neilj
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Post by neilj on May 11, 2023 5:21:43 GMT
More blue on blue
I think the Coronation suppressed tories worries for a few days. But now the reality of the election results and worsening opinion polls are hitting home and concentrating minds
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neilj
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Post by neilj on May 11, 2023 5:46:36 GMT
This was a surprisingly good idea from the tories, scrapping it shows again the Government has the wrong priorities. They should stop banging on about woke issues and concentrate on bread and butter issues
Hoping Labour pick it up and run with it, an easy win for them
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steve
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Post by steve on May 11, 2023 6:02:30 GMT
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 11, 2023 6:43:37 GMT
I've been keeping a watching eye on the twitter feed of GP Dr Dave Triska ( Dave _dlt)...... I see he says he was in the army till 2020? (theres a photo top of his feed dated 2020 of him saying its his last 20 minutes in the army). So not clear what long term experience he has of a typical GPs working life and how it has changed... That a very very strange period during which he has been in general GP practice. On the other hand, I can see how coming at this as an outsider he might me more angry at what is happening re GP shortages. I'm really not clear what difference this makes. Pharmacists have always been able to provide certain drugs without a GPs prescription which are not otherwises available to the public. They have also for years carried out health reviews of patients, given advice on what to take from what they can dispense themselves, reviewed people's repeat drugs, did covid and other vaccinations, checked blood pressures. So what actually is new here? While I take his point, the fact you cannot get a GP appointment on demand must already have stripped out many minor conditions. For example, people in 2019 or early 2020 who had covid would be considered as flu patients and told to go to bed to rest rather than seeing their GP. One of the reasons no one noticed early covid. But is he was an army doctor at that time, his patient workload must have been mostly fit young men at that time. I am interested where he actually says what you paraphrase, because looking at his twitter feed, he says patient numbers are up on 5 years ago...which doesnt mean it was his personal experience. Again, what actually does he mean by this? Is he saying many different infectious diseases are now much higher, which is what was predicted by many doctors after a long period of isolating the population in a lockdown? Is he saying that now far more people are asking to see their GP if they have a cold or flu (which will be mostly not covid even now), but because they now fear such diseases more, more are going to their GP with such conditions...essentially wasting GP time compared to 2019. Zoe also report on diseases similar to but not covid, and report about 1 in 250 people are reporting such an illness every day. Rates for covid seem to be about 1 in 1000. Thats probably similar to numbers throughout the epidemic on average. So most illness with covid symptoms, isnt covid and there will be a lot more people afraid they have covid and so visiting a doctor than actually got it. Government deliberately whipped up that fear to improve adherence to the rules it was imposing (on others, not downing street) when it was not justified by the facts of the epidemic. Yes but the overall level of illness now is no longer massive peaks followed by tiny levels, but more an average level with a superimposed ripple. It looks like a classical damped oscillation.  There are three possible reasons I know of why we might be seeing this. The first is that this is the first respiratory epidemic where mass testing has been available. We are therefore for the first time actually able to definitively diagnose whether this is covid or just a cold. Covid symptoms are very different now to the classic severe cases and the only way to tell is by these specific tests. So its entirely possible a background level like this is perfectly normal and is what we always saw with 'colds', which we just ignored. The second is that the mass vaccination program with repeated imperfect vaccinations has created a situation where people do not get severely ill, but do get repeated mild infections. So the problem was caused by the adopted solution. You have posted papers supporting this view yourself. The third that covid is a unique disease and unlike all others in the past is especially persistent. I am deeply sceptial of this which however seems to be your preferred reason. I am sceptical because there is no reason to think covid is an unusual disease. Humans have had covid before, have other viruses so similar to covid that they create cross immunity to each other. Its really not new, and it really has never been as severe as was initially feared. It has NEVER been bad enough to justify suspending society as was done. But they didnt say covid was responsible. They said inability to access GPs was responsible. My mother was ill 5 years ago, and it was impossible to access a GP. Its not new. The current government has systematically increased NHS spending at only about half the rate needed to keep up with the rising numbers of pensioners, who use most GP services. This is nothing to do with Covid but all about shortage of GPs. Its obvious brexit has cut the supply of doctors from Europe, you didnt mention that. But the statistics on numbers of pensioners and overall funding are stark. It was about 1.5% a year increase in demand for services which isnt being met. Over ten years that means a huge shortfall which is very very obvious and would have been had covid never happened. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 11, 2023 6:55:11 GMT
R4 just carried an interview with zelenskyy. He was asked about this spring offensive which hasnt happened. His answer why it hasnt happened is that the west has not provided sufficient weapons.
