Politics
Demands increase for Hunt to resign as NHS “Tailspins into catastrophe”
Everyone apart from the Health Secretary seemed to see this crisis coming a mile off says union GMB, the union for NHS workers, has demanded Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt resigns as the NHS crisis tailspins into catastrophe. Already in 2018 tens of thousands of non-emergency operations have been postponed, while the latest NHS figures show in the final week of 2017 almost 5,000 ambulances had to wait more than an hour to handover the patient to hospital. Before Christmas, GMB...
FOI request reveals shocking number of single crewed ambulances in Scotland
Tens of thousands of ambulances were dispatched with single crew in Scotland over the past four years. Despite the Scottish government previously saying single-crewing should occur only in "exceptional circumstances", a FOI request has today revealed that paramedics were sent out on their own to 2,204 emergency call-outs in 2016/17, and 3,514 went out the year before. The numbers have followed an upward trajectory since the data was first collected in 2013, when 1,644 ambulances were sent out with a...
Academics brand Tory members a “breed apart” as majority back death penalty and want MORE austerity
The majority of Conservatives want to bring back the death penalty as a punishment, a major study of political activists has found. Academics have branded Tory members a "breed apart" from their Labour, Liberal Democrat and SNP counterparts after research revealed stark differences between them on a range of issues. The report by Queen Mary University of London found 54 per cent of Conservatives were in favour of the death penalty, compared to 23 per cent of SNP supporters, 9 per...
Jeremy Hunt odds on to lose his job as Secretary of State for Health
Jeremy Hunt is odds-on to lose his job as Secretary of State for Health. The embattled minister is overseeing one of the worse crises in NHS history this January, with 55,000 operations cancelled. Dr Taj Hasan, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, was one of many doctors to recently speak out about the scale of the crisis, warning that "we are seeing conditions people have not seen in their working lives." Dr Nick Scriven, President of the Society...
This speech on Europe is going viral for all the right reasons
A video of a speech in the European Parliament by Spanish MEP Esteban Gonzales Pons is going viral on social media. The rousing talk highlights the problems currently being faced on the continent, highlighting the importance of unity in a time of great instability. He said: "Europe is currently bound to the North by populism and to the South by refugees drowned in the sea. "To the East by Putin's tanks, to the West by the Trump Wall. "In the past...
Corbyn’s shadow rail minister’s Virgin Train breaks down en route to rail fares protest
Jeremy Corbyn's shadow rail minister Andy McDonald was left stranded on a broken down Virgin Train en route to a rail fares protest in Leeds. The East Coast line has had the benefit of a £2 billion payout over the last over the last few weeks and it comes hot on the heels of today's 3.6 per cent increase in rail fares. McDonald said on his Facebook page: "My day of campaigning has been brought to a halt due to a...
Labour start 2018 two points ahead in the polls
The Labour party go in to 2018 two points ahead of the Conservatives in the polls, according to the latest data. Jeremy Corbyn's party would take 42 per cent of the vote if we had an election tomorrow, with the embattled Conservatives narrowly behind on 40 per cent. The so-called "Lib Dem surge" seems to have amounted to very little with the party remaining on 7 per cent of the vote. UKIP (4 per cent) and the Green Party (1...
Ministers struggle to name ONE country that has expressed interest in a post-Brexit trade deal
Trade Minister Greg Hands was unable to name a single country that had expressed interest in a post-Brexit trade deal in response to a parliamentary question. With the second set of negotiations set to accelerate in 2018, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox will be stepping up efforts to find trade deals the UK can sign after Brexit in 2019. But when challenged by Labour MP Stella Creasy over which foreign governments were queuing up to trade with the UK, his department...
Lord Adonis quits role & describes Brexit as a “populist and nationalist spasm”
Lord Adonis, The government's infrastructure adviser has announced he is quitting his role blaming the fallout from Brexit for his decision. He has chaired the National Infrastructure Commission since 2015 and has been an outspoken critic of Brexit from the start. Adonis called Brexit a "populist and nationalist spasm," and that the PM was “pursuing a course fraught with danger” over the UK’s decision to leave the European project. In his resignation letter, he accused Mrs May of "allying with...