Hazel Blears is the chairman of the Labour Party. The Labour Party have decided, in their wisdom, that cutting the number of hospitals will improve the NHS, since the NHS clearly has too many doctors and nurses. Hazel Blears is, apparently, in agreement. Yet she is protesting against the closure of her local hospital.

How is this anything other than shameless nimbyism? She’s perfectly happy for hospitals to close across the UK, but when it comes to the hospitals in her constituency, they’re all vital. I wonder if, perchance, this has anything to do with the potential to lose her oh-so-precious seat? She should take a leaf from Ruth Kelly’s book, and swap her beloved seat for an altogether safer one, and basically come out and admit that her career is more important that the local people she is supposed to be representing.

Is this the first time we’ve seen a cabinet minister protesting against a decision with which they apparently agree? It’s certainly an odd spectacle. But then, she’s an odd minister. Like many of Blair’s babes (mentioning absolutely no names), more of a huge-flower-on-the-lapel permasmile Blairite automaton than a person.

Gordon Brown’s four-month-old son Fraser has been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. My thoughts are with the family at this time – clearly, this is devastating news for them, and it’s hard to know what to post in these situations.

Nick Robinson tells an interesting anecdote on his blog:

My thoughts instantly turned to an event a couple of years ago which I attended at 11 Downing Street. It was, ironically, to raise funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. The star of the evening was Emily Thackray, pictured on the right with the Chancellor.

Emily is beautiful and charismatic and looks a picture of health. However, she is very ill with cystic fibrosis. When she told the assembled company that she was being considered for a transplant as “time is running out” I well recall the impact she made. Several people in the room fainted. The chancellor was visibly moved. So much so that I asked my camera crew to give him some privacy.

The good news is that two years later Emily is still with us. She was told in March 2005 that without a lung transplant she only had a year left to live but she is – I’m told – still fighting on.

Despite the personal difficulty for a reportedly forward-looking Chancellor, perhaps its not too terrible to suggest that having both leaders of the major political parties having children with chronic medical conditions may do something to benefit the thousands of children throughout the land who live with ongoing medical complaints. Since Ivan Cameron has cerebral palsy and Fraser Brown has cystic fibrosis, it seems that for the next while we’re going to have Prime Ministers with intimate personal experience of the NHS and caring for a chronically unwell child – and whilst undoubtedly terrible for the individuals, perhaps that will be good for the country, and good for the care of children throughout the land.

Surely there is nobody better to plan services for children like Ivan and Fraser than the people that use the services day-in, day-out, and understand the hardships and difficulties that the bad times bring – as well, of course, as the joy and laughter of the good times. And this certainly provides a platform for public awareness of the diseases to be increased. Let’s hope that some great good can come of some bad news.

I don’t mean to be flippant, but I think I’m glad I’m not on the Blairs’ Christmas card list if it meant I had to display this… err… monstrosity in my home. I wonder if anyone who receives one will send one back with a picture of themselves on the stairs? It’s really quite bizarre.

Well, not quite so bizarre as the new ‘cuddly’ Mr Brown’s Christmas card of cartoon children – quite wisely called ‘interesting’ by Mr Blair. I would say that Mr Brown should stop trying to rebrand himself, but watching him make a prat of himself is too much fun.

Mr Cameron has yet to release his Christmas card. This is an interesting moment. How will he marry sending chunks of dead tree through an antiquated postal system with his pledges to be ‘green’ and ‘modern’? I’m assuming the cards will be made of recycled paper or something, but perhaps he’ll go a step further and send e-cards instead. It’d certainly grab a few headlines, and wouldn’t harm the financial situation either. But there’s always a chance it could swing the wrong way, and he could be called ‘miserly’.

I expect we shall soon find out.

I don’t know if Stephen Ladyman reads this blog – I suspect not – but you do, Dr Ladyman, here’s the Danish solution you’re missing on the path to road safety:

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Anyone sniggering at Dr Ladyman’s name should be ashamed. 😆

Nick Clarke, presenter of The World at One, has died aged just 58, following a very public battle with cancer.

Nick had a long career with the BBC, but I know him best as presenter of The World at One, and for his moving audio diary of his cancer journey. He always came across more as a chatty friend than a newsreader, as reflected by some 2,000 messages of condolence on the BBC website, and many, many more on individual blogs and websites.

The beauty of Nick Clarke’s political presenting is that he could examine politics in the greatest forensic detail, whilst also retaining a warmth, a breath of knowledge about everyday life, and a touch of little humour. His presenting was always elegant, and his interviews calm and measured, simultaneously detailed, incisive and impeccably polite.