Its possible the west simply does no have enough weapons to give, in particular perhaps that it cannot do so without depleting its own reserves beyond acceptable levels. But we have had more than a year to do something about this and increase manufacturing. Russia has certainly done this. But us? Do we care? Johnson had lots of fine words about the Uk supporting ukraine, but after sending them our obsolete rocket launchers, have we actually sourced more rockets for them to shoot?
Similarly Ukraine made a recent appeal for more air defence. This isnt going to be about launchers because they seemed to have created an effective air cover. It is about the missiles to fire from these systems, at a million pounds a go to shoot down a cheap iranian drone. Or even just supplying thousands upon thousands of artillery shells to match Russia's supply.
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Post by crossbat11 on May 11, 2023 6:55:38 GMT
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 11, 2023 6:59:13 GMT
It might attract a higher banding but the issue would remain: does it then go on to lead to becoming a Doctor as with the apprenticeship? However the key issue might be whether the learn-more-on-the-job model is as good a route as learning more on the degree. After a period where we switched nurse training from being on the job to being in university, we now propose doing the reverse with doctors, when the division was always that doctors require a much greater level of complex knowledge. This progression is surely insane? |
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Post by jib on May 11, 2023 7:02:10 GMT
Plaid Cymru in some disarray tonight. Adam Price is likely to resign after stories have emerged of misogyny and bullying within the party; behaviour that appears to have gone on for some time without any serious investigation or rebuke. If Price nobly falls on his sword, no obvious deputy or replacement appears to be in sight. Rather like the SNP's problems in Scotland, I wonder if this is another piece of good luck for Labour? They have retained a decent electoral position in the principality, unlike in Scotland, so there is less scope for seat-hoovering than there is north of the border, but I would have thought a Plaid Cymru in retreat can only be good news for Labour in Wales. Disillusioned and alienated PC voters are more likely to drift leftwards than rightwards when looking for another party to support. My only worry with all this good news piling up for Labour, and that Prospect analysis of the local council election results, suggesting increasingly benign electoral geography developing for the party, is another Starmer broken pledge emerging. Another one and I think the game is up. Four and the electorate are likely to be forgiving, but if we get to five, then I fear a tipping point in voter tolerance. There is only so much offence to a section of the Labour membership that the British electorate will stand. 🤔😋 Indeed the leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price, has gone, he probably realised that falling on the sword was best given the leadership failures in the bullying report. The Anglesey Senedd Member would be the favourite to be the successor I'd say. 2024 is likely to be a tough election in Wales for anyone without "Labour Party Candidate" after their name, but Wales is a tribal nation and Plaid Cymru have their own bastions. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 11, 2023 7:04:21 GMT
From example Labour 'won' Aldershot 41% to 35%, a seat even Blair couldn't take. Does that mean the military are deserting Con? Our failure to support ukraine, after ignominious withdrawls from other foriegn countries might have soured the military towards them? |
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Post by moby on May 11, 2023 7:11:06 GMT
Your stated intention I believe is to vote Green - they support PR. Indeed so - but I would be voting Green for unrelated reasons - ie Starmer's compulsive lying and his obsessive persecution of Corbyn. Nice to see you being so positive.  |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 11, 2023 7:11:41 GMT
I was quite close to this at the time, as I was a technical manager for another manufacturer which outsold IBM in the UK for a few years. The leading OS company at the time was Digital Research with CP/M. I never understood how Microsoft got away with claiming MS-DOS was not based upon cp/m, they were so similar. Perhaps because they were more evolution than revolution, so based themselves upon predecessors. |
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Post by crossbat11 on May 11, 2023 7:19:27 GMT
I've just thought of another definition of managed capitalism. Asking the taxpayer to featherbed corporate failure. |
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Post by alec on May 11, 2023 7:22:12 GMT
Danny - Dr Triska has been a GP since 2016, which was when he left the army. I think he knows a bit more about frontline health care than you do. "But they [Diabetes UK] didnt say covid was responsible. They said inability to access GPs was responsible." They identified a number of excess deaths arising from failures to access care. This report only covered that narrow issue. It didn't cover the reasons for such an imbalance between demand and supply. They have covered this in a previous report, which I supplied you with, when they stated that covid is both creating significant new numbers of diabetes cases, worsening existing cases, and simultaneously pressuring healthcare services so that accessing care for diabetics is significantly harder than it was pre 2020. That's the problem if you only pay attention to half the evidence - you keep making the same mistake.
