The Conservative Party - Part Two.

[Delbow 699]

9 minutes ago, Tony said:

@delbow okay, thanks. So you like Conservative policies, but you think they should use public sector employees instead of private sector employees. 

 

Is that about the size of it?

Not really. I think the funding of public services should be for the explicit benefit of the public. Therefore, funding for health should go towards improving health outcomes across the board, not improving the share price of private companies with some marginal, tangential impact on health outcomes. Cygnet and Cambian are really good examples of this - they provide private psychiatric hospitals at eye watering costs per night. Simultaneously, the capacity in NHS psychiatric inpatient services has steadily reduced over the years (including during the Blair government). So now, health trusts shell out huge sums of money to place people detained under the Mental Health Act in private hospitals, because they have a legal obligation to find somewhere. And yet the private hospitals are free to refuse such placements if they think the person may be hard work, meaning some people are not admitted until weeks after being assessed. You could pump more money into that system, but the end result could just be price gouging by Cygnet and Cambian with marginal benefit to people in need of services. Or you could directly fund an increase in NHS capacity so that health trusts don't have to pay people solely to look for beds in expensive private hospitals.

[harvey19 541]

3 hours ago, Delbow said:

Not really. I think the funding of public services should be for the explicit benefit of the public. Therefore, funding for health should go towards improving health outcomes across the board, not improving the share price of private companies with some marginal, tangential impact on health outcomes. Cygnet and Cambian are really good examples of this - they provide private psychiatric hospitals at eye watering costs per night. Simultaneously, the capacity in NHS psychiatric inpatient services has steadily reduced over the years (including during the Blair government). So now, health trusts shell out huge sums of money to place people detained under the Mental Health Act in private hospitals, because they have a legal obligation to find somewhere. And yet the private hospitals are free to refuse such placements if they think the person may be hard work, meaning some people are not admitted until weeks after being assessed. You could pump more money into that system, but the end result could just be price gouging by Cygnet and Cambian with marginal benefit to people in need of services. Or you could directly fund an increase in NHS capacity so that health trusts don't have to pay people solely to look for beds in expensive private hospitals.

A small addition to your post is that a  large mental hospital at Middlewood   closed whilst the population increased.

 

Edited November 23, 2021 by harvey19

[El Cid 216]

4 hours ago, Tony said:

The Conservatives have increased the tax take to the highest it's been in 70 years

Not using it wisely though, are they?

Not funding local councils, police and social care, so where is it all going?

They are borrowing the most, since the 1960s; debt repayments are £25 billion per year!

The UK recorded the fourth-largest rise in government borrowing among 35 large economies last year.

If we had an election looming, it would be a Conservative tax bombshell on the horizon.

[butlers 260]

Now former local Tory councilor pays damages for defamation.

 

BBC News - Liverpool bomb: Jeremy Corbyn gets damages over fake photo tweet
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-59391582

[The Joker 10]

23 minutes ago, butlers said:

Now former local Tory councilor pays damages for defamation.

 

BBC News - Liverpool bomb: Jeremy Corbyn gets damages over fake photo tweet
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-59391582

Dishonourable Tory scumbag.  I'd have more respect for him if he'd doubled-down on the defamation . . . and lost his home in the process.  I'd have chucked him a few bob when he's homeless.

[RJRB 688]

5 hours ago, Tony said:

Help me out here then.

 

The Conservatives have increased the tax take to the highest it's been in 70 years, are nationalising whole swathes of industry, have pumped endless amounts of cash into healthcare, given social care it's first defined funding policy in I don't know how long. Gay marriage. Gender recognition. Carbon reduction commitments enshrined in law. Pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Basically, Johnson and his forebears have stolen all of Labour's policies and ideology and you don't like it.

 

So what should they be doing when they aren't stealing Labour policy?

The “Socialist”policies adopted by this government have been forced upon them by circumstances that no one could have foreseen.

At heart there is no change in their beliefs.

Many of the issues that have had to be addressed to some extent result from severe cuts across all public services during their reign of austerity.

As for the levelling up rhetoric...the gap between the have and have nots gets ever wider.

We have the weakest and least experienced Cabinet that I have experienced.

Hancock should have gone for many reasons long before his sacking and Patel is all words and no substance.

Bad decisions leading to inevitable U turns have happened too often.

Over promising and under delivering is Johnson’s modus operandi.

So what should they be doing?

Showing some sign of achieving their election pledges I would say

[Anna B 1,414]

5 hours ago, Delbow said:

The funding of public services looks good if you don't look too close. If you look a bit harder, you see that the funding goes through public services and into the pockets of the people the Tories really represent, i.e. large companies. All that extra money for the NHS is largely going to end up with Virgin Health, Alliance, Cygnet, etc. Which wouldn't be so bad if we got good value from that, but the Covid procurement fiasco has shown how little the government care about value for taxpayers. It's a way of giving money to corporations and friends of the Tory party while looking like they believe in public services. Also "whole swathes of industry"? It's not, is it. And the funding policy for social care is nowhere near what is needed and relies on a future government shifting large sums of money from the NHS to social care, which isn't going to happen. There is no long term commitment to social care funding from this government.

I so agree with this. I have been dealing with some of these companies and they are a disgrace.  An eyewateringly expensive fiasco of a disgrace. 

[Tony 10]

19 hours ago, El Cid said:

Not using it wisely though, are they?

