Tag: “Andrew Lansley”

There has been a touch of the ‘I had that David Cameron in the back of my cab’ to the Prime Minister this week. Street parties for the Royal Wedding … all them Labour councils (allegedly) stopping people having fun, elf’n’safety blahdiblah … then he takes on the issue of the lack of black students [...]

First of all, thanks for all the responses to yesterday’s blog asking for examples of frontline cuts to mental health services. Thanks also to Mark Brown, editor of One in Four, for sending me a brilliant description of why ‘the frontline’ is different in mental health services from other aspects of NHS care. He and [...]

Another fabulous day weather wise, spent so far sorting out a contract on an overseas speaking engagement; doing an interview with Andy Gray and Richard Keys on their new Talksport show; recording the voice over for a little film on Ian Botham’s charity exploits at Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research; going for a painfully slow run [...]

As health secretary Andrew Lansley stumbles through one of the most humiliating weeks of his career, at least his Cabinet colleague Caroline Spelman can boast her own little place in history as a result. The environment secretary is the first member of the coalition Cabinet to have become a verb … as in ‘Lansley’s just [...]

It’s fascinating to watch liberal commentators say how blindingly obvious it is that military action should be taken to deal with a fascist dictator killing his own people (aka Gaddafi) … in many instances the same liberal commentators who remain so angry at the action taken to deal with a fascist dictator who had been [...]

It says something for the insularity of the UK media that The Guardian makes such a big deal of the idea of special reports from our European neighbours. Too often, the editor rightly says, the countries of Europe are reported purely in terms of their relations with Britain. This was something of a bugbear of [...]

David Cameron was always quite fond of criticising the centralising Number 10 system which operated under Tony Blair. So it is highly amusing to watch him steadily shift towards the kind of centralising Number 10 system which operated under Tony Blair. He appears to be realising that whilst it is all well and good in [...]

Well done to those councils which felt Michael Gove was exceeding his powers when bringing the Building Schools for the Future programme crashing to the ground. Yesterday’s High Court ruling was a victory for them, and even though Mr Gove retains the ultimate power over which schools get rebuilt, hopefully the powerful slap on the [...]

The coalition are doing things for which they have no mandate. Scrapping NHS Direct is the latest. They are getting away with it for now, but with proper argument and campaigning, this and other decisions will hurt them later in this Parliament.

As the World Cup withdrawal symptoms abate (hugely helped by that abomination of a Final, over which the Dutch should stop whingeing about the ref and go kick someone their own size) I tuned into Newsnight and was pleasantly surprised by the depth and nature of the debate on the Tories’ health reforms. I say [...]