THE FOURTH OF JULY

[selectortone]

Oh, and I'll also predict that Jacob will say Labour would have done better if Corbyn was still in charge.

 

[TRITON]

The cherry on the icing would be Jacob Rees Mogg losing his seat.

Or falling down a set of escalators.

Preferably those in Angel underground station.

 

[Noel]

well @Noel you should be working at least six days a week and not be allowed to retire if Starmer has his way to clear the NHS backlog !

I fear you missed my point, no worries..

PS- He wasn't great on the Hippocratic oath.......

 

[Jake]

That's the power of individuals such as Farage: stoke the hatred (often with misinformation) then tell those people that their feelings are justified, and present them with a home (by voting for Farage).

I know, but it is frightening how little some people have learned from history. Left with simplistic self-fooling notions as if English people are innately good so nothing they think or support can be fascist because they opposed German Nazis in WWII. While they support the modern equivalent of Mosley who would have had us on the other side.

 

[Jake]

The cherry on the icing would be Jacob Rees Mogg losing his seat.

The sprinkling of hundreds and thousands on top of that would be Sunak losing his seat.

That's very restrained - I have a much longer list of Portillo moments I would cherish dearly.

 

[Jake]

A radical thought - rather than simply rely upon the unfunded (albeit worthy) manifesto and campaign aspirations, the incoming government could articulate the measures they will use to evaluate their election and subsequent government a success or failure.

I had in mind (for instance) the following - eg:

• unemployment currently 4.3%. Target - no more than 4.5%
• growth from 2023 compared to other G7 members. Target 1st or 2nd position
• overall tax take currently 40%. Target below 40%
• NHS waiting lists currently 7.6m Target 2.0m
• A&E waiting time currently 75% within 4 hours. Target 95%
• Housebuilding currently ~231k (2023). Target 1.5m over 5 years
• GDP to debt ratio currently 98%. Target less than 95%

There are more - but the principle is clear - stop the BS, objectivity, clear expectations. Had the same objective analysis been done with Brexit I suspect we would now judge it an unmitigated failure.

The thought process should also set levels of achievement ranging from complete failure, through reasonable, to outstanding. Not all will be fully achieved, some will be abject failures - a balanced scorecard needs to be the outcome.

No matter how worthy an idea, or reflective of good management practice, to set clear criteria to judge success or failure, I suspect the flow of BS, blame the current incumbents (probably fair), or blame external events beyond the control of government will prevail.

This all assumes everything outside the targets is in stasis, and if that is not the case then the targets can start distorting things. Some of them are just unrealistic, like your second bullet. And in every simplistic target there is a dodge or an unexpected cost that has not been democratically accounted for with the same transparency.

Life is complicated never mind governing a society. Lots of people are prone to thinking it should be more 'simples' but it just isn't a game of top trumps.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

This all assumes everything outside the targets is in stasis, and if that is not the case then the targets can start distorting things. Some of them are just unrealistic, like your second bullet. And in every simplistic target there is a dodge or an unexpected cost that has not been democratically accounted for with the same transparency.

Life is complicated never mind governing a society. Lots of people are prone to thinking it should be more 'simples' but it just isn't a game of top trumps.

I can fully understand why many want to see the back of the Tories.

All party manifestos are judged to be a triumph of aspiration over that which can actually be delivered. In five years time how will we know they have have "delivered. In the absence of explicit measures, only intuitive performance judgements can be made.

Successive governments over the last 45 years have lasted between 10-14 years. After a decade any party in power will have accumulated baggage (scandals, failures, etc). External events (financial crisis, pandemic, war) can tip public sentiment into very negative territory.

Measures need to be meaningful, achievable and provide a balanced assessment of degrees of achievement. External events - governments need to deal with them. The Tories were still roundly blamed for a cost of living crisis despite being largely caused by Ukraine war.

Selecting specific, relevant, clear measures which can be replicated consistently over time is important. Not doing so perpetuates the futile use of selective statistics to support whatever political point is wanted, and risks excusing failure before the battle has even started.

 

[Jacob]

..... The Tories were still roundly blamed for a cost of living crisis despite being largely caused by Ukraine war.

What a feeble excuse!
From 1979 the deliberately chosen tory policy of austerity has caused a continuous cost of living crisis, which we are still living with, and which the Starmer mob has promised to continue.
Politics is at a very low ebb at the moment - as exemplified by the Starmer/Sunak twins' grotesque clowning.
I will be voting Green. We need to look to the future and start reintroducing the idea of political opposition - perhaps the next election after this will be more meaningful.

 

[Jacob]

Oh, and I'll also predict that Jacob will say Labour would have done better if Corbyn was still in charge.

