Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Good one Fred...no sign of cleggy in that one...perhaps he has disappeared up his own

Notice he hasn't shown Lordy Ashcroft's pol results to-day

Survation poll in Rochester has UKIP lead growing to 15 points

The Kent Messenger are now reporting the voting intention figures from the Survation/Unite Rochester & Strood poll. Topline figures with changes from the previous Survation Rochester poll right after Mark Reckless’s defection are CON 33%(+2), LAB 16%(-9), LDEM 1%(-1), UKIP 48%(+8), GRN 2%.
As with the ComRes poll a week ago it shows UKIP with a solid lead. While there will always be some underlying churn, the obvious implication of the changes since the start of October is that the Labour vote has been significantly squeezed, and is breaking heavily in UKIP’s favour.


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Labour majortity 12 seats at G/E


In spite of Party CHQ dirty squad's smearing!

NHS spending on agency nurses soars past £5.5bn

Government accused of ‘truly incompetent planning’ after years of training cuts push cost of temporary staff way over budget



There are now 7,000 fewer qualified nurses working in the NHS, according to the Royal College of Nursing. Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian


Daniel Boffey, policy editor


The Observer, Saturday 1 November 2014 22.43 GMT



NHS spending on agency nurses and staff has spiralled to more than £5.5bn over the past four years and is continuing to rise amid a debilitating recruitment crisis in the health service. Budgets for temporary staff this financial year have already been blown apart, it can be revealed, with spending in some parts of the NHS running at twice the planned figure.

Reliance on agencies – at a cost of up to £1,800 per day per nurse – comes as the number of nurse training places in England has been cut. In the last year of the Labour government, 20,829 nurse training positions were filled in England. That fell to 17,741 in 2011-12 and to 17,219 in 2012-13, rising to 18,009 in 2013-14.

According to the latest figures, there were 7,000 fewer qualified nurses in August 2013 compared with May 2010, excluding health visitors, school nurses and midwives. Ministers were accused on Saturday of “truly incompetent planning” by the Royal College of Nurses.




More: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/01/nhs-spending-agency-nurses-cuts

Max

Agency nursing, Doctors, and other agency staff starting well back in the early 90s and I think from memory early 70s in one form or another.

(Expanding in forms and rates since early 60s, at their most rapid in 80s and 90s onward.)

If you look back I posted the effects of such on "moral" of non-agency staff and in many cases the lowering of NHS standards due to lack of ongoing "responsibilities." (Here to-day somewhere else to-morrow.)


But if you look at the so called rise in Nursing staff and Doctors employed in the NHS to-day compared with 10days ago, you will find that there is a distortion due to part timers,.

Medics able to earn £70000 year part time, again although the majority act responsibly again there is lack of attachment and goal in their practice.

Andrew Lansley and the Tory party have wasted over a billion pounds with ideological attempts at change.

They should be investigated and held responsible for negligence and lack of due diligence.

fred - i think the strood by-election is important ..... it is and always been inconceivable that reckless would lose, but the great unknown is what effect this will ultimately have on voter sentiment and result in the general election .... now add in labour's very real problems in scotland and where that will end up

all in all, a very messy time indeed is likely come mid 2015

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medics earn £70,000 a year

bet my d-in-law doesn't earn anything like that amount (in yorkshire) .... indeed, i'ld be quite surprised if it was much in excess of £40,000

Not good for the stock market cynic!

dd4 - not strictly true if you're a clever chap like shortie and skinny and can spend the time dipping in and out of the indices .... for them, volatility is exactly what they want

Manuel.

Dig in your pocket and give her a bob or two. ( I think you figures are previous to the NEW Contract of Labour. Even the doctors thought it was a stupid contract in their favour.)

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Scotland voting at next election puzzles me.

The NO vote had 55% of the voters of over 90% of those who voted.

I know Scotland has been "cleared" of Cons.

I know that one of the major ideology difference between SNP and Scottish independence was/is independence for Scotland.

I understand both SNP and Scot/lab are social democratic at core, with more left winged focus in many ways within those of the grass roots of the Labour party.

I understand the majority of both these parties rightly distrust the Con party and wish to have little to do with them and now consider SNP will "stick up for them".

The difficulty I have in understanding is why there is such a "said swing" form Lab to SNP. out of the 55% NO voters.

Unless it is the more vociferous SNP who have the distrust of London based Tory government and MPs in general have no spread that distrust rightly or wrongly onto Labour.

Such flimsy support may wobble in the wind in the lead up to the G.E.

Interesting! (For me.)

Any suggestions what T shirt Fred should wear. THIS IS WHAT A #### LOOKS LIKE

This must before he meets the party grandees.

alders - Clueless Prick fits nicely :0)

You sound worried Fred. Cons fast closing the gap with Labour. lol

YouGov -

Labour faces a near wipe out next May, unless it can revive its fortunes. If we apply the Scotland-wide shifts to each constituency, the SNP would jump from six seats to 47 while Labour would slump from 41 to just ten.

Update - Labour lead at 1

by YouGov in Politics

Sun November 2, 2014 6 a.m. GMT

Latest YouGov / Sunday Times results 31st Oct - Con 31%, Lab 32%, LD 7%, UKIP 18%;

WHAT else has to happen ­before Labour accepts that its minimalist position on more powers for Scotland is unsustainable? If it was not already clear to Ed Miliband and Ed Balls that their sniffy attitude to more devolution to Holyrood was costing Labour dear, the devastating message in a series of opinion polls over the past few days must surely have illuminated them.

