In Whom We Trust

It seemed like Andrew Lansley had been shadow Health Secretary throughout Labour's three terms in office. Certainly he's had a huge amount of time to devise the rationale behind the massive health care changes he wanted to see under a Tory Government.

So it is something of a surprise to hear his plans for 'reform' now he is in office; they sound ill-considered and entirely reactionary. First, he said Jamie Oliver's programme for healthy school dinners was "lecturing" and "nannying" and was largely "a failure". Although there is nothing to support those arguments, such as they are.

"Ministry insiders" hinted heavily on Monday, the Food Standards Agency and would be abolished and in its stead would be an inert Ministerial sub-Committee chaired by Andy himself. The food giants must have wept with joy over that one. Let us not forget the FSA was established following the BSE outbreak where big business's lack of moral scruples led to the extermination of the entire national beef cattle herd. Over 1,500 people in the UK have died of CJD.

But these issues are piffling compared to Lansley's plan for transferring four-fifths of NHS budgets to 5-600 consortia of GPs, as "doctors know best how to manage treatment for patients."

This facile philosophy is applied by Tories to schools too, "where parents know best how their child should be educated." This is patently idiotic. We are not the experts and GPs can't be expected join up all the right decisions and gain the full economy of scale for the health service.

But when pressed on the point by Martha Karney on Newsnight, Lansley opted for an ad hominem argument, "Don't you trust your Doctor to make these decisions?"

It takes seven or more years to train to be a GP and yet there are still no modules for financial management nor strategic planning. Trust is not the point: it is simply about competence and managerial capacity. These plans rather treat GPs as some sort of homegenous group with consistent outlook and skills. It would have been advisable to canvass their views first but these vast changes appear ready to be implemented without consultation nor piloting.

The purpose of this dramatic structural change is to rid the NHS of "bureacracy". The term is used in place of many inefficiencies and red tape. But huge organisations rely on a level of bureacracy to function at all; they provide the levers to pull. LAnsley beleives there are 68,000 managers carrying out superfluous duties.

Lansley and Cameron sound like those Leninists who attacked the agrarian "management" of kulaks. The ensuing chaos may not be quite so tortuous as Soviet Union in 1920s but the judgement is almost as dubious and prejudicial. It is a huge gamble and Lansley has not even started to explain why it is necessary.

But Are You Experienced?

It may be a bit previous to call for Michael Gove's resignation over the school building programme list fiasco.

But Gove would be as well to locate the slim vestige of humility he may still possess, if he is to learn anything from this unneccessarily embarrassing episode.

The original route of this idiotic cock-up was Gove's determination to proceed wth his purely ideologically 'free' school initiative. In order to release the necessary funds, he had to first cancel large parts of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme this side of recess, in order to have some flagship free schools in place for September term. A lawyer might call such huge shifting of resources in a period of a few weeks as "precipitative haste."

But that had no influence over Gove's amateurish and shambolic release of information cancelling hundreds of vital school building projects. His entirely inept performance would have shamed a sixth-form debater let alone a Secretary of State.

Speaker Bercow allowed Gove to run way beyond his usual time allowance of ten minutes. His statement was delivered with the usual Aberdonian briskness but was all outlandish rhetoric where measured tones would have been more apt. But on the list of schools affected, he omitted to deploy the vital phrase, "and copies are available from the Vote Office." Because they weren't.

First Speaker slapped Gove across the chops for not answering questions, "he's not supposed to be reading out a previously written script." He underlined the seriousness of Gove's misdemenour calling it, "unprecedented."

Mikey said, yeah thanks, but took no heed and carried on banging on about "scandalous" Labour waste, yadda, yadda. Mr Speaker then metaphorically held him against the wall saying, "Let me say to the Secretary of State, the assurance of his gratitude is of no interest to me; adhering to my ruling is."

Members then naturally probed him for news of their own constituencies. Gove had plenty of detail at his fingertips and wasted considerable Parliamentary time effectively reading them out one-by one. He then conceded he would write to every local authority and each Member. His Private Office must have exploded at the prospect of drafting 750 odd letters.

The dusky Caroline Flint was able to scoff at Gove's hapless handling when she said simply, "it would have been better to have provided that information, before the debate rather than during it." The effect was Gove casually divulging dramatic and devastating news to one community after another, like he was flicking peas off a table.

When it was finally over, which Mr Speaker described as, "an unwieldy process, to put it mildly," it emerged, via Ed Balls, that the elusive list had been circulated to the media prior to the debate. Members were now beside themsleves and even Speaker called it, "rank discourtesy." The car crash continued; Gove failed to take responsibility and said he didn't know if Balls was right even though precise timings were provided.

