ml1dch

3 minutes ago, Rds1983 said:

Always Sunny

13 hours ago, bickster said:

Promising to nationalise the railways within 5 years apparently

How very centrist of them

This seems to be broadly the correct take to me, albeit the language is a bit more inflammatory than it needs to be. 

2 hours ago, bickster said:

So the EU made an offer of a reciprocal four year visa for young people aged 18-30 to live and work in the EU. Sunak and the Tories rejected it… so did Labour 

LibDems thought it was a good idea.

Gives me absolutely no confidence in Labour fixing our Brexit problem.

Just makes me more and more likely to vote LibDem tbh

There's a bit more nuance than that though.

Whenever the subject of deepening relations comes up I always mention the big problem of "what's in it for them?" Johnson signed over pretty much every bit of leverage we had. They're pretty happy with the current, completely one-sided arrangement, so if we want something that makes our side better, why would they just change it without getting something they want too?

To that end, Labour right now should absolutely be saying that anything that the EU wants is out of the question. Then it goes in the ring-binder with the title "stuff they want that we can use to get stuff we want". 

This proposal will definitely happen at some point for all the reasons you say*, but saying now "that all sounds great, let's do it" is not the right thing to do. Even putting the electoral stuff aside.

*and one more reason, the Commission is fretting a bit about this issue as it's a grey area on whether it's an EU competence or in the hands of individual states. So they're pretty keen to park their tanks on it to stop Spain and France doing the own deals instead. 

Tory MP allegedly demanded campaign cash to pay ‘bad people’

Quote

 

A Tory MP is under investigation over allegations that he misused campaign funds and abused his position after making a late-night phone call saying he’d been locked up by “bad people” who were demanding thousands of pounds, The Times can reveal.

Mark Menzies, the Conservative MP for Fylde and a government trade envoy, rang an elderly local party volunteer at 3.15am in December saying he was locked in a flat and needed £5,000 as a matter of “life and death”. The sum, which rose to £6,500, was paid by his office manager from her personal bank account and subsequently reimbursed from campaign funds raised from donors.

£14,000 given by donors for use on Tory campaign activities had previously been transferred to Menzies’s personal bank account and used for his private medical expenses.

The Conservative Party has been aware of the allegations of potential fraud for more than three months and has taken no action

 

I mean, it's just solid 10/10 Tory sleaze stuff. Great work from the lad.

I imagine that if it were a former Labour leader instead of a former Tory leader who had been using made-up quotes from massive anti-semites all about how the Rothschilds control what Governments are able to do, it might have got a bit more of an excitable reaction from the media. 

While they're clearly all a load of bell-ends, I'm not sure the police shutting down their conference is the best way to win the argument.

15 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Nah, it’ll be fine, pay private agencies for medical staff and medical facilities, that’ll be the best possible use of our money. Probably cheaper than employing actual NHS staff I’m sure.

The problem is that this isn't ideological, caused by rapacious capitalists at the top trying to bleed the system dry. I've mentioned this before, but I think it's a good example of the sort of challenge the NHS faces in its current form. 

An employed registrar (for example) will earn around £50,000. However, a locum brought in temporarily will earn more than twice that on a daily rate. 

So over the last few years there seems to be a steady production line of newly qualified doctors not going into permanent roles, creating thousands of positions that need to be temporarily filled. And coincidentally enough, there are thousands of newly qualified doctors who will happily be paid £500 per day, to do the same job as the guy (not) doing it for £50k per year. Whack the whole lot through your "Dr. Smith Medical Services" limited company and pay 20% tax on the whole lot as well instead of higher rate of income tax. 

No blame on the doctors - it's their labour and expertise, and if you don't need the stability why wouldn't you do it the way that pays you twice as much and gives you complete flexibility about how much you work? It's not like they are taking much of a risk on whether the demand for their service is there. No blame on the trusts for paying it either - their choice is pay through the nose for staff or have (more) people dying.  

That's the reality of "paying private agencies for medical staff". But I don't really see what the fix is - just insisting that they "employ actual NHS staff" doesn't really deal with the root of the issue.

2 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

Such a massive success that prominent European Eurosceptics are abandoning leaving the EU. 

