Stephen O'Brien

Christ on a bicycle, they've only gone and done it. The Tories have said "England".

Stephen O'Brien has been criticised a few times on this blog. Perhaps he does listen.

Perhaps, after-all, the Conservative website is not, by default, an English website.

The aforementioned Stephen O'Brien, who does not respond to emails, has a post up on The Blue Blog. I have left the following comment in response to his vagueness.

Does the National Dementia Strategy (and £1.356 billion spending hole in Labour’s proposals) apply in England, or is this the entire UK we are talking about?

Are we expected to reach 1 million people in England diagnosed with dementia, or 1 million across the UK?

You say that Labour have yet to grasp the scale of the crisis facing ‘our country’ if the social services remain unreformed and support for dementia sufferers is not realised. Is ‘our country’ England or the UK?

If the Conservatives increase the proportion of Government research budgets that is spent on dementia research, will that money be spent in England or across the UK?

Will the Conservatives’ Home Protection Scheme for residential care be available across the UK, or just in England?

Are you going to reform social services across the UK or just in England?

Let's see if he's any better at answering comments.

On 21st January the Conservatives published the news item "Record number of patients starving on NHS wards", which has since inexplicably vanished from their website.

No matter, I have a screen shot (click for full story).

Mr O'Brien, Shadow Minister Health, was contacted by email and asked:

Do these alarming figures on Labour's starving patients relate to England or the whole of the UK? And do you have a source for the figures?

To date he has failed to respond. However, the Telegraph sheds some light:

The figures obtained by the Conservatives showed that 185,446 people were discharged from hospital in England in 2008/9 with a diagnosis of malnourishment, compared with 175,003 who were admitted malnourished.

It's funny that the Conservative website is, by default, an English website, and we should assume that all stories relate to England unless otherwise stated; yet the Telegraph feels that it is necessary to state that the figures apply to England alone when covering the very same story.