Liberal Vision

Mrs Clinton 1 – Lord Mandelson 0

Brits love conspiracy theories. UFO’s, ABCs (alien big cats), the Prince of Darkness is behind all-things governernmental.
Well this time it would seem that this is NOT a conspiracy. Lord Mandelson, who stuck two fingers up to the country when he returned to Corfu to hobnob with rich and famous for his summer sojourn, did have his mitts all over the the move to release the convicted Libyan bomber.

Last year it was dodgy Russians on yachts. This year it has been revealed that the Lord, between sunbathing and posh dinners at chez Rothschilds, did indeed meet with the son of the Libyan leader Colnel Gaddafi, (Saif al-Islam Gaddafi). Just days later meeting, hey presto, reports appear that the Libyan bomber may be released.

A link ? Noooo! Lord Mandelson’s spokesman said that whilst a meeting did take place subsequent reports of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi’s possible release from jail were “entirely coincidental“.

Just HOW stupid do they thing we are (er well pretty stupid now you ask! he’s shown that time and again).

But wait. Lord Mandelson may have met his match. Following the announcement of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi’s possible release, I have been told, and indeed it has been reported that, Hilary Clinton waded in. I do not know what precisely was said unfortnunately, but “over” and “our dead body” was almost certainly the sentiment, if not the actual words used.

So whilst Mr Mandelson may indeed be a highly effective dick-swinger,  it would appear that Mrs Clinton has an even larger and more influential one – and with considerable longer reach. Who would have thought that anyone would have ever written a post about MRS Clintons dick-swinging?

On a serious note, calls have been made for the Scottish parliament to be recalled to discuss this highly-charged matter. Time will tell if the Scots Lib Dem calls will be answered.

UPDATE: Following this post,  a friend (and respected journalist) contacted me to say  that he had been told by a trusted source that Mandelson actually came up with the idea of “moving fast” on this issue. Not, mind you,due to the ill-health of the Libyan – but because it might be possible to get a deal sorted whilst most MSP’s were away. Surely that is too Machiavellian? A conspiracy too-far – I hope!

USA’s “private” health care

It’s perhaps beneficial to my own health that I’ve been distracted enough to miss out on much of the frenzied debate on the US and UK health systems (both of which are flawed).

However, one point I’ve felt the need to contribute is as follows:

Almost 7 per cent of GDP in the USA is spent on healthcare by government.

Thus, the idea that the US system is a model of private provision is incorrect.

For entirely different reasons I ended up just now on a website entitled USASpending.gov.  On the homepage thereof is a list of the top 5 recipients of government spending. As follows:

1. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH CARE SERVICES
2. NEW YORK STATE DEPT OF HEALTH
3. TEXAS HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION
4. PENNSYLVANIA DEPT OF PUBLIC WELFARE
5. LOUISIANA DEPT OF HEALTH & HOSPITALS

Bold added.

The total received by the four health groups alone is around $55,000,000,000.

Just thought I’d share.

Vince Cable’s “solution” to high pay…another quango

One hundred “progressive” public figures – including our very own Vince Cable – have signed up to the Compass campaign for a new quango to tackle the “excessive levels” of “banking and executive remuneration”.

Their headline grabbing stat is that an employee on minimum wage would need to work for 226 years to earn as much as a top FTSE chief exec makes in one.

My reaction to this was “so what?” Can we at least be open to the possibility it might be worth paying 226 times as much to some people as to others?

The new Premiership football season started this weekend and wage differentials in our national sport are pretty enormous.

Players at many Championship and League One clubs will be on approximately £150,000 a year. Manchester City are offering their top transfer targets salaries of up to £200,000 a week. So, a Southampton, Leeds or Norwich player could have to play football for more than half a century to match John Terry’s earnings from a single season (and despite the obvious jokes about Southampton’s fall from grace, we are unlikely to be start fielding players who are beyond retirement age). Is this a moral outrage? I’m sure some of Saints’ hard grafting, but limited, players would be delighted to be able to appeal to a panel of “experts” and insist that their salary needed to bear some “maximum ratio” relation to Frank Lampard’s. Do Compass think they should be able to?

My heart soared – fleetingly – when I read in the Compass statement’s opening paragraph “The unjust rewards of a few hundred ‘masters of the universe’ exacerbated the risks we were all exposed to many times over.”

Unfortunately, they were referring to the private sector – not to Members of Parliament.

BBC reports total financial meltdown

Capitalism really is over, with the entire value of shares on the London Stock Exchange wiped out in Friday trading.

The NHS: a bit like my mad old aunt

No really, the NHS is just like my dear mad old aunt. Within the family we bitched about her amongst ourselves all the time. But let anyone from outside the family “have a go” at her and we would close ranks to defend her quicker than you could say “mad old bat”.

Likewise here we are, knowing that there are 100 things wrong with an old creaking system that we cant afford and have wasted way too much money on . Yet, our cousins across the pond have a dig about the NHS and suddenly we up in arms about it – Cameron and Brown shoulder to shoulder –  frothing at the mouth at the very idea that they might criticise our system. Come on if you think you’re hard enough!

Worse – when a British MEP dares to speak the unspeakable we are all but ready to have him strung up from the nearest lamp post. Some Tories are even calling for poor old Daniel Hannan (who has a bit of the madness about him, himself) to be kicked out of the party. Get a grip boys and girls he was hardly suggesting we take all GPs outside and shoot them. We still have such a things a free speech dont we?

Families are funny old things. Politics is even funnier. Give it a week or two and we will be back to complaining about MRSA, the number of penpushers in hospitals, the shortage of midwives,the postcode lottery on waiting lists, the cost of parking in hospital carparks, the mortality rate for cancer compared with the rest of the world and so forth…. Just dont let us hear anyone from outside the family have a pop.