About time

NICE, a harmless seeming acronym for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, they're the people who weigh and measure our health in England and decide if the treatment cost justifies whether or not it's worth keeping you alive. A death panel in other words. They're mostly notorious for denying cancer drugs in England that are available in Scotland and Wales. For instance many cancer medicines which are widely available in Europe, such as the bowel cancer drug, Bevacizumab, and the kidney cancer drug, Sorafenib, are not available in the England. France gives out on average 1,600 mg of Bevacizumab per bowel cancer case, compared to virtually none in the England. Some of the more expensive drugs which have been approved by NICE are used less than in other countries, the figures show. Patients are 20 per cent more likely to be given the breast cancer drug Herceptin on average in Europe than in England, 50 per cent more likely if they live in France or Spain.

Telegraph.

Cancer sufferers in England will get access to drugs refused approval by a NHS watchdog if the Conservatives win the general election, David Cameron has announced. 

Patients are currently subject to a national system of rationing, which means they are routinely refused treatments for breast, colon, kidney and lung cancer which are available free in other countries.

David Cameron pledged that any patient with the disease should be allowed any drug licensed in the last five years, if their doctor seeks it, even if the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has ruled against its use. 

The manifesto commitment means thousands of people could secure medications which are now rarely prescribed on the NHS, despite the fact they can extend lives by months and even years.

Mr Cameron said: "Other European countries are doing better than us at giving people longer, happier lives with cancer.

"We want to get more drugs to people more quickly and in the UK today there are some people – thousands of people – who want a certain cancer drug, whose doctors tell them they should have a certain cancer drug, who don't get it."

He said the costs of paying for the drugs would be met by the £200 million which the NHS stands to save from the Conservatives' decision not to go ahead with Labour's planned 1 per cent rise in National Insurance.

Finally a decision of Cameron that I fully agree with. Hopefully it will be put into practice if the Tories get elected. Still as we all know (at least according to Labour) Manifesto promises are not subject to legitimate expectation. However this isn't labour we're talking about and it does make a change from the "sour little Englanders" position Cameron has taken in the past. Perhaps he's realising where his real power will reside, will make a change for politicians in Westminster to finally put England on a level footing.

 

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The return of the sacrificial lamb

Back in September a row broke out over school pupils deciding to send a lamb they had raised as part of a project on food to be sent for slaughter. Part of the fall out lead to the head teacher resigning over the "antics" of a few parents and agitators.

BBC.

Parents at a Kent primary school are angry that a sheep hand-reared by pupils is to be slaughtered for meat.

Meat from neutered male Marcus, one of three sheep cared for at a farm set up in the spring at Lydd Primary School, is to be raffled to buy more animals.
Mother Jo Davis said it was a disgrace that the sheep fed by hand by her eight-year-old daughter Megan was to be slaughtered and sold.
Head teacher Andrea Charman said the school council voted for the slaughter.

BBC.

The school's head teacher Ms Charman said the children will learn a lot from the farm. She says it will teach them about where food comes from and the economy.
Several people, including TV presenter Paul O'Grady, and some animal sanctuaries have offered to buy or look after Marcus to keep him alive, but the school is thought to have turned down the offers.

BBC.

Mrs Charman went ahead with sending the animal to slaughter, which was part of a project to teach children about the food cycle.
At the time she said the decision had the support of the school council, staff, the governing body and most parents at the 250-pupil school.
Parents and pupils who took part in the protest said they were disappointed to see Mrs Charman leave.
Chair of governors Geoff Marsh said: "This is a sad day for us, but we wish her the very best for the future."
Kent councillor Sarah Hohler said: "I would want to assure everybody in the strongest possible terms that the governing body, school staff and Kent County Council have absolute faith and confidence in Mrs Charman.
"We are very sorry to see her leave."

Well common sense finally prevailed and Mrs Charman has returned to the school, hopefully now the original protesters will have learned a valuable lesson too and wont mess with the school in future when it tries to teach kids about the real world.

BBC.

