PM’s Questions – The Animals In The House

 Politics  No Responses »
Mar 102010
 

If you are unlucky enough to catch our representatives in parliament during Prime Minister’s questions (Wednesday lunchtimes), you are probably aware of the MPs making loud noises during the questions and answers. When a new election looms, the noise gets louder to the point that many ordinary MPs find it difficult to ask their questions and any answers become difficult to hear.

Personally I’m of the belief that shouting and screaming whilst someone else is trying to speak is impolite in the extreme; the MPs come across as a bunch of loud-mouthed louts who would rather shout down an opponent than actually take part in an intelligent debate. In other words the kind of yob that would be thrown out of any decent debating society for disruptive behaviour.

It is quite possible that their behaviour is a great deal better in ordinary debates, but we do not see those as often as we see PM’s questions. Part of the image problem that MPs have is probably down to this loutish behaviour.

The Speaker of the House is supposed to keep control and stop the worst excesses of this sort of behaviour, but he fails to do so properly – simply because he isn’t prepared to exclude the noisiest members for their behaviour. Perhaps it is about time he did ?

The Effect Of Social Media On The UK Election

 Politics  No Responses »
Mar 062010
 

I have just seen a news item on TV about what the pundits think the effect of social media (Twitter, Facebook and the like) will have on the upcoming UK election. The general consensus was that it probably will not make much difference, and I’m not going to disagree.

What was amusing though was that they seemed to have concentrated in what the politicians might say in their tweets or on their Facebook pages – missing the point of social networking entirely. Most of us do not pay much attention to what politicians say online on various social media sites; we stick to what our usual contacts say. It is what they say that may influence how we vote in elections.

Of course just like “water cooler debates”, it will not have a great influence over how we vote – it is just one more piece of information.

Assisted Suicide Is Not Euthanasia

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Feb 252010
 

Today we’ve had the news that the UK’s prosecution service has issued guidelines on where people will be prosecuted in cases of assisted suicide. Basically people won’t be if they assist someone provided they stick to certain conditions. Fair enough. But there’s a bit of a problem here – we’re in danger of allowing some groups of people who wish their life to end to be allowed their wish and others not to.

Part of the problem is the use of the phrase euthanasia which is mistakenly believed to imply “putting down” those people who are in dire straits with or without their consent. In particular people are worried that euthanasia opens the door to killing those who are inconveniently lingering. Such killings have occurred throughout history and are probably occurring today.

Assisted suicide is not euthanasia – the key is the word suicide – it is an active decision by someone to end their life. Ordinary suicide is of course legal (at least now), but assisting someone’s suicide remains illegal. So anyone in extremis who needs help in ending their life needs to find someone who is prepared to undertake the risk of prosecution to help out.

There are two problems with this. Firstly it limits the availability of assisted suicide to those who do have a friend or lover prepared to take the risk. Not everyone has such a close relationship with someone else, so we are essentially saying that such people have no way out of an intolerable situation – is that fair ?

Secondly, as assisted suicide remains illegal, it is something that is carried out stealthily in private with no oversight. It is easy to see that there are any number of possible abuses here – murder could in some circumstances be disguised as assisted suicide. And we certainly do not want to make murder any easier to get away with.

What we need is to legalise assisted suicide and require some form of procedure to make it more open and subject to oversight. In particular we need to ensure that other avenues are explored – we need to ensure that people do not opt for assisted suicide when other options are available.

Today’s announcement was essentially the easy way out – it doesn’t give those in favour of assisted suicide what they want and neither are those opposed happy about it. Whilst legalising assisted suicide will also not make those opposed happy, they need to understand that keeping it illegal won’t stop it.

Stafford Hospital – Now We Know

 Politics  No Responses »
Feb 242010
 

Today the report into the failings at Stafford Hospital was published. I admit I have not read the report, but the gist of the findings have been widely publicised in the media today. Even without reading the report, there are some immediately obvious outcomes.

It is clear that the management of Stafford Hospital failed abysmally to fulfil their basic duty of care to the patients. Some have criticised the government targets for distracting the management from their core responsibilities. That is rubbish – it does not take a genius to realise that no matter how many targets you are meeting, if patients are dying because of inadequate care, then you are failing in your duty as a responsible manager, and as a human being.

Personally I believe there is a clear case for the former Chief Executive, Martin Yeates to be charged with corporate manslaughter. If he had not been in charge and someone else with basic common sense had been running the hospital, then several hundred patients would not have died.

Those campaigners complaining about the report being a total whitewash (even before they had the chance to read it in many cases!) might want to consider bringing a private prosecution against Martin Yeates – even if there is little chance of him being found guilty (corporate manslaughter is weighted in favour of the corporations), dragging him through the courts is the beginning of some sort of punishment.

The other obvious things is that although the NHS did finally spot what was going on at Stafford Hospital, is that the NHS needs to dramatically improve the monitoring of hospitals. To some extent this has already been done, and the government has announced another inquiry into monitoring of hospitals.

Tory Election Bribe #1 – Bank Shares

 Politics  No Responses »
Feb 212010
 

Pssst … want to make a quick bundle ?

Just vote for the Tories and they will let you buy shares in the Banks we own for cheap. Sounds good doesn’t it ?

Sounds like a bloody stupid idea to me. To sell the shares cheaply, the government would have to make an enormous loss on the money it used to bail out the banks in the first place. Now saving the banks was probably the right thing to do, but so would be hanging onto those shares until they can be sold at a reasonable profit … or at least not a disastrous loss!

It’s all very well offering to throw money at the electorate to increase the chances of your party winning, but surely the government finances are in no state to start throwing money away like this ?

Perhaps when you are considering selling your soul … sorry I mean vote, for a handful of bank shares you should think a little more broadly than your wallet.

The funny thing is that the Tories seem to want to encourage the less well off (even students!) to invest in shares. I’m not sure what planet the Tories are from, but it probably isn’t the best idea to encourage these people to gamble with their money (which is what share investments are – a gamble) before they have a sensible amount of savings.

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