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I would imagine it is.
A lot of people "imagine" it is, thats the problem. Take the NHS for example, it is actually rather well regarded as a highly efficient organisation, far more efficient than most other countries health systems. I used to work in the NHS and my memory was actually working rather hard to deliver far better services than were actually realistically achievable within the budget. In fact I would say where I was working the biggest problem was burnout due to a general belief in its founding mission statement.
The problem with believing the myth of inefficiency is that every current political party talks about savings, it creates an atmosphere of never ending cuts, by rhetoric, intent and policy.
Government should be about providing the services that are essential and working out how to deliver them, not just assuming that cutting the budget is good and hey if life just keeps getting worse well **** it, we cut the budget so the oligarchs can horde even more money.
A lot of people "imagine" it is, thats the problem. Take the NHS for example, it is actually rather well regarded as a highly efficient organisation, far more efficient than most other countries health systems. I used to work in the NHS and my memory was actually working rather hard to deliver far better services than were actually realistically achievable within the budget.
When it comes to NHS I don't have to imagine it. I know people who work in NHS who do even less than I do.
People are not efficient and any excuse to not work they will find it, are you at 'work' now while spending time on this forum for example?
are you at 'work' now while spending time on this forum for example?
I mean, it is lunch time, here at least. And who cares what time it is if the job gets done when its supposed to be done.
And who cares what time it is if the job gets done when its supposed to be done.
Let's say I can get my job done in 5 hours a day leaving the other 3 not really doing much. And let's also say there are loads of people in that position in an organisation. Is that an efficient organisation from a cost perspective?
And who cares what time it is if the job gets done when its supposed to be done.
Let's say I can get my job done in 5 hours a day leaving the other 3 not really doing much. And let's also say there are loads of people in that position in an organisation. Is that an efficient organisation from a cost perspective?
I absolutely agree, but I can assure you that is not just a public sector issue.
When it comes to NHS I don't have to imagine it. I know people who work in NHS who do even less than I do.
Its still a highly efficient organisation and I think real knowledge of folk who work or have worked in it rather trumps your opinion
Another Reform councillor suddenly discovering that this gravy train isn't as easy as it looks from the terrace of his local Wetherspoons:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93knke95peo
Would be interesting to know how many councillors of different political flavours have stepped down in the same time period.
YouGov said: "Reform's meteoric rise to becoming comfortably the largest party in a hung parliament is driven by impressive performances right across the country - including in Scotland."
Reform have started to make inroads into London now too.
Four years is a long time in politics but it is becoming evermore obvious that a very fundamental shift has occurred in UK politics, this isn't a blip. Every single national opinion poll since mid-April has had Reform in the lead.
This is frankly terrifying. I know politics as usual is doing a terrible job right now but who is looking at these clowns thinking "* * * * it - what have a I got to lose?".
As numerous people have said, if Labour can't start doing something progressive and manage their PR, they're royally * * * *ed and so are we.
Why is * * * * shortening to *?
Dunno about nationally, but locally Labour have never had much of a showing, despite the town having one major employer, Westinghouse Brake & Signals, which one might have thought would be mostly Labour supporters, but it’s been Tory for decades, until recently when it’s swung largely to the Lib Dem’s, and Reform have gotten nowhere either.
Our former Tory MP went to Devizes, and I’ve no idea if she kept her seat there, and I don’t care much, either.
PR is exactly what we need . First past the post wil keep ConForm in power for decades.
The thing is, this rising support for Reform is coming off the back of Labour ****ing everything up. Farage has gone relatively quiet, most of the headlines about the party since they took control of councils has been negative and still they seem to be growing.
It's as if Starmer is leading the Labour party - and the country - through a minefield to try and clear a path to better times.
The thing is, this rising support for Reform is coming off the back of Labour ****ing everything up.
Exactly. Labour got in because the were the only slightly electable Party, not because people wanted them, they just wanted a change from the useless tories. Now we’ve found out Labour are much the same, cutting the pensioners £200 was an immediate sign that Labour hadnt got a clue how people felt. They may have done some good things since, but I cant name one. So next time it’ll be the Tories and Labour who people will not vote for, so anyone else in the election has a good chance as they are none of the above. Not that Reform deserve it, but the two main parties have shown they dont deserve many peoples vote, so it’ll be Reforms turn to mess things up further.
