The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[Chindie]

Incidentally it's good to know that the terrorist threat is now so great that the FSA need to know what websites you've looked at.

It's almost like it's not about the terrorists at all...

[darrenm]

7 hours ago, Mantis said:

Labour are in disarray. This is why the country needs a strong opposition.

No. They aren't. Some Tories and the media would like to believe they are.

They're doing what everyone criticises them for not doing, they're going after the populist angle.

They're not against brexit because they know that to fight it would draw the same backlash that Tim Farron has had.

They're not against IPA as the popular vote is scared of terrorism and to vote against it would get them labeled as terrorist sympathisers.

They know that the most damage they can inflict is with the NHS. The Tories are really going against the nation on this one and Labour are using it to their advantage.

They could follow their ideals and oppose all of this stuff but it doesn't help them to get into power which is what the right blairite side tried to rip the party apart for to get. Pragmatism gets them in. Then they can start undoing the mess the Tories have created.

[Mantis]

1 hour ago, darrenm said:

No. They aren't. Some Tories and the media would like to believe they are.

They're doing what everyone criticises them for not doing, they're going after the populist angle.

They're not against brexit because they know that to fight it would draw the same backlash that Tim Farron has had.

They're not against IPA as the popular vote is scared of terrorism and to vote against it would get them labeled as terrorist sympathisers.

They know that the most damage they can inflict is with the NHS. The Tories are really going against the nation on this one and Labour are using it to their advantage.

They could follow their ideals and oppose all of this stuff but it doesn't help them to get into power which is what the right blairite side tried to rip the party apart for to get. Pragmatism gets them in. Then they can start undoing the mess the Tories have created.

I don't think it's just "some Tories and the media" who think they're in disarray. It's a pretty commonly-held view, probably because they are in disarray. They're just not really doing much, especially in Parliament where they still have 230 MPs. One of the reasons why I expect is because Corbyn and McDonnell don't really care much for Parliament and think that politics should be pursued "on the streets". And of course the leadership can't really lean on the PLP that hard because when Corbyn and McDonnell were backbenchers under Blair, Brown and Miliband they were serial rebels.

Do you honestly belie that someone like Yvette Cooper for example wouldn't be challenging the government more forcefully if she were leader?

[snowychap]

2 hours ago, darrenm said:

Then they can start undoing the mess the Tories have created.

It's not really the thread to talk about the Labour party but, just quickly on this point, the point of an opposition is not to just sit meekly, watch and wait with their fingers crossed that they may be able to undo what the current government has done.

That's before getting in to a discussion of whether any future Labour government would ever go anywhere near 'undoing' the Investigatory Powers thing or the legislation that gave us the appalling Public Space Protection Orders (as opposed to just replacing these things with others just as/even more ghastly).

[HanoiVillan]

It might be time to consider selling any shares you've got invested in Boris's political future. Witness The Sun:

Constantly bashing Boris Johnson will just hurt Britain – so let’s stop it right now

“IF they want the UK to be taken seriously, they need to back him, not mock him,” fumes one of Boris Johnson’s closest political allies.

The Foreign Secretary’s circle is becoming increasingly fed up with him being the butt of the  Government’s jokes.

This week, Philip Hammond used the Autumn Statement to make fun of Boris’s failed leadership bid. While earlier this month, Theresa May suggested he would  be put down once he had outlived his usefulness.

Taking the mickey out of Boris is hardly new, every Tory leader since Michael Howard has done it.

But taking the mick when Boris is Foreign Secretary is very different to doing it when he’s just an MP or Mayor of London.

When Boris was Mayor, the Tory party could get away with treating him as the party jester   — after all, the most important negotiations he had every year was with the Treasury.

But now Boris is out representing Britain on the world stage, these jibes have consequences.

When the Prime Minister and the Chancellor suggest that they regard the Foreign Secretary as a bit of a joke, they invite the rest of the world to follow suit. Why should other governments take him seriously if his own Cabinet colleagues don’t?

“It doesn’t create the right impression in Europe,” warns one friend of Boris.

I’m told that the German government has already picked up on these put-downs of him.

Boris hasn’t responded in kind to these jokes. But don’t think he doesn’t mind them. One of those who sees him regularly in Government predicts: “At some point Boris is going to have a sense of humour failure about this.”

