Dean Hochlaf

Wonder if the Home Secretary thinks this might be a cause of division at all

He got Scotland automatically qualified for a world cup is what he did

All they have is weird slogans that normal people would never say in a million years

No underlying understanding of theories, philosophy, history, or even evidence that their policies will work or are in any way coherent

Just performance and soundbites to mask intellectual and moral bankruptcy

Just going to use the cars and big bags of gold refugees carry around to pay for benefits is the sort of policy you would come up with if you had never in your life read a book

Net immigration has fallen sharply since Labour came to power, and they're still incredibly unpopular among those who cite immigration as their biggest concern (and every other group for that matter)

Laughable if they think their latest ramping up of rhetoric is going to benefit them in any way

Would removing tax advantages for employee benefits help Labour voters? No

But do they help free up the resources you need so that they can be better allocated to help Labour voters? Also no

Starmer relying on the bond market to save him inadvertently exposes a pretty big problem with the UK economy which you would think Labour might want to address

Even if this raised funds, it surely would also reduce demand for government bonds and push up borrowing costs which will still leave them scrambling to meet their fiscal rules

The online hospital idea seems to make big and highly questionable assumptions about the effectiveness of online consultations, spare capacity of GP surgeries, and the extent to which it might induce demand and deny people access to their local service

Extending the number of years just seems stupid, not taking a penny in benefits ignores the actual function of the welfare system, and compulsory volunteering isn't just unethical, but also greatly overestimates the capacity of the voluntary sector to absorb so much extra labour

Have to say, embedding the world's most rapacious firms into the UK economy at the expense of digital sovereignty and homegrown tech firms, to chase the world's biggest bubble has really eased any concerns I might have had

Ramping up rhetoric against an international institution for allegedly preventing a harsher approach to immigration, is probably the least "unthinkable" thing a UK home secretary could do

The BMA and many others warned that this was coming, and now it is here. The UK government must act immediately to prevent widespread death in Gaza from hunger. This is entirely man-made and is intolerable.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ck...

Labour preparing to use public-private funding model for NHS in England Decision on neighbourhood health centres expected in autumn but approach divides policy experts

Telling the NHS that it can't keep asking for more money, but also, it should turn to costly private finance models to fund brand new and untested healthcare facilities, while making an accurate assessment of the risks is comical stuff

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

0.7% per capita growth on the year, bit better than recent times, but still well below historical averages, even during the austerity years

Increasingly clear, the government strategy of hoping growth will fuel public service/infrastructure investment is not going to happen any time soon

Human beings have a moral language for a reason. The word "evil" is an alarm bell which it's necessary to ring in a time of genocide. The level of sadistic, calculated cruelty we're witnessing in Gaza is the definition of evil. We're obliged to say it, and to keep saying it.

Exclusive: Ministers using ‘misleading’ figures to champion waiting list reductions The recent reduction in the waiting list repeatedly cited by ministers as evidence of the NHS's recovery has given a "misleading" impression to the public about the service's underlying performance, two leading think tanks have warned.

Fixing the NHS requires an honest appraisal of service delivery and resource needs

You can't implement meaningful reforms when you are downplaying the challenges through sleight of hand to manipulate data

www.hsj.co.uk/quality-and-...

Not sure you can call something a "long term plan" if it doesn't even remotely consider the costs of what you're trying to do...

Interest rates falling because the economic growth outlook is a bit gloomy and we are beginning to accept persistently higher levels of inflation feels like a weird thing to celebrate as evidence the economic plan is working

Resident doctors meet with Wes Streeting to agree window for negotiations  - BMA media centre - BMA Press release from the BMA

Yesterday resident doctors met with Wes Streeting MP

We have agreed a window for negotiations and are working to ensure strike action does not need to be repeated.

A credible offer to restore pay and value can end this dispute.
www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-ce... #PayRestoration

Really worrying that this government thinks exercising your legal and democratic right to strike, to demand better pay and conditions in a vital sector that is already falling behind the rest of the world, is tantamount to a declaration of war...

I live in Britain; I grew up in Israel. It’s painful to say, but we need real UK sanctions to save Gaza | Yair Wallach Symbolic gestures and empty statements are no longer enough. In Israel’s globalised economy, here’s what will shift public opinion, says says senior lecturer in Israeli studies Yair Wallach

By continuing business as usual, Israel’s international partners are allowing the Israeli government to continue with its genocidal campaign with no consequences beyond symbolic gestures of disapproval and statements.
The time to act is now - me @theguardian.com

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The man has never found a position he unequivocally supported that he did not later equivocate on

The FT View: The longer it has continued, the more it has borne the hallmarks of a vengeful assault by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government to destroy the very fabric of Palestinian society. https://on.ft.com/3UBv3Us

If the NHS is under threat it's because years of underinvestment has damaged capacity and failing to address the decline in real wages of vital staff ignores the real failure to provide an adequate funding settlement

Our political class has largely disengaged from the reality that the UK has too few resources to meet demand

Instead of addressing the issue, they instead try to stifle collective action in the hope diminished working conditions will be enough to overcome deliberate, persistent underinvestmnet

Worth remembering that the NHS 10-year "plan" makes absurd productivity assumptions, and wants to deliver a major transformation in healthcare with Thatcher-era spending increases

But the reality is you can't build a modern universal health service with an underpaid workforce

The catastrophic failure of humanity in Gaza should haunt us all and there is still time time for us to demand action and end our complicity in this travesty

The biggest threat to healthcare in the UK is that we deplete the real resources necessary to deliver care by failing to improve pay and working conditions, and instead bet the house on unproven technologies and fantasies of reform in a country with an ageing population and intense inequalities

YouTube video by BMAtv Resident doctor strikes to go ahead

Today resident doctors have voted to go ahead with strike action.

At last week's meeting with @rthonwesstreeting.bsky.social the committee were open to finding solutions to restore pay and improve conditions.

Today, they still do not have a credible offer on the table.

youtu.be/YkpaLxs-UY8?...