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steve
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Post by steve on May 11, 2023 7:23:38 GMT
CNN
In a bizarre decision allowed former president and serial sexual abusing compulsive liar to have a town hall in front of a bunch of maga lunatics.
For an hour he was allowed to repeat his old favourites about his bogus claims about well everything and oh how the audience laughed at the thought that their beloved deity might consider a middle aged woman attractive enough to assault.
Even in the tiny periods when he wasn't spouting utter bollocks he was advocating policies so fascistic that it would almost certainly lead to civil war.
The moderator attempted to fact check pointless with this deranged dangerous narcissist, should never have been allowed to happen in the first place.
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Post by crossbat11 on May 11, 2023 7:27:11 GMT
More blue on blue I think the Coronation suppressed tories worries for a few days. But now the reality of the election results and worsening opinion polls are hitting home and concentrating minds Translated as desperate pork barrel politics by panic-stricken MPs asking for the Treasury to save their bacon. (I've exhausted my porcine metaphor lexicon and will boar you no longer ) |
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Post by moby on May 11, 2023 7:42:54 GMT
Plaid Cymru in some disarray tonight. Adam Price is likely to resign after stories have emerged of misogyny and bullying within the party; behaviour that appears to have gone on for some time without any serious investigation or rebuke. If Price nobly falls on his sword, no obvious deputy or replacement appears to be in sight. Rather like the SNP's problems in Scotland, I wonder if this is another piece of good luck for Labour? They have retained a decent electoral position in the principality, unlike in Scotland, so there is less scope for seat-hoovering than there is north of the border, but I would have thought a Plaid Cymru in retreat can only be good news for Labour in Wales. Disillusioned and alienated PC voters are more likely to drift leftwards than rightwards when looking for another party to support. My only worry with all this good news piling up for Labour, and that Prospect analysis of the local council election results, suggesting increasingly benign electoral geography developing for the party, is another Starmer broken pledge emerging. Another one and I think the game is up. Four and the electorate are likely to be forgiving, but if we get to five, then I fear a tipping point in voter tolerance. There is only so much offence to a section of the Labour membership that the British electorate will stand. 🤔😋 Indeed the leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price, has gone, he probably realised that falling on the sword was best given the leadership failures in the bullying report. The Anglesey Senedd Member would be the favourite to be the successor I'd say. 2024 is likely to be a tough election in Wales for anyone without "Labour Party Candidate" after their name, but Wales is a tribal nation and Plaid Cymru have their own bastions. Yes I think he's the most likely candidate:- senedd.wales/people/rhun-ap-iorwerth-ms/ |
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Post by moby on May 11, 2023 7:46:30 GMT
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 11, 2023 7:47:21 GMT
Re-Electoral Reform I would be happy to see Labour bring in AV - but not PR. AV is not PR and can, depending on the circumstances, produce even more extreme outcomes than FPTP. Somewhere I still have a published paper which compares different electoral systems and one of the conclusions it came to (this was a few years after the 1997 election) was that in landslide conditions AV can produce extreme results. Roy Jenkins' proposal combined AV with a top-up of list members, effectively a hybrid between AV and AMS, but the top-up had to be large to get reasonable proportionality. Hard to say anything would produce more extreme outcomes than the current system short of switching to a one party state? |
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Post by wb61 on May 11, 2023 7:50:51 GMT
Rhun ap Iorwerth interviewed me on TV a long time ago when he was a Wales Today reporter. He is intelligent and a good debater and no doubt will be popular with the committed supporter. However he is also less personable than Adam Price and Leanne Wood and has a tendency to be irascible in some responses; I am not sure he would be the most effective leader to win over the undecided. |
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Mr Poppy
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Teaching assistant and now your elected PM
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Post by Mr Poppy on May 11, 2023 7:54:55 GMT
Vince Cable on Comment Central about coalition prospects: commentcentral.co.uk/lib-dems-could-back-labour-for-electoral-reformEd Davey is right not to rule out a coalition with Labour but it is highly unlikely that the Lib Dems would go into such an arrangement this side of electoral reform being delivered.