That moment might be closer than people realise. Privately, Boris fears  there is a deliberate attempt under way to make him look foolish, to stop him being taken seriously.

He is furious about reports that he has  taken the wrong papers to a Cabinet committee meeting, that he is  slapped down when he tries to talk in Cabinet and keeps putting his foot in it with EU diplomats.

I am told he has made clear to Downing Street how unhappy he is about this briefing against him.

Boris’s frustration is compounded by the fact he feels he is  not being allowed to make the positive case for Brexit and what it means for Britain’s place in the world.

Some in Government have sympathy with Boris. But others feel  he brings this ribbing on himself. “If you don’t want that, you can’t do whinge-orama and say free movement is b******s,”  says one figure close to Downing Street.

Since becoming Foreign Secretary, Boris has thrown himself into the job.

He has thought seriously about the Russian threat and what Britain’s role in the world should be once we have left the EU. Next week he is making a major speech setting out his foreign policy vision.

But if he is to be listened to,  his Cabinet colleagues must stop treating him as a figure of fun. As one friend puts it: “Do they want him to be the court jester, the butt of jokes? Or do they want him to be the Foreign Secretary?”

But one close Boris ally admits: “The difficulty is one of the people who does the ridiculing is at the top.”

If the Government wants Boris to bat for Britain, his team-mates can’t break his bat before he gets to the wicket.'

Hmm. Two thoughts occur here: first, 'don't take the piss out of politicians' seems to be a position that tabloid newspapers aren't going to be able to hold for very long. And this article does seem to me to be a little bit the political equivalent of 'the manager retains the full faith and confidence of the board'. The second thought is that if Theresa May is looking for a very cheap way to buy some continental goodwill, sacking Boris seems like a prime candidate. 

 

[tonyh29]

10 hours ago, darrenm said:

They're not against brexit because they know that to fight it would draw the same backlash that Tim Farron has had.

Aren't the Libs hoping to win Richmond on the anti Brexit vote ?

nobody even knows him Tim Farron is to have any backlash against him 

[tonyh29]

10 hours ago, darrenm said:

They know that the most damage they can inflict is with the NHS. The Tories are really going against the nation on this one and Labour are using it to their advantage.

Do me a favour , Labour are to the NHS as Thatcher is to coal mining  

[tonyh29]

21 hours ago, Davkaus said:

It's the stuff of nightmares, honestly, it's an invasion of privacy on such a gross scale, it beggars belief. It seems there's no limits to the laws you can pass if you mutter the word 'terrorism'every so often.

I totally agree and can't believe everyone has sleep walked through this

i signed one of the online petitions asking for it to be debated again in parliament ... that more clearings in the woods signed a  frivolous petition demanding Trump was banned from coming to England says all you need to know about the sorry state of this country...

[meregreen]

3 hours ago, tonyh29 said:

Do me a favour , Labour are to the NHS as Thatcher is to coal mining  

Simply not true. When a Tory Government is elected, As sure as night follows day,a crisis in the NHS will follow.Then Labour gets back in, and adequate funding is put back in. Voila, crisis over, waiting lists down.The Tories are to the NHS as Thatcher was to the miners, would be a far better analogy. 

[Jon]

13 hours ago, tonyh29 said:

Do me a favour , Labour are to the NHS as Thatcher is to coal mining  

[TrentVilla]

13 hours ago, tonyh29 said:

Do me a favour , Labour are to the NHS as Thatcher is to coal mining  

Ah yes because a Labour wants to close the NHS regardless of the arguments for not doing so in order to crush trade unions. If Corbyn gets in we can expect him to use the Police in South Yorkshire as his own private army to club trainee doctors around the head in fields.

Labour made plenty of mistakes with the NHS not least PFI but the above is utterly farcical Tony. 

[MakemineVanilla]

Getting into a pissing match about whose favourite political party loves the NHS the most seems to distract from the real issue with the NHS, which is rising costs.

http://tinyurl.com/hgbqjew 

Quote

Source: Department of Health annual report and accounts 2014-15 and Spending Review and Autumn Statement 2015. Real figures are in 2015/16 prices and adjust cash spending for inflation as measured by the GDP deflator.

The budget for the NHS in England for 2015/16 is £116.4 billion.

The increase in spending announced in the 2015 Spending Review will see the NHS budget increase to £133.1 billion by 2020/21. This amounts to a real increase of £4.5 billion. Nearly half this amount is earmarked for 2016/17, leaving the remaining increase spread over the next four years.

