DeclanCampbell

@EasyPeasy_3 You are finally right about something James 😊

There’s a reason the SNP are currently relying on small donations to keep them going. They had one job - make this country profitable and economically vibrant. The only vibrancy I see is in the burgeoning public sector layabouts. Not good.

Here’s my wee SNP gripe today. Not a biggie, but maybe gives an idea of the level of stupidity involved at the highest levels of Government. Especially in these cash-strapped times.

@ShaunLintern It’s like a policy thought up in the back of a ministerial car on the way to a speech. Oh wait that was in “Thick Thick of it”.

Streeting says he will soon roll out patient power payments, where patients will decide if the provider should get the full cost of their care based on the quality of care. Starting with women he says this will "kick medical misogyny where it it hurts."

@EasyPeasy_3 @voiceofrabbis It very much is an Israeli gotcha. I’m not going to play their game. Sorry

@Newlandsdoc @voiceofrabbis You either agree that Israel should continue to exist, or you don’t. It’s not a ‘gotcha’ or an Israeli government talking point.

General message to my twitter. You can hate Netanyahu and his reaction to the Hamas slaughter. I certainly do. You can also hate the extremist settlers and what they’re doing in the West Bank. I certainly do. So do a huge number of Israelis.

@DocEmUK Save yourself. You and your family deserve no less

I’ve been doing this GP malarkey for nearly 20y now. It struck me today that the only way I can carry on practising the way I used to is if I do it at my own personal expense. It never used to be like this - there was enough time in the day for bereavement visits, wellbeing checks, proactive care, time with colleagues to discuss patients & build relationships. General practice today is decision making at the same speed as a shoot-em-up game. Today was just me for 55 same day requests for appointments, clinical supervision of three members of staff, medical student education, paramedic education and all routine needs for a population of 1250 patients. We’re fortunate to have personal lists - though the new contract doesn’t value the continuity at all - and that matters to me deeply. Leaving work at 7, I decided to pop in to a patient of mine that I’ve known for 14y. In their 80s, they’ve just had joint replacement surgery and are having a bit of a wobble. We had a chat, they felt better, we have a plan & I’ll check in next week. This is the kind of GP I want to be. My day would have been less frantic, I’d have eaten/urinated at a sensible time, and I’d would have been less snappy with the children whom I saw briefly before bed if there hadn’t been so much nonsense crowding my day: 25 mins on hold trying to get through to a specialist (and failing), an insurance company slyly demanding a conversation with me about a non-urgent issue because it saves them money, dealing with consequences of private tests not requested by me but with the inevitable ‘see your GP’ as disposition, missing discharge medication, delayed follow-up, inappropriate ‘GP to’ as the heart failure team have a waiting list - and much more. Commissioning gaps, poor clinical pathway planning, govt targets on access over quality, media perpetuation of entitlement over responsibility and disproportionate investment & expansion of specialists over general practice have caused this. This is not ‘part time’ GP working - as a partner that’s never a thing. This is expectations from everywhere without resourcing to match. We want to deliver the things we did 20y ago - that’s why we went into this. If you want your family doctor back then you need to support us - because we want to be that too. I’m a GP, but also a Mum, wife and daughter of aged parents. I can’t do this at my own expense any more, and nor should I have to. Arguments of laziness and greed always abound, but really what we need is a properly resourced service. Please stand with us - a fight is coming.

@EasyPeasy_3 @voiceofrabbis What Israel are you talking about James. 1947 1967 1973 2000 2026? It’s kind of hard to know when people come out with the Israeli government “gotcha” question of “does Israel have the right to exist?” It’s a meaningless attempt to deflect

@Matt_Q_OnX @voiceofrabbis Ah, bring in an outlier. Do you think the state of Israel should exist and have the right to defend itself?

Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh 🇮🇪☘️

@EasyPeasy_3 Flew overhead on the way to the game

@GemmaBigemma36 @EwenDCameron Alcohol probably not the issue. Cocaine on the other hand…..

@EwenDCameron And the alcohol trials will be suspended

FT: Rangers lose on penalties to Celtic’s B team. Scenes at the end were utterly embarrassing. That’ll end all the talk of away fans getting a bigger allocation. Bloody mindless idiots. #Rangers #Celtic

The world, Europe, and Spain have faced this critical moment before. In 2003, a few irresponsible leaders dragged us into an illegal war in the Middle East that brought nothing but insecurity and pain. Our response then must be our response now: NO to violations of international law. NO to the illusion that we can solve the world’s problems with bombs. NO to repeating the mistakes of the past. NO TO WAR. lamoncloa.gob.es/presidente/int…

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Nuremberg Tribunal 1946

@enda_coll Straw man argument Enda. Neither look good enough

Would love to see the reviews of Cvancara if his name was Johnny Kenny.

