Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => Politics & Current Affairs => Topic started by: Nearly Sane on July 08, 2022, 07:14:08 PM
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So apparently Rishi Sunak is running in order to rebuild the economy that Rishi Sunak was running. Bet he thinks that Sunak's a right bastard.
Also Nadine Dorries is thinking of standing. There really is a reason that we cannot have The Thick of It anymore.
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...Nadine Dorries is thinking ...
Satire is dead, long live Satire. >:(
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Satire is dead, long live Satire. >:(
#GoNads
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#GoNads
I'll wake up tomorrow, still giggling about that.
If only I could get a placard... ;D
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Maybe not Andrea Jenkyns
https://youtube.com/shorts/FBYx7Ti-0VQ?feature=share
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Maybe not Andrea Jenkyns
https://youtube.com/shorts/FBYx7Ti-0VQ?feature=share
How unlike the home life of our own dear Queen.
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How unlike the home life of our own dear Queen.
Yeah, there's only the nonce Andrew there.
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#GoNads
She's starting to build up her #GoNads team.
If it gets too cold, they'll shrivel away, but if its nice and hot they'll do well on the swing.
Either way, the competitors will hope they end up with a licking.
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...
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Fun fact - Suella Braverman is a Buddhist.
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Ben Wallace not standing
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But Johnson might. Tbh I don't think this can work but....
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As the runners enter the parade ring for the 'Next PM Stakes' it looks very much like a low grade handicap on a wet Wednesday afternoon - but even then they are all 'out of the weights': a horse racing term that means these animals are so useless that they are officially handicapped to carry even less weight than is the official minimum weight for runners in the race.
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But Johnson might. Tbh I don't think this can work but....
John Major did it at some point in the mid 90's(?). He won and carried on.
Labour at that point had a retired lawyer(/ solicitor?) leader and won by a landslide.
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John Major did it at some point in the mid 90's(?). He won and carried on.
Labour at that point had a retired lawyer(/ solicitor?) leader and won by a landslide.
Do you mean Neil Kinnock? John Smith, who succeeded Kinnock, was greatly admired and respected ... and had trained as a solicitor. He died suddenly and was replaced by Tony Blair.
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John Major did it at some point in the mid 90's(?). He won and carried on.
Labour at that point had a retired lawyer(/ solicitor?) leader and won by a landslide.
Rules have changed since then so my understanding is that you cannot resign and stand again not that it means they cannot change again
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Rules have changed since then so my understanding is that you cannot resign and stand again not that it means they cannot change again
Not according to this. (https://reaction.life/could-boris-stand-again/)
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Not according to this. (https://reaction.life/could-boris-stand-again/)
Then they haven't bother to actually read the rules. Schedule 2 of the Conservative Party Constitution states:
"A Leader resigning from the Leadership of the Party is not eligible for re-nomination in the consequent Leadership election"
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Not according to this. (https://reaction.life/could-boris-stand-again/)
I had this argument with Professor Davey last year or the year before. In an effort to prove hime wrong I dug out the Conservative Party constitution and found out that he was right. They changed the rules to prevent a party leader from pulling the same stunt as John Major.
Edit: And here it is
https://public.conservatives.com/organisation-department/202101/Conservative%20Party%20Constitution%20%20as%20amended%20January%202021.pdf
Schedule 2 referenced by PD above is on page 18. The rule that stops BJ from standing is the second point on the page.
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In an effort to prove hime wrong I dug out the Conservative Party constitution and found out that he was right.
Many have tried the former - few have succeeded ;)
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I had this argument with Professor Davey last year or the year before. In an effort to prove hime wrong I dug out the Conservative Party constitution and found out that he was right. They changed the rules to prevent a party leader from pulling the same stunt as John Major.
Edit: And here it is
https://public.conservatives.com/organisation-department/202101/Conservative%20Party%20Constitution%20%20as%20amended%20January%202021.pdf
Schedule 2 referenced by PD above is on page 18. The rule that stops BJ from standing is the second point on the page.
I remember reading some years ago that the Conservative party nationally did not have any members: you could only be a member of your local association. Obviously that is no longer true, if it ever was.
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Andrea Jenkyns was asked how many candidates she'd support.
Turns out it was only one.
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/new-education-minister-andrea-jenkyns-must-justify-giving-middle-finger-to-crowds-says-commons-leader-1733946
These rats toxicity is disgraceful.
Sorry NS, my fault I'd missed your earlier post
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Yeah, there's only the nonce Andrew there.
The dossiers are claimed to include allegations about extramarital affairs and the use of tax dodges, illicit drugs and prostitutes, with at least one private investigator reportedly hired to probe some candidates’ financial arrangements.
“There are rumours being widely circulated about candidates getting involved in bondage, domination and sadomasochism, <that's BDSM, carry on>* claims of inappropriate relationships and compromising explicit photographs that could be used as kompromat,” a senior Tory Party source told the [Indie] paper.
...
N.B.
While there is currently no public evidence to support such allegations, it is suggested that details of the claims could soon make their way into the public domain given the likely expedited nature of the Tory leadership contest.
* - (c) Alan Partridge
I'll see if I work out how to get the link working.
Meanwhile, they'll be a massive shortage of popcorn...
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-leadership-race-dirty-dossiers-b2119655.html
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I saw this elsewhere:
All eleven candidates are put on a flight to Rwanda.
Each of them is given a budget and personal responsibility for it.
Every time they cross a border they have to prove they are a highly skilled worker.
First one back to No.10 wins.
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Britain's best political commentator on the departure of Johnson.
https://youtu.be/lKrLBPmRsrM
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I see Grant Shapps has pulled out. He had the necessary number of supporters but they didn't all vote for the same name.
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I see Grant Shapps has pulled out. He had the necessary number of supporters but they didn't all vote for the same name.
But the flip side is that both Grant Shapps and Michael Green will have a vote in the MPs ballot ;)
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I see Grant Shapps has pulled out. He had the necessary number of supporters but they didn't all vote for the same name.
Pity BJ didn't pull out a few times - he'd have fewer illegitimate kids.
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Pity BJ didn't pull out a few times - he'd have fewer illegitimate kids.
Are you saying you'd prefer it if those children didn't exist?
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Are you saying you'd prefer it if those children didn't exist?
Sigh... ::)
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Pity BJ didn't pull out a few times - he'd have fewer illegitimate kids.
But all of this does not concern "BJ". Ask any one of the women concerned for the name of their bed mate and she will answer "AL".
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But all of this does not concern "BJ". Ask any one of the women concerned for the name of their bed mate and she will answer "AL".
What are you on about?
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What are you on about?
Al for Alexander I would guess.
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Al for Alexander I would guess.
He doesn't have a name beginning with L.
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He doesn't have a name beginning with L.
Not sure HH was mimicking the BJ thing that closely, anyway no doubt he'll clarify if he wants to.
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What are you on about?
his name is Alexander ... and he is usually called "Al". "Boris" is an elaborate brand that he has developed ... it is a seperate identity from Al.
Boris ... or BJ as you put it ... is not the one making the babies. I was told once that Carrie, on one occasion before they were married, openly characterised his horizontal performance as "Alexander the Great".
Sorry about the confusion. I had typed Al and I thought that it might be misinterpreted as A1.
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his name is Alexander ... and he is usually called "Al". "Boris" is an elaborate brand that he has developed ... it is a seperate identity from Al.
Boris ... or BJ as you put it ... is not the one making the babies. I was told once that Carrie, on one occasion before they were married, openly characterised his horizontal performance as "Alexander the Great".
Sorry about the confusion. I had typed Al and I thought that it might be misinterpreted as A1.
He has as many names as he has faces but when I met him, unfortunately often, 35ish years ago he went by Boris.
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He has as many names as he has faces but when I met him, unfortunately often, 35ish years ago he went by Boris.
You shameless name-dropper.
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He developed the Boris identity when he was at some charity school just outsde Windsor.
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Of the 8, only Sunak seems to have clue on how the economy could be managed for the better: addressing cost of living, levelling up and NHS and care funding. However, given his performance under Johnson and his background in banking I don't feel he can be trusted to work in the interest of the country overall rather than those of particular individuals or institutions.
Somehow I expect Tugendhat to have some moral fibre ... but seems to have no idea how to actually run a government/economy/country (?).
That all of the candidates support the "Rwanda" policy speaks volumes.
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You shameless name-dropper.
Moi???
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Of the 8, only Sunak seems to have clue on how the economy could be managed for the better: addressing cost of living, levelling up and NHS and care funding. However, given his performance under Johnson and his background in banking I don't feel he can be trusted to work in the interest of the country overall rather than those of particular individuals or institutions.
Somehow I expect Tugendhat to have some moral fibre ... but seems to have no idea how to actually run a government/economy/country (?).
That all of the candidates support the "Rwanda" policy speaks volumes.
You mean Sunak who has been Chancellor of the Ecgequer has a clue about getting the country out of a mess which, he, Sunak, was Chancellor of the Exchequer, got the country into?
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Of the 8, only Sunak seems to have clue on how the economy could be managed for the better: addressing cost of living, levelling up and NHS and care funding. However, given his performance under Johnson and his background in banking I don't feel he can be trusted to work in the interest of the country overall rather than those of particular individuals or institutions.
Somehow I expect Tugendhat to have some moral fibre ... but seems to have no idea how to actually run a government/economy/country (?).
That all of the candidates support the "Rwanda" policy speaks volumes.
The notion that people are talking up Tugendhat, Mourdant, Badenoch and Braverman as credible candidates is, frankly, terrifying on lack of experience grounds.
For as far back as we can remember (certainly back into the 1800s - I gave up going any further back) every PM has either held one of the great offices of state (Chancellor, Foreign Secretary or Home Secretary) or has been successful as Leader of the Opposition (successful enough to have won a general election). So if any of these four became PM they'd be the least experience person to become PM since Queen Victoria was on the thrown.
And there is a reason why every person becoming PM has had that experience - firstly because it is preparation for the top job, but also gives you credibility with your fellow ministers etc. Can you really imagine PM Badenoch or PM Tugendhat credibly leading highly experienced ministers such as Hunt, Sunak, Truss etc - or would these people all have to be relegated to the back benches to allow her to surround herself with people less credible and experienced.
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The notion that people are talking up Tugendhat, Mourdant, Badenoch and Braverman as credible candidates is, frankly, terrifying on lack of experience grounds.
For as far back as we can remember (certainly back into the 1800s - I gave up going any further back) every PM has either held one of the great offices of state (Chancellor, Foreign Secretary or Home Secretary) or has been successful as Leader of the Opposition (successful enough to have won a general election). So if any of these four became PM they'd be the least experience person to become PM since Queen Victoria was on the thrown.
And there is a reason why every person becoming PM has had that experience - firstly because it is preparation for the top job, but also gives you credibility with your fellow ministers etc. Can you really imagine PM Badenoch or PM Tugendhat credibly leading highly experienced ministers such as Hunt, Sunak, Truss etc - or would these people all have to be relegated to the back benches to allow her to surround herself with people less credible and experienced.
and yet Johnson.
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and yet Johnson.
Was Foreign Secretary - not saying that prior experience will make you good as PM, but I think it is a pretty tough ask, both in terms of being prepared for the top job and having authority, if you've never done anything more than a couple of junior ministerial roles and never run a department.
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Was Foreign Secretary - not saying that prior experience will make you good as PM, but I think it is a pretty tough ask, both in terms of being prepared for the top job and having authority, if you've never done anything more than a couple of junior ministerial roles and never run a department.
Yes, I know he was Foreign Secretary, and a spectacularly useless one. The point is you are arguing that somehow that made him better prepared to be PM.
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Yes, I know he was Foreign Secretary, and a spectacularly useless one. The point is you are arguing that somehow that made him better prepared to be PM.
I think it did - just imagine how useful he'd have been if he'd not had that experience or running a major Whitehall department and engaging with foreign leaders.
I don't doubt he was useless as Foreign Secretary and as PM but that doesn't mean that his experience as Foreign Secretary didn't make a slightly better PM than he would have been had he not had that experience.
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I think it did - just imagine how useful he'd have been if he'd not had that experience or running a major Whitehall department and engaging with foreign leaders.
I don't doubt he was useless as Foreign Secretary and as PM but that doesn't mean that his experience as Foreign Secretary didn't make a slightly better PM than he would have been had he not had that experience.
I would rather a vague sense of ennui that couldn't spell MP had been PM rather than the oleaginous turdbubble but off you go with your appreciation of an approach that helped the boak-inducing pricktoast PM.
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I would rather a vague sense of ennui that couldn't spell MP had been PM rather than the oleaginous turdbubble but off you go with your appreciation of an approach that helped the boak-inducing pricktoast PM.
To return to my actual point.
If MPs and members select Tugendhat, Mourdant, Badenoch or Braverman they will be selecting the least experienced person to become PM since Queen Victoria was on the throne. I find that concerning.
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To return to my actual point.
If MPs and members select Tugendhat, Mourdant, Badenoch or Braverman they will be selecting the least experienced person to become PM since Queen Victoria was on the throne. I find that concerning.
And yet Johnson shows your point about experience is vacuous. Add to that you've already undermined your own point by saying experience is not important if you win an election.
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You mean Sunak who has been Chancellor of the Ecgequer has a clue about getting the country out of a mess which, he, Sunak, was Chancellor of the Exchequer, got the country into?
TBF .. the economy (or rather some parts of it) has been in a mess since the banking crash in 2008/9. Brown started to deal with it in a cautious way.
I don't doubt Osborne, Hammond, Javid and Sunak, even Zahawi, had/have the skills and ability to put in place teams and policies to deal with the mess to some extent - but they have chosen not to deal with it, even make things worse, for political and other reasons.
I don't believe they have the welfare of ordinary people in this country as a tangible objective, but are good at mis-selling their policies.
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Add to that you've already undermined your own point by saying experience is not important if you win an election.
I never said that at all.
What I've said is that since the 1800s every PM has had experience in one of the great offices of state or as leader of the opposition. Clearly the whole point of being leader of the opposition is that it shadows and prepares you to be PM. And to become PM from leader of the opposition you'd need not just to have the experience of that role, but to be successful in that role as to become PM you'd need to won the general election from opposition.
So the point remains - Tugendhat, Mourdant, Badenoch or Braverman (and actually Zahawi) are painfully inexperienced compared to their predecessor PMs all of who (since 1900) had been Chancellor, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary or a winning Leader of the opposition.
And actually, were you to ask which of the PMs over the past 120 years was least experienced, then probably Johnson, with a tenure of less than two years as Foreign Secretary.
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TBF .. the economy (or rather some parts of it) has been in a mess since the banking crash in 2008/9. Brown started to deal with it in a cautious way.
I don't doubt Osborne, Hammond, Javid and Sunak, even Zahawi, had/have the skills and ability to put in place teams and policies to deal with the mess to some extent - but they have chosen not to deal with it, even make things worse, for political and other reasons.
I don't believe they have the welfare of ordinary people in this country as a tangible objective, but are good at mis-selling their policies.
I'm not sure I see a big difference between someone not having a clue how to sort the economy, and someone having a clue about how to sort it but choosing not to.
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I never said that at all.
What I've said is that since the 1800s every PM has had experience in one of the great offices of state or as leader of the opposition. Clearly the whole point of being leader of the opposition is that it shadows and prepares you to be PM. And to become PM from leader of the opposition you'd need not just to have the experience of that role, but to be successful in that role as to become PM you'd need to won the general election from opposition.
So the point remains - Tugendhat, Mourdant, Badenoch or Braverman (and actually Zahawi) are painfully inexperienced compared to their predecessor PMs all of who (since 1900) had been Chancellor, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary or a winning Leader of the opposition.
And actually, were you to ask which of the PMs over the past 120 years was least experienced, then probably Johnson, with a tenure of less than two years as Foreign Secretary.
What actual experience of govt does a leader of the opposition get? And are you actually suggesting that Johnson was a lying twat because he didn't have enough experience?
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What actual experience of govt does a leader of the opposition get?
The Leader of the Opposition has to lead his party, develop and set out policy and strategy, be subject to intense scrutiny from the press and to be an excellent performer at the despatch box (if they are to be able to win an election). Sure they don't actually implement that policy, which the PM (or rather their ministers) do, but the role is a good training ground for a PM - indeed many of the PMs considered to be the most successful cut their teeth as an ultimately election winning Leader of the Opposition, e.g. Blair, Thatcher.
So I think Leader of the Opposition sits alongside great offices of state as appropriately (and clearly expected) experience for a potential PM, give that every one of our PMs back to (I think) the 14th Earl of Derby in 1852 had held one of the great offices of state or been Leader of the Opposition prior to becoming PM.
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The Leader of the Opposition has to lead his party, develop and set out policy and strategy, be subject to intense scrutiny from the press and to be an excellent performer at the dispatch box (if they are to be able to win an election). Sure they don't actually implement that policy, which the PM (or rather their ministers) do, but the role is a good training ground for a PM - indeed many of the PMs considered to be the most successful cut their teeth as an ultimately election winning Leader of the Opposition, e.g. Blair, Thatcher.
So I think Leader of the Opposition sits alongside great offices of state as appropriately (and clearly expected) experience for a potential PM, give that every one of our PMs back to (I think) the 14th Earl of Derby in 1852 had held one of the great offices of state or been Leader of the Opposition prior to becoming PM.
So that would be no actual experience (btw, it's the despatch, not dispatch, box).
And a swerve to the Johnson question in my post.
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So that would be no actual experience (btw, it's the despatch, not dispatch, box).
And a swerve to the Johnson question in my post.
Swerve all you like - my point was about the experience of people becoming PM, and it is a well versed expectation that PMs have always either held one of the great offices of state or been leader of the opposition. This has held true for 170 years - it is notable that this 170 year old record for required experience may well be broken and if so PM Mourdant, or PM Badenoch will be the least experienced person to have become PM since the populace was still extolling the recently closed Great Exhibition of 1851.
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So that would be no actual experience (btw, it's the despatch, not dispatch, box).
Pedantry is rarely a good look - but edited nonetheless.
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One of the points about experience is that people know who you are and have an understanding of what your skills, strengths, weaknesses, view etc are.
And again on this count the current crop (or at least some of them) are simply completely invisible.
So just 5% of people in a recent poll said they knew "a great deal" about the Conservative candidates Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat.
This compares to 6% who say they know a great deal about a Conservative MP called Stewart Lewis.
And err - Stewart Lewis is a made up person - he doesn't exist. So fewer people know a great deal about three of the candidates to be our next PM than about a non-existent person.
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Sunak 88
Mordaunt 67
Truss 50
Badenoch 40
Tugendhat 37
Braverman 32
Zahawi 25
Hunt 18
Hunt and Zahawi out
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Pedantry is rarely a good look - but edited nonetheless.
And yet you wear it so well.
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One of the points about experience is that people know who you are and have an understanding of what your skills, strengths, weaknesses, view etc are.
And again on this count the current crop (or at least some of them) are simply completely invisible.
So just 5% of people in a recent poll said they knew "a great deal" about the Conservative candidates Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat.
This compares to 6% who say they know a great deal about a Conservative MP called Stewart Lewis.
And err - Stewart Lewis is a made up person - he doesn't exist. So fewer people know a great deal about three of the candidates to be our next PM than about a non-existent person.
Proper LOL there but being notorious is not a good quality, and you seem to be taking that position. I knew Johnson was a liar.
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Swerve all you like - my point was about the experience of people becoming PM, and it is a well versed expectation that PMs have always either held one of the great offices of state or been leader of the opposition. This has held true for 170 years - it is notable that this 170 year old record for required experience may well be broken and if so PM Mourdant, or PM Badenoch will be the least experienced person to have become PM since the populace was still extolling the recently closed Great Exhibition of 1851.
Who swerved? Oh that was you. 'Well versed expectation' is just an ad populum.
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Sunak 88
Mordaunt 67
Truss 50
Badenoch 40
Tugendhat 37
Braverman 32
Zahawi 25
Hunt 18
Hunt and Zahawi out
Hunt's performance is spectacular.
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I don't doubt he was useless as Foreign Secretary and as PM but that doesn't mean that his experience as Foreign Secretary didn't make a slightly better PM than he would have been had he not had that experience.
Indeed. His most significant and notable achievement as Foreign Secretary - clearly indicating his potential as Prime Minister - getting Nazanin's sentence doubled.
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Who swerved? Oh that was you.
Nope because my point was nothing to do with Johnson specifically but the situation for all PMs for the past 170 years. You swerved it into a narrow debate about Johnson, not me.
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Big betting movement towards Mourdant ... the person who in a Savanta survey over the past couple of days just 11% of people (and just 16% of conservative voters) could actually name when showed a picture of her.
Given that she seems to be much more popular than Sunak (and probably Truss) amongst members it is quite likely that were there to be a Sunak/Mourdant final two that Sunak would simply pull out. So someone with such low recognition that nigh on 9 out of 10 people cannot name (and presumably know next to nothing about) could be our PM early next week. Hmmm.
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Nope because my point was nothing to do with Johnson specifically but the situation for all PMs for the past 170 years. You swerved it into a narrow debate about Johnson, not me.
Drivel. You want to ignore Johnson because it doesn't help your 'argument'. Having 'experienced' people by your argument, gave us a serial incompetent liar.
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Big betting movement towards Mourdant ... the person who in a Savanta survey over the past couple of days just 11% of people (and just 16% of conservative voters) could actually name when showed a picture of her.
Given that she seems to be much more popular than Sunak (and probably Truss) amongst members it is quite likely that were there to be a Sunak/Mourdant final two that Sunak would simply pull out. So someone with such low recognition that nigh on 9 out of 10 people cannot name (and presumably know next to nothing about) could be our PM early next week. Hmmm.
And Mordaunt has already lied about her position on women's rights in the last 2 days.
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Indeed. His most significant and notable achievement as Foreign Secretary - clearly indicating his potential as Prime Minister - getting Nazanin's sentence doubled.
And do you think, as Prof D does, that this made him a better PM?
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I'm not sure I see a big difference between someone not having a clue how to sort the economy, and someone having a clue about how to sort it but choosing not to.
None of this lot, either as PM or Chancellor, will sort the economy, but could easily make things a lot worse.
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None of this lot, either as PM or Chancellor, will sort the economy, but could easily make things a lot worse.
TBH given the energy price rises about to hit and us moving into winter, I think someone not standing is being sensible. It's not clear to me that there won't be another PM, after whoever, before the next election.
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And do you think, as Prof D does, that this made him a better PM?
Oh dear. Do I have to warn you that I am being sarcastic? But it might not be unrealistic to suggest that if this is what he is capable of doing when Foreign Secretary, what might he cock up when in the top job?
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Oh dear. Do I have to warn you that I am being sarcastic? But it might not be unrealistic to suggest that if this is what he is capable of doing when Foreign Secretary, what might he cock up when in the top job?
Err, no. I got your sarcasm, and given Prof D's position on him being FS somehow having made Johnson not quite as shite a PM as he might have been, asked whether you agreed.
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Drivel. You want to ignore Johnson because it doesn't help your 'argument'. Having 'experienced' people by your argument, gave us a serial incompetent liar.
Nope I actually haven't ignored Johnson, but when you are considering a trend that goes back 170 unbroken, trying to make a point about a single PM rather than the totality of PMs since 1852 is missing the point.
The point remains that for the past 170 years every PM has had the experience of one of the great offices of state or been leader of the opposition. In many cases more than one of these experiences. That is a simple statement of fact and the reason behind this is because it has always been considered that this level of experience is important.
I suspect this 170 year trend is about to be broken, perhaps as early as next week, when we end up with a PM whose greatest level of experience up to that point will be two months as Defence Secretary. Perhaps she'll be great, perhaps she'll be awful - but you've already alluded to one of the issues - we have no idea about her because she's never had any significant scrutiny on her which would have been the case had she held one of the great offices of state or been leader of the opposition.
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Nope I actually haven't ignored Johnson, but when you are considering a trend that goes back 170 unbroken, trying to make a point about a single PM rather than the totality of PMs since 1852 is missing the point.
The point remains that for the past 170 years every PM has had the experience of one of the great offices of state or been leader of the opposition. In many cases more than one of these experiences. That is a simple statement of fact and the reason behind this is because it has always been considered that this level of experience is important.
I suspect this 170 year trend is about to be broken, perhaps as early as next week, when we end up with a PM whose greatest level of experience up to that point will be two months as Defence Secretary. Perhaps she'll be great, perhaps she'll be awful - but you've already alluded to one of the issues - we have no idea about her because she's never had any significant scrutiny on her which would have been the case had she held one of the great offices of state or been leader of the opposition.
Writing a long ad populum is just an ad populum. My issues with Mordaunt are about her lying. My issues with Johnson were that he was a liar. Him being FS just meant he was a liar who had been FS.
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(btw, it's the despatch, not dispatch, box).
Either, according to Wikipedia. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despatch_box)
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Either, according to Wikipedia. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despatch_box)
Ah hoist by my own pedantry!
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Writing a long ad populum is just an ad populum.
An argument ad populum is an attempt to prove that a matter of opinion is objectively or factually correct on the basis that it is a popular opinion. It is, of course, a non-sense argument.
But there is no argument ad populum in my point - I was making a point of fact - it is a fact that every PM since 1852 has had prior experience in either one of the great offices of state or as (a successful) leader of the opposition. It matters not a jot whether that point is popular or not, because it isn't a matter or opinion, but a point of fact. There is no argument ad populum.
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I saw this elsewhere:
All eleven candidates are put on a flight to Rwanda.
...
First one back to No.10 wins.
I saw a trailer for a show with pairs of naked people being dropped off to race home. A race between Richie Sunak and Penny Dormant...
(No idea what channel or what the name was, btw) Putting this mob in naked, would end up being called the Naked Revulsion.
There's a Chinese curse, 'May you live in interesting times' I don't think even Theresa May would like to live in these interesting times.
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A related point that has occurred to me during this leadership election is that if this was under a first past the post system Mr. Sunak would already be PM.
So if an all-but-name transferrable vote system is good enough for Conservative MP's to elect their leader, why isn't it good enough at a general election?
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A related point that has occurred to me during this leadership election is that if this was under a first past the post system Mr. Sunak would already be PM.
So if an all-but-name transferrable vote system is good enough for Conservative MP's to elect their leader, why isn't it good enough at a general election?
One rule for them, another rule for us. At least they are consistent ;)
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I'm also loving Lord Frost's views on Penny Morduant:
Former Brexit Minister Lord Frost said Ms Mordaunt did not "master detail"
Well, I suppose he would personally know all about that particular quality.
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A related point that has occurred to me during this leadership election is that if this was under a first past the post system Mr. Sunak would already be PM.
So if an all-but-name transferrable vote system is good enough for Conservative MP's to elect their leader, why isn't it good enough at a general election?
They have a constitution.
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So Penny M showing her credentials here in her support for homeopathy:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/15/penny-mordaunt-repeatedly-advocated-use-of-homeopathy-on-nhs?
It really would be nice to see a politician deal with facts based on evidence. It would also make me feel more confident in their abilities no matter their political persuasion.
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So Penny M showing her credentials here in her support for homeopathy:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/15/penny-mordaunt-repeatedly-advocated-use-of-homeopathy-on-nhs?
It really would be nice to see a politician deal with facts based on evidence. It would also make me feel more confident in their abilities no matter their political persuasion.
To be fair though they all want to put homeopathic amounts of money into the NHS.
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A related point that has occurred to me during this leadership election is that if this was under a first past the post system Mr. Sunak would already be PM.
So if an all-but-name transferrable vote system is good enough for Conservative MP's to elect their leader, why isn't it good enough at a general election?
I support single transferabe vote for general elections but I think the tories would reply that they are completely different types of election - you are not comparing like with like.
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I support single transferabe vote for general elections but I think the tories would reply that they are completely different types of election - you are not comparing like with like.
why?
