Today’s economic results were worse than anybody expected. The world economy is growing faster, and we are back into recession territory. And the Chancellor’s explanation – the wrong sort of snow.

A senior PCT manager writes to tell me that they have estimated that the new GP Consortia – costing about £25-£35 per patient to run – will mean between £7-£10m for their area, whilst the current PCT costs at most £7m.

The Oldham and Saddleworth by-election is intersting for all sorts of reasons: the first since the general election; the first where two Coalition parties have fought each other (or not); the first sitting MP to be expelled by an Election Court for lying about an opponent (and let’s hope that doesn’t catch on or we’ll […]

The allegation is being widely circulated that Manchester City Council announced it’s 2,000 job losses today as a “spoiler” for the Old & Sad bye-election. Sadly, nothing so expertly Machiavellian has happened….

A crazy day after Manchester City Council confirmed that it was to make 2,000 staff redundant. A few minutes after I’d heard about on the Today programme just after 7am, they rang up to ask me to comment! Apart from a Today interview, which you can listen to here, I’ve done interviews for BBC Radio […]

I was surprised to hear David Cameron admit on Sunday’s Andrew Marr Show (BBC TV) that “no-one gave us a mandate on how to run a coalition”.  How true, how very, very, true.

Last week the Public Administration Select Committee published a hard-hitting, extremely blunt, report criticising the way in which the Government’s (non) bonfire of the quangos has been conducted. Well worth a read – one of the most intriguing suggestions was that many quangos should be turned into executive agencies, which for those of us who […]

I was amused, but also frustrated, to watch the media over Christmas get themselves into a tiz about whether the Government are “Maoists”. The Financial Times even went so far as to construct a sort of Mao-Metre for individual policies – amusing, but unfortunately a bad historical parallel.

I have been trying – and I confess failing – to try and get my head around a simple question: who owns (or rather will own) GP consortia? The legal status of these bodies may seem a bit pedantic, but it could have a fundamental affect on the dynamics of the New Model NHS. This […]

Toady’s economic results were worse than anybody expected. The world economy is growing faster, and we are back into recession territory. And the Chancellor’s explanation – the wrong sort of snow. Growth in the last three quarters has dropped from +1.1%, to +0.7% and now down to minus 0.5%. it doesn’t take a rocket scientist […]