Politics Thread!

[gravy]

Regardless you've backed up your latest view with a poll published in the daily mail before the announcement of Coulson's guilt or Cameron's apology which cost taxpayers money.

Cameron's apology cost taxpayers money how? The main costs to the public in all this were the Leveson inquiry and Coulson's trial. Are you suggesting one or those should not have happened?

You know about some of the charges against Coulson are being retrialed in part due to Cameron's apology?

EDIT: ah I've got that wrong. Cameron had censure from the Judge but the retrial is because the jury couldn't come to a verdict

[VNVObit]

EDIT: ah I've got that wrong. Cameron had censure from the Judge but the retrial is because the jury couldn't come to a verdict

I made that mistake too

Regardless you've backed up your latest view with a poll published in the daily mail before the announcement of Coulson's guilt or Cameron's apology which cost taxpayers money.

Cameron's apology cost taxpayers money how? The main costs to the public in all this were the Leveson inquiry and Coulson's trial. Are you suggesting one or those should not have happened? And they were not due to any statement/apology by the PM.

But I think you're really mistaken to think this will hurt Cameron politically. What little impact there might have been has been defused by his accepting responsibility and apologising. If anything he might see a boost from being able to put this behind him.

And yes, they're just polls. But the differences are so great that it's well beyond any plausible margin of error. Labour ignores them at their peril (though it's difficult to know what they can do at this point).

I'm not saying the poll is wrong just pointing out it predates the issues that we're talking about (i.e. Coulson being found guilty, the apology, etc.)

a more recent poll here gives a topline split of CON 35%, LAB 37%, LD 8%, UKIP 12% which would leave Conservatives short of their dream of a majority (though lead within margin of error).

Interesting what a few days makes

[gravy]

Don't worry guys, we're in safe hands!

https://vine.co/v/MUMdDLxlAeb

[merman]

Pogo, you are missing the point. If Cameron lied about the basis on which he employed Coulson, then voters should be concerned about else he is lying about.

Like privatisation of the NHS. 70% of new NHS contracts since 2011 have gone to private companies, which satisfies the World Health Organisation's definition of privatisation.

Next in the Big UK Sell-Off - cancer care and end-of-life care services, with vultures including Virgin Health looking to earn more than £700 million from such a deal.

[pogo]

It doesn't work like that though. People don't expect politicians to be completely open, honest and correct all the time. They don't expect it of people in general and especially not politicians. So it doesn't matter if Cameron got the details wrong of what he knew when hiring Coulson seven years ago. Or as much as it did matter Cameron's admitted he made a mistake and apologised.

The NHS does matter. So if the government says the NHS is safe in their hands and it turns out not to be people should pay attention. That's independent of how it's provided though. There's already a lot of private provision in the NHS and it generally should be done by whoever provides best service, including private firms.

We have an election soon. Labour have to decide what they'll focus on. What happened seven years ago between Coulson and Cameron. What % of NHS provision is public or private. Or how things will be better if they're elected.

[Darkflame]

Wanting to change the NHS reeks of insanity frankly. For the most part, other people should be changing towards our system.

People don't expect politicians to be completely open, honest and correct all the time.

Expect? No. But it is a judgment criteria. Theres "oh none of them are trustworthy" in a generic sense and "we have specific reason not to trust this guy" in the specific.

Personal things count and past things for something, its not just about future promises. Myself I dont trust anyone who implements Internet censorship, detains journalists on terrorism charges, and who has such a twisted view of reality that doing what your told when ordered too amounts to "admitting guilt" or for that mater, that reporting on two separate cases of spying is hypocritical.
I admit though, these things arnt such a big deal to many people.

[VNVObit]

Don't worry guys, we're in safe hands!

https://vine.co/v/MUMdDLxlAeb

here's the youtube version


frankly pathetic excuse

[KlaxonCow]

It's also, amusingly enough, entirely contradictory to a campaign that the Welsh government are currently running, encouraging people not to be negative or reticent about maths around children, as such bad attitudes could potentially rub off on them:



But I guess that's devolution for you. Now governments are able to send out mixed messages, have the right hand pay no attention to what the left hand is doing and contradict one another on so many new levels...

[Dio]

Can I just say, I asked my 6-year-old what 7x8 was and he got it right.

[VNVObit]

Steve Bell's take on the question of 7X8

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... steve-bell

[merman]

Cameron lied again. He says A&E departments are doing fine, the truth is waiting times are significantly higher in the last four years and most departments are struggling with lower staffing and reduced budgets.

It's the 66th anniversary of the NHS tomorrow. We need to vote the Tories out to make sure it exists in the future.

[Dio]

That's the big issue for the next election, for me. Fuck the cost of living crisis, ask everyone to look at what's happened in the last five years and vote whether or not you trust the Tories with the NHS.

[gravy]

That's the big issue for the next election, for me. Fuck the cost of living crisis, ask everyone to look at what's happened in the last five years and vote whether or not you trust the Tories with the NHS.

Yeah! But Labour! The Defecit they left! Labour! etc

[pogo]

Not sure if this has been posted before. It's meant to highlight the inadequacy of the US health system but at the same time shows how well our system is doing. The only category we do badly in is 'Healthy Lives' which I assume is down to still far too common problems with smoking, drinking and bad diets. But even that's not enough to drag down our overall ranking.

waiting times are significantly higher in the last four years and most departments are struggling with lower staffing and reduced budgets.

These are separate things. Money is short, so many parts of government are having to cope with reduced/tight budgets, lower staffing levels. But this doesn't automatically lead to worse outcomes; the NHS seems to be faring pretty well compared to other systems. There's a temptation on the left to think that spending more on health always leads to better outcomes but the evidence refutes this: look at the US, or health spending under Blair/Brown which increased dramatically but just led to richer nurses, managers and doctors.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6314301.stm

[gravy]

Hey! Pogo!

You were saying the government were doing a fantastic job increasing tax revenues by enforcing the rules.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/07 ... 1404467055

Was that based on these incorrect figures?