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Alex
Alex

The thing with the trans issue is it’s another thing they’ve tried to weaponise to play to their base. Even in the wake of this, another entirely avoidable and entirely of their own making PR disaster

Renton
Renton

I'm just going to land this here. Two years ago I was in a desperate place, I reached out and for some reason you were there and really helped me. We don't see eye to eye on everything Rayvin but you

trophyshy
trophyshy

My first wife had her period on our honeymoon.    Not since Pearl Harbor has a Japanese flag seen so much action in Hawaii.  

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Gemmill

Gemmill 44872

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Just in case anyone fancies donating...

 

Shutting A&E departments can cost lives. Recent reports showed that when an A&E in Newark closed, there was a 37% jump in patient deaths. [1] Yet across the country A&Es are being cut. Not because of clinical need, but to meet unrealistic financial demands made by the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. [2]

 

If we work together, we can stop this worrying trend. In Lewisham, South London, local campaigners want to take the government to court over plans to slash their A&E and maternity services. If they win their court case, it would be a huge boost for battles to protect A&E services up and down the country.

 

This is a court case that matters for all of us, not just the people of Lewisham. But for it to go ahead, the campaigners desperately need more funds. So far they've raised £5,000 on their own. If we can help them get to £20,000, they can hire in a top legal team and make the most of their chance to challenge the closure.

 

Please will you chip in now? If enough of us donate, the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign will be able to take Jeremy Hunt to court!

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/save-lewisham-hospital

 

If Jeremy Hunt gets away with slashing services in Lewisham, he'll be far more likely to try it elsewhere. Lewisham hospital is well-performing. Crazily, it’s because Lewisham is a successful hospital that it has been targeted. Hunt wants to move money-making services away from Lewisham to bail out hospitals making losses in the area next door.

 

Expert lawyers say he isn’t allowed to do this. A judge has already agreed that there's a case to answer, and capped costs at £20,000. If we can raise that money and get the right legal team in place, we have a real chance of getting Jeremy Hunt's closure plan overturned.

 

The Save Lewisham Hospital campaign is an inspiring example of ordinary people working to protect the NHS. Many of them are 38 Degrees members. They are campaigning for the same thing as the rest of us - a decent NHS we can all rely on. And if they win, it will boost our chances of protecting A&E services everywhere. So let's show them our support and help them take Jeremy Hunt to court!

 

The court case is scheduled to start in a couple of weeks - please donate now so the legal team can start working as soon as possible:

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/save-lewisham-hospital

 

 

Thanks for being involved,

 

Blanche, Ian, David and the 38 Degrees team

 

 

FURTHER INFORMATION

 

What is the legal case about?

 

The Save Lewisham Hospital campaign is asking for the court to review Jeremy Hunt’s decision to downgrade a number of services at Lewisham Hospital. Lawyers have said he didn’t have the authority to make this decision. For more information on the case, click here:

http://www.savelewishamhospital.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Grounds-for-SLH-challenge.pdf'>http://www.savelewishamhospital.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Grounds-for-SLH-challenge.pdf

 

Why are they trying to raise £20,000?

 

A judge has agreed that the case should be heard, and that the amount of money local people should have to pay to fight it should be limited. The judge limited the amount Government lawyers could claim in costs if they win. The Save Lewisham Hospital campaign’s lawyers have also limited their fees - so in total, the most that the legal challenge could cost the campaign is £20,000.

 

What happens if we raise more than the £15,000 still needed?

 

Any donations made above the £15,000 target will go towards 38 Degrees’ campaigning work, including our NHS campaign and supporting other local hospital campaigns. For more details of our donations policy click here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/pages/donations-to-38-degrees

 

Can the £20,000 be recovered if the case is successful?

 

If the legal challenge is successful there is a chance that the legal costs can be recovered. If this happens, the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign will return the donations made to their legal fund. They will be reinvested in 38 Degrees’ campaigning work, in line with our donations policy.

 

Can I get involved in any other ways?

 

The Save Lewisham Hospital website contains lots of further information about the campaign and other ways people can get involved:

http://www.savelewishamhospital.com/

 

What about my local hospital which is also under threat?

