Master Weasel

Author's Note: The author of this post is not The Devil's Kitchen

A timely reminder that a politician with blonde floppy hair and a semblance of a sense of humour is still a politician.

Boris Johnson's supporters justified the piece of illiberal fuckwittery that is the banning of the drinking of alcohol on public transport, saying "he is carrying out a key manifesto commitment".

Remind me. What was the key-est of all of Boris' manifesto commitments? The flagship policy, if you like? Was it perhaps:

• The bendy bus is unsuitable for London's streets, they are twice as dangerous as non-articulated buses and have almost three times the rate of fare evasion. I will phase out bendy buses and run a new competition to find a 21st century Routemaster that has full disabled access, runs on clean fuel and has conductors.

Are, we, after less than two weeks, starting to see the Boris Team weaselling out of this particular manifesto commitment? Er...

The Mayor's plans for a new generation Routemaster may not happen, his new transport boss admitted today.

Kulveer Ranger, Boris Johnson's director of transport policy, said that a design competition would be launched - but if no bid was good enough they would look again at the pledge. He added that although Mr Johnson is very keen to bring in a new-style bus in place of bendy buses, they would not press ahead with the idea for the sake of it.

...

But in a departure from Mr Johnson's policies, Mr Ranger said the new design would not necessarily be "hopon, hop-off" with a conductor, as on the old Routemasters.

He said: "Whether or not we have a conductor depends on the design of the bus. We want people to be creative...If we find there are initially no suitable bids we will review [the policy]."

So, to translate: There's a good chance there will be no new bus and, even if there is, it is very unlikely that it will be one that could reasonably be described as a 'Routemaster'.

It's the oldest trick in the book of representative democracy. Wait until you're elected, then tell the people who elected you that your policy is unworkable, despite the fact that you've been aware of this all along. Not a whole lot the voters can do about it now, is there?

Boris Johnson: Disingenuous cunt.

More: Boris Watch

What has Boris been smoking?

Boris has obviously not been smoking the liberal weed because, as Iain Dale reports, he seems to be on his ban-wagon again.

“London has a higher rate of alcohol-related crimes than any other region in England and I have been told time and again that people are scared of taking the Underground late at night because of aggressive behaviour by drunken yobs. Too many people find themselves forced to sit opposite someone swigging from a can of lager and engaging in behaviour that is intimidating or worse. I want everyone’s journeys to be safer and more pleasant"

And Iain does seem to approve.

As a liberal Conservative I instinctively recoil from banning things. However, is it liberal to allow tube users to be abused by drunken louts? No, definitely not. I think this policy will be welcomed by many as long as it is policed properly.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Is it liberal to allow anyone to be abused by drunken louts? Shouldn't we therefore ban alcohol entirely?

And "this policy will be welcomed by many as long as it is policed properly"? If the drunk and disorderly laws were being policed properly, then the drunken louts would not be on the Tube in the first place.

I mean, how many people get pissed whilst actually on the Tube?

Time's up, Postman Prat

Alan Johnson is up to his neck in corruption allegations that seem to have merit, as the Sunday Times reveals:

"Johnson held a private meeting in his officers with Dr Reg Race of Quality Health, a firm that has been paid millions of pounds to conduct surveys for the NHS. A long-term Labour donor and former MP, Race had earlier given £5,000 to Johnson’s deputy leadership campaign."

There were no civil servants present at the meeting and no minutes were kept. Alan Johnson's beard grows longer, especially with this coming on the back of claims of dodgy donations to his deputy leadership campaign.

A trend is emerging that our leading politicians are rather keen to dish out juicy state contracts to the very people who are funding their parties. The failing internal market that Labour have forced upon the NHS seems to be constantly undermined by serious problems with the way in which contracts are handed out unfairly and corruptly.

GPs are rightly becoming stroppy as they are being bullied into a corner by a regime that shows no evidence that it has the interests of patients at the heart of its reform. The government is systematically destroying primary care and dishing out contracts unfairly in the process. I just wonder how many of those private firms, which are busy hoovering up tax payer's cash by 'winning' various lucrative state contracts, have had off the record meetings with our masters from Whitehall? I wonder if money has somehow made its way from these health care firms to fund out politicians' jollies, possibly via third parties?

Porkies Mr Johnson?