Politics in the UK has hit a low, and I cant see any way out of it in the next 10 years. The Tories are stuck in a rut with few, mostly old, failed, ideas, Labour dont seem to have any ideas, if they have, they are not getting that message across, and not inspiring people. Hopefully from this mess will emerge, eventually, some good politicians who are there for the Countries good, rather than what we have now with little direction, and even less thought about their policies consequences.
Labour got in as they weren’t Tory.
Reform will get in for not being Tory or Labour.
All Farage has to do is sit it out 🙁
Hopefully from this mess will emerge, eventually, some good politicians who are there for the Countries good, rather than what we have now with little direction, and even less thought about their policies consequences.
Wishful thinking,
I think that the next bunch of rich grifters be riding in on whatever populist horse they can find 🙂
I had an email yesterday letting me know that 7 million voters have the reading age of a 9 year old and statistically they were more likely to vote for people we don’t like.
Come the election we all need to stand as independents. I’m going to stand as a Rejoin candidate. I’ve got a nifty euro blue logo with an arrow pointing towards the mainland and the direction we must go.
A truly clear message.
Franchise candidates are welcome.
Labour got in as they weren’t Tory.
Reform will get in for not being Tory or Labour.
All Farage has to do is sit it out 🙁
This is a genuine risk. Especially, given their ability to spin, they start pointing out that Reform councils can't fix anything due to a lack of central government funding, which has been self evident for 15 years.
Yep, very likely to happen. Voted in Labour with hope of it being better after 14 years of tory shit but turns out it is pretty much the same (not surprisingly due to Labour Party lack of anything progressive at all) so give Reform a go as they are different. I haven't bothered to look at what the differences are but that doesn't matter, worth giving them go anyway especially as they hate immigrants who are clearly the cause of all the problems in my life.
I see Reform are trying to whip up a boycott of Redwell Brewery (Norwich) as they cancelled an event on them.
So that's Redwell Brewery of Norwich - they do home deliveries of beer (slightly pricey IMO, but worth it for this), so if you've got a barbecue planned or fancy trying some small brewery beer, give them a go perhaps.
These Reform ****ers need showing that the majority of us are decent folk who don't appreciate their brand of bigotry and prejudice.
These Reform ****ers need showing that the majority of us are decent folk who don't appreciate their brand of bigotry and prejudice.
Someone posted an 'event' called "Bikers for Britain" to a Harley Sportster facebook group which when you dug into it turned out to be joining a protest in Dover against ....... stuff (lots of AI images of lions roaring over white cliffs and Tommy Robinson, you get the idea).
Now, sportsters have a slightly rougher around the edges following* than other Harleys because they're not £40k+panniers like a road glide. So I fully expected to make a few comments then either get the boot or just show myself the door. So it was quite heartening to see it get torn to shreds.
*They're great people but I really don't fit in
Farage just got a slap. Not a physical one though, which will disappoint many.
Shadow armed forces minister Mark Francois has queried why, in a meeting about the defence of the country, reform hadn't bothered to turn up. The reason he said is because reform don't do defence.
Interesting little dig he got in there despite few actually sitting. More singling out of reform and farage as just a total shitshow and waste of space.
Interesting little dig he got in there despite few actually sitting. More singling out of reform and farage as just a total shitshow and waste of space.
He is - but the opposition have made the goalposts the full width of the pitch, raised the cross-bar to 30ft and left the goalie in the locker room.
Labour and Tory are making it so easy for him.
François is a running joke, though.
A pumped up little Brexiteer twunt in an irrelevant party. I doubt Fartage gives a fig.
It won't even register for 99.999% of people.
But...
Redwell Brewery (Norwich) for your summer beer needs...
👍
Reform: At it again.
This time one of their MP's could be looking for a new job shortly.
James McMurdock has had the whip removed . It was removed for some very dodgy business dealings, involving dormant companies receiving £70K in covid loans.