A looser ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement is much more plausible, depending on how the numbers look after an election and subject to agreement on reform of the voting system.Would C+S be a "grubby" and "desperate" deal? Noting LAB have demanded "no grubby, desperate deals"?
Conservatives pledge not to enter any electoral pacts after Labour demands no ‘grubby, desperate deal’
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tories-electoral-pacts-laurence-fox-andrew-bridgen-b2336760.htmlOne point to make is it that if no pacts/deals are made BEFORE a GE then 0% of voters will have voted for whatever "grubby" and/or "desperate" deal is agreed AFTER a GE in order to put Starmer into #10. NB I'm simply using the adjectives that LAB used. I note WLAB have a deal with PC (WNATs) - although it's certainly possible Starmer-ELAB were not aware of that |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 11, 2023 7:55:00 GMT
Disagree,I don't think Biden won because he was Biden, I think he won because he wasn't Trump. Biden wasn't an inspirational candidate, he was actually quite a vanilla candidate, but he wasn't Trump Trump has a cadre of very keen supporters, the problem is he has a much bigger section of people who really don't like him and will vote against him and for any candidate who doesn't frighten the horses, little like the ABT vote But that still doesnt answer the question of whether there is anyone else who republicans might choose who would de better than Trump! I dont think conservatives adopted brexit because they failed to realise how bad it would be for the UK. They did it because it was the only way they could see which had a chance of winning an election. Then May tried her damndest to soften brexit but couldnt make it work, so the party eventually gave up trying and adopted Johnson as their leader to just do it regardless of outcomes. Trump and Brexit are at root the same, the harm doesnt matter. Its the chance of being elected which is why the parties do it. The analogy is stonger because of the split powers in the US. Republicans in congress are significantly powerless without a republican president too, while a republican president can stymy a democrat congress. So the analogy works, Trump might damage the country just like brexit here, but adopting them gives a chance of the party staying in power. |
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Post by wb61 on May 11, 2023 7:55:01 GMT
It is to be remembered that CNN is essentially a Democrat leaning station, as is their audience. I wonder if the thought process was to keep reminding their viewers of what a monster this man is with the hope of making sure the Democrat vote is buoyed up. The polls running against Biden at the moment, and momentum being important, it might be a bit of strategic thinking although it looks tactically inept. Who knows? |
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Post by moby on May 11, 2023 7:58:16 GMT
Rhun ap Iorwerth interviewed me on TV a long time ago when he was a Wales Today reporter. He is intelligent and a good debater and no doubt will be popular with the committed supporter. However he is also less personable than Adam Price and Leanne Wood and has a tendency to be irascible in some responses; I am not sure he would be the most effective leader to win over the undecided. Yes he's quite abrasive in manner sometimes from what I've seen. |
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Mr Poppy
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Teaching assistant and now your elected PM
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Post by Mr Poppy on May 11, 2023 7:59:57 GMT
the leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price, has gone, he probably realised that falling on the sword was best given the leadership failures in the bullying report. The Anglesey Senedd Member would be the favourite to be the successor I'd say. 2024 is likely to be a tough election in Wales for anyone without "Labour Party Candidate" after their name, but Wales is a tribal nation and Plaid Cymru have their own bastions. Wales in not my polity but the 3yr "deal" between WLAB and PC expires next year - timing was possibly linked to UK GE and WLAB can go back to LDEM to prop them up in Wales if Drakeford (who was supposed to be going mid-term??) decided PC are now too "grubby" to agree a new "desperate" deal with. From Nov'21:
Labour and Plaid Cymru deal set to last three yearswww.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-59371291 |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 11, 2023 8:00:25 GMT
More blue on blue I think the Coronation suppressed tories worries for a few days. But now the reality of the election results and worsening opinion polls are hitting home and concentrating minds But Sunak cannot do levelling up. First its two late to have effect, but second he spent the slush money saved up to mitigate brexit on covid lockdown, and vastly more besides. If con leave a note in the treasury this time it will say, 'you thought there was no money left but we proved you wrong. Now its really true'. |
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Post by moby on May 11, 2023 8:01:47 GMT
Vince Cable on Comment Central about coalition prospects: commentcentral.co.uk/lib-dems-could-back-labour-for-electoral-reformEd Davey is right not to rule out a coalition with Labour but it is highly unlikely that the Lib Dems would go into such an arrangement this side of electoral reform being delivered.
