Nhs

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 23 April 2015

Enemies within Sir: I thought Matthew Parris was typically incisive in his last column, but perhaps not quite as much as the person who wrote its online headline, ‘Scotland knows the power of a common enemy. We English don’t’ (18 April). It is true that ‘the wish to be the underdog’ is a defining urge of our age, even in relatively prosperous polities such as Scotland and Catalonia. But Parris is wrong when he claims that the closest the English come to the ‘Braveheart feeling’ is in their collective memory of the second world war. If only that were true. Would any other country make so little of its crucial

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Campaign kick-off: 15 days to go

The general election campaign is beginning to feel a little staid. Maybe there was too much excitement over the attacks and TV debates, or maybe the parties are running out of big policies. But there are still some announcements: Labour will continue its ‘NHS week’ with promises of more health care spending while the Tories will talk up their caring side. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Vote Labour, save the Union The Tories’ attacks on the dangers of voting Labour and getting the SNP have hit a road bump. Two senior former cabinet minsters have

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

The Tories are gaining momentum with their ‘Labour-SNP pact’ message

Complain all you like about the way the Tories are campaigning at the moment, but it’s getting the message across. The party has hit on the SNP, which is fascinating the media anyway, as the best line of attack to undermine Labour. Tory candidates report being pleasantly surprised by how much cut-through the Labour-SNP message is getting, while pollsters now say members of their focus groups are raising the issue unprompted. Focusing on the SNP may well have a number of serious side effects for the Tory party. It may reinforce the perception that they are a nasty, negative party. It may mean they do not give voters sufficient reason to

Sebastian Payne

Campaign kick-off: 16 days to go

The Tories are partying like it’s 1992. Sir John Major is being wheeled out today to reinforce what Michael Fallon and others have said: the SNP are dangerous for Britain. Labour will continue with its ‘NHS week’ by promising more money and outlining what they will do on entering government. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Major moment While Tony Blair’s standing has gone down since he left office, John Major’s has increased. He is now looked upon fondly by many Conservatives, coming from a time when the party won majorities and didn’t have to worry

Monday

Sebastian Payne

Campaign kick-off: 17 days to go

The campaign’s focus will swing back to Scotland today, with Nicola Sturgeon launching the SNP’s manifesto in Edinburgh. Ed Miliband is also heading north, to address the Scottish TUC and kick off Labour’s latest efforts to attack the Conservatives on the NHS. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Last chance to vote More important than any of the news stories, today marks the deadline for registering to vote on May 7. As the splash of today’s Daily Mirror puts it, ‘you can make a difference’. Forget talk of the same old parties with same old ideas, the

Thursday

David Starkey

Diary – 16 April 2015

To the dentist. And for an extraction. I hadn’t had a tooth out in decades. But the twinges when I bit on a nut warned me that my problem molar — much abused by a badly fitted bridge in the 1970s — had finally given way. My usual dentist confirmed as much with a poke and an X-ray. Then came the surprise. ‘I’m going to hand you over now,’ he said. Having a tooth out has ceased to be a hazard of life to be borne and grinned at. Instead it’s become dental surgery. And it requires a specialist. Mine was a man with a mission. ‘My job is to

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 16 April 2015

Home Launching the Conservative party manifesto, David Cameron, the party leader, told voters he wanted to ‘turn the good news in our economy into a good life for you and your family’. The Tories promised: to eliminate the deficit by the end of the parliament; to provide 30 hours of free child care a week for working parents of three- and four-year-olds; to grant a right for housing association tenants to buy their properties; to increase the inheritance tax threshold for married couples from £650,000 to £1 million (paid for by nobbling tax allowances on pension contributions for those earning £150,000); to raise the threshold of the 40p rate to £50,000 by

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour MP suggests Ed Miliband is not speaking frankly about NHS spending

This morning Sir David Nicholson criticised Ed Miliband for failing to commit an extra £8 billion a year towards the NHS. The former head of the NHS said that Labour needed to follow the example of the Tories and Lib Dems by signing up to the pledge. Now, Frank Field, the Labour MP, has come out in response. However, rather than rush to Miliband’s defence, he has claimed that each main party leader, including Ed Miliband, is not being frank about NHS spending. Field says in a press statement that it will only be after the election that Labour, along with the other major parties, will be able to seriously discuss their plans for the

Robert Smith

Exclusive: Where the next generation of MPs think the burden of cuts should fall

What do the next generation of MPs think with regards to public services, government spending and taxes? Coffee House has got its hands on new research by Ipsos MORI on the opinions of prospective parliamentary candidates from the main parties. The pollsters interviewed almost one hundred PPCs – 26 Conservative, 29 Labour, 20 Liberal Democrat and 11 SNP – who are all standing in marginal or safe seats, and therefore stand a good chance of making it to the green benches after the general election. Here are the points that stand out: 1: Defence cuts on the front line Defence cuts lead the way for both Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates who

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Call me insane, but I’m voting Labour

Quite often when I deliver myself of an opinion to a friend or colleague, the reply will come back: ‘Are you out of your mind? I think that is sectionable under the Mental Health Act.’ In fact, I get that kind of reaction rather more often than, ‘Oh, what a wise and sensible idea, Rod, I commend your acuity.’ There is nothing I say, however, which provokes such fervid and splenetic derision, and the subsequent arrival of pacifying nurses, as when I tell people that I intend to vote Labour at the forthcoming general election. When I tell people that, they look at me the way my dog does when

Tuesday

Daniel Jackson

Apple and IBM may just have changed the future of personalised medicine

As the FT reports, Apple and IBM have got into bed together. The deal they’ve struck has major implications for the growing number of people using wearable tech (and indeed mobile phones) to monitor their health. Here are the details. IBM has entered into partnership with Apple and other manufacturers of medical devices to make health data from wearable tech available to doctors and insurers. One outcome will be personalised treatments for diabetics. But that’s only part of the picture. This is how it will work. If you’re self-monitoring your heart rate, calories and cholesterol levels – as more and more of us are – you will now be able to

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Is Labour really wise to take on the Tories on the economy?