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I support single transferabe vote for general elections but I think the tories would reply that they are completely different types of election - you are not comparing like with like.
There are lots of different electoral systems, each with advantages and disadvantages. Any single system proposed by an individual or party is unlikely to gain majority support and guarantees no change - ie. continuing with fptp. I think we should put in place an independent, credible, body to examine the issue, with public discussion, reasoning and justification - then propose a system suitable for the UK.
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why?
An election for a party leader and a general election are very different. One doesn't change the government, the other might. They could argue (I wouldn't) that fptp is best in general elections because it usually avoids hung parliaments (though that's a lot less true than it used to be).
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The ever excellent John Crace on last night's debate:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/15/the-tory-leadership-debate-desperate-as-a-sales-pitch-worse-as-entertainment?
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Tory fuckwit who looks about 14, wants his constituency levelled and can't spell his own name (it's Brereton) backs Mordaunt.
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The votes were as follows:
Rishi Sunak - 115 Penny Mordaunt - 82 Liz Truss - 71 Kemi Badenoch - 58 Tom Tugendhat - 31
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Tory fuckwit who looks about 14, wants his constituency levelled and can't spell his own name (it's Brereton) backs Mordaunt.
Amazing how much difference the omission of the word "up" can make.
I think there needs to be a lower age limit for MPs, say about 30.
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Amazing how much difference the omission of the word "up" can make.
I think there needs to be a lower age limit for MPs, say about 30.
Not sure about that - there've been some great young Labour, Lib Dem and SNP MPs.
That little squirt, though, also doesn't even know the name of his own constituency: It's Stoke on Trent SOUTH.
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The votes were as follows:
Rishi Sunak - 118
Penny Mordaunt - 92
Liz Truss - 86
Kemi Badenoch - 59
Suspect this means a Sunak v Truss run off
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The votes were as follows:
Rishi Sunak - 118
Penny Mordaunt - 92
Liz Truss - 86
Kemi Badenoch - 59
Suspect this means a Sunak v Truss run off
And the Tory membership on current polling prefers Truss.
I do wonder which universe they are living in.
Not that I'm a fan of Sunak but he does at least seem to have a tentative grasp of reality.
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And the Tory membership on current polling prefers Truss.
I do wonder which universe they are living in.
Not that I'm a fan of Sunak but he does at least seem to have a tentative grasp of reality.
I think the green card issue, combined with him having been the Chancellor while a cost of living crisis exploded, is a worry for many. Truss, while so often glaikit, doesn't have the baggage.
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glaikit
Had to look that up!
She is indeed.
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Rishi Sunak - 137
Penny Mordaunt - 105
Liz Truss - 113
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Well. Keir Starmer it is then.
Just a shame that the Penny has finally dropped.
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Had to look that up!
She is indeed.
"There in the kirkyard coming down from the fields and over the burn without touching the water, they came, and bone white they were, and their eyes glaikit ..."
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Now that we are stuck with either rishi Sunak or Liz Truss, I do not know which to vote for, but since I definitely don't want Liz Truss, I suppose it will have to be Rishi Sunak ... or stay at home.
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Some thoughts on Sunak vs Truss from today's Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/20/britain-next-prime-minister-rishi-sunak-liz-truss-conservative-leader
I'm hoping it is Truss since she is clearly useless, and that might speed the demise of this wretched Tory government.
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... or stay at home.
Stay at home. The tories are suppressing votes all the time.
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When looking at this leadership contest and taking the climate crisis into consideration why am I reminded so clearly of this:
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When looking at this leadership contest and taking the climate crisis into consideration why am I reminded so clearly of this:
That worked much better when it was Johnson who had a Neronian air in that Peter Ustinov would have been casting for Johnson.
https://youtu.be/pBIswXv28GI
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Now that we are stuck with either rishi Sunak or Liz Truss, I do not know which to vote for, but since I definitely don't want Liz Truss, I suppose it will have to be Rishi Sunak ... or stay at home.
Not an enviable choice but why specifically not Truss?
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That worked much better when it was Johnson who had a Neronian air in that Peter Ustinov would have been casting for Johnson.
https://youtu.be/pBIswXv28GI
Indeed. Although I was thinking more generally about the pledge to remove the green levy and boost production of North Sea gas.
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Not an enviable choice but why specifically not Truss?
Truss wants to hit the ground running. She's got no idea where she'll be, so she'll hit the wall running.
As she left the room, she headed for … the window. ... Eventually, as she walked ... a snapper took pity on her and directed her to the door. Classico. She couldn’t find her way into the room and she couldn’t find her way out.
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That worked much better when it was Johnson who had a Neronian air in that Peter Ustinov would have been casting for Johnson.
Ustinov died in 2004.
Imagine casting someone completely dead, totally inert, while maggots eat him and even rats turn their noses up at him.
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Rishi Sunak - 137
Penny Mordaunt - 105
Liz Truss - 113
So the 170 trend that a new PM will either have held one of the great offices of state or have been leader of the opposition will continue.
Also the stranglehold for Oxford graduates (and PPE at Oxford continues) - I think you have to go back to 1935 for the last PM who was a graduate but not an Oxford graduate (all have been with the exception of Churchill and Major who didn't go to university).
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So the 170 trend that a new PM will either have held one of the great offices of state or have been leader of the opposition will continue.
Also the stranglehold for Oxford graduates (and PPE at Oxford continues) - I think you have to go back to 1935 for the last PM who was a graduate but not an Oxford graduate (all have been with the exception of Churchill and Major who didn't go to university).
Gordon Brown
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So the 170 trend that a new PM will either have held one of the great offices of state or have been leader of the opposition will continue.
Also the stranglehold for Oxford graduates (and PPE at Oxford continues) - I think you have to go back to 1935 for the last PM who was a graduate but not an Oxford graduate (all have been with the exception of Churchill and Major who didn't go to university).
Callaghan didn't go to University.
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So the 170 trend that a new PM will either have held one of the great offices of state or have been leader of the opposition will continue.
Also the stranglehold for Oxford graduates (and PPE at Oxford continues) - I think you have to go back to 1935 for the last PM who was a graduate but not an Oxford graduate (all have been with the exception of Churchill and Major who didn't go to university).
Margaret Thatcher did chemistry.
And Tony Blair did jurisprudence.
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Gordon Brown
Yes - you are correct.
I got that stat from another site but actually looking again I think this is about PMs who won a general election, which would count out Brown and Callaghan. Of course we won't know whether either Sunak or Truss win a general election for a while, but Starmer is also an Oxford alumnus (at post-grad level), so unless something pretty strange happens I think the next general election will be won (yet again) by an Oxford alumnus.
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Margaret Thatcher did chemistry.
And Tony Blair did jurisprudence.
Yes - Oxford PPE is over-represented at the highest levels in politics, but far from universal.
Interesting particle on Oxford PPE:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/feb/23/ppe-oxford-university-degree-that-rules-britain
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I believe that the PPE degree was invented by, and is unique to, Oxford. It is obvously tailored for politicians.
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I believe that the PPE degree was invented by, and is unique to, Oxford. It is obvously tailored for politicians.
But leads to a very narrow range of experience. If your talent pool becomes so narrow that it is largely focussed on a single University and a single degree programme at that university then you will be ignoring an incredible wealth of talent. My approach (in academia) has always been to cast your net as widely as possible, to ensure the widest possible talent pool. You never quite know where the best person, with the best combination of abilities and hard work ethic might come from.
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But leads to a very narrow range of experience. If your talent pool becomes so narrow that it is largely focussed on a single University and a single degree programme at that university then you will be ignoring an incredible wealth of talent. My approach (in academia) has always been to cast your net as widely as possible, to ensure the widest possible talent pool. You never quite know where the best person, with the best combination of abilities and hard work ethic might come from.
It's also then a self fulfilling prophecy, and means that not just is it from a narrow talent pool but that we end up with people who are all very similar. More and more, we get the people who think they might want to go into politocs trying to get into PPE, and then effectively being professional politicians with no outside experience.
The electorate then are given an idea of what a politician is supposed to be like. That many seemed to think Johnson was a 'breath of fresh air' was both laughable and frightening.
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It's also then a self fulfilling prophecy, and means that not just is it from a narrow talent pool but that we end up with people who are all very similar. More and more, we get the people who think they might want to go into politocs trying to get into PPE, and then effectively being professional politicians with no outside experience.
I agree - I think it is important for someone suitable for the top job politically to have some very serious political experience, but the 'group-think' that we have at the moment where so many of our top politicians are identical from the point they entered university is concerning.
The electorate then are given an idea of what a politician is supposed to be like. That many seemed to think Johnson was a 'breath of fresh air' was both laughable and frightening.
And the notion that he was somehow anti-establishment when Johnson was achingly establishment - Eton, Oxford PPE (including Bullingdon), brought up to expect the top job.
The most unedifying aspect of Johnson is that I think the country has suffered from a long standing feud dating back to the playing fields of Eton. I don't think that Johnson could stand the fact that Cameron (Eton, Oxford PPE(including Bullingdon)) had got further than him even though he was a couple of years below him, so he had to have the top job too to prove he was as good as his old school chum.
Problem is that if you go into politics to prove that you got one step further than your school chums you are doing it for all the wrong reasons. The only reason to go into politics is to make a difference.
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Agree with all of that, but Johnson is a Classics outsider.
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Agree with all of that, but Johnson is a Classics outsider.
Oh yes you are right - makes a huge difference.
Eton, Oxford PPE (including uber-elite Bullingdon) vs
Eton, Oxford Classics (including uber-elite Bullingdon)
Chalk and cheese really
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A 2.1 as well.
Still, at least he's not a girly swot.
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Rishi Sunak's wife is richer than the Queen apparently ..... https://tinyurl.com/f78ynd94
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Rishi Sunak's wife is richer than the Queen apparently ..... https://tinyurl.com/f78ynd94
Indeed - from privileged upper middle class glob-trotting stock stretching back generations. Nice 'down-to-earth' touch, his 18th birthday present - shirt signed by the entire Southampton FC squad - that must have cost a pretty penny, or obtained through influence and connections.
But VG and others seem to have been sucked into his carefully curated and selective 'humble beginnings' narrative of his campaign launch video which starts:
"Let me tell you a story about a young woman, almost a lifetime ago, who boarded a plane ..."
Hmm - note the error - penniless migrants didn't migrate by plane in the 1960s - air travel remained prohibitively expensive - they migrated by ship. So she can hardly have been penniless as the narrative goes if she could have afforded a plane fare back in 1966.
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Ustinov died in 2004.
Imagine casting someone completely dead, totally inert, while maggots eat him and even rats turn their noses up at him.
He's not dead, he's resting
https://archive.ph/5xcB4
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If I can play devil's advocate again...
There might be an advantage to having a PM who's as rich as Creosote; he'll be less likely to take back-handers or indulge in other forms of financial corruption, because he's already got more dosh than anyone can get through in a lifetime. (I still hope the Tory bastards take a beating at the next general election, though, and Labour win a landslide.)
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Indeed - from privileged upper middle class glob-trotting stock stretching back generations. Nice 'down-to-earth' touch, his 18th birthday present - shirt signed by the entire Southampton FC squad - that must have cost a pretty penny, or obtained through influence and connections.
But VG and others seem to have been sucked into his carefully curated and selective 'humble beginnings' narrative of his campaign launch video which starts:
"Let me tell you a story about a young woman, almost a lifetime ago, who boarded a plane ..."
Hmm - note the error - penniless migrants didn't migrate by plane in the 1960s - air travel remained prohibitively expensive - they migrated by ship. So she can hardly have been penniless as the narrative goes if she could have afforded a plane fare back in 1966.
PD - firstly, where does the video claim that Rishi Sunak's grandmother was penniless? The video just says she came to England, found a job and it took her almost a year to save enough money to pay for her husband and children (including Rishi Sunak's mother) to join her in England. The grandmother sounds like a hard-working, capable person. Articles in the media have reported that she sold her jewellery to fund her one-way ticket to Britain but I doubt she arrived penniless - she probably had at least a little bit of money left over from the sale of her jewellery even after she bought her plane ticket to help her pay rent and buy food. I know someone who sold her jewellery to be able to get on a plane with her family from Sri Lanka to Canada in the 1990s and they all became Canadian citizens.
Not really sure why stating any of the above is controversial. Seems perfectly feasible to me that someone like Rishi's grandmother could come to the UK, find a place to live and a job and save enough to pay for her husband and children to join her after about a year. My parents were able to pay for me, my brother, and my grandparents to join them in London after 2 years, and my parents were able to buy a 3 bedroom house in London after only 3 years in the UK. They arrived in the UK with no money, found jobs and saved. I know many others with a similar story.
So Rishi's mother came to the UK a year later in 1967 at the age of 15. Rishi Sunak was born in 1980 so this is 13 years later. He would have turned 18 in 1998 so that is 31 years after his mother first arrived in England in her mid-teens. If my parents could buy a 4 bed detached house in London after 9 years of being in the UK after having arrived with no money, why would it be suprising that after being in England for 31 years, a pharmamcist with her own company and pharmacy (she probably owns the building and her Ltd co probably pays her rent to run the pharmacy business from that building) who is married to a GP could afford a football shirt signed by a professional football team for her son for his 18th birthday? How much would something like that cost? A few thousand pounds maybe? Or perhaps as the parents apparently seem to have done a lot for their local community, helping people, maybe they did not have to pay anything and they got it for free.
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There might be an advantage to having a PM who's as rich as Creosote; he'll be less likely to take back-handers or indulge in other forms of financial corruption, because he's already got more dosh than anyone can get through in a lifetime.
I don't see wealth as any kind of prevention of corruption.
Surely in a not insignificant number of cases, it has acted as a guarantee of corruption.
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PD - firstly, where does the video claim that Rishi Sunak's grandmother was penniless? The video just says she came to England, found a job and it took her almost a year to save enough money to pay for her husband and children (including Rishi Sunak's mother) to join her in England. The grandmother sounds like a hard-working, capable person. Articles in the media have reported that she sold her jewellery to fund her one-way ticket to Britain but I doubt she arrived penniless - she probably had at least a little bit of money left over from the sale of her jewellery even after she bought her plane ticket to help her pay rent and buy food. I know someone who sold her jewellery to be able to get on a plane with her family from Sri Lanka to Canada in the 1990s and they all became Canadian citizens.
Not really sure why stating any of the above is controversial. Seems perfectly feasible to me that someone like Rishi's grandmother could come to the UK, find a place to live and a job and save enough to pay for her husband and children to join her after about a year. My parents were able to pay for me, my brother, and my grandparents to join them in London after 2 years, and my parents were able to buy a 3 bedroom house in London after only 3 years in the UK. They arrived in the UK with no money, found jobs and saved. I know many others with a similar story.
So Rishi's mother came to the UK a year later in 1967 at the age of 15. Rishi Sunak was born in 1980 so this is 13 years later. He would have turned 18 in 1998 so that is 31 years after his mother first arrived in England in her mid-teens. If my parents could buy a 4 bed detached house in London after 9 years of being in the UK after having arrived with no money, why would it be suprising that after being in England for 31 years, a pharmamcist with her own company and pharmacy (she probably owns the building and her Ltd co probably pays her rent to run the pharmacy business from that building) who is married to a GP could afford a football shirt signed by a professional football team for her son for his 18th birthday? How much would something like that cost? A few thousand pounds maybe? Or perhaps as the parents apparently seem to have done a lot for their local community, helping people, maybe they did not have to pay anything and they got it for free.
Oh dear you really do want to try to project Sunak onto your family and your family onto Sunak.
As Udayana appreciates, migrants aren't all the same - everyone's story is different, including yours and Sunak's.
So let's nail some of the points.
You knew someone who migrated by plane in the 90s - so what, air travel was commonplace in the 90s and routine long distance travel by sea had all but disappeared, so of course they travelled by plane. In the 60s air travel was prohibitively expensive to most people. So unless you had serious money you travelled by sea. So the notion that she flew suggests that she was either stupidly profligate with her money or that there was some considerable financial resource available to her. Note that there is hardly any mention of her husband (Sunak's grandfather) - he was an engineer (a prestigious and well paid job and presumably a graduate) and then became a tax official (also a prestigious and well paid job) who became senior enough to be awarded an MBE in the early 80s (note in those days gongs for civil servants were largely awarded due to seniority of position). So I suspect there was plenty of money around, sufficient to fund an advantageous move for an upper middle class couple from one country to another. As often happens, one member of the couple goes ahead to sort matters including housing and schooling, while the other remains behind with the children and then join later. Indeed my family did this in a much smaller distance (from Liverpool to London in the 70s).
And no mention of the other side of the family - the family described by Ashcroft as upper class and educated over generations - the grandfather who was deciding which separate continent to send some of his 6 children for their A-level and university education and which separate continent to send the rest of them (noting that in no case did the 6 kids study even in the continent where they lived). And the great grandfather who was in a very senior position within the Raj etc etc.
Yup - what we have his is an elite, educated, upper class and advantaged family over many generations who would, presumably have significant financial resource slopping around to be able even to contemplate sending kids overseas to study or to be sending kids to eye waveringly expensive private schools.
And on to the parents and Rishi so through the 90s, apparently on just a NHS GP's salary and part time locum pharmacist money they were funding three kids through private school, at least one boarding at a school with fees of £46k in today's money. Also affording a 6 bedroom house and (new revelation) when Sunak graduated they gave him over £100k to buy a flat in Chelsea - at that time £100k was more than the average house was worth - think about it. Despite having been funding these kids through private school they had enough money slopping around have been able to buy a house more expensive than the average outright, with cash had they chosen. And all this before they bought and set up the chemist's company.
Nope Sunak isn't from humble beginnings (whether that makes it like you VG or not I cannot say) - he has come from a highly elite, advantaged, educated upper middle class background that extends back over generations. One that is internationalist in outlook, happy to relocate globally for a better life, safe in the knowledge that their education, and probably their networks and secure financial position, will see them very comfortably in their new countries. For generations they have sat near the top of the social tree and although they might find it a little tricky to rise towards the top as they move globally they are comfortable that their resources (education, financial, networks) will get them there in short time.
Oh and on the football shirt - if you are spending a few thousand pounds on a 18th birthday present (as you seem to idly dismiss it) that is yet another hall mark of privilege - most people don't have the funds to be able to spend a few thousand pounds on a birthday present, even a significant one. A few hundred pounds maybe, but a few thousand - nope. That you find that seemingly just normal suggests that perhaps your upbringing was somewhat more privileged than your are implying.
And on that final point - you haven't told us details of your private schooling - again noting Udayana's astute point that not all private schools are the same. Did you and you brother attend as day pupils or as boarders (Sunak was a boarder)? Did you get bursaries of scholarships (Sunak didn't)? Was you brother attending Harrow School as a boarder which had to be paid in full by your parents (this would be the equivalent)?
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....
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Last night's Ch4 news had a segment on Sunak's background:
https://www.channel4.com/news/rishi-sunak-inside-the-tory-leadership-candidates-fortune
Seems reasonably fair given that they want dramatic news items.
The facts, of fees equating to around £22,000 "in today's money" - about twice that of other good local public (ie. private) schools, accord with my recollections from around early 2000's.
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Indeed - from privileged upper middle class glob-trotting stock stretching back generations.
...
But what evidence are you basing that on?
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Last night's Ch4 news had a segment on Sunak's background:
https://www.channel4.com/news/rishi-sunak-inside-the-tory-leadership-candidates-fortune
Seems reasonably fair given that they are want dramatic news items.
The facts, of fees equating to around £22,000 "in today's money" about twice that of other good local public (ie. private) schools accord with my recollections from around early 2000's.
Suspect their suggestion of fees is an underestimate, given that fees are currently £46k (in today's money).
Yes I saw that too and this is where the new revelation that Sunak's parents had enough case sloshing around to be able to give Rishi an 'interest free loan' of £110k (more than the entire value of an average house in 2001) to allow him to buy a flat in Chelsea worth more then twice the value of an average home at the age of 21, fresh out of university.
Now I'm not denying this to be an extremely smart move from a financial perspective. But you can only do this sort of thing for your kids if you have serious amounts of disposable money around.
The channel 4 piece also has a little more of the cringeworthy interview when he was much younger when he made the comment a bout not knowing any working class people. He also has an astonishingly patronising bit where he talks about going into state schools and talking to kids about them being able to have the same aspirations as him. He says they can go to Oxford to and then indicates that they were amazed when he told them he went to Winchester College. The astonishingly lack of self-reflection is remarkable. The reason he could drift into Oxford was because he went to Winchester College and that is way, way beyond the means of the vast majority of people regardless of their abilities or aspirations. He seems not to recognise that he was provided with privilege and opportunity on a plate. Sure he took it, but those opportunities simply don't exist to ordinary folk whose parents cannot rustle up tens of thousand of pounds every year in school fees (for each child). Of course VG will conclude that of course they can as long as they give up drinking - but she is talking complete non-sense.
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But what evidence are you basing that on?
Ashcroft's biography - the most comprehensive, that uses that exact term - upper middle class. And he also describes how their educational and professional credentials stretched back at least to Sunak's great grandfather (who had a highly prestigeous role in the Raj) and also the twice migrating nature, across three continents. This was a family that used their educational and professional credentials to seek out better opportunities even when they were a continent away. Now I'm not blaming them for that, but the very nature that they could rely on their graduate credentials (the vast majority of people at that time were not educated to university level) and their professional roles (engineers, civil servants, government officials, doctors etc) to open doors to them tells us they aren't an ordinary family (in demographic terms) but a multigenerational elite, educated, professional upper middle class family where opportunity exist that do not exist for most people. Great that they took those opportunities (good for them) but you can only take opportunities if they are available to you.
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Oh dear you really do want to try to project Sunak onto your family and your family onto Sunak.
As Udayana appreciates, migrants are all the same - everyone's story is different, including yours and Sunak's.
So let's nail some of the points.
You knew someone who migrated by plane in the 90s - so what, air travel was commonplace in the 90s. In the 60s air travel was prohibitively expensive to most people. So unless you had serious money you travelled by sea. So the notion that she flew suggests that she was either stupidly profligate with her money or that there was some considerable financial resource available to her. Note that there is hardly any mention of her husband (Sunak's grandfather) - he was an engineer (a prestigious and well paid job and presumably a graduate) and then became a tax official (also a prestigious and well paid job) who became senior enough to be awarded an MBE in the early 80s (note in those days goes for civil servants was largely awarded due to seniority of position). So I suspect there was plenty of money around, sufficient to fund an advantageous move for an upper middle class couple from one country to another. As often happens, one member of the couple goes ahead to sort matters, while the other remains behind with the children and then join later. Indeed my family did this in a much smaller distance (from Liverpool to London in the 70s).
And no mention of the other side of the family - the family described by Ashcroft as upper class and educated over generations - the grandfather who was deciding which separate continent to send some of his 6 children for their A-level and university education and which separate continent to send the rest of them (noting that in no case did the 6 kids study even in the continent where they lived). And the great grandfather who was in a very senior position within the Raj etc etc.
Yup - what we have his is an educated, upper class and advantaged family over many generations who would, presumably have significant financial resource slopping around to be able even to contemplate sending kids overseas to study or to be sending kids to eye waveringly expensive private schools.
And on to the parents and Rishi so through the 90s, apparently on just a NHS GP's salary they were funding three kids through private school, at least one boarding at a school with fees of £46k in today's money. Also affording a 6 bedroom house and (new revelation) when Sunak graduated they gave him over £100k to buy a flat in Chelsea - at that time £100k was more than the average house was worth - think about it. Despite having been funding these kids through private school they had enough money slopping around have been able to buy a house more expensive than the average outright, with cash had they chosen. And all this before they bought and set up the chemist's company.
Nope Sunak isn't from humble beginnings (whether that makes it like you VG or not I cannot say) - he has come from a highly advantaged, educated upper middle class background that extends back over generations. One that is internationalist in background, happy to relocate globally for a better life, safe in the knowledge that their educations, and probably their networks, will see them very comfortably in their new countries. For generations they have sat near the top of the social tree and although they might find it a little tricky to rise towards the top as they move they are comfortable that their resources (education, financial, networks) will get them there in short time.
Oh and on the football shirt - if you are spending a few thousand pounds on a 18th birthday present (as you seem to idly dismiss it) that is yet another hall mark of privilege - most people don't have the funds to be able to spend a few thousand pounds on a birthday present, even a significant one. A few hundred pounds maybe, but a few thousand - nope. That you find that seemingly just normal suggests that perhaps your upbringing was somewhat more privileged than your are implying.
And on that final point - you haven't told us details of your private schooling - again noting Udayana's astute point that not all private schools are the same. Did you and you brother attend as day pupils or as boarders (Sunak was a boarder)? Did you get bursaries of scholarships (Sunak didn't)? Was you brother attending Harrow School as a boarder which had to be paid in full by your parents (this would be the equivalent)?
Oh dear - all this waffle from you without answering the basic question I asked. Where in the video does it say Sunak's grandmother was penniless? Can you answer that question first since that seems to be what you have a bee in your bonnet about.
The only thing the video seems to say is that Sunak's grandmother came to England, found a job, and saved enough money to bring her husband and children over after a year- she seems a very capable woman to me. And not that different from many other immigrants who found a job and saved to pay for the rest of the family to join them. If the grandfather had a good job maybe he brought some savings too, though unless it was in GBP the exchange rate would have meant it was worth a lot less once converted.
If you are mistaken about that point about the video saying she was penniless, you don't have much credibility for the rest of your unevidenced assertions. I suggest you provide some links to your assertions so we can look into where else you might be mistaken.
For example, your assertion that in the 90s, only Sunak's father was bringing in any income to pay for private school. What is your evidence that his mother's pharmacy business was not doing well and bringing in income? Or that they did not use the equity in their house to fund fees or the money they loaned Rishi Sunak towards his first flat? Or if the pharmacy business was doing well because his mother was working long hours in it, his mother's Ltd could have loaned the money to Rishi Sunak. I assume he took out a mortgage to cover the rest of the purchase price. And as far as I can tell Sunak has not pretended that his parents did not work hard to fund these things or that he did not enjoy these privileges.
I am not sure why you seem to have a problem with people coming to the UK and working hard to earn money to pay for a private school education or to buy property?
The 2nd property - the 3 bedroom flat my parents bought in the 1990s near Kensington Olympia in London - it was bought in my name and my brother's name, with a mortgage. Buying your children property is just a thing Asian professionals spend their money on, rather than other stuff middle class people spend their money on. It doesn't negate our relatively modest upbringing in the 1970s and 1980s. Of course we weren't ever penniless - my parents worked and saved and owned a 3 bed semi in London after only being in the UK for 3 years, and having arrived in the UK in 1971 with pretty much nothing (£6 maybe) with my dad being a student for 1 of those years.
Of course I transferred the Kensington Olympia flat ownership back to my parents in 2001 once they had paid off the mortgage on it. I got to live in it rent free for at least 6 or 7 years in the 1990s before I moved out. I was unable to transfer it back to my parents earlier as they could not get a mortgage for a term longer than 10 years in their name, because of their age and because my mother had retired, so the interest rates would have been really high for such a mortgage, so we had to wait until the mortgage was paid off to be able to change the ownership back to my parents. My parents wanted my brother and me to have their 2nd property but we wanted our parents to have it as we figured we could earn our own way and buy our own properties, given the privileges we had already been given - such as a private school education, a stable home life, a 4 bed detached house in the suburbs to grow up in etc. Plus if they were going to retire they would need a place to live and a source of income such as the rent from a 2nd property. Sure, this is a relatively privileged position for my parents to be in compared to others, but that's where hard work and sacrifice and saving money and luck can get you in Britain even if you arrive with nothing except brains and qualifications.
