Off Topic Politics Thread

[Brinkworth Saint]

Most definitely, seeing as a lot of those "bob" savings were companies paying less because migrants would work for less. Companies having to pay more to get British to do those jobs will undoubtedly cost "the country" more in terms of profit but of course will mean some will come back with more tax take.

Staying will cost us more too, the new EU budget will take care of that!

 

[VocalMinority]

Pray tell how you can use spending in Scotland and Wales vs England and try and suggest we should spend more to catch up with them, when under the Barnett formula it is set and if the government decides to spend £100 more per head in England then it has to give Scotland and Wales £100 per head more?

They already get more per head BECAUSE that is the barnett formula. If we up it they get more.......

........however as pointed out, because they are a devolved government that doesn't mean they have to spend that extra £100 on health as seen this year where due to the new rises in England, Scotland got an extra £600m which they only allocated £550m to their health service. Think that is in the same article I provided earlier

I would also suggest that some of that extra healthcare spending in Scotland may well be due to free prescriptions rather than "better services." Hurrah you might add to that but that ignores that prescriptions are free across the board for the poor in the form of exemptions cards (now paper.) Thus I don't pay anything for prescriptions nor dentistry IF I am in receipt of an exemption card. So in reality that extra spending on free prescriptions for all is for the benefit of?


Anyway we digress. The point was that England should spend more to catch up. Reality being that England can't spend more without giving Scotland and Wales more and the targets are not assessed in any detail. If 96% of my patients are kept waiting for between 3 and 4 hours while yours are mostly out the door within the hour yet 10% take longer then on that target I win, despite having a lot of angry patients.

The target is not waiting time either. It is the time from admission (seeing the receptionist) to being discharged, whether that be to another department or leaving after treatment. That is purely A&E remember so not outpatients or appointments, merely the "turn up" service.

All the above is not the best to assess who gets a better deal between the nations.

firstly, I never mentioned Scotland in my first several posts. This was your rant, not mine, i was going by your stats for my one afterthought in trying to help you understand what i was talking about using your rant after you said scotland get 7% more. And as i said, this doesn't affect my argument. Ive not even looked at any articles on how much scotland put into the NHS despite your claims of hypocrisy.

 

[ImpSaint]

firstly, I never mentioned Scotland in my first several posts. This was your rant, not mine, i was going by your stats for my one afterthought in trying to help you understand what i was talking about using your rant after you said scotland get 7% more. And as i said, this doesn't affect my argument. Ive not even looked at any articles on how much scotland put into the NHS despite your claims of hypocrisy.

I know it wasn't you that brought it up. Someone else brought up an article that singled out that Wales and Scotland spent more on elderly care than England. I was merely stating that this was a very simplistic way of looking at things. I think we all know that the health service is not delivering. Most of the arguments between right and left is the left want to throw more money at it while the right think that the money is not being well spent.

My other point was that comparing the service in (most of England) to Scotland and Wales is not really something that can be assessed by spending amounts or waiting times and especially not if singling out one particular aspect purely on monetary spending terms.

We may as well just say England is doing the best because we have longer life expectancy than them. It would be equally misleading.

 

[VocalMinority]

I know it wasn't you that brought it up. Someone else brought up an article that singled out that Wales and Scotland spent more on elderly care than England. I was merely stating that this was a very simplistic way of looking at things. I think we all know that the health service is not delivering. Most of the arguments between right and left is the left want to throw more money at it while the right think that the money is not being well spent.

My other point was that comparing the service in (most of England) to Scotland and Wales is not really something that can be assessed by spending amounts or waiting times and especially not if singling out one particular aspect purely on monetary spending terms.

We may as well just say England is doing the best because we have longer life expectancy than them. It would be equally misleading.

Well the left is certainly correct in this case. the NHS is very efficient.

 

[Brinkworth Saint]

From my understanding Scotland have had to do this to catch up with England. They haven't spent more to get better service. They have spent more to try and get the same service. This is the problem with looking at mere % of GDP or rises in expenditure. It costs more in Scotland to provide the same service as England because of the Geography, demographics and poorer health issues. These numbers just give you a short term soundbite.

What has been used (with the false 43% figure or whatever it was) is an assertion that we should spend more in England to catch up with Scotland. The reality being that Scotland spends more yet is behind England in terms of service. Yes we could spend more but we wouldn't be catching up with Scotland we would be pulling further ahead because Scotland needs to spend more.

If you look at this article the SNP (who constantly moan about austerity) are actually demanding more "efficiency" cuts from their service than in England (1.3% vs 0.8%) and they are manipulating numbers, forecasts, calculations to hide that they are reducing their spending increases. The UK government gives them their barnett money and it is the Scottish government that then budget that out so it can't be laid at Westminster's door. The SNP are choosing to spend in other areas while hiding that they are reducing increases to the NHS by clever accounting. And then someone on here tries to paint Scotland spending more than England in one aspect (elderly was it) as a single pointer to Scotland getting better services. All based on the spend on looking after elderly people in a country where there is a vast amount of remoteness, islands galore, small communities spread all over the place a long way from the nearest urban area. Of course spending on the elderly (and dare I suggest any age group) is a lot lot more than in England where most people are much closer to an urban area. Is that such a surprise?

And this is presented by the BBC to achieve the exact result it has here. For people to see it and immediately take it as "evidence" to attack government policy in England with.

The reality that this article (and those using it for support) should be addressing is rural areas (like Somerset mentioned in the report) should have more spend per person that somewhere like London or Nottingham or for that matter Lincoln. But it doesn't.

So do people now care about the elderly? They wanted them all to die the week before and now they care?

I am constantly attacked for this sort of thing but everyone else on here does it as well. As long as it suits their argument then it is fine. If I do it then I am a stupid ignorant little englander leaver.

