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

[MakemineVanilla]

Thanks for the extra info MMV (not quoted). I've learnt something and take the point that there are now more nurses than there were (though I guess there are also more people in the country and more poorly sick folk, so there needs to be more nurses, hospitals, doctors, schools, police and all the rest.)

I'm not sure that Milton Freedman's free market doctrine and anti unions stuff really fairly explains the nursing unions actions and motivations. Nurses pay is not high to start with, they have had Gov't imposed limits on wage rises, they're not a militant bunch  - you'd kind of think the nurses would be justified in taking action to raise their pay. And I'm not really sure that a change from a diploma to a degree makes that case or difference anyway. If anything if the degree does raise standards, that's a good thing. I confess to ignorance as to whether it was nursing unions anyway who determined that to be employed as a nurse you have to have a nursing degree - wouldn't that be a NHS or Hospital Trust or Gov't decision?

The funny thing is that in the video Friedman says that airline pilots have the strongest union, which reminds us that Norman Tebbit had been an official of the British Airline Pilots Association, which made his anti-union stance hypocritical.  

[bickster]

Tebbit was Leader of the Pilots Union

[tonyh29]

 

If that had been a South African politician the kid would have probably come away with the ball and scored a try

[HanoiVillan]

Ronald Reagan was President of the Screen Actors Guild as well, even leading actors out on strike (in a battle over 'residual payments'). 

[snowychap]

In the government's new housing and planning bill, they are to legislate on rules for what they call 'High Income Social Tenants' (the threshold for a household is initially intended to be £30k p.a. outside of London and £40k for London).

As part of that, they want to give social landlords the power to require tenants to give them information on household income or else face automatically being viewed as a high income social tenant and thus made to pay the higher rents. They also intend for those landlords to have access to HMRC data in order to verify the accuracy of the declared income.

Other than the forcing people to divulge that sort of information to their landlords, it seems a very low level of household income that might class two people living together, working a 40 hour week and earning just over what will become the new national minimum wage in April 2016 (Osborne's living wage amount of £7.20/hr) as high earners. It would also likely reduce the incentives of those close to the threshold to increase their hours or find a higher paying job and if the threshold for becoming a 'high earner' doesn't keep pace with the proposed increases in the new NMW  (£9/hr by 2020) then there may well be people having to decide whether it's worth reducing hours so as not to be penalized.

 

Oh and all of the detail regarding what counts as income, what the thresholds are, what the rent levels will be and so on are to be sorted out by secondary legislation (i.e. it won't be (properly) scrutinized by parliament). And finally, any excess income (over and above normal rent levels) is to be returned to the treasury and not used by the councils or HAs.

Edit: Having looked at the consultation document, it says the proposal is for HAs to keep the extra revenue but for councils to have to return it (after taking in to account reasonable admin costs) to the treasury. Also this is proposed to be introduced from April 2017, so the suggested initial threshold (£30k p.a.) looks like it would be below the income of two minimum wage earners working a 40 hour week (c. £31.6k).

Edit 2: In the previous consultation on this, the government's proposed thresholds were £60k, £80k and £100k.

Edited October 16, 2015 by snowychap

[chrisp65]

The Ministry of Defence say they spent £8.4 Billion in 6 years in Iraq.

Energy Minister promises a further £2 Billion in guarantees to underwrite £25 Billion deal for French and Chinese to design and build new nuclear site.

 

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, another 2,000 steelworkers are made redundant and the business minister shrugs her shoulders.

 But Business Minister Anna Soubry said the Teesside plant had never been profitable, leaving the official receiver with no choice but to close the site.

refusing to cleverly link, but one story amongst many at the moment: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-34301975

 

 It's a funny old world innit.

Thousands and thousands of jobs being lost in industry due to 'market forces', whilst we spunk tens upon tens of billions of pounds on bombs, bullets and chinese nuclear expertise.

[MakemineVanilla]

The Ministry of Defence say they spent £8.4 Billion in 6 years in Iraq.

Energy Minister promises a further £2 Billion in guarantees to underwrite £25 Billion deal for French and Chinese to design and build new nuclear site.

 

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, another 2,000 steelworkers are made redundant and the business minister shrugs her shoulders.

