18-OCT 2023 : LAB 44% / CON 28% / LDM 9% / REF 7%

[Mark]

*** New Polling thread alert ***

[crossbat11]

Feb 5, 2024 15:05:37 GMT leftieliberal said:

Feb 4, 2024 22:34:16 GMT crossbat11 said:

Being handed their own arse is something that happens quite often to the Gooners.

On this occasion they fluked a win. Totally against the run out of play. I suspect the match was fixed.

Be fair. They gifted Liverpool a goal (an own goal, in fact) at a time when Liverpool seemed incapable of scoring. They shouldn't be blamed for van Dijk and Alisson's Keystone Cops act.

Just for the avoidance of all doubt, my brief report of the Arsenal v Liverpool game yesterday was not a serious one.

It was intended for Mr Crofty's attention in the main.

It may also be worth pointing out that Crofty's internet probably wasn't inoperative and that he may well have been watching the game live on television, therefore being aware of the result.

I hope these clarifications put an end to the matter

[peterbell]

Crofty, you need a new internet, TV & radio. You always seem to lose reception when your team wins. Not good for you being kept in the dark.

[steve]

Applauding the possibility of the Tories winning more seats while pretending to support Labour.


Your party salutes you.
Attachment Deleted

[Deleted]

Feb 5, 2024 18:56:05 GMT peterbell said:

Crofty, you need a new internet, TV & radio. You always seem to lose reception when your team wins. Not good for you being kept in the dark.

Sadly it works when we lose.

[alec]

Pretty staggering numbers from the ONS today. After re-weighting their population data, they now think there are 2.8m working age people unable to work due to ill health, up from the 2.6m previously. They now think that since the start of the pandemic, long term sickness has risen by 33%, rather than the 24% previously, after a decade of mainly level or slightly falling numbers.

Really bad figures with huge long term implications, and according to the recent data, the rate of rise appears to be getting steeper. Covid is not done with us yet.

[alec]

This tweet, from Shaun Lintern, one of the few UK health journalists that does a decent job, puts Charlie's cancer diagnosis in perspective for us normal folk -

[steve]

Alec
New polling thread

[mercian]

Feb 5, 2024 19:58:12 GMT alec said:

Pretty staggering numbers from the ONS today. After re-weighting their population data, they now think there are 2.8m working age people unable to work due to ill health, up from the 2.6m previously. They now think that since the start of the pandemic, long term sickness has risen by 33%, rather than the 24% previously, after a decade of mainly level or slightly falling numbers.

Really bad figures with huge long term implications, and according to the recent data, the rate of rise appears to be getting steeper. Covid is not done with us yet.

Or skiving seems to be on the increase.

[Danny]

Feb 5, 2024 9:45:54 GMT steve said:

Danny

When I suggested uniform public services to my kids as both their parents and both their grandparents and three of their cousins and uncles had been in civilian or military uniform services they looked at me as if I was bonkers.

They certainly need to be paid better but the Met Police degree scheme, that replaces the two year probation with a three year degree is pretty competitive, not enough to live on in London independently of course but £38000 pa at age 19 isn't bad.
It's better pay than an armed forces officer in training but the benefits, free or heavily discounted board and lodging in the armed forces are better.
Those benefits have now gone for Met Officers which is the primary reason they can't recruit.

You seem to be saying that the police are going the same way as the whole rest of government services, cut pay until people will no longer do the job, and force privatisation by failure of services.

As it happens I was looking into another family which had a tradition in the metropolitain police, where three genertions served in the 19th century. I was reading an article about pay at that period, where it was described (informlly) as 'a retainer' where officers were expected to make up that pay with payments from the public when they carried out a service affecting them. So officer comes to investigate your burglary and catches someone, you pay him. The hierachy believed performance pay was how to get results. The obvious problem is guilt is besides the point, its convictions which count, and this long tradition has persisted to today.

[Danny]

Feb 5, 2024 10:43:27 GMT @fecklessmiser said:

Feb 5, 2024 9:19:47 GMT Danny said:

If you want to make pensions affordable again, encourage everyone to smoke and start the younger the better. Let all the disabled die as they used to well before claiming a pension. Get rid of the home helps and the central heating so those pensioners freeze to death and starve because they cant look after themselves.

The reason there are so many registered sick people is because we are keeping them alive longer!

Just reposted this to highlight what remarkably ugly things you post on here.

Its true, you know. I dont see anyone seeking to refute it, just complaining about how the world really is. Life expectancy has soared in the last 100 years, and its exactly because we spend more of national wealth on keeping people alive longer. Obviously that means the average population is sicker, because in the past its those who would just have died earlier.

Alec complained there are more sick people because we are not spending enough on health, or doing eough to reduce risk which amounts to the same thing because it adds cost, whereas the truth is there are more sick people exactly because we are spending more on health.

Feb 5, 2024 10:54:13 GMT wb61 said:

Feb 5, 2024 10:43:27 GMT @fecklessmiser said:

Just reposted this to highlight what remarkably ugly things you post on here.

That is just astonishing: to follow that logic why don't we just return to life in a state of nature when everyone can die before they are forty years old. I am glad I have blocked @danny as such misanthropy is truly scary.

If you blocked me then I doubt you will get the context of the comment, which was replying to alec. In a state of nature we would not all die below 40 and never did. In particular the rich still enjoyed long lives, but the intrinsicly luckiest in the genetic lottery also lived longest and thats how our species evolves. What we have done is encourage those physiologically imperfect to survive longer and reproduce. Whether thats good or bad depends on your viewpoint, but we are adapting to the changing conditions around us where life is much easier and there are medical props to keep us alive. Its not at all surprising there are more unhealthy people still alive.