Presumably the Sunak children attended private schools from age 11 or did they go later? So possibly early 1990s onwards? And what were the fees of the private schools at the time they attended during the 90s - no point talking about the cost today, given all the articles about how over the past 25 years private school fees have risen by 550 per cent. But consumer prices in that time are up only 200 per cent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-charts-that-shows-how-private-school-fees-have-exploded-a7023056.html
Regarding the football shirt - we don't know whether it cost anything at all yet. I was running a charity sports event and a young guy who coaches under-privileged youth football in East London said if I wanted to run an auction to raise funds he could get me a signed professional football team shirt from his contacts. He didn't know me at all but his brother-in-law knew me and the guy also drove all the way across London to coach football as part of my charity event, without ever having met me.
We ran an American Auction to raise funds at another charity event and someone (not wealthy) donated a cricket bat signed by the Sri Lankan cricket team. If you take being able to get these signed souvenirs as signs of privilege in terms of wealth, you are mistaken. It's just down to luck or being friendly and getting to know people.
My point has not been to project my story onto Sunak, but to show you that your apparent ignorance of the lives of immigrants based on your posts here, means that your assumptions about Sunak could be incorrect. If you have a link to evidence about how his parents funded their assets and expenses, feel free to post it. But until you do, your assumptions could be way off the mark.
For a start, I'm still waiting to find out how you came up with the assumption that Sunak's grandmother arrived in the UK penniless. If as has been reported by the media, she sold her jewellery to buy a plane ticket, then we can assume she had some money when she arrived. If she chose to travel to the UK by plane (as my parents did) yes we can assume she had a middle class life-style in Tanzania. My parents had a middle class lifestyle in Sri Lanka. My dad was working as an engineer and my mum was working as a doctor in Sri Lanka. There just wasn't much of a future for my dad in Sri Lanka, as the government increasingly adopted racist and socialist economic policies under the Sinhalese nationalist left-wing government of the time. It still does not change the fact that my parents started out life in the UK with hardly any money and managed to buy a house in London within 3 years.
And what year did Sunak's grandfather get an MBE? MBEs really aren't all that difficult to get - they give out loads these days and to people from all different walks of life. I don't know when he got his MBE or what the process was of getting it when he was given an MBE. My husband has one. But many of my children's friends from school live in far nicer homes than us, they drive newer cars than us, they buy their children far more stuff than we buy our children - tickets to festivals, clothes, new iphones etc. You can't tell much from an MBE.
Oh and just to add, my husband's great grandfather was knighted by the British ie he was a Sir, when it was Ceylon - before independence. So according to you that signifies generations of privileged upper-middle class lifestyles in Sri Lanka. That didn't mean anything for my husband's and his siblings' lifestyle when they came to the UK. When I met my husband in 1992, his lifestyle was on par with my parents' lifestyle in 1974. So maybe stop making so many assumptions without linking it to some kind of evidence if you want to be taken seriously.
ETA - I just made this edit PD
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Worth noting that private school fee inflation has been well over general inflation:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-charts-that-shows-how-private-school-fees-have-exploded-a7023056.html?r=84631
(ah, just seen VG has already ref'd this article)
For interest, house prices (adjusted for inflation) over the last 50 years:
https://www.allagents.co.uk/house-prices-adjusted/
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Ashcroft's biography - the most comprehensive, that uses that exact term - upper middle class.
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I'll see if I can find a copy - but surely anything Ashcroft says has to be triple checked itself !
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Delving into the background is all very interesting and relevant to a point, and I think a good job has been done all around at covering every angle!
But, shouldn't we concentrate on Sunak's actions in government and what he might have achieved and where he failed. I'm quite prepared to believe that millionaires might want to work for the general good of the country. I'm also quite prepared to believe that they might work for the general good of themselves and their friends.
So maybe judge them by their record now. To that end here is Sunaks voting record:
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/25428/rishi_sunak/richmond_%28yorks%29/votes
and Liz Truss's voting record:
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24941/elizabeth_truss/south_west_norfolk/votes
All I can tell you from my pov is that they are both bastards going by their voting record. So if you have a vote you have a choice between a smooth, slimy bastard and a robotic, deranged bastard.
Good luck with that, SD.
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A perspective from a remain campaigner on one of the FB feeds I have:
"An air of sticky and suffocating unreality has pervaded British politics this week, quite as much as it has the weather. The ongoing contest to replace Boris Johnson seems completely detached from the realities of a country enduring a sharp lesson in what climate change is going to mean, still gripped by a pandemic that with “dangerous complacency” is treated as being over, suffering the misery of record NHS waiting lists, and facing multiple economic crises. And, as always, though no candidate to be Prime Minister can admit it, there is the ongoing, dragging undertow of Brexit, which has ripped up fifty years of economic and foreign policy strategy whilst its advocates are still unable to identify a viable alternative. Against this background, the leadership contest has come down to the absurdly narrow canvas of whether there should be tax cuts now or next year.
It’s beyond pitiful."
For the sake of my own equilibrium, I'd like to be able to disagree with that analysis, unfortunately, I can't.
I have more than a touch of the black dog hanging about me.
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The only thing the video seems to say is that Sunak's grandmother came to England, found a job, and saved enough money to bring her husband and children over after a year- she seems a very capable woman to me. And not that different from many other immigrants who found a job and saved to pay for the rest of the family to join them. If the grandfather had a good job maybe he brought some savings too, though unless it was in GBP the exchange rate would have meant it was worth a lot less once converted.
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This business of who was or was not able to transfer their savings or wealth is quite interesting. It very much depends on exactly when the migration was and from which country.
Most Asian immigration from Africa was in the late 60's when people were being expelled from Uganada or Kenya - nearly all of them had their wealth taken from them before being forced out. Tanzania was different in that anti-Indian sentiment and associated migration started from around 1964 and many were able to take proceeds from selling businesses and/or their savings with them.
The early 60's also saw the take off of secret off-shore banking - outside of normal banking controls and tax management - and could also be used to avoid losses due to exchange rates or controls. It was certainly used by some people moving money out of South Africa and Rhodesia.
The whole industry was boosted by banking de-regulation under Thatcher and by the latest Tory government, especially by Brexit. Both Sunak and Truss are promising to continue helping it thrive.
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Delving into the background is all very interesting and relevant to a point, and I think a good job has been done all around at covering every angle!
But, shouldn't we concentrate on Sunak's actions in government and what he might have achieved and where he failed. I'm quite prepared to believe that millionaires might want to work for the general good of the country. I'm also quite prepared to believe that they might work for the general good of themselves and their friends.
So maybe judge them by their record now. To that end here is Sunaks voting record:
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/25428/rishi_sunak/richmond_%28yorks%29/votes
and Liz Truss's voting record:
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24941/elizabeth_truss/south_west_norfolk/votes
All I can tell you from my pov is that they are both bastards going by their voting record. So if you have a vote you have a choice between a smooth, slimy bastard and a robotic, deranged bastard.
Good luck with that, SD.
Yes, I would agree with that assessment. The Tories certainly appear to be bastards when you look at the voting history and the Parliamentary debates on tax e.g. anti-avoidance legislation and HMRC powers and the issue of raising income tax thresholds or cutting CGT rates that seem to benefit the rich far more than the poor.
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2016-04-13c.360.0#g411.0
Having said that I still have a visceral hatred for the culture wars and identity politics of the left that outweighs my hatred for the wealth inequality perpetuated by the right. I am no doubt morally wrong in that view and a bastard myself, but nevertheless I can no longer bring myself to vote Labour or Lib-Dem for that reason. The left's identity politics and bleating about white privilege appears to seek to make me a victim and I cannot support a party that denies me my own sense of agency - to me that stance erases my individuality, and I would rather be a bastard than a victim.
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This business of who was or was not able to transfer their savings or wealth is quite interesting. It very much depends on exactly when the migration was and from which country.
Most Asian immigration from Africa was in the late 60's when people were being expelled from Uganada or Kenya - nearly all of them had their wealth taken from them before being forced out. Tanzania was different in that anti-Indian sentiment and associated migration started from around 1964 and many were able to take proceeds from selling businesses and/or their savings with them.
The early 60's also saw the take off of secret off-shore banking - outside of normal banking controls and tax management - and could also be used to avoid losses due to exchange rates or controls. It was certainly used by some people moving money out of South Africa and Rhodesia.
The whole industry was boosted by banking de-regulation under Thatcher and by the latest Tory government, especially by Brexit. Both Sunak and Truss are promising to continue helping it thrive.
Interesting and would agree with you. Possibly Rishi Sunak has off-shore funds held in the name of a company or trust in tax havens and certainly has no problem with people using non-dom tax breaks to not pay tax on world-wide income. His parents may have off-shore funds held in the name of a company or trust in a tax haven.
Even if people are asked to reveal the name of the ultimate beneficial owners it seems relatively easy to not reveal them and just give the names of the shareholders ie the names of the owners according to the legal paperwork. The tax authorities don't seem to have the resources to look into every company and trust to drill down and follow the paper trail and work out who is really benefitting from the scheme or structure and who is making the decisions.
Plus, there are always loopholes in tax legislation and very clever people who can use them to their financial advantage, because governments often rely on the revenue generated by foreign investment to run the economy and pay for public spending and infrastructure projects, hence need to make their own country's economy appear advantageous to people with capital seeking a good return, in comparison to another country's economy.
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Yes, I would agree with that assessment. The Tories certainly appear to be bastards when you look at the voting history and the Parliamentary debates on tax e.g. anti-avoidance legislation and HMRC powers and the issue of raising income tax thresholds or cutting CGT rates that seem to benefit the rich far more than the poor.
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2016-04-13c.360.0#g411.0
Having said that I still have a visceral hatred for the culture wars and identity politics of the left that outweighs my hatred for the wealth inequality perpetuated by the right. I am no doubt morally wrong in that view and a bastard myself, but nevertheless I can no longer bring myself to vote Labour or Lib-Dem for that reason. The left's identity politics and bleating about white privilege appears to seek to make me a victim and I cannot support a party that denies me my own sense of agency - to me that stance erases my individuality, and I would rather be a bastard than a victim.
I might be tempted to vote for competent bastards who weren't corrupt but corrupt incompetent bastards are a step too far. Individuals might get my vote currently but no party is likely to in the foreseeable future.
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I might be tempted to vote for competent bastards who weren't corrupt but corrupt incompetent bastards are a step too far. Individuals might get my vote currently but no party is likely to in the foreseeable future.
Yes - would agree with the Tories being corrupt, incompetent bastards.
In Sri Lanka, which has been run by a succession of corrupt incompetent bastards who don't even bother to hide their corruptness, we've come to the conclusion that most politicians are corrupt and self-serving unfortunately. They have just kicked out the current President and his brothers from power, and don't seem to have too many options on who to replace them with that isn't corrupt.
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For example, your assertion that in the 90s, only Sunak's father was bringing in any income to pay for private school.
See my post:
"And on to the parents and Rishi so through the 90s, apparently on just a NHS GP's salary and part time locum pharmacist money they were funding three kids through private school"
Ashcroft is clear that through the mid 90s Sunak's mother was only working part time as a locum pharmacist, as it offered flexibility and also allowed her to retain her credentials as a pharmacist.
What is your evidence that his mother's pharmacy business was not doing well and bringing in income? Or that they did not use the equity in their house to fund fees or the money they loaned Rishi Sunak towards his first flat? Or if the pharmacy business was doing well because his mother was working long hours in it, his mother's Ltd could have loaned the money to Rishi Sunak.
I can be 100% confident that the pharmacy business did not contribute to bringing in income to support Rishi through Winchester (which he left in 1998), nor through Oxford (he graduated in 2001) or toward the purchased of the Chelsea flat the year he graduated.
How can I be so confident? Because there wasn't a pharmacy business to be doing either well or badly. Sunak Pharmacy (later called Bassett Pharmacy) wasn't in existence until 2003 - 18th March 2003 to be precise. Companies House records are your friend when you want evidence rather than hand waving assertion.
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"An air of sticky and suffocating unreality has pervaded British politics this week, quite as much as it has the weather. The ongoing contest to replace Boris Johnson seems completely detached from the realities of a country enduring a sharp lesson in what climate change is going to mean, still gripped by a pandemic that with “dangerous complacency” is treated as being over, suffering the misery of record NHS waiting lists, and facing multiple economic crises. And, as always, though no candidate to be Prime Minister can admit it, there is the ongoing, dragging undertow of Brexit, which has ripped up fifty years of economic and foreign policy strategy whilst its advocates are still unable to identify a viable alternative. Against this background, the leadership contest has come down to the absurdly narrow canvas of whether there should be tax cuts now or next year.
It’s beyond pitiful."
This crystallises the whole thing for me. I don't care how rich the next PM is or how rich his wife is - or her husband. I don't care if they were brought up in poverty or not or if their grandparents were. All of that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether they will make a good leader for this country.
What matters is that all the candidates are scrabbling to see see who can be the most reckless with our futures just so they can say they were PM for a bit. We do not need tax cuts. In fact we need tax increases, because, if nothing else, we have to pay for the pandemic. I want the whole lot of them to just fuck off and die so we can get a leader who is prepared to do the right things to save this country.
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I should add that while some/ many people would view self-serving tax planning as being corrupt, others would not. They genuinely believe that Parliament should sort the problem out by overhauling the tax system and making the rules clearer and enforceable rather than expecting people not to use available tax planning strategies. What is fair or morally right is subjective so it would be easier to correct the tax laws than to try to rely on the morality of individuals.
Maybe British society has acquired an appetite for the introduction of a wealth tax to try to redistribute the wealth more fairly according to what society deems fair at the time? I guess we'll find out at the next election as to whether the majority support the introduction of a wealth tax. Not sure whether the wealthy and business owners will leave for other countries with more attractive tax policies and if this will cause a drop in tax revenue for the Treasury if a wealth tax was introduced.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/09/labour-may-tax-wealth-more-heavily-to-fund-social-care-says-starmer
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See my post:
"And on to the parents and Rishi so through the 90s, apparently on just a NHS GP's salary and part time locum pharmacist money they were funding three kids through private school"
Ashcroft is clear that through the mid 90s Sunak's mother was only working part time as a locum pharmacist, as it offered flexibility and also allowed her to retain her credentials as a pharmacist.
I can be 100% confident that the pharmacy business did not contribute to bringing in income to support Rishi through Winchester (which he left in 1998), nor through Oxford (he graduated in 2001) or toward the purchased of the Chelsea flat the year he graduated.
How can I be so confident? Because there wasn't a pharmacy business to be doing either well or badly. Sunak Pharmacy (later called Bassett Pharmacy) wasn't in existence until 2003 - 18th March 2003 to be precise. Companies House records are your friend when you want evidence rather than hand waving assertion.
Ok so no Ltd in existence. Companies House records tell you when a Ltd company came into existence and whether Usha Sunak was a director or secretary or shareholder of any Ltd companies.
Companies House does not tell you if Usha Sunak had a sole trader or partnership business and what she earned as a locum pharmacist and if she had any other income source and what she spent her income on. I suggest you come back with her tax returns and bank statements for the mid-1990s and then we can see what her income and outgoings were.
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This crystallises the whole thing for me. I don't care how rich the next PM is or how rich his wife is - or her husband. I don't care if they were brought up in poverty or not or if their grandparents were. All of that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether they will make a good leader for this country.
Quite right .. entirely agree
What matters is that all the candidates are scrabbling to see see who can be the most reckless with our futures just so they can say they were PM for a bit. We do not need tax cuts. In fact we need tax increases, because, if nothing else, we have to pay for the pandemic. I want the whole lot of them to just fuck off and die so we can get a leader who is prepared to do the right things to save this country.
Truss is being put in place by the same people that brought us brexit and Johnson. They can come up with popular policies to get votes, but behind the scenes are only concerned with maintaining their positions as facilitators to the worlds corrupt elites. The actual systems we depend on will just fall further into decay until we join Russia and the rest of the "developing" world.
Sunak probably knows how to keep our economy working longer whilst keeping the backers happy but, even if eventually chosen, will have been so compromised his govt will be completely ineffective.
Labour really need to get their act together - both to get into power at next election and as to how they are going to fix things - from a worse state than they are in now. Not really seen much sign of either so far.
The Blair/Brown govt did manage to keep a grip on the economy but the behind the scenes powers, including the money launderers, oligarchs, dictators etc, were left at liberty to take advantage of our banking and financial systems - ultimately contributing to the global problems that brought them down and are buffeting us now.
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See my post:
"And on to the parents and Rishi so through the 90s, apparently on just a NHS GP's salary and part time locum pharmacist money they were funding three kids through private school"
Glad you went back and corrected your mistake about the Sunak family income only consisting of a GP salary.
There are lots of ways to get money apart from a salary, such as loans, overdrafts, return on investments, liquidating assets. Do you have any evidence to show the equity on the house did not partly fund the school fees?
What happened to all your other hand-waving assertions about the grandmother being portrayed as penniless, or the signed birthday card (apparently it was a birthday card not a football jersey) by the Southampton team costing a lot of money or requiring wealthy connections? Did you go find any evidence to support those assertions?
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Suspect their suggestion of fees is an underestimate, given that fees are currently £46k (in today's money).
Yes I saw that too and this is where the new revelation that Sunak's parents had enough case sloshing around to be able to give Rishi an 'interest free loan' of £110k (more than the entire value of an average house in 2001) to allow him to buy a flat in Chelsea worth more then twice the value of an average home at the age of 21, fresh out of university.
Now I'm not denying this to be an extremely smart move from a financial perspective. But you can only do this sort of thing for your kids if you have serious amounts of disposable money around.
The channel 4 piece also has a little more of the cringeworthy interview when he was much younger when he made the comment a bout not knowing any working class people. He also has an astonishingly patronising bit where he talks about going into state schools and talking to kids about them being able to have the same aspirations as him. He says they can go to Oxford to and then indicates that they were amazed when he told them he went to Winchester College. The astonishingly lack of self-reflection is remarkable. The reason he could drift into Oxford was because he went to Winchester College and that is way, way beyond the means of the vast majority of people regardless of their abilities or aspirations. He seems not to recognise that he was provided with privilege and opportunity on a plate. Sure he took it, but those opportunities simply don't exist to ordinary folk whose parents cannot rustle up tens of thousand of pounds every year in school fees (for each child). Of course VG will conclude that of course they can as long as they give up drinking - but she is talking complete non-sense.
As usual, you seem to be the one talking nonsense PD. Where did I claim people can afford school fees just by giving up drinking? Your poor comprehension skills letting you down yet again, which may explain your unevidenced and fanciful imaginings in relation to the Sunaks. Got any actual evidence to support your many assertions?
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What is fair or morally right is subjective
What is morally right is arguably objective, at least in broad outline, and I would so argue; and what is fair is definitely objective.
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What is morally right is arguably objective, at least in broad outline, and I would so argue; and what is fair is definitely objective.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor
I didn't present the evidence for my assertions, because it's completely off-topic, but I could so so in another thread, if you like.
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What is morally right is arguably objective, at least in broad outline, and I would so argue; and what is fair is definitely objective.
In terms of taxation and public spending? I don't see how you can argue or provide evidence of an objective morality or objective fairness. Morality and perceptions of fairness have an emotional component and people's emotions have a genetic component, which influences how they are predisposed to react.
“Emotions are not only about how feel about the world, but how our brains influence our perception of it. As our genes influence how we literally see the positive and negative aspects of our world more clearly, we may come to believe the world has more rewards or threats."
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201505/how-do-your-genes-influence-levels-emotional-sensitivity
For example, some people are predisposed to feel more discomfort/ alarm/ unsafe when contemplating change or uncertainty and prefer tradition and hierarchy and order and certainty, whereas others are predisposed to feeling suffocated by tradition, hierarchy and order and feel energised at the prospect of change or uncertainty. This then affects how they feel about issues such as taxation, inflation, spending, saving, wealth distribution, career choices, job security, education, wages, innovation, entrepreneurship, their appetite for risk, tax planning etc
When faced with the risk that a tax-planning scheme that seemingly complies with tax law but also allows tax savings that might in the future be challenged/ disallowed by HMRC, some people are willing to take the risk and utilise the scheme and see what happens and some people prefer certainty and decide not to use that tax-planning scheme. Knowing that there are possibilities of appeal and testing the law to ascertain what judges interpret as Parliament's intention when drafting the tax legislation, some people consider it is worth pursuing. Until HMRC challenge a scheme and it goes through the courts / tribunals it is not always clear whether Parliament intended the tax saving to be used or not - as there might be a commercial reason to allow tax savings in that particular way.
Some people are more focused on enterprise and economy and some people are more focused on giving all their money away to help others. The amount of compassion someone feels and their subsequent actions may be linked to their genes and how pre-disposed they are to feel fear or perceive a threat.
These polymorphisms interacted with perceived threat to predict engagement in volunteer work or charitable activities and commitment to civic duty. Specifically, greater perceived threat predicted engagement in fewer charitable activities for individuals with A/A and A/G genotypes of OXTR rs53576, but not for G/G individuals. Similarly, greater perceived threat predicted lower commitment to civic duty for individuals with one or two short alleles for AVPR1a rs1, but not for individuals with only long alleles. Oxytocin, vasopressin, and their receptor genes may significantly influence prosocial behavior and may lie at the core of the caregiving behavioral system. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22457427/
So how would you determine objectively the right level of threat perception?
ETA: I have now posted this on the thread Steve started about Objective Morality http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=19051.msg847784#top
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Glad you went back and corrected your mistake about the Sunak family income only consisting of a GP salary.
VG why did you doctor my post (reply 131) when you quoted it in reply 137.
Sadly for you posts are timestamped so your finger-prints are all over it.
My post (reply 131) has remained unaltered since 9:20 yesterday, clearly including the words "and part time locum pharmacist money".
Yet when you posted a reply at 10:51 yesterday you quoted my entire post, except you selectively removed "and part time locum pharmacist money", allowing you to try to claim that I said something I didn't.
Why on earth would you do that VG.
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Interesting further snippet on the Sunaks.
There is a book written back in 2002 (so well before there was any political scrutiny on Sunak), called Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl. In the book the Sunak family are used briefly as an example of middle class professional asians who had relocated from East Africa (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is also included - she would presumably have been far better know back then than the Sunak's) - there are brief interviews with both Rishi and his mother.
Point being that the book reveals that not just Rishi was at Winchester, but his brother too. Perhaps not unexpected - most parents will want to treat all their kids equally. But we now have two of the kids attending the uber-expensive Winchester College through the 90s (apparently funded by just an NHS GP salary and part time locum pharmacy money)! Wonder where the sister went?
Also interesting the quote from Rishi himself which is a far cry from his 'humble beginnings, importance of asian attitudes'. Rishi is clear that he has always considered his background as being first and foremost professional middle class, that he is in an elite position in society and dismisses the importance of his asian background. But hey, at that point he wasn't needing to carefully curate a background story narrative for the purposes of a bid to be PM..
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VG why did you doctor my post (reply 131) when you quoted it in reply 137.
Sadly for you posts are timestamped so your finger-prints are all over it.
My post (reply 131) has remained unaltered since 9:20 yesterday, clearly including the words "and part time locum pharmacist money".
Yet when you posted a reply at 10:51 yesterday you quoted my entire post, except you selectively removed "and part time locum pharmacist money", allowing you to try to claim that I said something I didn't.
Why on earth would you do that VG.
And here we have further evidence, not that we needed it, of your tendency to jump to unevidenced assumptions and conclusions. I have no idea how you claim to be a Professor if this is your level of investigation and attention to detail.
I did not doctor your post PD. My reply says Last Edit: July 22, 2022, 10:58:10 AM by Violent Gabriella to Quote from: ProfessorDavey on July 22, 2022, 08:27:01 AM
So what in fact happened was I quoted your post at 8.27am and you edited your post to correct your mistake - not sure when but it says Last Edit: July 22, 2022, 09:20:33 AM by ProfessorDavey - but it must have been AFTER I had quoted your post. I then edited some typos to my post with the last edit being at 10.58 am, without noticing that you had edited your original post, which I had quoted at 8:27 AM
Next time PD, why don't you do some basic checks before posting so you don't make yourself look so silly on here?
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Interesting further snippet on the Sunaks.
There is a book written back in 2002 (so well before there was any political scrutiny on Sunak), called Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl. In the book the Sunak family are used briefly as an example of middle class professional asians who had relocated from East Africa (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is also included - she would presumably have been far better know back then than the Sunak's) - there are brief interviews with both Rishi and his mother.
Point being that the book reveals that not just Rishi was at Winchester, but his brother too. Perhaps not unexpected - most parents will want to treat all their kids equally. But we now have two of the kids attending the uber-expensive Winchester College through the 90s (apparently funded by just an NHS GP salary and part time locum pharmacy money)! Wonder where the sister went?
Also interesting the quote from Rishi himself which is a far cry from his 'humble beginnings, importance of asian attitudes'. Rishi is clear that he has always considered his background as being first and foremost professional middle class, that he is in an elite position in society and dismisses the importance of his asian background. But hey, at that point he wasn't needing to carefully curate a background story narrative for the purposes of a bid to be PM.
I already linked to that book on the Should he Stay or Should He Go thread http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=18934.525 in my reply #543.
Given his parents are professionals - a doctor and a pharmacist - this isn't much of a revelation. Yes they are professional middle class. Could you link to where he has tried to pretend his parents aren't professional middle-class?
My parents were professional middle class from the moment they arrived in the UK with barely any money in 1971 and lived in Brimingham - my dad was an engineer doing his MSc at Birmingham university and my mum was a doctor working at Birmingham hospital. Having no money did not stop them being professional middle class. They saved and bought a house in 1974 in London, when my grandparents, my brother and I came to the UK. I was therefore in an elite position in society compared to many others - my parents were home-owners and professional middle class.
When we moved to a 4 bed detached house in London and my brother and I went to private school in the 1980s, and we had 2 cars etc, etc, and when my mother started working part-time or doing locums in my teens and my parents bought my brother and I a flat in Kensington Olympia when I was 19, we were in an even more elite position in society. Not seeing the problem - my parents sacrificed and worked hard for what they acquired. And they came here with barely any money and they / we were lucky enough to be in a privileged position. That's something to admire and celebrate right?
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I did not doctor your post PD. My reply says Last Edit: July 22, 2022, 10:58:10 AM by Violent Gabriella to Quote from: ProfessorDavey on July 22, 2022, 08:27:01 AM
You do realise that the 08:27:01 time is the time of the original posting. Regardless of how many edits someone makes that is the time that will appear if you quote that post in your reply.
So what in fact happened was I quoted your post at 8.27am and you edited your post to correct your mistake - not sure when but it says Last Edit: July 22, 2022, 09:20:33 AM by ProfessorDavey - but it must have been AFTER I had quoted your post. I then edited some typos to my post with the last edit being at 10.58 am, without noticing that you had edited your original post, which I had quoted at 8:27 AM
Your reply to me is time stamped 10:51 (and will be regardless of how many edits you later make). My last edit to the post you were replying to was 9:20 - an hour and a half before you posted your reply. When you posted your reply the quote you embedded in your reply clearly included "and part time locum pharmacist money" (indeed I suspect it always did - can't remember what edits I made - often just typos and auto-correct stuff that sometimes creeps in). When you replied at 10:51 suddenly the quote lacks those words. Only conclusion - you doctored my quote - just admit it rather than digging yourself further into a hole.
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You do realise that the 08:27:01 time is the time of the original posting. Regardless of how many edits someone makes that is the time that will appear if you quote that post in your reply.
Your reply to me is time stamped 10:51 (and will be regardless of how many edits you later make). My last edit to the post you were replying to was 9:20 - an hour and a half before you posted your reply. When you posted your reply the quote clearly included "and part time locum pharmacist money". When you replied at 10:51 suddenly the quote lacks those words. Only conclusion - you doctored by quote - just admit it rather than digging yourself further into a hole.
