When bookkeepers rule the world

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NHS ' is heading for underspend'
The NHS looks like it has underspent by nearly £500m last year after making cuts amid intense political pressure to avoid a deficit, early data shows.
This obsession with 'balancing the books' (the cretinous Health Secretary has staked her job on achieving it) has led to totally unnecessary cuts in services.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said the final figures would be published shortly. But she added: "The NHS ended last year [2005-6] with a deficit of over £500m. "This was unacceptable, and we introduced new rigour and discipline in order to put the NHS on a sound financial footing for the future."
Utter bollocks. Only someone with no idea of what goes on in the real world would talk such crap. The overspend was about 0.7% of the total budget. Put another way. If you had an extension built and the estimate was for £15,000 I don't think you'd lose much sleep over getting an extra bill for £105, roughly the cost of replacing a broken sealed-unit.

Meanwhile, as shown on a recent TV programme, a lack of foetal monitors has led directly to deaths and injuries during childbirth which cost the NHS £25 million in compensation last year alone.




Perles before swine

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Guardian - No regrets

Of all the neo-con warmongers Richard Perle is probably the most obnoxious and the most sinister. In this interview with Suzanne Goldenberg he comes across as positively certifiable.
For Perle, it seems, war is something that happens to other people. It is also a condition about which ordinary mortals - those not privy to classified reports and reliant on newspapers and television for information - may not necessarily be qualified to hold an opinion. He says he learned that lesson in 1974 when he visited Saigon as the clock was winding down on the US presence in South Vietnam. Perle says he was braced for scenes of gore after following press reports of the conflict. "The war was still going on, and I went to several places in Vietnam. I expected before arriving, as a newspaper reader, to see a moonscape when I arrived, to see devastation everywhere. I arrived in Saigon and apart from the sandbags in front of some government buildings you wouldn't have known there was a war going on. Life on the surface was completely normal," Perle says. "I didn't see the war."

Just a year after his visit, America would make its ignominious exit from Vietnam, helicopters lifting off from the US embassy in Saigon. But Perle says he never felt like he was in a real war zone. Small wonder then, perhaps, that 30 years later, he had no reservations in advocating war on Iraq, and was unable to imagine what might come afterwards.
And Iraq?
Are the Iraqi people better off today than they were under Saddam? "That's a very temporal question," he says.
If they put a noose around his fat neck I'd happily pull the lever.




The Blitz ll (Revenge of the coach driver)

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The Sun - We will light them on beaches!
Glyn Bowden stopped German tourists snaffling all the sunbeds on a holiday beach — by setting fire to their towels. Coach driver Glyn, 55, took drastic action after holidaymakers he took to Italy complained at the German guests’ selfish antics. First, he staged two dawn raids to remove the towels left to “book” all the best sunbeds at Viana Marina on the Italian Riviera.

That failed to deter the Germans so, on the third day, he gathered up the towels, poured diesel over them, and set them alight.


Nee, nah,nee,nah!

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90,000 police officers caught speeding are 'let off'
Only 354 of 90,000 police caught on camera speeding or jumping red lights last year were punished. Last night forces were accused of double standards after it emerged that only one in 200 officers was fined or given points, compared with 84 per cent of ordinary drivers. In a quarter of the cases the police cars had their blue lights flashing, suggesting officers were attending an emergency. However, nearly all of the rest had the slate wiped clean by senior police, saving them from three points on their licence and a £60 fine.

Managers have the discretion to cancel tickets if an officer can persuade them they had a good reason for speeding, such as pursuing a suspect or trying to find a witness. But critics point out motorists enjoy no such rights and that if they want to challenge a fixed penalty notice they must go to court. They also say the disparity between the figures raises the suspicion that thousands of officers are being let off even if they do not have a valid excuse for speeding.




WOT?

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TRAC - Immigration Enforcement: The Rhetoric, The Reality
Despite repeated claims by high officials of the Bush Administration that fighting terrorism has been the central mission of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) since it began operating, the data show that in the last three years a claim of terrorism was made against only 12 (0.0015%) out of 814,073 individuals against whom the DHS has filed charges in the immigration courts...

Despite the constant official talk by ICE officials about its war on terrorism campaign, the data on national security and terrorism charges clearly show declining long term trends back to 1992. The incidents of 9/11/2001 and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security appear to have had little discernable impact on these trends.



War trolls

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James Wolcott on Mr Pastry:
In or out of mating season, John Bolton in full swollen umbrage is never an edifying spectacle, which makes it all the more puzzling that producers insist on providing this diplomatic reject and rage-aholic with a peddler's license to lie, bluster, and fearmonger.

We Americans are now accustomed to the likes of Bolton in full coconut-heaving mode but the Brits have been less exposed to neoconservatism in the malignant raw, and Matthew Carr's review of Bolton's recent perf on the Today show read like a report filed from behind a one-way mirror at a psychiatric clinic.




Finger on the pulse

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John Redwood’s Diary The £48 million divorce
The London lawyers have done it again - a blockbuster divorce settlement after just three and a half years of marriage. I wonder how big the legal fees were on all that? (emphasis mine)
Three and a half years of marriage?
Google, Mr Redwood, always remember to Google.
Mr Charman met his wife, Beverley, at school. During their 29 years of marriage he built up assets of more than £130m in the insurance market and became the eighth richest businessman in the City of London. During that time Mrs Charman, also 53, gave up her job to raise their two children, who have now left home. The couple separated in 2003 and Mr Charman went to live in Bermuda.
Seems like they split up three and a half years ago, old boy.

UPDATE: My comment on Redwood's blog failed to get published so I sent a second one explaining in simple terms how to update his post with a correction. This morning I get an email from him in which  he claims that he was actually referring to two cases and had accidentally missed out 'a few words'. He's corrected the post now and is 'sorry if it annoyed' me but he was 'away from the computer when the mistake was made'!. Only a bloody politician could send a response like that. Sheesh.



You head east and we'll try and cut her off at the pass.

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Rachel from north London: Cyber-stalking: Your help is needed

A number of bloggers are running with this story and even publishing 'wanted' posters on their sites. As disturbing as this woman's behaviour has been I can't help feeling the response is all getting a little over the top. The woman in question has been arrested and convicted. She has now absconded and is being sought by the police.

The photograph provided on Rachel's site is out of date and may not be a decent representation of what she looks like now. The reality is that most of the bloggers displaying this woman's picture wouldn't recognise her in the street if they bumped into her. What are we supposed to do anyway? Call the police everytime we see a woman in a library or internet cafe that resembles the stalker?  I can see the police getting pissed off with that pretty quickly.

The police should issue a current picture (they have one but are overcome with Portugese style reticence about publishing it) to libraries and internet cafes in the areas where she is suspected of being. Although, as she is an avid reader of Rachel's blog, she may well be much more careful where she posts from in future.

Clearly this woman has a mental health problem, or she's a 'mad bint and 'nutjob' if you prefer the description used by DK. I'm not sure that the wild west approach is the most appropriate but the wanted poster makes a nice set when coupled with that other feel-good picture of Madeleine McCann.

Update: I see there is now even an animated gif wanted poster available.

I even made one of my own...



I just called to say...

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At DEFRA they send emails to the staff with tips on how to be 'greener'. One piece of advice is not to send greetings cards. Even delivery by hand is frowned upon, it's all those trees dearie. Apparently the advice is to phone in your good wishes. I suppose when granny is seeing out her last days she can always scan her old BT bills to remember all those birthday wishes she got from the grandkids.

I suggested to the person who told me about this that he should snatch every  magazine, newspaper or paperback from the hands of any DEFRA 'green' he spots. Think of the trees, the trees.