A looser ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement is much more plausible, depending on how the numbers look after an election and subject to agreement on reform of the voting system.Would C+S be a "grubby" and "desperate" deal? Noting LAB have demanded "no grubby, desperate deals"?
Conservatives pledge not to enter any electoral pacts after Labour demands no ‘grubby, desperate deal’
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tories-electoral-pacts-laurence-fox-andrew-bridgen-b2336760.htmlOne point to make is it that if no pacts/deals are made BEFORE a GE then 0% of voters will have voted for whatever "grubby" and/or "desperate" deal is agreed AFTER a GE in order to put Starmer into #10. NB I'm simply using the adjectives that LAB used. I note WLAB have a deal with PC (WNATs) - although it's certainly possible Starmer-ELAB were not aware of that You are always very keen to pick up on lies and U turns.....any views on this one given it was one of Rishi's campaign promises last summer? www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brexit-eu-law-bonfire-u-turn_uk_645abb50e4b018d846b9fd75 |
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Post by James E on May 11, 2023 8:04:28 GMT
Pjw1961 I had a quick look at the ward by ward analysis for Redditch and, to be honest, found it a little baffling at first sight. Big jumps in Labour percentage vote share from 2019, particularly in the five wards they gained from the Tories, but no reciprocal reduction in the Tory percentage vote share. That only dropped a few points in most cases and, at first glance, it wasn't immediately obvious where the Labour increased share had come from. Maybe some independent candidates had stood down from 2019. There was clear evidence, however, of the Lib Dem vote being squeezed by Labour. Put another way, a static Tory horse being overtaken by a turbo charged Labour horse that had been given additional legs by a hitherto rival stable. That is the same pattern as I found when comparing the Rushmoor (Aldershot) results to the 2019 LEs. Con 37% (-5) Lab 47% (+17) LD 14% (+3) Others 2% (-15) The reason was mostly the decline of UKIP who were taking around 14% in GB polls in early May 2019. And it's worth remembering that the Tories were at a low ebb at that point, too, taking an average of around 28% in Westminster polls, and the same share per NEV in the local elections. Of course, it is highly unlikely that these net movements reflect the actual churn in each party's 2019 voters. So it does not mean that Labour won their voters from UKIP or others. |
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neilj
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Post by neilj on May 11, 2023 8:08:03 GMT
@danny
'But that still doesnt answer the question of whether there is anyone else who republicans might choose who would de better than Trump'
DeSantis, I don't like him or his policies, in many ways their worse than Trump's. But he hasn't got the baggage of Trump, but he will never get on the ballot paper because of the Trump MAGA cult
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 11, 2023 8:13:27 GMT
R4 commentators suggested the core problem there has been government policy to obstruct negotiaions between staff and the company, so there was no possibility of a settlement. Bottom line is insufficient drivers. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 11, 2023 8:17:06 GMT
Danny - Dr Triska has been a GP since 2016, which was when he left the army. I think he knows a bit more about frontline health care than you do. Where is this stated? Why is there a picture dated 2020 saying it is his last 20 mins in the army, having just returned from a tour of duty? Was he a part time GP/ part time army medic? |
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