 But Business Minister Anna Soubry said the Teesside plant had never been profitable, leaving the official receiver with no choice but to close the site.

refusing to cleverly link, but one story amongst many at the moment: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-34301975

 

 It's a funny old world innit.

Thousands and thousands of jobs being lost in industry due to 'market forces', whilst we spunk tens upon tens of billions of pounds on bombs, bullets and chinese nuclear expertise.

It is always sad to see well-paid jobs disappearing but for those who claim to be concerned about the environment they can't really regret a steel mill closing down because they produce massive amounts of pollution, particularly sulphur dioxide. 

Certainly the Norwegians will be grateful because they end up with UK's sulphur dioxide and sulphur dioxide has a serious impact on human health.

 

[OutByEaster?]

It is always sad to see well-paid jobs disappearing but for those who claim to be concerned about the environment they can't really regret a steel mill closing down because they produce massive amounts of pollution, particularly sulphur dioxide.

*Makeminevanilla wrote that, but I'm not smart enough to fix the quoting.

I don't think this is because we're going to produce less steel worldwide - in fact the likelihood is that this steel will now be produced in a part of the world with less pesky regulation about the environmental impact that production has.

 

Edited October 17, 2015 by OutByEaster?

[MakemineVanilla]

It is always sad to see well-paid jobs disappearing but for those who claim to be concerned about the environment they can't really regret a steel mill closing down because they produce massive amounts of pollution, particularly sulphur dioxide.

*Makeminevanilla wrote that, but I'm not smart enough to fix the quoting.

I don't think this is because we're going to produce less steel worldwide - in fact the likelihood is that this steel will now be produced in a part of the world with less pesky regulation about the environmental impact that production has.

 

 

Absolutely true.

I was illustrating how traditional Labour beliefs (socialism) conflict with modern Labour beliefs (Green) and how they would produce opposite policies.

 

 

 

[OutByEaster?]

Which is an interesting topic in it's own right - I guess the socialist/green point of view of sustaining jobs whilst attempting to control pollution in so far as possible and look for alternatives in future sounds a whole lot wishful thinking/pipe dream - but you'd have to say it's better than the Neo-Liberal, move it somewhere it can be done cheaper - poor people are poor people wherever they are but owners of steel companies help banks make profit so must be looked after.

 

[chrisp65]

I think that regardless of your opinion on green issues, the steelworks would be considered less destructive than nuclear waste and another generation of bombing. You could even argue that there is something quite contradictory about our efforts to tax carbon and worry about the correct specification of diesel emissions tests when unleashing all manner of filth, poison and destruction in foreign lands that many of us couldn't pin on a map or describe their flag. 

In fact, that bombing could be a strong contributor to the rise of ISIS and the destruction of swathes of north africa and the middle east and the curse it repeats on uneducated dirt poor generations of suicide bomb fodder across the region.

As already said by OBE, the steel hasn't been 'stopped'. it's been moved. Moved to somewhere with cheaper more compliant drones.

(I'm also aware this isn't solely a tory issue)

[MakemineVanilla]

Which is an interesting topic in it's own right - I guess the socialist/green point of view of sustaining jobs whilst attempting to control pollution in so far as possible and look for alternatives in future sounds a whole lot wishful thinking/pipe dream - but you'd have to say it's better than the Neo-Liberal, move it somewhere it can be done cheaper - poor people are poor people wherever they are but owners of steel companies help banks make profit so must be looked after.

 

When European countries shut down coal mines and coal-fired power stations, while Australia opens a massive coal mine which endangers the barrier reef, to supply Chinese coal-fired power stations, you can only conclude that Green politics is a middle-class vanity project which diverts and distracts Labour from its primary purpose of helping working people. 

[HanoiVillan]

I think there are plenty of other conclusions that can be made to be honest. 

[Xann]

I am a consultant in A&E and am writing to you, because I am scared for the future of my patients and asking for your help. The NHS is on a knife-edge and could get much worse by an unfair and unjust junior doctor contract.

We need your help to get the truth out there, so to force the government to rethink the way they are treating the back bone of the NHS - junior doctors.

