I agree and disagree My point is that post Brexit after 5 minutes of brief unity this country has to bond together to make the U.K. great again The model of the south where I live is wrong and the problem IMO Building a united country requires a different culture It can’t help when we have this division There is a current resentment in Brighton for instance about the DFL’s The people who cashed in Down From London buying up two or properties without doing anything apart from being lucky I agree they rarely move north to invest Things have to change I know property hot spots exist throughout Europe etc in Cities but the U.K. has a problem out of control imo Take into account snobbery and greed in the U.K. we have an uphill task to come close to a Boris speech
I thought the British response to the Caribbean hurricanes was a bit weak, but the US effort in Puerto Rico seems non existent. Real issues down there, good luck to the inhabitants.
we have mmp here just had an election and now everyone is waiting to see where the party that got 7% is going will it be a 3 party coalition on the left or will he go into a 2 party coalition on the right or he might not go with anyone and he becomes the de facto prime minister because nothing gets done unless he agrees to it
We have first past the post, as you know, but the result is nothing gets done anyway, and a bunch of Neanderthals are bribed to allow it to happen.
also the bloke that is the party of 7% was voted out in his electorate but because he was number 1 on his party list he gets to stay in parliament
Had some interesting conversations with Americans today about this flag / anthem / kneeling thing. None could give me a good reason why kneeling was disrespectful, they just ‘knew’ it was. They seemed convinced that standing for the anthem was all about the military and veterans, when all the vets that contributed said they would be more insulted had they fought for a country where people were not allowed to protest. I get that the flag is important to them, as the only continuing symbol they have. But for a country which goes all mental when you question an individuals second amendment rights, they sure don’t care about protecting people’s FIRST amendment right to freedom of expression...
That’s precisely why protests/statements involving the flag are effective. It’s just Trump shooting his ignorant mouth off. There’s plenty of diversity of opinion in the USA, it’s just presented in the British (and to be fair the European) media to reinforce the knee jerk stereotype we have of them. It’s hardly all Americans Strolls. I’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate.
Yes, I wish we were more like them in this way over here. Everybody, after me... Imagine there’d been no John Lennon It’s easy if you try...
The usual poorly thought out crowd pleasing sloganeering from MacDonnell. PFI contracts can be flawed and onerous, but they have enabled hundreds of new public sector facilities to be built without the taxpayer shelling out up front. The NHS will be paying out, at peak in about 10 years time, about £3bn a year to service these contracts - less than 3% of the current NHS budget. It will cost about £300bn to buy out these contracts at full market value. And if Labour don’t offer full market value it will ruin pension funds which are the major investors in PFI companies. So let’s punish people who have saved for their retirement to satisfy some ideological urge and please a few trades unions. ****er. Thankfully, Ashworth (shadow health secretary, me neither) has already said that the intention isn’t to cancel all PFI contracts, it’s to review them one by one, and he reckons most are absolutely fine and offer good value. We are truly cursed to be in the midst of the least competent bunch of politicians, of all parties, of all time (in my opinion, which in this case might as well be stated as absolute fact).
Yes, everyone has a right to disrespect their country's flag or otherwise show reservation about aspects of governance. It's just a shame that in this case, it's a bunch of spoiled, multi-millionairre prima donnas who shout about black lives mattering, but ignore the fact that in America the greatest threat to a young black man, is not a cop (though, admittedly, there have been a few shocking cases of malpractice - and not just against black people) - but another young black man. Americans are notably patriotic, and I can't help thinking that with the kneeling and raising fists during the national anthem, the loser here will be the NFL, which can ill afford a drop in attendances.
The American flag thing is another example of how people can steal the meaning behind an act and manipulate it for their own ends. First of all, it's not something that the NFL requires teams to do before a game. There are "extracts" from the NFL rulebook circulating the Internet showing this a an NFL rule, but they're fake. Also, they've not been doing it for very long (unlike professional baseball, which has played the anthem at games for decades). The original "kneeler", Colin Kaepernick, was open that he wasn't trying to insult the American flag or US veterans by kneeling. He was saying this was a way of bringing media attention onto himself so he could start a dialogue about race issues that still existed in the country. He lost his job at the end of last season and is currently unemployed as a result. His fellow sportspeople are kneeling to show their support for his right to protest. They, in effect, are protesting that people have the right to protest and shouldn't be punished for doing so. We all know what the narrative from Trump is in response - he's manipulating it into being something else that suits his own purposes and those of his sponsors. As we know, there are plenty of people within and outside the US who are happy to believe Trumps version of the underlying reasons for anything. I guess some of them just don't want the discussion that Kaepernick was attempting to start, and this is their way of stopping it. Suppress discussion by accusing those who support the other point of view of not being patriots and inciting anger against them. Sounds familiar....
