We learnt last week that Ms Hewitt asked clinical experts like Hazel Blears and Downing Street’s John McTernan and Paul Corrigan to draw up “heat maps” indicating marginal Labour seats where closures or changes to healthcare could deter voters.
Guido has drawn up a map for her to save McTernan the trouble allowing him more time to help others with their inquiries. Bedford was a Labour marginal where Patrick Hall had a 3,383 majority. A group of consultants at Bedford Hospital have decided that enough is enough.
They have formed a political party, Save Bedford Hospital, which they are in the process of registering with the Electoral Commission, and plan to fight the re-drawn Bedford and Kempston parliamentary seat. The group have universal support from hospital staff, patients and the local press. According to Dr Barry Monk, a consultant at the hospital for the past nineteen years, and chairman of the hospital consultants’ committee, who is now the party’s prospective parliamentary candidate, they are determined to win. “The time has come to explain to people how badly things have gone wrong in the NHS; the public deserve better.”
Get lost we don’t want your type round here.
This is the site for grassroots party loyalists? Oh dearie me….
The irrepressible Mr Eugenides has even started his own one.
In the Indy this morning he says that there is an obligation on the Lobby and in particular its senior members “inside the loop” to correctly interpret the “culture in British politics of off-the-record journalism”.
He then goes on to seemingly accept the Guido critique:
He feels references to “Blairites say” and “Brownites claim” leave viewers feeling “short-changed” and says he must do more to get politicians on camera. He says the audience was also irritated by references to Charles Kennedy’s alcohol problem being widely known before it was made public. “The problem was with the chatterariat or commentariat who, in an easy cliché, said it was ‘Westminster’s best-kept secret’. Instantly what was being said to the audience was ‘We knew, you didn’t, we’re in some sort of conspiracy of silence.'”
The most important revelation in the interview was that his glasses are Gucci.
Scientific and objective? Who cares, look who came came top!* Guido was reluctant when Iain asked for a few hundred words for his Guide to UK Political Blogging, however when he said the Miliblogger was contributing – well you know how it is – so buy a dead-tree-copy or scrounge one off Dale at a party conference. Alternatively download it here and see for yourself the result. Guido assumed an earnest, caring social justice promoting blog would come top. Totty-watching must have even wider appeal than Guido originally imagined…
*Guido’s blog was judged the #1 Non-Aligned Blog & the #1 UK Political Blog Overall. Notice that Guido was in the non-aligned category, not Tory, though this never seems to get through to some lazy journalists and a certain type of pro-regime apologist for New Labour’s sleaze.