 

Hopefully a successful legal challenge to save Lewisham hospital will help protect other hospitals which are under threat. If your local hospital or NHS services is under threat and you are interested in launching a local campaign in your area (or have details of a campaign that already exists) please email the office team at ccgsupport@38degrees.org.uk

 

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Meenzer

Meenzer 15526

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Posted

UKIP lost their deposit in the By election last night pleased with that like.

 

Still a bit surprising to see an essentially English party get a four-figure vote in a place like Aberdeen, mind.

 

The Green Party candidate was called Rhonda Reekie. You'd think that'd have been worth a few votes.

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Gemmill

Gemmill 44872

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On Saturday, Moorside library in central Newcastle will close its doors; another four city libraries will stop receiving any council funding, and will be transferred into the hands of volunteers. A note on the Newcastle Libraries website states simply: "On Saturday 29 June we will be closing the following libraries as part of the £100m we have been forced to save by 2016."

 

Newcastle City Pool has already closed to the public and is only running club training sessions for a few final weeks, before shutting definitively at the end of July. Overseeing one of the final training sessions at the pool, which has produced three Olympians, city of Newcastle swimming club head coach, Louise Graham, has been wondering what to do with the dozens of multi-coloured flags that decorate the walls, celebrating all the international appearances of former club members.

 

"Nine-year-olds see those flags and are inspired. That inspiration and that history is going to be in a cupboard somewhere," she said. "It is just desperately sad."

 

Nick Forbes, the Labour leader of Newcastle city council is despondent at the imminent closures, but believes that in a few years time, the ultimate scale of the cuts the council is likely to be obliged to introduce across all departments, will make library and pool closures pale into insignificance.

 

"I'm devastated by it. Libraries are part of the move towards civilised society. They are a sense that our collective knowledge is available to all in a publicly accessible space. The idea that we have to close them is just appalling – but the prospect of removing people from residential care is even worse," he said, in an interview at Newcastle city council headquarters.

 

"These are the invidious decisions that my colleagues and I are faced with and that every council in the country is going to have to grapple with over the next few years."

 

He described the local government budget reduction of 10% for 2015-16 announced by the chancellor George Osborne in the spending review, as "slightly worse than our worst case scenario", although he was still waiting for a detailed breakdown of funding allocations for Newcastle. He said the new cuts were likely to force the council into making very significant cuts to the number of Sure Start centres in the city (which have currently been untouched), into rationing the provision of council-funded home care to only the most profoundly vulnerable elderly and disabled residents and into radically reducing the amount spent on cleaning up rubbish and graffiti.

 

"The council will have lost somewhere between 55% and 60% of its government income over a six year period, and the organisation can't continue in that way," he said. Of the £100m he estimates the council will be cutting between 2013 and 2016, approximately half of that figure reflects rising cost pressures within the city (largely the result of the ageing population requiring more, expensive care), and the other half is the result of central government cuts to the city's budget.

 

"We have this awful situation of seriously increasing demand on the one hand and decreasing resources on the other," he said.

 

Newcastle council has been arguing since the beginning of the year that there is a political bias to the way central government carves up cuts to local authorities, providing data analysis suggesting that the poorest areas of the country are taking the brunt of the cuts.

 

The city is also more affected by public sector cuts than most southern councils, because it has a higher than average proportion of people employed in the public sector (more than a third of the working age population). Unemployment has risen by 3.5% to 10.1% since 2008, one of the highest rates in the country, making the city more vulnerable to welfare cuts.

 

Forbes was unconvinced by the chancellor's argument that "five new jobs have been created for every job cut in the public sector", remarking: "That's just not borne out in Newcastle, there just aren't the private sector jobs." He was also uncertain that the chancellor's announcement of an "upfront work search" scheme, which will require the unemployed to make weekly visits to jobcentres, would improve employment rates.

 

"In my experience people are visiting jobcentres on a daily basis looking for jobs. It is all very well saying people should come weekly, but if there are no jobs for people to find, then it's a wasted visit," he said.