Nope - the time stamp of my post is the time I post and not the time I start quoting your post and typing my reply - so for example I pressed quote to this post around 12pm or a little before but it will be time-stamped for when I press "Post", which I will do at 12:05PM. So when I quoted your post and started replying to it, it was before you edited your post to include the part-time locum salary. Once again, I recommend you research things properly before you post.
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Nope - the time stamp of my post is the time I post and not the time I start quoting your post and typing my reply - so for example I pressed quote to this post around 12pm or a little before but it will be time-stamped for when I press "Post", which I will do at 12:05PM. So when I quoted your post and started replying to it, it was before you edited your post to include the part-time locum salary. Once again, I recommend you research things properly before you post.
So you sat on an unposted 'draft' post for over an hour and a half - hardly credible.
And even if that were true (which I don't believe) then surely the onus is entirely on you to ensure that you are quoting the actual words at the point you post, not words that might or might not have existed earlier.
Whatever excuses you try to posit the fact remains - when you posted your reply the quoted post (reply 131) clearly included the words - "and part time locum pharmacist money" - that is clear to see to anyone looking back at this thread.
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So you sat on an unposted 'draft' post for over an hour and a half - hardly credible.
Yes well we've already established that you decide what is credible based on guess-work, pre-conceived beliefs and prejudices rather than evidence. I sit on posts a lot - if I am working or get a phone call or have to do something else, I leave the draft without logging out of the forum as you can't save what you have already typed without posting it - unless you copy and paste it to a Word doc or something. It's easier just to leave it open and come back to it later when you have more time.
And even if that were true (which I don't believe)
Ok since no one has to take your beliefs seriously then surely the onus is entirely on you to ensure that you are quoting the actual words at the point you post, not words that might or might not have existed earlier.
Not sure - other people on here seem to quote posts and then realise after they hit Post that the original post has been edited after they started typing their reply and before they pressed Post. I don't recall anyone else jumping to the erroneous conclusion like you just did that their post has been doctored. Must just be you being paranoid and jumping to conclusions based on partial information as usual.
The forum tells you if there have been replies posted since you started drafting your own reply, but the forum doesn't flag that a post you are quoting has been altered since you quoted it and started replying.
Whatever excuses you try to posit the fact remains - when you posted your reply the quoted post (reply 131) clearly included the words - "and part time locum pharmacist money" - that is clear to see to anyone looking back at this thread.
And whatever excuses you try to come up with, the fact remains you were wrong when you wrote "Only conclusion - you doctored my quote" - that is clear to see to anyone looking back at this thread.
I think I will post this at 12:26 even though I quoted your post earlier.
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Oh ffs, no-one else cares! Give it a rest, both of you!
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Oh ffs, no-one else cares! Give it a rest, both of you!
Sorry Steve - if PD due to his stupidity and lack of understanding of how the forum works writes "Only conclusion - you doctored my quote", not surprisingly I am not about to let that slide.
I suggest you go find another thread to read or another forum to go on if you're that bothered by our friendly banter on here.
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Oh ffs, no-one else cares! Give it a rest, both of you!
Morning Steve and apologies - it is certainly an unedifying sight that VG and I are going at each other.
But there are times when you cannot allow something which is wrong to stand. There are certain elements of message board etiquette that are really important and a MB will whither and die if they are routinely broken. One is that you don't deliberately misrepresent the views of others. Another that you do not misquote someone, particularly if by misquoting you use the words that a poster hadn't said in a post that you are replying to (at the point when you post your reply) to misrepresent their view. Sadly VG has done both, clearly her misquoting and misrepresentation of my views is the starting point of all this.
That VG misquoted me is there for all to see (reply 137 vs reply 131 - noting the times of posting) - that is beyond dispute. She has provided no evidence that my quote at one point did not contain the words she left out when quoting and her excuse that she regularly writes a post and sits on it for hours lacks credulity. Hence my claim of doctoring.
But for the sake of argument, let's assume that VG did leave a post for hours and that my original post didn't contain those words (there is no evidence for this), then the onus must remain on the poster to check whether the person they are replying to has amended their original post prior to them posting - that is basic thread etiquette and if you don't check and you post after a person has changed their original post then you are both misquoting that person and potentially misrepresenting their views.
I suspect that VG knows clearly that she was in the wrong as when I pulled her up on misquoting and misrepresentation she quietly edited reply 137 albeit fails to rectify the original misquote.
Now of course when someone amends their post after a reply there is no onus on the replier to make a change as their reply was to the post at the point they replied. Nor can posters be expected to check when both people are replying/editing at about the same time. But this wasn't the case here - my post has been unedited since 9:20 on Friday - VG replied and misquoted it over one and a half hours later.
Of course the appropriate response from VG would have been to accept her error, 'my bad' apologise, correct the misquote and we'd all have moved on. But that isn't really VGs style is it. She tends to double down, note she didn't appear to understand how the timing of quotes works - always the time of the original post, regardless of any edits that might have happened in the interim time prior to posting) and isn't shy of throwing out personal insults.
I doubt I will get an apology from VG for the misquoting and misrepresentation of my views which kicked this whole spat off, so I'm going to save my breath from here on in - this is my last word on the matter to either you or VG.
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Stewart Lee on coruscating form here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/24/tory-death-priests-have-our-lives-in-their-hands?
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Stewart Lee on coruscating form here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/24/tory-death-priests-have-our-lives-in-their-hands?
Sadly it seems to be a matter of faith amongst sufficient numbers of the tory membership to swing a vote that all this climate stuff is non-sense. It seems strange that a Conservative party seems to pay limited heed to conserving the planet.
I suspect there are a few reasons - firstly a reactive trait that we don't like change and change will, of course be necessary to deal with climate change. Also I suspect a defensiveness, on the basis that tory members are overwhelmingly old and what previous generations did (and did not do) is often considered key to the state we are now. Finally I think this is another aspect of the whole anti-woke, culture wars non-sense, in which false dichotemies are fermented to create division. Now in many cases this culture war non-sense simply doesn't impact on people's lives (how many people's number one issue is that they are concerned that the statue of the 11th Earl of Marr in Beverley town square is in danger, or that society is going to hell in a hand-card because we encourage places to install gender neutral toilets), but climate change does affect people. So we have a weird dichotomy amongst the tories - banging on ad nausiem about issues that the vast, vast majority of the county simply doesn't see as important (they are worried about the cost of living crisis, climate change, why it is impossible to get a GP appointment, not whether footballer choose to take the knee before a game), while ignoring arguably the most important issue facing the country - certainly the most important long-term issue.
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It seems strange that a Conservative party seems to pay limited heed to conserving the planet.
Ah well. If you had a wise mother like mine you would have been told at an early age that the only thing the conservatives are interested in conserving is privilege.
While rambling about on the internet I also found this which I wasn't aware of (I probably should have been, but things pass me by sometimes):
As a political term, Tory was an insult (derived from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe, modern Irish tóraí, meaning "outlaw", "robber", from the Irish word tóir, meaning "pursuit" since outlaws were "pursued men") that entered English politics during the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678–1681.
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Morning Steve and apologies - it is certainly an unedifying sight that VG and I are going at each other.
But there are times when you cannot allow something which is wrong to stand. There are certain elements of message board etiquette that are really important and a MB will whither and die if they are routinely broken. One is that you don't deliberately misrepresent the views of others. Another that you do not misquote someone, particularly if by misquoting you use the words that a poster hadn't said in a post that you are replying to (at the point when you post your reply) to misrepresent their view. Sadly VG has done both, clearly her misquoting and misrepresentation of my views is the starting point of all this.
That VG misquoted me is there for all to see (reply 137 vs reply 131 - noting the times of posting) - that is beyond dispute. She has provided no evidence that my quote at one point did not contain the words she left out when quoting and her excuse that she regularly writes a post and sits on it for hours lacks credulity. Hence my claim of doctoring.
But for the sake of argument, let's assume that VG did leave a post for hours and that my original post didn't contain those words (there is no evidence for this), then the onus must remain on the poster to check whether the person they are replying to has amended their original post prior to them posting - that is basic thread etiquette and if you don't check and you post after a person has changed their original post then you are both misquoting that person and potentially misrepresenting their views.
I suspect that VG knows clearly that she was in the wrong as when I pulled her up on misquoting and misrepresentation she quietly edited reply 137 albeit fails to rectify the original misquote.
Now of course when someone amends their post after a reply there is no onus on the replier to make a change as their reply was to the post at the point they replied. Nor can posters be expected to check when both people are replying/editing at about the same time. But this wasn't the case here - my post has been unedited since 9:20 on Friday - VG replied and misquoted it over one and a half hours later.
Of course the appropriate response from VG would have been to accept her error, 'my bad' apologise, correct the misquote and we'd all have moved on. But that isn't really VGs style is it. She tends to double down, note she didn't appear to understand how the timing of quotes works - always the time of the original post, regardless of any edits that might have happened in the interim time prior to posting) and isn't shy of throwing out personal insults.
I doubt I will get an apology from VG for the misquoting and misrepresentation of my views which kicked this whole spat off, so I'm going to save my breath from here on in - this is my last word on the matter to either you or VG.
As I have already pointed out, once you quote a post, there is no automatic mechanism to be alerted to any edits a poster makes to the post you are quoting after they have posted it. How do you propose posters check if the post they have spent time typing a reply to has been edited since they quoted it? I don't have time to keep flipping back and forth and comparing each word and line to check before pressing "post" after drafting my reply. If you have a useful suggestion let's have it.
Normal forum etiquette is that if you edit your post after you have posted it to add more information rather than just correcting typos, you flag your edit by stating "ETA" or "edited" and then stating the edit. That way, when I preview my post I can scroll down to your post to see if there were any edits I need to consider. In this case you edited your post after you posted it to add the part-time pharmacy salary but did not flag your edit. When you replied to say you had mentioned the pharmacy salary I acknowledged your edit by saying I was glad you had corrected your original mistake in leaving it out in your original post before you edited it.
Forum etiquette is that if you are stupid enough to accuse people of doctoring your post without having evidence that they have, your error is pointed out to you. Given the way the forum post function works where you can quote a post and start typing a reply without being alerted to any edits made to the post you are quoting while you are drafting a reply, it was stupid of you to assume I doctored your post rather than say that I was quoting a post you had subsequently edited. I have been taking hours to draft replies to posts since I have been using this forum, because I will leave my reply open in mid-draft while I research a point that I am trying to make e.g. to find a link to post to support my point. This is the first time I can recall seeing anyone on this forum be accused of doctoring a post because the post they are quoting was edited by the poster after they quoted it. It is fairly obvious that I would have no need to doctor posts - given your credibility is already reduced each time you ignore my requests for evidence to support your assertions about the "penniless grandmother" and the "humble beginnings" and the signed football shirt "that must have cost a pretty penny, or obtained through influence and connections."
I suggest you follow your own rules and stop misrepresenting me by claiming I said people can pay private school fees simply by not drinking and smoking. I doubt I will get any apology for your repeated misrepresentations, since you have not apologised to me before for any previous errors on your part. You just ignore the point and move on to something else.
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Ah well. If you had a wise mother like mine you would have been told at an early age that the only thing the conservatives are interested in conserving is privilege.
While rambling about on the internet I also found this which I wasn't aware of (I probably should have been, but things pass me by sometimes):
As a political term, Tory was an insult (derived from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe, modern Irish tóraí, meaning "outlaw", "robber", from the Irish word tóir, meaning "pursuit" since outlaws were "pursued men") that entered English politics during the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678–1681.
My former Tory MP, the late and unlamented (by me, at any rate) Robert Jones, in an election leaflet for one of the elections in the 80s or 90s, seriously claimed that the Tories were the party of the environment because they were called the Conservative party, so obviously they cared about conservation. I think that's the etymological fallacy. The only time I ever saw him in the constituency was on May 1st, 1997 - polling day - getting out of his car at the local Tory HQ, looking worried, as well he might, as he was about to be booted out by Labour.
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After last night's 'debate' on the Beeb, and, having watched the cat fight;
In the immortal words of Han Solo;
"I've got a baaaaaad feeling about this".
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After last night's 'debate' on the Beeb, and, having watched the cat fight;
In the immortal words of Han Solo;
"I've got a baaaaaad feeling about this".
I an amazed at your fortitude. I fear my TV would not survive me watching it.
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After last night's 'debate' on the Beeb, and, having watched the cat fight;
In the immortal words of Han Solo;
"I've got a baaaaaad feeling about this".
I only watched the first half hour. Had to switch it off as I could not stand Sunak's constant interruptions.
If that is the effect it had on me I wonder how it played with the Tory faithful?
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Whilst I am immensely glad Johnson has been booted out as PM, I can't say Truss or Sunak fill me with pleasure. Their debates are like a couple of kids yelling at each other in the playground! :o
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Whilst I am immensely glad Johnson has been booted out as PM, I can't say Truss or Sunak fill me with pleasure. Their debates are like a couple of kids yelling at each other in the playground! :o
To be honest I think that is quite insulting to kids.
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To be honest I think that is quite insulting to kids.
Yeh you are right about that.
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I watched it - the interruptions were irritating. But when people debate politics, interruptions seem par for the course I think based on what I remember from other election debates and on Question Time so I wasn't that bothered by it. E.g. see this clip about 32 minutes in, when Nicola Sturgeon and Rishi Sunak were discussing a no deal Brexit and interrupting and talking over each other and then Jo Swinson followed by Nigel Farage interrupted and were talking over each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnZo1ZYcmtA
I am not clear where Liz Truss is planning on cutting costs in public spending or how she will cover the drop in tax revenue, especially as we need the money to care for an aging population. There are people who can afford the rise in cost of living (fuel and energy price rises) so they will be spending more if there are tax cuts, which means inflation is likely to go up. The Bank of England will raise interest rates to control spending and inflation, which affects homeowners with mortgages. Are people who took out mortgages going to be able to keep up with higher interest payments? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/25/liz-truss-trussonomics-tax-cuts-interest-rates
Lots of job vacancies at the moment and people wanting higher wages to do the jobs = inflation. Did Truss seem to think the government should have a hand in the Bank of England monetary policy to reduce money supply rather than raise interest rates i.e. Bank of England would no longer be independent of a government's election/ political agenda?
I am not clear on how Sunak is planning on helping low income households with the high cost of living.
Given over half the voters in the referendum wanted to take a risk with Brexit even though they had no idea how the promises made by Leavers would be delivered, voters might go with the same approach and risk tax cuts.
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To quote my favourite economist: 'Controlling inflation by raising and lowering interest rates is like controlling the oven temperature by switching the light on and off'
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Yes inflation pretty hard to control - energy prices don't look like they are going to drop any time soon while war in Ukraine is going on. Also need increased supply of refined oil for petrol and diesel prices to fall, but companies don't want to invest in increasing production/ supply as demand is supposed to fall as we're supposed to be going greener. Oil companies also don't know if everyone is going to stop going out if Covid infection rates are going back up so demand will fall. So looks like prices will remain high for a while.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-24/oil-s-dive-won-t-bring-any-immediate-relief-on-inflation#xj4y7vzkg
And price rise in fertiliser and Ukraine war has led to higher food costs.
Sunak is worried about paying for the Covid spending and emergency measures - including furlough and the Eat Out To Help Out scheme so I can see why he doesn't want to cut taxes.
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To quote my favourite economist: 'Controlling inflation by raising and lowering interest rates is like controlling the oven temperature by switching the light on and off'
Who's that?
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Who's that?
My wife
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My wife
Jolly good.
Given the main drivers of the current burst of inflation it is unlikely that raising interest rates would help in controlling it. However, rapidly growing government debt could cause rates to rise - a weakened pound would itself help inflation.
Given the causes are temporary it should be possible to just wait it out .. but that would be very painful for the worst off. Best would probably be to manage it - by using carefully designed price controls and select windfall taxes, until the energy and food issues are resolved - as some EU countries are doing.
Just reducing taxes won't really help - what they mean is reducing taxes on business to encourage investment to grow the economy - not reducing taxes to help ordinary people cope with the inflation.
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Aye
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Patrick Minford (the economist cited by Liz Truss as supporting her tax cuts) has now said he was misquoted by the Times journalist as saying interest rates will rise to 7%. He now says it is more likely to rise to about 3% and that is ok and what the Bank of England needs to do.
He also said that tax cuts and increased Govt borrowing is what the economy needs for economic growth. He disputed Sunak's idea that it is immoral to continue borrowing and expecting our children and grandchildren to repay. He said in the present circumstance it was necessary due to the current supply side constraints pushing up prices causing an unprecedented cost of living crisis. Others have also compared fighting Covid to the situation after WW2, when government debt was also at a record high and took decades to pay off.
I see Sunak has now agreed to cut the 5% VAT on household energy bills for 1 year if the energy price cap rises in October above £3000. He had previously opposed the one-year VAT cut when Labour proposed it in Jan 2022, despite Johnson etc having promised to get rid of the 5% VAT on energy imposed by the EU during the Brexit campaign, if Britain left the EU. Presumably because of the Covid pandemic spending? Shows you can't rely on any promises made by politicians as you don't know what the next shock to the economy will be.
Falling pound not having a bigger positive effect on UK exports. UK's relatively high cost of labour per unit of output not helping.
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He also said that tax cuts and increased Govt borrowing is what the economy needs for economic growth.
Sure a fiscal stimulus involving tax cuts and increasing borrowing will likely drive economic growth - that seems to be economics 101, in principle.
The issue is that this will almost certainly further fuel inflation, which is already at levels we haven't seen for 40 years. And of course if pay rises lag behind inflation (as they have for years) then people will simply be poorer in the long run regardless of a temporary sugar-rush hit of tax cuts. And the standard approach to dealing with inflationary pressures is raising interest rates, which will hit people with mortgages hard who have become used to very low interest rates, and presumably have budgeted accordingly.
And there is another point - if tax cuts result in spending cuts and major job losses in the public sector this will act as a counteracting drag to economic growth as those people will have less ability to fuel that economic growth via spending on products and services. We saw this after the 2010 election when the austerity policies effectively choked off the ability of the UK economy to grow out of the economic shock of the global financial crisis.
And although inflation and growth is actually very helpful in dealing with debt repayment, higher interest rates aren't.
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Truly transformational Rishi wants to fine people for not attending appts, scans, etc.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62366197
No details, it's just going to happen. He clearly doesn't understand how the NHS works if he thinks this can be done without massive investment in systems and staff.
Plus how will this be collected?
Are they going to send out debt collectors for a tenner?
An ill thought out soundbite masquerading as a policy to try to feed his doubters some red meat. Beyond pathetic.
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And MadNad doing her best to keep it classy:
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/watch-dangerous-nadine-dorries-slammed-for-retweeting-sunak-stabbing-pic-331070/?
I do hope this is covered by the ministerial code.
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Truly transformational Rishi wants to fine people for not attending appts, scans, etc.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62366197
No details, it's just going to happen. He clearly doesn't understand how the NHS works if he thinks this can be done without massive investment in systems and staff.
Plus how will this be collected?
Are they going to send out debt collectors for a tenner?
An ill thought out soundbite masquerading as a policy to try to feed his doubters some red meat. Beyond pathetic.
Agree it's a soundbite. Don't know if they are hoping it will have the same effect on people's behaviour as the 5p plastic bag charge - suddenly a large number of people became more organised and remembered to take a bag with them when they went to the shops. If you know you are going to get charged if you miss an NHS appointment without a good reason (something more than you forgot or you were disorganised), you might take more personal responsibility to make arrangements not to miss the appointment. Human behaviour seems to respond to such incentives - there are lots of people who change their behaviour if they know they will face a penalty for continuing that behaviour so it could be a useful tool, if it can be implemented.
Not sure how fines would be implemented but according to this YouGov poll the idea has a lot of support from healthcare workers https://yougov.co.uk/topics/health/articles-reports/2020/05/27/most-healthcare-workers-support-fines-those-missin
If Conservative MPs' tactics are to tell people what they want to hear i.e. advocate policies that appeal to enough voters to get them elected, and Labour have struggled to get elected to power because their MPs are not saying what voters in a constituency want to hear, isn't that down to how our political system works? They need to change the FPTP system before we will get a different style of campaigning.
If the media is to be believed, Sunak is unlikely to be elected leader by the members. I saw him being interviewed by Andrew Neil (apparently Truss declined a similar interview) and he was justifying the Rwanda pilot plan at a cost of £600,000 per migrant as he claimed it would have a deterrent effect on people trafficking. Hard to believe this cost per migrant is cheaper than the cost of going after and prosecuting the people traffickers or that it will work to deter people from falling victim to traffickers. Seems more the case that publicising the Rwanda policy and pandering to xenophobia is politically easier than the government being organised enough or having the resources to efficiently process migrants.
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You'll get no argument from me on FPTP. this taken in conjunction with other reasons is why I am politically homeless.
I'm sure health workers do agree with charging for defaulting on appointments. If asked that question I'd probably agree. Did they ask them if they thought the policy was workable?
I would be concerned with the practicalities of it given the granular nature of the NHS it would be a nightmare to administer. Once those members of the public who are a) likely to miss an appointment, and b) likely to default on payment realise this, (also bear in mind there will be all sorts of exemptions) then the proposed charge is dead in the water.
The charging for plastic bags is not that good a comparison unless we all pay upfront for appts.
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Fining people for missing, as opposed to cancelling appointments, which would have freed the slot for some other ill patient, might work for GPs - a lady who works as a GP receptionist said on LBC she would be happy to take payment as she already takes payment for doctor's sick notes or reports etc. I think she said it would be a case of if the patient had missed a 1st appointment and then also a 2nd appointment, it would be flagged on the system and the receptionist would not book a 3rd appointment until the fine had been paid.
This is probably made easier by the triage system many GPs now have, whereby you can't get an appointment anymore just by ringing the GP or turning up at the surgery. When you call, you are booked in for a call-back from a GP, who will ascertain over the phone if/ when you need to come in for a physical appointment. My GP also operate an online system where you log in and send in messages, describe symptoms, upload photos of the problem if requested and the GP messages back. I actually prefer this, rather than having to trek to the GP to get an assessment.
Of course, the patient could just go to A&E instead of paying the fine, which then clogs up A&E. I don't think there is a perfect solution, but it seems that letting people off isn't working. I would support introducing fines for missed GP appointments and see what happens.
Not sure how it would work for hospital appointments. Considering you get text reminders of the appointment the day or 2 before and sometimes even a phone call reminder, with a number to call if you have to cancel the appointment, I don't think there can be any justification for so many appointments still being missed, which some other patient could have taken, especially as waiting times are so long. I don't think throwing more money at the NHS will fix this particular problem.
What I am curious about is that I thought if you miss a clinic appointment, you are sent a letter saying if you miss the next one, you will be taken off the patient list for that clinic and you will have to go back to see your GP and start again from scratch i.e. be referred to the clinic again by your GP and be put at the back of the queue. In which case your GP receptionist could require you to pay the fine for the missed appointment before they will refer you to the clinic again.
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Still don't think it would work. All those initiatives for hospital appointments assume that everybody lives well-ordered lives. It just isn't so, unfortunately.
The proposal is that "reasonable excuses" would be exempt.
Who decides what is a reasonable excuse?
So from my direct experience of managing reception areas in a hospital, which of these are reasonable:
My washing machine flooded.
My daughter started being sick.
My wife took the house keys.
and my personal favourite:
My girlfriend had a very heavy period and I couldn't leave her.
How do you decide if the excuse is reasonable and furthermore do you go one step further and in effect accuse them of lying?
I'm sure some of the people I dealt with in the past were not telling the truth, but it wasn't my job to alienate them from the healthcare they had been referred for.
I just do not see it being feasible.
As I said it sounds appealing and a nice easy win. It isn't.
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I see your point about what you would feel comfortable charging people for. I had a NHS dental appointment I was late for so I said even if they could not fit me in because I was late, I would pay the charge for the appointment as it was my fault. The dentist did manage to fit me in but said he would not have accepted payment for the missed appointment if he had been unable to fit me in.
I would probably want a system where you charge people the fine regardless of the excuse but give them a form to apply for a refund for the fine along with a requirement for evidence and leave it up to someone else to determine if they had a reasonable excuse for not cancelling the appointment in advance or turning up to the appointment.
The person on reception could tell the patient it's out of your hands to waive the fine as it's a new policy due to the huge cost to the NHS and to other ill patients by people missing appointments. So with all of the excuses you listed I would have still fined them - as the price to be paid for having a free Health Service. Some people might be annoyed but most would understand - my experience is that when something is free people don't really appreciate it or start taking it for granted, to their detriment and the detriment of the rest of the community. So what starts as a good thing actually becomes a hindrance to the people you are trying to help - especially if it creates a dependency culture or a cavalier attitude towards waste. In my view you would be doing patients and the community a disservice by not fining patients who miss appointments.
Though I guess Good Samaritans on Reception who felt really bad for a patient could always pay the fine for them.
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Agree it's a soundbite. Don't know if they are hoping it will have the same effect on people's behaviour as the 5p plastic bag charge - suddenly a large number of people became more organised and remembered to take a bag with them when they went to the shops.
But it isn't like charging for a bag, which is easy to administer. If you go to the shop and don't have a bag you can buy one for 5p - simple. It isn't anything like as simple for people who do not attend an appointment, for the simple reason that they aren't there to be charged.
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Not sure how fines would be implemented but according to this YouGov poll the idea has a lot of support from healthcare workers https://yougov.co.uk/topics/health/articles-reports/2020/05/27/most-healthcare-workers-support-fines-those-missin
These kinds of surveys are highly dependent on the question being asked.
So ask NHS staff whether patients should be charged if they miss an appointment and they say 'yes'. I wonder what the answer would be if you asked NHS administrative staff whether they should be spending their time chasing people for unpaid fines for missing appointment - suspect you'd get a very different response. If you fine people you will need to have a system to administer those fines, collect those fines and chase up people who have not paid their fines. I can't see how that will fall to anyone except already overstretched NHS administrative staff.
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The person on reception could tell the patient it's out of your hands to waive the fine as it's a new policy due to the huge cost to the NHS and to other ill patients by people missing appointments.
But how is that going to work as the whole point about people not attending appointments is that they ... err ... do not attend the appointment so aren't going to be able to have any conversation with the receptionist because ... err ... they aren't there.
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Latest numpty proposal from the race-to-the-bottom tory leadership race - this time from Truss.
Apparently she wants all triple A* A-level students to be automatically given and interview for Oxbridge.
So let's unpack that for a moment.
So A-level results come out in August - at that point there will be no way that a triple A* student would be able to be offered a place for that year (unless there is a complete change in the admissions process so that all applications etc are made after A levels). So this would be for the following year - so a triple A* student getting their results in Aug 23 may get a place in Sept 24. The only exception would be for courses that have clearing places, but if the have clearing places then that student would get a place under the current system. And of course Oxbridge courses don't do clearing!
So that student will have to wait a year (see later for the impact of that) and need to apply to Oxbridge the following year. But the issue is that even the most competitive Oxbridge courses have offers lower that A*A*A* - the highest is A*A*A. So if a person is applying with actually banked down grades of A*A*A* as opposed to just a prediction of grades for exam not yet taken, will they get an interview under the current system? Well of course they will - so Truss' proposal will make absolutely zero difference in practice - knee-jerk click-bait cat-nip for the tory membership.
But there is another element here, even if it did result in students getting an interview who wouldn't have otherwise, you need to ask who would benefit. Well to benefit you'd need to be prepared to take a year out as any offer wouldn't be for the upcoming academic year but the year after. Fine if you can happily take a gap year or drop yourself into a nice internship etc. But that isn't the case for the kinds of students under-represented at Oxbridge, those who may come from highly deprived backgrounds, perhaps the first in their families to got to universities. It is much less likely that those students will be able to simply take a year out even if it meant being able to go to Oxbridge a year later. They simply don't have the means to fund that year out.
