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Which Huhne punters are going to end up winners?

May 28th, 2011

Will he really be out of the cabinet by Tuesday?

For the fourth weekend in succession it looks as though the Lib Dem energy secretary, Chris Huhne, is going to figure prominently in the Sunday papers.

The business with speeding point allegations has prompted a lot of coverage and we seem to have a pattern – what’s predicted on some websites never quite lives up to the billing when the papers arrive.

For punters there’s been a lively betting on whether he’ll have to quit the cabinet. One market put up three weeks ago by Ladbrokes was simply on whether he would still be a cabinet minister at the start of June and many PBers have gone in betting on both sides of the argument.

Well that runs out on Tuesday evening and if those who took the prices of up to 2/1 that he’d be out are to win then there needs to be something dramatically new.

The other market has been on who will be the next cabinet minister to leave. That moves up and down sharply with one name after another moving into the frame.

What we’ve always got to remember is that politicians who make it to the top of the greasy pole are hugely resilient as we saw with Hague last September. I went in quite heavily against the foreign secretary then when all seemed black for him. Hague stuck in there – could Huhne do the same?

Mike Smithson
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  • Mick Pork

    491. “But then I am not a vested political interest here”

    When in doubt you always go for absurdist humour fitalass. :-D
    You couldn’t be more obviously partisan if you tried or were your gushing tributes to Osborne ironic ?

    “its not that great, its not delivering where it needs too”

    It needs improving but if you seriously think Lansley’s reforms are the panacea then you are barking up the wrong tree since they DEFINITELY won’t happen in scotland. Thank god.

    In case you haven’t been paying attention these wonderful reforms are in a state of utter confusion and chaos in england right now because they were ill thought out, idealogical in nature and dreamed up by the imcompetent Lansley. No wonder you think they’re great. :-D

  • fitalass

    494.”Additionally, you will submit your improvement plan along with it – backed by your party?”

    Fully intend to submit to the Conservative party.

    Ignored your last paragraph as unworthy of a response. It quite simple encompassed your spin to try and deflect from my genuine concerns over the Scottish NHS. You are as usual are trying to put words into my mouth, or attributing views I have not expressed instead of addressing my genuine concerns. Just this once, it would be refreshing if you could actually engage in this debate and admit that its not a perfect system of health care in Scotland. Christ!! Look at the fecking health outcomes up here. But still,

    I am sure that banning the sale of booze or fags before or after 10 of a day, and getting rid of vending machines will make up for the short fall on health care and addictive abuse up here. Are you watching ‘The Scheme’? That seems to be working, not, when there is a drug dealer on every street corner! :roll: What are the SNP going to do when Thatcher and the Tories are gone from Scotland for 30 odd years and still these problems increase?

  • Mick Pork

    “As a former member of this institution, that made me laugh out loud tonight!
    But then, I was a member back when they were not full of militant socialists!”

    Are you even aware of your own absurd contradictions any more ? You are a self parody and your own unwitting comedy always makes me chuckle. :-)

    “give them real substance to use in their arguments for a change.”

    Said the man who thinks Lansley will be PM and compared him to Obama. :lol:

  • oldnat

    Seth O. Logue @495
    Thanks for the link. I had missed that.

    From that brief account, it seems a more sensible approach than in most of the USA.

    While my instincts are always for communitarian provision of public services, I don’t take an ideological statist approach. I’m always willing to look at alternative methods of providing better public services, and it’s worth looking at different models from elsewhere to see if they can be adapted for use within Scotland.

    For example, in my own field of education, Scotland recognised that our school curriculum wasn’t up to scratch and looked around the world for models that might be worked on for here. I’m afraid that England was rejected very early in the process, and the cutting edge model from Australia was taken as the starting point.

    It doesn’t deal with school structures, or the input or output models that have been imposed on Scotland by Westminster Governments since the 60s, but on process. How do kids learn best, and how can they best be helped to do so.

    England’s obsession with structures proved to be a very weak model for education and, I suspect, will prove to be the same in health.

  • Mick Pork

    “What are the SNP going to do when Thatcher and the Tories are gone from Scotland for 30 odd years and still these problems increase?”

    I’d put your crystal ball away since when I pointed out how precarious Annabel Goldie’s position was you blithely insisted she was perfectly safe and mere hours later she was gone.

    Stick to pretending the whole of scotland must be like a sensationalist TV ‘documentary’ you saw. That’s about your level. No doubt you think the Daily Mail is the word of god too.

  • fitalass

    500.Not really, and many thanks. You have given me the courage to submit my views and impressions of the current state of health care up here in Scotland.

    You can be rude, insulting and dismiss my views on this issue. But that is not going to change the fundamental short comings in health care in Scotland right now. I look forward to these curfews on booze and fags showing a vast improvement on drink and smoking numbers in Scotland, and improving health care outlooks over the next five years.

  • Seth O. Logue

    498 Pork

    In case you haven’t been paying attention these wonderful reforms are in a state of utter confusion and chaos in england right now because they were ill thought out, idealogical in nature and dreamed up by the imcompetent Lansley.

    Have you ever travelled south of the border?

    Or were you barred from alighting the overnight sleeper at Edinburgh Waverley on the same general principle which applied to that pit pony in Wrexham?

  • oldnat

    fitalass @499
    Thatcher was selling drugs here!!!! I never realised that. :-)

  • oldnat

    Seth O. Logue @504:

    Have you ever travelled south of the border?

     
    I have checked that my travel insurance covers medical expenses within the UK!

    Can you assure me that no GP, hospital etc in England will be able to charge me for treatment that I would get free in Scotland?

    Obviously not. I would have to pay for my prescription, but what else?

  • Mick Pork

    504. Log.

    When are you starting your Lansley for Prime Minister campaign ?

