Off Topic The "Discuss Anything Else" Thread

Thank goodness I don't look like him, also my my middle name is not "Monster", just Frederick! Take a look at this one too, what a pug-ugly 'Proud Boys' leader, Enrique Tarrio is; a real in-bred Mafia type. Seems things are getting pretty out-of-hand in Washington D.C. Appears 'law-and-order' does not apply here, in the Gospel According To Trump? What a bloody mess. My former American expat. colleagues and friends were all older than I in those far-happier days, and in a way, I am glad they did not live to see what is happening to their beloved country. I think of them often; great guys, they were the best friends a (then) youngish Brit could have had. God Bless Them!

Now to this 'Proud Boys' joker:



Now there's a "Monster"?

 

I am pretty sure that most people would consider thousands of people dying and ten months of having our freedoms and liberties withdrawn based on the exaggerations of so-called experts could be considered a national emergency.

So here we are in a national emergency and Public Health England cannot deliver plague vaccines on a Sunday.

According to dodgy estimates from the ONS, one in fifty people is carrying the plague – over a million people – so which is going to get to two million people first: the plague or the vaccine?

The plague has a head start because the vaccine takes three weeks to be effective.

In Israel, three competing private sector healthcare providers are running vaccination centres fourteen hours a day to get people inoculated in a country with a population a seventh of ours.

We had a head start on most of Europe because we did our own approvals of the vaccines but the roles of tortoise and hare look like being unfavourably cast, assuming neither of them succumb to the plague.

 

Here in Kenya the Gov will receive 10m doses of a vaccine, i am not sure which one. The population is around 53m.
I wonder how much the Gov will be selling it for to the people who are willing to take and can afford it.

 

When the BBC are doing their daily item on how the NHS is under pressure is it really sensible to film the item inside an NHS ward with people attached to various tubes and machines. I think not

 

how else are they going to show what conditions are like ?

 

can’t imagine this would be allowed if they were black people

 

Christ Almighty, what a tragedy!

 

i personally think that to criticise the NHS at the moment is quite frankly disgusting and a very warped viewpoint.
But I accept that is the way you look at the world.

the NHS is doing its best in the most appalling circumstances. Not only has the government continually underfunded the service for the past decade, it has created a worse situation during the COVID crisis by continually locking down the country too late and it has failed to bring the country with it through mixed, confusing messaging.

why are people coming into the country STILL not being tested at airports?
Why are the police only today saying they will be tougher in enforcing lockdown rules?

the fact that today alone has seen more people die from COVID in the UK than Australia has since the start of the pandemic is more a monumental failure of government, not the mismanagement of the NHS.

 

It would be interesting to know if, since the NHS glory days, when you could turn up at the doctors without an appointment and wait your turn to see any one of four doctors, the funding for the NHS has kept pace with inflation and the increasing population and the projected need (assuming it was projected) due to changing demographics

 

the aging population coupled with advances in medicine mean that more interventions than ever are possible so workload has increased exponentially......without resources ( mainly staff / funding ) this will mean rationing / delays .
very few people alive will have first hand experience pre nhs , my grandparents used to tell horror tales of life without such a great institution, basically if you had no means , you didn’t get treatment , people were terrified of even calling a doctor such was the bill .

 

Have you seen the scenes in America…!!! If you thought it was a crazy place before, then this has rubber stamped it for me and you... I have been fortunate enough to see many places in America from Florida, to Boston, New York and New Haven and all have their own quirks, similar I suppose to us in England with Scousers, Mancs, Geordies, Londoners and people from Birmingham. We all have are leanings and traits, its what makes us the small island country we are great in my mind. But I never associate myself as a Scouser ( I was born in Liverpool ) or a Lancastrian as I live near Preston. I am English first.

Most of these pro supporters I have seen ion the tv this morning say they hail from Texas claiming they are Texans first, Trump supporters through and through and want to rebel against the 'crime' of Trump being dethroned. And if they are not from Texas claim to be from some sort of back water place that needs to be recognized. I get people protesting, I suppose its their democratic right, but if they honestly think this puts them in any better light to the world then they are very much mistaken.

The fall out of this may be that the Texans push for their own Independence, which they wont get, similar I suppose to the good people of Cornwall wanting to be known by their own rights. America is huge, vast, it's endless. A continent on it's own governed by people who are trying to pull 50 individual states all under the one banner. Good luck to the man or woman who could achieve that... It's the impossible dream...

 

I would support the Trump demonstraters in the US right up until they break the law. Once you have crossed that line you have lost and should be dealt with by the law and locked up. They are no longer demonstrators and just criminals, idiots. I have lived in the US and visited many states but never Texas and find the majority of Americans good and decent people just like anywhere else.
However, the press has a lot to answer for the last 10 years, they report agendas and not the news these days imo.
The press were super anti Trump from day one, even though he was fairly elected. He, like anyone else should be judged on his record, good or bad but they could not bring themsleves to give him credit with such things as the peace deals for example on the middle east with countries restoring relations. Just day after day of orange man bad reporting.
Now you have a criminal gang running amok in large due to that imo.

 

What has happened in the USA should not surprise anyone: the man is an idiot and a bully, and they voted him in. You get what you deserve and unfortunately they have deserved this. The ridiculous red and blue bipartisanship, the ridiculous power of one man and the deeply conservative behaviours have brought down to an infantile, spiteful level what should be the most liberal and rich country in the World.
But hey that doesn't matter because the stock market is going up and they can continue to worship the mighty dollar.

 

totally agree.
I wasn't even shocked by the scenes last night. just another day in Trumpland as far as I am concerned.
Hopefully things will settle down with the calm Joe Biden in charge.

 

Government spending on the NHS from 2010 to 2015 resulted in funding that rose at 0.9% a year in real terms, according to analysts at the Health Foundation and the King's Fund. In contrast, since the NHS was created in 1948 average real term increases have been 3.7% per year and the average increase between 2002 and 2005 was 8.6% per year (when Tony Blair was PM)

At the same time as funding has slumped demand has increased. It is very clear that funding has not kept pace with demand.

The government decided that what the NHS needed was an extra £8 billion when the figure of £30 billion was the funding gap to be filled.
The government is reported to have exerted pressure on Simon Stevens CEO of NHS England to amend his report to get it down to the much smaller £8 billion.
But it gets worse - the £8 billion is actually a lot less than this. Due to cuts made on health spending not covered by NHS England the net result for the Department of Health as a whole is an increase in spending of only £4.5 billion from 2016 to 2021. This results in an average 0.9% increase in spending per year for the NHS over this period, way below the historical yearly average of 3.7%.

There have been several increases since this was announced. Budgets therefore rose by 1.4% each year on average in the 10 years between 2010 and 2019 (compared to the 3.7% average rises since the NHS was established)

There has been more than £50 billion of extra funding due to the COVID 19 pandemic.

 

Brrrr, quick weather report from the deep south of Germany. Lot of snow yesterday and it's a winter wonderland down here today. Apparently it's 0°C. but it sure feels more like -2°C. Bet they've got tons of the white stuff all points south of Munich.

Prefer these conditions to what Queensland is going through at the moment. My goodness, those cyclones are terrible, Hope everything's OK where Cyclonic lives.