Robin-H

Yes, I appreciate it would not be easy to provide that level of service through the NHS. However, I was responding to a comment that was implying that business involvement lowers patient care. I don't believe that to be true.

I have been treated in the NHS and at the BMI Thornbury, which is a private hospital, (although through the NHS, so I didn't pay for either). Whilst the treatment at both was excellent, the facilities, level of attention, food, hospitality, etc etc was of a much higher standard at the Thornbury Hospital. I saw no evidence at all that letting business in has caused the level of patient care to suffer, indeed it was quite the opposite.

The quote is from the Tory manifesto, but your interpretation of the quote is incorrect. They are saying that they want 80% of trade to be covered by FTA within 3 years. Why do you think that means binning 20% of the UK trade? Do you think 100% of UK trade is currently done under FTAs?

I think you have to use them for at least 7-10 years for it to be the same (and then better) than getting a live Christmas Tree, although even then how you dispose of it remains an issue as it should be recycled. Unfortunately a lot of people replace their artificial trees more regularly than that, (and they then end up in landfill) although I don’t know what the average time is across the UK. I would hope it’s more than 10 years.

And the environmental cost of those are....?

Whilst technically true, that's a rather alarming way of looking at it. When the manifestoes are put together, nobody knows which party is going to get the most votes. It therefore behoves every party to make sure their manifesto is as accurate as possible. It seems like you're suggesting that parties that don't stand a chance of winning can just fill their manifesto with claptrap and rubbish. I hope you don't think that.

I don't have a 'favourite' misleading half truth, from any manifesto.

"When the Labour party, announced its new policy to nationalise Openreach and roll out full fibre broadband nationwide, it incorrectly said the cost of maintaining the network would be £230 million a year. This was based on a misreading of analysis and Labour has since corrected the figure to estimate operating costs would be around £580 million per year." https://fullfact.org/election-2019/labour-broadband-maintenance/ This is still the lowest estimate, which ranges from £580m to £1.1b a year. Still no explanation where the cost of paying the £800m in salaries on top of that is coming from.

From whose manifesto? I imagine you are only interested when it's done by the Tory Party.

If you believe that to be justification for the payout to the WASPI women, why is it going to such a narrow group of people. Women older than the WASPI age bracket would have suffered the same discrimination, if not even worse. Where is their payout? What about those younger? Ethnic minorities, gay people, the disabled. Where is their payout to right historic (and ongoing) discrimination? Just like every manifesto from every political party from every election ever then.

Plus all the other legalisation that has been brought in, such as the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Race Relations Act 1976, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003, the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, the Equality Act 2006, Part 2 the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007. Men's retirement age has been increased. My retirement age went up by 3 years 'in one go'. Nobodies retirement age went up by 6 years in one go. There may be a six year difference between what they thought and the new age, but that's because they didn't check their retirement age for over 16 years.

Can you provide a link? I can't see anywhere where it states the word rescued, but you've implied you are quoting something. What are you quoting?

Is that what it means? If they say they aim to have 80% of UK trade covered by free trade agreements within the next three years, and you say that means binning 20% of UK trade deals, that means that we currently have 100% of trade covered by free trade agreements at the the moment. That isn't true.

Yes, but the majority of those changes (the rise to 65) were advertised back in 1995. The further rise by one year was announced in 2011. The pension age when you last checked was 60, but that does mean that you didn't check your pension age since before 1995, as if you did it would have told you that it was no longer 60. My pension age used to be 65. It is now 68 (and likely to increase). If I hadn't checked my pension age, I could have got to 65 and been in for a shock. Does the government owe me money too?

So the ads are targeted. You're right to say it's the people paying for the adverts that decide where they're targeted, rather than Facebook themselves, but I'm not wrong to say that they are targeted.

Aren't Facebook ads targeted, so that people receive adverts that Facebook thinks would interest them?

The Tories have already announced £1b in extra funding to mitigate people who were worst affected. Saying people are going to be 'impoverished' because of an 18 month delay to getting a state pension (a pension which is much more generous than it was when they were originally going to be getting it...) is hyperbole. The changes were announced in 1995 (and got quite a bit of media coverage). It should not have come out of the blue. I appreciate that despite this, some women were not aware of the changes, and a Parliamentary Committee concluded that more could have been done to make those affected by the changes more aware, but that was mainly a failing of the previous Labour government as letters didn't really get sent out until 2009, and very little direct communication was done between 1997-2010. A lot more has been done since then, but of course as the date is closer, there is less time to prepare.

The decision was made in 1993 (and made law in 1995) to address to the inequality between the fact that women retired earlier and lived longer, and so received more generous pensions in total than men. Don't you think the pension age should be equalised?

Why isn't Labour working out how much in benefits people have missed out on since these were frozen, or how much the public sector workers have missed out on since their wages were frozen, add it all up, and pay them back everything that has been 'taken' from them? They had much less notice, as the main pension changes were announced in 1995. What's the difference?

https://www.tutor2u.net/economics/blog/is-qe-a-magic-money-tree "I think that many A level students would agree that QE can be quite hard to get their heads around. It's a help when they realise that it is not a process of 'printing money', as many journalists have described it since 2009."

So it's an extra £11.6 billion a year that wasn't in their manifesto. Governments need to prioritise where money is spent, as (most) governments realise that you can't just borrow hundreds and hundreds of billions of pounds ad infinitum without harsh economic consequences. I'm not sure that given the figures involved this should be a priority. There could be a middle ground.

Is it over 20-30 years? Labour said it would make individual payments of an average of £15,380 to the 3.7 million women it claims were affected, with some payouts as high as £31,300. It doesn't suggest these would be spread out over 30 years unless they've just not mentioned that detail..

Which weirdly wasn’t in their manifesto...which is quite a big hole when it’s £58b.

This was the IFS analysis back from when they proposed it in their 2017 manifesto. "The tax revenue that Labour’s proposal would raise is highly uncertain. If no one changed their behaviour in response, it would raise around £7 billion per year. But some of those affected would respond by reducing their taxable incomes, reducing the amount raised. The size of the response is highly uncertain and the revenue raised is highly sensitive to the size of the response. Labour expects the policy to raise in the region of £4.5 billion per year. Based on the available evidence this looks a little on the optimistic side, but it is entirely possible. However, it is also possible that the policy would raise nothing." The amount it would raise seems to be between nothing and £4.5 billion.

I understand that, but with regards to what was being the discussed (the super rich) a £12,000 profit limit is nothing. You can't make more than £12,000 profit a year from the sale of shares before having to pay tax. Yes, you could liquidate a large number of shares and pay little to no tax, but you can't liquidate a large value of shares without paying tax, unless that value is less than £12,000 more than you paid for it, which isn't going to help the super rich much.