Scottish Labour has lost the historic advantage it has always enjoyed over the SNP when it comes to Westminster elections. It has disappeared. In fact, support for the Scottish National Party in voting intentions for Westminster is, according to one poll, more than twice support for Scottish Labour. If this was replicated in the General Election in May next year, the number of Scottish Labour MPs would be reduced to just four. Not only that, two-thirds of Scots want a re-run of the independence referendum within ten years. And if the referendum was to be re-run tomorrow, 52 per cent of Scots would vote Yes – including 43 per cent of Labour voters.

This is an extraordinary set of results. It shows that to prevent the break-up the United Kingdom, securing a No vote in the independence referendum was only the first stage in a two-part process. The second stage is to deliver incontrovertibly on the promise of a powerhouse parliament at Holyrood, with substantial economic levers the hands of MSPs. The No vote on its own was clearly not enough. It was a job half-done. A much stronger Holyrood is necessary to honour the deal that was struck with the Scottish electorate in the run-up to 18 September.

This newspaper has consistently backed more power for Holyrood, not out of fear for the ­future of the UK, but out of a desire to see a Scottish Parliament that is responsible, effective, accountable, and equal to the ambitions of the people. It would be heartening if principle was the compass for Labour’s deliberations. But if principle is absent, self-preservation will have to do. If Labour has first to stare into the headlights of an electoral juggernaut that threatens to squish its hopes of power on the highway of Scottish opinion, then so be it. Naked fear can be a useful motivating force. The question is whether Miliband and Balls fully recognise the peril they face. To get into Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street next May, they need to secure the election of dozens of Scottish Labour MPs who face an existential threat from a rampant SNP. To head off this threat, Miliband and Balls need to reassure hundreds of thousands of Scots who are turning their backs on Labour, perhaps for good. How to achieve this? It’s not rocket science, guys. Give Scottish voters what they want, and stop telling them you know better than they do what is best for them.

To ignore the clear message from the Scottish electorate would be a mistake of historic proportions. It would be to underestimate a political mood – not just in Scotland but across the UK – that is febrile, fluid and unforgiving. It would be to underestimate the scale of ambition in the Scottish electorate for self-government, and a lack of concern among many Labour ­voters about whether that self-government is achieved within or outwith the UK. It would be a failure to recognise a shifting of the political sands. It would show Labour was not nimble enough, not deft enough, not fleet enough. It would show Labour was not equal to the moment. The Smith Commission has only a few weeks of deliberation before it has to come to its conclusions. There is still time for the Labour leadership to see sense. The unequivocal backing of Scottish Labour leadership contenders for a step change in powers would be useful, but ultimately this is a decision for Miliband and Balls. By the time this month is out we will know whether Labour has decided to save itself, or whether it has chosen a grisly end entirely of its own making.

Intolerable strain on Scottish NHS

Concerns about the National Health Service were at the heart of the independence referendum campaign and look certain to be at the heart of the General Election in May next year.

The SNP’s argument is that Scotland’s NHS must be protected from the English way of ­approaching healthcare, which involves the ­private sector much more than is the case north of the Border.

The impression the Scottish Government likes to present is of a Scottish NHS where everything in the garden is rosy. And yet it is becoming increasingly clear that this is not, in fact, the case.

Take today’s study of patients’ experiences of being treated – or not treated, as the case may be – by their GPs. This makes grim reading, and is hard to reconcile with the picture of the NHS being offered by Nationalist ministers.

Spending on GP services has fallen by 2 per cent in real terms, and the results are plain to see in length of time Scottish patients are having to wait to see a doctor. One in four are unable to see their GP within a week of seeking an appointment. There was also a rise of more than 8 per cent in the number of patients who felt their doctor did not have enough time to deal with them during their appointment, once it finally arrived.

The state of GP services is worrying in itself. It is even more worrying when you consider one of the Scottish Government’s central strategies is a shift away from hospital care, to care in the community. Some of this care will be done by health visitors, but much of it will fall to already-stretched GPs. A system under intolerable strain is about to be put under even greater pressure, not by external forces but by a policy pursued by another branch of the very same National Health Service, under the same SNP minister.

Quite simply, this does not add up. In England, in the system disparaged by SNP ministers, the government has recently promised universal access to GP services at the weekends by 2020. In Scotland, this is a pipe-dream.

Dr John Gillies, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, says: “When the crisis in general practice clearly shows patient safety to be under threat, it is incumbent upon the Scottish Government to act.”

It is hard to disagree.

Salmond has just been on the Andrew Neill show and said in no uncertain terms that the SNP would not form a coalition with the Conservatives. When asked if a coalition with Labour might be possible he hedged the answer.

DC.

If you refer to Scotland I am just a little puzzled and sceptical and think part of the said swing is disillusionment and media led.

But if the confidence trickster's party feel happy, the once again I don't think that the SNP will often go into a coalition with them.

(I think I will see pigs flying before that will happen.)

Also, can see the splitting of the tories in two, The Looney Far Right Haunch and the more moderate central left party.

Will be interesting to see them squabbling over the "kitty", or if they have a funds left after Reckless and the G/E.

(What are the accountant fees and can we review the accounts?)

The former trying to join up with UKIP.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2817563/BBC-wastes-10million-licence-fee-payers-money-redundancy-payouts-hundreds-time-staff-REHIRE-them.html

May be of interest Fred -

What YouGov's new Scotland poll says about the rise of the SNP, the disappearance of 'red Nats', and the potential for a new 'normal' in Scottish politics


http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/10/31/labours-scottish-nightmare/

oooh :-)