 

In the past year, Newcastle has attracted national attention for proposing a 100% cut to the city's £1.2m arts budget – a decision which has subsequently been modified, so that the city's cultural institutions are now merely grappling with a 50% cut. Forbes regrets the level of cuts, but argues that they illustrate the difficult choices local councils are being forced to make as they calculate how to cope with ongoing funding reductions.

 

"No-one questions the value of the arts to our society and culture, particularly to the economy and society. The question is, in a time of austerity and swingeing budget cuts, how do you pay for it? The problem was that arts and culture always had to compete in the council's revenue budget against other vital services, everything from bin collections, and libraries and swimming pools to adult social care and children's social care."

 

Since 2010, the council has made considerable savings. It will have cut 22% of its staff headcount by 2016; 1,320 full-time posts, of which 695 have already been cut, including road sweepers, park keepers and youth workers. The council's support services have been cut by 50%, partly by integrating the customer services systems for different council departments. Further cost-saving integration of back-office and IT services between the council and the city's universities is planned.

 

Officials say they have done a lot to try to ensure that the council – in the favoured local government jargon – has made "efficiency savings" and "works smarter", they have tried to find "creative solutions". They have managed to save many of the 10 libraries originally scheduled for closure by finding community groups ready to take them over. But now they believe further rationalisation and barely perceptible "salami slicing" is no longer possible.

 

"We are getting to the point now where it is difficult to maintain the services people expect," Forbes said. There was a city-wide consultation earlier this year about the budget proposals for the next three years. "We thought it was important to have a very honest discussion with the city about what the council was going to be able to do in the future, and it was inevitably a lot less, given that we faced cuts and cost pressures amounting to more than a third of our flexible revenue budget."

 

There has already been anger locally at the council's decision to switch to fortnightly bin collection, and to charge an annual £20 levy for the removal of garden waste. Forbes said his email inbox this week was full of complaints about long grass, the result of cuts to the city's environment budget. By 2016 he expects to make more dramatic cuts to the teams charged with removing fly-tipped rubbish and cleaning the city's streets.

 

More significantly, Forbes believes that Sure Start services will have to be reduced from the current 18 centres, to a "rump service", catering only for the city's five most deprived areas. "That will set back our work on tackling inequality by generations," Forbes said.

 

Newcastle also proposes to ration the amount of support it gives to the elderly and the disabled so that those classified with "substantial" needs will no longer be eligible for state support, and only those with "critical" needs will be looked after by the council; similar decisions have already been taken by other councils. Forbes did not think that the £3bn for social care announced by the chancellor would be enough to allow the council to reconsider.

 

Although officials will continue to search for other ways of making the cuts, Forbes believes that the prospect of avoiding big reductions in these services is slim. He rejects the accusation, which he has repeatedly faced this year, that his forecasts are deliberately alarmist.

 

"People accused me of painting the most alarming scenarios possible for political purposes but actually we have been over optimistic in our assessment of what the government was going to cut, rather than pessimistic," he said.

 

It is a dispiriting time to be a council leader responsible for implementing cuts, Forbes said. "The services that the council provides offer a lifeline of support to the people who most need them, the kind of help that transforms people's lives from a path of poverty to one of opportunity, and it breaks my heart to see the loss of opportunity that the destruction of these public services represents."

 

Catherine McKinnell, Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne North, and shadow Treasury Secretary said that the impact was only beginning to be felt by constituents. "Up until now, most of it has been announcements that people have had to digest, and the reality hasn't bitten. But it is about to get a lot more difficult," she said. "It is a deeply concerning picture for the city."

 

At Newcastle City Pool, Graham says she feels sorry for the younger generation of swimmers. "For the juniors who are coming through, showing that potential, the future is looking a little bit bleak. We really don't know what the future is.

 

"I was involved in the Olympics last year, and the buzz that came from that was amazing … the idea of inspiring a generation. I came back from that, and within a few weeks we knew that this was closing. These kids do face a massive hurdle.

 

"Some of them dream big, but some of them won't have the opportunity to carry it through like other generations have."