Otherwise they may leave and we will not be able to care for our patients. Yesterday I spoke at the rally for the NHS organised by the junior doctors and thought we had really got the message out loud and clear. I left elated.

But I was wrong. I overheard a conversation on the train home, which depressed me. A man in his twenties coming back from a rugby match said. “Good on Mr. Hunt – it's a disgrace doctors don’t work weekends. I read it in the paper.” I came home in despair.

We need your help. Government propaganda, deceits and distortions are dominating. Please hear what we have to say and get the truth out otherwise the NHS may not survive.

A contract has been designed which will damage patient care and mean doctors will leave in their droves.

Mr Hunt says it is about improving cover for the weekend. That is just not true. It will damage weekend care. With the existing contract you can get very good coverage at the weekend.

Most A&E departments have their junior doctors already working more than 1 in 2 weekends and have more juniors working at the weekend than a weekday.

But his plan is to say that normal office hours are up to 10pm including on a Saturday and not pay any supplement for these hours. How is working till 10pm on a Saturday ‘office hours’ ?

This would result in a pay cuts for those who do a lot of emergency work out of ‘office hours’. How can a pay cut for working weekends increase weekend cover? This will put people off working in specialities like mine in A&E and damage the care I can give to patients.

Jeremy Hunt has become the best recruiter the Australian Health service has ever had.

Also Mr Hunt can not be trusted. Mr Hunt says 3 things: 1) The junior doctor salary bill will not change, 2) We will pay people more to go into specialities like mine in A&E, 3) No one will have their pay cut. The three do not add up. One of these can not be true. You can not trust the man.

He is the Volkswagen of politicians. Looks and sounds good but no one trusts his emissions.

How is it right that the new contract penalises people who take time off clinical work to do research? How is right that the contract removes safeguards on juniors hours? How is it right that NHS workers have had 5 years of relative pay cuts when MPs have had a 10% pay rise in this year alone?

If you don't believe me, what about believing his right hand men. As Dan Poulter - a minister for health until a few months ago – said recently: ‘The junior doctor contract that has emerged over the summer - is very different from the one being discussed this time last year. Then there was no talk of 90-hour weeks, no talk of large numbers of junior doctors having their pay cut”

Mr. Hunt's arrogance and the distain in which he talks about junior doctors is making it so hard for the medical profession to work with him.

Unless he changes his attitude and starts proper negotiations, then the junior doctors will go on strike. But a strike will be temporary. Someone will back down.

But worse than that, because of the attitude of the health secretary, they will not apply for new jobs starting in August 2016 and leave the country with their skills and expertise. We can not run the NHS without them. Mr Hunt is a threat to the future of the NHS.

Mr Hunt is also affecting patient care now with his political spin. He has scared people coming to hospital over the weekend. the hunt effect - delayed presentation, with worsening outcome because of political ideology.

Good care depends on good leadership and the current leadership at the top of the department of health is utterly inadequate.

Patient care is being damaged The government are bullying NHS workers and we need your help in standing up to them.

But the issue is larger than just about junior doctors. Much bigger. It is about a targeted attack on the whole fabric of the NHS.

Billions wasted in reorganisation and selling contracts to the private sector, funding cuts (per patient seen) and attacks on the care we give and despicable attacks on the staff who provide that care.

It feels like a co-ordinated plan to convince the public that the NHS is unaffordable. But the NHS was born in a time of great austerity. It cannot be destroyed in the name of austerity.

We should remember that properly run, when patients come before profits and co-operation is key and not competition, then the NHS is the most efficient way of delivering high quality care for all. Political ideology should not be allowed to destroy the NHS

Why move to an insurance scheme such as in the USA where they spend double what we do and patients get much worse care especially the poor. Unless you are in cahoots with private sector health companies I suppose?

Jeremey Hunt has presided over the worst fall in patient care and staff morale than any other health secretary. Corridor medicine is now commonplace in A&Es up and down the country and the winter crisis in the NHS is year long.

When it comes to those at the top of the Department of health and patients safety, never have so many, been so harmed by so few.

And if he does not sort out the mess he has created with the junior doctor contract, things could get much much worse.

