How health reform prompts innovation....

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A striking initiative from Christies:

Specialist cancer hospital The Christie Foundation Trust is considering plans which could see it open branded treatment and diagnostic centres across England, in partnership with a private sector provider.


If the proposal goes ahead, the Manchester-based hospital could become the first in a wave of high profile FTs to use joint ventures with the private sector to develop national “chains” of providers.

Chief executive Caroline Shaw said the NHS reforms offered the Christie the opportunity to use its joint venture with private hospitals group HCA International to expand beyond its regional boundaries.

And probably good news too!

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Dave, Nick - it's the economy that matters NOW not voting systems

This is beginning to get me annoyed. Look guys and gals, it’s pretty simple. The only thing that matters right now – the ONLY thing – is sorting out the government’s financial crisis before it comes over all Hellenic.

By all means have a nice fireside chat about voting systems in the down moments from sorting out the mess. But we don’t have to have another election for five years – yes, folks you’ve got five years to discuss and explore the options on voting reform.

But we don’t have five years to sort out the deficit, begin to reduce the debt, stabilise the economy, end the squeezing out of private enterprise and get the economy going again. I’m not sure we’ve the luxury of five months to do this urgent work – the markets, the lenders and the investors won’t give us five days if we insist on blabbering about voting systems rather than sitting down and working out what needs to be done NOW to sort the public finances out.

So Dave, Nick and all the other chatterers – shut up about voting systems and get on with sorting out Gordon’s mess – it’s why you were elected!

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We really do need to reform the POLITICAL system not the VOTING system

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I’ve said a few times that we need to look in some detail at our political system – not because it’s unfair but because it promotes the corrupting of politics and government. And the main fault here rests with the ‘professionalisation’ of politics. Back in February I wrote this about reforming our political system:

“And those concerns? Firstly there is the issue of accountability. Secondly there is the matter of selection. And third there is the question of what we elect MPs to do. If our parliament debates the arcana of voting systems it does so without answering the real questions around our democracy – how we allowed MPs to get beyond the law, why those MPs (or most of them) felt empowered to indulge in an exercise of blatant exploitation and why we allow them to create a special, privileged and protected position for the political party.None of these questions – how we hold MPs to account, how candidates are selected and what we the people want our MPs to do – are addressed by changing the system of voting. That merely creates the illusion of a substantial change without making the real changes we need. And those changes?

Direct election of the executive
Terms limits for all politicians at whatever level
The power of recall
Ending state funding for political parties
Repealing the Registration of Political Parties Act
Restricting all election campaigning to the promotion of individual candidates

Without these changes the voting system – how we choose – is of little or no relevance and will do nothing to restore public confidence in politics, let alone enthusiasm!”

…and this on electoral reform:

“So beloved reader, I want you to sit back, gaze at the flowers, light your proverbial pipe and think for a few seconds. That’s right – think. In all these great thoughts did “let’s have a new electoral system that works just like the current system but not quite” enter you mind? In fact did “let’s have a new electoral system” enter your mind at all?”

I’m not sure recent events have changed my mind.

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Thoughts from Bradford on strategies for a hung parliament

OK, so the worst happens and we get an inconclusive result on May 6th. What’s the deal and how should it be handled? These are some thoughts at least partly informed by ten years of sitting on a ‘hung’ council. Without going into lots of complicated constitutional waffle, the options are as follows:

A minority government formed by one or other of the parties either through getting the support of the second or (in the case of the party with the most MPs) one party abstaining

A coalition of some sort between two (or more parties) – these take a multitude of different forms from formal public agreements to slightly shady backroom fudges. “Governments of National Unity” and such like are merely pompous forms of coalition

The essence of negotiation under these circumstances is as follows:

1. Know your strengths and your limits. The Liberal Democrats have set out their stall which provides strengths but also provides the risk of reneging in order to secure a coalition arrangement

2. Understand the risks of coalition. Joining a coalition as a minority partner means being outvoted all the time – the party only has the ‘nuclear option’ of walking out

3. Appreciate that propping up a minority government can be bad for your popularity. The old Liberal Party discovered this in 1979

4. Don’t try to agree everything at the outset. Again the Liberal Democrats have set out a ‘five point plan’ that contains some specifics (a referendum on electoral reform for example) and some more vague assertions. There is scope for negotiation

5. The deal – whatever arrangement is preferred – is more important than either the detail or who gets which job. Saying Vince Cable has to be chancellor or William Hague has to be foreign secretary sits below the agreement on policy and legislative priorities

6. Be prepared to lose votes and for the party outside the arrangement to look for ‘wedge’ issues aimed at splitting the arrangement. And remember it’s better to lose a vote or have your proposals amended than to lose the ability to propose legislation and act on budgets

If there is to be such and arrangement what might a Tory offer to the Liberal Democrats look like?