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Meenzer

Meenzer 15526

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:lol: Glorious misdirection on the part of Our Great Rulers, innit? Pretend there's some kind of burger-related controversy and it'll overshadow the gross injustices Osborne is wreaking on the country. </parky>

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Meenzer

Meenzer 15526

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Just in case anyone fancies donating...

 

Shutting A&E departments can cost lives. Recent reports showed that when an A&E in Newark closed, there was a 37% jump in patient deaths. [1] Yet across the country A&Es are being cut. Not because of clinical need, but to meet unrealistic financial demands made by the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. [2]

 

If we work together, we can stop this worrying trend. In Lewisham, South London, local campaigners want to take the government to court over plans to slash their A&E and maternity services. If they win their court case, it would be a huge boost for battles to protect A&E services up and down the country.

 

This is a court case that matters for all of us, not just the people of Lewisham. But for it to go ahead, the campaigners desperately need more funds. So far they've raised £5,000 on their own. If we can help them get to £20,000, they can hire in a top legal team and make the most of their chance to challenge the closure.

 

Please will you chip in now? If enough of us donate, the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign will be able to take Jeremy Hunt to court!

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/save-lewisham-hospital

 

If Jeremy Hunt gets away with slashing services in Lewisham, he'll be far more likely to try it elsewhere. Lewisham hospital is well-performing. Crazily, it’s because Lewisham is a successful hospital that it has been targeted. Hunt wants to move money-making services away from Lewisham to bail out hospitals making losses in the area next door.

 

Expert lawyers say he isn’t allowed to do this. A judge has already agreed that there's a case to answer, and capped costs at £20,000. If we can raise that money and get the right legal team in place, we have a real chance of getting Jeremy Hunt's closure plan overturned.

 

The Save Lewisham Hospital campaign is an inspiring example of ordinary people working to protect the NHS. Many of them are 38 Degrees members. They are campaigning for the same thing as the rest of us - a decent NHS we can all rely on. And if they win, it will boost our chances of protecting A&E services everywhere. So let's show them our support and help them take Jeremy Hunt to court!

 

The court case is scheduled to start in a couple of weeks - please donate now so the legal team can start working as soon as possible:

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/save-lewisham-hospital

 

 

Thanks for being involved,

 

Blanche, Ian, David and the 38 Degrees team

 

 

FURTHER INFORMATION

 

What is the legal case about?

 

The Save Lewisham Hospital campaign is asking for the court to review Jeremy Hunt’s decision to downgrade a number of services at Lewisham Hospital. Lawyers have said he didn’t have the authority to make this decision. For more information on the case, click here:

http://www.savelewishamhospital.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Grounds-for-SLH-challenge.pdf

 

Why are they trying to raise £20,000?

 

A judge has agreed that the case should be heard, and that the amount of money local people should have to pay to fight it should be limited. The judge limited the amount Government lawyers could claim in costs if they win. The Save Lewisham Hospital campaign’s lawyers have also limited their fees - so in total, the most that the legal challenge could cost the campaign is £20,000.

 

What happens if we raise more than the £15,000 still needed?

 

Any donations made above the £15,000 target will go towards 38 Degrees’ campaigning work, including our NHS campaign and supporting other local hospital campaigns. For more details of our donations policy click here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/pages/donations-to-38-degrees

 

Can the £20,000 be recovered if the case is successful?

 

If the legal challenge is successful there is a chance that the legal costs can be recovered. If this happens, the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign will return the donations made to their legal fund. They will be reinvested in 38 Degrees’ campaigning work, in line with our donations policy.

 

Can I get involved in any other ways?

 

The Save Lewisham Hospital website contains lots of further information about the campaign and other ways people can get involved:

http://www.savelewishamhospital.com/

 

What about my local hospital which is also under threat?

 

Hopefully a successful legal challenge to save Lewisham hospital will help protect other hospitals which are under threat. If your local hospital or NHS services is under threat and you are interested in launching a local campaign in your area (or have details of a campaign that already exists) please email the office team at ccgsupport@38degrees.org.uk

 

 

We've got this far:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23137477

 

Still fearing the worst, but hoping for the best. Fingers firmly crossed...