Ed Miliband gave a good, forceful, well-received speech at Labour’s manifesto launch this morning. It couldn’t have been anything else, given how close we are to polling day. There were some very well-delivered moments, particularly when it came to zero hours contracts and non-doms. The peroration was particularly energetic, with the Labour leader saying: ‘Over the last four and a half years, I have been tested. It is right that I have been. Tested for the privilege of leading this country. I am ready. Ready to put an end to the tired old idea that as long as we look after the rich and powerful we will all be OK.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Tories on £8bn NHS commitment: Trust in me

Towards the end of last week, the Tories were looking a bit miserable. Their slow response to Labour’s non-coms announcement, coupled with a ‘dead cat’ response from Michael Fallon which made the party look rattled and unpleasant had left the Conservative campaign looking unusually disorganised and slow-witted. But ministers have tried to pick things up, and some of their announcements in particular have left Labour in a similar mess. The story that David Cameron’s party will meet the £8bn demand for health funding from NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens has left Labour hopping around looking a bit cross and awkward. This was not how the party had planned things:

James Forsyth James Forsyth

This week, the Tories must seize the initiative

Even Tory insiders admit that while they broadly had the better of the first week of the campaign, Labour had the better of the week just gone.  This makes it imperative for their hopes of re-election that the Tories wrest back the initiative this week. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, if they don’t, Tory discipline—which is already beginning to fray a bit—will crack, and Ed Miliband will have the keys to Number 10 within his grasp. The Tories have made a decent start to this task. Labour has been unsure of how to respond to the Tories’ commitment to give £8 billion more to the NHS. While

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tories try to use their lead on the economy to bolster their position on the NHS

The Tories believe that their record in government and their lead on economic competence means that they can set out spending commitments without having to set out precisely how they would pay for them. George Osborne’s interview on Marr this morning was a demonstration of this strategy. Challenged repeatedly over where the £8 billion for the NHS that he and Cameron pledged yesterday would come from, Osborne simply pointed out that they have managed to increase the amount of money going into the health service every year over the last five years despite having to make significant spending cuts. However much it infuriates their opponents, I suspect that this Tory

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 9 April 2015

Home Tony Blair, the former prime minister, opposed a referendum on membership of the EU. In a speech at Sedgefield he said that, following the Scottish referendum, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, knew ‘the perilous fragility of public support for the sensible choice’. Opinion polls following a television debate by seven party leaders, which drew an audience of 7.7 million, were inconsistent. Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party, was held to have made a mark, while Leanne Wood, the leader of Plaid Cymru, and Natalie Bennett polled at between 2 and 5 per cent. Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, was seen to sweat profusely. He had

Wednesday

Brendan O’Neill

Trans activists are effectively experimenting on children. Could there be anything more cruel?

Can you think of anything more cruel than telling a five-year-old boy who likes Lady Gaga that he might have gender dysphoria? Or telling a nine-year-old tomboy who hates Barbie and loves Beckham that she might really be male – in spirit – and therefore she should think about putting off puberty and possibly transitioning to her ‘correct gender’? Saying such things to kids who are only doing what kids have done for generations – messing about, discovering their identity – turns playfulness into a pathology. It convinces boys who aren’t boyish and girls who aren’t girly that they must have some great gender problem, a profound inner turmoil that

Thursday

Attila Bland

The Heckler: down with the actor-commentariat!

I’ve never been terribly keen on actors. I prefer hairdressers and accountants. And teachers and builders and lawyers. I may even prefer politicians and footballers to actors. It’s a modesty thing. No profession demands more attention. And no attention is less warranted. Everywhere you look, there they are pouting and grimacing on billboards and TV screens, like oversized teenagers. How have we come to this? These people dress up and pretend to be other people — for a living! It wouldn’t be quite so bad if that were all they did. But these days actors are taking over our public space in a way that is unsettling and impossible to

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Cameron: Je ne regrette rien

David Cameron doesn’t regret the Lansley reforms that have done so much to damage any chance that the Tories could be trusted again by voters on the NHS. That’s what he told the Today programme this morning, saying: ‘The reforms were important and they were right… Of course [I stand by the changes]. If you’re saying to me: “Would you rather have 20,000 more bureaucrats and 9,000 fewer doctors?” Of course not.’ listen to ‘Today: David Cameron defends hostile campaign focus on Labour and Ed Miliband’ on audioBoom It’s difficult to find many Tories who privately share his view. Many who still think the spirit of the reforms were right

Tuesday

Brendan O’Neill

If it’s not ok to hound Sienna Miller and Steve Coogan, why is it ok to hound Nigel Farage?

Faragephobia reached dizzy new heights on Sunday afternoon, when a bunch of thespians and circus freaks invaded Nigel Farage’s local pub and hounded him and his family out. Behaving with grating and probably knowing irony like small-minded Little Englanders, though dolled up as punkish outsiders, the protesters were basically saying to Nige: ‘Your sort aren’t welcome here — you’re barred!’ And so was a public figure humiliated while doing that utterly non-public thing of lunching with his wife and young daughters — turfed out of his own local hangout by people who don’t like his policies on immigration, the NHS, and other stuff. But this was more that Faragephobia, more than