Speaker had to throttle Gove again reminding him he had Ministerial responsibility and ignorance could be no defence, "the Secretary of State should be aware". It was getting toe-curling now and could not possibly get worse could it?

But once MPs began verifying details of the cuts, they found a huge number of inconsistencies - in Sandwell in the West Midlands, nine school building projects which appeared to have been saved were actually for the chop after all.

But despite this comedy of errors, Gove was the very picture of arrogance on Newsnight and showed not an ounce of chagrin about his school boy handling of the cancellation of £55Bn worth of school building.

Even after he was compelled to apologise in the most abject terms on Wednesday, what was still missing, as Glenda Jackson said in the House, was, "any concern at all for the future of our children."

C'est La Guerre

Mark Serwotka (left), the eloquent head of Public and Commercial Services Union, is already a hardened campaigner against public sector cuts.

For all the Tories' talk of finally bringing discipline to public accounts, it ignores the several assaults Labour made on reducing welfare and the benefits to the civil service.

As soon as Ministers start using isolated examples of big payouts to mandarins you know the service as a whole is in for a battering. The reality is rather different. Most civil servants retire on a fairly pitiful small pension, the terms may be better than some areas of the private sector but the pay rates have been poor for so long, they could not really be described in any way as "generous".

Pensions and staff levels are being targetted for colossal reductions. Just at the point the economy is starting draw breath again the Coalition overnment is aiming a blow at its solar plexus. Serwotka rightfully described the forthcoming job losses as, "economically illiterate." The public sector, according to the more conservative Treasury figures is facing at least 600,000 job losses which rises to 1.3m when adding private sector. Add these numbers to the existing 2.57m unemployed and a total in excess of 4m is, to borrow a term from Osborne, "unavoidable."

It rather makes a nonsense of pulling 10,000s off disability benefits to give them a bigger incentive to find work. Each graduate position now receives 70 applications. Quite how students are expecting to pay off huge debts may be a mere detail to Ministers like Gove but a source of huge stress to countless families.

The Government is preparing for a huge rise in poverty, IDS's Work and Pensions Department are developing plans for issuing of food stamps. This is the undignified future for many, unemployment, no job prospects, reduced benefits, living off handouts.

What did we actually do to deserve this? Did millions of civil servants, low paid and benefit claimants spend extravagantly in the last few years? Or did the vast national debt pile up on bailing out TSB/Lloyds, Bradford and Bingley, RBS and Northern Rock?

The banks' share of pain is a derisory £2bn transaction tax which even the IMF has suggested should be at least four times higher. Soon they'll be back earning their super profits while the bottom sixth of society sinks to a new level of 'underclass'.

This is what you voted for.

Sound the Alarm

Assistant Commissioner at the Met, John Yates (left) heard Home Sec, Theresa May's speech on Tuesday and, like the rest of us, realised huge cuts to our police forces were inevitable.

She said quite unequivocably, "cuts will fall on the police as they will on other public services, " they would be expected to, "make sacrifices" and mirror the "ruthless cutting [of] waste" in the Home Office.

The projected cuts are staggering; not just down to the bone but effectively removing limbs.

Yates, anticipates his budget on counter-terrorism to be slashed by £65-87m and I think it was his duty to reflect how this would impact on the overall policing capability of keeping the country safe from terrorism.

Step forward the old crocodile, Francis Maude, Secretary of State in the Cabinet Office, to give Yates a public dressing-down for daring to speak the bleedin' obvious. Maude savaged Yeats for, "alarming the public" and "shroud waving." Well it was hardly Yates's idea to shift counter-terrorism from the category of 'necessary' to that of 'preferable'.

The first aspect this febrile spat reveals is the Tories' wholly different attitude to the police service. While Labour was rather fawning and genuflecting, Tories expect deference from mere "public servants."

Secondly, the need to slash public spending to pay for the banks' economic crash is now considered beyond question. Anyone who doubts the sense of reducing what yesterday we thought as essential public services, can expect vilification.

Five years ago tomorrow were the 7 July bombings in London where 52 people were murdered.

At the time, I would never have thought it possible any Government, even a Tory one, could consider measures to prevent such carnage and bloody killings should be just like any other budgetary issue, like whether to build more laybys on the A12.

Fool me Twice

Picture poor old Vince Cable shuffling home to his Twickenham semi after another hard slog in Whitehall, looking forward to a glass of bitter shandy and a glimpse of the evening's play at Wimbledon.

