David Miliband does not understand the Liberal Democrats or their voters

The Labour leadership race has highlighted the sheer hypocritical views that the five contenders have.

They voted for the illegal war in Iraq to take place and for the billions of pounds to be spent wasted on that same war and yet now they want to be leader some of them have distanced themselves so far away from the decision you would think they voted with the Liberal Democrats at the time.

More recently we have seen the blatant lies and sheer hypocrisy about the reorganisation of NHS24, being replaced by NHS111, despite this being a Labour Party manifesto pledge both John Prescott and Andy Burnham went on the attack against the Liberal Democrats/Conservative coalition government.

They are taking people for fools in opposition in much the same way as they did in Government and unfortunately many people are still believing their shameful lies.

How do these Labour politicians live with themselves when they blatantly try to deny the last thirteen years when they were in government?

Well today we see David Miliband interviewed on Politics.co.uk and already we see he has no understanding of the Liberal Democrats nor of their core supporters.

Mr Miliband believes Lib Dem tensions hold the key to bringing down the government, but his comments may come as a surprise to the party's left-wing figurehead Jon Cruddas, who endorsed David Miliband over Ed Miliband last month.

Jon Cruddas said just last month;

"Attacking the Liberals is wrong. There's a danger of us spraying too much lead across the forecourt and not really thinking about how we need to regroup,"

Liberal Democrats and their voters know that they disagree with some of the announcements made by the conservative part of the coalition government, however they also know that things would be much, much more right wing if the Liberal Democrats were not part of this coalition government.

900,000 people will no longer pay income tax, the ending of child detention and reform of the political system with a referendum on fairer votes for starters.

Going into the election the Liberal Democrats made clear that they had four key priorities: fairer taxes; a fair start for children with extra funding for disadvantaged pupils; a comprehensive clean up of our politics, including a fairer voting system; and a green, sustainable economy.


Thanks to Lib Dem involvement, the Coalition Government will deliver on each of these.

There are also a large number of other Lib Dem policies and pledges that will now begin to make a real, positive difference to people’s lives because of our role in the Coalition Government.
These include everything from rolling back the surveillance state and giving people back their civil liberties, to prison and NHS reforms, fairer pensions, the ending of child detention and the scrapping of the third runway at Heathrow.

You can read more about what the Liberal Democrats in Government have achieved HERE.
 
So, David Miliband we will not take lessons from you with your 13 years amnesia problem nor will you split our Party.

John Prescott, Labour and the truth about NHS Direct

On Saturday I blogged about the breaking news that the coalition government were planning to scrap NHS Direct and asking whether this in fact was the right decision.

Well it looks like the proposed changes will only improve the current service - straight away the new 111 service will be free to call unlike NHS Direct now, you pay for that privilege.

Where NHS Direct can only highlight other services, when you call NHS 111 you will be able to book a GP appointment or go straight through to local out of hours services. If you do need an ambulance the 111 service will cut out the need to go through the 999 service assessment.
Since Saturday the story has moved on a great deal, and I do hope and appeal once again that in future the Minister or Ministry responsible either announce these major policy shifts through parliament or at the very least announce it to the media in a proper manner.

Labour, especially via mouthpiece John "I want to be treasurer of the bankrupt party" Prescott have seized on this and are setting up websites claiming to Save NHS Direct.

In fact yesterday I ended up having a spat with John Prescott on twitter.

Leadership contender Andy Burnham MP said at the weekend of the announcement;

"The health secretary's statement will stun people across the NHS.

"It is yet more evidence that Andrew Lansley is on a vindictive mission to break up the NHS, ruthlessly dismantling services before alternatives are in place."

The reason Andy Burnhams comments, and the argument I used with John Prescott is that Labour are NOT being honest with the voters (again).  Actually they are being complete hypocrites.

That is not a comment I make lightly.

On page 35 of this year's Labour Party manifesto, sits the following paragraph:

"A new, national 111 telephone number will make non emergency services far easier for people to access and book."

Would the Labour government if still in power have had this 111 service running alongside NHS Direct?

Of course not!

Labour were planning to scrap NHS Direct themselves and replace it with a 111 service.

