Off Topic Politics Thread

Remember the big red bus promoting Brexit and that it promised £350 million a week to the NHS.

Brexit completed.....they got £3.50 a week

That's quite some over-promising.

 

Perhaps they could take a tenner out to get the PM a smart haircut?

 

A 3% increase would therefore cost 1.5 billion. How much profit was made from contracts such as Track and Trace? Perhaps a little rebate back would cover that amount with a word in a friends ear.

 

This is exactly the point. They ave overpaid on the contracts and maybe where the delivery has been unsatisfactory, they should be asking for a rebate with which to repay the nurses. It is amazingly short-sighted. I would have thought that the Govt would have firstly done the decent thing and made a pay award that was commensurate with the efforts and sacrifices made by the nursing profession. The second thing should have been made the salaries sufficiently appealing to attract further staff recruitment so that we are geared up for the next waves which will inevitably follow.

I think that 12 months ago the government was caught unprepared and was effectively thinking on it's feet. Not all the decisions seemed to work and some of them were extremely poor. Track and trace never delivered the expected benefit as it was too reliant upon people's behaviour to work sufficiently well. In fairness, the govt has performed brilliantly with rolling out the vaccine. I am surprised that they have achieved this and they deserve to be congratulated. Unfortunately, if we have no one working in the HNS because of a proposed 1% pay increase, I think that this will have been wasted.

On a different note, I had to visit the opticians in Winchester yesterday and was shocked at how busy it was. Loads of shops were open that I would not have considered to be essential including mobile phone shops. My Mum said the same about Romsey yesterday afternoon. Seems to me that people have already given up on lockdown. I had read similar comments on line yet was surprised to witness this is such a scale in Winchester, This is the first time since December that I had gone beyond Waitrose in Chandlers Ford - I was shocked by what I was seeing.

 

I would say a mobile phone was absolutely essential during lockdown. They will be some people's lifelines to the world.

 

I think the NHS pay rise is an interesting debate and one that has, again, no easy answers.

We have accumulated a massive debt due to Covid. Simply massive. Furlough is going to be continued, so the debt keeps rising.

We have maybe an additional 2m unemployed, that instead of contributing to taxes, are now being financially supported by taxes.

The majority of workers in the country have zero pay rise, and a freeze on the personal allowance, so like the NHS are effectively subject to a pay cut.

Many, many people i know and work with, have lived for the past 12 months in absolute fear they will lose their job. The stresses they have been under are also immense. They have also been working more hours, unpaid, to perform so they didnt lose their jobs. The stress these people lived under about losing their jobs has broken up families.

Many of these people were working in call centres, earning about £17k pa, or other jobs not earning much more.

So, please dont think i am being unsympathetic to the NHS, far from it, but there are many others out there in a similar, or worse position, and I dont hear much clamour for them.

 

I absolutely understand that it is a tricky one especially with all the debts that have to be paid back and still mounting, I just think the government are missing an open goal. Yes, lots of people could come clamouring for a pay rise following this, but I doubt there would many people out there who would begrudge that particular group of key workers a fair pay rise after what has happened and is still happening.

For me, it is just far too cold from the government

They didn’t think about the balance sheet when pinging billions out on contracts in a slap dash manner, yet now they manage to do that at this point.

A real chance missed for me.

 

Yeah I agree it was a missed opportunity, and I think the tactic, if you like, was off point. I think they got the mood wrong, maybe thought the Covid vaccine roll-out was riding the crest of a wave. The handing out of contracts was poorly managed, but i also think they just needed to cast nets out to over-subscribe to get PPE, etc at short notice whilst fighting every other country to get hold of it. Not saying it was the right way to go about it, btw.

I also think they will try the ‘let’s negotiate’ and try to come up trumps (no pun) with the ‘we saved the NHS’, but for people thinking it is the **** Tory scum etc, lets not forget every party is its own PR machine, they are selling votes.

I agree no one will begrudge NHS a pay rise, me included, but how it is going to be paid for is another.

In one way they are getting a rise (albeit 1%) the rest of the nation are not getting, yet lots of us are working longer hours without compensation or the small rise.

My concern here, is the clamour for an NHS pay rise - will all the people saying yep, give them more, be prepared to take a pay cut to pay for it?