I'd say Labour would do even better if Starmer had maintained the Labour broad church, as he promised in order to steal the leadership.
Corbyn, Abbott, etc could have retired gracefully by now instead of having to hang on in trying to defend their party and their reputations, against the Starmer mob takeover.
Starmer has been dishonest and divisive from the start and I don't think his authoritarianism is a sign of strength, quite the opposite - a weak little man with no political skills or leadership abilities, leading a weak little mob.
Starmer has another agenda, maybe just aiming at House of Lords, maybe something more sinister and very establishment based

 

[mrpercysnodgrass]

Well here we are ELECTION DAY. Vote early, VOTE OFTEN!

 

[John Brown]

Well here we are ELECTION DAY. Vote early, VOTE OFTEN!

I voted a week ago...

 

[selectortone]

That's very restrained - I have a much longer list of Portillo moments I would cherish dearly.

I'm looking forward to lots of Portillo moments.

 

[Jester129]

The text has suddenly got smaller - how do I get it back to the normal size please

 

[RobinBHM]

The Tories were still roundly blamed for a cost of living crisis despite being largely caused by Ukraine war

Your political bias is glowing bright

 

[Rhossydd]

The Tories were still roundly blamed for a cost of living crisis despite being largely caused by Ukraine war.

Tell that to people who had their mortgages go through the roof, or people's pension funds fell through the floor, after Truss tried to run the country.
You also need to look at the staggering wastes they've delivered. The PPE scandals, not trying to recover furlough fraud, stopping HS2 after having bought the land......

The tories have a LOT to answer for and some should be held to account for their failure in public office.

 

[selectortone]

Some should be held to account for their failure in public office.

Yep. And Michelle Mone should be in jail.

 

[selectortone]

 

[treeturner123]

Let's be like the BBC and not mention politics today!!

Some Hope!

Phil

 

[Yorkieguy]

The BMA carried out a survey last year which showed one third of ethnic minority doctors were considering leaving the NHS due to racism.

It would be worth knowing what the cost arising from the loss of doctors is perhaps before we ditch a role that is there to address a reason they are leaving? With the staffing shortfall in the NHS expected to increase to 500k within a decade (again according to the BMA) I’d guess we’re going to be reliant on it having a diverse work force.

The NHS has a toxic 'cover up' culture. 'Whistle blowers' including senior clinicians, are disciplined and even dismissed for highlighting shortcomings.

If anyone speaks out, they're seen to be the problem, so in the end, they just leave and go elsewhere.

I'm not basing that view on what I've read in The Times, Daily Mail or Guardian or wherever. From late 1997 until November 2003, I was a non-executive director of an NHS Ambulance Trust, serving as Complaints Convenor, (organising and sitting on panels which investigated complaints of clinical negligence), and from 2000 - 2003 served as Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Trust.

This outlines the role of non-executive directors:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/1sthi5th.../54/2020/08/NED2_About_the_ned_role_final.pdf

There's much I could say (and a lot I ought not to say) about why this endemic adversarial bullying culture exists whichever government is is power, (it was Labour throughout my time), and why it isn't fixable by just throwing money at it, be that in higher salaries or more staff, but now is not the time. Suffice to say that whichever government is in power, as an objective outsider, you rightly assume that in the NHS, patients are the ’customers’ and what matters most is the achievement of the best clinical outcomes for patients, with well-trained front-line staff and supportive management. The reality is that the government is the ‘customer’ and the ‘product’ is the achievement of targets, putting the focus in what’s ‘inspected’ – not what’s ‘expected’. Patients are merely the ‘end users’.

Heck, even the Care Quality Commission, whose role is to inspect NHS Trusts, has been found by a Manchester employment tribunal to have unfairly sacked orthopaedic surgeon Shyam Kumar as a part-time special adviser. It found that the CQC failed to accept his whistleblowing was valid and tried to discredit him.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/sep/05/nhs-whistleblower-wins-dismissal-case-against-england-health-regulator-cqc-manchester

For this to change, the NHS would need to adopt a 'no-blame culture' like the Airline Industry does. I doubt that it will, any time soon.

Airlines produce fewer deaths per mile than cars, ferries, trains, the underground, or buses. The chances of dying in a plane crash are roughly the same as getting struck by lightning while reading this post. The biggest US commercial airlines have now gone 15 years without a fatal crash, and there have been more than a hundred million flights and 10 billion passengers since then. Between 1998 and 2008, the fatal accident rate of US commercial aviation dropped by 83% and the American system became a model for the rest of the world. But even back in 2008, the country's current safety record would've sounded not just incredible or inconceivable, it would've sounded completely insane.

