British Politics
Been on holiday for a few weeks, surprised to find no general discussion of British politics so though I'd kick one off.
Tory leadership contest is quickly turning into farce. Trump has backed Boris, which should be reason enough for anyone with half a brain to exclude him.
Of the other candidates Rory Stewart looks the best of the outsiders. Surprised to see Cleverly and Javid not further up the betting, but not sure the Tory membership are ready for a brown PM.
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/bri...
Regarding the LD leadership contest, Jo Swinson is miles ahead of any other candidate (and indeed any of the Tory lot). Should be a shoe in.
Finally, it's Groundhog Day in Labour - the more serious the anti-Semitism claims get, the more Corbyn's cronies write their own obituary by blaming it on outlandish conspiracy theories - this week, it's apparently the Jewish Embassy's fault...
This is the permanently puzzling thing. Why are people prepared to pay stupid money (pretty much their life savings) to the gangs, and face a high risk of death, not only for themselves but for their children, in the unsound and unfit boats provided by the gangs, in order to escape from... France? I mean -- what? It's not exactly like risking death to get over the Berlin Wall in the old days, is it? And risking your children's lives in that way is particularly reprehensible.
A BBC reporter explai
they have internet and facebook groups and whatnot and they identify the UK as *far better* for them than France for multiple reasons. Ofc those reasons don't apply to everyone.
But there is no point where any actual topic of "they deserve help" applies, the INSTANT they aren't in a country where their life is in danger. It's incredible how we allow this
Fear isn't necessarily an irrational mechanism nor necessarily a bad or immoral thing to use in decision making, and calling nazi people who base some of their decisions on fear is quite absurd and frankly... Purely based on irrational fear
The article doesn't say that. You should try reading things before commenting on them.
I remember reading somewhere that no ID cards is what makes Britain more attractive than the EU for illegal immigrants. Not sure where, maybe the Guardian or Telegraph. No idea of the truth of this though.
Lack of a national ID system, gatekeeping access to residence, employment, benefits and the NHS among other things, may be a factor. You can certainly see how it would attract organise crime, which runs the small-boat racket.
Lack of a national ID system, gatekeeping access to residence, employment, benefits and the NHS among other things, may be a factor. You can certainly see how it would attract organise crime, which runs the small-boat racket.
NHS can't be a factor in the France vs UK comparison, France has the same 0 out of pocket, fully public system and (depending on the exact source you check) it tends to rank a bit better than the British one lately
I remember reading somewhere that no ID cards is what makes Britain more attractive than the EU for illegal immigrants. Not sure where, maybe the Guardian or Telegraph. No idea of the truth of this though.
Yeah I read the same thing, and I rarely venture outside the BBC for news (although I am edging in that direction) so it was probably there.
I was mildly positive for a national ID system when Blair kicked the idea around. I think it's probably the most effective way of discouraging illegal migration.
How segregated are British cities?
Anti-immigration rhetoric claims it leads to ethnic ghettos. Statistics tell a different story
This is a government minister 'answering' on the number of alcohol deaths in Scotland. Completely out of her depth and just trying to parrot the lines Spads have given her. Unfortunately, this is very, very common in the Scottish Parliament.
The end of the NHS is unsuprisingly upon us
NHS must reform or die, Starmer to say
In a speech, the prime minister will respond to the report by promising “the biggest reimagining of the NHS” since it was formed, with a new 10-year plan for the health service to be published in the coming months.
He will propose three key areas of reform: the transition to a digital NHS, moving more care from hospitals to communities, and focusing efforts on prevention over sickness.
It may sounds benign but digital NHS is going to be run by private companies (with blair's puke all over it). 'Care in the community' - one of thatchers favorites. 'Prevention over sickness' will have some good stuff but huge doses of PR bollocks and blame.
It wont all be terrible but the NHS is cooked.
For those who dont prefer hope and denial. Here's the intellectual movement behind the reforms that we will be enjoying.
Tony Blair’s NHS dream? Fewer GPs, more chatbots.
I've worked in the NHS, everyone working in it knows that there's reforms every 7 years or so, just something to weather.
Private companies have been a bane to the NHS for years, and will remain so because no-mates politicians buy whatever the liggers and snake oil salesmen sell them while pretending to be their mates.
Thus it ever was.
The NHS has been in serious decline for a while. It's not going round in circles, it's circling the drain.
