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The Willetts speech on education is causing waves in Tory circles, as they vie with each other for who has the best idea for the standard (or perhaps two-model) offering that should be provided to other people's children. It's yet another example of how Camoronism is about out-Labouring Labour.

Government

Yesterday I asked the question, was the DoH decision to scrap the NHS online recruitment system a belated good decision or the only option left? Andrew Rowland, vice-chairman of the BMA's junior doctors committee, rather surprisingly believes "The Department of Health has at last seen sense and effectively abandoned the unfair, discredited and shambolic MTAS system." I couldn't disagree more.

With just a couple of weeks to go before the introduction of the Home Improvement Packs, The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has thrown a spanner in to the Government's works.  Fearing a housing market crash from the combined effect of potential sellers being put of selling due to HIPs, a rush of sales prior to the 1st June and rising interest rates, RICS are now seeking a judicial review over the packs.  They are claiming, what we all know, that there aren't enough inspectors and also that the consultation process was not carried out properly.  They did, however, fail to add that the packs are a waste of time and money.

Government

Government 

A slender majority of people wanted to see the NHS retain political control by the government. Maybe a poll asking whether the NHS should be taken away from nationalisation completely would have produced a different result? One for the future maybe...

A new poll has started and is likely to cause some debate - it already has with myself and bgp. Is the solution to the railways to:

a) Renationalise them

The BBC is reporting that the MTAS online recruitment system is being completely withdrawn.  A belated good decision or the only option left?

If ever proof were needed that the more the government intervene the more damage they actually do here it is. The government think that the best way to improve policing is tell the policemen exactly how to their job. This has led to officers arresting more and more easy targets just to boost government figures. Rather like my previous post, it is easy for the government to get headline grabbing figures like - "Police arrest more criminals under Labour" - but that is not the point. What are they arresting people for is more relevant.

An interesting stat in today's Times: NHS funding has leapt from £35 billion when Labour took office to £92 billion in 2007-08. On the surface, I think most people would look at the basic piece of information and say well done New Labour. But as is the reality with many government interventions, the bare statistics do not tell the whole story. What has that £92bn been actually spent on?

Government

Government

• Today the Prime Minister announced there are now over 200 schools on track to get Trust status - double the number expected at this point. Over 140 primary, secondary and special schools have applied to become Trusts in the last six months, alongside 69 full pathfinder schools piloting Trust status. The first of the pathfinder schools plan to become Trust schools from September 2007. There are now plans to work towards having 300 schools who have become Trust schools or are in the pipeline by the end of the year. Organisations currently signed up to partner the pathfinder schools, strengthen their leadership and build their ethos, include Barnado's, Microsoft, the Co-operative Group, Unilever, Dyslexia Action and a range of FE colleges and universities.
• Fourteen councils and six NHS Trusts have joined together to save nearly £7 million in the latest IT hardware eAuction run by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) with the London Centre of Excellence (LCE). The councils and trusts auctioned IT hardware requirements worth £13.7 million at pre-auction benchmarked prices, achieving a price at the end of the five hour auction of £6.9 million: an average saving of 50 per cent across the six lots. This brings the number of central government and wider public sector organisations that have so far participated in OGC eAuctions to 325, saving a total of £21 million since the first eAuction in September 2005.
  

Below is a letter to the editor printed in today's Times. It makes very, interesting reading and has been signed by 18 members of the great and the good of the medical world: (I have highlighted some of the key statements)

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 was, at least in principle, a good piece of legislation. It is not perfect and as far as I'm concern had too many ambiguities and exemptions. But all in all it made for a far more open government and public sector. Unfortunately, it seems it has been too successful and there has been for some time a growing force within Parliament to make MPs exempt from the law. This is, as far as I'm concerned, the most open and obvious show of contempt for the electorate I have seen for a long time. What makes them so special that they feel they above the law?

Government

What do the following have in common?

• The top 16 in the Eurovision Song Contest consist of 14 former communist-block countries, plus Greece and Turkey. As usual, regional block-voting dominated the outcome.
• Zimbabwe was elected to head the UN's Commission on Sustainable Development, thanks to the African block choosing to put African solidarity and contempt for the first-world ahead of responsibility.
• Every member of the EU except Britain defrauds the first phase of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme by overestimating their potential emissions and setting themselves targets that are so easy to meet that they can profit from excess emissions rights without having to make serious efforts to reduce emissions. The value of carbon in EU-ETS collapses as a consequence, and no significant reductions of emissions are attributable to the first phase.
• Concerted action on Darfur is undermined by the self-interest of countries like China, India and Malaysia.
• Concerted action on Iran's nuclear programme is undermined by Russian self-interest.
• Russia is trying to put together a gas cartel along the lines of OPEC, in order to control the price of gas to its mainly Western customers.
• Progress on reform of agricultural support and protectionism at the WTO is hampered by regional blocks trying to maximise their advantage. Rich countries like France are quite prepared to sabotage the process in order to protect the profits of the 3% of their population now engaged in farming. Their old, supposedly right-wing government has refused to countenance any reduction of support under the EU Common Agricultural Policy. Their new, supposedly right-wing president has called for Europe to be more protectionist.

Government

How about this for a health policy? Instead of putting patients in the more cost effective hospital, move them to the ones that are losing loads of money and cost more to run and then close down the more cost effective ones. Well that is the policy in the South East at the moment. Seriously. New hospitals built under PFI have over run so much that they are likely to be in permanent deficit. Not only that, but to close them down now would risk even bigger debts.

Government