Not funding local councils, police and social care, so where is it all going?

They are borrowing the most, since the 1960s; debt repayments are £25 billion per year!

The UK recorded the fourth-largest rise in government borrowing among 35 large economies last year.

If we had an election looming, it would be a Conservative tax bombshell on the horizon.

Very well observed El Cid. The shift to the left has certainly coincided with massive spending increases without corresponding efficiency improvements. Sunak was showing some promise at being a change driven chancellor but that star is fading fast right now. That said, it's hardly a new problem but the Tories are expected  to find improvements instead of throwing money at the wall. Unless something changes soon I'm pretty certain that BJ won't be the next UK PM, but it won't be a Labour PM either. Quite who's sitting right now in the Conservative ranks with both capability and support to replace BJ is a mystery. Javid maybe?

18 hours ago, RJRB said:

The “Socialist”policies adopted by this government have been forced upon them by circumstances that no one could have foreseen.

At heart there is no change in their beliefs.

Many of the issues that have had to be addressed to some extent result from severe cuts across all public services during their reign of austerity.

As for the levelling up rhetoric...the gap between the have and have nots gets ever wider.

We have the weakest and least experienced Cabinet that I have experienced.

Hancock should have gone for many reasons long before his sacking and Patel is all words and no substance.

Bad decisions leading to inevitable U turns have happened too often.

Over promising and under delivering is Johnson’s modus operandi.

So what should they be doing?

Showing some sign of achieving their election pledges I would say

Yes. That.

 

Circumstances are, as you quite rightly say, somewhat forced at the moment. That's no excuse for repeated poor handling of what appear to the outside world to be straightforward problems with straightforward, if occasionally unpalatable, solutions. There's a couple of years until the next election and unless they machinegun successes in teh last 6-12 months they are going to be speaking to the DUP again.

[the_bloke 17]

19 hours ago, butlers said:

Now former local Tory councilor pays damages for defamation.

 

BBC News - Liverpool bomb: Jeremy Corbyn gets damages over fake photo tweet
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-59391582

Didn't even go to court, so presumably the legal costs is just paying Corbyn's solicitor for the letter saying 'please take it down'.

 

It's quite clear it's satire and parody and would have been thrown out of court IMO.

[Anna B 1,414]

3 hours ago, the_bloke said:

Didn't even go to court, so presumably the legal costs is just paying Corbyn's solicitor for the letter saying 'please take it down'.

 

It's quite clear it's satire and parody and would have been thrown out of court IMO.

Corbyn got 'substancial damages' (which he has given to charity) as well as costs. 

 

I just wish he'd done it sooner when it mattered.  Never has a man been so successfully smeared 

[Mister M 1,624]

On 05/11/2021 at 23:37, sibon said:

Let's move the debate on from obviously corrupt Tory mps and their enablers in Government.

 

Is Nadine Dorries fit for office? 

 

 

 

 

Dozy Dorries is back in the headlines again. Not for eating an ostrich anus on TV, but for this pearler in front of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee :

 

Addressing how the government is considering selling off the channel after opening a public consultation into its future, Dorries said: “I would argue that to say that, just because Channel 4′s been established as a public service broadcaster and just because it’s in receipt of public money, we should never audit the future of Channel 4 and we should never evaluate how Channel 4 looks in the future and whether or not it’s a sustainable and viable model.

“It’s quite right that the government should do that.”

 

Fellow Tory MP Damien Green then frowned and said: “Channel 4 is not like the BBC it’s not in receipt of license fee money.”

Channel 4 does not receive any public funding but relies on its commercial activities, mostly its advertising revenue.

 

She replied: “And...so... though it’s...yeah and that...”

 

 

Dorries is one of the leading figures who will decide the future of Channel 4 in the upcoming months.

 

 

[altus 540]

  

6 hours ago, Tony said:

Your gymnastic efforts are to be applauded but you're still utterly wrong since I did not "certainly defended him from having to face the consequences of his actions".

People can look back through this thread and form their own opinion about that.

 

Quote

Look, I appreciate that you're struggling to make mud stick here but if we keep to the topic in hand rather than what you mistakenly think I think (at which I am the World's acknowledged expert)  you might have more success at having a friendly, fulfilling and enlightening discussion instead of these continual rebuttals that have to follow your nonsense statement.

The reason I've been trying to guess what you think is because you repeatedly fail to answer questions about topics relevant to the discussion.

 

Quote

Come on Altus, let's give it a go. I'll try to get it back to a basic principle that we can hopefully agree on. 

 

Should MPs be held to the same standards as everyone else, and enjoy the same employment privileges as everyone else?

 

 

(Yes, I know you know that technically they are self-employed, but let's keep it simple for this purpose)

Members of the armed forces aren't "held to held to the same standards as everyone else, and enjoy the same employment privileges as everyone else".

 

Members of the security services aren't "held to the same standards as everyone else, and enjoy the same employment privileges as everyone else".

 

MPs aren't either.

 

We can't "keep it simple for this purpose" because it's fundamentally not simple. You can't ignore the additional duties, responsibilities and especially power MPs have when deciding how they should be treated employment wise - any more than you can for members of the security services or armed forces.

 

MPs are currently treated differently from ordinary citizens, as are some other people. If you want to argue they should be treated the same as ordinary citizens you need to make a case why the status quo should change. You don't get to claim things should be different without explaining why and then claim its up to other people to explain why not.