From this article:

“As Monica Lennon MSP showed this week more than 20 per cent of patients waiting for diagnostic tests are not seen within six weeks as promised - and throughout 2018 Scottish accident and emergency departments have not met their 95 per cent target - the promise of treatment within four hours - despite the fact Scottish hospitals appear to experience less demand for A & E than England."

https://www.scotsman.com/news-2-150...ependence-than-our-nhs-gordon-brown-1-4837708

And, don't even ask about the eduaction record in Scotland under the SNP, another area they are for which they are fully responsible.

 

[ImpSaint]

Well the left is certainly correct in this case. the NHS is very efficient.

Someone best tell the SNP then seeing as they are expecting more efficiency cuts than NHS England are. If you believe that the SNP are left that is.

 

[Onionman]

So do people now care about the elderly? They wanted them all to die the week before and now they care?

What the what?

 

[SaintinSerbia]

I worked 62 hours last week. 58 the week before (see the pattern here) for £8.21 an hour, in the UK

2000 a month. eee when I were a lad I worked for 10 quid a day, ****ed up my back picking up heavy rolls of turf and never got no compensation or sick pay. They were the days (you know before all that new fangled workers rights ****) Welcome to the world of paying your own way. (and look after your back)

 

[Schad]

And no here we are with the same Labour party (admittedly under a vastly different guise) banging on about protecting worker's rights that they can;t see are no longer worth anything to those in the bottom half of the work ladder. We are now there having to choose take the job or demand the rights.

And here's the crux of the issue: you are blaming immigrants for problems that really have little to nothing to do with immigrants. There are a whole host of things that have led to this point, from the "reforms" of Thatcher to global trends in offshoring and manufacturing, to post-2008 austerity, and none of them have a damned thing to do with immigrants.

 

[davecg69]

What the what?

Nice one, Imps! You serious, or what?

My 96 year old mother is currently in QA and they’re looking after her magnificently (and for free). If Farage et al got their way, she wouldn’t be in there because she couldn’t afford it or the insurance to cover it. They can **** right off

 

[TheSecondStain]

Nice one, Imps! You serious, or what?

My 96 year old mother is currently in QA and they’re looking after her magnificently (and for free). If Farage et al got their way, she wouldn’t be in there because she couldn’t afford it or the insurance to cover it. They can **** right off

And by the way. I bet many couldn't afford it either. Imps among us. Impsaint, don't be foolish enough to let your ideological beliefs destroy your own life. The bible that is preached to you is not aimed at making your life better. It is written to make the top 1% better off, and to enslave you. Don't make life easier for them when it's easy enough.

 

[StJabbo]

Imps, you and a colleague working 40 hours a week instead of 60 is a job for someone else. I've worked in counties where that's actively encouraged. What effect are long term 60 hour weeks going to have on your health and family? Better hope a functioning NHS is there if or more likely when you need.

 

[shoot_spiderman]

Do you think it is any surprise Leavers won't listen anymore? The last 3 years they have been called all number of names under the sun, been depicted as fascists, idiots and told that they will be dead soon and good riddance.....................and now people want to talk. lol. Roll on Halloween.

That’s not why they won’t listen. It’s because logic can’t trump passion and they have a passionate belief in the new Great Britain we are going to create

 

[Archers Road]

And, don't even ask about the eduaction record in Scotland under the SNP, another area they are for which they are fully responsible.

I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask about education in Scotland. Are you saying education standards in Scotland are behind those in England and Wales? I didn’t know that, can you educate me please?

 

[fatletiss]

Just my opinion but it was Murdoch who coaxed some of the right wing voters over Labour, when he threw the weight of his newspapers behind Blair.
I don’t think the media should ever be under estimated in the way it manipulates the way the public think.

Never a truer word spoken about politics. My very first comment on the referendum, upon its announcement, was that the mail and the sun would have the biggest impact on the result. Any result.

 

[saintlyhero]

Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann.

Not sure if it’s been discussed on this thread before, but a book written in the 1920s which warns of the power of media

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Opinion_(book)

The introduction describes man's inability to interpret the world: "The real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance" between people and their environment. People construct a pseudo-environment that is a subjective, biased, and necessarily abridged mental image of the world, and to a degree, everyone's pseudo-environment is a fiction. People "live in the same world, but they think and feel in different ones."

 

[Archers Road]

Anti trade union legislation? What could a trade union do for me other than to lose me and my colleagues our jobs?

Having worked for a number of large employers, I can assure you Imps that terms and conditions for Unionised employees are invariably way better than for those who have no representation.

But you carry on doffing your cap to the people who are exploiting you, while blaming immigrants (many of whom are presumably your colleagues) for your poor pay and conditions.

Meanwhile, the good employers frequently get undercut by the bad. But let me remind you who it was that won court cases against the nefarious activities of employers like Uber and Deliveroo - that’s right, Trade Unions. Many of whose members are immigrants.

 

[Onionman]

Terrific couple of minutes on emotional appeals without substance in politics (see Farage, Trump, etc) and on how to counter them - it's in the second of these tweets

You must log in or register to see media

Vin

 

[Onionman]

Imps, genuine question: How would you feel if a few hundred Scottish people came to your area and thus depressed the need for local workers? Would you have the same view as you do when people come from other parts of the EU?

Vin

 

[Beddy]

Imps, genuine question: How would you feel if a few hundred Scottish people came to your area and thus depressed the need for local workers? Would you have the same view as you do when people come from other parts of the EU?

Vin

Why on earth would he??..........Are you suggesting because We voted leave my Scottish relatives wouldn't be welcome down here if the need arrived.......I don't believe Imps has anything against Europeans or anyone. The Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish are British are they not??. They are no different from someone coming from London because its too expensive to live up there........or retiring to Bournemouth as a lot of them do!!