I'm not saying Wilders definitely didn't say that, and he has recently dropped a commitment to a referendum from his policy platform, but RS Archer is a spoof account that people shouldn't really quote in good faith. 

1 minute ago, sidcow said:

And it's just shocking how many of them are perverts. Does it go hand in hand for a desire for power? 

An openly gay, unmarried 36 year old using an app like Grindr makes him a pervert?

Alright Mary Whitehouse. 

26 minutes ago, bickster said:

But that is exactly how the honeytrap works, it relies on a victim not going to the police because they have something on them that will embarrass them

Yes he should have acted differently but so should everyone that is a victim of a similar crime but they don't. You can't judge Wragg differently to other victims because he's a Tory MP

Broadly agree, but Wragg also has a fair bit of recent history about kicking off about propriety and ethics. It's only a few weeks since he was the one proposing a motion to kick Hoyle out because he felt Hoyle's standards weren't up to scratch. He was also extremely vocal on the Johnson stuff about the parties. 

So in much the same way that Rayner's council house stuff is more politically difficult because she's spent the last three years writing letters calling for everyone under the sun to resign due to some breach of conduct or protocol, she's now going to be judged by the standards that she is expecting of others.

So I would judge him differently, but only as a result of the standards that he has shown he supposedly expects from others. 

Happy four year Starmerversary, to all who celebrate. 

7 minutes ago, picicata said:

Historically it tends to close in a little when the election actually happens so I suspect they're taking that into account.

It's definitely a possibility. However I think I'd be wary of making too many predictions based on historical precedent. As an example, previous times where there is evidence of polls narrowing in the run up to an election, I think I'm right in saying that it was already clearly happening by this stage in the election cycle. 

So maybe it'll happen this time, just quicker and later. Or maybe it won't. 

Reassuring to know that Labour 41 Tory 24 gives a result that strong. As that's towards to low end for Labour and the high end for Tories compared to a lot of polls.

Let them fight

34 minutes ago, Jon said:

So, massive political donor to the tories, Mohamed Mansour, Knighted by Rishi Rich. 

I think at this point they've simply given up and are just doing what they can whilst they're still at the helm.

This guy.
 

Quote

 

Labour has urged the Conservatives to hand back a £5m donation from the party’s senior treasurer, Mohamed Mansour, as it questioned why it had taken so long for one of his companies to wind down its business in Russia.

In a letter to the Tories, Labour’s chair, Anneliese Dodds, called on the party to justify donations of almost £7.5m that she said had come from people and firms who had had links to business in Russia.

Labour renewed its attack on the Conservatives over donations after the Tories criticised its acceptance of £1.5m from Dale Vince, the founder of the energy company Ecotricity who also funds the campaign group Just Stop Oil.

Labour drew particular attention to Mansour’s co-ownership of Mantrac, which earlier this week still appeared to have a Russian-language website advertising its services as an authorised dealer of Caterpillar hardware and equipment, with 14 offices in the country.

Mantrac said in May that it was winding down its business in Russia, more than a year after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine drew international condemnation and calls from Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson for businesses to withdraw.

 

Four years (to the day) is a long time in politics 

2 hours ago, sidcow said:

And I'd LOVE to know who the remaining 30% are who think getting a GP or Hospital appointment is easy. I can only assume that's almost entirely made up of people who have never actually tried to get an appointment. The super healthy and people who use private doctors and hospitals. 

That's not what it says. Of the people who were dissatisfied, 70% said that the difficulty in getting an appointment was in their top three reasons for being dissatisfied. 

Someone might think that all five are true.

Edit 

If the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011 hadn't been repealed, Parliament would have been dissolved today ready for the General Election which the law would have required to take place on May 2nd.

Bloody Johnson, still ruining things two years later.

49 minutes ago, Genie said:

They’ve made him sound like a new football signing  

They've been doing that for a while now. The last proper reshuffle was all done as a Fabrizio Romano piss-take.

At least they've managed to fill the Lee Anderson role with no significant drop in quality

3 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

2/3 

Titanic wasn't what I had in mind.  

I assume yours is Lord Of The Rings. But Titanic is obviously the better answer

Back To The Future, Fight Club and Titanic.