1.Putting Gordon Brown back in Downing Street would be a disaster – people voted for change even though they weren’t sure what that change might look like

2. Propose an immediate public review of government finances aimed at identifying the scale of the problem, identifying savings and proposing cuts

3. Agree to a referendum on electoral reform (which I suspect is a non-negotiable Liberal Democrat position) but insist on support for proposals on European referendums

4. Set out a ‘localism’ package combining some of the ideas around ‘free’ schools, changes to local government financing, elected mayors and the system of local elections

5. Scope a “Big Society” plan that gives local activists and others greater power to get change, power or action

6. Insist on rolling back the database state being an absolute priority for action – the Tory deal breaker

Finally, we need to recognise that the hung parliament will mean less legislation since the government can never be assured of support. But also the circumstances place greater powers in parliament – with a smaller legislative programme from government there will be more time to get the detail right, to debate what is happening and for individual members to challenge the hegemony of the whip.

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Wednesday whimsy: Welcome to the sideshow...

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"‘Scuse me sir, but how do you get to Westminster?"

I mean what a palaver – hours of debate, millions upon millions of frantic words, thousands of yards of film...for what? Would we, as a result of this great debate, answer the character question? Will we – or rather you – as ordinary folk stand a chance of being better served? Will you be able to get rid if you don’t want or are failed?

Sadly the great panjandrums of electoral reform don’t answer these questions preferring instead to wrap themselves in Cardhousian knots explaining how the reform will make everything fairer, more equal, shinier and closer to the people.

So beloved reader, I want you to sit back, gaze at the flowers, light your proverbial pipe and think for a few seconds. That’s right – think. In all these great thoughts did “let’s have a new electoral system that works just like the current system but not quite” enter you mind? In fact did “let’s have a new electoral system” enter your mind at all?

Of course not. You’ve more important things to consider such as:

...your children’s education, your Dad’s heart problems, the fact that the pub at the top of the road is shut, where the mortgage money is coming from this month, whether you’ll have a job next week, the amount of money it now takes to fill the car with petrol, why the council hasn’t filled in all the potholes caused by the recent freeze, if you’ll get a holiday this year, the need to buy the kids new uniforms for school, how the chocolate factory closing will affect your business, how you’re going to afford to pay into the pension this month, how much it will cost to remove the tree that’s blocking all the light from the front room, what sort of do to have for your husband’s 50th birthday, how you’re going to get little Wayne to football practice at the same time as Susan has to be a dance class, if the woman next door is having an affair with the butcher, what day is is that the recycling bins are put out, whether the jazz is on at the club tonight, how your teams chances of winning tonight look...

a thousand things will scuttle through your mind scuffling for the limited spaces at “front of mind”. Not one of them is electoral reform.

Parliament, with each passing year, becomes more powerless and less relevant. Our MPs have transformed from representatives applying their thoughts and ideas to better government into glorified caseworkers. Debating the way they get to Westminster is at about their level – the level of student debate.

It’s a sideshow.

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We need to change our POLITICAL system not our VOTING system

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Today our politicians are obsessing about democracy – or rather about the process of democracy (which for most of is politicians is far more important than what we might mean by the idea of democracy). Central to the debate today will be occult arguments by anorak-wearing political obsessives about the precise mathematics of this or that system of voting. Nuances and semantics of the meaning placed on “proportionality” or “fairness” will be paraded – MPs will feel that, for once, they are engaged in a debate that matters. They are wrong!

So rest assured dear reader I am not going to lay out before you the whys and wherefores of each voting type, to discuss their merits or meaning, to ponder the significance of Arrow’s Theorem* or even to speculate on the motivations behind Gordon’s damascene conversion to the cause of the instant re-run. Instead, I propose to argue that the method of election is a matter of monumental inconsequence next to some other concerns.

And those concerns? Firstly there is the issue of accountability. Secondly there is the matter of selection. And third there is the question of what we elect MPs to do. If our parliament debates the arcane of voting systems it does so without answering the real questions around our democracy – how we allowed MPs to get beyond the law, why those MPs (or most of them) felt empowered to indulge in an exercise of blatant exploitation and why we allow them to create a special, privileged and protected position for the political party.

None of these questions – how we hold MPs to account, how candidates are selected and what we the people want our MPs to do – are addressed by changing the system of voting. That merely creates the illusion of a substantial change without making the real changes we need. And those changes?

Direct election of the executive
Terms limits for all politicians at whatever level
The power of recall
Ending state funding for political parties
Repealing the Registration of Political Parties Act
Restricting all election campaigning to the promotion of individual candidates

Without these changes the voting system – how we choose – is of little or no relevance and will do nothing to restore public confidence in politics, let alone enthusiasm!

*Although I do think that discussing the merits or otherwise of voting systems without understanding Arrow's Theorem and its proofs is like discussing a football match without considering the offside law!

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It's an election we want Nick...and we want it now!

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Nick Clegg clambered up onto the limited soap box provided by the Independent to get all radical and angry about the Queen's Speech.

...and what does he want?

1. Fixed term parliaments - so MPs get a solid four or five years to feather their nests?
2. State funding for politics - so all the aspirant MPs can get cushy jobs at party HQ
3. An electoral system designed to give the Lib Dems a permanent hold over Government
4. A House of Lords filled with still more washed up old hacks
5. A "code of conduct" for candidates - as if the electorate can't spot the scumbags

Nick, you're a nice man and they say you're very bright...but what people want is an election. And they want it now!

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