    Are you designing a Shepard Fairey style HOPE poster using Lansleys beaming face since you consider him to be the conservatives Obama ?

    YES WE CAN! :lol:

  • oldnat

    oldnat @506:

    I would have to pay for my prescription

     
    There’s a thought. I wonder if my insurance would cover that?

  • oldnat

    Nytol

  • Seth O. Logue

    500 Pork

    Said the man who thinks Lansley will be PM and compared him to Obama.

    Lansley and Obama are both Titans on their chosen political stage.

    In my view there is only one major difference between them.

    Lansley is not yet leader.

    Get you bets on soon, Pork.

  • fitalass

    “Have you ever travelled south of the border?”

    No, he just chortles at the inaccuracies of the Daily Mail articles on health provision up here if it furthers the myth.

    I have been in utter despair of what is happening in recent years up here. There was some really appalling health trusts through out the Conservative years last time, but equally, there was also some really excellent ones. But politics never allows us to truly reprimand and change the bad ones by example of the good practice of those that work who ever is running the UK or Scotland or any other part of the UK.

    And you know what, I suspect that there was some really excellent health trusts under Labour down South in the intervening years as well. But that would be down to the right people being in charge and running a very good efficient service within their budget, just as others did under the last Conservative government.

    What I cannot abide if the smug assumption that health provision up here in Scotland is better under the SNP because its the SNP running the show. It isn’t, and they are making some long term huge mistakes that are not going to be easy to rectify.

  • Seth O. Logue

    506 oldnat

    I would have to pay for my prescription, but what else?

    A return train fare?

  • fitalass

    512.I would gladly pay for a prescription up here in Scotland if it would provide a quicker waiting list when it really mattered. I would also like cleaner hospitals and a better system of care even if I had to pay for a parking charge to visit a relative as well.
    At present prescriptions and parking are free as I enter a dirty/grubby hospital and find poor nursing care and communication due to the current system of shifts and staff levels.

  • redcliffe62

    Fitalass, I note your comments.
    For many people, with the Scottish NHS they care about waiting times and how long it takes to be seen at A and E.

    Here in Brisbane we had 22 ambulanceds lined up last week with nowhere to go on “by pass”, meaning no room at the inn and they could not get seen at the main Alexandra hospital. Code 2 and less. Code 1 is life threatening.
    This is appalling.
    Yet where I live in Redcliffe at our own hospital we are seen quickly and easily, within 30 minutes every time my family have gone, perhaps 15 times all up, so it is not the same everywhere.
    I suspect it is the same in the Scottish NHS, good and bad.

    If it is true that waiting times are less since the SNP are in charge, then as far as the patients are concerned they are doing a good job. The problems onsite are frankly of more concern to you than Joe Public.

  • Mick Pork

    “And you know what, I suspect that there was some really excellent health trusts under Labour down South in the intervening years as well.”

    I suspect you need to look at the findings of Mid Staffordshire to see where relentless marketisation and reform for the sake for reform leads and a taste of what more is in store in Lansley ever got his way.

    Whatever else the SNP may have to do to rectify problems in the NHS the one thing they will absolutely get credit on from the scottish public is not following the Lansley reforms you seem so inexplicably fond of. Their unpopularity in england is as nothing as to how unpopular they are in scotland.

    You can’t complain that the public gets defensive and worried about politicians interfering in the NHS when Cameron and Lansley are enacting idealogical marketisation reforms “so big they can be seen from space”.

    Cameron was even more stupid than Lansley for thinking these NHS reforms would not have a huge political impact but he was so hypnotised by Blair’s bitter musings that he wished he had reformed more sooner that Cameron threw caution to the wind.

  • fitalass

    514.redcliffe62, I thank you for your comments on the Scottish NHS. Its a debate that is sadly lacking on PB.com because it lacks any attempt at honest debate by your SNP comrades in Scotland. For there to be any debate, we would have to admit the failings that exist, and then we can chat about how to overcome them.
    Its absolutely laughable to argue that the current health outcomes and dependency culture up here doesn’t pose a huge burden on the NHS. And yet, the SNP are desperately trying to change life style outcomes by banning booze and fags up here between 10pm and 10am as if that is going to make any frigging difference to the dealer on the street or the lifestyles of the general populace. Its a pain in the arse, but they simple just adjust their shopping times and quantities.

    I am gobsmacked that they have now decided to end prescription charges, what a contradiction in terms! Remove the young, the elderly or infirm with long term health medication needs. Its not surely that many that were paying for their prescriptions?? And the most tight fisted were nipping to the GP for even a bottle of calpol for the kids!!

    Watching the scheme is a real eye opener up here. And the SNP are certainly on their way to helping that culture carry on. But for a wee bit oil and gas in the North Sea, we would be entirely screwed as an economy!!

  • Mick Pork

    “Lansley and Obama are both Titans on their chosen political stage.”

    Beautiful! :lol:

    If I can tear you away from Narnia for a second you need only look at Brown to see what a mistake it is to choose a leader who is locked away for years to fulminate and brood over one narrow section of policy. Be it the economy or healthcare. And like Brown Lansley’s supposed area of expertise will also be his downfall.

  • fitalass

    515.”Whatever else the SNP may have to do to rectify problems in the NHS the one thing they will absolutely get credit on from the scottish public is not following the Lansley reforms you seem so inexplicably fond of. Their unpopularity in england is as nothing as to how unpopular they are in scotland.”

    Carry on regardless…………..

  • Mick Pork

    518. You appear to have been asleep when the scottish conservatives had their worst result ever. We won’t be taking lessons from Lansley or his acolytes like yourself. The idea that the only two choices on healthcare is do nothing or follow Lanlsey is simple minded twaddle.

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