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But how is that going to work as the whole point about people not attending appointments is that they ... err ... do not attend the appointment so aren't going to be able to have any conversation with the receptionist because ... err ... they aren't there.
The fine for repeat offenders, as per my suggestion in my post, would be payable before you can get another NHS appointment including seeing your GP. It should be logged against your NHS number in the system and the booking system should prevent booking an appointment until it has been paid. The idea is that rather than chasing people to pay, people would be trying to pay the NHS so they can get an appointment. Same way they pay if they want a doctor’s note from the GP. They can fill in a form to apply for a refund If their reason for missing appointment falls within certain set criteria for refunds eg a death of close family member, illness etc and if they can provide evidence.
The system can also automate sending reminders to pay. I got text reminders about Covid vaccines, flu vaccines, so the majority of people would get their payment reminders by text or Whatsapp or email with a link or QR code to pay by card or Paypal. People who don’t have access to electronic communication can be sent a letter or be reminded to pay over the phone when they call to try to book an appointment.
This would allow Good Samaritans to pay fines for others if they have the payment link/ reference number and patient’s details. But I don’t think it’s meant to be a money-making idea - it’s supposed to have a deterrent effect to change behaviour. Some gyms do this. You get a penalty if you don’t attend a class you booked and you did not cancel your booking. You can’t book a new class or activity or gym session until you pay the penalty. It’s a small amount and I paid it at my gym as I had a family matter to deal with so couldn’t attend, but it gave me the incentive to try to be better organised for the future.
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Still don't think it would work. All those initiatives for hospital appointments assume that everybody lives well-ordered lives. It just isn't so, unfortunately.
The proposal is that "reasonable excuses" would be exempt.
Who decides what is a reasonable excuse?
So from my direct experience of managing reception areas in a hospital, which of these are reasonable:
My washing machine flooded.
My daughter started being sick.
My wife took the house keys.
and my personal favourite:
My girlfriend had a very heavy period and I couldn't leave her.
How do you decide if the excuse is reasonable and furthermore do you go one step further and in effect accuse them of lying?
I'm sure some of the people I dealt with in the past were not telling the truth, but it wasn't my job to alienate them from the healthcare they had been referred for.
I just do not see it being feasible.
As I said it sounds appealing and a nice easy win. It isn't.
I agree - there are many people whose lives are chaotic or have medical conditions that make it difficult to remember appointments or to get to them. I don't think fining people is the way forward at all, as I suspect the people most affected will be disproportionately the most vulnerable.
The other problem I have with this is a nasty undercurrent which is appearing to blame the difficulty in getting an appointment with a GP on people not turning up (you could have had their appointment). So blaming other patients for the poor service so many people are currently facing in terms of seeing their GP.
Now the data I've seen suggests that only one in 20 or one in 25 GP appointments is a 'no show', which isn't really a very high level and certainly not sufficient to explain not being able to get a routine GP appointment for three weeks (or more). No the reason is that the system is creaking through underfunding and lack of staff, not because occasionally someone doesn't turn up to an appointment.
And you can see where this is going - first it will be fining people for not attending and when that doesn't work the tories will move onto changing people a 'small amount to visit their GP, just to make sure they show up'.
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The fine for repeat offenders, as per my suggestion in my post, would be payable before you can get another NHS appointment including seeing your GP. It should be logged against your NHS number in the system and the booking system should prevent booking an appointment until it has been paid.
So someone rings up to a get an appointment for something that might be really serious and they won't be given an appointment until they've paid a fine for some missed appointments in the past where they might have a perfectly reasonable reason why they didn't attend. Some people simply don't have the money - what are you going to do then.
The system can also automate sending reminders to pay. I got text reminders about Covid vaccines, flu vaccines, so the majority of people would get their payment reminders by text or Whatsapp or email with a link or QR code to pay by card or Paypal. People who don’t have access to electronic communication can be sent a letter or be reminded to pay over the phone when they call to try to book an appointment.
This would allow Good Samaritans to pay fines for others if they have the payment link/ reference number and patient’s details. But I don’t think it’s meant to be a money-making idea - it’s supposed to have a deterrent effect to change behaviour.
We already have a Good Samaritan system to pay for other people to access medical services - it is called general taxation.
Frankly you are looking for a solution where there isn't a problem - I know when you look at the headline figure (about £200million) as the cost of missed appointment this sounds like a lot - but in the context of the NHS budget of about £200billion it represents about 0.1% of that budget. And fining people won't reduce that cost fully (indeed I doubt it would reduce the cost significantly) as the suggested fines are lower than the cost of an appointment and you'd have to factor in the cost of administering the fines, processes of appealing against a fine etc (which would probably be greater than the suggested £10 cost), plus those who appeal successfully. Finally the increased burden on other, likely more expensive, parts of the NHS as patients start heading to A&E rather than their GP.
And at around one in 20/25 appointments being missed, it is hardly the reason you can't get an appointment at your GP, is it.
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So someone rings up to a get an appointment for something that might be really serious and they won't be given an appointment until they've paid a fine for some missed appointments in the past where they might have a perfectly reasonable reason why they didn't attend.
Yup. If they have been issued reminders to pay and have not managed to find the time to pay, here is the perfect opportunity to pay and get their appointment for something that might be really serious. Some people simply don't have the money - what are you going to do then.
And many people do have the money to pay and don't feel bad about not showing up for appointments as there are no financial penalties. Like I said, it can be like food banks where people really don't have the money to eat - if people really, really don't have £10 and they can convince the many generous good samaritans all over the place to support the NHS and pay the fine on their behalf, then they will still get the appointment about something that might be serious.
Let's face it, it's not like you currently get lightening service about potentially serious health issues now on the NHS - though it depends on the service you are trying to access and on the whole I personally have had a good experience.
We already have a Good Samaritan system to pay for other people to access medical services - it is called general taxation.
I don't think taxation has quite the deterrent effect this penalty is trying to achieve.
Frankly you are looking for a solution where there isn't a problem - I know when you look at the headline figure (about £200million) as the cost of missed appointment this sounds like a lot - but in the context of the NHS budget of about £200billion it represents about 0.1% of that budget. And fining people won't reduce that cost fully (indeed I doubt it would reduce the cost significantly) as the suggested fines are lower than the cost of an appointment and you'd have to factor in the cost of administering the fines, processes of appealing against a fine (which would probably be greater than the suggested £10 cost), plus those who appeal successfully. Finally the increased burden on other, likely more expensive, parts of the NHS as patients start heading to A&E rather than their GP.
And at around one in 20/25 appointments being missed, it is hardly the reason you can't get an appointment at your GP, is it.
Sure - if the number-crunchers do the maths and decide it is not an issue worth pursuing or this is not the solution, then fine with me.
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Yup. If they have been issued reminders to pay and have not managed to find the time to pay, here is the perfect opportunity to pay and get their appointment for something that might be really serious.
You do understand that the group most likely by far to miss multiple appointment (in other words the group you'd want to fine) are the over 90s.
Other factors that predispose towards regular non attendance include being in the poorest socio-economic groups (almost perfect correlation).
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And many people do have the money to pay and don't feel bad about not showing up for appointments as there are no financial penalties.
Unevidenced assertion. Data please to back up your claim.
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Like I said, it can be like food banks where people really don't have the money to eat - if people really, really don't have £10 and they can convince the many generous good samaritans all over the place to support the NHS and pay the fine on their behalf,
As I've already said - we already do this, support the NHS - it is called general taxation. Your analogy to a food bank run as a charity isn't relevant.
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You do understand that the group most likely by far to miss multiple appointment (in other words the group you'd want to fine) are the over 90s.
Other factors that predispose towards regular non attendance include being in the poorest socio-economic groups (almost perfect correlation).
Not seeing the problem. Have an exemption for over 90s if that is a valid reason for missing appointments.
If being poor is also a valid reason to miss NHS appointments, again have an exemption for people on benefits.
This would be something for the NHS staff and voters to work out as they are the ones directly affected by the behaviour of missing appointments and its impact on waiting lists - if the number-crunchers don't see fines as a viable option, that's fine with me. On the other hand, if it works then great. Like I said before, I thought we already had a system where they kick you off the clinic list and your GP has to start the referral process again if you miss 2 NHS clinic appointments.
Also, see current policy for NHS dentists - they can't charge if you miss your first appointment but can decline to see you again. They can however curtail your course of treatment if you are part way through a course of treatment and you miss an appointment. They would then charge you again if you come back to their practice and want to have the course of treatment they curtailed.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6327739/dentist-charging-for-missed-nhs-appointment
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Unevidenced assertion. Data please to back up your claim.
You want data for "many people" or data for many people possessing £10 in their bank account or wallet/ purse? How do you suggest I define "many" so I know the criteria for the data you require?
Here are some stats on average savings in the UK as a starting point:
https://www.raisin.co.uk/newsroom/savings/better-saving-money/
https://www.finder.com/uk/saving-statistics
Or you want data for many people not feeling bad about being financially penalised for missing appointments, since they are currently not financially penalised for missing an appointment?
I don't think it's a controversial suggestion - I suspect many people who are financially penalised by their NHS dentist for missing appointments, feel bad about being financially penalised for missing appointments.
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As I've already said - we already do this, support the NHS - it is called general taxation. Your analogy to a food bank run as a charity isn't relevant.
Yes but it seems the taxes aren't covering the costs. We could of course increase taxes but some voters do not agree due to the perceived inefficiency of the NHS. Some people don't want to be taxed more to cover NHS costs for all treatments, e.g. if they feel the treatment is for an issue that is self-inflicted or cosmetic or it is going towards funding inclusiveness policies and training rather than medical treatments.
If we pay for other people to eat despite being taxed to fund benefits for poor people to be able to afford to eat, is there any reason we can't start a charity similar to food banks to pay people's fines for missed NHS appointments so they can access health care again.
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You want data for "many people" or data for many people possessing £10 in their bank account or wallet/ purse? How do you suggest I define "many" so I know the criteria for the data you require?
Here are some stats on average savings in the UK as a starting point:
https://www.raisin.co.uk/newsroom/savings/better-saving-money/
https://www.finder.com/uk/saving-statistics
Nope
Or you want data for many people not feeling bad about being financially penalised for missing appointments, since they are currently not financially penalised for missing an appointment?
Kind of - I want evidence to back up your assertion that many people don't feel bad about missing an appointment because there is no financial impact. That seems to me to be an unevidenced assertion as you haven't provided evidence as to why most people miss appointments, nor how they feel about missing an appointment. Still less have you provided a causal link that the lack of a financial penalty is the reason why they miss the appointment and that they don't care because there is no financial penalty.
So over to you VG, or you could perhaps retract the comment if you cannot back it up.
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Nope
Kind of - I want evidence to back up your assertion that many people don't feel bad about missing an appointment because there is no financial impact. That seems to me to be an unevidenced assertion as you haven't provided evidence as to why most people miss appointments, nor how they feel about missing an appointment. Still less have you provided a causal link that the lack fof a financial penalty is the reason why they miss the appointment and that they don't care because there is no financial penalty.
I don't need to as it wasn't a suggestion to fine people who have valid reasons to miss appointments. I believe the suggestion is to fine repeat offenders who are just being disorganised or not prioritising the NHS appointment over other issues because they take healthcare for granted because it is free and it doesn't cost them anything to rebook. It's an opinion based on the use of financial penalties to change behaviour in other areas of society.
Some healthcare workers have even suggested that there are patients who see free healthcare as a right rather than a privilege, and they want to change that mindset by introducing charges for GP appointments. Presumably these could be waived or claimed back or paid by a charity for people on benefits. They currently do this for vet bills.
So over to you VG, or you could perhaps retract the comment if you cannot back it up.
Sure - be happy to look into it once you have retracted all the comments that you have made on this thread and haven't been able to back up. E.g. Sunak's penniless grandmother etc etc
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I don't need to as it wasn't a suggestion to fine people who have valid reasons to miss appointments.
But you have asserted that many people don't feel bad about missing an appointment because there is no financial impact. That's what you need to justify, which requires you to evidence why they are missing appointments and how they feel about that.
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But you have asserted that many people don't feel bad about missing an appointment because there is no financial impact. That's what you need to justify, which requires you to evidence why they are missing appointments and how they feel about that.
No, it doesn't require me to evidence why they are missing appointments.
My point was that financial penalties usually make people feel bad, so if there aren't financial penalties they are not going to feel bad due to financial penalties.
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No, it doesn't require me to evidence why they are missing appointments.
It does if your argument is that financial penalties would make people miss fewer appointments.
My point was that financial penalties usually make people feel bad, so if there aren't financial penalties they are not going to feel bad due to financial penalties.
It doesn't matter if is makes them feel good, bad or indifferent - if it doesn't make people miss fewer appointments then how they feel seems pretty irrelevant, doesn't it.
But hey ho, clearly you aren't going to justify your assertion.
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Good response from the BMA on the matter.
https://www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-centre/charging-patients-for-missed-appointments-is-not-the-answer-to-tackling-the-nhs-backlog-says-bma
Also great article from the Independent from a few years ago on the related topic of charging for GP appointments, which is justified by the same, faulty, arguments that if you pay for something you will value it more and be less likely to miss an appointment.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/5-reasons-why-you-shouldn-t-have-to-pay-to-see-your-gp-a6838501.html
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Obviously none of this is about doing anything to help the NHS practically or elsewise. It's just about trying to drum up votes - all the proposals will be ditched straight after Sept 5th.
Personally, I think he might have been better off proposing £10 compensation each time you turn up for an NHS appointment and are left waiting for over 30 mins after the time given!
(Yes, I know this completely impractical)
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Obviously none of this is about doing anything to help the NHS practically or elsewise. It's just about trying to drum up votes - all the proposals will be ditched straight after Sept 5th.
Personally, I think he might have been better off proposing £10 compensation each time you turn up for an NHS appointment and are left waiting for over 30 mins after the time given!
(Yes, I know this completely impractical)
It is just classic tory diversionary non-sense.
So which is more likely to mean you cannot get a GP appointment for weeks:
1. One in 20 appointments is a no-show or
2. That there are 105,000 staff vacancies in the NHS
Answers on a post-card. But in the tory mind better to shift the blame onto patients, and not just all patients (research suggests a typical no-show is most likely to be very old, over 90, from a very low socio-economic group and likely have complex multiple health-care needs), rather than take responsibility for under funding the NHS and creating a staffing nightmare via brexit.
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Obviously none of this is about doing anything to help the NHS practically or elsewise. It's just about trying to drum up votes - all the proposals will be ditched straight after Sept 5th.
Personally, I think he might have been better off proposing £10 compensation each time you turn up for an NHS appointment and are left waiting for over 30 mins after the time given!
(Yes, I know this completely impractical)
Actually I think there is more truth in this than you think.
There is certainly evidence that if you pay for something up from, e.g. a fee for a GP consultation that patients expect more, and would certainly expect their appointment to be on time.
So if patients get fined for being late of not attending, then surely the flip-side should apply - patients should be compensated if their appointment is late or cancelled.
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It does if your argument is that financial penalties would make people miss fewer appointments.
My argument is that some people would be deterred from missing appointments by fines - probably the same people who are deterred by fines from parking in places where they are obstructing traffic or waiting in yellow box junctions. Of course, there are other people who rack up lots of parking tickets and other PCNs and are not deterred by fines.
It doesn't matter if is makes them feel good, bad or indifferent - if it doesn't make people miss fewer appointments then how they feel seems pretty irrelevant, doesn't it.
I would trial a fine system and see how it works out for the NHS. It might take a while for people to learn to take personal responsibility but I think it is something to work towards. While there are of course genuine cases of hardship that led to missing an appointment, there are also people who are immature or disorganised, or who have not been taught to take personal responsibility, or who make excuses and the fines would probably be doing them a favour as currently they have no reason to not miss an appointment - if it will get re-booked at no cost to them. The fines would help them prioritise and learn some self-discipline, for which they would eventually be grateful even if they don't acknowledge it as it's not much fun learning lessons.
But hey ho, clearly you aren't going to justify your assertion.
Good you're finally catching on. I suppose it's a bit like you arguing that Sunak's grandmother was penniless without evidence or you arguing that Sunak's mother's pharmacy business did not help pay for school fees, again without any evidence.
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My argument is that some people would be deterred from missing appointments by fines - probably the same people who are deterred by fines from parking in places where they are obstructing traffic or waiting in yellow box junctions. Of course, there are other people who rack up lots of parking tickets and other PCNs and are not deterred by fines.
Again poor analogy.
If you get a FPN or PCN for a parking offence, or blocking a box junction, or speeding etc - it is precisely because those things are offences. Not turning up to an appointment isn't an offence last time I looked. Are you planning on making missing a GP appointment an offence VG?
But back to your argument - where is your evidence that fining people for missing appointments or changing a fee for an appointment will make them not miss appointments. There are plenty of other countries that have tried your 'experiment' largely through charging for GP appointments - as the article I linked to suggests it doesn't change behaviours. Indeed Germany tried this (fees for GP appointments) in 2004, but scrapped them in 2012 because they didn't change behaviour but imposed a significant administrative burden on their healthservice - actually rather more than the theoretical cost of all the missed GP appointments in the UK.
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I would trial a fine system and see how it works out for the NHS. It might take a while for people to learn to take personal responsibility but I think it is something to work towards. While there are of course genuine cases of hardship that led to missing an appointment, there are also people who are immature or disorganised, or who have not been taught to take personal responsibility, or who make excuses and the fines would probably be doing them a favour as currently they have no reason to not miss an appointment - if it will get re-booked at no cost to them. The fines would help them prioritise and learn some self-discipline, for which they would eventually be grateful even if they don't acknowledge it as it's not much fun learning lessons.
Yup that's right - let's blame the feckless - that'll teach em!!!!
Alternatively we could actually fund the NHS properly and stop blaming patients for problems that aren't caused to any significant degree by one in 20 appointments being missed, costing (even using the theoretical cost) about 0.1% of the NHS budget, when the NHS has a staffing crisis with 105,000 vacancies.
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Yup that's right - let's blame the feckless - that'll teach em!!!!
Alternatively we could actually fund the NHS properly and stop blaming patients for problems that aren't caused to any significant degree by one in 20 appointments being missed, costing (even using the theoretical cost) about 0.1% of the NHS budget, when the NHS has a staffing crisis with 105,000 vacancies.
Well, it's not either/or, is it? We could (and of course should) massively increase the NHS's funding (and if that means a rise in tax or national Insurance, that's fine by me), AND charge for missed appointments. I think the latter is impractical, and would probably cost more to administer than it brings in, as others have suggested, but there's nothing wrong with the idea ethically.
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Well, it's not either/or, is it? We could (and of course should) massively increase the NHS's funding (and if that means a rise in tax or national Insurance, that's fine by me), AND charge for missed appointments. I think the latter is impractical, and would probably cost more to administer than it brings in, as others have suggested, but there's nothing wrong with the idea ethically.
Yup you could do both I guess, but I don't think fining people for non-attendance at appointment should happen for practical reasons, but I guess also on principle, which you might consider to be ethical.
Not sure I agree with you that there aren't ethical issues, and the BMA certainly thinks there are - from their response to the proposals:
"Charging patients for missed appointments would not only undermine the essential trust between doctor and patient, but ultimately threaten the fundamental principle that the NHS delivers free care at the point of need, for all. The BMA has always stood firmly against the idea of charging patients for missed appointments.
While it is frustrating when patients do not attend, the reasons why this happens should be investigated rather than simply resorting to punishing them. Financially penalising patients inevitably impacts the poorest and most vulnerable in the community. This may discourage them from rebooking, exacerbating already worsening health inequalities and costing the NHS more."
I would have thought that doctor/patient trust is fundamental medical ethical issue. As is justice (one of the four cornerstones of medical ethics along with autonomy, beneficence and non-maleficence). Bringing in something that would disproportionately impact the poorest and most vulnerable in the community seems to me to be a clear medical ethical issue around justice.
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Again poor analogy.
If you get a FPN or PCN for a parking offence, or blocking a box junction, or speeding etc - it is precisely because those things are offences. Not turning up to an appointment isn't an offence last time I looked. Are you planning on making missing a GP appointment an offence VG?
No I wouldn't make it an offence. I think we should just trial the principle of fines for missing 2 appointments and see what effect it has. I think in Scotland NHS dentists can fine you for missing appointments. I have not had time to look into the data to see the effect it has had
But back to your argument - where is your evidence that fining people for missing appointments or changing a fee for an appointment will make them not miss appointments. There are plenty of other countries that have tried your 'experiment' largely through charging for GP appointments - as the article I linked to suggests it doesn't change behaviours. Indeed Germany tried this (fees for GP appointments) in 2004, but scrapped them in 2012 because they didn't change behaviour but imposed a significant administrative burden on their healthservice - actually rather more than the theoretical cost of all the missed GP appointments in the UK.
If you are referring to the Independent article you linked to, I could not read it as not a subscriber. I thought Germany requires everyone to take our state or private health insurance, and the cost of premiums are partly paid by the employee from their salary and partly paid by employers. The self-employed also pay premiums. Not sure what happens if you are unemployed in Germany. I think everyone still has to pay a fee for the first visit to a doctor in every quarter.
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Yup that's right - let's blame the feckless - that'll teach em!!!!
Not even sure what that comment means. It's a fairly straight-forward concept in business that can be adopted for healthcare. The dentists seem to have managed it. Vets manage it for everyone's "fur babies" that are like members of the family. If you were supposed to be at an appointment and you miss it and you don't have a good reason to miss it, you will be charged if you try to make another appointment. It's not blame, it's just the reality of adults living in a capitalist economy where prices are allocated to goods and services due to costs incurred. If taxes can be raised to cover all these costs, fine. But people who want to raise taxes seem to have a hard time getting elected in Britain so let's assume that we can't get the money from taxes and will have to find alternative funding. So charging when an opportunity presents itself seems more sensible than not charging, unless it doesn't prove to have a deterrent effect and therefore does not save the NHS money.
Alternatively we could actually fund the NHS properly and stop blaming patients for problems that aren't caused to any significant degree by one in 20 appointments being missed, costing (even using the theoretical cost) about 0.1% of the NHS budget, when the NHS has a staffing crisis with 105,000 vacancies.
Yes we should fund the NHS properly as well. There is an issue with productivity and with recruitment. While we are waiting for all these extra people to materialise and fill the vacancies and for the funds to appear to pay people enough so they would be willing to do the jobs, we can also experiment with fines for missing appointments.
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Yup you could do both I guess, but I don't think fining people for non-attendance at appointment should happen for practical reasons, but I guess also on principle, which you might consider to be ethical.
Not sure I agree with you that there aren't ethical issues, and the BMA certainly thinks there are - from their response to the proposals:
"Charging patients for missed appointments would not only undermine the essential trust between doctor and patient, but ultimately threaten the fundamental principle that the NHS delivers free care at the point of need, for all. The BMA has always stood firmly against the idea of charging patients for missed appointments.
Yeah I don't agree. I would still trust my doctor even if I got charged for a missed appointment. What choice do I have if I need medical help than to go see the doctor even after they had charged me.
While it is frustrating when patients do not attend, the reasons why this happens should be investigated rather than simply resorting to punishing them. Financially penalising patients inevitably impacts the poorest and most vulnerable in the community. This may discourage them from rebooking, exacerbating already worsening health inequalities and costing the NHS more."[/i]
Yes sure if we had the funding via high taxation to investigate the causes, it would be an interesting exercise. But given we seem to be underfunded, I guess we won't find out in the near future.
I would have thought that doctor/patient trust is fundamental medical ethical issue. As is justice (one of the four cornerstones of medical ethics along with autonomy, beneficence and non-maleficence). Bringing in something that would disproportionately impact the poorest and most vulnerable in the community seems to me to be a clear medical ethical issue around justice.
Not really seeing the injustice as I think it is only supposed to impact the disaorganised and those who prioritise other events in their lives over NHS appointments when they should have turned up for the appointment.
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The dentists seem to have managed it. Vets manage it for everyone's "fur babies" that are like members of the family. If you were supposed to be at an appointment and you miss it and you don't have a good reason to miss it, you will be charged if you try to make another appointment.
Not relevant comparisons as you are talking about private, paid for services, rather than free-at-point-of-care services funded by the tax payer.
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Yeah I don't agree. I would still trust my doctor even if I got charged for a missed appointment.
You might, but the BMA is clear that it is concerned that fining patients would impact doctor patient trust, so they clearly think there are plenty of people whose trust would be impacted. That you aren't one of them is irrelevant.
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Yes sure if we had the funding via high taxation to investigate the causes, it would be an interesting exercise. But given we seem to be underfunded, I guess we won't find out in the near future.
Actually there has been a lot of research on this, and on what interventions work and don't work. And 'couldn't be bothered to turn up' and 'decided to do something else' don't feature high on the list of reasons.
Typically 'forgot' is up there, but of course a lot of people accessing GP services may have mental health issues, cognitive impairment or decline where 'forgot' is hardly an unreasonable excuse. Also challenges getting to the GP is another one high up and again many patients cannot get to a GP appointment without others helping out - indeed may be entirely reliant on others to book appointments, get them to the GP etc - it is fair to penalise those patients when inability to get to an appointment may be entirely beyond their control.
'Got better' is another common reason and I agree those people should cancel, but 'difficulties cancelling appointment' is another common reason. For many people getting an appointment requires sitting on the phone, on hold for ages (often at a specific time of day) - cancelling an appointment may require exactly the same rigmarole and of course not all people are able to wait in a phone queue at 8am for 20 minutes to get through (that's the process at my GP) - for example if you are at work.
Oh, and of course more research into this would be helpful, but this wouldn't be funded from core NHS funding - it would be funded by research organisations, potentially medical charities such as the Wellcome Trust and Kings Fund. So conducting more research wouldn't impact on NHS funding, except that using the research to improve services may make the NHS work better.
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Not really seeing the injustice as I think it is only supposed to impact the disaorganised and those who prioritise other events in their lives over NHS appointments when they should have turned up for the appointment.
Justice in Medical Ethics terms is quite specific - here is one mini-primer:
https://www.themedicportal.com/application-guide/medical-school-interview/medical-ethics/justice/
Note:
"It also means that we must ensure no one is unfairly disadvantaged when it comes to access to healthcare. Justice is one reason why the NHS has certain entitlements, such as free prescriptions for lower-income individuals."
So I'm a little bewildered as to how you are unable to see how your proposal (see reply 193) fails to meet the concept of justice in medical ethics. Here are just a few examples:
1. Your proposal is fundamentally regressive, in that the same about (e.g. £10) is charged regardless of the individual. £10 for some people is neither here nor there - for others it is a huge deal, hence the reason why prescriptions are free some some patients while others pay £9.35 - for some people paying £9.35 is a major issue so without free prescriptions those people are unfairly disadvantaged.
2. Your proposal will disproportionately impact those who are most vulnerable and disadvantaged. So for example patients over 90 are roughly twice as likely to miss appointments than any other age group and 220% more likely to miss appointment than the average. Similar those in the lowest socioeconomic groups are twice as likely to miss appointments. So your proposal will disadvantage people who are already likely to be vulnerable and already disadvantaged.
3. Your two-strikes-and-you-are-out proposal (i.e. fining after two missed appointments) will unfairly impact people with multiple healthcare needs and therefore have to visit the GP very often - note that 40% of all GP appointments are taken by just 10% of the population. So a person who has 20 GP appointment in a year and misses two (so a 10% non attendance rate) would be hit by your proposal yet a person who has just two appointments, and misses one of those (a 50% non attendance rate) won't be. The more appointments you have the more likely you are to be impacted - so people with multiple, complex health care needs would be unfairly disadvantaged.
