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Any reforms of the NHS generate more heat than light in debate, and it's an area of service provision in which the usual rules sometimes don't apply; generally, Localists shy away from making simple pronouncements about health structures. Take the Localist tenet that services should be delivered at the lowest possible economic level - but would you rather have your triple bypass done by a surgeon in a regional centre who carries out the procedure twenty times a month, or one in a cottage hospital who does three bypasses a year? Reforming the NHS is a bit like making Gesso. One has to stir a bucket of Plaster of Paris and water constantly, not pausing for a moment, to achieve the thin cream required rather than the lumpy sediment that nature seeks.
So you'll forgive me if I abstain from pronouncing on NHS reform. I don't think it's the important Parliamentary story, anyway; that comes next week, when the Conservatives attempt to reform our rotten and corrupt constituency boundaries against the self-interest of the rotten and corrupt MPs of the Libdem and Labour parties. Watch this space.
Blogging may be difficult over the next couple of days as I'll be reliant on mobile phone alone.
I remember hosting a small party of London chums for a weekend in Suffolk some years ago. Amongst them was a City lawyer, and because he was 90% City and only 10% lawyer he was superlatively good company. However, he didn't translate well from the square mile to the empty quarter; he pitched up in cashmere City overcoat, cufflinks and black loafers, his only concession to the country being immaculate jeans. Clearly, a winter's tramp through the clay of newly turned fields was not going to be on the agenda, so we spent the time much as we would in London. In the pub, watching rugby.
I imagine Cameron's wardrobe being similarly limited to town suits, morning and evening dress, with some jeans, shorts and Boden polo shirts for the hols. As the Mail points out, he appears to be sporting the same pair of black town loafers for the Braemar games that he wore for his Tuscan holiday, and his brown suit with the patch pockets looks like Lord John circa 1978. Now those who know me will be aware I'm the last person to comment on men's fashion, but in a Prime Minister these signals do matter.
As a Cameron, he could legitimately sport his clan tartan, and thus signal to besieged and demoralised Scots Tories that he identifies with them. Not to take this obvious opportunity may signal the opposite - that he doesn't want to be seen as identifying with Scotland or the Scots, or even to draw attention to the gaelic derivation of his surname, the 'Cam' part meaning 'crooked' whichever way you translate the 'eron' part.
Alternatively, he could at least have bought a pair of brown brogues and a Barbour. Not to conform to the simple expectations of the country also signals that it doesn't matter, that rural folk are not a constituency worth wooing.
No, not snobbish or pretentious. The Prime Minister has a certain responsibility to conform to the simple courtesies of a diverse nation. We already have a Speaker who dresses like an end of the Pier ventiloquist and has made a mockery of his office. 'One nation' doesn't mean 'one wardrobe', Prime Minister.
Let's be clear that the UK doesn't have a housing shortage, London and the South East has a housing shortage. And this means we're not talking generally about building on greenfield sites, as attractive as this is to developers, but specifically on greenbelt sites. I'm sure that local housing pressures elsewhere in the UK can be met by the reuse of brownfield sites without despoiling the Chilterns, the Malverns, the New Forest, the Somerset levels or my own Brecklands.
John Redwood had half the solution when he asked why we were using premium rail routes into the centre of London for heavy steel-wheeled rolling stock; wouldn't it make more sense, he asked, to move the heavy rail termini to the outskirts and use these valuable inner corridors for rapid, rubber-wheeled, high capacity, computer queued light transit stock that could move millions of commuters about effectively and overcome overcrowding of both heavy rail routes and carriages?
The other half of the solution should be this; draw a 40 minute travel-time (by light mass transit) radius around London. Within this area, existing main line rail routes will pass through the greenbelt; between Gatwick and Victoria, Chelmsford and Liverpool Street and so on. A development corridor or ribbon two miles wide centred on the mainline, equipped with new stations and stops, through the existing greenbelt, will allow as much new housebuilding as anyone will ever need, with no additional pressures on the road system.
Too simple? Probably.
Back on 17th June, in the halcyon days of our glorious Summer, I wrote:
Our masters in Brussels would rather see the entire European economy stagnate and economic activity shrink to a dribble before they'll surrender, but the truth apparent to all is that no nation will be able to grow and flourish again whilst the cancer of debt repayment gnaws at its back. Default is the only realistic option for Greece, Ireland, Portugal, perhaps even Spain, perhaps even us. The banks will howl and whinge as they collapse, but we can come through it. C'mon. It's time to take the hit and get on with it.
I gave it until September. C@W has a superb post and informed comments on the 'End Time', and Richard North likewise over at EU Referendum.
Short term, as the banks crash, the ATMs will be out of action, so we need to keep a wad of ready cash in the house. Plus a fortnight's worth of dried and tinned foods, at least 2 x 25l water containers and of course the Tilley lamps and wind-up radio. Plus the means to prevent someone taking it all.
Some years ago on the leading boaty forum, a retired senior officer in a position to know confirmed that many of our most senior civil servants keep yachts fully stocked for an ocean passage and ready to go at several locations in the South-West. I joked at the time that they'd never get beyond the M4. Now I'm not so sure.
There's a quite interesting piece in September's Vanity Fair that attempts to link the German obsession with poo and their behaviour during the financial crisis, and a paragraph that's pure Joseph Heller;
“There had never been any innovation in German banking,” says Enderlein. “You gave money to some company, and the company paid you back. They went [virtually overnight] from this to being American. And they weren’t any good at it.” What Germans did with money between 2003 and 2008 would never have been possible within Germany, as there was no one to take the other side of the many deals they did which made no sense. They lost massive sums, in everything they touched. Indeed, one view of the European debt crisis—the Greek street view—is that it is an elaborate attempt by the German government on behalf of its banks to get their money back without calling attention to what they are up to. The German government gives money to the European Union rescue fund so that it can give money to the Irish government so that the Irish government can give money to Irish banks so the Irish banks can repay their loans to the German banks. “They are playing billiards,” says Enderlein. “The easier way to do it would be to give German money to the German banks and let the Irish banks fail.”
Of course the Hun, being a terrific hoarder, has some 3,400 tonnes of Gold in the cellar of the national Bank, whereas the UK has, er 300 tonnes left after Gordon's manic depredations.
There are few lobbies as loud as the claret-toned bray of the banks, and few ears as receptive to the molar drawl as Boy Dave's. The CBI have revealed their bias, and the Midlands SME owner must now wonder why he subscribes to a body that seems to be little more than a branch of the British Bankers Association. The split of the retail arms from the buccaneer operations of the banks is both inevitable and necessary - it is, after all, the investment side that holds some $10 trillion of worthless derivatives, and care must be taken this liability stays out of the retail side of the books.
Vince Cable and George Osborne must stay their course on this and Dave will have to let his chums down this time.
