Healthcare – A View from the Grassroots

Healthcare – A View from the Grassroots

A guest article from Innocent Abroad Recently I’ve been involved in a local campaign to save a well-loved doctors’ surgery (its previous partners have included AJ Cronin, the author of “Dr Finlay’s Casebook”). The problem arose because the partners needed to sell their premises, as one of them was retiring. The Primary Care Trust decided that it wouldn’t treat this as an accommodation issue, but insisted that the doctors gave notice and then bid in open competition for their own…

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So is Al going to run?

So is Al going to run?

Is it too late to enter the race for the Democratic nomination? Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize has naturally led to speculation that he might seek to have one last roll of the dice and enter the 2008 Presidential race. The current odds for the Democratic nomination on Betfair have him available at 7.6 (13/2 in traditional odds), with Hillary a short-priced 1.46 and Obama at 8.8. It says something for Gore that his odds are shorter than…

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Sean Fear’s Friday slot

Sean Fear’s Friday slot

Has Labour Lost the Overspill Estates for Good? From the late 1940s to the 1960s, when land surrounding London was cheap and plentiful, many London authorities built large council estates in the surrounding Home Counties. These varied enormously in size, from a few hundred houses in places like Ashwood Road, Potters Bar, through to estates of many thousands, in places like Borehamwood, Harlow, Loughton, Hemel Hempstead, Crawley, Hatfield, and Stevenage. Such has been London’s expansion over the years, that some…

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Is Gord still being given the benefit of the doubt?

Is Gord still being given the benefit of the doubt?

But those 40% plus Tory shares should be worrying Too often, I think, those with a passion for following the fortunes of our great parties seem to expect instant reactions from the polls to the events they see daily in the papers and on their TV screens. So Brown has been having a torrid few days and yet Labour is at 38% in the latest Mori poll trailing by just 3%. That could have been a lot worse and I…

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“Three Daves” from Ipsos MORI

“Three Daves” from Ipsos MORI

Mori shows a 5% swing to the Tories since its last poll A Mori poll for the Sun shows the Conservatives on 41, Labour on 38, and the Lib Dems on 11, which represent changes of +7, -3, -5 since the last Mori poll taken shortly after Brown’s speech to the Labour conference. This is a swing of 5% to the Conservatives, although fieldwork dates remain to be confirmed. These figures are identical to the recent YouGov poll showing a…

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More bad news for embattled Labour

More bad news for embattled Labour

Will Alan Johnson come under pressure to resign? In what’s been a dreadful week for Labour, there’s more bad news for the government today with the 90 deaths from the C difficile bug at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. Health secretary Alan Johnson has described the deaths as “scandalous” and has told the trust to withold any severance pay to the chief executive who resigned last week. A police investigation has begun, with the possibility that the trust may…

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Was this the moment it all started to go wrong?

Was this the moment it all started to go wrong?

Why can’t Gordon “do” sincerity? The above screen-shot is from the weekend’s Andrew Marr interview and shows the expression on Brown’s face the moment he first started to explain why there was not going to be an election this year. Just imagine how the political scene would have looked this morning if Brown had taken a different approach and Alastair Darling’s pre-budget report had made no mention of the Tory and Lib Dem taxation ideas? Just imagine what the reaction…

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Could it be like this until 2010?

Could it be like this until 2010?

How can Brown deal with this sort of attack? I’ve been traveling and have yet to watch today’s PMQ confrontation between Dave and Gord. That treat is still to come and I can’t make a judgement. The critical thing though is how this will play on the bulletins and in the press and from what’s already been published Cameron appears to be coming out on top. He had the sound-bites so beloved by those who have to process news into…

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