A revolution in the sky that has saved countless lives. That revolution depended on pilots, flight attendants and dispatchers voluntarily reporting safety issues and admitting their own mistakes, and not just the fatal ones. This system aims to prevent accidents before they happen. The old system explained accidents after they happened. They got better at understanding safety and risk and dealing with the indicators of risk without waiting for the accident.

https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/wsj-the-future-of-everything/science-of-success-how-self-reporting-made-flying-safer/c529dfdf-c08f-4059-85b0-6b32dbdb27a0

A ‘blame culture’ is endemic in the NHS. ‘Hard on the staff, soft on the problems’, with the focus in on ‘who’s gone wrong and whose fault was it?’ (never senior management), rather than ‘what’s gone wrong, and how do we learn from that and prevent it going wrong again?’ ‘Floggings will continue until morale improves’ comes to mind. If senior managers don’t care for staff, how do they expect hard-pressed staff to care for customers? The closer I got to those who deal first-hand with patients - paramedics, nurses, doctors, the greater my admiration, and it's all the more remarkable that of the millions of people who need the service of the NHS, most have a good experience.

Time and again in independent reviews, NHS Trusts are found to be wanting. Every time, the conclusions are the same, 'lives has been lost, lessons have been learned and this must not happen again', then it does. The most recent example being the Lucy Letby murders in which senior clinicians were made to apologise to Lucy Letby for raising serious legitimate concerns, allowing her to go on to commit more murders in plain sight.

As to racism in the NHS, here's a recent example:

Quote:

A culture of bullying and racial discrimination has been found at a hospital trust, according to an inspection report.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) said there was a bullying culture across Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) Trust, with many staff too frightened to speak up. Sarah Dunnett, the CQC's head of hospital inspection, said they were told of bullying incidents that had not been addressed.

"We were concerned about the culture of bullying across the trust with many staff being too frightened to speak up," she said.

Speaking to the BBC, one black staff member said the trust had lost talented staff as a result of its failings. "There's like a barrier at management level and most of us just can't get through it no matter how good we are," they said. Another black employee, in her 50s, said: "Many of my fellow black colleagues feel we have been exposed to this 'hidden pandemic' of constant race discrimination.

"If we speak out, we're the problem."

The report highlighted several other areas in which the trust, which runs Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre (QMC) and City Hospital, needed to make changes.

Inspectors found the board was not working effectively together and had poor relationships, with some executive directors often "working in silo".

• This is not the first time the trust has made headlines for the wrong reasons. Maternity services at both hospitals are set to be the subject of an independent probe after an investigation found dozens of babies have died or been left with serious injuries.
• In December 2020, the CQC rated the units inadequate, criticising staffing and poor leadership.
• In June 2020, Unison raised a group grievance for 36 employees, most of them nurses, on a QMC coronavirus ward who, the union claimed, had been told their "lives would be made hell" if they complained over conditions.

They said some leaders "lacked integrity", focusing on the trust's external reputation rather than addressing challenges. They also highlighted that many leaders were unaware of issues identified during an inspection of the trust's maternity services, which had existed since 2018.

End quote.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-58560841

The Lucy Letby Murders - Senior clinical ‘whistle blowers’ were disciplined and made to apologise to Lucy Letby:

The first five murders all happened between June and October 2015 and - despite months of warnings - the final two were in June 2016. BBC Panorama and BBC News investigated how Letby was able to murder and harm so many babies for so long. They spoke to the lead consultant in the unit, Dr Brearey - who first raised concerns about Letby - and also examined hospital documents. The investigation reveals a catalogue of failures and raises serious questions about how the hospital responded to the deaths.

Dr Brearey says he demanded Letby be taken off duty in June 2016, after the final two murders. Hospital management initially refused.

The BBC investigation found:

The hospital's top manager demanded the doctors write an apology to Letby and told them to stop making allegations against her

Two consultants were ordered to attend mediation with Letby, even though they suspected she was killing babies.

When she was finally moved, of all things, Letby was assigned to the risk and patient safety office, where she had access to sensitive documents from the neonatal unit and was in close proximity to senior managers whose job it was to investigate her.

Deaths were not reported appropriately, which meant the high fatality rate could not be picked up by the wider NHS system, a manager who took over after the deaths has told the BBC.

As well as the seven murder convictions, Letby was on duty for another six baby deaths at the hospital - and the police have widened their investigation

Two babies also died while Letby was working at Liverpool Women's Hospital.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66120934
(Letby's just been found guilty of yet another attempted murder.)

Quite enough for now, given that it's not really an election issue.

David.

 

[Chris152]

Now most of the hurly-burly's done with just the last obstacle to get over, I wonder to what extent the UK election is just so much fiddling with deckchairs - watching the news reports from the US this last week, I can't understand why the Democrats can't find a leader more likely to win. Seems Biden/ the Democrats must be on course to lose. Given the fragile world order as it is at the moment, I dread to think what comes next for all of us if that's the case.
Anyway, off to the polling station to put my mark in the correct box. Now, if I could just find a photo ID...