Monday 1st June 2015

[ohsocynical]

Golden handcuffs deal for Scots GPs costs £19m a year

http://www.express.co.uk/scotland/58140 ... ly-doctors

[Eric_WLothian]

Paul Waugh ‏@paulwaugh 37m37 minutes ago
I'm told @YvetteCooperMP will visit Scotland this week as part of national tour Wants to meet voters who switched to SNP. #firstintolionsden

Panorama at 8:30 tonight (except Wales):

She's been called 'The Most Dangerous Woman in Britain'. Nicola Sturgeon's party is riding high in Scotland, sending a tartan army of MPs to Westminster, but what will the SNP's electoral success mean for the rest of the UK? Panorama goes behind the scenes with Scotland's first minister to investigate the rise to power of the woman who holds the future of the union in her hands.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05y3dkc
OTT or what? Ultimately the future of the union resides in Westminster, with c600 unionist MPs. They've given up promoting Farage beyond his relevance, now they're starting on Sturgeon.
(Presumably it's not in Wales in case it gives PC ideas )

[rebeccariots2]

Holyrood officials give bizarre excuse for not revealing SNP letters to rich and famous
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/polit ... se-5799400" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I wouldn't call the excuse 'bizarre' - as it's a very commonly used get out when departments don't want to disclose information. But it's definitely thin - as the Daily Record points out it's very easy to search by name in email systems.

[Eric_WLothian]

Golden handcuffs deal for Scots GPs costs £19m a year

http://www.express.co.uk/scotland/58140 ... ly-doctors

There's something of a crisis:

ALMOST a third of GPs are planning to retire in the next five years, according to a survey which has heightened fears of a ballooning recruitment crisis.
A poll of more than 1800 family doctors in Scotland found 32per cent want to step down by 2020, and a further 14per cent would like to move to part-time working.
With some surgeries already struggling to fill vacancies and a shortage of young medics wanting to train in general practice, there are repeated warnings that Scotland is facing a severe GP shortage.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/heal ... .123183706

There may be an unintended consequence of additional payments (depending on any strings attached) - they'll be able to afford earlier retirement.

[PorFavor]

Goodnight, everyone.

[ohsocynical]

Goodnight, everyone.

Night PF

[citizenJA]

Goodnight, everyone.

Goodnight, PorFavor

[Eric_WLothian]

Holyrood officials give bizarre excuse for not revealing SNP letters to rich and famous
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/polit ... se-5799400" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I wouldn't call the excuse 'bizarre' - as it's a very commonly used get out when departments don't want to disclose information. But it's definitely thin - as the Daily Record points out it's very easy to search by name in email systems.

It can be done easily in 'Outlook' (if they still use it). From Outlook 'help':

1. In Mail, on the Folder tab, in the New group, click New Search Folder.
Keyboard shortcut To create a Search Folder, click CTRL+SHIFT+P.
1. From the Select a Search Folder list, click Create a custom Search Folder.
2. Under Customize Search Folder, click Choose.
3. Type a name for your custom Search Folder.
4. Click Criteria, and then select the options that you want.
The Messages tab contains criteria on the message content or properties, such as sender, keywords, or recipients.

The More Choices tab contains criteria on other message conditions, such as importance, flags, attachments, or categorization.

The Advanced tab enables you to make detailed criteria. Under Define more criteria, click Field, click the type of criterion that you want, and then click the specific criterion from the list. Then in the Condition box and the Value box, click the options that you want, and then click Add to List. Repeat for each criterion that you want to add to this search folder, and then click OK.

5. Click Browse, select the folders that you want to be searched.
6. Click OK to close each open dialog box.

Can I have the £600+ that the FoI would allegedly cost, please?

[rebeccariots2]

Former Ukip parliamentary candidate Matthew Smith sentenced to community service after admitting electoral fraud
http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/for ... _1_4095035" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Smith had originally worked for the Conservatives but fell out with the party after leaving acrimoniously in 2011.

His guilty plea means that Smith will now have to stand down as a county council member.

His barrister Piers Wauchope said that he would automatically be disqualified.

Mr Warchope also pointed out that the false signatures on the nomination paper included names of Smith’s own family members and others were names of Ukip members and supporters, who would all have been pleased to sign the nomination paper in question.

“Had they been asked to sign a form, they would have done so.”

Under election rules all candidates standing in council elections must obtain 10 nominations from members of the public.

That makes it worse ... was he just too lazy to ask them then?

