Blogs

Government

Government

Richard Granger has resigned.  Never heard of him?  You will know his work.  He is was Britain's top paid civil servant (£290,000 a year no less) and was responsible for upgrading information technology (IT) systems and introducing electronic patient records within the NHS.  Yes, that £12bn upgrade system that has run well over budget, is two years late, is littered with problems and will not have that much benefit to actual patient care at all. 

I get a distinct feeling that the Tories are rapidly moving back to square one at the moment. It may well be too early to say with any conviction that they are back in Hague/IDS/Howard territory, but the signs are there. They have had a miserable month with the grammar schools debate, the rise of Gordon and ever bubbling worry that no one wants to be a Tory Mayor (and that includes Greg Dyke, as we all found out much to the red faces at CCHQ).

Government

Iain Dale has demolished in a few short words Ming Campbell's proposal to abuse local-authority powers to get more social housing built, so effectively that even the LibDem NorfolkBlogger agrees with him. This has provoked an unintentionally funny response on NorfolkBlogger's site from Tim Leunig, Lecturer in Economic History at the LSE, and original author of Ming's proposal:

"In what sense are CLAs illiberal?
They:
1) Allow local authorities total control over how many houses are built in their area
2) Allow local authorities total control over what proportion are social houses
3) Will lead to lower house price inflation, so that hopefully your child and mine can afford to leave home in 2030

Freedom and social justice: a good combination, surely?"

In what sense is "total control" by the authorities "illiberal"? If you need to ask, Tim, you are probably beyond help.

Government

And so to the BMA's annual conference where GPs voted on various issues. There were unanimous votes to carry the following motions:

This conference has no confidence in

1) the UK government's handling of the National Health Service,

2) the Secretary of State for Health in England

So after all the fuss, u-turns, backtracking, re-packaging, delays, spin and farce it seems that HIPs may not be enforceable after all!  That is right,  even if the government does go ahead with its pseudo-implementation on 1st August, there are loopholes which will mean houses can still go on the market with that all important information pack.  According to the FT:

Government

JG pointed out Boris Johnson's comments on Blair's speech about the modern media. It deserves a post of its own.

Boris wants to characterize Blair's comments as being mainly about the media's treatment of him. If you read Blair's speech, very little of it was about his treatment at the hands of the media. And he acknowledged his complicity.

Boris must be assuming that most people will not bother to read Blair's actual words, and will instead rely on what they hear about it through the media. Would that be the same "media-literate" public who he claims "can almost always see behind the hysteria and the hyperbole, and work out what is really going on", who "find it relatively easy to blow the froth off a story and get to the nub"? Would you like any cream with your disingenuity, Boris?

Misrepresenting Blair's argument is not enough. He must also recast the media as poor, set-upon creatures, deserving of our sympathy, as they struggle in the glare of the public spotlight against the harsh criticisms of the blogosphere. A mistake, that. It is so over-egged that most readers, however credulous, will smell a rat. A "new and terrifying threat"? "Hordes of lynx-eyed brainboxes out there in cyberspace"? Journalists "increasingly accountable, increasingly vulnerable to the pithy rejoinders of the man or woman on the net"?

I don't know if this counts to you as a pithy rejoinder, Boris. But let's see what difference it makes. Are you feeling threatened? Are you taking account? Do you think this post will make the slightest difference to your journalistic career? You, and most of your readers, probably won't even know it exists. You wrote your piece because you knew you could get away with it, not because you feared that you couldn't.

Government

Continuing a trend of "the least likely people getting it right", today I think I can trump them all. Labour laughing stock and soon to be ex-secretary of state for Health, Patricia Hewitt has finally said something that is neither spin nor complete nonsense.

Government

Government  

The new Bagehot at The Economist, recently returned from a posting to a "harsh, cold country", thinks that those of us who claim Britain is going to the dogs are hypochondriacs. I have sent the following letter in reply:

Sir,

(Picture - Hat tip: Guido Fawkes)

Government