Perhaps he sits in silent company with his wife, unable to express his anguish of what he finds himself carrying out in Government. He should be totally sickened as his progressive and redistributive instincts are confronted with the daily menu of vicious cuts in welfare and public services.

George Osborne and his work trainee Danny Alexander presented a vile, despicable budget on Tuesday. The message came through clearly: the recklessness of the banks will be paid for by the struggling majority. The slashing of welfare payments by £11bn was certainly breathtaking and back to the old Tories of the early 80s which Cameron kidded us had been consigned to history. "We're all in this together," said Osborne, the millionaire son of a Baronet, on slashing housing benefits and so guaranteeing big rises in homelessness.

Compounding Vince’s misery must be the biggest economic questions about whether £40bn worth of fiscal savagery, at a time where recovery is so fragile, risks knocking Britain back into recession. There is also the small matter of regressive measure of putting VAT up to 20 percent which Vince railed against throughout the election. That just can't be spun.

The Departmental cuts of a quarter or a third look, er, impossible to implement. Some Ministries like Transport can put a moratorium on all building projects and save a few billion but take a Department like the Home Office where the commitment to community safety could not be viewed as luxurious indulgence. Cuts that deep will mean we have decide if we no longer monitor sex offenders, discontinue providing home security to the elderly or make do with 50,000 less police officers.

Cameron said to Andrew Marr a few days before the election, “Any Cabinet minister, if we win the election, who comes to me and says 'here are my plans and they involve front line reductions' will be sent back to their department to go away and think again." That claptrap was about as convincing as George Bush senior when he promised, “no new taxes.”

Vince is central to this odious deceit, kidding the country the severe hardship and steeply rising unemployment and poverty is “unavoidable”. But ultimately he’s kidding himself his heart is in it at all.

A Scroundel's Refuge

The oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico looks about the worst man-made environmental disaster since Chernobyl. Its cause appears to be risky well management from the lead company BP and the American population has rightfully poured barrels of scorn on them.

It hardly helped the corporation when it massively understated the scale of the daily flow and one of its execs described it as "tiny" ccompared to the size of the Gulf.

However BP has recently found an allay in the Daily Mail who has taken exception to President Obama bashing 'British Petroleum' as a swipe at our entire nation. Mail columnist Amanda Platell (above) said on BBC's Question Time, the "anti-British" sentiment was seriously harming the relations between Washington and London to the extent we should consider withdrawing our troops from Helmand.

The Mail often rages against Europe in this little Englander manner (although Platell is Australian) so it is unusual to lay into our oldest ally the US. But the only way the Mail can make this story run as if Obama and the US media had broadened their anger to any other aspect of Britishness or Britain. The plain fact is they haven't.

Platell and other polemicists seem to expect us to take this leap of logic. Their approach is more akin to Fox News where the extreme edge of a story is placed as the mainstream.

And in the end the Mail looks like they are defenders of a company whose reckless decision-making will cause long-lasting damage to 1,500 miles of coastline. And not forgetting 11 rig-workers were killed in the initial explosion.

It's rather like sympathising with a bully who has hurt his hand beating an old lady.

Circles of Hell

This is a picture of Gary Purdham, farmer’s son, Rugby League player and father of two small children. He was murdered, quite without motive, by gun-owner and part-time taxi driver Derrick Bird in Cumbria yesterday. Gary Purdham was helping his uncle carry out the annual hedge-trimming on his farm near Gosforth, when Bird drew up in his taxi and shot him point-blank.

Bird appears to have 'flipped' like other gun-owners and had taken out his simmering paranoid frustration on the innocent community. He felt he could, because he owned and had inherited a stack of rifles and shotguns. In some people possessing a lethal weapon lends them a sense of imperviousness, of hidden power over their seemingly inferior peers.

Like all mass-shootings, the assailant comes to realise exerting power of life or death over strangers is finite and their suicide is a common feature to all firearms massacres. And as usual the weapons were legally owned. The ban on handguns between 1996-8 meant the mass-murderers favoured weapon, the pistol, is no longer easily available and the ammunition is now very hard to come by. So it is a surprise, Bird could murder so many with a shotgun and a .22 rifle.

The law is probably not the best solution here. But independent scrutiny of firearms licensing is long overdue as police seem to simply dish them out to their old mates with little consideration for their mental health. Thomas Hamilton’s licence was approved eventhough the assessment could have not been more explicit in raising potential dangers of letting him have his gun back.

But better policing is no compensation to small boys waking up today to find their Dada still gone. Bird’s acts of evil consign him to the same ignominy as Ryan and Hamilton, fitting testament to other quiet, loners who carried out unspeakable horrors with legal guns.