The graph shows the number of reported deaths as a direct result of Clostridium difficile in recent years, hardly an encouraging trend; especially when one considers that there is evidence suggesting that some trusts have illegally ordered doctors to lie on death certificates, thus covering up the true extent of the problem. This would be embarrassing for any country, however this is happening in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

Alan Johnson claims that:

"To suggest that in this particular incident, this reflects what's happening in the NHS across the country is absolutely wrong," he said. "There are nurses and clinicians across the country who have dealt with the targets... but kept the highest safety standards."

The Healthcare Commission's report rather contradicts Mr Johnson:

"The investigation into the outbreaks at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has thrown up a number of similarities with the findings of our previous investigation into outbreaks of C. difficile at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, part of Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust. Both trusts had undergone difficult mergers, were preoccupied with finances, and had a demanding agenda for reconfiguration and private finance initiative (PFI), all of which consumed much management time and effort. They also had poor environments, with many dormitory style wards and few single rooms which could be used for isolating patients with infections.

In both we observed unacceptable examples of contamination and unhygienic practice. Additionally, the impact of financial pressures was to reduce further already low numbers of nurses and to put a cap on the use of nurses from agencies and nursing banks. There was unrelenting pressure to reduce the number of beds.

Thus, both trusts had very high occupancy levels, could not manage with fewer beds, and so had to open 'escalation' beds, often at short notice and in unsuitable environments, without proper support services and equipment in place and, by definition, without permanent staff. The effect of all this was to compromise seriously the control of infection and the quality of clinical care. While it should be noted that improvements have subsequently been made at Stoke Mandeville, it seems unlikely that these similarities are coincidental. We are concerned that where trusts are struggling with a number of problems that consume senior managers' time, and are under severe pressure to meet targets relating to finance and access, concern for infection control may be undermined."

There are clearly major problems here that go right up the chain of command, all the way to central government. Undoubtedly the local management were grossly negligent and must be held accountable for their actions or lack of them, however to deny that the government's policies are also to blame for this systematic problem is nothing but dishonest denial.

As James Le Fanu puts it in today's Telegraph, the malignant over interference of successive governments has resulted in hospitals being run from Whitehall and not running themselves. Whether public or private, the fact that hospitals have no freedom whatsoever to run themselves is the real problem here:

"The Health Service does not need ever more new-fangled schemes of "provider competition" and "practice based commissioning". What it needs is to return to the system when hospitals ran themselves."

An avoidable tragedy

This case involving the incompetent handling of an outbreak of Clostridum difficile in Tunbridge Wells has been splashed all over the newspapers this morning. It is easy to criticise the Hospital Trust for their mismanagement of the situation and the staff concerned for their role, I would argue that the majority of the blame lies with the central agencies involved that include the Department of Health and our politicians in power in Whitehall. The slimy Alan Johnson says:

"There is no excuse for what happened at this particular trust."

This is because our political leaders want to see all the blame dished out locally, if any corporate manslaughter charges are brought then central government will try to pin these charges locally. It typifies the central control and local blame culture of New Labour. I just have a few questions for those in power who have presided over the NHS for the last ten years.

• Who was enforcing the artificial financial deficits upon Trusts like Tunbridge Wells which meant they had to prioritise money over clinical safety?


• Who has privatised NHS cleaning, resulting in a minimalist shoddy cleaning service??


• Who has been centrally prioritising central targets over good standards in clinical care??


• Whose targets have resulted in the patient merry-go-round that means infections are easily spread, rather then being contained??


• Who has been privatising the NHS with PFI schemes that have resulted in a large decrease in the number of acute beds in the UK, meaning that infectious patients cannot be isolated??


• Who has devalued proper old fashioned nursing as a career, meaning that wards are now routinely short staffed of proper nurses to do basic nursing tasks??


• Who has reformed nursing, moving lots of good nurses from proper nursing into management and doctoring roles for which they are largely ill suited??


• Who is running the NHS at virtually 100% bed occupancy rates which means that the isolation of infectious patients is not possible??

The answer is rather obvious Mr Johnson. Your party has been in charge of this completely incompetent management of the NHS that values political propaganda gathering over patients' lives. For some reason I cannot see you kind learning their lessons, the blame will be deposited locally; while the same central diktats are held in place, thus virtually guaranteeing that this kind of tragic disaster will happen again.