Companies with no assets, no employees, suddenly spring to life with their hand out.
Neither company has filed accounts or annual corporate filings at Companies house since the loans were paid. And looks like both are about to be stricken from their books because of it.
Add this to revelation(well, not surprising revelations thats for damn sure) that Farage himself has received £98K in gifts(aka bribery/corruption) since the beginning of this Parliament. Topping the list of MP's 'gifts' by quite a wide margin.
He removed himself from the whip, presumably jumping before he was pushed.
Farage is a creature of the establishment, he's trapped within the blairite paradigm along with everyone else. The labels given to him of "far right" and "fascist" are a complete joke, he's centre right at best. Everything comes back to immigration and Farages policy of net zero immigration is 20 years too late.
The revolution is coming. I'm well aware that people on here find the policies of reform abhorrent, I don't blame or dislike anyone for that. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I respect that. I'd only ask that everyone goes through the same process that I did of asking themselves 'why do I think and believe the things that I do'
If the answer is that the BBC/telegraph/Gb news/guardian/private eye/daily mail told you to think those things I beg you to think more deeply. All of mainstream media lies. I prefer my news/media to be openly biased, at least you know where you stand. Any media outlet that claims to be "unbiased and impartial" is lying. No such thing exists.
Best case scenario for me is that Farage and reform destroy our current two party system and from this emerges a proper left and right wing party. Centrist parties are a waste of time, the push and pull between left and right makes democracy work.
I'd only ask that everyone goes through the same process that I did of asking themselves 'why do I think and believe the things that I do'
I have never stopped doing that. And I find that Nigel Farage is a very useful reminder.
Just listening to Farage for a couple of minutes reminds me how much of an arsehole he is and how he has absolutely nothing to offer.
Good tip billabong 👍
You get a fair amount of stick on here ernie but personally I like your takes even though I disagree with a lot of them. It's clear you draw from many sources and then make up your own mind. I wish more people were like you.
I'm a Marxist billabong, and I have always throughout my life applied Karl Marx's favourite motto :
"De omnibus dubitandum"
I doubt absolutely everything, including everything from left-wing sources. It gets me labelled a contrarian by some but I'm not prepared to argue for anything which I can't be sure to be true. Rght-wingers don't have a complete monopoly over dishonesty.
But anyway yeah, that Nigel Farage is an arsehole. Listening to him convinced me of that.
including everything from left-wing sources.
To be fair it is often a case of genuine errors or sloppiness, not necessarily deliberate. It is something which we are all guilty of from time to time.
I've been reading this forum for a long time so I'm well aware of your political leanings ernie, I disagree pretty strongly but I respect what you say because it's sincere.
I read the guardian regularly and I see far too many people on here just regurgitating what they've read there. I feel like this is a big problem in modern society, people pick a team and stick to it no matter what. The real world isn't black and white, it's messy and complicated.
I'm happy to concede that Farage is an arsehole, many of the criticisms levelled at him are accurate and I'm far from his biggest fan. However, if an election was held tomorrow I'd vote for him. I don't believe that Farage will enact any of the changes that I personally feel are necessary to help everyone in our country, he's trapped in the old paradigm that is destroying us all. What he could do is shatter the current uniparty system that we are all trapped in. Both left and right deserve parties that represent their interests, we are clearly not getting that currently. IMO both Labour and Conservatives need to be destroyed, at this point they cannot be reformed. Can anyone honestly say that they think the main parties care about the common man? To put my tinfoil hat on for a moment it seems to me that no matter which party is in power the state serves the interests of big business and war. Will Farage change the status quo? probably not, he could be the catalyst for it though. That is my hope, perhaps it's a fools hope but at this point I don't see any other options.
Centrist parties are a waste of time, the push and pull between left and right makes democracy work.
My inclination is that the best way to preserve democracy is a coalition of all. Make the buggers negotiate and compromise.
Can anyone honestly say that they think the main parties care about the common man? To put my tinfoil hat on for a moment it seems to me that no matter which party is in power the state serves the interests of big business and war. Will Farage change the status quo? probably not, he could be the catalyst for it though.