We have to decide what we want as a society. Do we reward the bankers and speculators who have crippled the country or do we reward the doctors and nurses who heal the country? Or at least not cut their pay.

You saw the pictures form the rally yesterday. 20,000 junior doctors and supporters chanting “save our nhs”. In your heart of hearts do you trust the politicians who are trained in spin and manipulation or NHS workers, who dedicate their lives to helping those in need?

Please get the truth out. Many of you have helped get the truth out. Thank you. Others just ignore it - I can think of no bigger issue affecting the country yet the countrys papers give very little coverage.

But others have just recycled government propaganda. I know it must be hard. For many people working in the press, your bosses are supporters of the government and I am sure they must apply pressure on you for what you write and report.

But this is bigger than politics. This is about the future of the NHS. And The NHS doesn't have a future without its junior doctors.

Please help to save it. Our children will need it as much as we do.

The NHS which the British public care so passionately about, may soon not be able to care for them.

Dr Rob Galloway, A&E Consultant

Edited October 19, 2015 by Xann

[tonyh29]

It's sorta interesting that this 90 hour week figure isn't being digested in more detail ... As I understand it , it doesn't mean they are working 90 hour weeks as the headlines suggest... their actual working hours remain at 48  hours and what is happening is the  available hours when they're on basic pay has gone from 60 to 90.... Now the the media may be spinning things but it would seem they aren't alone  ?

[snowychap]

The only person talking about 90 hour weeks in the letter quoted in the post above it looks like is Tory MP Dan Poulter.

 

But the BMA (according to this Torygraph article) say that junior doctors are still working 100 hour weeks (well as of May last year):

Junior doctors are still working 100-hour weeks despite European laws, the British Medical Association has warned.

...

The European Working Time Directive has limited doctors to working 48 hours in a week but this is averaged across 26 weeks.

 

Edited October 19, 2015 by snowychap

[carlitobrigante]

Not big into politics, but just wanted to add my 2 cents. I have never been a fan of the conservatives (my first and only vote for them so far was in the most recent election), but when i look at the other political parties, they strike me as the only ones even half competent to run this country.

People in general seem to be forgetting the mess our economy was in, and how susceptible we were to the crash back in 2008. Too many are railing against any change that affects current living standards in even the slightest way, with no concern for the fate of this country, or our long term economic prospects. The fact Labour haven't acknowledged their failures when they were in power, or put forward any real plans for cutting the deficit and our overall debt means i cant give them my vote. They screwed up so badly when last in power, that i basically want an apology and a frank acceptance of these failures before i could even begin to consider voting for them. How Labour caused or dealt with things like the benefit culture, the iraq war, immigration, our meek acceptable of certain EU rules we could have easily fought against or opted out of, and the weakness of our economy to handle the financial crisis when it hit, are things i'm not sure i can ever forgive them for. 

The Conservatives are at least making decisions on the economy for the long term that so far i have mostly agreed with. Importantly for me, they gain no political capital from some of these decisions, and some of them will actually cost them votes in the short term. They seem prepared to make unpopular decisions as they believe it is important for the long term prospects of our country. Whereas with Labour, rightly or wrongly i feel they would more likely steer away from, or water down any big policy's on the economy that would involve them losing voters especially when only a later government would reap any potential rewards. I have zero faith in the current Labour party and i think they only concerned about spin and public opinion, and who have now chosen a queen hating wildcard as a leader, who also wants to scrap our nukes at a time when the middle east is in chaos, and Russia is the most belligerent it's been since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Would anyone here honestly take Labour and Corbyn to run this country at such a difficult time? The very thought of it scares me shitless. 

 

[chrisp65]

I'm no expert, but I don't think it's quite as black and white as that.

Out of interest, what long term decisions on the UK steel industry have the conservative government made that you agree with? What decisions on giving China money to write the software for our nuclear power stations have been good for our security?

[Jon]

Not big into politics, but just wanted to add my 2 cents. I have never been a fan of the conservatives (my first and only vote for them so far was in the most recent election).

Bwahahahaha.  Farcically hilarious post.  Great satire from start to finish,  but this bit had me laughing the most.   

[Jon]

Lord ashcroft nobbled?  Or just coincidence? I'm inclined to think the former ...