Dulais Valley GP shortages

Thanks to Steve Hunt, independent councillor for Seven Sisters, for posting this on Facebook.

The Dulais Valley General Practice has traditionally had four GP partners. One partner has left and the practice has been unable to recruit a replacement.

A second partner is due to retire next February and, while the practice is still trying to recruit, there are concerns it might not be able to replace him either.

 I remember these facilities being unveiled during the time I was on the Neath Port Talbot council. If these modern working conditions cannot attract replacement GPs, what hope do other more antiquated valley practices have?

Does Welsh general practice have an image problem, a hangover from the Labour/Plaid 8% NHS budget cut perhaps? Or is there a more deep-rooted flaw?

Female/male employment ratio

Over the eleven years 2004-2014, the UK has seen a slight increase in the female working population. We are still behind some northern European neighbours, and we have not achieved the big jump of Germany, in third place in the EU as this extract graph shows. It will also be argued that women occupy the most low-paid sector of the economy. Still, it's good to see us in the top ten.

For the full infographic and further comment, see http://epthinktank.eu/2015/10/28/trends-in-female-employment/.

Great entrances

The film column in the latest Radio Times lists great entrances in movies. I am gratified to see Harry Lime at number three.  This was for me the best of the lot, and paid homage to in at least one TV series.  But many of the others in the list are hardly great and some of the great ones are undeservedly low, notably Laura at no. 63.

I also believe that the compilers of the list missed a trick in not considering comedies other than Some Like It Hot (I agree with no. 14, by the way). One of my favourites is the dramatic entry of Sara (Victoria Tennant) in LA Story, knocking over outdoor restaurant furniture and swearing in a cut-glass accent. And what about Blazing Saddles, where there are two great entrances: Bart (Cleavon Little) and Mongo?

Hypocrisy among politicians

Sir Edward Leigh speaking against the Lords Reform Bill in 2012:

What is so wrong with the House of Lords? The point that I make continually is that whereas over the past 15 years, we in the Commons have had the collective courage to defeat the Government only 10 times, our friends in the other place have defeated the Government no less than 576 times. That point has been made already, but it is a powerful one.

[...]
Why do we want to abolish an institution that has held the Government so closely to account that, in the past 15 years, it has defeated them no less than 576 times? The fundamental problem is that once the House of Lords is elected, it will become the poodle of the House of Commons. The real problem is not with the primacy of the House of Commons, but that the Executive is all-powerful. It is only in the other place that there is any decent scrutiny and that the Government are occasionally defeated.

[...]
What is right for our country is to retain the system of an elected House of Commons and a revising second Chamber that does an excellent job of improving legislation. We must leave it alone and defeat this Bill tonight.

Sir Edward Leigh in the Commons yesterday:

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. In the other place not two minutes ago, their Lordships voted for a Labour amendment to in effect kill off— [ Interrupted by opposition cheers]

Not for 100 years has the House of Lords defied this elected House. This is a serious matter, and I ask you or Mr Speaker to make a statement to protect the rights of the elected representatives—not just for us, but for the people of this country.

Why is fracking still on the agenda?

When oil and gas prices are declining, why is the government still intent on developing an industry which is clearly uneconomic? The financial incentives to frack in the UK are still available, and Simon Oliver reports that even SSSIs are under threat, contrary to promises made by the Conservatives before the general election.

Comedians and conservatives

There were three interesting elections round the world yesterday.

In Guatemala, a popular comedian, one of whose most famous comedy roles was that of a useless cowboy who becomes president by accident, won a presidential election by a street. Jimmy Morales put out a sketchy manifesto, but won in a low poll because his opponent was associated with the corruption endemic in government.

The Prawa i Sprawiedliwości (Law and Justice) party was, as predicted, successful in Poland and will be able to govern with an absolute majority. As a previous post indicated, David Cameron will find many points of agreement with the conservative PiS, in particular the assertion of national sovereignty within the EU. However, he will not like the insistence of the new prime minister, Beata Szydło, that free movement of labour across the Union  must remain. (He is also going to have to practise the pronunciation of that surname.)

Daniel Scioli, seen as the natural successor to Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, is not going to have it all his own way after all. He faces a run-off election on November 22nd against the Buenos Aires mayor Mauricio Macri. Macri, who is described as "centre right", only just failed to top the first-round poll. Whichever man wins, it seems that relations with the UK will improve. For the Argentines, he will need to get a grip on the corruption which has dragged down what should be one of the richest countries in South America.

Today is Wellington's birthday

Not of the Iron Duke, but the pipe-yard philosopher in the classic Daily Mirror strip, The Perishers.

According to the wikipedia entry, the action was set in Croynge, a fictional outer London location first aired on the radio show Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh. If I recall correctly, it was where Sam Costa's Aunt Emily was said to reside.

Osborne as soft as Brown on big banks

James Moore writes of the cop-out provisional report from the Competition and Markets Authority on banking (pdf here).

The only thing these findings are not is surprising. They are perfectly in tune with everything else that has been going on in the regulation of banking since the General Election. Martin Wheatley, the tough as nails boss of the Financial Conduct Authority? Ousted. The “presumption of responsibility” that would have required bankers to prove they had taken reasonable steps to prevent wrongdoing? Dropped in favour of a nebulous “duty of responsibility”.

Meanwhile, nearly every bank in Britain is applying for “transitional waivers” that they hope will allow them to get out of the requirement to ring-fence their retail banks from the wilder, and riskier, fields of investment and corporate banking. Despite the fact that the rules won’t come fully into force until 2019 and that they were trailed way back in 2011.

What still does surprise (a bit) is how short our memories have become. We are just seven years past a banking-led financial tsunami that very nearly destroyed this country’s economy, and I don’t use that term lightly. [...] “Never again” was the cry at the time, and small wonder. There were promises of new rules to make sure of it too. Ministers’ feet were held to the fire by a succession of ugly scandals, left stinking in the sunlight when the flood waters of crisis had subsided.

These are with us still. Investigations are ongoing into precious-metal price-fixing. In the past few days, a French bank – Credit Agricole – paid nearly $800m to US authorities to settle a sanctions busting investigation. Some of the payments it tried to hide went through its London office*.

Still banks drag their feet on PPI.

And yet this appalling behaviour now seems to generate merely a resigned shrug. Oh what, banks again? [...]

All the while the masters of the financial universe are getting more comfortable. We may have cause to regret that.

* This was happening at the same time as Lehman Brothers made use of slack financial standards in London in order to trick its investors.