Current Affairs The General Election

[abelard]

Maybe it's better if it is sold off bit by bit?

Then it would be shaped and improved by market forces rather than by clumsy Government dictate.

We let the free market provide other basic societal needs: food, shelter, power & energy, and on the whole it does an excellent job of it to every level of society. Perhaps its time we look at giving the free market a proper go at providing our basic healthcare.

Feel free to call me all sorts of unprintable names under the sun, but this is the sort of mature discussion the country needs to have if they really want to improve the quality of health in the country.

Ah yes, always good to hear from the @Bruce Wayne's 'Portrait of Dorian Grey', which he keeps safely hidden in the attic.

 

[evilwebby]

Ah yes, always good to hear from the @Bruce Wayne's 'Portrait of Dorian Grey', which he keeps safely hidden in the attic.

haa.. if you actually take time to read the complete diatribe that you have spouted all over this thread...

 

[tsubaki]

I dispute this notion of 'decades of savage cuts' though. Welfare spending in the halcyon days of the Atlee government was around 2% of GDP. Now it's 6%, which, incidentally, is about what it was in the first 5 years of the Blair government.

Which is a bit of a misleading comparison - Attlee ran a country where the cost of living was much less, with a younger and fitter population that remained in family groups more and one where there was plenty of stable and secure (relative to now) work.

People could live on what they were paid, which although they’d be understood as dirt poor nowadays they would not have considered themselves as such.

Now on the other hand we have an older population, with more health and care issues, with families less able to look after them (because of work and other pressures), with much less stable and secure employment and a much higher cost of living. This means the state has to support them via WTCs, HB, CB, care packages and so on in ways that Attlee never had to.

To cope with that requires more money, more than Blair or governments since were able to supply. The result is that personal debt has skyrocketed, spending on welfare has gone up and the situation for those in receipt of it has gotten worse, because of all the pressures on what the money has to do.

This to me is one of the main reasons to support Labour - by reducing the cost of living (remember housing and transport costs are a big chunk of that) you should reduce the amount needed to keep that person afloat, which should eventually reduce the welfare bill.

 

[abelard]

That's precisely what it refers to, as both the SMC and Joseph Rowntree Foundation use relative poverty, not absolute poverty when creating their statistics.

They define poverty as 'not being able to heat your home, pay your rent, or buy the essentials for your children. It means waking up every day facing insecurity, uncertainty, and impossible decisions about money. It means facing marginalisation – and even discrimination – because of your financial circumstances. The constant stress it causes can lead to problems that deprive people of the chance to play a full part in society.'

What is poverty?

Poverty is when your resources are well below your minimum needs.

www.jrf.org.uk

They define 'relative poverty' as 'where households have less than 60% of contemporary median income'.

The median household income in the UK is £29,400.

If you are earning less than 60% of that, (£17,600) and trying to raise children then it is very likely that you encounter much of what they describe above.

 

[abelard]

We let the free market provide other basic societal needs: food, shelter, power & energy, and on the whole it does an excellent job of it to every level of society.

The Trussell Trust - Latest Stats

Twice a year we release stats about the number of emergency food supplies given to people in crisis by Trussell Trust foodbanks.

www.trusselltrust.org

"1.6 million: The number of three-day emergency food supplies given to people in crisis by Trussell Trust food banks in the financial year 2018-2019."

Number of homeless children at Christmas to be highest in 12 years

More than 4,000 children set to lose their homes between now and Christmas day, says Shelter

www.independent.co.uk

"The number of children set to be homeless this Christmas is the highest in 12 years, with 135,000 youngsters currently without a home or living in temporary accommodation, new figures show."

Try again.

 

[evilwebby]

If you make something cheaper you increase the demand for it. Personal debt has rocketed because the cost of that debt has been greatly reduced. Who'd have thought that market forces are actually at work in the real world like that, eh? Unintended consequences...

 

[abelard]

If you make something cheaper you increase the demand for it. Personal debt has rocketed because the cost of that debt has been greatly reduced. Who'd have thought that market forces are actually at work in the real world like that, eh? Unintended consequences...

It would appear that deliberately contracting the economy at the height of the worst recession in 80 years, which forced to BoE to gut interest rates in order to keep the whole mess afloat, and which dramatically increased demand for personal debt, was a bad idea.

 

[abelard]

Next time I'm doing a shift at the Samaritans and someone's crying down the phone telling me they can't afford to pay their rent and feed their kids, I'll just tell them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and buy a cookbook.

Or try explaining that their poverty is only 'relative'

 

[Billy Dean]

Maybe it's better if it is sold off bit by bit?

Then it would be shaped and improved by market forces rather than by clumsy Government dictate.

We let the free market provide other basic societal needs: food, shelter, power & energy, and on the whole it does an excellent job of it to every level of society. Perhaps its time we look at giving the free market a proper go at providing our basic healthcare.

