Planning permission | the same bad policies again

This is the new exciting policy announcement form the Tory Party conference. A radical change in planning permission: This is a sad faced Nick Clegg announcing the same policy almost exactly 7 years ago: I’ve applied for this extension to my house. What can go wrong?

The NHS | The Tories have a good policy! Shock!

The Conservatives plan to scrap big chunks of Andrew Lansley’s 2012 Health and Social Care Act. This is a damn good thing. The specific sections which will be repealed are those requiring commissioners to offer NHS Services for tender to private sector contractors like Virgin or Circle They will also remove NHS Services from the … Read more

The NHS | Labour have a good policy! Shock!

While we were all in shock after the Supreme Court ruling that Boris Johson is an idiot we missed this part of Corbyn’s speech If I understand it correctly a Labour Government would use to current public sector research and purchasing spend on pharmaceuticals to create a public sector owned pharmaceutical company which will compete … Read more

Slavery | Toussaint L’Ouverture, Somerset v Stewart 98 ER 499, Ann Widdecombe

Anne Widdecombe announced her arrival in the European Parliament this week with a speech that made a spectacularly ill judged comparison between Brexit and the abolition of slavery. Widdecombe’s views on slavery, the British Empire and the last few hundred years of British history maybe eccentric and unpleasant, but she isn’t the only person with … Read more

Dismantling the NHS Internal Market by stealth. Ninjas strike again

Croydon Health Services NHS is about to advertise for a new Chief Executive. This isn’t unusual. It’s been a troubled Trust on and off for a while, formed from the merger of Mayday Healthcare NHS Trust with Croydon Community Health Services. It operates University Hospital Croydon along with lots of Community Services, and a Community Hospital. The … Read more

Dismantling the NHS Internal Market by stealth. The Nationalisation Ninjas

People in the NHS continually complain about re-organisations. The endless churn and change of job titles, letterheads and lanyards. The reason for this continual mess can be traced back to the original sin of NHS management – the introduction of the internal market – the purchaser/provider split in the 80s. Pretty much ever re-organisation since … Read more

Student Loans Swindle 2: Cash from chaos

A month ago I wrote about the weird world of Student Loans and how they are accounted for by the Government. /https://jon-chadwick.com/2018/11/17/the-great-student-loans-swindle-its-a-swindle-a-swindle/ Today the Office of National Statistics published their review of Student Loans accounting, which makes some big changes to how the Government calculates the deficit (but not national debt) https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2018/12/17/accounting-for-student-loans-how-we-are-improving-the-recording-of-student-loans-in-government-accounts/ In short an … Read more

Interserve Overdrive

A few months ago I wrote about the collapse of Carillion, and drew comparisons between their collapse and the Government outsourcing industry in general. https://jon-chadwick.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=946&action=edit This week Interserve have announced they are negotiating a financial recovery package.  This news led their shares to slump to 24p each, down from 660p 3 years ago.   Interserve turn … Read more