@mrewanmurray It pains me to say you are completely correct. The whole presser was a car crash. Literally said “we don’t have the money” with nearly £70m in the bank.

Rather than make my time honoured Scottish budgets point 😂 Only last season Celtic played RB Leipzig off the pitch and could well have knocked Bayern out of the Champions League. Their own regression (pre Martin O’Neill) is more relevant than big spending opponents.

“A nation run this way cannot be sovereign. Its secrets leak upward. Its wealth flows outward. Its politics is for sale.” My piece on Mandelson as the most perfect expression of Britain’s captured political system. novaramedia.com/2026/02/10/pet…

@jk_rowling A billionaire speaks

Add Keir Starmer's newfound concern for victims of Peter Mandelson's bestie to his backflip on whether women can have penises and his U-turn on the Rotherham grooming gangs enquiry. Starmer is indifferent to harm done to girls and women unless it threatens his career. #StarmerOut

@DalgetySusan Maybe best to keep your nonsense on today of all days to yourself. I thought you championed women? Read the room for goodness sake.

I was a fan of Peter Mandelson’s in 1985 when he took a 1950s Labour Party and with Neil Kinnock brought it into the 1980s and beyond 🌹 The planning and execution of the 1997 campaign - masterminded by him - was a masterclass in political communications. He was by all accounts an astute and effective minister - such politicians are far more rare than they should be. He was a gifted political strategist and communicator; Labour royalty (as a boy he played with Harold Wilson’s son in Number 10); a charming, erudite public speaker. His influence across Labour over 40 years cannot be underestimated - even those who despised him took notice of him. But the revelations this week are shocking. He systematically betrayed his party, his leaders, his country, and for what? To show off to his creepy friend? For personal gain? One of the lead architects of the modern Labour Party may well prove to be the man who destroyed the very thing he purported to love. It’s been a bleak week and it’s far from over.

Morgan McSweeney’s resignation should not be treated as a cleansing moment. He was not an aberration. He was the tip of an iceberg. What he represents is a political culture that has dominated Labour for a generation. A culture forged under Blair and Mandelson that taught the party to be relaxed about extreme wealth, comfortable in the orbit of billionaires, lobbyists and corporate power, and increasingly detached from the lives of the people it was created to represent. The Mandelson scandal matters because it exposes that culture in its rawest form. Proximity to wealth and power was not a by-product. It was the point. Access was normalised. Influence was laundered as ‘serious politics’. Moral judgement was dulled by the belief that being close to money and power was a sign of maturity rather than capture. That mindset hollowed Labour out. It replaced a party rooted in working-class life with a professional political caste fluent in donor networks, private dinners and elite reassurance, while communities were told to accept decline as the price of ‘responsible’ government. Politics became about managing optics and markets, not challenging vested interests or redistributing power. McSweeney’s departure changes none of that on its own. Unless Labour confronts the culture that rewarded closeness to wealth, blurred ethical lines and treated democratic accountability as an inconvenience, this will amount to little more than damage limitation. Remove one operator and the system that produced him remains. And unless that system is dismantled, Labour will continue to lose its moral authority, its social base, and ultimately its right to govern, leaving the ground clear for forces far worse to exploit the wreckage.

@MatthewTorbitt Gordon McKee is either pretty stupid or knows he is getting punted next time out. Perhaps a job with Morgan’s next project is his best bet.

There will be a lot of this rewriting history stuff over the next few days. Those in No10 took Liz Kendall to a mighty 4.5% against “Magic Grandpa” in 2015 They found an empty vessel in Starmer & benefitted from a Tory implosion. The last 18 months has shown their true “ability”

@GordonMcKeeMP You’re not getting my vote again Gordon. Better get those job applications in now. Probably better saying nothing today of all days.

Morgan McSweeney made a mistake on Mandelson, as he said, but he is not alone in that. What he is alone in is his extraordinary ability. Morgan started as a receptionist, and rose up to almost single handedly mastermind our return from the wilderness to a Labour Government.

There has been a gigantic transfer of public assets to private interests since 1979. Summary: - Failure to adopt Norway model for North sea oil - Loss £1-1.5tn - Council House sales - loss £300bn - Utility privatisation - Loss £100bn. This is why the UK is crumbling.

Topical. Must listen. ⁦@raguvnor⁩ ⁦@mikedailly⁩ podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the…