Feel free to call me all sorts of unprintable names under the sun, but this is the sort of mature discussion the country needs to have if they really want to improve the quality of healthcare in the country.

it would be a disaster.

 

[Eggs]

...what an own goal from Labour keeping Corbyn. A liability, a millstone. Politicians from all sides saying he’s an ‘issue on the doorstep’ and yet the likes of Andy Burnham felt he was better getting out of a Westminster.

Ridiculous.

 

[JimmyJeffers]

...what an own goal from Labour keeping Corbyn. A liability, a millstone. Politicians from all sides saying he’s an ‘issue on the doorstep’ and yet the likes of Andy Burnham felt he was better getting out of a Westminster.

Ridiculous.

Never been keen on Burnham. His eyebrows unsettle me.

 

[Hickson9]

Maybe it's better if it is sold off bit by bit?

Then it would be shaped and improved by market forces rather than by clumsy Government dictate.

We let the free market provide other basic societal needs: food, shelter, power & energy, and on the whole it does an excellent job of it to every level of society. Perhaps its time we look at giving the free market a proper go at providing our basic healthcare.

Feel free to call me all sorts of unprintable names under the sun, but this is the sort of mature discussion the country needs to have if they really want to improve the quality of healthcare in the country.

We're driving thousands of species to extinction and heating the planet up to levels where unthinkable things might happen - due to "market forces".

What is the best treatment for a person's health doesn't fit with making profit due to the inherent monopolies (i.e. lack of choice in "best treatment").

 

[dwightschrute]

Genuine disgrace the smear campaign this man has faced.

I really dont know how hes managed to carry on and kept his head up from the s**** hes faced since the day he won the leadership

For all I'd prefer McDonnell as leader as he's clearly more intelligent and politically savvy than Corbyn, I dont think anyone other than Corbyn could still show the integrity and caring in that video where you can tell he means every word

 

[catcherintherye]

Maybe it's better if it is sold off bit by bit?

Then it would be shaped and improved by market forces rather than by clumsy Government dictate.

We let the free market provide other basic societal needs: food, shelter, power & energy, and on the whole it does an excellent job of it to every level of society. Perhaps its time we look at giving the free market a proper go at providing our basic healthcare.

Feel free to call me all sorts of unprintable names under the sun, but this is the sort of mature discussion the country needs to have if they really want to improve the quality of healthcare in the country.

But the free market systems have not made things better. They are more expensive, clunky, inefficient and lacking in any degree of democratic control to give any degree of accountability.

Anyone who has been subjected to Southern's use of the railways would be very hard pressed to tell me any nationalised industry, in any country (pick the worst example) would be inferior to the shambolic service they offer.

The same is true for the NHS. We fund it far less than he privatised US model, and it provides far better outcomes.

The only possible reason to make the change is not for better service, but is for ideological reasons. You have a bunch of politicians who slavishly believe privatising things is the solution to all ills, irrespective of any amount of evidence that disproves it to the contrary. They are aware it's a fallacy as they won't have the debate on said terrain, so they obscure it by talking about costa coffee, or floursists. It's a dishonest way to conduct the debate.

I would have more respect for politicians who told the truth,not only ethically will people be unable to afford to use the NHS if it's fully privatised, but also the services will be a lot worse and it will cost us all a lot more money. However big drug companies, shareholders and in all likelihood Conservative Politicians will benefit out of such a sale. Then let people decide what they want. If people are happy to have that, then the public get's what it wants.

Lets end the fallacies and misinformation about privatisation and what it means though. It means a more expensive service, for a far poorer quality product, and the gap in between those things benefit shareholders who make money out of the reduction in quality via profits.

 

[Charro]

Those are cliches fed to you by the Labour comms team. My wife works with a large number of families on the breadline, and for them, learning how to eat well on a budget is an effective intervention, but such things have become demonised by the left because they've put the poor on such a pedestal that the only thing missing in their life is money to help them overcome the horribleness of the system. It's utter drivel.

You see it in the school figures, as migrants and ethnic minorities often have just as many financial challenges as white natives, yet do far better at school. That's ignored though because it's a bit too much like pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps. It's the same with adult education, as pretty much all the research suggests the biggest barrier to engagement isn't a lack of money or a lack of opportunity, but a sense that education is not for them and they can get nothing meaningful out of it. Will Labour's 'national education service' factor that in, or will it simply regurgitate the LSAs from the 90s that flopped?

You are horrendously out of touch.

I worked in welfare for two years. Universal credit was designed to put people into poverty and keep them there.

What good is teaching somebody too cook, when they have to wait six weeks for a first payment on UC and struggle to even buy food? Who would even teach this?

Go outside, have a look at what's around you instead of thinking the answer to everything is through numbers and articles in the economist.