Chris Whiteside's Blog

After Adrian Davis-Johnston's brilliant parody "I won't survive" in support of West Cumberland Hospital (for a reminder follow the link to http://savewestcumbriahospitals.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/adrian-davis-johnstons-i-wont-survive.html ) the campaign to re-open Whitehaven Civic Hall have released their own parody on Youtube. This one is called "We Want Our Hall" It is of course a parody of Queen's "We Want It All" and was written by  John Thompson and sung by Niall (Patty) Paterson.

“If, on the other hand, in the midst of difficulties we are always ready to seize an advantage, we may extricate ourselves from misfortune.”    ( Sun Tzu , The Art of War  )

Chancellor George Osborne writes ... "Today I set out the last Autumn Statement before the election with a clear message. Britain now faces a choice: we can squander the economic security we have gained with Labour's plans for higher taxes and higher spending, or we can stay the course with our long-term economic plan that is working. The deficit is falling Unemployment is falling The economy is growing "We do not shy away from the problems that remain unresolved in the British economy. But it's only by working through the plan that we can deliver more security for hardworking families. That's why we're clear: we must stay the course to prosperity. So please get behind our plan and add your name to our petition today. "Our long-term economic plan backs people who want to work hard and get on. It backs the aspiration to save, to work, and to own your own home. "Today I announced: We will overhaul stamp duty so that 98% of stamp dut...

Today the Chancellor will deliver this Government’s final Autumn Statement which will set out plans to boost business and invest in infrastructure in order to secure a healthier economy and a better future for Britain. During the Autumn Statement the Chancellor will announce plans to unlock £1 billion of support for small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) in order to build a stronger, healthier economy.   Small and medium sized businesses are the lifeblood of the economy, creating jobs and growth. Under Labour, businesses were stifled by too much regulation and high taxes.   That’s why we are backing small business with lower taxes and better infrastructure. We will continue to support people looking to set up new businesses by extending the Funding For Lending Scheme, guaranteeing up to £500 million of new bank lending to SMEs, and expanding the British Business Bank with an additional £400 million. We will also review business rates and look to create a modern ...

Mark Twain once said that a lie can get half-way round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. There was a very good piece in the Speccie on Saturday by Isobel Hardman about pictures which paint a thousand lies, and which you can read at http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/isabel-hardman/2014/11/the-menace-of-memes-how-pictures-can-paint-a-thousand-lies/ Goodness knows that there are many ways in which our MPs are imperfect. But let's restrict our criticisms of them to those which are true. A number of chain emails and pictures on twitter have been circulating which purport to show an empty House of Commons chamber when MPs are debating some important subject such as welfare reform, and a full one when they are debating some issue which affects MPs like their salary or expenses. Isobel Hardman checked one of these out. The captions on the pictures which purported to show a full chamber debating MPs expenses and MPs salaries were downright lies - she proved that the da...

“Nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth.”    ( Patrick Rothfuss  )

If we had a responsible opposition, then rather than taking a few cheap and inaccurate shots at George Osborne over public borrowing, they would be putting forward ideas to reduce it and giving him a very hard time. I think the present team of treasury ministers have done very well to manage the deficit down under incredibly difficult political and economic circumstances. I see no possibility whatsoever of the forthcoming election producing an alternative team who might cut the deficit faster than George Osborne will. But I think this country would be in a far better position if we had a real debate about how to cut the deficit faster instead of a few cheap gibes about it from people who anyone with two working brain cells knows would actually cut borrowing more slowly. Let nobody forget that the last government left behind a position where they were spending four pounds for every three pounds of revenue and a national debt on course to hit £1.2 trill...

"She had the unusual sort of mind that used logic and evidence to produce conclusions, rather than the other way around." (S.M. Stirling, of a character in his novel "Lord of Mountains")

The Government has unveiled the biggest investment in roads in a generation with a £15 billion Road Investment Strategy which will increase the capacity and condition of roads across England, to keep the economy growing and help people to get on and get around. This may include dualling the A66, as a feasibility study into the much-needed possibility of making that road a dual carriageway is included in the announcement. T he government announced today that it will take forward Rory Stewart MP’s campaign – for dualling the A66 – to the next level, by conducting a full feasibility study of the route. They have also agreed to the push from John Stevenson, the Carlisle MP and Guy Opperman, the Hexham MP, supported by Rory Stewart, for a study on dualling the A69 between Carlisle and Newcastle. The “Trans-Pennine” initiative by the Department of Transport will focus on creating a strategic link between the West and the East coast across the Pennines in northern England. The anno...