It does all illustrate the health gap between rich and poor, and how this is another metric of our deliberate choice in society to make the rich richer, not just in money but also lived years.

Feb 5, 2024 11:22:51 GMT alec said:

Capitalism didn't go along with pensions, welfare payments, health & safety, education etc etc for nothing. Victorian industrialists came to understand that as soon as we reached the point where we needed a cadre of more productive, better educated workers to make their industries function, the old 'survival of the fittest' mentality of a disposable workforce became counter productive. It was enlightened industrialists who promoted better working conditions, decades before the Labour Party was born, because they knew it made economic sense in the bigger picture.

and yet the government services including strict working standards we are today most proud of only came about after ordinary people achieved political power. Nothing has changed, the owners of capital still have tunnel vision that their only concern is to maximise profits. Bill Gates has given a vast amount to health and welfare, but only after he almost accidentally became one of the richest men in the world. Similarly Victorian quakers in particular believed it was their moral duty to use their wealth to help the poor, which definitely included their own workers. And you are right, there was a big chunk of self interest here, improving the health of their own workers, not those of rival companies! Dont forget the slave owners who became fabulously wealthy on the back of slave labour, and only gave it up kicking and screaming and in the case of the british empire, being paid the market value in compensation for their lost slaves. Political pressure from the less rich caused that change.

The reason why we need government level action and legislation to apply such improvements to all, is that while more enlightened working structures and social support is far better for employers over the longer term, in the short term, those who cut corners gain an advantage, so unless that advantage is closed down by law, the better companies are unable to take over the marketplace and force standards to rise everywhere.

While yes I can see there is benefit in keeing your workers healthy, but the pretty unanimous decision has always been its just easier to hire some more if they die. It still is, thats what we are doing today encouraging immigration, especially skilled immigration.

I think he's one of the few posters on here who posts deliberately inflammatory material for his own kicks. The rest of us are at least trying to make a fist of an intelligent discussion. Sadly, it does pollute the board.

I post things I believe to be true. Here we have a good example, where I post a truth about the world which is deemed distasteful, and rather than enter into an intelligent discussion, those who dont like it start making disparaging comments. Its 'shoot the messenger' again.

[alec]

@danyinexile - "Life expectancy has soared in the last 100 years, and its exactly because we spend more of national wealth on keeping people alive longer. Obviously that means the average population is sicker, because in the past its those who would just have died earlier.

Alec complained there are more sick people because we are not spending enough on health, or doing eough to reduce risk which amounts to the same thing because it adds cost, whereas the truth is there are more sick people exactly because we are spending more on health."

Completely wrong, on all counts. We live longer primarily because we've tackled infectious diseases, along with food safety and environmental dangers, and these no longer kill people in anything like the same number. Medicine has contributed a very small fraction of the life extension. You don't know what you are talking about I'm afraid. And no, I didn't complain that there are more sick people because we're not spending enough on health - are you so thick that you've forgotten that this is what you are saying? What I'm saying is that since 2020 there has been a new disease that has directly and indirectly killed and sickened people, and we are now seeing those consequences.


You must have the memory of a goldfish if you're forgotten that.

[Danny]

Feb 5, 2024 11:28:16 GMT domjg said:

Covid (the pandemic rather than a specific case of the disease) seems to have deranged him and since then he seems to have more and more of a need to get a reaction through provocation. 

As to covid, I happened to be one of the earliest people infected with the disease back in 2019. Not that I or anyone else realised this at the time, it was just another winter flu. Its only in retrospect it became obvious Hastings was one of the earliest places to catch covid and had got over it well before most of the nation caught it, or the national lockdown began.

The importance of this is that it demonstrated there was little point to that lockdown. It was incredibly expensive but the return for all that money in terms of lives saved was minimal. The world took leave of its senses trying to outdo everyone else in looking good through taking action, pointlessly. It became the ultimate political show of good faith, which at the time saw support for government soar, but many people now realise it was a terible mistake.

Sweden did the right thing, did not impose lockdown and got better results than most equivalent nations, 2/3 the deaths of the UK. And yet there too the authorities saw a backlash against the government for their inaction compared to others. They did the right think, did not restrict liberty or run up such huge bills, but then took a political hit for following the better course of doing less. So at least short term, all those other governments took the correct political action to squander national wealth but thereby buy votes. Now the rearguard action is to prevent those voters realising how much they were deceived.

[Danny]

Feb 6, 2024 7:46:02 GMT alec said:

@danyinexile - "Life expectancy has soared in the last 100 years, and its exactly because we spend more of national wealth on keeping people alive longer. Obviously that means the average population is sicker, because in the past its those who would just have died earlier.

Alec complained there are more sick people because we are not spending enough on health, or doing eough to reduce risk which amounts to the same thing because it adds cost, whereas the truth is there are more sick people exactly because we are spending more on health."

Completely wrong, on all counts. We live longer primarily because we've tackled infectious diseases, along with food safety and environmental dangers, and these no longer kill people in anything like the same number.

Then you are actually agreeing with me, we spent more on health. Makes no difference if that was spent on providing uncontaminated drinking water, its still spending on health. But I would agree with you some of the most cost effective spending is such as that, providing clean water, safe and sufficient food and decent housing.

When you start trying to close down the entire UK econony to stop a few people catching a very infectious disease not dangerous to the great majority, then insanity has descended upon us.

[neilj]

Awkward