4. Having a system which requires people to pay a fine first (in order to be able to access further healthcare) but with an appeals process will disadvantage those who will find appealing difficult, for example people with significant learning difficulties or other challenges to engaging with an appeals process, e.g. mental health issues that means that such a process creates significant anxiety issues. They would either be left out of pocket (although they might have perfectly legitimate reasons for missing an appointment) or would be denied ongoing healthcare. Again that doesn't fit with the principle of justice.
I could go on, but I won't. Hopefully you can see how your proposal isn't really compatible with the principle of justice in medical ethics.
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Latest numpty proposal from the race-to-the-bottom tory leadership race - this time from Truss.
Apparently she wants all triple A* A-level students to be automatically given and interview for Oxbridge.
So let's unpack that for a moment.
So A-level results come out in August - at that point there will be no way that a triple A* student would be able to be offered a place for that year (unless there is a complete change in the admissions process so that all applications etc are made after A levels). So this would be for the following year - so a triple A* student getting their results in Aug 23 may get a place in Sept 24. The only exception would be for courses that have clearing places, but if the have clearing places then that student would get a place under the current system. And of course Oxbridge courses don't do clearing!
So that student will have to wait a year (see later for the impact of that) and need to apply to Oxbridge the following year. But the issue is that even the most competitive Oxbridge courses have offers lower that A*A*A* - the highest is A*A*A. So if a person is applying with actually banked down grades of A*A*A* as opposed to just a prediction of grades for exam not yet taken, will they get an interview under the current system? Well of course they will - so Truss' proposal will make absolutely zero difference in practice - knee-jerk click-bait cat-nip for the tory membership.
But there is another element here, even if it did result in students getting an interview who wouldn't have otherwise, you need to ask who would benefit. Well to benefit you'd need to be prepared to take a year out as any offer wouldn't be for the upcoming academic year but the year after. Fine if you can happily take a gap year or drop yourself into a nice internship etc. But that isn't the case for the kinds of students under-represented at Oxbridge, those who may come from highly deprived backgrounds, perhaps the first in their families to got to universities. It is much less likely that those students will be able to simply take a year out even if it meant being able to go to Oxbridge a year later. They simply don't have the means to fund that year out.
There is a further reason why this is a really bad idea, particularly if the aim is to get bright kids from disadvantaged backgrounds into Oxbridge.
There is incontrovertible evidence that when you match students from state schools and independent schools in terms of A-level entry grades that state school students do significantly better in terms of final degree outcomes compared to independent schools. This has been recognised over a number of years, and unsurprisingly I have access to data looking at every single student over a number of years with their entry grades compared to their final degree outcome.
So typically matched by A-level entry (e.g. both get ABB) a state school student will attain 8% higher in their degree than an independent school student - that is nearly a whole degree classification range. Put it another way you would predict that a state school pupil with A level results two points below an independent school student will be likely to attain the same degree result. So AAA for an independent school pupil is the equivalent in terms of potential to do well in their degree to AAB, even ABB for a state school pupils.
University admissions is all about trying to identify students most likely to do well so should be taking this into account (although they often don't for fear of provoking the ire of the right wing press etc).
So let's look at Truss' proposals - it only applies to A*A*A* (most of these students will be in the independent sector) - but we know that state school students two points lower have a similar potential. So A*A*A* from an independent school is equivalent in potential terms to A*A*A or even A*AA in the state system. So if you have two students (of equal potential) - independent school student with A*A*A*, state school student with A*A*A (this person likely has the greater potential), who gets the automatic interview ... err ... only the independent school student.
Truss' proposal actively advantage independent school students over state school student of equal potential.
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Well, that was quick
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/liz-truss-civil-service-pay-row-levelling-up
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Well, that was quick
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/liz-truss-civil-service-pay-row-levelling-up
Wonder if she will u-turn on her non-sense proposals on Oxbridge admission which will disproportionately benefit private school students if there is any impact at all.
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The argument about charging for missed appointments is purely academic anyway:
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The argument about charging for missed appointments is purely academic anyway:
Very good.
And of course in many cases the process for cancelling an appointment, that you may no longer need or be able to attend, is as complicated and lengthy as the process to get an appointment in the first place. There was a letter in the Times yesterday making this very point.
My GP practice has no special route to cancel an appointment - the only ways are to go to the surgery in person or to phone on the same line used to book an appointment. A typical wait to get through is about 15-20 minutes in my case. Is it reasonable to fine someone for not cancelling an appointment because they are unwilling or unable (for lots of people this is impossible, e.g. they might be at work) to wait on hold for 15-20 minutes to cancel their appointment.
Sorting out the whole process of appointments, including ease of cancellation is the way to go if you want to reduce missed appointments - and there have been a number of studies that have looked at interventions to reduce missed appointments that have concluded the same. This the conclusion of a comprehensive interventional study from 2020 (my emphasis):
"Forward booking time in days is the best predictor of practice DNA rates. Sharing appointment data produced a significant reduction in missed appointments, and behaviour change interventions with patients had a modest additional impact; in contrast, introducing structural change to the appointment system effectively reduced DNA rates. To reduce non-attendance, it appears that the appointment system needs to change, not the patient."
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Ooh, that Rishi Sunak's hard! The competition for most idiotic policy continues.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/02/former-counter-terrorism-police-chief-attacks-rishi-sunaks-prevent-plans
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Ooh, that Rishi Sunak's hard! The competition for most idiotic policy continues.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/02/former-counter-terrorism-police-chief-attacks-rishi-sunaks-prevent-plans
I'm convinced that they have racks of these policies all ready to pull out for the media ... filed under:
"Be tough on ..."
"Look empathetic to ..."
"Distract to threat from ..."
"Stop waste in the ..."
"Raise NHS funds by ..."
...
with appropriate sub-categories.
Of-course they don't need to actually implement anything whether or not the statements have had the desired effect. At worst, they can pass a law (or set rules) then just not bother enforcing them.
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I'm convinced that they have racks of these policies all ready to pull out for the media ... filed under:
"Be tough on ..."
"Look empathetic to ..."
"Distract to threat from ..."
"Stop waste in the ..."
"Raise NHS funds by ..."
...
with appropriate sub-categories.
Of-course they don't need to actually implement anything whether or not the statements have had the desired effect. At worst, they can pass a law (or set rules) then just not bother enforcing them.
I don't doubt it but they seem to be choosing fron the idiotic pile
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Truss in Scotchland
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/my-adventures-in-scotchland-by-liz-truss-20220803224015
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Turns out Liz is flying for every vote.
https://liveapp.inews.co.uk/2022/08/03/liz-truss-charters-luxury-private-helicopter-to-campaign-in-tory-leadership-election/content.html
Liz Truss charters ‘luxury’ private helicopter to campaign in Tory leadership election
So confident, she won't even keep her feet on the ground.
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(It took me about five attempts to finally get it right...grrr. >:()
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Not relevant comparisons as you are talking about private, paid for services, rather than free-at-point-of-care services funded by the tax payer.
I am suggesting change the concept of free at point of care e.g. except where you miss appointments without a valid reason.
I understand that someone has to make a decision as to what is a valid excuse and what isn't. Some people might have problems making decisions on this but not everyone feels too squeamish to make these kind of decisions, even though they know there is a possibility they might make the wrong call. I don't think I would as I would see it as necessary decisions that need to be made for the service to still be available for the majority.
I think it's a good thing that people do not all feel the same way about issues and therefore different people are available to carry out different taks based on their individual ability/ aptitude/ perspective.
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You might, but the BMA is clear that it is concerned that fining patients would impact doctor patient trust, so they clearly think there are plenty of people whose trust would be impacted. That you aren't one of them is irrelevant.
I don't think it's irrelevant. If there are enough people who feel similarly to me, then the BMA's view might become irrelevant.
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Actually there has been a lot of research on this, and on what interventions work and don't work. And 'couldn't be bothered to turn up' and 'decided to do something else' don't feature high on the list of reasons.
Link please
Typically 'forgot' is up there, but of course a lot of people accessing GP services may have mental health issues, cognitive impairment or decline where 'forgot' is hardly an unreasonable excuse. Also challenges getting to the GP is another one high up and again many patients cannot get to a GP appointment without others helping out - indeed may be entirely reliant on others to book appointments, get them to the GP etc - it is fair to penalise those patients when inability to get to an appointment may be entirely beyond their control.
And a lot of people who forgot may not have mental health issues at all. Would be good to find out how many people who forgot have a mental health issue that leads to forgetfulness. Lots of people have mental health issues while still being able to funciton, do homework, study for exams, carry out responsibilities at work etc. without forgetting. Or if they do forget they get penalised at school or work for forgetting - they don't just escape all consequences because they have mental health issues.
'Got better' is another common reason and I agree those people should cancel, but 'difficulties cancelling appointment' is another common reason. For many people getting an appointment requires sitting on the phone, on hold for ages (often at a specific time of day) - cancelling an appointment may require exactly the same rigmarole and of course not all people are able to wait in a phone queue at 8am for 20 minutes to get through (that's the process at my GP) - for example if you are at work.
Would agree with this.
Oh, and of course more research into this would be helpful, but this wouldn't be funded from core NHS funding - it would be funded by research organisations, potentially medical charities such as the Wellcome Trust and Kings Fund. So conducting more research wouldn't impact on NHS funding, except that using the research to improve services may make the NHS work better.
Ok. If the research organisations have funding, great.
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Justice in Medical Ethics terms is quite specific - here is one mini-primer:
https://www.themedicportal.com/application-guide/medical-school-interview/medical-ethics/justice/
Note:
"It also means that we must ensure no one is unfairly disadvantaged when it comes to access to healthcare. Justice is one reason why the NHS has certain entitlements, such as free prescriptions for lower-income individuals."
So I'm a little bewildered as to how you are unable to see how your proposal (see reply 193) fails to meet the concept of justice in medical ethics. Here are just a few examples:
1. Your proposal is fundamentally regressive, in that the same about (e.g. £10) is charged regardless of the individual. £10 for some people is neither here nor there - for others it is a huge deal, hence the reason why prescriptions are free some some patients while others pay £9.35 - for some people paying £9.35 is a major issue so without free prescriptions those people are unfairly disadvantaged.
2. Your proposal will disproportionately impact those who are most vulnerable and disadvantaged. So for example patients over 90 are roughly twice as likely to miss appointments than any other age group and 220% more likely to miss appointment than the average. Similar those in the lowest socioeconomic groups are twice as likely to miss appointments. So your proposal will disadvantage people who are already likely to be vulnerable and already disadvantaged.
3. Your two-strikes-and-you-are-out proposal (i.e. fining after two missed appointments) will unfairly impact people with multiple healthcare needs and therefore have to visit the GP very often - note that 40% of all GP appointments are taken by just 10% of the population. So a person who has 20 GP appointment in a year and misses two (so a 10% non attendance rate) would be hit by your proposal yet a person who has just two appointments, and misses one of those (a 50% non attendance rate) won't be. The more appointments you have the more likely you are to be impacted - so people with multiple, complex health care needs would be unfairly disadvantaged.
4. Having a system which requires people to pay a fine first (in order to be able to access further healthcare) but with an appeals process will disadvantage those who will find appealing difficult, for example people with significant learning difficulties or other challenges to engaging with an appeals process, e.g. mental health issues that means that such a process creates significant anxiety issues. They would either be left out of pocket (although they might have perfectly legitimate reasons for missing an appointment) or would be denied ongoing healthcare. Again that doesn't fit with the principle of justice.
I could go on, but I won't. Hopefully you can see how your proposal isn't really compatible with the principle of justice in medical ethics.
I already responded to many of these points before e.g. the over 90s exemption and exemptions for people categorised as having mental health forgetfulness issues, which explains why I think the policy is compatible with justice.
The only new point you raised is people who have multiple health issues with mutiple apointments. You could set the system to flag missing appointents per department clinic rather than overall. If it's GP appointments, presuamably the practice will know their patients and be able to set the system to ascertain if a particular patient is missing too many appointments and set the trigger for a fine at an appropriate level. I think the principle of fining for missed appointments without a valid reason works - though individual GP practices might tweak the system depending on how they want to implement it.
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I am suggesting change the concept of free at point of care e.g. except where you miss appointments without a valid reason.
The point I was making is that it isn't relevant to take practice in the private free-market and simply suggest they necessarily apply to public services. That nature of the manner in which those services are paid for and the notion of choice makes those comparisons irrelevant as far as I am concerned. That some private dentists and vets charge for missed appointments provides no relevant justification that the NHS should impose fines for missed GP appointments, which are not a chargeable service at point of use.
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I already responded to many of these points before e.g. the over 90s exemption and exemptions for people categorised as having mental health forgetfulness issues, which explains why I think the policy is compatible with justice.
Hmm - so the only way in which your proposal can be made to be compatible with justice in medical ethics terms is to ensure it doesn't apply to groups most likely to miss appointments - seems that basically demonstrates that the basic plan isn't compatible with justice. And if you exempt the groups most likely to miss appointments, what on earth is the point, as that exemption isn't on the basis of justifiable reason, but a mere blanket exemption.
So in justice terms why should a perfectly able 90 year old who couldn't be bothered to turn up as their appointment clashed with a big game at Wimbledon (and they are a big tennis fan) be exempt, while.
A perfectly able 89 year old who couldn't be bothered to turn up as their appointment clashed with a big game at Wimbledon (and they are a big tennis fan) is fined.
Or even an 89 year old with fluctuating alzheimer's who relies on a carer to remember and get them to the appointment - who will be fined and then has to appeal.
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Link please
Here are a couple:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2296-6-47
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2296-6-47
Not sure if you can read the full article. From the first article:
The top reason was forgetfulness - but there isn't detail on why, e.g. whether individuals had cognitive decline or whether the GP made any attempt to remind the patient. It is well established that the biggest driver for missed appointments is how far in advance the appointment is made - so appointments in the next day or two are much more likely to be attended than appointment made for 3-4 week in the future. Not surprising really but that is surely an appointment-side issue. I return to my quote:
"Forward booking time in days is the best predictor of practice DNA rates. Sharing appointment data produced a significant reduction in missed appointments, and behaviour change interventions with patients had a modest additional impact; in contrast, introducing structural change to the appointment system effectively reduced DNA rates. To reduce non-attendance, it appears that the appointment system needs to change, not the patient."
Second highest reason - very hard to cancel appointment. And you seem to agree with me on this. Surely until GPs provide a very easy way to cancel an appointment fining patients for not attending and not cancelling seems totally unreasonable. Effectively GPs would then be fining patients for their own failure to provide a quick and easy way to cancel an appointment.
There is also a clear theme that patients blame misunderstanding or mistakes - and in the most part see those as misunderstanding or mistakes as being on the part of the GP practice.
Would agree with this.
See above - so until a GP can demonstrate that it is straightforward to cancel an appointment how can it be fair to fine a patient who fails to cancel an appointment.
Ok. If the research organisations have funding, great.
They do, so funding of relevant research, which may include trialling intervention studies (as has been the case) won't impact on NHS funding. It may, of course, improve service provision or reduce costs if the fundings are implemented.
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Truss has tweeted her intention to "hit the ground from day one". We can but hope... One is reminded of the Tory MP for Stoke-on-Trent South Jack Brereton's tweeted hope to see his constituency levelled.
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I don't think it's irrelevant. If there are enough people who feel similarly to me, then the BMA's view might become irrelevant.
With respect - I think the BMA know an awful lot more about trust between patients and medical professionals than either you or I. And trust between a medical professional and a patient is something that rests at the level of an individual - so the notion that a different patient has trust is irrelevant when considering trust in the context of the patient sitting in front of you as a medical professional.
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My ballot paper has arrived today, so when I find out how to use it, I think I will vote for Rishi Sunak; not because he's a person I want to take the position - I don't want either of them - but he's marginally less likely to nake major errors ... I hope!
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My ballot paper has arrived today, so when I find out how to use it, I think I will vote for Rishi Sunak; not because he's a person I want to take the position - I don't want either of them - but he's marginally less likely to nake major errors ... I hope!
Interesting that it has arrived, with the delays after concerns from GCHQ about hacking.
Will you vote straightaway or wait in case there is some bombshell about either candidate. I know the original plan was to allow members to vote and then change their vote later, but that was what was considered to be a hackers-dream scenario.
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My ballot paper has arrived today, so when I find out how to use it, I think I will vote for Rishi Sunak; not because he's a person I want to take the position - I don't want either of them - but he's marginally less likely to nake major errors ... I hope!
I think your post should be used as the definition of damning with faint praise.
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I think your post should be used as the definition of damning with faint praise.
Indeed - Susan, ever thought you were in the wrong party?
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Indeed - Susan, ever thought you were in the wrong party?
If just thinking the leader was useless was a guide though, there would be a lot fewer members in most parties most of the time
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Indeed - Susan, ever thought you were in the wrong party?
No! How about giving me a run-down in a few lines of the virtues, values and benefits of the other party which you think would prvide such a superior government for the country that I would simply have to change allegiance!!
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No! How about giving me a run-down in a few lines of the virtues, values and benefits of the other party which you think would prvide such a superior government for the country that I would simply have to change allegiance!!
There are more than one alternative parties available. Alternatively you could simply cease to be a member of any political party - there is no obligation to be a member of any party.
That's what I did when I felt that the party I was a member of no longer had a leader I had confidence in and policies I felt were appropriate. In my case I felt strongly that the party had moved, not me - that the party no longer had the same competence, leadership and overall vision/policies it had when I joined and when I was an activist and, a couple of times, a council candidate.
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No! How about giving me a run-down in a few lines of the virtues, values and benefits of the other party which you think would prvide such a superior government for the country that I would simply have to change allegiance!!
I think that one of the problems we face, compounded by an indefensible first-past-the-post electoral system, is that neither of the major parties represent any real political philosophy. They are essentially tribal in their appeal - but with most of the elements of this tribalism having largely become no longer relevant in the third decade of the twenty first century.
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Shocking news revealed by Truss
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"Work shys, scroungers, lay abouts. You have only yourselves to blame." Tory
boygirl.*
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/16/leaked-audio-reveals-liz-truss-said-british-workers-needed-more-graft (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/16/leaked-audio-reveals-liz-truss-said-british-workers-needed-more-graft)
* ((C) H Enfield, decades ago.)
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"Work shys, scroungers, lay abouts. You have only yourselves to blame." Tory boygirl.*
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/16/leaked-audio-reveals-liz-truss-said-british-workers-needed-more-graft (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/16/leaked-audio-reveals-liz-truss-said-british-workers-needed-more-graft)
* ((C) H Enfield, decades ago.)
Difficult to know if that will work for or against her with:
a) the Tory party members voting in the leadership election
b) the electorate in a general election
No one thinks they are work shy or scroungers but many seem ready to accuse others of being so.
There's no sign that anything she proposes will actually help with the productivity problems that need to be fixed.
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Difficult to know if that will work...
Well, you might want to watch this documentary.
https://youtu.be/9oQ_tbf6j2A (https://youtu.be/9oQ_tbf6j2A)
(From theBeeb)
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Well, you might want to watch this documentary.
https://youtu.be/9oQ_tbf6j2A (https://youtu.be/9oQ_tbf6j2A)
(From theBeeb)
Ah I see, randomly insulting the UK public bound to get you a good majority!
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(https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F8efc5612-1e4f-11ed-add4-d333562d46fb.jpg?crop=3374%2C1898%2C266%2C150&resize=1200)
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(https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F8efc5612-1e4f-11ed-add4-d333562d46fb.jpg?crop=3374%2C1898%2C266%2C150&resize=1200)
That would be amusing if it wasn't so true!
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.
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With respect - I think the BMA know an awful lot more about trust between patients and medical professionals than either you or I. And trust between a medical professional and a patient is something that rests at the level of an individual - so the notion that a different patient has trust is irrelevant when considering trust in the context of the patient sitting in front of you as a medical professional.
The BMA may think they know something but I think it should be up to the public to decide about charging fees, not the BMA. The BMA are not usually facing the problems ordinary members of the public face - most of their members probably opt for private healthcare.
My view is that necessity means people have limited choices even if fees are charged for treatment or a penalty imposed for missing appointments - if you want your illness or problem to be assessed and treated by someone qualified and trained in medicine you have to see a medical professional regardless of whether you feel you trust them or not because you have paid something towards treatment. Hopefully self-preservation will kick in for the ill person and they will go to a doctor (plenty to choose from) even if they have to pay, and ignore any feelings of distrust caused by payment of fees. If they don't want to go to the doctor due to distrusting all doctors they have to pay for, not much anyone can do about that.
Whether you trust them or not based on having to pay a fee doesn't alter the fact that seeing them is your only option if you want to be treated by a qualified professional. At least that's been my experience with private healthcare - you get the diagnosis and treatment options and then decide if you want to go ahead. Same with NHS - you can't trust the doctor to get it right in the NHS as medical treatment is often figured out by a process of elimination of possible conditions through tests and guesswork and somtimes you are unlucky and your doctor has not had the particular experience or has not read a particular article or can't recall it if they have read it in order to diagnose correctly. Sometimes you are unlucky and the test comes back with a false negative. I have experienced misdiagnosis from the NHS.
Luckily my mum is a doctor (retired) and therefore either she has recalled some obscure article she may have read or she has chatted with colleagues and relatives who are still doctors and between them someone has recalled something to figure out the reason for certain symptoms for people in our extended family, whereas the official NHS doctor or the private doctor being consulted by the patient has not figured it out yet. Whether fees are being paid towards medical treatment has been irrelevant in this process, other than you get quicker access and treatment if you pay - either via insurance or personally.
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Meanwhile let's bomb France
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-truss-emmanuel-macron-france-b2153011.html
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Meanwhile let's bomb France
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-truss-emmanuel-macron-france-b2153011.html (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-truss-emmanuel-macron-france-b2153011.html)
Don't worry, there's so much shit in the channel, the French wouldn't even try to invade.
https://liveapp.inews.co.uk/2022/08/25/merde-french-fury-over-uks-despicable-sewage-dumping-that-reflects-image-of-government/content.html[/size][/color]
We'd have to walk over it and claim asylum.
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Liz Truss and bins
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1564889645791444993.html
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Jacob Rees-Mogg blocking major UK tourism campaign
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/03/jacob-rees-mogg-blocking-major-uk-tourism-campaign (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/03/jacob-rees-mogg-blocking-major-uk-tourism-campaign)
Just imagine. All those foreigners. Coming over here. Paying our services. Buying our tat.
That reminds me... they won't even pay for our Tate.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/02/festival-of-brexit-unboxed-disaster (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/02/festival-of-brexit-unboxed-disaster)
author= More moaning from The Groaniad
Total fiasco, you say? Appalling waste of public money, you say? Completely different to what was promised, you say? Despite having been years in the planning, no one knew what it was actually supposed to look like, you say? The people who came up with it are blaming its failure on anyone but themselves, you say? I mean … I mourn the time when a metaphor stole imperceptibly into the British consciousness...
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Did anyone else watch the Beeb's "Have I got news for Boris" last night?
Probably one of HIGNFY's better offerings.
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The sheer poverty of thought by Truss and her supporters is mind freezing.
https://archive.ph/OczM6
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The sheer poverty of thought by Truss and her supporters is mind freezing.
https://archive.ph/OczM6
Let her try. If the workers lose their entitlement to take two weeks off to go to Magaluf or wherever, I can't see it ending well for the government that does it. I think she'll share James Callaghan's fate
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Did anyone else watch the Beeb's "Have I got news for Boris" last night?
Probably one of HIGNFY's better offerings.
Made a point to watch, but not many real laughs!
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Well, I'm going to buy loads of French cheese now.
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It's Liz
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Another skidmark on the Y Fronts of British history.
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author=LT's SPAD
We will deliver, we will deliver, we will deliver.
I wouldn't even trust her to deliver a paper round.
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I'm delighted: she's absolutely fucking useless but should, hopefully, do an extremely good job of losing the next election.
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I wouldn't even trust her to deliver a paper round.
As well as lamb, chicken and fish?
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I'm delighted: she's absolutely fucking useless but should, hopefully, do an extremely good job of losing the next election.
The problem is that's 2 years away and her corrupt incompetence will bring misery to millions.
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As well as lamb, chicken and fish?
...she's clearly delighted by pork markets.
She might work out how many fingers fish have by buying them from Birds Eye.
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I wouldn't truss her to run a whelk stall, but as Gordon says, she
should, hopefully, do an extremely good job of losing the next election.
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It's Liz
At 57:43 closer than many anticipated, which creates further difficulties for Truss - she only received support of 30% of Tory MPs and now hasn't received a thumping endorsement from the membership either - both Johnson and Cameron won two thirds of the membership and both were also the preferred candidate for MPs.
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I wonder if she'll give fishy Rishi a job in her cabinet.
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I wonder if she'll give fishy Rishi a job in her cabinet.
I think he's said he wouldn't take one.
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I wonder if she'll give fishy Rishi a job in her cabinet.
Not sure about that. I hear she is being advised by Hugh Briss.
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The problem is that's 2 years away and her corrupt incompetence will bring misery to millions.
True - ideally some sort of crisis would bring an election forward but, and whatever this crisis turned out to be, people would be damaged in some way.
The Tory party disgust me in terms of what they've done, what they say they want to do, and what they stand for - and regarding those who vote for them I shall refrain from comment in case I have to ban myself.
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True - ideally some sort of crisis would bring an election forward but, and whatever this crisis turned out to be, people would be damaged in some way.
The Tory party disgust me in terms of what they've done, what they say they want to do, and what they stand for - and regarding those who vote for them I shall refrain from comment in case I have to ban myself.
I have heard that the SNP is preparing for a snao election to be called but I think that's more as a scenario planning in case there is a Truss bounce
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I can't stand Truss, although I doubt it's possible to do much worse than Johnson, but anything is possible. >:(
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I can't stand Truss, although I doubt it's possible to do much worse than Johnson, but anything is possible. >:(
I cant stand any Tory, with one or two exceptions: Edwina Currie, who stood up to be counted on the issue of equalising the age of consent for gays; The late Earl of Arran, whom I once met, who was a major mover in legalising gay relationships in the 60s, and was also an animal rights campaigner; Anna Soubry, who committed political suicide for her Europeanism; and... err...that's about it. Can't stand any of the present shower.
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The Apotheosis of Truss (my title) by Coldwar Steve
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They chose the worst of two evils to further steer the sinking ship onto the iceberg.
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Fuck off Boris.
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Does anyone know Liz Truss's stance on Scotland leaving the union?
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Does anyone know Liz Truss's stance on Scotland leaving the union?
Like all other Tory fuckwit PMs of late, I've no doubt she'll bleat on about the 'precious union' and ignore that the Scottish electorate have rejected her party and their Brexit madness and, according to reports, she will obstruct and also try to gerrymander a second referendum.
I can't see her changing the fortune of the Tories in Scotland in any positive sense and, hopefully, she will make them even more irrelevant to the electorate in Scotland thatn they already are - roll on the next general election, since it brings the prospect of there being no Tory MPs in Scotland (as per the 1997 general election).
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Does anyone know Liz Truss's stance on Scotland leaving the union?
Who cares?
We didn't vote for her, and we haven't elected her party in majority since 1955.
If she tries to tough it out, it only strengthens the YES side; if she tries concessions, we'll take that as a crack in the dam and help the flood gates to open.
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Does anyone know Liz Truss's stance on Scotland leaving the union?
The latest wizard wheeeze that her camp came out with is to say a referendum could be held but that to pass it would need 50% of the total electorate.
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The problem is that's 2 years away and her corrupt incompetence will bring misery to millions.
Would Rishi have been better in your opinion?
I think he probably would heave been, but either of them is better than BJ.
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Seen in a newsagent.
For those using a screen reader it is the front page of the New European showing a picture of BJ being flushed down a toilet. The caption says "Farewell Boris Johnson and thanks for f..." and the rest is obscured by the bar code.
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Would Rishi have been better in your opinion?
I think he probably would heave been, but either of them is better than BJ.
