The Conservatives have admitted producing a misleading leaflet about the MRSA superbug and apologised for what they're calling an error. (They stated that statistics given in a leaflet were for a single 'hospital trust', rather than for a number of 'hospital trust
s'.)
The result was that:
Voters in Harrogate and Knaresborough were informed that their local hospital had had 247 cases of MRSA in the past year, rather than the 6 that they'd actually had.
Voters in Twickenham were told that their trust had had 166 cases, whereas in reality the two local hospitals had only had 60 between them during the past year.
The Conservative party has sent similar leaflets all around the country, but has said it has no plans to correct them.
In fact, the NHS Confederation abandoned its efforts to stay out of politics and condemned the Conservative Party leaflets. This is just over a week after the Association of Chief Police Officers condemned the Tories for sending out leaflets like the ones that came through our door the other week, which said that violent crime had risen by 200%, whereas actually it's fallen by 30%, and in the same week that a Tory candidate in the most marginal Labour seat in the country doctored a photograph of himself and Anne Widdecombe, taken at a rally in which they were supporting the campaign to keep a family of asylum seekers in the country.
Wait for it: They were carrying placards. The candidate's had a photo of one of the asylum seekers in question. Widdecombe had the words "Let Them Stay". Now, in the election leaflet, his says: "Controlled Immigration", and hers says: "Not Chaos & Inhumanity".
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4435895.stm)
Random Disconnected Thought: Labour supporters refusing to vote Labour simply because they dislike Tony Blair are utter arseholes. It's not like he's got long left as prime minister anyway.
Another Random Disconnected Thought: Labour supporters who switch to Tory because they disagree with the Iraq war are worse - they're also idiots. The Conservative Party were staunch supporters of the war, no matter what they've been saying since. Those who choose to vote Lib Dem, fair play to you, but beware of the 'Nader effect' electing a Conservative government.
Interesting election link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4393925.stm
Okay, enough politics for now.
More interesting news:
A new Doctor has been found. David Tennant, who's currently playing the young Casanova in Russell T Davies's other BBC drama being shown at the moment.
I've never seen him in anything other than adverts for Casanova, but it could be interesting. I'll have to try and watch an episode of Casanova at some point.
Ooh, he's Scottish as well. I wonder what accent he'll be using for the Doctor?
And it turns out he's playing Barry Crouch in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. (Damn, fanboys and girls, help me: Who the fuck was Barry Crouch?)
The BBC has also removed its warning that Doctor Who may be too scary for children under the age of 8, despite receiving a number of complaints about the zombies and ghostlike aliens in last week's episode. (Come on, parents! When you've got one of the League of Gentlemen writing the episode, what were you expecting? Doctor Who in Teletubbyland?)
Anyway, where've I been for the past few days? In a school, in Bolton, doing a few days of classroom observation before my St. Martin's interview on the 27th.
Very interesting. I've seen 7th years, I've seen 11th years. I've seen set 1, I've seen set 5. It's kind of like my old school, except that it's better performing and has worse discipline problems.
- The day before I arrived, the headmaster handed in his resignation, and no one's quite sure why.
- On Thursday, a 7th year was caught with cannabis, although she claims she nicked it off her older sister and brought it into school to show to her friends.
- On Friday, I sat in on a meeting involving members of all three unions, discussing how to respond to the governors reversing the expulsion of a boy who hit a teacher in the face. There's suspicions that the head may have resigned as a result of being overruled by the governors, but no one knows full details as yet.
I spoke to a student teacher there who's in the middle of a PGCE at Manchester Metropolitan University, and she told me what it was like on the course. She pointed out that, no matter how bad it gets, it's a good idea to stay on the course, because otherwise they make you pay back the £6000 bursary.