Yesterday was Advent Sunday and today the first of December, which means that the official run-up to Christmas is finally here after what seems like the longest "Jumping the Gun" lead up I can ever remember. This year Christmas products and themes began to appear in the shops in late September, before the end of the warm weather, before Halloween. I have no problem with retailers trying to use Christmas to sell things - they have a living to earn like everyone else - but at this rate they'll barely have finished Christmas in one year before they start trying to sell things for the next one. Nor do I have a problem with people spending some of their time and money on material things - we live, after all, in material bodies with material needs and it is a responsibility, not just a right, to look after those material needs for ourselves and our families. Yet a life lived for material things only is not much of a life, and I cannot think of a worse advert for materia...

In a couple of days it will be just five months to the 2015 General Election. Which is looking like the closest and most difficult to call of my adult lifetime. I agree with very little that Nigel Farage has said in the past few weeks, but when he said that nobody knows what is going to happen in the election he was pretty much right. Mike Smithson wrote yesterday on his Political Betting blog that "Until we can get a clearer fix on Labour in Scotland GE15 is almost impossible to call." He might as well have left out the first eleven of those words and stuck with the last six. It is overwhelmingly likely that either David Cameron or Ed Miliband will be Prime Minister for the early part of the next parliament and that is about as much as we can confidently predict. If people who would otherwise have voted Conservative turn to UKIP that will help both UKIP and Labour at the expense of the Conservatives and could potentially put Ed Miliband into Downing Street - in...

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”    ( C.G. Jung  )

“An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things.”    ( Bryant McGill  )

“Integrity is the integument that makes intelligence more acceptable”    ( Constance Chuks Friday  )

Prime Minister David Cameron is due to make a speech this morning which will outline how he plans to cut net migration from the European Union and to deliver the control that British people want.   The Prime Minister will set out a package of measures that will remove the financial incentives that attract migrants to Britain. The reforms will mean that in future:   EU workers will: ·          not get in work benefits until they have been in the UK for 4 years; ·          not get social housing until they have been here for 4 years; and ·          not get child benefits and tax credits for children living elsewhere in Europe no matter how long they have paid taxes in the UK.   EU jobseekers will: ·          not be supported by UK taxpayers; and  ·      ...

“Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.”    ( G.K. Chesterton , The Man Who Knew Too Much   )  

Dan Hodges tweeted earlier this week that he was thinking of setting Ed Miliband's last six months to the tune of "We didn't start the Fire." Now such a clip has appeared on Youtube. Hat tip to Guido's "Order Order" blog for the video below. This is the man who could be Prime Minister in less than six month's time ...

“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers.”    ( H.G. Wells , The Time Machine   )   

Adrian Davis-Johnston's parody of Gloria Gaynor's "I will survive" in support of the campaign to protect services at WCH. (Hashtag #WeNeedWestCumberlandHospital) will be performed live in Workington on Sunday 30th November as part of the town's Christmas Lights switch-on, with all proceeds going to the Great North Air Ambulance. It is also available for pre-order on iTunes at www.iwontsurvive.com . As has repeatedly been pointed out by Adrian, myself, and other campaigners, the nearest alternative hospitals to WCH such as the North Cumberland Infirmary at Carlisle or FGH at Barrow are respectively an hour away from Whitehaven or Millom on terrible roads, and more like ninety minutes away from much of South Copeland. Given the importance of getting people to treatment quickly, any reduction in major trauma, maternity or other emergency services at the West Cumberland could have a dire impact on West Cumbria. This was the Youtube version of Adrian's take ...

Twenty-five local GPs from Copeland and Allerdale have written to the Whitehaven News expressing concerns about proposals for services at West Cumberland Hospital, particularly maternity and paediatrics. The doctors said: “We are deeply concerned, in light of recent comments, that the medical director of our acute trust neither appears to recognise the special challenges of providing maternity services in our area, nor be prepared to await the advice of the expert panel that the Clinical Commissioning Group has brought together to review these issues.” The full text of the letter can be read on the Whitehaven News website at http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/letters/you-say/our-families-need-these-vital-services-1.1176325 A spokesperson for North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust responded as follows: “Our very firm intention is that more, not less, patients will be treated in West Cumbria in the future. We are already starting to see this happen and even following the importa...

"When people can’t look at a tweet publicly taunting a man over the death of his six-year-old son and realise there is something deeply, horribly wrong, then they have a problem. If they can’t understand that a tweet like that transcends the most basic laws of human decency, they have a problem. And if they can’t simply and unequivocally condemn that tweet, without constructing straw men, throwing deflections and trying to draw spurious moral parallels, then they have a serious, serious problem." (Dan Hodges, writing in the Telegraph yesterday about the Jack Monroe tweet)

Anger is a driving force which motivates many people who are involved in politics. If channelled in the right way it is not necessarily a negative thing. I was very angry, just before turning 18, when my father was rung up on the day he was supposed to go into hospital for a heart valve operation, and told that shop stewards representing porters and cleaners had blocked my dad's heart operation on the grounds that they supposedly knew better than doctors whether it was an emergency. (That was about the time some NHS shop steward was quoted in the press as saying "If someone dies, so be it." My father was one of the people whose potential death that union was treating as acceptable collateral damage in an industrial dispute.) That anger was an important driving force for my becoming involved in politics, but I channelled it in what I regard as a positive direction: supporting Mrs Thatcher's plans to put the national finances on a sound footing so th...