This means that between 2009/10 and 2020/21, spending on the NHS in England will rise by nearly £35 billion in cash terms – an increase of 35 per cent. But much of this increase will be swallowed up by rising prices. In fact, around £24 billion will be absorbed by inflation, leaving a real increase of just £11 billion (a 10 per cent rise over eleven years; equivalent to an average annual increase of just 0.9 per cent).

Both of the main parties need to bite the bullet and start taxing people to pay for the damn thing.

Governments need to start making pensioners pay NI and ring-fencing the proceeds for the NHS.

[TrentVilla]

In my view the sooner both sides of the political divide admit the truth and stop the political pissing contest over the NHS the better.

The fundamental truth is that we can't afford the cradle to the grave of Bevan or if we could we won't find it. That goes for the public as well Government whoever is in.

But neither side will admit that, they are too busy hiding behind ideological pissing contests about PFI, doctors contracts, immigration, management waste and backdoor privatisation.

All of it is just noise. The truth is that the NHS can no longer meet all medical needs of all people all the time. Not as medical treatments improve, become more varied and costly and not with an aging population due to prolonged life.

Sooner or later both politicians and the public are going to have to face the truth, that the NHS must fundamentally change in order to prosper.

Only when people accept and admit that  will we start to find solutions. Paying for it on the PFI never never and profiteering from its privatisation aren't solutions.

[markavfc40]

The NHS is perhaps the only thing that the vast majority would accept tax increases to protect/improve. Tax increases and Tories don’t go together though so there is no prospect of that anytime soon.

They have spent the last 6 years setting it up to fail by decimating funding for social care, the changes to Junior doctors contracts, ceasing the nursing bursary and now having to pay 27k+ to become a nurse both making it a less desirable profession, all so they can say the only way to save it is more privatisation.

It is shameful.

[tonyh29]

47 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

In my view the sooner both sides of the political divide admit the truth and stop the political pissing contest over the NHS the better.

The fundamental truth is that we can't afford the cradle to the grave of Bevan or if we could we won't find it. That goes for the public as well Government whoever is in.

But neither side will admit that, they are too busy hiding behind ideological pissing contests about PFI, doctors contracts, immigration, management waste and backdoor privatisation.

All of it is just noise. The truth is that the NHS can no longer meet all medical needs of all people all the time. Not as medical treatments improve, become more varied and costly and not with an aging population due to prolonged life.

Sooner or later both politicians and the public are going to have to face the truth, that the NHS must fundamentally change in order to prosper.

Only when people accept and admit that  will we start to find solutions. Paying for it on the PFI never never and profiteering from its privatisation aren't solutions.

well that was the point I was making in my post , which you seemed to disagree with ... perhaps it was the way I worded it

 

The NHS needs change , trouble is no matter what the Tories try and do to it ,you get gnashing of teeth from Labour supporters about killing the NHS and the BMA playing party politics  ... now maybe the changes the Tories were proposing weren't the right ones so both reactions are fair comment , but equally when you read some of the frankly bonkers stuff going on in the NHS ( it's in this thread elsewhere and sure it's been done to death )  it definitely needs to change .... but it appears only a labour government will be allowed to change it as everything else is just selling it off

 

 

[peterms]

We spend a middling amount on health (for a developed country), somewhere between Czech Republic and the Netherlands.  Of course the US with its mad private system is the outlier, far more cost and less coverage.

The change we need is to fund it properly, which we can certainly afford to do.

Not funding it properly is a political choice aimed at demoralising staff and discrediting the service, with a view to privatising it still further, step by incremental step, and pushing us into the crazy position of the US, with grasping rentiers making money from peoples' misfortune and leaving the poorest to die on the pavement.

This is from the Kings Fund:

 

[meregreen]

2 hours ago, TrentVilla said:

In my view the sooner both sides of the political divide admit the truth and stop the political pissing contest over the NHS the better.

The fundamental truth is that we can't afford the cradle to the grave of Bevan or if we could we won't find it. That goes for the public as well Government whoever is in.

But neither side will admit that, they are too busy hiding behind ideological pissing contests about PFI, doctors contracts, immigration, management waste and backdoor privatisation.

All of it is just noise. The truth is that the NHS can no longer meet all medical needs of all people all the time. Not as medical treatments improve, become more varied and costly and not with an aging population due to prolonged life.