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Meenzer

Meenzer 15526

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/02/jeremy-hunt-lewisham-hospital-unlawful

 

 


As a resident of the south London borough of Lewisham, for me, today is a very significant day. After months of fundraising, protesting and petitioning, the community-led Save Lewisham hospital campaign is heading to the high court. The aim? To challenge plans to close the successful, solvent hospital's existing A&E, maternity, adults' and children's acute wards, and critical care unit, all to bail out a failing neighbouring NHS trust. I almost feel sorry for Jeremy Hunt. Who would have thought that community campaigners from a small deprived area of south-east London could mount such a high-profile, co-ordinated and relentless campaign in defence of their local hospital?

 

So relentless, in fact, that back in January, Hunt was forced to feign a U-turn on one of the more widely-criticised proposals: the replacement of Lewisham's A&E (which sees 120,000 patients a year) with an urgent care centre. Instead, he claimed, Lewisham would "retain a smaller A&E".

 

And it might have worked too, if people hadn't cottoned on to the fact that this new unit wouldn't be able to treat or admit patients with serious injuries or illnesses, meaning that patients would have to travel to the already-full-to-bursting Queen Elizabeth hospital six miles away (in inner London traffic, mind) for emergency care. Even the College of Emergency Medicine has stated that the so-called "smaller A&E" does not meet their definition of an emergency department.

 

NHS medical director Professor Sir Bruce Keogh advised that the downgraded unit could still see up to 75% of patients, which in theory should have been of some comfort to those opposed to the plans. Yet when pushed for evidence by local clinicians to support his claim, Keogh said: "It's not an exact science." I filed a freedom of information request to the Department of Health a few days after Hunt's announced his decision on Lewisham, asking for the clinical data Keogh used to arrive at the 75% figure. Over three months later, the DoH admitted that it had no information on how he reached that figure.

 

Similarly, Hunt continues to claim that the changes would save 100 lives a year, an extension of the argument that by having fewer, bigger specialist medical centres, clinical outcomes can be improved. But while this is widely agreed to be true for strokes and heart attacks (and south-east London already has specialist centres for both), there is no clinical evidence that the same is true for other emergency admissions. Only a few years ago Hunt, in a speech about the importance of a "locally delivered NHS", bemoaned the fact that "the people running the health service are always thinking: 'By centralising, we do things more efficiently.'". Then again, it was only a few weeks before announcing his decision on Lewisham that he pledged to use the government's four tests for NHS reconfigurations to inform his decision: GP support, public engagement, clear clinical evidence and improved patient choice. But plans to close services at Lewisham failed all four.

 

By approving the cuts at Lewisham, the health secretary sent out a clear message: any hospital, regardless of quality or financial solvency, can be subject to closures if it fits with the government's wider agenda. Indeed, it seems like every week we hear of plans for yet more cuts to hospital services. Ealing, in west London, Trafford General, in Manchester, and St Helier in Surrey are just a few examples of other hospitals whose A&E departments are under threat, with the latter also set to lose its maternity unit. And all too often concerns are raised that these changes are based on flimsy clinical evidence and little or no genuine public consultation.

 

That is why the Save Lewisham hospital campaign is challenging the health secretary's decision. We believe that the plans are wrong on the grounds that: the public consultation was flawed; the government's own four tests have not been met; and by using the administration process for the failing South London Healthcare Trust to justify cuts at Lewisham, Hunt has misunderstood his own legal powers. As such, we in Lewisham are asking for this abuse of process to be called what it is: unlawful.

 

So today is not only a significant day for the residents of Lewisham. The fight for Lewisham hospital marks a pivotal moment in the fight for all hospitals. And who knows? We might just win.

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Christmas Tree

Christmas Tree 4725

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Seems a right dirty going on between Labour and the unions over vote fixing.

 

Holier than though Tom Watson resigns from the shadow cabinet, Labours biggest donor Unite says it has no faith in the party leadership and now the police are called in.

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