Frank's Westminster Blog

I fear that many people could add their own experiences chiming in with the report the Patients' Association released today. The Association reports a consistent pattern of shocking standards of care that patients have experienced up and down the country. The Association believes that its report highlights the persistent unacceptable behaviour by nurses. Their examples reflect my own experience. As my mother got frailer the numbers of trips to hospitals became more frequent. It was when

Britain will soon be in an era of unprecedented cuts in public expenditure. Yet one item of expenditure is set to rise - our contribution to the EU. Figures dug out by Lord Vinson show that today's reports on our rising subsidy to the EU are wide of the mark - awful as the figures were. The Treasury's Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2009 shows net expenditure rising from £5.4bn in 2007-8 to a whacking £7.9bn planned for 2010-11. By then MPs will be inundated by...

The Government's borrowing figures out today are worse than what it had planned, no matter what silk phrases the Treasury utters. At this rate the Government is on target to break through £200 billion in loans for this year, as I feared at the pre-budget report and despite counter statements. The borrowing data gives the other side to the unemployment figures, which, at best, are contradictory. The income tax take, the levels of national insurance contributions and the returns from...

The Independent on Sunday yesterday carried the '50 smuggest Britons'. How did they make this choice? The article was billed in the following terms: 'They are pleased with themselves, very often with no discernible cause, and our stand-in PM, Lord Mandelson, proved last week he is the Daddy of them all'. The IoS assured its readers that it had deliberated long and hard over who should feature in their 50 'cats that got the cream'. One of these, high up in the table, is Simon Cowell.

On Saturday, I visited Wallington, a National Trust property in Northumberland. It was one of the homes of the Trevelyans and was given to the National Trust by Sir Charles Philip Trevelyan a Liberal, and then a Labour politician. His brother George Macaulay Trevelyan, was perhaps the greatest and certainly the most successful historian of his day. I also visited Craigside - the house that Lord Armstrong built for himself for what was once a wonderful view over Northumberland's stunning...