Cos we’re back!

The sound of blank cartridge ?

Harold Wilson’s weary observation that a week is a long time in politics has hardly sounded more apposite.

Last weekend, the drumbeat of election speculation was reaching crescendo. This was the final reckoning of the Tory Party we were told. Gordon should strike now and blast the Tories into smithereens once and for all.

Now? Well we can hear a gentle “splish, spolsh” as Labour starts to row back from all the hyperbole.

Yes, there are still echoes of the phoney war with the party putting emergency plans in place to have candidates in all seats by the end of next week if a poll is called on Tuesday. But it feels half-hearted.

Instead, expect to hear Ministers in coming days talking about “getting on with the job” and “implementing the manifesto”. The message will be “back to business” after the fluff of the silly season.

Doubtless “media speculation” will be to blame for all the talk of an election.

For all that, read “the jitters have set in.”

Check out the post below. What is happening now was completely predictable and happens every year during the conference season. The state of the parties ebbs and flows. And as the Tories are the last out of the traps with their conference, they inherit a bounce as we head into the next political term. They were never going to fall apart. Silly to think otherwise. If the PM’s advisers couldn’t foresee all this it then shame on them.

Of course we have been here before. The famous putsch-that-never-was against Tony Blair last September saw Brownite outriders take to the ramparts and talk up a revolution only to lose the belly to fight it.

The sound of blank cartridge can be deafening.

But the big guff-up of the week was undoubtedly the foolish own goal of announcing 1000 troops coming home from Iraq. As 500 were already shaking the sand off their boots back in Blighty, the PM should have been more circumspect.

OK, 1000 sounds twice as impressive as 500, but only if you are going to get away with a bit of sleight of hand. Instead, Gordon took one of the army’s rickety SA80s and shot a great big hole in his foot having worked so hard in previous weeks to embrace the “new politics” and shake off his image as partisan machine politician par excellence.

The plain old truth of where we are is that too many pieces are in flux (to use Mr. Blair’s circumlocution). The polls are flaky. The Labour Party’s machinery is nowhere nearly ready for an election campaign. Foot and mouth, post office strikes, moth-eaten electoral registers and Scotland are all concerns.

A few months of stability and good government would set a better backdrop to an election campaign rather than cutting and running now. Let people see Brown in action and his policy agenda start to bed-in. That was even the advice of Hilary Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, on last night’s Newsnight.

To those still prattling on about an early election we at WCH paraphrase Clem Attlee on the loudmouth Harold Laski: a period of silence on your part would be most welcome.

Where's the Passion Folks?

The Internet is a truly marvellous invention. Shame there is so much rubbish on it.

WCH thought long and hard before his old gnarled fingers danced across the keyboard to bring you this magnificent offering.

Some of the so-called political bloggers littering up the information superhighway should have done the same!

I mean, some of the blogs passing for left-wing political comment are as a tepid as a baby’s bath.
Blogging and lefty politics should be about passion and energy. Not much of that about in cyberspace at the moment...

Apparently Alistair Campbell, the Mr. Hyde to Tony Blair’s Dr. Jekyll, thinks the ‘blogosphere’ (what a truly ugly word...) is dominated by the political Right. He has a point. There does seem to be more of the buggers out there. Why is that? Has the Right got more to say? Never! Are they better educated? Of course not! Can they afford better computers? Probably...

EXCLUSIVE: NO ELECTION IN 2007!

There you have it. Nice and straightforward. No hedging of bets. No hiding behind forms of words. Even the BBC's reliably straight-talking Nick Robinson is sounding shifty...

Why won't there be an election? Because Cameron will knock 'em dead in his Leader's Speech. Everyone will rally round. His party will remember Lord Kilmuir's famous dictum that loyalty is the Tory Party's secret weapon. An overnight poll will show a surge for Cameron. And talk of an election will receed quicker than William Hague's hairline.

Of course, if I'm wrong then I'll look a blithering idiot.

But I'm not.

Take A Walk on the Wild Side? No Thanks...

Before he departed the stage to ‘fix’ the problems if the Middle East, that old political drag queen, Tony Blair, thoughtfully reminded us that we now live in an age of political cross-dressing.

Watching this week’s Conservative conference I can now see what old gender-bender Blair meant.

Your correspondent is reduced to weeping tears of regret that it apparantly takes a Conservative Government to clobber the super rich “non-domicile” tax dodging parasites while a Labour Treasury sits on its bean-counting derriere for a decade and does nothing.

This following Margaret Thatcher being invited round to her old digs at No. 10 and lauded as a conviction politican – by a Labour Prime Minister!

Tories taxing the super rich? Ken Livingstone lecturing Boris Johnson about political posturing? Tea and crumpets with Thatcher? Where will it all end?!

Greens backing airport expansion? UKIP calling for implementation of the Working Time Directive?

I’m just waiting for the launch of the BNP’s equal opportunities policy...

WCH does not like all this political transvestitisim and is keeping his cloth cap firmly on his head...