Sooner or later both politicians and the public are going to have to face the truth, that the NHS must fundamentally change in order to prosper.

Only when people accept and admit that  will we start to find solutions. Paying for it on the PFI never never and profiteering from its privatisation aren't solutions.

Not true. If we put in our NHS, a remarkably efficient organization.The same amount of funding re GDP that other developed countries do, then most of the NHS's cash woes would simply not exist. We simply underfund the NHS .I can't help feeling that this is by design sometimes. So that the kind of myths you mention can be peddled by those politicians and right wing media who would like to see its demise.It's more a question of priorities really. Tax cuts or more for the NHS.

[TrentVilla]

1 hour ago, tonyh29 said:

well that was the point I was making in my post , which you seemed to disagree with ... perhaps it was the way I worded it

 

The NHS needs change , trouble is no matter what the Tories try and do to it ,you get gnashing of teeth from Labour supporters about killing the NHS and the BMA playing party politics  ... now maybe the changes the Tories were proposing weren't the right ones so both reactions are fair comment , but equally when you read some of the frankly bonkers stuff going on in the NHS ( it's in this thread elsewhere and sure it's been done to death )  it definitely needs to change .... but it appears only a labour government will be allowed to change it as everything else is just selling it off

I don't really think that comparing Labour and the NHS to Thatcher and the miners was the same point as mine

You are right there is a reaction to the Tory's doing anything with the NHS. Perhaps that is because any changes they make usually appear to come from an ideological perspective and rarely seem to be about patient care or protecting the NHS. Is it any wonder people question their actions when they don't trust their motives? If anyone is to blame for that it is successive Tory Governments not the electorate.

I mistrust the Tory party with the NHS, as I do many things, because their primary motivations always appear to be  about improving the lot of the few rather than the many. They always seem to have the ideological basis of being the antithesis of Robin Hood.

Labour aren't perfect when it comes to the NHS nobody could claim them to be. The thing is though they are fundermentally viewed as being in favour of it and the defenders of it, Conservatives are seen as the enemy of the NHS and let's face it with good reason. 

Previous Conservative Governments sold off anything that wasn't nailed down and even some that were. Under Cameron this continued with the Post Office which was criminally undervalued and sold to the old boy networks of investment companies and banks.

Now I'm not saying flogging the Post Office was the wrong thing to do, but the way it was done was wrong and is in part why people continue not to trust the boys in blue.

You reap what you sow as the saying goes.

Honestly, do you really believe that the current government is seeking change in  the NHS in order to protect it and ensure its continued existence? Because sadly I don't even though I recognise change is needed.

[tonyh29]

1 hour ago, TrentVilla said:

Labour aren't perfect when it comes to the NHS nobody could claim them to be. The thing is though they are fundermentally viewed as being in favour of it and the defenders of it, Conservatives are seen as the enemy of the NHS and let's face it with good reason. 

 

I agree with your first sentence but I fear you are overlooking some of the tribalism in that sentence

 

regarding the bolded statement  , this is what I struggle with

figures show that under Labour the percentage of the NHS budget spent on private providers increased from 2.8% to 4.9% . ( in balance it's now at 6.1% )

Labour introduced the "any willing provider " system  (again in balance the Tories have extended it )

Labour introduced the contract for GPs, allowing most to abandon emergency cover – a key driver of pressures on A&E we are currently experiencing

 

how can that make them the defenders of it  , other than saying things in opposition that they didn't put into practise when they were the government ( you can argue that is the job of opposition of course , and Labour have a new leader now who may reverse the work of his predecessors )

 

if I posted that Tories are better at managing  the economy , this thread would be awash with graphs , quotes from the Huffington Post and social media economists proving me wrong ... yet throw out a simple statement like Labour are the champions of the NHS and you get a few auto likes and everyone moves on cause well we all know that's true  ...

 

it needs reform , no argument from me there , but the NHS should be reformed with cross party agreement ( assuming the bastards agree not to all profit out of it ) with a commitment that the next government wont then change everything for the sake of it  

 

 

Edited November 28, 2016 by tonyh29

[chrisp65]

Why don't we just give the NHS and charities and children's causes and social workers and disability groups an extra £35 Billion.

Then, once a year, the BBC could host a week long telethon to raise money for nuclear weapons.