If Juventus fans were to go to Amsterdam and damage property there, sing offensive songs, and beat up taxi drivers would there not be a similar result, but one which would not get splashed all over the papers the next day and labelled racist. So why the Jewish exceptionism ? Do you think that you can do anything, anywhere and then use the Anti-Semitism weapon to deflect all criticism. How can you think that Israel can murder 70,000 women and children and displace nearly a million others - and then have fans singing songs in praise of that, without a negative result ?
No, there wouldn’t be, because the ‘locals’ wouldn’t have planned an attack on Juventus fans along with anyone who happens to look a bit Italian and demand ID to prove they weren’t before assaulting them. Again, you wouldn’t try and justify this against any other minority. I didn’t like it when people celebrated on October 7th in London. I didn’t kick the **** out of them.
If you think that Ajax fans would not plan an attack on Juventus fans then you obviously have no idea what Dutch football is like - it would be routine the situation is so bad there that there are no away fans allowed (in either direction) in games against Feyenoord or Den Haag. You ask whether I can justify this - the answer is no - but to turn that around, can you justify the murder of 70,000 women and children or the use of things like phosphorous bombs on a civilian population ? And you expect no reaction to this ?
Who’s making up numbers now? I’ve been to an Ajax v Feyenoord game as it happens. Equating this to football violence between rival firms is grim. You’re letting your Palestine hobby cloud your judgment.
I'm sorry but I don't have to make up numbers. The average daily death toll in Gaza is 250 per day - most of these women and children. This is a higher daily death toll than all other 21st Century conflicts - higher than the wars in Syria, or Sudan or Ukraine. Not my invention but the figures from Oxfam. It's patently obvious that Israels idea of self defence is to wipe out whole communities - and eventually steal their land as they have done the rest of Palestine. So again I ask if you can justify this genocide - or if you expect no reaction elsewhere ?
There’s no genocide so it’s a bit of a non-starter of a question. It’s a shame Hamas put their people in this situation. Once the hostages are returned we can talk about what’s justified. Attacking random people on the off chance they’re Jewish in Amsterdam does very little for those people.
Killing 70,000 people on the off chance that there might be the odd Hamas fighter amongst them does very little to further your argument.
It’s a pretty solid civilian to combatant ratio as wars go given the circumstances so it’s a lot more than just doing stuff on the off chance. Everyone was crying even when they took out a load of Hezbollah via their own pagers so any form of attack is going to have our new generation of Hamas apologists crying.
So Little Wes Streeting is cutting and pasting his idol Alan Milburn’s Stalinist approach to the NHS - league tables, public humiliations and punishment for failure, sacking evil managers. The reward for ‘success’ (which appears to be staying in budget) is more ‘freedom’ from Whitehall control. Old style state socialism, which is why there is no mention of patients having the ability to chose where they are treated to avoid **** local services Trouble is that Milburn was able to accompany his performance metrics with year on year real funding increases, a luxury likely to be denied Wes. And Milburn’s approach was dropped anyway because it didn’t work. It didn’t work because the metrics were all about inputs and outputs, never outcomes. Here’s an idea. There are plenty of really excellent, and really efficient, service models dotted around the NHS. And even, amazingly, in other countries. Why not concentrate on sharing good practice and helping those places which are not doing so well copy and implement it? Presumably because it doesn’t fit with the Starmer sado-masochistic mantra that everything is incredibly **** and will be for years so everyone has to very visibly suffer to earn the possible privilege of things not being quite so **** in a decade. We are now governed by people whose image of 2020’s United Kingdom seems to be more or less identical to Hieronymus Bosch’s depiction of Hell.
You really have it in for Streeting, don't you? I find him rather impressive. I don't see anything wrong with getting rid of bad managers.
I met an old work colleague I haven't seen since the 90s today, we worked together at a school in Peckham back then and in reminiscing over a pint he dropped a bombshell on me concerning a teacher who was there at the time. Her name was Sally and she was a lovely scatty blond who was also definitely a party animal, some of the end of term parties often finished in the wee small hours and she was a leading participant at many along with her party piece of doing handstands which were quite a sight. Anyway, to my amazement it turns out she is the mother of our erstwhile Chancellor of the Exchequer, a more direct opposite it is hard to imagine. I would never have guessed despite Rachel retaining her maiden name, small world...