Yet Andy Burnham accused Andrew Lansley of being on a "vindictive mission to break up the NHS" when he would have done exactly the same thing himself.

John Prescott argued with me on twitter that "40% of NHSD staff are nurses - 1400. Your plan = replace them with call centre advisors. Ours was to change number."

What John Prescott omits there in his answer is that 60% of the staff are call centre advisors already.

They are taking people for fools in opposition in much the same way as they did in Government and unfortunately many people are still believing their shameful lies.

Labour leadership hopeful Andy Burnham MP wants to scrap the NHS

Andy Burnham MP is plodding along in the Labour leadership race but not really attracting the media attention of the brothers grim.

Here is one way to do, get in a photo with the message "end the NHS".

In fact Andy Burnham was standing in front of a van with the message "defend our NHS", another reason why someone should always check the photos first......

John McDonnell withdraws from Labour leadership battle

John McDonnell has withdrawn from the Labour leadership battle with a matter of hours before nominations close.

John McDonnell had just 16 nominations at the time of his withdrawl, less than half the number required to go through to be included on the ballot paper.

John McDonnell is hoping that by adding his 16 nominations to the 11 that Diane Abbott already has that she can then get the final 6 needed to go through onto the ballot paper.

Ed Balls, David Miliband and Ed Miliband all have at least the 33 nominations required and Andy Burnham is now claiming that he also has 33 nominations.

Explaining why he was pulling out of the race, John McDonnell said:

"I stood for the Labour leadership as the candidate of the Left and trade union movement so that there could be a proper debate about Labour's future in which all the wings of the party were fully represented.

"It is now clear that I am unlikely to secure enough nominations and so I am withdrawing in the hope that we can at least secure a woman on the ballot paper."

Yesterday, acting Labour leader Harriet Harman said she was nominating Diane Abbott because she did not want to see a "men-only" contest where there has been wide spread criticism within the Labour party of the similarities between the perceived three main candidates, Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and David Miliband, who are already through to the next stage of the election - because they are all Oxford-educated men in their 40s, who worked as political advisers before becoming MPs and then cabinet ministers.


Let's see if Diane Abbott pulls it off.

Labour targeting of cancer victims shallow and appalling

When I was scanning the blogs and online headlines this morning, as I do every day, I saw Jeff Breslin over at SNP Tactical Voting had done a good post about this with a link to the story in The Times and I was so angry after reading it, I could not actually write this blog post until now.

The Labour Party have done a mailing to around 250,000 women, many appear to be cancer victims or who have only recently had scans for various forms of cancer reading all of the different newspaper stories covering this.

Labour have strongly denied that the mailshot was specifically targeted at cancer patients, the rest of the story is covered in The Mirror;

"cancer was sadly so prevalent in society that some of the 250,000 people were likely to have suffered from it."

Honestly, what a load of crap, they must have known what they were doing, in an election you do not randomly write to a quarter of a million women voters and hope the message might just resonate!

If the Labour Party have targeted women with cancer, or have been screened for cancer then that is utterly outrageous and Health Secretary Andy Burnham should apologise for the Labour Party stooping so low and campaigning in this manner.

As the Liberal Democrats Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb said;

"However, it's all too easy for the Conservative Party to dismiss this campaign as nothing more than dirty tricks.  Andrew Lansley cannot escape the fact that Tory policy to remove the NHS targets means people have no guarantee of access to cancer services within any timeframe."

Personally, I think Gordon Brown has to intervene here to find out the facts and then act accordingly.  In my view this mailing was nothing short of shallow and appalling.

As I know from painful personal experience with my Mum being diagnosed with and then shortly after passing away with pancreatic cancer only last year, cancer hits people and their families hard, and having a political party write direct in this manner can only cause upset. 

If Mum had received that mailing oh my god would Gordon Brown have known about it.

When I was Vince Cable's Agent in 2001 we did a general health mailing that was specifically about HPV screening, and we wrote to men and women, but every single household, not a small selective group and remember at that time during the actual 2001 election campaign, Vince's first wife, Olympia was losing her 13 year battle with breast cancer.

It does appear that Labour may have scored an own goal on this one.