Scandalous complacency in the Nationalised Hospital Service

Steve Barclay MP highlights yet another shortcoming in the Nationalised Hospital Service.

He mentions how some hospitals have better outcomes than others nearby. We might have expected the Department of Health to challenge NHS trusts where mortality rates should have raised a red flag, he remarks, and take them to task.

But apparently they don't. Sir Detail Nicholson told the Public Accounts Committee that looking into such alarming discrepancies was not his job but rather an internal matter for each hospital board.

An internal matter? We are talking here about life and death matters for the people the Nationalised Hospital Service is there to heal. Yet if your local hospital is delivering sub-standard performance, it is up to your local supremo whether or not they disclose it.

This is absolutely NOT an internal matter! As a model for how to run a Nationalised Hospital Service this is wholly unacceptable.

Where's the constant and open straining for excellence we are entitled to expect in return for all the money we put in?

Apparently it's optional.

As Mr Barclay writes

The NHS will only be at the forefront of health systems when patient choice is at the heart of its service. And for that to happen, patients need to know about the data on outcomes.

And it's a major scandal that we are denied that information. But in a nationalised monopoly it's not especially surprising.

Snooty French politicians on a pedestal

Reuters reports that French lawmakers diluted President Francois Hollande's plans to force politicians to declare their wealth and are pushing instead to penalize reporters who publish such information - which tells us a lot about French political culture.

The government wants to make politicians declare assets, income and potential conflicts of interest to an independent authority, after the budget minister admitted that he had been lying for months in denying he had a Swiss account.

The aim was to make the French political system one of the most transparent among western countries and restore voter confidence after the scandal.

But Socialists in the lower house have endorsed amendments stating that disclosures would only be made public to people on an electoral list who specifically requested the information.

People who published the details could face a year in prison and be fined 45,000 euros.

In other words, journalists could be sent to prison for writing the truth about politicians.

Some conservative lawmakers said they opposed the idea of media fines - on the basis that financial information might appear on the Internet rather than be reported by established media!

We are too grand for the public to know our business - and reporting it on that American internet would be just too de haut en bas.

Monsieur politician, if you don't want the public to know your business, don't put yourself up to be their ruler.

Global warming bollocks

As the government succeeded in resisting amendments to the Energy Bill, it took a step back from the UK's world-leading climate change targets, says Roger Harrabin. 267 idiot MPs still voted to set a "decarbonisation" target for the power sector by 2030.

That's the problem, isn't it. "World-leading" reductions in carbon dioxide emissions mean expensive energy and one of the first economies to price itself out of world markets and push its already struggling proles even deeper into fuel poverty.

But never mind them.

While pauperising British proles, cutting our carbon dioxide emissions would have no detectable effect on the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That's partly because our economy is about 2% of global economic activity, and partly because the increases in China's emissions dwarf any cuts we could make.

So forget it.

That's assuming the tiny amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere make a difference anyway. Given that temperatures haven't risen this century, that is questionable.

However, Ed Davey says global warming theory always predicted temperature standstills (really?) so it must be true, and in authentic 1984 style the media should suppress any objectors because The (allegedly liberal, how does that work?) Party Knows Best, even though we have no idea what evidence could count against global warming theory - presumably none, as The Party has made its decision.

Tread down the masses.

Nadine Dorries is self-obsessed, manipulative and trivial

Tell me something I didn't know, you may say.

All right, I won't keep you long.

Self-obsessed? Well she's actually spoken on television about her hair falling out. And we should be interested why?

But it's worse. It makes her cry every morning.

The Tory admitted she was “terrified” of her hair loss getting worse and likened it to having a mastectomy.

That's a highly insensitive exaggeration. Which she proceeds to compound with stupidity.

When men go bald and when they lose their hair, what they tend to do is have a mid-life crisis and go out and have an affair.

But what women tend to do is to actually go into their houses and lock the door, and there is help available, you can do something.

And on Sunday Politics she stressed that she had not benefited from her appearance on I'm a Celebrity "personally" - several times. She stonewalled questions about whether money had gone to her company.

An unattractive spectacle. I'm glad Nadine Dorries isn't my MP, and I would never vote for her.

Media reporting on shale is growing up

Media reporting on fracking has become more balanced now that it's shifting from greenie propagandists masquerading as environment reporters, and into the business pages.

Thus today the BBC reports on the latest estimates by IGas of what its shale licences in North West England might contain. The report is based on the company's news release to the Stock Exchange, and so doesn't come from Roger Harrabin's ghetto, but is written John Moylan, Industry correspondent, BBC News.

Thus greenie objections do feature, but not in the prominent way the Harrabin school prefers. Moylan writes:

The process of fracking also remains controversial - it has been blamed for causing earth tremors and there are concerns about water contamination and the large volumes of water required.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth has described fracking as "dirty and unnecessary", arguing that the UK should instead focus on investing in renewable energy.

Moylan's report is a professional job. Just one question.

Anyone can blame anything for anything. That doesn't make it "controversial".

I could say that the standstill of temperatures so far this century makes global warming theory controversial. Mere evidence wouldn't be enough for the BBC to describe global warming as "controversial", though.

As regards fracking, "concerns about water contamination and the large volumes of water required" have been debunked - not least by UK government agencies at an IoD conference in Lancashire last week.

Those concerns are discredited. So when will the BBC stop recycling them?

P.S. Bloomberg does a more traditional workmanlike job of reporting the story, putting the resources upgrade in context - "U.K. Natural Gas Reserves May Quadruple From IGas Shale Licenses". (h/t Nick Grealy)

Offensive broadcasting on BBC Radio 5

This about Clare Balding would be brain-dead and offensive in a pub. So why does the BBC think it's suitable for broadcasting on national radio, and then in a mealy-mouthed way apologise for "any" offence?

