The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[VILLAMARV]

19 hours ago, Xann said:

Disinformation isn’t always about favoring a particular side. It helps hostile authoritarian states like Russia—or domestic authoritarians like Trump—undermine the foundations of governance, causing people to lose faith in democracy itself. “The objective is to get a society to the point where nobody knows whether something is real or not, and therefore, that society cannot function,” says Taylor. Sometimes chaos is the only goal.

I'll occasionaly make reference to Surkovs Non-Linear Warfare - basically lifted from Adam Curtis's Hypernormalisation - people are happy to accept the concept framed as Russian malevolence. But as a tactic it's absolutely by design and the idea that it's confined to Russia or China or N.Korea is laughable.

[Chindie]

Quote

Keir Starmer has told voters he cannot “turn the taps on” to fix the crisis in local authority funding as he was quizzed on how Labour would plug councils’ £4bn gap at the launch of its local election campaign.

“I can’t pretend that we could turn the taps on, pretend the damage hasn’t been done to the economy – it has,” he said. “There’s no magic money tree that we can waggle the day after the election. No, they’ve broken the economy, they’ve done huge damage.”

Grauniad

We're ****.

That's the hope. That.

If only it wasn't so predictable.

[Jareth]

I don’t back starmer but I would point to Gordon browns plan for the future published in an article for the guardian today, once Labour win then this sort of thing can be adopted. 

[ml1dch]

Happy four year Starmerversary, to all who celebrate. 

[wishywashy]

The Labour Party's stance is now to actively mock *checks notes* the left wing.

[bickster]

1 hour ago, wishywashy said:

The Labour Party's stance is now to actively mock *checks notes* the left wing.

I'd be more worried that he thinks money is a liquid

[Jon]

1 hour ago, wishywashy said:

The Labour Party's stance is now to actively mock *checks notes* the left wing.

The capitalist system stranglehold is there for all to see with that little clip.  

[wishywashy]

 

[chrisp65]

Hope you all get what you wish vote for.

But remember, it’s only a wish vote if you wish really really hard before you put it in the ballot box.

 

[Chindie]

It's ok, they're actually lying. Honest.

[bickster]

26 minutes ago, wishywashy said:

 

Why do people get outraged by this? How else would it be possible to reduce the backlog? Nationalise the private sector? (that isn't going to create more staff, probably less as being a doctor in the UK just became far less lucrative) Put up with the backlog?

Genuine question, what are the alternative options?

[Jon]

33 minutes ago, wishywashy said:

 

I'd be perfectly happy with this IF, big IF, it's in conjunction with proper investment in the NHS. If that means an increase in direct taxation for those that can most afford it, then great  

[blandy]

1 hour ago, Jon said:

I'd be perfectly happy with this IF, big IF, it's in conjunction with proper investment in the NHS. If that means an increase in direct taxation for those that can most afford it, then great  

That’s exactly right in my view. If you’re waiting months, even years in pain then speeding up that wait has got to be good. By using empty private beds and associated staff, more people will get treated and sooner. But it’s no good taking money away from NHS services to pay for it, it needs extra money, like you say. One other thing is the NHS is incredibly wasteful and inefficient in many areas, from personal knowledge. There’s a serious need to sort out a lot of the waste and bureaucracy. It’s a complete shambles. I hope Labour doesn’t bottle it, based on outdated and unthinking dogma around “best health service in the world”nonsense. It isn’t. It’s second rate at best.

[chrisp65]

These private medical staff we can use to take up the slack for the lack of NHS resource, they got any other jobs?

They cost the same as investing in the NHS?

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.

We live in strange times, eh.

[bickster]

8 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

These private medical staff we can use to take up the slack for the lack of NHS resource, they got any other jobs?

They cost the same as investing in the NHS?

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.

We live in strange times, eh.

That is an entirely different thing to getting the backlog down

[chrisp65]

12 minutes ago, bickster said:

That is an entirely different thing to getting the backlog down

In England alone there is a waiting list of 6.3 million paties, with many of them waiting for multiple things.

Getting that backlog down, and the one in Scotland, and N.I., and Wales is not entirely different. 

The private sector will take massive resource away from the NHS if it is to backfill for 8,000,000 patients.

I’d say its very related.

[ml1dch]

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.

[blandy]

18 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

These private medical staff we can use to take up the slack for the lack of NHS resource, they got any other jobs?

They cost the same as investing in the NHS?

There's a couple of obvious things. Firstly the private medical staff are in place right now. And they've got the beds and capacity to treat people right now. The NHS doesn't have either the staff or the capacity. So sure, invest in the NHS, wait while they build the hospitals, recruit and or train the staff...all the while there's these patients, or would be patients needing treatment. Sod the ideology, make the injured and ill healthy as soon as possible. That's what hospitals and health providers (of whatever ilk) are there to do.

The second thing is because of staff shortages in the NHS, the NHS is spending (as you point out) an absolute fortune on locums, so using private facilities is not much different in cost terms, either.

[limpid]

21 minutes ago, blandy said:

There's a couple of obvious things. Firstly the private medical staff are in place right now. And they've got the beds and capacity to treat people right now. The NHS doesn't have either the staff or the capacity. So sure, invest in the NHS, wait while they build the hospitals, recruit and or train the staff...all the while there's these patients, or would be patients needing treatment. Sod the ideology, make the injured and ill healthy as soon as possible. That's what hospitals and health providers (of whatever ilk) are there to do.

The second thing is because of staff shortages in the NHS, the NHS is spending (as you point out) an absolute fortune on locums, so using private facilities is not much different in cost terms, either.

Make people healthy so that they can get earning (and paying tax) to offset part of the bills. Insist on British based private sector companies so that their taxes are paid in the UK.

[meregreen]

Far too much capacity within NHS hospitals is being utilised by consultants doing private work. No NHS facilities should be used privately while a huge NHS backlog is in place. I speak as someone who is in that backlog.