And he could have the complete opposite effect to the one you say want. If voters decide to give Farage a punt, and it looks increasingly likely that they will, then a Reform government will be totally shambolic, Reform can't run a council never mind a national government.
What message will that send to voters? Possibly that the establishment parties are the safest to vote for whatever their failings.
It possibly won't mean that because the Tories, Labour, and LibDems, are now probably too discredited in the eyes of the electorate, in which case we don't need Farage to break the mould anyway, it's already broken, but it might mean that.
No good can ever come from voting for any party led by Nigel Farage.
Well, that’s an appropriate views number…
Can anyone honestly say that they think the main parties care about the common man?
Some of the MPs in the main parties care. But I have a feeling that Farage doesn’t care at all about the common man.
Farage's (known) income streams and lack of actual time spent in his constituency, the lack of time in Brussels when a MEP etc tells you all you need to know. He's a grifting shite who has learned that whipping up racist/xenophobic intolerance and leading on gullible voters is extremely lucrative.
The antics of McMurdock are just more of the same. They're crooks preying on prejudice and stupidity. But people just won't be told or even believe the evidence when it is presented to them.
Only about which common man will be serving his next pint
Nah he only does pints when he is trying to sell himself to the common man. By all accounts he is a wine drinker when he isnt having to pretend a connection with the plebs.
However, if an election was held tomorrow I'd vote for him. I don't believe that Farage will enact any of the changes that I personally feel are necessary to help everyone in our country, he's trapped in the old paradigm that is destroying us all. What he could do is shatter the current uniparty system that we are all trapped in. Both left and right deserve parties that represent their interests, we are clearly not getting that currently. IMO both Labour and Conservatives need to be destroyed, at this point they cannot be reformed
No need to destroy the parties; it's the system that needs to go. Some version of PR is what I'd like to see. I don't even mind if it's a hybrid, say 1/3 of seats for huge remapped constituencies and then the rest from PR.
Then you could have your protest vote without (hopefully) actually putting a **** like Farage into government - that would be disastrous, especially now Trump has shown the way to extend populist bullshit into massively damaging action while the true-believing nutters cheer him on. You could argue that he might become a power-broker depending on which coalition he forms after PR but I suspect the threat of being made a minister and having to work for a living would put him right off that
So over the last year since Sir Keir Starmer became Prime Minister we have gone from the likely scenario of the Tories forming a government after the next general election with help from Reform UK, to the likelihood of Nigel Farage forming a government with help from the Tories, to now the possibility of Reform forming a majority government without needing any help from anyone:
And this is against the backdrop of every single one of the 62 opinion polls since mid-April putting Reform UK in the lead.
Just over 12 months ago it wasn't even certain that Reform UK could win a single seat.
It turns out that Keir Starmer aping Nigel Farage by slashing the foreign aid budget to instead spend the money on the military, permanently denying British citizenship to asylum seekers, and accusing immigrants of causing "incalculable damage" to Britain, hasn't given Labour any boost.
In fact the only person who appears to have received a boost is Nigel Farage.
Who would have thought that British voters would prefer the real thing to Sir Keir Starmer's cynical attempt at a tribute act?
What he could do is shatter the current uniparty system that we are all trapped in
I don’t share your confidence.
I think they would, like Trump in the USA, make a mess of everything. Whilst I would hope it would be a one term wonder, we would be left in a worse state after they have finished. They would undo important stuff that was hard won and which may never be put back in place. They would, like Thatcher, move the Overton window in the wrong direction. It worries me that people are sufficiently taken in by the rubbish they spout that, even if they don’t agree with their policies, they are willing to give them a go.
The thought of having Farage as PM is depressing on an entirely new level.
As for breaking the uniparty system, would they would introduce PR if they managed to get elected by FPTP?
I live in Kent where Chancers have taken control of the council. They’ve cancelled loads of planned meetings. I imagine they’d do the same if they won the GE.
The Gammons must have short memories. Remember Johnson’s “Oh Shit, what do we do now look” after the Brexit “win”? It’ll be that x1000