I think Chris is the man who just wants to make things better without all the spin and I think that is what the party wants and I think that is what the public want too.

Whatever happens, I’m sure both candidates will be an improvement on our former leader and will offer new vision for our party.

However, after hearing both candidates last night, I think that Chris has a stronger vision and will put us on the path for future election success.

Hospitals are a mixture of the public and the private. The evolution of private hospitals has been, like here a method of bringing private capital into the state sector. The hospitals charge the health service to an agreed tarif for each operation or treatment. The patient pays nothing – unless they want too. For example, for the birth of our first son, my wife spent three nights in the hospital, with no charge to us, but I was offered a considerable number of additional facilities, which is where the hospital admitted they made their profit. These included private rooms if you wanted one – my wife preferred company; Wine with meals – I kid you not, they even had a wine list! Fresh Flowers every day. Cable Television and so on!
The rooms were clean, comfortable and well maintained. The service impeccable. I contrast that with the birth of our second son in a north London Hospital four years later. The staff were malevolant, borderline incompetent – “O no, baby’s not coming yet.” “Well stick your head down there and tell him that!” The Hospital was dirty and I don’t just mean a little tired and worn around the edges, I mean dirty. They discharged my wife and baby within 24 hours and I have never been so relieved in my life, just to get them out of there.

The point is that 10 years ago we could say, ‘well we get what we pay for…’ but now we pay a similar amount of our GNP to the health service as other european countries it’s still little better.

When a friend or colleague had to have some treatment or a minor operation in France we would all wish them well and compliment them on their luck in having a few comfortable days off work.

Here I just pray for them.

The Health Service needs a completely new approach, not more money, or at least not until it is reformed root and branch. We need to be leading a real agenda for change in the the way health is provided. Of course it must remain free; that is a fundamental principle. But there is no reason why it can’t be free and not actually go around trying to kill people.

Our leadership contenders need to address this issue. The public can trust us with the health service; but we can no longer, as a society, afford to trust the running of our most important national asset to a bloated and incompetant bureaucracy.

It was the leader of the Liberal Party, Clement Davies, who expressed scepticism about the nationalisation of the coal industry by the 1945-51 Labour government with a quote I can’t quite remember, but something like “it will be the same men in the same place, and the same expression on the face of the pit pony”.

I feel similar scepticism about the magic solution of changing the sign plates on hospitals. We have after all, seen enough of this sort of thing with various privatisations and PFI and the like to know that it isn’t the magic solution it was once held up to be and could perhaps be more easily believed to be in 1980. I’d be all for it if someone could really explain how handing over hospitals to the private sector and contracting back their services is going to change the behaviour of those working in them so the experience of using them becomes much more pleasant.

I actually think the problem may not at all be the nameplate on the hospital, but a certain crapness in British society which encourages the sort of slapdash attitudes I agree we undoubtedly see in our hospitals. We do seem to have lost some of that mental discipline and common sense which once meant people worked well and gave good service in hospitals. Part of this may be to do with things like contracting out cleaning to private suppliers on the basis of those who make the lowest bid (and do it by cutting corners and employing cheap “no questions asked” labour) get the job. Part of it may be obsessive management forever with an eye on the budget at the expense of longer term considerations. I don’t know for sure, but I do feel switching the nameplate won’t solve it.

To criticise a candidate’s position, that candidate has to tell us what his position is.

This was Conservative Party policy in 2005. Fox and Howard came back from European countries and promoted the idea.

Good on Clegg!

Is he really Labour/Tory?
Is he in favour of wife beating?
Is he clockwork?

Cut the crap. If you have something to say, say it. If you wish to criticise a candidate’s position, then you might want to refer to what that position actually is, rather than all this “my Nan says he’s probably anti-apple pie” bullshit.

Under the last Tory government it was a mantra that what the NHS needed was investment. Health spending hasd been increased from less than 6% of GNP to more than 9% today, in line with our continental neighbours. And has it got any better? Well yes, but nothing like 50% better and it’s still a long way behind European Standards. Surely we cannot reasonably argue that we must continue to pour money in without any prospect of reasonable standards being achieved?

Who knows, if Nick is really starting to question things, root and branch, I might yet be provoked into voting…

Now if only he would say something about the organisational state of the party… Bit TOO radical that, though.

So just a reminder of the comments policy – disagreement, including from active supporters of other parties, is welcome. Spending your time wandering around on the internet like a foul-mouthed drunk isn’t.

Why do the media want us to vote for Nick?

Is it because he would be more favourable to US foreign policy than Chris?

Is it because he would form a coalition with the Conservatives in the event of a hung Parliament?

Or is he just another political celebrity, like Blair and Cameron?

Of course there is no evidence that Nick has mass popular appeal. Too few people know him. And the same is likely to be true of Chris. And anyone else in the Parliamentary Party.

The fact that much of said Parliamentary Party has lined up to shaft Chris tells us something, but I am not quite sure what that something is.

Who, if anyone, is winding the key in Nick’s back?

Anonymous @ 24 – quite right!

Maybe he should pop down the cinema to see ‘Sicko’ from Michael Moore – amusing if not entirely telling the whole truth. But does show the dangers of not having comprehensive health care…