Doubtless no one will be sacked.

Yet another scandal in the Nationalised Hospital Service

Airports work seven days a week - but not our hospitals, apparently. Patients undergoing planned operations on the NHS are far more likely to die if they have their operations towards the end of the week, reports The Telegraph.

The research on more than four million patients found that those who had surgery on a Friday were 44% more likely to die following the procedure than those who had the same operations on a Monday - with the risks steadily increasing as the week went on.

Between 2008 and 2011 27,582 of the patients died within 30 days of their operation. The study found that death rates were lowest for patients having operations on Monday, increasing by around 10 per cent for each subsequent day of the week.

If we take Monday as the baseline - and why shouldn't we - then the excess deaths over a week are 22% higher than they would have been had Monday's figure been maintained.

Over the three year period of the study, that gives a figure for excess deaths of 6,096. Let's not pretend to exactness - let's say the part time Nationalised Hospital Service is killing over 2,000 patients a year this way.

Who knew? Apparently nobody. Nobody knew Friday is the most dangerous weekday for elective surgery. Not the Department of Health, not Sir Detail Nicholson, not the hospitals across the land who kill more people as the week goes on - though a survey of NHS hospital trust chief executives found that they "have significant doubts" that their hospitals are as safe at weekends as they are during the week. And they did precisely what about it? Does casual, uncaring incompetence pervade our nationalised hospital service?

The Medical Director of NHS England belatedly says that

We need to review how we can best provide services to patients seven days a week.

Oh well done. Isn't that a basic starting point for any in-patient hospital? The Patients' Association say

At the weekends there are less staff, less consultant cover and fewer diagnostic services available, so the chances of developing complications are greater.

The NHS still seems to work 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday when it needs to be responding to the needs of patients and the public.

Dim Dorrell thinks that "these figures are concerning. It is important that the facts behind these statistics are analysed and properly understood."

They just don't get it. In patient hospitals have to provide 24/7 service. Isn't that beyond obvious as a starting point?

Are we seriously to believe that none of the highly paid managers noticed, none of the dedicated doctors noticed their own performance records? If they did, it doesn't seem to have troubled them.

It's not that the Nationalised Hospital Service is a charity and we should be grateful for whatever it bestows. We pay for this nationalised monopoly. And it is killing too many of us.

Beginning of the end for the EU's green energy fiasco?

Good piece by Benny Peiser explaining how The EU’s "scheme of transforming itself into a green energy powerhouse is faltering" as unemployment rises and "its fantasy plan is colliding with reality".

The green folly was founded on two apocalyptic fears: firstly, that global warming was an urgent threat that needed to be prevented at all cost, and secondly, that the world was running out of fossil fuels, which meant that oil and gas would inexorably become ever more expensive. Both conjectures, however, turned out to be bogus.

But temperatures have stopped rising, competitors are benefiting from cheaper fossil fuels (partly thanks to shale), and enforced economic austerity has led to nearly 27 million jobless, even as European manufacturers announce plans to expand in the US, thanks to the cheaper energy. The renewable energy mandates and unilateral climate targets have become "prohibitively costly".

That unemployment is threatening the eurocrats' dreams. High energy costs won't help to reduce it - quite apart from making already disenchanted consumers poorer.

David Miliband calls for moonshine

David Miliband has used a speech in Dublin to criticise Nigel Lawson's case for withdrawal from the EU, notes The Telegraph.

He accused Lawson of "folly" over his claim that the eurozone is a unified bloc; said there was no European plot against Britain on financial regulation; and argued against the notion "that the single market is somehow cosseting British industry".

He concluded that "The answer is not less Europe, more Europe, or no Europe; it is a different Europe".

Why did no one think of that? Why has no one tried it? - not even one DM when he was foreign secretary.

Moonshine all round, waiter.

It's not just horrible Hodge attacking beneficial businesses

It's politicians who make the tax laws. If lawmakers don't like the results of the laws they have made, they should persuade government to change the law, not haul successful international companies in for show trials.

Apple has been publicly berated in the US senate. And over here the puffed up Margaret Hodge keeps showing off by abusing international companies in the Public Accounts Committee.

Into the fray steps Ed Miliband. As The Telegraph points out, he shows no signs of having thought around his populist soundbite on the subject. Does he exist in a leftist cocoon? Does he ever listen to anyone but his leftie pals? The Telegraph:

Earlier this week, it was announced that Fiat Industrial was relocating to Britain from Italy because of the UK’s more competitive low levels of corporation tax. Is that also a case of a foreign company avoiding tax? We await Mr Miliband’s answer with bated breath.

It's reminiscent of student politics when I was at university, with the lefties in a huddle talking only to each other, stirring their mates to ever greater indignation, never asking if there were any counterarguments. Mr Geek knows best, you see.

Guido reports a UKIP MEP has called on HMRC to investigate Ms Hodge's tax affairs. Doubtless she will protest that it's all legal - but that's what Google say, and that's not good enough for the sanctimonious and shallow Margaret. If the trust which holds her family company shares isn't tax efficient, why is it there? She usually falls back on claiming she has no idea why it exists. If she cannot understand her own finances, is she really in a position to pontificate about Google's?

Of course big spending politicians want to take as much tax from people and businesses as possible. Yesterday José Manuel Barroso said something must be done about ‘€1trillion in tax evasion and tax avoidance’ in the EU, reports Mary Ellen Synon. As she concludes:

Note that Mr Barroso lumped together the crime of tax evasion with the legal activity of tax avoidance. The jackals are circling here in Brussels, too. And tell me one of those jackals who doesn’t minimise his taxes.

And these self-interested, parasitical hypocrites think they have a moral right to lecture creators of prosperity, technological advance, and jobs.