[LadyCentauria]

AndrewSparrow ‏@AndrewSparrow 4m4 minutes ago
Sounds as if the British bill of rights could end up looking remarkably similar to Labour's Human Rights Act - http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blo ... 2b412965c5" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

It's all sleight of hand with Cameron and the Tories. I expect the same with the Europe negotiations as well. He'll come out with something that's really what we've got now and proclaim it's something wonderfully different. Just depends how many people will be fooled by it.

Such as the existing right of any country, through its Sovereign Parliament, to vary laws on the entitlement of nationals of other EU countries to receive Social Security/Welfare benefits, especially where other EU nationals' claims on the host country's system are causing an excessive burden on the host country's system. Social Security and Welfare are reserved powers, to all effects and purposes. Guy Verhofstadt talked about this on the BBC's Hardtalk programme, which I saw last night:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... for-europe

[RogerOThornhill]

Interesting.

Tim Loughton ‏@timloughton 3h3 hours ago
Can confirm that I intend to stand for the chairmanship of the House of Commons Education Select Committee but there is tough opposition

Think he'd be pretty good - didn't seem to be of the wonky ideas sect that has infested the DfE. Had hoped that it might go to Pat Glass but if it has to be a Tory then Loughton would do.

[frightful_oik]

I don't know if this has been linked yet, as usual, apologies if it has, to me though it sums up the ridiculousness and frustration of politics in this country at the moment, Michael Sheen is sublime at the moment, if ever you want to give up the day job Mike, and in darkness, Port Talbot is a dead ringer for Manhattan, what with all the lights from the steel works...


http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/20 ... -democracy" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

He's so right. The fundamental thing now should be 'What do you believe in?' and then create the policies that support that.

I love that article. It sums up my views exactly.

[RogerOThornhill]

Front of tomorrow's DT...



"You know that £8bn we promised? That's right...you won't be seeing that"

[tinyclanger2]

am thinking (on the angle front) land ("farming") subsidies.
there has be some mileage with, just as an example, Scotland's top 50 landowners pocketing on average 3.3 million each across the ten years from 2000 to 2009

[rebeccariots2]

Front of tomorrow's DT...



"You know that £8bn we promised? That's right...you won't be seeing that"

I would say unbelievable. But it isn't - it's all too believable. They just keep getting away with this stuff.

[rebeccariots2]

One of my fellow canvassers is a nurse. What really gets her ... really really gets her ... is that some of her colleagues vote Tory.

[citizenJA]

The wind & rain are cold.
I love you, people.
Thank you for your continued patience with me.
Goodnight.
cJA

[rebeccariots2]

Sam Coates Times retweeted
Neil Henderson ‏@hendopolis 22m22 minutes ago
TIMES: Tories split as Cameron refuses to cut benefits #tomorrowspaperstoday #BBCPapers

Sam Coates Times ‏@SamCoatesTimes 5m5 minutes ago
Exc: Osborne may delay announcing some of £12 bn welfare cuts to Autumn spending review, rather than July 8 budget

Sam Coates Times ‏@SamCoatesTimes 5m5 minutes ago
DWP have been modelling child benefit changes: which Cameron ruled out during election campaign. So starting afresh

[RogerOThornhill]

Sam Coates Times retweeted
Neil Henderson ‏@hendopolis 22m22 minutes ago
TIMES: Tories split as Cameron refuses to cut benefits #tomorrowspaperstoday #BBCPapers

Sam Coates Times ‏@SamCoatesTimes 5m5 minutes ago
Exc: Osborne may delay announcing some of £12 bn welfare cuts to Autumn spending review, rather than July 8 budget

Sam Coates Times ‏@SamCoatesTimes 5m5 minutes ago
DWP have been modelling child benefit changes: which Cameron ruled out during election campaign. So starting afresh

Election night reaction..."Shit. We managed to win. All that stuff in the manifesto was just nonsense. How on earth are we going to do it all?"

