Lunching over looking Whitehall and tea over looking St Paul’s Cathedral – it is a hard life but every now and then it is worth taking a day off – especially when it is your anniversary. Whilst it was a lovely day the light was awful, not to mention the lack of a clean window! No matter I thought I would take a couple of snaps anyway. The truth is that my wind wasn’t really in the game but what the heck.
This is a quote from an article I found in the New York Magazine and whilst it is specific to the current mess that the Republican party in the United States are getting themselves into over healthcare it is just as applicable to Britain. A few weeks ago I had a long debate with my good friend about the threats that the NHS faces under this Tory government. My friend argued that the way that the Government has allowed the social care mess to develop is the model that would be followed to destroy many of the founding tenets of the NHS. I disagreed and my argument is that no Government of whatever colour can get away with changing the NHS in any real sense. As has been proved time and again when any change is introduced, no matter how worthy, people will oppose it. An example of this would be the protests about centralisation of paediatric heart services after the Bristol baby scandal. It doesn’t matter that most people would ever be effected by the changes or that they would probably improve the chances of the child’s survival – it is a closure of a local service and the people really care about that.
I was thinking about this when Anne Widdecombe went completely off topic on the This Week show and started to bang on about reforming or replacing the NHS. It is very easy to call for grand commissions or reviews so that we can come up with a new NHS for the 21st century. This may well be the best way forward when trying to meet exponential growth in demand with finite resources but just ask the congressmen and women who have been holding meetings in their individual states this week what it is like to defend changing people’s health care provision. It is very easy to tweet about professional protestors, I don’t believe that is the case, but when the government, any government, wants to really stir up troubles for itself it tries to change health care provision. I suspect the President of the United States may well be starting to learn that lesson around about now. You can build as many walls as you like but don’t you take away my little Johnnie’s Asthma treatment!
So what is the way forward? I personally haven’t got a clue, nothing new there you may well rightly mutter to yourself, other than I do believe that the NHS does have to change and probably radically. This will take time and a lot of patience but I don’t think it will happen and I suspect we will end up like the USA where the healthcare system is about a fifth of the total GDP ($3 trillion to $16 trillion) – currently in the UK it is around about a 16th of total GDP (£120 billion to £2.6 trillion). If this is the case then goodness only knows what will have to be dropped to pay for this.
Such is life or is that death?
What are we to learn from the two by elections that were held yesterday (23/02/2017)? Well I am sure there will be a lot of mendacious spinning by all sides some of it might be true but most of it not worth the hot air that was expelled by the talking heads. This being said the one clear signal is that UKIP are in serious trouble. Stoke on Trent Central, (wherever that might actually be as Stoke on Trent as a place doesn’t as such exists) was one of the most Brexit constituencies in the country and yet THE brexit party wasn’t able to make any gains over the general election result. What is that I hear in the wings the fourth (or is that fifth? I have lost count) coming of Nigel? Perhaps.
Other than that the most interesting lesson is that it probably confirms what we already knew…Labour are in a right mess and yet not such a mess though that because they won in Stoke with a prominent remain candidate. I am still trying to work that one out as well but one thing is for sure they are in no fit state to win the next General Election and that is a real problem, not just for the Labour party but for the country as a whole as this places no pressure on the Tory government to try and move towards the centre but instead to move back to the right…now who called the unelectable Conservative party ‘the nasty party’? How times change.
I am still in my creative doldrums and nothing seems to be able to lift my mood. When in dire straights it is always worth knowing that Disney can offer some simple pleasures in this barren land. What a drama queen I am!
One of the joys (?) of photography is that you have to work with the available light. Yes you can enhance things in post production but without really good light you start to struggle. Yesterday at Stowe garden was a case in point. Whilst it was really quite mild the light was mostly as a flat as a pancake and this can be a problem. (Well sort of because flat light, even dull, is usually the best light to make images of flowers but that is a whole different story.) Only very occasionally did the light make an appearance between the thick grey clouds which proved a challenge. I’ll let you decide whether I met that challenge.