Kent councillor Sarah Hohler said: "I am very pleased that Andrea Charman is returning to Lydd Primary School.
"The community has spoken and made their feelings known loud and clear. There is overwhelming support for her.
"Under her guidance the school made tremendous progress and I know she will relish the opportunity to continue that work and do her best for the children and staff.
"Welcome back Mrs Charman."
Parents and pupils held a protest in February to try and stop Mrs Charman from resigning.
Comedian Paul O'Grady, who lives near Ashford, had offered to buy Marcus.
But Mrs Charman went ahead with sending the animal to slaughter, which was part of a project to teach children about the food cycle.
Doug Wanstall, a farmer in Aldington, told BBC Kent it was vital children knew where their food came from.
He said: "There are a number of things we rely on - oxygen, water and food.
"It's very important that we understand all of those... and how we get our food, to my mind, is a very important part of any education."
At the time she said the decision had the support of the school council, staff, the governing body and most parents at the 250-pupil school.

I realise there is a tendency in today's society to see food as originating in supermarkets, but it really is vital that kids see the whole process from  start to finish including the end result. That it nearly cost the headteacher her job and health is a far more telling verdict on those who protested about the lamb. Lessons learned? I doubt it, but it's good to see this lady back in her job.

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Cheating

When you can't win fair and square those on the socialist left usually resort to cheating, although it's something they share with politicians in general. It means that they use their "ends justifying the means" mantra to ignore the wishes of the many or subvert votes (in the case of politicians simply going ahead and doing it anyway) to get their own way, or rather the way of the activist and leadership.

The RMT are a classic example of this, lead by a man who is a committed socialist (read communist) who decided New Labour weren't socialist enough for his union so set up his own political party to a resounding failure to get votes.
He's been spoiling for a fight with the government (any government) for a while now and sees a chance to send New Labour into the dustbin of history by making them unelectable via strike action. Except that it might be that his membership did not agree with him, but that's ok, you can always find extra votes when on the left (or a Lib Dem) simply by making them up.

Times.

Arsonists struck in the dead of night on April 19 last year. By dawn, the East Usk signal box in Newport was a burnt-out shell and police had started an investigation into the “suspicious” fire.

Few could have imagined that, a year on, the charred ruin in South Wales might have a role in preventing the national rail strike planned for next week.

The East Usk signal is one of 11 “ghost” boxes that Network Rail claims were wrongly included in the Rail, Maritime and Transport union’s strike ballot. The three votes listed from the Newport siding should be disqualified along with all 25 from signal boxes that have long disappeared, the company will argue today in the High Court.

While most were closed this century as automation spread along the railway, one of them stopped operating in the 1960s. 

Chalford signal box, near Gloucester, opened on August 2, 1897, at the bottom of a four-mile hill below Saperton Tunnel. It is still revered by some railway enthusiasts for the safe passage afforded to “auto-train” services in the 1930s – shuttle trains with a cab at both ends that plied the line to Gloucester. But it signalled to its last goods train in 1963 and its last passenger service a year later.

Nonetheless, one RMT signaller appears to have been included in this year’s ballot.

Network Rail says it has unearthed scores of inaccuracies in the signallers’ ballot, which show that the union has “manifestly failed to comply with the requirements of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act of 1992”.

The vote was so close, its lawyers will argue, that just 112 of 4,556 signallers balloted would have been enough to swing the vote against the strike. Network Rail says that the inaccuracies in the ballot account for almost 300 potential votes. 

As well as including signal boxes that do not exist, the union omitted 26 that do, accounting for almost 100 staff, the company said. Network Rail argues that in 67 other locations, the RMT sought votes from more employees than work there. It says, for example, that the union asked 11 members to vote at South Tottenham, where it employs three signallers; and 33 at Crewe, where Network Rail says it employs 24 people. 

It's a tactic obviously learned from New labour and it's predilection to ballot rigging by postal vote, after all why trust the membership to agree with you when you can simply rig the votes to agree with what you want. Cuts out the inconvenient middle man so to speak, the moderate who simply wants the money to keep coming in to pay his mortgage rather than have his year ruined by getting no pay because it's been decided (not by him) to strike about possible redundancies with a view to loss of safety.
Democracy is a foreign concept to many socialists, useful if it goes their way, but why take the chance...

The RMT are a classic example of not taking a chance, if the reports are true, they would not be on strike this coming weekend anyway, so they decided to cheat, fortunately they got caught, wonder how many other dodgy ballots have been won by phantom voters though.

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