[LadyCentauria]

The wind & rain are cold.
I love you, people.
Thank you for your continued patience with me.
Goodnight.
cJA

Goodnight, @cJA and all who've toddled off already. Dream sweetly and sleep deeply

[refitman]

The wind & rain are cold.
I love you, people.
Thank you for your continued patience with me.
Goodnight.
cJA

'Night cJA

[LadyCentauria]

Sam Coates Times retweeted
Neil Henderson ‏@hendopolis 22m22 minutes ago
TIMES: Tories split as Cameron refuses to cut benefits #tomorrowspaperstoday #BBCPapers

Sam Coates Times ‏@SamCoatesTimes 5m5 minutes ago
Exc: Osborne may delay announcing some of £12 bn welfare cuts to Autumn spending review, rather than July 8 budget

Sam Coates Times ‏@SamCoatesTimes 5m5 minutes ago
DWP have been modelling child benefit changes: which Cameron ruled out during election campaign. So starting afresh

Election night reaction..."Shit. We managed to win. All that stuff in the manifesto was just nonsense. How on earth are we going to do it all?"

The other place has an article on it by Nicolas Watt:

The intervention by Downing Street suggests that Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, is heading for a showdown with George Osborne over his planned welfare cuts before next month’s budget.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015 ... ld-benefit

[thatchersorphan]

Phillip Jones ‏@Phillip_D_Jones 2m2 minutes ago

i am beginning to think that if @Ed_Miliband could get 35 MPs to nominate him he would win the leadership contest.

[LadyCentauria]

Watched an excellent documentary/magazine-programme on Aljazeera (English), earlier, called Mapping Greenland's Glaciers. It was about the work of the NASA team who are, as in the programme's title, mapping the glaciers of Greenland and comparing today's findings with the maps and other data which they collected ten years ago. The pilots say that they've watched striking changes in the ice cover every year, which are clearly visible to the naked eye even before the scientists gather their data on ice-coverage, thickness, temperatures, albedo effect, and much else. It's not yet available on their catch-up or youtube channels but will be repeated on Tuesday morning at 9.30 (and at other times during the week. Aljazeera is on Freeview channel 133, and the HD channel is on Freeview channel 108. Well worth watching!

[thatchersorphan]

Benefits cap will leave 'tens of thousands' of children surviving on £3 or less a day http://www.mirror.co.uk/money/benefits- ... ct-5803187" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Labour lists weekly survey has a question on the benefit cap, but not sure of the link to it - anyone who did the labour leadership thing last week should auto get emailed with it.

[thatchersorphan]

http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/blog/system-crisis" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; contains link to the full report also

[LadyCentauria]

Lord Falconer of Thoroton gave an excellent speech in the House of Lords, on Monday, which can be found at 3.45 in Hansard, in which he was scathing of Gove and his plans for repealing the Human Rights Act, replacing it with a British Bill of Rights, and 'ensuring that the Supreme Court is Supreme' – which it already is. A part of his speech I quote here:

It is difficult to know what [The Lord Chancellor] means by “enhancement” when all the proposals so far produced by the Conservatives involve a reduction in rights.

Further, his reference to the Supreme Court being “genuinely supreme” betrays a misunderstanding of the current position. The UK courts are the final arbiters of what UK law provides, including human rights law. There is no appeal from what the UK courts say UK law is. The UK Supreme Court has been clear that it will not treat itself as bound by decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and has departed from European court decisions when it has disagreed with them. So both in form and in reality the UK Supreme Court is supreme, and if the European Court of Human Rights finds the United Kingdom to be in breach of the convention, the European court cannot overrule either the UK courts or Parliament. All the European court can do is to determine whether there is a breach of the convention—and if there is, it is for the UK Parliament to decide how to remedy the breach. I am glad that the Government have paused and I urge them to abandon these proposals. If they do not, my party, the Commons, this House, and maybe even Fat Boy Cameron will resist them.

My edit replaces the word 'he' with the job-title of Mr. Gove, he being the subject of the first sentence. Or do I mean 'object'? It's late!
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publi ... known/153/

(Slightly aside: I'm sure you used to be able to find speeches in Hansard by date and time, or by date and speaker, and generate a link directly to that point in the record. I can't see how to do that now, when finding a speech which is still included in 'today's debates'.)

Lord Falconer's was not the only powerful speech in the debate and I recommend that anyone with the time (or the ability to speed-read) should see what was said; or you could listen to it, or watch it, instead. Parliament TV's layout has changed and Monday's session appears under 'forthcoming events', just to confuse. Once you've gone to the events calendar and chosen Monday 1st June, you do find an improvement; the player now gives you the option to select 'audio only', and the slider's timer starts at the time at which the debate started so you can now slide that along to 15.45.00 to land on Lord Falconer, rather than starting at 00.00.00 and having to do the maths yourself. It'd be better if they used the same version of telling the time as Hansard – but, hey-ho! Here's the link to the session:
http://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/fb ... 4892736121