In an attempt to purge my system of all the political nonsense floating around this at the moment we visited the most political landscape in Britain – Stowe in Buckinghamshire – short of a busman’s holiday.
It only took one speech and the whole British political world suddenly fell apart. It didn’t matter that the speech was, to say the least, out of step with the current political temperature it was the underlying message that really got an awful lot of politicians worried. I’m back.
Nothing scares the political class more than a proven winner re – entering the political fray. Nobody who is active in today’s House of Commons has got anything like Tony Blair’s winning record and they know it. Three general elections three landslides. A big shark is swimming in amongst the minnows.
“IS THIS THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN BRITAIN?” the Sun headline screamed in 1998…I suspect there are many politicians today are thinking just that. You could almost hear Hello, Hello, I’m Back Again playing in the background. I’m sure he must be thinking if Trump can do it why not me? Just when you thought things couldn’t get any crazier.
Are we at one of those tipping points in history? I really hope not.
Everyday the world seems to get just a little crazier than before…little things and big things I just can’t keep up. No matter. This morning as a means to ease this craziness I made these two quick drawings…I present to you the Dauphin.
One Hundred Days…such a catchy number 100. Not 99 or 101 but 100. Everything is now broken down to 100 days. Of course the number is somewhat arbitrary and I believe it is meant to have some reference to the number of days in which congress is available to concentrate on governing before the start of the next election cycle. After this time minds start to wonder to the next election and political survival or advancement. How true this is I will leave this to the political scientists and American studies students.
Another way of looking at 100 days is that it ended with Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeat at Waterloo after he had raised an army and marched again. Just 100 days. So there seems to be something politically totemic about the number 100 either getting things done or marching to defeat – you decide which applies to Donald Trump. Personally I think that it is far too early to really judge what type of President Donald Trump is going to be but what we can say for certain is that some of his hostages to fortune are coming back to haunt him – not least his apparent inability to understand just what the President of the United States can and cannot really do. Couple this with a really bad live TV performance when the last thing he looks is Presidential there are serious causes for concern if you are a Trump supporter. (Anyone who has taken time to read this blog will know that doesn’t include me plus I’m not an American citizen so rightly Trump can ignore anything I write and why wouldn’t he anyway?)
I wrote yesterday that there is a whiff of Watergate floating around the Trump Presidency at the moment and I am sure we haven’t heard the end of Michael Flynn, especially if he is interviewed by the FBI – will he name names or will he take the bullet for his former boss? There must be grave concerns in the White House as to what he would do in those circumstances. Of course this talk of Watergate puts the wind in the sails of the White House press corp who have a few scores to settle with the Trump administration ? This is starting to play out like the second season of House of Cards is Mike Pence really Frank Underwood? Am I going a little crazy right now?
Back to the 100 days theme – what if if the British government added another 100 days before activating the Article 50 process? This would mean that the process would start after the Dutch and far more important French elections thus allowing the negotiators a much clearer view about how unstable the European Union would be. If the Dutch swing to the right and Le Pen is President then that will really change the dynamic of the European Union – perhaps fatally. An extra 100 days would also allow the slow burning Euro crises to either calm down or ignite in a way that could paralyse the European Union. In other words the first 100 days of the negotiations would effectively be wasted time anyway so why waste them? The answer to that is because it suits the British government’s self imposed timetable whether this is in the best interest of Britain is another matter – much like Brexit itself but that boat has sailed so we now have to make the most of the situation we find ourselves in. Giving ourselves an extra 100 days would also allow us to see how to factor in the Trump effect on our negotiating position.
So the number 100 does seem to have a strange political potency.
One final thought – I believe that Donald Trump will serve out his full four year term. I suspect that much of the current heat and fury may well blow itself out. However, I believe at the end of the four year period Trump will resemble President Carter rather than any of his more successful predecessors. I suspect he may have do a Hollande and not run again – however, this being Trump there is very little chance of that so he could really bring the whole thing down crashing on his and many Congressmen and women’s head – but then again what the hell do I know.
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