There’s rather more to it than sacking bad managers, but hey, reform or die, whatever that means. Of the 4 current worst performing Trusts, 3 have replaced their CEO within the last two years anyway. It’s what tends to happen with failing organisations. In his speech to NHS Providers Streeting said he wasn’t ‘in the business of public humiliation’. Two minutes later when asked a perfectly reasonable question by the chair of his own local mental health trust, the North East London NHS Foundation Trust, he threw a hissy fit and screeched that he ‘would take no lectures from the chair of a challenged organisation’. Pathetic. He has told people that he doesn’t want to be Secretary of State for Health anyway, he wants to be PM. I see he’s doubling down on his message that NHS Palliative Care is so **** that it has to be improved before assisted dying can be permitted. So presumably he will sort that by sacking a few managers and **** those terminally ill with six months to live who want to choose their time of death with dignity in the ten years or whatever it will take to fix it. Impressive. The terms of the draft assisted dying bill are so restrictive that the numbers involved will be relatively tiny, a few hundred people a year, but apparently that would divert too many resources from the rest of the NHS.
Did he really screech? I have confidence in Streeting to oversee a major improvement in NHS performance and outcomes in the next 5 years. If he doesn't, he will have failed, but don't write him off before he's really got started.
I get you have confidence in him, I don’t get why. What has he achieved in the rest of his career (seriously, I haven’t looked it up)? He won’t be Health Secretary in 5 years time. Define ‘major improvement in NHS performance and outcomes’ - I’m pretty sure money will be thrown at waiting lists and they will come down, but will still be a problem. As for what else he wants to achieve I suppose we’ll have to wait until the government almanac brings us to ‘Spring 2025’. Anyway, I’ll try to avoid commenting on the little toad in future. Possibly. What do you think of Reeves’ plan to amalgamate public sector pension schemes and make them invest in U.K. infrastructure?
I'm not sure if Reeves can make the megafunds invest in UK infrastructure or merely encourage them, but it sounds like a good idea to me. The longer-term OBR growth projections based on Reeves's budget were fairly disappointing, but moves such as this - along with the effects of Rayner's relaxation of planning restrictions (not taken into account by the OBR) - should help this government exceed the OBR's projections. One other thing about the budget that occurred to me (and I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere) is that the increases to Employers' NI are possibly the best way to get at multi-nationals operating in the UK who are able to hide profits elsewhere in order to avoid UK corporation tax. I recall Jeff Bezos responding to criticism of the amount of UK tax paid by Amazon by quoting how much it pays in NI contributions.
I’m not sure, have to think it through and read a bit more. I’m sure it will have unintended consequences like the NI rise, which might be good for multinationals to absorb but is much harder for small businesses and may well impact on prices, wages and possibly jobs/investment. Hope it’s all been factored in.
Trump's cabinet appointments . Americans are going to reap the whirlwind and they deserve it, the ****ing numbskulls. Meanwhile, Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, says that, whilst he has absolutely no view whatsoever on the referendum vote (clue here, he was in favour), Brexit is to blame for the struggles currently faced by the UK economy. Go figure, Andrew. Meanwhile 2, Francois Hollande, former French President, has urged Keir Starmer to lead Europe from outside of the EU. Absofuckinglutely, Frankie. We need Europe and they need us. **** America.
As it happens, I’m due to be in a meeting with Bailey in the next few months. Personally, in my opinion, I think the BoE should have raised interest rates much earlier than they did - all the Covid Furlough borrowing had to lead to higher inflation and interest rates. As such, Truss’ catastrophic mini-budget provided a perfect ‘get out of jail’ card for him and the BoE to correct matters. (Just my personal opinion of course!) (I recall the Chief Investment Officer of the Pension Fund that I was involved in - I Chaired the Investment Fund that managed the Scheme’s assets (we managed the investments in-house) telling me years ago that the best way to deal with Government Borrowing was for the Government to ‘inflate the debt away’ - very prescient.) Brexit clearly has impacted the UK economy but there again the jury is still out on the recent budget:
