A Bond Villain

It's not often I'll praise a Conservative, but sometimes it's deserved. Jackson Carlaw - a man with a Bond villain name and whose appearance would be rounded off by having a white cat to stroke - has lodged an amendment to a motion submitted by Margaret Curran.

Curran's motion was the usual unthinking Labour blinkered ramble, this time on health, rattling through criticising the Conservatives' Shadow Health Secretary for England, the Scottish Government, two passing camels and the Brazilian beach volleyball team while praising Labour for delivering the cringingly awful mess the country is in now.

Carlaw's amendment would make the motion read:

That the Parliament is wearying of the parade of invitations to pay tribute to the former Lib/Lab administration, rejected by the electorate in May 2007; invites the Scottish Government to press on with evidence-based action to assist the people of Scotland to tackle health inequalities and to do so without fear or favour to the record of the Labour party, which having governed the people of Glasgow for decades has singularly failed to improve health inequalities within the city, and calls on members of all parties to measure success less by reference to health spending and more by reference to health outcomes while ensuring that all people in Scotland, of whatever financial means, can access the healthcare they deserve

Well, I laughed.

For completeness, here's the Curran motion (everybody's doing a brand new dance now), full of dreadful inaccuracies, of course:

That the Parliament calls on Conservative UK Shadow Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley MP, to withdraw his comments suggesting that health spending should be
reduced in Glasgow and spent elsewhere in the United Kingdom; believes that Mr Lansley’s apparent conclusion that health spending is inverse to health outcomes and should therefore be reduced in areas of poor health is a perverse logic that risks denying people in most need the healthcare that they require and deserve and that this is an alarming indication of the Conservatives’ intention to cut NHS funding; notes with equal concern that Mr Lansley’s wish may already be being granted by the SNP government in light of the recently announced £42 million of cuts to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and the fact that health spending in the Scottish Government’s budget fails to match the year-on-year increases of both the UK Government for England and those of the previous Scottish administration; further notes that, if this trend continues, Scotland’s historically higher health spending per head of population is at risk of being reversed within the next five years, and calls on members of all parties to defend the NHS in Scotland from further cuts and ensure that all people in Scotland of whatever financial means can access the healthcare that they deserve.