Given Sunak came out with less random bollocks during the campaign, yes, but it's not a ringing endorsement.
As to Truss v Johnson, dunno. I fear her vacuousness is easily filled with detritus of thoughts from others. Johnson's principle was pro bono Johnson. Truss isn't even that focussed.
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The latest wizard wheeeze that her camp came out with is to say a referendum could be held but that to pass it would need 50% of the total electorate.
Oh and to add to that she stated during the campaign that she is going to ignore Sturgeon, and during one of the Tories internal hustings was asked along with Sunak if they would suppress Sturgeon - apparently it's all light hearted.
I feel between the SNP and Tories currently they are pkaying a game to see if they can make me vote the opposite way on independence to their view by being the most crassly stupid and inept. They are both doing very well.
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...
I think he probably would heave been, but either of them is better than BJ.
Not sure about that. Sometimes it might be better to have the dishonest face in the front every time, rather than a bland face with the same cheating hidden behind.
At least with Sunak and Johnson, you can see that they have an instinct to answer a question (honestly or not) if asked ... Truss - she just repeats the same meaningless, fabricated, phrases - in the same ways Johnson's ministers did in interviews.
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Madge with her 15 prime ministers. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-62795868)
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Madge with her 15 prime ministers. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-62795868)
Removing Truss as she's only started, that gives an average of almost exactly 5 years per PM, the theoretical length of 1 parliament.
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Seen in a newsagent.
For those using a screen reader it is the front page of the New European showing a picture of BJ being flushed down a toilet. The caption says "Farewell Boris Johnson and thanks for f..." and the rest is obscured by the bar code.
I'd feel sorry for the sewer rats, with that to deal with.
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I'd feel sorry for the sewer rats, with that to deal with.
So do I. ;D
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Looking forward to seeing what 'Private Eye' does for its fortnightly prime-ministerial spoof for LT. If 'twas me, I'd do an old fashioned girl's school story, with LT as jolly-hockey-sticks head girl.
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/07/liz-truss-new-cabinet-in-full-who-is-in-and-who-is-out
Another reshuffle of the pack, a new group without in-depth understanding of the areas they've taken responsibility for in place ...
"Liz Truss, prime minister
Thérèse Coffey, deputy prime minister and health and social care secretary
Kwasi Kwarteng, chancellor of the exchequer
James Cleverly, foreign secretary
Suella Braverman, home secretary"
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If Truss is thinking of giving Johnson a job, cleaning the Westminster loos would be ideal! ;D
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/07/liz-truss-new-cabinet-in-full-who-is-in-and-who-is-out
Another reshuffle of the pack, a new group without in-depth understanding of the areas they've taken responsibility for in place ...
At least Priti Patel is out...
Suella Braverman, home secretary"
Oh.
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Removing Truss as she's only started, that gives an average of almost exactly 5 years per PM, the theoretical length of 1 parliament.
And yet not one of them actually served for five years. That's arithmetical averages for you!
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The caption says "Farewell Boris Johnson and thanks for f..." and the rest is obscured by the bar code.
The top line concluded "its the end of the error".
If only...now Truss has appointed JRMugg and he wants to collect all the gas and oil, he doesn't even understand climate change.
Lazy selfish rich idiot.
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The top line concluded "its the end of the error".
If only...now Truss has appointed JRMugg and he wants to collect all the gas and oil, he doesn't even understand climate change.
Lazy selfish rich idiot.
I feel it is actually worse. The are going to undo a decade of (the minimal benefits of) austerity and pass huge amounts of money to themselves via the energy companies. UK will be left with a debt burden that will drag it down for at least another decade. Climate change totally ignored, where we could have had a plan that allowed people to cope with the energy price crisis and fuel poverty and also reduced emissions - without crippling the economy.
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Michael Rosen:
In honour of Ms Truss, formerly employed by Shell.
There was an old firm called Shell
who found they did extremely well.
A former employee
showed her loyalty
by helping their bank account swell.
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Superb
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Michael Rosen:
In honour of Ms Truss, formerly employed by Shell
Don't you mean 'Hell'?
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I found this on FB. Too good not to share? Too unsettling to share? Meh, you decide:
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That pic could be a source of nightmares.
I wonder if Boris the Liar is pissed at just missing out on the PM role in leading the official political sychophancy over the next 10 days or so following the death of Elizabeth Windsor, where that will now fall on Truss.
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That pic could be a source of nightmares.
I wonder if Boris the Liar is pissed at just missing out on the PM role in leading the official political sychophancy over the next 10 days or so following the death of Elizabeth Windsor, where that will now fall on Truss.
I expect she hung on with all her strength until she was sure he was gone!
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Turns out that Susan was right all along. The corrupt, incompetent, lying clown was the best on offer from the Tory party ...
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Turns out that Susan was right all along. The corrupt, incompetent, lying clown was the best on offer from the Tory party ...
Talking of who, where is Susan? She hasn't posted for yonks.
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Turns out that Susan was right all along. The corrupt, incompetent, lying clown was the best on offer from the Tory party ...
I think Sunak would have been better.
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We have been trying to contact Susan but with no luck so far. See here:
http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=19141.msg849920#new
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I think Sunak would have been better.
Indeed, but the Tories did not!
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More madness from the UK government.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/11/therese-coffey-to-drop-smoking-action-plan-insiders-say
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More madness from the UK government.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/11/therese-coffey-to-drop-smoking-action-plan-insiders-say
For once, I'm on their side. Restrictions on smoking have gone too far already. Advertising should be banned, and full information given about the dangers of smoking (but with pipes and cigars, which are much less dangerous, differentiated from cigs, the real killers), and smoking banned in enclosed public spaces, but maybe allow pubs to provide a room behind a normally-closed door for smokers - and that's it. Yes, more people would die - but as long as they are fully informed, that's their choice. Saving as many people's lives as possible is inconsistent with personal freedom, otherwise we'd ban dangerous sports and junk food, and reduce car speed limits across the board, as well (I think I'm correct in saying that cars are far and away the biggest cause of avoidable death and disability.)
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That sounds like an argument for legalising cocaine - provided of course they explain the risks first and then it is just a matter of personal choice - can't see that happening, so why is tobacco a special case?
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Because it's already legal, which is a major difference. Also, degree of harm.
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Because it's already legal, which is a major difference. Also, degree of harm.
It's a weird thing but the 'it's already legal' argument is an important indicator on the failings of consistency in govt. We think we should be governed by principles but a lot of it is about practicality. That said, there was a time when if you had told me smoking would be banned IN pubs, I would have thought you mad.
Degree of harm here is an interesting concept though. I know individuals' behaviour on coke is a problem but there isn't such a thing as passive snorting.
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Because it's already legal, which is a major difference. Also, degree of harm.
Except, very often when studies are published the degree of harm from nicotine is worse than that from cocaine (there are varying results on this and I think it is extremely difficult to do an exact comparison) and it often comes out top as the most dangerous drug, although alcohol does too on some reports.
As far as I can see if you want to be consistent you either go down the route of personal responsibility on all drugs or government intervention on all drugs.
To be clear, I don't want to be consistent. A society without alcohol in it would be a dull and tasteless place, and quite often seems to be accompanied by nasty authoritarian leaders. A society with tobacco in it has some taste but not altogether a pleasant one.
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From elsewhere:
IN LIZ WE’RE TRUSSED
An election for the unelectable,
humanity scarcely detectable.
Promising delivery at Tory convention,
a DHL package of lies and invention.
Utopian scenarios well depicted
in diatribes for the bullshit addicted.
Dreams of Albion ground into dust –
In Liz we’re trussed.
No longer a need for defending the land,
our blessed leader has it all in hand;
No Ethics or Science on government agenda,
case is closed, return to sender.
In a cabinet rotten with moral decay,
the spineless cronies are holding sway,
No room any more to debate and discuss –
In Liz we’re trussed.
“We got Brexit done!” I can hear in exultation,
but Brexit did us in with those fiendish machinations,
and that budgetary thing was a crazy arse notion,
the farcical riding on waves of revulsion,
‘cos you rob from the poor and the rich can’t get enough,
with the PM’s tax-idermy and the country’s truly stuffed.
So applaud this circus if you feel you must –
In Liz we’re trussed.
TIM BECKERLEY
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Because it's already legal, which is a major difference. Also, degree of harm.
Other people don't ingest secondary cocaine, unlike those who ingest secondary tobacco smoke
The 'already legal' argument is a poor one since its legality dates to well before the risks became known - we now know that smoking is a cause of cancer and other lung diseases.
Any and all uses of tobacco are a health risk, and not just to the user, and that steps have been taken via legislation does confirm that there is a known risk - that this Tory fuckwit is reported to want to roll back a strategy to reduce tobacco use is deplorable and irresponsible
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For once, I'm on their side. Restrictions on smoking have gone too far already. Advertising should be banned, and full information given about the dangers of smoking (but with pipes and cigars, which are much less dangerous, differentiated from cigs, the real killers), and smoking banned in enclosed public spaces, but maybe allow pubs to provide a room behind a normally-closed door for smokers - and that's it. Yes, more people would die - but as long as they are fully informed, that's their choice. Saving as many people's lives as possible is inconsistent with personal freedom, otherwise we'd ban dangerous sports and junk food, and reduce car speed limits across the board, as well (I think I'm correct in saying that cars are far and away the biggest cause of avoidable death and disability.)
Smoking will be gone in a generation anyway. All the young people seem to do vaping instead.
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Smoking will be gone in a generation anyway. All the young people seem to do vaping instead.
They don't half look stupid though. Especially when they use those slightly larger contraptions it looks like they're giving head. Snus is the future.
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.
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'Only 3 chancellors till Christmas'
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.
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'Only 3 chancellors till Christmas'
Kamikwazi Kwartang had the second shortest time in office as chancellor in modern times, according to the BBC.
I know what you are thinking: well it was Iain Macleod who held office for only 30 days in 1970. He died from a heart attack.
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.
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.
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John Crace
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/14/kwasi-kwarteng-liz-truss-offer-consciously-uncouple-train-wreck
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Kamikwazi ...
...now feels queasy.
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Trussterfuck of all Trussterfucks.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/14/kwasi-kwarteng-liz-truss-offer-consciously-uncouple-train-wreck (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/14/kwasi-kwarteng-liz-truss-offer-consciously-uncouple-train-wreck)
Unfortunately, Sainsbury's are sold out of popcorn.
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.
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Parody but only just
https://twitter.com/MrMichaelSpicer/status/1581028189979041792
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https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/oct/15/miriam-margolyes-swears-live-on-air-about-chancellor-jeremy-hunt
MM couldn't even remember to call Hunt a C word*, so auntie beeb chucked her out.
Seems fair enough to me.
Obviously, now, he is a Chancellor, not a, ahem, Hunt.
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...now feels queasy.
I doubt it. I think he's well out of it. This is going to get worse before it gets better.
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When the Tories start getting through leaders at the rate of one every two or three years, you know they're in trouble. It happened after their rout in 1997, and they were out of power then for 13 years, so hopefully there'll be another rout at the next election.
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When the Tories start getting through leaders at the rate of one every two or three years, you know they're in trouble. It happened after their rout in 1997, and they were out of power then for 13 years, so hopefully there'll be another rout at the next election.
Yes, but what does it mean when they go through chancellors at the rate of one a month?
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.
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;D
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Brilliant
https://twitter.com/CentralBylines/status/1581655696621588480?t=yaBw-go49dgHcQA3xmXUew&s=19
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Brilliant
https://twitter.com/CentralBylines/status/1581655696621588480?t=yaBw-go49dgHcQA3xmXUew&s=19
I love the reclining JRM
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I love the reclining JRM
Yep, that was excellent. The pork markets end was just right. Anyway
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.
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Oh - PRIME minister. Aha, aha, aha. ::)
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I've just, out of curiosity, had a look at Mail Online, to see what it is saying about Truss. Even they - well, Sarah Vine, anyway - hate her and want to see the back of her, although in Vine's case in order to save the Tory party. Kamikwasi is now the shortest-serving Chancellor who didn't die in office (the shortest of all was Iain Mcleod, who popped his clogs after 30 days, in 1970). The second-and third-shortest were Zahawi and Javid, also within the last two years or so. It comes to something when a complete numpty like Jeremy Rhyming-Slang ends up looking statesmanlike by comparison.
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I've just, out of curiosity, had a look at Mail Online, to see what it is saying about Truss. Even they - well, Sarah Vine, anyway - hate her and want to see the back of her, although in Vine's case in order to save the Tory party. Kamikwasi is now the shortest-serving Chancellor who didn't die in office (the shortest of all was Iain Mcleod, who popped his clogs after 30 days, in 1970). The second-and third-shortest were Zahawi and Javid, also within the last two years or so. It comes to something when a complete numpty like Jeremy Rhyming-Slang ends up looking statesmanlike by comparison.
You actually paid money to have a read?
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You actually paid money to have a read?
Or is that just the Telegraph?
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You actually paid money to have a read?
Unfortunately you only have to sacrifice your dignity to read the Mail Online, not actual cash. Possibly a remarkable piece of future-proofing on the part of Paul Dacre, given the way the UK economy is going.
O.
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It's the Telegraph. Mail Online is free. I never normally sully my computer screen with it, but I was curious to see what it was saying about Truss.
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Where's Suella? To lose one major minister of state...
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Live scenes from the last week in the UK govt
https://youtu.be/FVeDt9zSbr0
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Can we sort this mess by tomorrow, as I want an extra long 'Have I got News for You' on Friday.
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So we're just getting the corrupt incompetence done up front by Tory ministers
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63318157
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/28/inside-the-investigation-that-forced-grant-shapps-to-resign
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1560625/Grant-Shapps-fake-name-Michael-Green-evg
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BREAKINGChief whip and deputy resign
Chief Whip Wendy Morton and deputy Craig Whittaker have resigned, Tory MPs tell the BBC.
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This is sounding a better and better method
https://youtu.be/dt-a6sovg_k
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We appear to be living in a paper pot dictatorship
-
.
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BREAKINGChief whip and deputy resign
Chief Whip Wendy Morton and deputy Craig Whittaker have resigned, Tory MPs tell the BBC.
The BBC seems to think there might be some uncertainty about that.
Certainly JRM says he doesn't know what's happening.
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The BBC seems to think there might be some uncertainty about that.
Certainly JRM says he doesn't know what's happening.
It was taken from their news feed at the time.
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This is quite extraordinary
https://youtu.be/Dimw572twfk
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Another one bites the dust. Can Truss be far behind?
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Another one bites the dust. Can Truss be far behind?
Currently 5/1 on to be gone this year.
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The situation that "Government" in the UK finds itself is largely due to the insistence on retaining first-past-the-post.
FPTP encourages political systems which have very few parties since small parties will seldom win any seats. The two major parties in Britain have tended to represent tribal interests rather than political philosophies. The party election which resulted in Truss becoming party leader exemplified this - Liz Truss was closer to the tribal ideal than Rishi Sunak.
One aspect of the election is of interest here. The postal election took place over several weeks - people who returned their ballot papers early, apparently, voted overwhelmingly in favour of Truss, as time passed more people progressively voted for Sunak. So it's likely that early returns were tribal rather than rational.
Another weird voting procedure is that used in the House of Commons where MPs traipse though lobbies for a (literal) head count. There are reports that, yesterday. this procedure enabled party whips to intimidate Conservative MPs into voting according to party demands. Tradition is the enemy of rationality.
I think that the true villain in the whole of this business is Cameron. Following the Scottish referendum he had an ideal opportunity to set up a commission to to consider the constitutional needs and operation of a major nation in the 21st Century. Instead he chose EVAL ...
Still, Cameron was eventually encouraged to find his true niche - gofer for a bent Australian millionaire.
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It was taken from their news feed at the time.
Their news feed had to back track when it became obvious that nobody in the Conservative Party knew if they had actually resigned or not.
These people are supposed to be running our country. If they had any integrity, they'd call a general election now so they can sort out their internal issues without the distraction of having to govern.
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Their news feed had to back track when it became obvious that nobody in the Conservative Party knew if they had actually resigned or not.
These people are supposed to be running our country. If they had any integrity, they'd call a general election now so they can sort out their internal issues without the distraction of having to govern.
And the flip-flopping over last night's vote.
First it was declared to be a confidence vote.
Then presumably when the government was concerned they might lose it was declared not to be a confidence vote, just 10 minutes before the vote.
Then when they won, they retrospectively declared it to be a confidence vote again.
And if this is the case I gather the party will need to remove the whip from those that didn't vote the government's way - which would include the two previous tory PMs!! And the guy who was Truss' chancellor until a week ago.
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...
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And the flip-flopping over last night's vote.
First it was declared to be a confidence vote.
Then presumably when the government was concerned they might lose it was declared not to be a confidence vote, just 10 minutes before the vote.
Then when they won, they retrospectively declared it to be a confidence vote again.
And if this is the case I gather the party will need to remove the whip from those that didn't vote the government's way - which would include the two previous tory PMs!! And the guy who was Truss' chancellor until a week ago.
Johnson is currently in the Carribean; I think he was officially excused.
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Johnson is currently in the Carribean; I think he was officially excused.
On official business?
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Johnson is currently in the Carribean; I think he was officially excused.
Yep, the list that I think was being circulated was Tory MPs that hadn't voted with the govt bit had no indication of those whose absence was already accepted.
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On official business?
No, but given the short notice would have been accepted as ok. That Johnson is currently grifting and holidaying is a different matter from the vote.
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No, but given the short notice would have been accepted as ok. That Johnson is currently grifting and holidaying is a different matter from the vote.
Fair enough - looks like he was paired.
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And the flip-flopping over last night's vote.
First it was declared to be a confidence vote.
Then presumably when the government was concerned they might lose it was declared not to be a confidence vote, just 10 minutes before the vote.
Then when they won, they retrospectively declared it to be a confidence vote again.
And if this is the case I gather the party will need to remove the whip from those that didn't vote the government's way - which would include the two previous tory PMs!! And the guy who was Truss' chancellor until a week ago.
The oddest thing is that they made it a confidence vote even though they would have won the vote anyway.
Now, after confirming it was a confidence vote, they will asses any punishment for voting the "wrong way" taking into account reasonable excuses - not as harshly as they were informed yesterday.
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The situation that "Government" in the UK finds itself is largely due to the insistence on retaining first-past-the-post.
No it isn't.
Since the 1830's governments of all stripes have managed to run the UK without the current chaos using essentially the same system.
Note that I am not defending FPTP, I am claiming the current chaos is not caused by it.
What has caused the current political chaos is a series of crises that each have led to culls of the most able people. It's the same dynamic as what happened to the Labour Party when they lost the 2010 general election. When they lost that, everybody associated with the loss and the "New Labour" government was tainted but the problem was that the people who were tainted were all the most able people in the party. The best person to take over the leadership from Gordon Brown would have been David Miliband. He was not chosen because of his association with the Blair and Brown governments. Ed Miliband's team was selected mainly from people who had avoided being tainted i.e. people were not able enough to take a significant role in Brown's government. Then, when Ed Miliband lost the next general election, and resigned, the process repeated. It's only now that Labour is getting back to a point where it has good politicians in key roles.
Now let's examine the Conservatives. The same process has been happening, starting with the Brexit vote. The government lost the Brexit vote and Cameron resigned. He and all the Remainers in his government were now tainted. That's a fair proportion of all the able politicians in the Tory Party at the time. The only way for a Remainer to get on in the Tory Party was to recant their own principles as May did and as Truss did. Since then there have been two more leadership changes and on each occasion, the people associated with the old leadership and often the opponents of the eventual winner were effectively culled. With Liz Truss we are now down to the dregs and it's no surprise they lack the ability to run a country.
This cycle is going to continue until somehow a general election is forced because the parliamentary party hasn't got anybody left who is both electable by the party as a whole and competent.
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And the flip-flopping over last night's vote.
First it was declared to be a confidence vote.
Then presumably when the government was concerned they might lose it was declared not to be a confidence vote, just 10 minutes before the vote.
Then when they won, they retrospectively declared it to be a confidence vote again.
My hypothesis is that they thought they might lose the vote or at least have a significant rebellion so they declared it a confidence vote to put pressure on the Tory MPs to vote the right way. Then they thought it might be backfiring, so they backtracked. The final position was just the normal spin you put on a significant victory.
And if this is the case I gather the party will need to remove the whip from those that didn't vote the government's way - which would include the two previous tory PMs!! And the guy who was Truss' chancellor until a week ago.
The BBC says they are considering proportionate disciplinary action (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-63309400?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=6350d32034a915418162da7a%26Some%20Tory%20MPs%20face%20disciplinary%20action%20over%20fracking%20vote%262022-10-20T04%3A58%3A08.407Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:e62b727d-28f9-4897-81fe-56df868a5245&pinned_post_asset_id=6350d32034a915418162da7a&pinned_post_type=share).
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My hypothesis is that they thought they might lose the vote or at least have a significant rebellion so they declared it a confidence vote to put pressure on the Tory MPs to vote the right way. Then they thought it might be backfiring, so they backtracked. The final position was just the normal spin you put on a significant victory.
Yup I agree - but comes across as completely incompetent.
The BBC says they are considering proportionate disciplinary action (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-63309400?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=6350d32034a915418162da7a%26Some%20Tory%20MPs%20face%20disciplinary%20action%20over%20fracking%20vote%262022-10-20T04%3A58%3A08.407Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:e62b727d-28f9-4897-81fe-56df868a5245&pinned_post_asset_id=6350d32034a915418162da7a&pinned_post_type=share).
Indeed - the line was much tougher in advance with I think a much clearer view that anyone failing to toe the party line would lose the whip. I guess Truss has a challenging line to walk. Remove the whip and create more chaos and greater numbers of people out to get her ... but if the whip has been removed any letter sent to the 1922 committee would no longer be valid.
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I'll just leave this here
https://www.newsweek.com/prince-andrew-more-popular-uk-prime-minister-liz-truss-government-crisis-1752745
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Fair enough - looks like he was paired.
As an aside on the list of those Tory MPs that I saw not voting with the govt was one Liz Truss.
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On official business?
He paired with a non-voting Labour MP.
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As an aside on the list of those Tory MPs that I saw not voting with the govt was one Liz Truss.
She did vote apparently. Just more confusion.
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She did vote apparently. Just more confusion.
https://youtu.be/Da-31cDX3Xs
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She's making a statement in 10 minutes - lectern just been set up.
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She's gone - thank fuck for that: but wait - another Tory fuckwit will be taking over by this time next week.
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The Lettuce won.
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The Lettuce won.
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She's gone - thank fuck for that: but wait - another Tory fuckwit will be taking over by this time next week.
betting is saying Sunak.
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At some point does Bobby Ewing come out the shower and we find that Brexit was all a dream?
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.
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Somewhere in the BBC Strictly Come Dancing office, someone is phoning 10 Downing St to ask 'we were wondering if Liz is available September 2023?'
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https://newsthump.com/2022/10/20/fighter-liz-truss-outlasted-by-lettuce-lettuce-to-become-pm/
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Johnson coming back?
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Johnson coming back?
He's fourth favourite in the betting.
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At some point does Bobby Ewing come out the shower and we find that Brexit was all a dreamnightmare?
FTFY
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He's fourth favourite in the betting.
But it's going to be an online vote of Tory members apparently. Watch his odds shorten.
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FTFY
Surely the other way for 52% of those that voted?
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I'm just wondering if we've ever had a period between two general elections before with three different prime ministers.
Also, have we ever had a year before with five chancellors?
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And the flip-flopping over last night's vote.
First it was declared to be a confidence vote.
Then presumably when the government was concerned they might lose it was declared not to be a confidence vote, just 10 minutes before the vote.
Then when they won, they retrospectively declared it to be a confidence vote again.
And if this is the case I gather the party will need to remove the whip from those that didn't vote the government's way - which would include the two previous tory PMs!! And the guy who was Truss' chancellor until a week ago.
Oh, the grand odd lady Truss,
She had 300 men,
She marched them up to the top of the bill
And Marched them down again.
And when they were up they were up.
And when they were down they were down.
And when they were only half way up they shoved each other again.
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I'm just wondering if we've ever had a period between two general elections before with three different prime ministers.
Also, have we ever had a year before with five chancellors?
Quite likely only two, albeit one will have had a brief 6 week absence while Truss was PM.
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The Dug has a rant......
https://weegingerdug.wordpress.com/2022/10/20/the-tory-lettuceship-contest/
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I'm just wondering if we've ever had a period between two general elections before with three different prime ministers.
Also, have we ever had a year before with five chancellors?
Shortest-ever prime-ministerial term, shortest-ever home secretarial term in modern times, and shortest-ever Chancellorship apart from Iain Mcleod in 1970, but he was a special case because he unexpectedly snuffed it. What a dismal set of records!
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Quite likely only two, albeit one will have had a brief 6 week absence while Truss was PM.
I find it hard to believe they'd let Johnson back.
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.
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Har-de-har.
Ben Wallace looks like the safest pair of hands out of this lot, (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63332047) which is why I cynically hope he doesn't get the job: what we need is yet another numpty, to ensure a Labour landslide when the election finally arrives.
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I find it hard to believe they'd let Johnson back.
Given politics recently, I wouldn't be surprised if someone suggested they should get Trump to do the job.
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Har-de-har.
Ben Wallace looks like the safest pair of hands out of this lot, (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63332047) which is why I cynically hope he doesn't get the job: what we need is yet another numpty, to ensure a Labour landslide when the election finally arrives.
Isn't that just wanting to fuck the country up (even further) for purely party political reasons?
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Isn't that just wanting to fuck the country up (even further) for purely party political reasons?
Fuck-up in the shortish term to get a decent government, versus fuckish-up in the long term. I did say it was cynical, but a degree of cynicism is necessary in politics.
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Fuck-up in the shortish term to get a decent government, versus fuckish-up in the long term. I did say it was cynical, but a degree of cynicism is necessary in politics.
It's 2 years till the next election. In the long term we are all dead, and if you have an idiot in charge in the short term then, given our existing problems, some people will die because of that. It's not cynical, it's tribal.
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I've never voted Tory. I can see no circumstances in which I ever will but I hope they manage to find the greatest PM ever in this vote because given the fuck up of the country they have made, if it isn't the greatest PM of all time, it's going to be horrendous.
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Soul???
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The idea that Boris the Liar, who is still being investigated, could return as PM is so perverse that it would probably happen, since it seems that if get gets enough MP support to be in the final two, so that members get a vote, they are likely to vote for him - so yet again an small cohort of middle-aged and reasonably well-off people living largely in the south of England make the choice.
Perhaps it would hasten the hammering in of the final nail in the coffin of the Tory party in its current form and hasten a GE.
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The idea that Boris the Liar, who is still being investigated, could return as PM is so perverse that it would probably happen, since it seems that if get gets enough MP support to be in the final two, so that members get a vote, they are likely to vote for him - so yet again an small cohort of middle-aged and reasonably well-off people living largely in the south of England make the choice.
Perhaps it would hasten the hammering in of the final nail in the coffin of the Tory party in its current form and hasten a GE.
Can't see how any outcome hastens a GE since even with a bounce , the Tories would be 20 points behind.
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Soul???
I think they probably meant 'sole'... after 44 days, something certainly stinks!
O.
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This open from Newsnight last night is a work of editing art
https://twitter.com/timoncheese/status/1583216768986013701?t=yVQ2uVngAV5lhlkcrKCHcQ&s=19
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Shortest-ever prime-ministerial term, shortest-ever home secretarial term in modern times, and shortest-ever Chancellorship apart from Iain Mcleod in 1970, but he was a special case because he unexpectedly snuffed it. What a dismal set of records!
Jeremy Hunt might beat the record.
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Har-de-har.
Ben Wallace looks like the safest pair of hands out of this lot, (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63332047) which is why I cynically hope he doesn't get the job: what we need is yet another numpty, to ensure a Labour landslide when the election finally arrives.