Blair built the coffin and now starmer is bringing his nails.
PFI is staggeringly horrible. Even so it's not the cancer that's eaten away the NHS. It's the inernal privatisation that it will not survive if it';s stoppped. It's about to go terminal
1997 Tony Blair (New Labour) dumps Labour’s tradition of support for public service and opts for privatisation and deregulation, funding 100 new NHS hospitals with PFIs. In total, approximately £12.7 billion is borrowed, with repayments reaching over £80 billion. Even when fully repaid, the public won’t own the hospitals! PFIs enable a covert bed closure program to shrink NHS capacity, and a future land grab. As the costs of paying off debts rise, NHS trusts will be forced to sell assets. Oliver Letwin becomes a Conservative MP to action his NHS privatisation manual.
2000 New Labour’s NHS Plan introduces private provision of medical services into the NHS for the first time to ‘modernise’ and ‘reform’ its practices. Routine planned surgery, diagnostic tests and procedures are contracted out to private sector treatment centres at greater cost than the same care on the NHS.
2003 New Labour allows NHS trusts to apply to become Foundation Trusts (FTs), arms-length business entities independent of government control. This further embeds commercial priorities and leadership into the system.
2004 New Labour brings in Payment by Results. Providers are paid a fixed price per unit of completed health care. This helps the private sector to cherry-pick the easiest, most profitable treatments.
This is not to absolve the tories but they're supposed to believe in this stuff. It's supposed to be oppose by labour, not led by them.
If you want stable or increasing quality for a public healthcare system with an aging population you have to commit to spending ever-increasing amounts of real resources.
That's the main element which should be discussed candidly in public, because it means either cutting something else the public does a little every year, or ever increasing taxation as a % of total gdp, unless gdp grows pretty fast (which is very hard to do with an agin population, and very hard to do in general for already fully developed countries).
It might be the case that people would broadly accept slowly increasing taxes every year to fund public healthcare, that depends on voters and they vary country by country, but people who claim there is "waste to cut" which would allow things to be far better even without increasing taxes, or other magical things to do which would decrease costs, are wrong even if some specific interventions (say, increasing spots in med schools) could help at the margin.
The direction is very clear and it's an apolitical assessment: aging population -> more money needed for healthcare just to achieve the same results you were able to achieve 10 or 20 years ago.
And every year it gets worse.
That's ceratinly a good argument for subsiding obesity, smoking etc
Not sure it's true but I'll drink to it.
I’ll arrest you under the Policing Law.
Individual concerned is a right prick
Lol jeez ahahahah this is so funny
Italy has historically received about twice as many 'unauthorised arrivals by sea' as the UK, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to ask the Italians what they're doing about it. Although it's likely that a large number of those arrivals travel on to Calais.
Italy has historically received about twice as many 'unauthorised arrivals by sea' as the UK, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to ask the Italians what they're doing about it. Although it's likely that a large number of those arrivals travel on to Calais.
We are doing the Rwanda Tory plan in Albania, they could have asked me, or anyone else.
And it works because immigrants have options: since we started, we are seeing much fewer arrivals, Spain is like + 300% or something
Yes, but heads of government talk to heads of government. I gather Spain is indeed experiencing quite a problem. I think the Rwanda plan was originally copied from the Australians, who decided to send unauthorised boat arrivals to Papua New Guinea or Nauru for 'processing', which cut the numbers from 20,000 in 2013 to near zero. (PNG has subsequently ruled the scheme illegal, but it didn't matter by then because the numbers were negligible.) Denmark has a 'zero refugees' policy and was in talks with Rwanda at one point, and the EU, in concert with the UNHCR, has been sending people to Niger.
Yes, but heads of government talk to heads of government. I gather Spain is indeed experiencing quite a problem. I think the Rwanda plan was originally copied from the Australians, who decided to send unauthorised boat arrivals to Papua New Guinea or Nauru for 'processing', which cut the numbers from 20,000 in 2013 to near zero. (PNG has subsequently ruled the scheme illegal, but it didn't matter by then because the numbers were negligible.) Denmark has a 'zero refugees' policy and was in talks
I think Denmark can use EU rules to send them back to the EU country they were in before entering Denmark (almost always, Germany ofc).
Once you enter safe space you don't have an international law right to move around anywhere else in the world afaik