MPs have passed the bill giving constituents the power to recall them with some, but not all, of the amendments which had been proposed to make it easier to use. One amendment passed by 204 votes to 125 was to reduce the number of sitting days for which an MP has to be suspended by the House of Commons before becoming subject to a recall petition by half, to 10 days rather than 20. Other amendments which were agreed gave power to trigger a recall process in cases of expenses fraud where an MP was given a non-custodial sentence, and in cases where information about historic wrongdoing came to light after an MP was elected. Some of the other amendments, such as one from Zac Goldsmith which took the House of Commons privileges committee out of the process, were not agreed, however. The bill now goes to the House of Lords. I'm pleased to see there is some movement on this though I would have liked to see a stronger bill, provided the recall mechanism is...

“It is one thing to be clever and another to be wise.”    ( George R.R. Martin )

Mark Wallace has an excellent post on Conservative Home at   http://www.conservativehome.com/leftwatch/2014/11/remember-the-left-is-more-compassionate-than-you-will-ever-be.html in which he gives two recent examples of a left-wing journalist and a Labour PPC respectively using tactics which would have half the left demanding the resignation of any Tory MP or PPC who used them. It is a problem for people in all parts of the political spectrum, but the left are particularly prone to it, to be so convinced of your own rightness that any nasty trick you play on your opponents can be justified. For example, one he quotes a tweet from a Guardian journalist called Jack Monroe who had made a poisonous attack on David Cameron concerning what DC had said about his dead son. It will not be a surprise to any reader of this blog to learn that I am not Gordon Brown's biggest fan. But there is one type of nasty comment which I would never make about Gordo, would never excuse or jus...

"There is literally nothing Miliband can’t mess up. "Having abdicated almost completely in a seat that they held until 2010, the compensation was meant to be that Labour got to sit back and watch all the negative headlines hurt the Conservatives. Instead, Emily Thornberry managed to drag the focus back on to her own party’s problems by   a) unwisely tweeting an apparently surprised or judgemental picture of a house with England flags hanging out of the window,  b) issuing perhaps the world’s clumsiest apology (including an unbelievable claim that she had never seen anything like it before), and    c) in so doing panicking her leader into sacking her. "To be honest, Thornberry could have survived the farce – she was a notoriously smug lefty before the tweet and she remained so after – but Miliband’s desperation saw him make her jump before she was pushed. On Monday he was beaten by a popstar. Yesterday he was defeated by a house. The Labour leader shou...

Below are some quotes from the Guardian about the Emily Thornberry tweet issue. A number of people who saw the tweet out of context would have been baffled by the fuss, because the tweet itself did not have anything rude about the house of its' owner. The row has been entirely about what people assume was meant by bothering to tweet the picture. Hence the reason I am quoting Labour figures as reported in the Guardian is that the reaction of those on the left who are angry about what they think the tweet said about their own side is what best demonstrates why there was an issue. Here are some examples from this weekend's report on the Guardian website about Labour's, quote "Civil war" on the issue ... "Labour has erupted into civil war over the “snobby” tweet sent by the sacked shadow attorney general, prompting senior MPs to warn that Ed Miliband’s chances in the general election are being actively damaged by the fallout over the affair." ...

"The political mismanagement needs to stop and we need strong management at the County Council. Somebody needs to carry the can and that person has to be the leader." (County Councillor James Airey, leader of the Conservative opposition on Cumbria County Council, talking about the Cumbria CC fiasco over the disastrous proposals for on-street parking charges which were eventually dropped last week.)

Earlier this week it came out that the Broadway Hotel in Blackpool fined a Whitehaven couple £100 for posting a bad review on Trip Advisor. (The hotel later agreed to refund the money after a huge public outcry.) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30111525 Also this week Labour supporters tried to have Myleen Klass fired as the "Face of Littlewoods" for criticising Ed Miliband's tax policy. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/6106475/Labour-supporters-demand-Littlewoods-drop-Myleene.html The hotel policy was criticised as outrageous and almost certainly illegal, but was it any better for Labour party members to try to take revenge on Myleen Klass for expressing an opinion they didn't agree with (and showing up Ed Miliband)? But it's not just hotels and a few socialists who have a problem with free speech. When I was a student I was a strong opponent of the so called "No Platform" policy which some on the left applied to anyon...

“In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box.” (George Orwell) As Guido Fawkes pointed out, one of the reasons the tweet from Emily Thornberry of a house with three St George's Cross flags and a white van caused such a fuss was probably because people assumed it was an expression of the sort of "progressive" metropolitan disdain for both patriotism and actual working people that Orwell was talking about.