First strike or not?

There was a curious phone in on BBC Five Live yesterday morning.  You can listen to it on the BBC iPlayer. It was all about Trident.  Should we renew?.

One of the guests was Lord West, or to give him his full title, Admiral Alan William John West, Baron West of Spithead, GCB, DSC, PC.  He is of course a retired senior officer of the Royal Navy and formerly, from June 2007 to May 2010, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the UK Home Office with responsibility for security and a security advisor to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Prior to his ministerial appointment, he was First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff from 2002 to 2006. He is the current Chancellor of Southampton Solent University.  

So you would think someone of that standing would be a well thought out sensible chap.

Well, let me recount what happened in the phone in. One minute Lord West said that he would use nuclear weapons first to stop a war if he felt we were losing and would, to use his words, “advise the government to use nuclear weapons to stop a defeat”.   That sounds very like first strike to me.

But the next minute he says “it’s not a first strike weapon”.  Confused?  I am.  He can't have it both ways.

But here’s the thing, such confused and worrying thinking was at the heart of our nations response on matters military for much of the last decade.   One does wonder how some people get such top jobs when they, in the space of three minutes on live radio, can make such a complete road crash of an interview.

Mind you, he has form. In November 2007 he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that he was not "totally convinced" of the need for 42-day detention (without trial) of terrorist suspects. But less than two hours later, following a meeting with the Prime Minister, he said he was "convinced" of the need for the new legislation. He later claimed: "Being a simple sailor not a politician maybe I didn't choose my words well... Maybe my choice of words wasn't very clever". The incident was an embarrassment for the government, particularly as West was the minister charged with navigating the controversial legislation through the House of Lords.

Who thought this out?

Something strange is happening in Glasgow.  Traffic is queuing where it never queued before,  journeys are taking longer. Whole stretches of motorway that were once freely flowing are turning into car parks.

I was puzzling over this as I drove west along the Clydeside Expressway last night.  And it hit me.

All this traffic congestion is the result of one thing.  The new South Glasgow Hospital.

It appears to be the classic case of unintended consequences.  But for such a big project you would have thought the government would have ensured its flagship project was properly planned from the traffic and infrastructure side.  Oh yes, they put in fast bus lanes, which the drivers decided not to use as they were slower than the road.  But when you have a population of a small town descending on to the local roads, you can see what will happen.  So drivers try different routes.  They then get clogged up too. 

I’m sure the hospital itself will settle down and be a great place.  But the complete apparent lack of foresight on how you get thousands of staff in and out, never mind the patients relatives, is a bit of a scandal. Actually, the scandal probably is, they did know before but no one did anything about it.

What is the point?

We know we are going to die. 

We know it is only 4 minutes before the nuclear devices explode killing you and me and millions of others.  And we have a choice.  But before we take it, let us pause and consider who sent the nuclear war heads that are now only 3 minutes 40 seconds from killing us. It will have been a head of state of another country.  So understandably some may argue we should punish him for the wickedness and destruction that they are about to visit upon us.  Should stop thinking so much, only 3 minutes 20 seconds to go. 

But wait a minute, if our leader pushes our button, we will be killing millions of their citizens too.  They didn’t push the button.  So in our desire to punish the other leader we will kill millions of innocent people.  For what?  Is that in the remotest way a moral thing to do?  We know we are going to die so let’s take as many with us would seem to be the rationale. 

I did support having nuclear weapons till I thought of it this way.  But now I don’t.  Better watch my time, that’s only 2 minutes left.   

So back to our choice.  Are we to create even more victims?  Given we will be dead anyway as the weapons are still heading towards us, why not let the other side have a chance.  A chance to get rid of their leader.  After all our fate already is decided.  It is 1 minutes 30 away.  Why not let them try and make a better life after the nuclear holocaust that will engulf us.  Why punish them for the sins of their leaders?

And instead of us spending all that money on a weapon that really has no moral purpose, commit every penny of that to conventional weapons and solders, security service and other things that actually will keep us safe.

There, did that before the 4 minutes are up.  Maybe just time for a hot refreshing cup of tea……….

What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!

I do get confused at times.

I hear politicians tell us that we want to defend the values of our country.  Amen to that.  Yet when Jeremy Corbyn was asked by ITV yesterday afternoon if he would have authorised the drone strike which killed Jihadi John, he replied: “I would only authorise actions that are legal and within the terms of international law.”, he is mocked and ridiculed for his reply.

Jihadi John was of course Mohammed Emwazi, a British Arab man alleged to be the person seen in several videos produced by the Islamic extremist group ISIL showing the beheadings of a number of captives.  And that’s the problem.  He will now always have been the alleged killer.   

We have adopted a system of extra judicial killing.  So the families of the people he was alleged to have killed will never get their day in court to see him convicted by a jury based on evidence before them.  I can see why many of them don’t support what has been done.  They wanted justice.  And in our society justice can only be seen to be done in a court of law.  You don’t do justice from a drone at 30,000ft.

I thought we were defending our ways.  But this and many other instances simply says we are lowering ourselves to the same values as those who seek to destroy our way of life.  And know what, they are succeeding.

One rule for you, one rule for me.

There is strange logic at times from Scotland’s First Minister.  When it was her government setting up Police Scotland, it was all about, cutting back the number of chief constables to make a more efficient and effective service.

Now it’s the UK government cutting back the number of HMRC offices, she’s on the march already.  She said the announcement on office closures "appeared to put significant numbers of jobs in Scotland at risk".  She also stated  she would be seeking urgent talks with the UK government to discuss the matter. 

So with the police, it is ok, because she is doing it.  With the tax office it is not ok, because it's the baddies at Westminster once again doing cuts.

