My comments below on Andrew Lansley's Times interview on NHS spending seem to have provoked the ire of some readers. I think this is one of those occasions when as a blogger you realise that you can't please all of the people all of the time. Not that I try very hard. A similar thing happened on Wednesday when I called PMQs for Gordon Brown. A funny thing for a supposed CCHQ mouthpiece to do, wouldn't you say? My comments on Andrew Lansley were rather moderate compared to what Ben Brogan or Fraser Nelson have had to say today.
I've written more about this issue in my Telegraph column tomorrow. And I make no apology for calling it as I see it.
Good to see Iain. Your blog goes up in my estimation when you are honest about a mistake on our side. If you see everything with just one eye the neutral voters will soon drift away.
ReplyDelete"When in a hole, stop digging"
ReplyDeleteIain - when I see a shovel being offered on Ebay "location - Tunbridge Wells", I'll know that you've learned something from the past 24 hours!
I'll offer you £5. It'll give my under-employed GP wife something to do with all the free time she now has to fill.
I have to admit I am utterly bewildered by this announcement. I would mention that it is common knowledge that for demographic reasons health spending is likely to have to rise even with great improvements in efficiency so I would be wary of context.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless an astonishing thing for a Conservative to say . How will this be paid for ? ....What on earth is going on? Have they entirely lost the plot Iain ?
We didn`t expect a hare running backwards ...
Gordon clearly won PMQs this week and most people think he at least edged it last week. Whereas you insisted au contraire contrarily.
ReplyDeleteIain
ReplyDeleteThe truth, whether you or me like it or not is that NHS spending will indeed have to go up BIG TIME. How on earth do you think Ronny Cohen and his chums are going to get their easy 100% safe, hard grafted and bribed for, easy profits from?
We all know that the NHS can be run more efficiently and maybe the system has to be radically changed, but thats not the point. It just an't going to happen and, would cost many billions just to change the system, even slightly. It would also take many years before anyone would see any benefits. This is not good for politicians. Who very much LOVE the jam now and even more LOVE the bills to come in much later.
We cant even stop immigration because the British born people are now so uneducated and lazy, half of our hospitals would have to close within a week.
We have an aging population that have paid for the NHS all their lives and now want what they have already paid for. This crazy system may have been a socialist establishment plot to enslave and impoverish the British people.
But its far to late to do anything about this massively evil rip-off now.
We are indeed buggered and have no one really to blame but ourselves, and past generations of extremely dishonest Labour socialist and Conservative socialist politicians.
They could all plainly see the writing on the wall. But would rather drive around in the slick limos and indulge in the expense accounts then tell the people the truth and get rotten eggs thrown at them.
I agree, this announcement to increase health spending was made when most people agree previous increases have been wasted and when other public services, partiuclarly the military, are pitifully underfunded.
ReplyDeleteToday there was an announcement that GPs are hugely overpaid, or that was the gist of it. And here is a party that should believe in controlling public spending promising to increase it further. My old schoolfellow George Osborne should either retract or resign.
No apologies are needed but I suggest you need to develop a bit more of the scepticism that professional journalists, who are being lied to or at any rate misled much of the time, acquire about everything that comes their way.
ReplyDeleteHowever I appreciate that you are working in real time and that often there is no time for you to check and double check what you write before you publish in the way that nephew Robert [Hutton] has to do before he can publish an item, e.g. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=apniLBQQvAhM
The question you must ask yourself is: are you writing news [checked and believed to be true] or gossip [newsworthy if true and fun to read even if not]? Many readers, now that you have acquired a reputation, will take your gossip and comment as news.
Anyway, keep it coming!
greetings!
ReplyDeletethe interesting thing about all of this for me is the lack of a Labour response; in the past the rebuttal unit would have been all over this like a rash - they would have been using the " hows it going to be paid for line" straight away, followed by the "senior conservatives condem extra health spending" line once people such as Iain et al come out and criticise Andrew Lansley. (Nulab were always good at having things both ways!)
The almost complete lack of response has been quite baffling - almost makes you wish for the Halcyon days of Alistar and Peter
re Rylandoyle
ReplyDeleteI find this interesting too . Labour are now the party actually doing the part privatising of the English NHS ( not the celtic ones , oh not them !).
GP surgeries are being privatised regularly , also much surgery at private centres . This process has only just started .
re Lansley - the great unsaid is that the extra cash will come from private sources eg tax relief could easily unleash a wave of money
MR Lansley is an utter blithering idiot. The /last/ thing this country needs is more money splurged.
ReplyDeleteIf we end up with another bloody Labour govt in 2010 thanks to asshats like Mr Lansley then he deserves to be slowly tortured to death, preferably by Americans as they seem to be good at it.
Chris Paul, Gordon has never 'clearly won' ANYTHING. (Notably an election).
Zorro