I really don't want to go through two years of disaster and destruction just because you want a Labour landslide.
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We're safe - Charles is a god!
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I really don't want to go through two years of disaster and destruction just because you want a Labour landslide.
Much though I want a Labour government, I agree.
We need someone with a basic grasp of the markets and how they operate, allied with an awareness of ordinary people's needs and concerns. The second part of that equation is a difficult ask from the current crop of apparent candidates. So I guess I'll have to settle for the first part. Rishi it is, then. :-[
The only other possibility, and I'm not sure the figures stack up, is that Boris Johnson returns and enough of his backbenchers are so pissed off that they fall in line behind a vote of no confidence. But that is a really long shot, and the possibility of letting Johnson back in gives me a great sense of foreboding.
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Quite likely only two, albeit one will have had a brief 6 week absence while Truss was PM.
I don't think Boris will get back in. Most MPs probably regard that idea as political suicide.
Anyway. We had a period between two general elections with three PMs between 1935 and 1945. It was unusual circumstances though.
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Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...
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'Monday's PM will have a new face,
Tuesday's PM will leave no trace,
Wednesday's PM will be full of Woe
Thursday's PM will make them go
Friday's PM to the rich will be giving
Saturday's PM - the rest work for a living
But the PM that is here on the Sabath day...
who am I kidding - will fuck up and then not stay'
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Johnson and Sunak now joint favourites at 6/5
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My mind keeps turning to this. I wonder why?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_the_Four_Emperors
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Wallace has ruled himself out.
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Wallace has ruled himself out.
Frrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeddddddddddoooooommmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!
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Or 1066, the year of the three Kings.
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Or 1066, the year of the three Kings.
"N.B. – Do not on any account attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once.”
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Whited sepulchre - Jacob Rees Mogg
https://twitter.com/OxfordDiplomat/status/1583448414804508673?t=_qh4ohQgzl-JLI48hrV-Bw&s=19
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Soul???
The tories could fight for a soul if they actually had one.
I doubt they've even seen their face in a mirror.
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Wallace has ruled himself out.
yeh.....of the title "decent tory"
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Larry the cat for PM:
https://twitter.com/Number10cat/status/1583072541677002752
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There are reports that Risky Sunak has already got his 100 nominations, while Johnson is in the 40s and Mordaunt in the 20s.
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There are reports that Risky Sunak has already got his 100 nominations, while Johnson is in the 40s and Mordaunt in the 20s.
Sunak has moved back to 7/4 on, while Johnson is 19/10. Mordaunt is 39/5
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Sunak has moved back to 7/4 on, while Johnson is 19/10. Mordaunt is 39/5
Not being a betting man, I have no idea what that means.
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Not being a betting man, I have no idea what that means.
https://mybettingsites.co.uk/learn/betting-odds-explained/
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Not being a betting man, I have no idea what that means.
You can think about it a bit more mathematically to work out each bet would be x/20,So the odds would 35/20, 38/20 and 156/20 (respectively)so, looking at those odds, Riski is the favourite bet.(I'm pretty sure Alice Roberts would keep saying "it's a bit more complicated than that." But that's only because it is.)
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You can think about it a bit more mathematically to work out each bet would be x/20,So the odds would 35/20, 38/20 and 156/20 (respectively)so, looking at those odds, Riski is the favourite bet.(I'm pretty sure Alice Roberts would keep saying "it's a bit more complicated than that." But that's only because it is.)
You missed that Sunak is 7/4 ON. Which is odds on so the notation gets switched to 4/7 - I find it easy to forget tgat this would not be understood.
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You can think about it a bit more mathematically to work out each bet would be x/20,So the odds would 35/20, 38/20 and 156/20 (respectively)so, looking at those odds, Riski is the favourite bet.(I'm pretty sure Alice Roberts would keep saying "it's a bit more complicated than that." But that's only because it is.)
I never knew Alice Roberts was a betting man.
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You missed that Sunak is 7/4 ON. Which is odds on so the notation gets switched to 4/7 - I find it easy to forget tgat this would not be understood.
Yes, you're right I did miss that.
So 4/7 ~> 12/21 (not perfect, but easier than using a pencil and paper). It still shows that Riski is the favourite.
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I never knew Alice Roberts was a betting man.
She isn't a betting man. She's a Professor.
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You missed that Sunak is 7/4 ON. Which is odds on so the notation gets switched to 4/7 - I find it easy to forget tgat this would not be understood.
That's what I finally worked out that it meant. Why on earth don't they just express it as 4/7?
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That's what I finally worked out that it meant. Why on earth don't they just express it as 4/7?
I doubt it's known. I suspect it's about how numbers and odds 'feel' to those doing it. If you picture a pie chart of tge chances of sonething like 7/4 i.e that you are saying in 4 chnces out of 11, the thing will happen, it's easier to switch that when it's odd on i.e. 7 chances out of 11 when hearing 7/4 on than 4/7. Add to that the indicator 'on' makes clear that it's seen as the likely thing without an individual thinking about the numbers.
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Sunak now 3/1 on
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Sunak now 3/1 on
Though with claims that Johnson has the 100 MPs that has slipped to 9/4 on
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I thought Johnson was carrying a giant sword in his belt when I first saw the photo from which I cropped this! One way of eliminating rivals, I suppose...
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And it looks like people do not believe the claims of Johnson as Sunak is now 4/1 on.
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And it looks like people do not believe the claims of Johnson as Sunak is now 4/1 on.
If he starts pretending to care about ordinary workers on low wages, the homeless, etc., remember he's worth c.£750,000,000. He could give £748,000,000 away to charities, and still have enough to live on in luxury for the rest of his life.
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If he starts pretending to care about ordinary workers on low wages, the homeless, etc., remember he's worth c.£750,000,000. He could give £748,000,000 away to charities, and still have enough to live on in luxury for the rest of his life.
But it isn't Rishi Sunak that is worth £750,000,000 - it's his wife.
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But it isn't Rishi Sunak that is worth £750,000,000 - it's his wife.
A fair amount of it is his, from his days moving pretend electronic money around.
He's wealthier than King Charles!
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Rumour is that Johnson not going to stand. If so, begin to wonder if there might be a deal being done.
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.
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Ffs!
https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1583836182781517830?t=1VtEOa07hKzKjzxZ9lj2fg&s=19
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If he starts pretending to care about ordinary workers on low wages, the homeless, etc., remember he's ...
...morally bankrupt.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2022/aug/05/rishi-sunak-admits-taking-money-from-deprived-areas-in-leaked-footage-video
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Ffs!
https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1583836182781517830?t=1VtEOa07hKzKjzxZ9lj2fg&s=19
How many kinds of wrongness can one person display in a single phone conversation?
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A fair amount of it is his, from his days moving pretend electronic money around.
He's wealthier than King Charles!
So basically, you don't like rich people having a role in running the country. Isn't that something of an ad hominem?
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So basically, you don't like rich people having a role in running the country. Isn't that something of an ad hominem?
I don't like people being ridiculously rich, when they could give much of their wealth away to charities. No-one needs £750m, and there aren't many ways of becoming that rich that are morally acceptable.
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One way of eliminating rivals, I suppose...
And there was I thinking, what a knob.
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Risky has 147 backers, while Johnson is still well short of 100. Beginning to look as though Risky will be the only candidate by the deadline, so there won't be an election.
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If Johnson does manage 100, and Mordaunt drops out, then Tory MPs vote again and its seems likely Sunak would probably win that round hands down - but that round counts for nothing other than 'guidance' for the members as they then vote - and bearing in mind they were naive enough to vote for Truss they may well be naive enough to vote for Boris the Liar.
If so, then the new Tory PM wouldn't have the support of the majority of Tory MPs and I can't see how the Tory party doesn't implode - but if they do I'll be cheering from the sidelines (especially at the discomforture of the Scottish Tories).
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.
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That merits a laugh!
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Johnson not standing
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Johnson not standing
Thank goodness.
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Johnson not standing
;D ;D ;D
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I don't like people being ridiculously rich, when they could give much of their wealth away to charities. No-one needs £750m, and there aren't many ways of becoming that rich that are morally acceptable.
Well, in comparison to most of the World, probably everybody posting on this forum is "ridiculously rich".
I think this hatred of people purely because they have got lots of money has really got to stop. It's not healthy.
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Well, in comparison to most of the World, probably everybody posting on this forum is "ridiculously rich".
I think this hatred of people purely because they have got lots of money has really got to stop. It's not healthy.
Perhaps it would be best to address the hatred toward people who have little or no money. At least money insulates you from some harm.
At the heart of this is not one person, but an attitude displayed time and again by the Conservative party and identified thus by one Dominic Cummings:
“People think, and by the way I think most people are right: ‘The Tory party is run by people who basically don’t care about people like me.’
“That is what most people in the country have thought about the Tory party for decades. I know a lot of Tory MPs and I am sad to say the public is basically correct. Tory MPs largely do not care about these poorer people. They don’t care about the NHS. And the public has kind of cottoned on to that.”
This is, of course, a liar talking about other liars predominantly, but it is a conclusion I, and I dare say many others arrived at a long time ago.
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Not often I say this, indeed not sure I ever have before, but points to Isabel Oakeshott for this
https://archive.ph/sdiIq
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-63363876 Mystic Mogg future-gazing.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-63363876 Mystic Mogg future-gazing.
Of the various people I hope the new PM junks - it is Mogg and that cretin Coffey that I'll especially enjoy seeing the back of (along with Jimmy Dimly, of course).
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Perhaps it would be best to address the hatred toward people who have little or no money. At least money insulates you from some harm.
Quite.
At the heart of this is not one person, but an attitude displayed time and again by the Conservative party and identified thus by one Dominic Cummings:
“People think, and by the way I think most people are right: ‘The Tory party is run by people who basically don’t care about people like me.’
“That is what most people in the country have thought about the Tory party for decades. I know a lot of Tory MPs and I am sad to say the public is basically correct. Tory MPs largely do not care about these poorer people. They don’t care about the NHS. And the public has kind of cottoned on to that.”
This is, of course, a liar talking about other liars predominantly, but it is a conclusion I, and I dare say many others arrived at a long time ago.
I would argue they do care about the NHS. They care because they look at the US healthcare industry with envious eyes and the vast profits available to healthcare companies and insurers there and they wish the same same opportunities were available here. The main reason why healthcare here is less lucrative is the NHS.
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Not often I say this, indeed not sure I ever have before, but points to Isabel Oakeshott for this
https://archive.ph/sdiIq
I think she's overreaching by claiming that Sunak supporters engineered the financial meltdown that did for Kamikwasi. Points for predicting Sunak or Hunt would win in the end though.
The high tax and spend Remain-leaning Establishment blob has won.
If that's what Sunak wants, I'm happier today than a week ago.
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I think she's overreaching by claiming that Sunak supporters engineered the financial meltdown that did for Kamikwasi. Points for predicting Sunak or Hunt would win in the end though.
I particularly like the bit where 'no longer Chancellor' Sunak (and his ill-defined mob) can engineer market weakness, whilst the actual Chancellor KamiKwasi and the actual (honestly!) Prime Minister Truss were powerless to prevent it... and this somehow reflects badly on Sunak?
Desperately trying to engineer a behind-the-scenes plot in the hopes that we won't recognise gob-smacking incompetence.
O.
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Of the various people I hope the new PM junks - it is Mogg and that cretin Coffey that I'll especially enjoy seeing the back of (along with Jimmy Dimly, of course).
Rees-Mogg needs taking down a peg or two (or three or ....).
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-63376995
Wow! They must have spent the last few days replacing Sunak with a robot - just in time to replace the malfunctioning Truss version!
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Cometh the hour, cometh another Dud.
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What are the odds on Wide-boy Johnson ending up as Chancer of the Exchequer?
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What are the odds on Wide-boy Johnson ending up as Chancer of the Exchequer?
I'd say 5000/1 or longer - nae chance of that happening.
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What are the odds on Wide-boy Johnson ending up as Chancer of the Exchequer?
They'll keep Hunt as moving him would look odd. I doubt they would countenance Johnson as CofE, nor would he want it as it needs detail work.
I suspect that Johnson wouldn't mind a move to the Lords but in the short term they won't want a by election. The most obvious role is Foreign Secretary which he's already done, badly, but would allow him to wibble on and play the statesman.
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What are the odds on Wide-boy Johnson ending up as Chancer of the Exchequer?
No chance I'd say. Not suited for it at all. Think Hunt will stay in post.
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You all missed the joke. Wide-boy Johnson, Chancer of the Exchequer.
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You all missed the joke. Wide-boy Johnson, Chancer of the Exchequer.
Very good.
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What are the odds on Wide-boy Johnson ending up as Chancer of the Exchequer?
I don't think that Alexander Johnson will serve in any executive role. he still has the possible consequences of his own inadequate behaviour hanging over him. It is possible that he may even be ejected from the Commons.
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You all missed the joke. Wide-boy Johnson, Chancer of the Exchequer.
Didn't think it was worth commenting on.
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Someone pointed out that Sunak's the 57th prime minister.
I think I prefer the alphabet sphagetti. More variety.
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Someone pointed out that Sunak's the 57th prime minister.
So far he started in a Private school, went to a banking management, moved into the Richmond constituency and married a very well off wife.
He's worked so hard, he's moved from riches to riches.
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What are the odds on Wide-boy Johnson ending up as Chancer of the Exchequer?
He won't be in the government.
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Right now our country is facing a profound economic crisis.
So said the former Chancellor of the Exchequer.
She was not wrong to want to improve growth in this country. It is a noble aim.
According to the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who couldn't grow the economy quicker than inflation.
...
But some mistakes were made.
According to the former CofE.
... There might be some sort of theme here...
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So Braverman returns as Home Secretary a week after resigning for breaking the ministerial code....
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So Braverman returns as Home Secretary a week after resigning for breaking the ministerial code....
I'm surprised at how little is being changed.
All three offices of state same as they were in the latter days of Truss (Hunt, Cleverly, Braverman), plus the rest seems to be a case of moving the same old failed faces around.
I thought Sunak would have had a much more intensive clear out. This this suggests he doesn't feel very confident of making changes and a bit of an open goal for Labour in that most of these people were the same people around the cabinet table under the disastrous Truss regime.
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I can't believe I'm older than the PM...
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I can't believe I'm older than the PM...
And poorer ... oh well actually that's everyone.
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I'm surprised at how little is being changed.
All three offices of state same as they were in the latter days of Truss (Hunt, Cleverly, Braverman), plus the rest seems to be a case of moving the same old failed faces around.
I thought Sunak would have had a much more intensive clear out. This this suggests he doesn't feel very confident of making changes and a bit of an open goal for Labour in that most of these people were the same people around the cabinet table under the disastrous Truss regime.
Terrible choices, another configuration of the same talentless know-nothings & so much for integrity and compassion. Not sure if he is actually in control of any of this or even wrote his own words for the Downing street speech.
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I'm struggling to understand why the moronic Coffey is still in the government.
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I'm struggling to understand why the moronic Coffey is still in the government.
Quite.
I am struggling with trying to make any sense of it.
Anna Soubrey was on SKY earlier and used the old worn-out adage about re-arranging the deckchairs on a certain ill-fated liner. Even though it is overused, it is in this case, most apt.
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And Alister Jack stays on as Scottish Sec: not that anyone here will notice much, since he is about as relevant as a clockwork jellyfish would be to an aquarium.
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....
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A few thoughts from John Crace.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/25/rishi-sunak-stifles-a-grin-and-gets-serious-after-liz-truss-goes-down-fighting
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So Braverman returns as Home Secretary a week after resigning for breaking the ministerial code....
That is most bizarre. A resigning matter yet not a matter for her to turn down the post a week later.
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And Gavin Williamson - the fuckwit's fuckwit - gets a seat round the table.
We need rid of this bunch - can't see that recent events will enhance their already dismal profile here in Scotland.
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I can't believe I'm older than the PM...
That first happened to me in 1997, then from '07 to '10 I was younger again, and since then I've been well older.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/25/rishi-sunak-prime-minister-system
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Grant Shapps becomes the shortest-ever serving Home Secretary, at six days. The unenviable records, and general chaos, keep piling up.
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Grant Shapps becomes the shortest-ever serving Home Secretary, at six days. The unenviable records, and general chaos, keep piling up.
A record he shares with Michael Green
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According to the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who couldn't grow the economy quicker than inflation.
Most of his term as chancellor was during the pandemic.
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Interesting analysis and if correct about Braverman underlines that Sunak's talk of integrity was egregious lying.
https://archive.ph/4mJML
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Ree-Smug's resignation letter.
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Details on Braverman's resignation actions
https://twitter.com/ShippersUnbound/status/1584939423703396352?t=HYRkpyRR1K_TlFTBw0PfXg&s=19
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Details on Braverman's resignation actions
https://twitter.com/ShippersUnbound/status/1584939423703396352?t=HYRkpyRR1K_TlFTBw0PfXg&s=19
Hopefully she will screw up again shortly and bring down Sunak's government, kicking off a general election.
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.
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Just watching BBC News (got a UK VPN) at my mum's. They're going through Sunak's new cabinet. What the hell is a "levelling up" secretary?
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Just watching BBC News (got a UK VPN) at my mum's. They're going through Sunak's new cabinet. What the hell is a "levelling up" secretary?
Someone in charge of the levelling up agenda.
I know Truss tended not to mention it (over the past 6 weeks) but the Johnson regime constantly talked about it - albeit they did precious little to actually achieve levelling up.
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Someone in charge of the levelling up agenda.
I know Truss tended not to mention it (over the past 6 weeks) but the Johnson regime constantly talked about it - albeit they did precious little to actually achieve levelling up.
Can someone 'tend not to mention' something over the course of 6 weeks? Especially given a couple of them were wholly funereal based?
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Just watching BBC News (got a UK VPN) at my mum's. They're going through Sunak's new cabinet. What the hell is a "levelling up" secretary?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/56238260
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Someone in charge of the levelling up agenda.
I know Truss tended not to mention it (over the past 6 weeks) but the Johnson regime constantly talked about it - albeit they did precious little to actually achieve levelling up.
But what is levelling up? Does it mean reducing differences between rich and poor? Or have I misunderstood it?
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Can someone 'tend not to mention' something over the course of 6 weeks? Especially given a couple of them were wholly funereal based?
I guess you can - it didn't seem to be part of Truss' agenda. Levelling up, levelling up, levelling up got replaced by Growth, growth, growth.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/56238260
Cheers! That clears it up. Thanks!👍
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But what is levelling up? Does it mean reducing differences between rich and poor? Or have I misunderstood it?
The concept is to invest in poorer areas of the country to try to reduce the gap between those areas and richer areas.
The reality is that it was a sop to Red wall seats in the north and midlands to try to get them to vote tory, and it worked. Problem was (and is) that sufficient money to make any meaningful different didn't flow. In addition, the projects funded would have limited meaningful effect on prosperity long term, being largely small-scale capital projects such as improving pavements on a high street (I kid you not) rather than significantly investing in skills and bringing high skill jobs into a particular area. Final issue was that funding tended to go to constituencies most important to the tories electoral chances rather than where there was need and some of the poorest areas in the country, which are actually in London were largely ignored.
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Can someone 'tend not to mention' something over the course of 6 weeks? Especially given a couple of them were wholly funereal based?
Quite - the corpse must have had quite a bumpy ride on all the uneven roads!
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The concept is to invest in poorer areas of the country to try to reduce the gap between those areas and richer areas.
The reality is that it was a sop to Red wall seats in the north and midlands to try to get them to vote tory, and it worked. Problem was (and is) that sufficient money to make any meaningful different didn't flow. In addition, the projects funded would have limited meaningful effect on prosperity long term, being largely small-scale capital projects such as improving pavements on a high street (I kid you not) rather than significantly investing in skills and bringing high skill jobs into a particular area. Final issue was that funding tended to go to constituencies most important to the tories electoral chances rather than where there was need and some of the poorest areas in the country, which are actually in London were largely ignored.
Thanks. I'd just never heard of it before. Sounds good in theory but it seems it hasn't been put into any meaningful practice.
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Thanks. I'd just never heard of it before. Sounds good in theory but it seems it hasn't been put into any meaningful practice.
Another issue is that you need a broader regional approach. Otherwise you create tiny hot spots where investment has happened or tax breaks are available to businesses, but all that is happening is relocation of existing activity from another local area. So you don't create more jobs, opportunities etc, you just move them and that can be even worse for areas that are left behind as their businesses, jobs etc move 10 miles down the road, but those 10 miles could be critical for the poorest in society who may be completely reliant on non-existent public transport.
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Hopefully she will screw up again shortly and bring down Sunak's government, kicking off a general election.
Forget about a general election.
The government's majority is 71. Can you conceive of 36 of the Tory MPs choosing to put the good of the country ahead of their own careers?
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Just watching BBC News (got a UK VPN) at my mum's. They're going through Sunak's new cabinet. What the hell is a "levelling up" secretary?
The minister of pretending to care about poor people.
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Just watching BBC News (got a UK VPN) at my mum's. They're going through Sunak's new cabinet. What the hell is a "levelling up" secretary?
Someone gave Michael Gove a spirit level - coming soon to shelves UK-wide.
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The minister of pretending to care about poor people.
But only the ones that vote and in areas where there is a chance that them voting tory would tip the seat in their favour.
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Rosie Holt's parodies always catch a few people out. This is pitch perfect on the approach over Braverman
https://twitter.com/RosieisaHolt/status/1585256278728884224?t=2IP2N3r28X0wvtm4PROOFQ&s=08
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Riski is going to have to let bygones be bygones.
Be bygones, be bygones, be bygones.
Bebygonesbebygonesbebygonesbebygonesbebygonesbebygones.
Bebygones.
Braverman responsible for ‘multiple breaches of ministerial code’
Bebygones.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/26/suella-braverman-return-after-security-breach-defended-by-james-cleverly (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/26/suella-braverman-return-after-security-breach-defended-by-james-cleverly)
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In case anyone thinks that at least the Tories are better at running the economy than Labour...
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/business-economics/new-research-reveals-labour-is-better-at-handling-the-economy-than-the-conservatives-295748/
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"Rishi Sunak still in office!"
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"Rishi Sunak still in office!"
Well that's depressing isn't it?
https://news.sky.com/story/rishi-sunak-defends-cop27-snub-saying-he-will-be-focusing-on-depressing-domestic-challenges-instead-12732103
Just imagine, trying to help Pensioners get their triple lock back on track, pay nurses a better wage giving school teachers even more money .
If only his deal with Depression was dealing with Nutella.
https://liveapp.inews.co.uk/2022/10/28/a-massive-mistake-sunaks-tory-allies-despair-at-reappointment-of-suella-braverman-as-home-secretary/content.html
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Well that's depressing isn't it?
https://news.sky.com/story/rishi-sunak-defends-cop27-snub-saying-he-will-be-focusing-on-depressing-domestic-challenges-instead-12732103
Just imagine, trying to help Pensioners get their triple lock back on track, pay nurses a better wage giving school teachers even more money .
If only his deal with Depression was dealing with Nutella.
https://liveapp.inews.co.uk/2022/10/28/a-massive-mistake-sunaks-tory-allies-despair-at-reappointment-of-suella-braverman-as-home-secretary/content.html
Yes, that is depressing.
Also, he doesn't seem to be taking climate change seriously.
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Yes, that is depressing.
Well, so far he's worked out to getting through depression by taking money off deprived areas in the UK and the world and giving it to rich areas in England.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/10/rishi-sunak-to-save-billions-by-counting-imf-cash-as-aid-for-poorAlso, he doesn't seem to be taking climate change seriously.
Maybe getting rid of Coffey's recycling cups will stop him getting depressed? https://liveapp.inews.co.uk/2022/10/28/environment-secretary-therese-coffey-says-she-tackles-climate-change-by-using-permanent-cups/content.html
The poor snowflake.
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Perhaps this is a digression ... but I heard Coffey on BBC Radio 4 talking about COP27. She said ... at least twice ... how important it was that it was taking place on African soil, and that it was important for the people of Africa.
COP27 is taking place in Sharm el Sheikh. Sharm is in Asia.
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COP27 is taking place in Sharm el Sheikh. Sharm is in Asia.
Debateable. https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g297555-i9225-k1871433-Sinai_Africa_or_Asia-Sharm_El_Sheikh_South_Sinai_Red_Sea_and_Sinai.html
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Perhaps this is a digression ... but I heard Coffey on BBC Radio 4 talking about COP27. She said ... at least twice ... how important it was that it was taking place on African soil, and that it was important for the people of Africa.
COP27 is taking place in Sharm el Sheikh. Sharm is in Asia.
It's in Egypt. Egypt is an African country. Not only that, Sharm is on the West coast (i.e. the African side) of the Gulf of Aqaba which appears to be the dividing line between the African plate and the Arabian plate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Plate#/media/File:Tectonical_map_of_East_Africa.png
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It's in Egypt. Egypt is an African country. Not only that, Sharm is on the West coast (i.e. the African side) of the Gulf of Aqaba which appears to be the dividing line between the African plate and the Arabian plate
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Plate#/media/File:Tectonical_map_of_East_Africa.png
The Sinai Peninsula, or simply Sinai .... is a peninsula in Egypt, and the only part of the country located in Asia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinai_Peninsula
The Sinai Peninsula is a southwestern projection of Isreal. Sharm El Sheikh is on the peninsula's eastern side.
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The Sinai Peninsula, or simply Sinai .... is a peninsula in Egypt, and the only part of the country located in Asia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinai_Peninsula
The Sinai Peninsula is a southwestern projection of Isreal. Sharm El Sheikh is on the peninsula's eastern side.
It's not in Asia though. Did you not look at the picture I linked? The fault line that divides the African plate from the Arabian plate is on the Eastern side of Sharm.
Furthermore, it's in a political entity that is widely regarded as an African country.
Anyway, the point is that you were mocking Coffey for apparently not knowing which continent Sharm El Sheik is in and it's really a nothing burger. There's plenty of more substantial stuff you could be mocking her for.
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It's not in Asia though. Did you not look at the picture I linked? The fault line that divides the African plate from the Arabian plate is on the Eastern side of Sharm.
As far as I understand it the boundary between Africa and Asia runs along the Isthmus of Suez and the Suez Canal meaning that Sinai is in Asia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundaries_between_the_continents_of_Earth#Africa_and_Asia
Furthermore, it's in a political entity that is widely regarded as an African country.
But Egypt is like Turkey - a country which spans two continents. So just as most of Turkey is in Asia, with a smaller part in Europe, most of Egypt is in Africa with a smaller part in Asia. Hence:
'Egypt (Arabic: مِصر, romanized: Miṣr, Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [masˤr]), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt
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Looks as though Nutella will be sacked again soon.
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I'd like to know just what the heck is going on in the world when Roger Gale sounds enlightened and reasonable:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/31/tory-sir-roger-gale-asylum-seeker-centre-manston-crisis
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I'd like to know just what the heck is going on in the world when Roger Gale sounds enlightened and reasonable:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/31/tory-sir-roger-gale-asylum-seeker-centre-manston-crisis
I had to do a double-take myself.
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As far as I understand it the boundary between Africa and Asia runs along the Isthmus of Suez and the Suez Canal meaning that Sinai is in Asia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundaries_between_the_continents_of_Earth#Africa_and_Asia
But Egypt is like Turkey - a country which spans two continents. So just as most of Turkey is in Asia, with a smaller part in Europe, most of Egypt is in Africa with a smaller part in Asia. Hence:
'Egypt (Arabic: مِصر, romanized: Miṣr, Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [masˤr]), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt
The established border between Asia and Africa is clearly wrong then.
But all of this is not the point. It's a really trivial mistake (if it is a mistake) to pick up on. There are plenty of real reasons to get annoyed with Coffey about. This is just petty.
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.