It’s interesting the justification that has been put forward for the HMRC changes.  They rather closely mirror the reasons Ms Sturgeon gave for setting up a unified police service in Scotland.  HMRC's chief executive Lin Homer said: "HMRC has too many expensive, isolated and outdated offices. This makes it difficult for us to collaborate, modernise our ways of working, and make the changes we need to transform our service to customers and clamp down further on the minority who try to cheat the system."

But here is the odd thing.  You would have thought that Ms Sturgeon would have come out and said, brilliant, we can save the taxpayer money by doing it more efficiently and at less cost.  But no, once again she thinks that governments are a taxpayer funded job creation agency.

Bully boys and girls.

Last night there was a series of votes in the UK parliament on what has become known as the Scotland Bill.  It’s an interesting piece of legislation that no one voted for at the independence referendum.  A simple yes no question was all that was on the ballot paper.  And only 35% of the people in Scotland voted yes.

Many people had already voted by post before Gordon Brown and his Vow came along.  So the voters who still had to go to the polls were being told there really was a third option on the table.  Vote No and you will not get what you are voting No to, but something else, and that something has been turned into the Scotland Bill.  Weird, but there you go. 

If you watched the debate you will have seen Angus Robertson addressing the Scottish people and remarking that what was happening on the government benches showed disrespect for the people of Scotland and the people of Scotland would be watching.

There is a famous portion in Matthews Gospel when the writer says "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  If only Mr Robertson had noted such advice.  The behaviour of his MPs was really quite remarkable.  Barracking and shouting at anyone who dared to question the Nationalism Party. 

One particular incident occurred when former Consultant breast surgeon Dr Philippa Whitford, SNP Health spokesperson, sought to intervene in a speech by Ian Austin, MP.  You really want to go and look at the footage.  The intervention was somewhat unbecoming of her status.   It may be an unfortunate camera angle but her face says aggression, even hatred towards Mr Austin who was gently reminding the SNP that they already had the power to do things in NHS Scotland which is a devolved matter.  And in Mr Austin’s view, the SNP government in Scotland were making a bit of a hash of it.

And this was the general tone of the SNP.  You can’t comment on Scottish things because you’re not Scottish.  It really was unpleasant.

But this all comes back to one thing.  Leadership.  People follow the behaviour of their leader.  And week after week in the Scottish parliament Ms Sturgeon, by her words and her body language, encourages people to think that anyone who speaks against the SNP is talking rubbish, is unpatriotic, or is somehow cerebrally challenged.  This is her flaw. And will be her downfall.

I think on reflection Angus Robertson will realise that the Scottish people would have been looking, not so much at the government benches but at him and his party.  Unruly, disrespectful, ignorant of how to behave in a debate.  It really was a poor showing in what could have been a grand debate where they could have delivered a stunning argument.  They didn’t.

What is the NHS actually for?

I pose this as today's question after reading an article in the Herald.   Is the NHS there to ensure that people are treated quickly and effectively as possible?  I hope you will agree with me that this is what the NHS should be doing. 

And here is the problem.  It’s not.  Why?  Well, as the carefully and thoughtfully written article about retired neurologist Dr Ian Bone, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer after he went to see his GP with a sore foot, points out the NHS as we know it today is not about treating a patient as quickly and effectively as possible.  It is about treating a patient quickly and effectively as possible within the structures and systems of the NHS monolith. 

Even if a patent can be treated quicker and as effectively by some other provider, the NHS won’t pay as this article demonstrates. "But why not?" I hear you ask.  After all, we have all paid our taxes for getting health care at the point of need for free through our taxes.  So why insist it can only be spent in the nationalised health provision business and not on treatment by some other provider who can do it quicker and more effectively?

I had occasion to come across this problem recently when my daughter damaged her knee.  Waiting time in the NHS?  Oh, about 6 months probably.  But if you went to another provider, the response was “When would you like to come in to get it done”.  It really is time we stopped treating the NHS as the only provider of service.

Let’s just think what the NHS is.  It has only one role.  And that is to provide a free at the point of delivery healthcare service to the nation.  Does it mean it has to have a big organisation to do this?  To actually run hospitals?  I think not.  That is such old thinking and it restricts the clinical excellence we do have in the UK form blossoming into a world class system.  Which it's not.

So lLet the NHS concept of free at the point of delivery flourish.  But endow it with the opportunism of innovation and free thinking.   But for that to happen the politicians have to agree that the NHS needs to end its monolithic sole provider status.  Only then will innovation and fresh thinking waft through the wards.   Let’s save the NHS by liberating its ability to care for people at their point of need.  Let the money follow the patient like Dr Bone.  Even if it means the money goes to Germany.  For me, the patient should always come first.

There is no such thing as the Police family.

It was a sad occasion.  The funeral of a police officer in Liverpool today.  Very dignified. 

But was it very fitting?  There was something not quite right about it all. There were no "ordinary" people there.

Apart from the family and friends of the officer I’m not sure I saw many people who were not in uniform.  The subliminal message, this is all about us, it’s one of our own we have lost.  Which when you think about it for more than a nano second is the wrong message. And it reinforces the thinking that seems to exist in the police that its all us vs them.  That is certainly what it looked like today with the community the police serve being rather significantly absent and seen as irrelevant.

The tired phrase “police family” was trotted out again.  But the police are not a family.  They are members of our communities, just like everyone else.  It’s just we have given them one thing.  The power of arrest.  And that power is there to be exercised on behalf of the community family they come from.  This talk of the police being a family only alienates people from the police. 

Putting it very simply, they are not a Police Family.  They are not a Police Force.  They are a Police Service for the community provided by people of the community who chose to serve as officers.

When he laid out his nine principles of Modern Policing in 1829 Sir Robert Peel said this: 'The police are the public and the public are the police’ – police officers are drawn from the community and we exercise our powers on their behalf – we police by our community’s consent.'