I guess someone far smarter than me could work out the metrics, but say they wanted to give the NHS a 3% rise - if that worked out to be an additional £20 pm out of everyone’s take home pay to cover it - would we all be prepared to pay?

 

I, for one, would, but I’d like to see a load of tax loopholes closed up first, so more people pay their fair share. Seems to me that, if you’re well off enough to hire a good tax adviser, you can get away with paying a load less than an “ordinary” tax payer, like me. I’m with Warren Buffett on this when he said “stop coddling the super rich. We don’t need special tax breaks ....”
However, if I had to pay £20 a month more and it was guaranteed (haha - no feckin chance of that is there?) to go to pay the NHS workers a decent increase, I’d go for it.

 

Agreed. We have to pay for COVID somehow. However, the Government has really misjudged the mood IMO.

As an example, if I had a limited amount of money and I had to pay a business loan, a home mortgage, a personal credit card and a mate, I would do everything possible to pay the business loan (or I can't earn - the NHS in this analogy), then the mortgage (as I need somewhere to live - other sectors in this analogy) and the others are paid if there is anything left in the order I wrote it. Would suck to be a mate, but with in a situation you have to prioritise.

BTW, do I owe any of you money?

 

I would pay my mate first, everyone else can wait.

Probably why I've been skint all my life.

Edit; none of my mates are Tory MPs.

 

I would have procured, at great expense to the taxpayer, and 1398% over the going rate, some oranges, just large enough to fit in ones mouth.

And some black bin bags.

 

I can see where you’re going wrong in life. Tory MP’s make very good friends and are well worth the expense.

 

Couple of you saying the government mis-read the current mood of the public... shocked to read they may be out of touch with people.

 

The newspapers seem full of reports regarding Meghan and Harry's interview on TV in the States. I think circumstances like this underscore the difference between the British and Americans. For the British, the royal family are part of the constitution and people expect them to behave with a certain degree of protocol. For the Americans, they are just part of a media circus that they obsess about whereas they are effectively irrelevant to the lives of the people of the United Kingdom. The media seems split along two lines with the American's aghast at the attitudes of the royals and partisan to Meghan. I was surprised to see the "race card" played and I think that the royals are aloof enough for these comments to have some efficacy. It does beg the question as to whether this country wants a racist family at the head of our constitution. All in all, the push to topple statues of people from the past who might be deemed or have been demonstrated to have been racist now seems quaint in light of the fact that the Winsors themselves are perhaps more culpable.

The other side of the coin demonstrates how different we are from the Americans. Oprah may be something of a celebrity interviewer in the US but she would not cut it in the UK. I wonder how incisive the interview would have been had it been carried out by John Humphreys! I have to say that I have little sympathy with either side. I think Meghan has done well out of the marriage as she was otherwise destined to be an obscure, American TV actress. Te clips I have seen are suggestive that she is only thinking about herself. It is difficult to express any sympathy with someone who is so rich and moves in exalted circles.

The debacle between the royals and Meghan / Harry is all rather akin to a football match between Liverpool and Man Utd. Unfortunately, the sides cannot both lose and you still end up not liking either side. It does make you realise how pointless the royals have become and that it is time for them to go. Conversely, it is difficult not to be surprised that the Americans do not get the concept of the royal family and it does seem a bit rich coming from a country that elected Donald Trump! I suppose that at least the Yanks can vote to get rid of an unpopular president and we are stuck with the Winsors. However, I think that the British constitution is a slow moving beast than can accommodate change and you hope that today's news will help people wake up and think about why the vestiges of an early medieval institution still holds such sway in the 21st century. I think the time is get rid of them all is long overdue.

 

Spain will get rid of theirs long before you see the demise of the British and Commonwealth Royals. The House of Windsor is very clever in its projection of itself and something mega would have to happen for the UK public to turn en massé against them. The nearest to that happening was in the week after Diana's death, and previously in the late 19th Century.

 

Can't stand the royals and that includes Harry and Meghan. Poor little spoilt brats.

 

Perhaps a reason for this is that they are never off the front pages for very long. How newsworthy is it when one of William´s children starts school? It isn´t yet the press make a big deal of it. Perhaps there would be less disdain for them if there was little to no publicity about them. Not going to happen, is it?

 

Harry claims a member of the royal family questioned what colour (his then) unborn son would be, but won’t name them.
Megan also claims she told them she had suicidal thoughts, and was basically ignored.
It’s going to get messy.