Nick Robinson’s tribute brings back fond memories of some of the best political interviews of our time:

Nick asked once asked what I consider to be the perfect question – proving that you could balance persistence with courtesy. He was being fobbed off by the government’s straight-bat man Alastair Darling who was insisting on talking about the Tories’ policies and refusing to answer about his own. Nick paused briefly after one such answer – just long enough for the audience to notice. Then in that gloriously rich bass of a voice asked, “Minister, just for the sake of neatness could you answer the question I asked you”. Glorious.

There’s a full obituary on the BBC site, as well as a tribute from Mark Damazer, the controller of Radio 4. Thoughts are with his five children, and his widow Barbara.

He will be sadly missed.

Everybody’s favourite giant-flower wearing government jester, Heath Secretary ‘Mad’ Patricia Hewitt, has pronounced that

some parts of the NHS in England have taken on too many doctors and nurses

That seems a bit of a sweeping statement to me. I think it’s important she’s more specific – exactly which hospitals have too many doctors and nurses? Presumably not the one in Wales, which has had to close its minor injuries unit due to a lack of staff. Presumably not Scotland, where current government estimates say there will soon be 500 too few GPs – a number the BMA beleives to be much higher. And presumably not England, where ambulances have been turned away from understaffed A&Es.

But they’re out there somewhere. And it’s important we find them. After all, we can’t go spending all the NHS money on silly extravagances like doctors and nurses when there’s marketing to be paid for.

So where are these wasteful hospitals? Dr Crippen’s looking for them. I want to know where they are. And I’m sure the electorate surrounding the identified hospitals will be interested.

So come on, Pat, tell us: Which hospitals have too many healthcare staff?

I’m not sure on this one… Is this exactly the opposite of what David Cameron wanted his Webcameron site to be used for – or is it exactly what he wanted?

It’s certainly ‘down with the kids’ – it’s not a Tory message, but is the hope that videos like this will attract young people to the site, so that when they start browsing they might come across some Conservative content – or even just reinforce the ‘Cool Cameron’ brand in their minds? Or was this exactly the sort of thing the critics feared?

I’m confusuled!

From the Press Association:

A cash-strapped hospital could open its doors to dogs and cats in a bid to raise extra funds, it has emerged.

Ipswich Hospital is proposing to use its state-of-the-art radiotherapy equipment, which lies dormant at weekends, to treat family pets with cancer at special Saturday morning clinics.

It’s like something from The Thick of It. When the NHS is so cash-strapped that hospitals are thinking of treating animals, things aren’t going well. Why do I suspect the hand of Mad Pat in this? Just to remind you, other proposals she’s come up with include closing unpopular hospital departments, making those who spread MRSA face criminal charges, announcing that the doubling of NHS debt means the financial crisis is “stabilising”, and, perhaps most famously, announcing that this year was the NHS’s “best year ever”. Compared to those gaffes, suggesting that NHS hospitals start treating pets seems relatively sane.

How is this woman still in her job?

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I have written a lot in the past about the NHS, but rarely have I touched upon the subject of dentistry – mainly because it’s not an area in which I think I have particularly special knowledge. This missive from a reader of Dr Crippen needs no specialist knowledge:

Several years ago I had an NHS dentist. I saw him regularly albeit reluctantly, he used to do his ‘stuff’ and I’d leave, sometimes sore and sometimes not.

Then I moved house.

The area I moved to has few NHS dentists and none of them has vacancies for new NHS patients. I’ve been on four different waiting lists for several years during which I’ve received no dental treatment.

It started with a single filling falling out, shortly followed by another and then within six months nearly every filling in my head ended up in the bin. I rang all the NHS Dentists in the area but I was turned away. I was not registered and, in any case, they had no vacancies. Some of the dental practices didn’t even bother to talk to me. As soon as I mentioned ‘NHS’ and ‘Not Registered’ they just put the phone down on me.

The full story (well worth reading) wants to remind everybody that the Labour government has done little to improve the health service in any meaningful way – an assessment with which the Health Secretary “Mad” Pat agrees.

Let me remind you, for a moment, of Tony Blair’s conference speech of 1999:

…everyone within the next two years will be able once again to see an NHS dentist just by phoning NHS Direct

Seven years later, and NHS dentistry is in a worse state than when Tony Blair made his pledge.

Another broken promise. Another absent apology.