Are you defending PFIs? Whilst it might not make financial sense to cancel the PFIs now, to have entered into PFIs was folly in the first place. Its the privatisation of the NHS without the supposed benefits of privatisation (efficiency, although thats not true for a lot of free enterprise) as well as other government projects. We are effectively borrowing lots more money than were allocated just to make this year look better than it is. Just kicking the finances down to the future generations
The talk of pension funds being ruined is a giant red herring in my opinion (and alluding to punishing poor OAPs is not worthy of you, Stan). Scrapping PFIs and re-nationalising natural monopolies is about an overdue re-balancing of private/public ownership. Why let private (or overseas state-owned) companies make profits out of our state institutions when we should own and invest in them ourselves, benefitting everyone? Pension funds will have to work a bit harder for their members and find less-easy pickings.
I'm happy to believe they aren't disrespecting the US flag in their own minds and they are showing support for a fellow sportsman who has been victimised. I don't think we should discount the views or opinions of sportsmen just because they are well paid - so I don't see the relevance of your comment about their income except as a way of playing the "elite" card (again) as a way of diminishing their actions in the minds of those who respond accordingly. These sportsmen are just as entitled to express their views as two anonymous people on the Internet are (that's you and me, btw) using whatever platform they can muster. No-one can argue that a black person is more likely to be killed by another black person - that's statistically factual. Whether it is meaningful or helpful to know that statistic is another thing.
It's incredibly important to recognise how young black men are being killed in order to do something about it. Sorry BD, but the limp-wristed liberal approach that what is happening should not be acknowledged merely prolongs the problem. You say - support for a fellow sportman that's been victimised. There's the problem. No one knows what the protest by these pampered pooches is about. Racism, social injustice, Trump (probably not, because the protest began before he was elected), black killing cops, other sportsmen... you tell me. America does not have to suffer this alone - we have the Harrow-educated celebrity Cumberbach to tell ordinary working people how to live
If some bloke in Hicksville did it, nobody would know or care. It HAS to be the people in the public eye, at public events, in public, doing the protesting so that people actually see it.
I worked in and around the NHS in the late 80s and bits of the 90s, including involvement in the commissioning of the ‘new’ (now old) block at the Whittington Hospital in Archway and working with doctors and other clinicians on the design of several PFI projects. All were nightmares, for various reasons. But I cannot imagine how the state would have got the massive amount of capital required to replace and renew the crumbling estate which formed a large percentage of NHS buildings without private sector financing. I suppose the alternative would be borrowing and taxation, which would still have gone to the private sector because the state did and does not run construction businesses. Of course, none of these builds have been perfect as the demand forecasting, predictions of workforce and skills, and knowledge of coming technology were weak at best. I may be in a minority but I really don’t care who provides public services as long as they are good quality and free at the point of delivery, paid for out of progressive taxation. The focus should be on quality rather than on ‘ownwership’. Not that I’m wildly impressed with the quality of bits of public services which are privately provided. PFI is the least of the challenges facing the NHS, workforce issues and availability of the most modern treatments and technology are far bigger problems in my opinion. And in this case Labour have just seized on something which will be popular with their ideologues, rather than addressing the hard stuff. Like the hospital in Kent with over 300 nursing vacancies, which tried to recruit from Manila, but when 50 nurses turned up 90% failed the English language test. What is their plan for urgent and immediate problems like this? I think the electorate would be more impressed with something concrete on this. In an ideal world I’d do without PFI, but it’s not a burning issue for me. I didn’t mention poor OAPs mate, I was talking about people who have attempted to plan for their retirement. If Labour gets in and does this, paying off the contracts in full, fair enough. If it tries to do it on the cheap it will lose in multiple ways. My problem with state run industries isn’t the principle, it that in my experience they aren’t very good, in this country at least. But the fundamental point I was making is that the Labour policy on this is badly thought out, designed to get a cheer at the conference, hence the almost instant contradiction of MacDonnell from other bits of the Shadow Cabinet. They are obviously taking their lead from the real cabinet.
Whatever happened to marches and demonstrations? If a million march, it's infinitely more meaningful than some overpaid celebrities disrespecting the flag or haranguing a theatre audience to let in more refugees (before returning to his mansion in North London and refusing to provide a home for any immigrants).
