Election night drinking game- shot for every cabinet member deposed.

Election night drinking game- shot for every chicken hatched.

“Margaret…Margaret…tell the kids to come inside, next door’s slamming the bins with progressively larger amounts of green waste inside them again!”

There’s a fundamental problem with the ambition for social mobility through hardwork and being successful

No-one is making the stupid and circular argument that social mobility should be a matter of hard work and success.

You’re reaching so hard to portray Starmer as “another establishment, private school educated, oxford graduate who has wriggled his way to the top” that you’re gonna need a physio by election day!

imvhe the diagnosis doesn’t help much but the medication…if you can get hold of it…helped a lot! It didn’t change me and wasn’t mind-bending or anything, but it just seemed to let me hit a streak of “good days” quite often.

Have you actually been diagnosed?

what are peoples plans on election night?

Can anyone show up to the count (or specifically the announcent of the result by the returning officer)? Or do you need to be invited or approved or something?

His campaign will be interested in whether he exceeds Corbyn’s 40% from 2017, as some kind of internal metric of success or seeing off voices from the left, that kind of thing.

I think there’s a single metric that is going to be the beginning and end of that conversation for everyone outside the Islington-Hackney Continuity Front.

My sympathies to your neighbours, who apparently live next door to someone that spends their free time repeatedly slamming bin lids. ;)

I have no idea as I’m sure we opt out of the electoral role sharing.

You can’t opt out of candidates sending you election communications though – that’s on the “electoral register”. You can opt out of the “open register”.

https://www.gov.uk/electoral-register/opt-out-of-the-open-register

IDK if people are aware of this but SKS’s Dad was a toolmaker.

Well that just shows how unrelatable he is. How many people are toolmakers today?

But seriously – Starmer’s story of coming from a “normal” family, using the springboard provided by society (good free-at-the-point-of-use schools and universities, student grants,  universal healthcare…), and backing that up with hard work, personal intelligence, and ruthless ambition to get to the top of your profession…that’s exactly the kind of story that should be relatable to everyone, and what the government should be there for everyone to support.

Facts

…

The private sector has little spare capacity

TJ, much as I think you’re one of the best people around, you’ve admitted your source for this claim is your personal experience* rather than anything more fact-y. My experience of the private helathcare sector in the last year (which frankly I wish I’d never had, in many senses of the word) was that they were able to deal with me very quickly. I have no idea which of our experiences is more representative of the true picture, and maybe neither of them is helpful, but I don’t think either of us can say they stand for a fact about the current capacity of the private sector.

* I should have said btw I was sorry to see your mum was unwell. It’s horrible seeing people close to you under the weather like that.

Worth pointing out that not owning the practices has saved the NHS a lot of money in property, equipment etc

Well, yeah, but also if GPs didn’t have to cover their own overheads, then the NHS could pay them less and it wouldn’t affect their take home pay. And perhaps if surgeries were more centralised with the facilities provided by the NHS like any other employer, then there could be efficiencies on property, maintenance, IT, this, that, the other.

When councils replace playgrounds, how do they dispose of the old equipment? Does the installation contractor just bin it all?

Peak usage of the term Wordfinder was between 1980 and 2000.

The junior wordfinders are all pretty easygoing but the Wordfinder General isn’t to be messed with…

the private sector … now have their own waiting lists and are at full capacity

Again, what’s the source for that? It hasn’t been my (totally anecdotal) experience having been provided a bunch of medical services through the private sector over the last year.

(I’m not, by any means, disagreeing with the idea that the NHS should be the primary and best provider of healthcare that’s free at the point of use).

When you’re 20, you’re interested in the sound of the bass bins.

When you’re 40, you’re interested in the noise of wheely bins.

PCA – I assume thats the data I got that from – its certainly around the right time.

Okay, well, if that’s right – it doesn’t say what you are presenting it as saying.

“Risk”?

I think you’re confusing me with someone else. The only other thing I can remember saying in defence of Sunak was that it wasn’t fair to accuse him of being an anti-Pakistani bigot because he (Sunak) objected to being called a “P***”.

I am surprised to see a couple of people here (who probably would say they aren’t bigots) thinking that the victim of racist abuse was a racist themselves or that it was okay to be racist towards them because they were nasty.

The stupid fake market stuff in England wastes 10% of the NHS budget – Scotland does not have this and admin costs are half!  10% of budget compared to 20% in England

Is there a source for this claim (that comes up fairly often)?

I did try googling and only came across this decade old writeup from the Socialist Health Association:

the highest [hospital management and administration] costs per capita (after numerous adjustments) are in those systems with complex payment systems.  Systems which have single payer and block funding have the lowest costs.  … the best estimate for England is for administration and management to account for between 17% and 21% of total expenditure…  The study suggest that a base level of around 12% is necessary for any system.

In comparisons of relative expenditure England comes out slightly higher than Wales but Scotland is significantly lower.  The explanation though appears to be a technical one in that management of capital in Scotland is more centralised.  In fact there is not a lot of difference between the three nations.

NB this is for looking at all management and administration costs (not just “fake market stuff”) in hospitals (not healthcare systems as a whole). The suggestion seems to be that if the admin and management happens centrally, that’s not a hospital cost but doesn’t mean the cost is removed from the healthcare system as a whole. It might still be a bit cheaper though.

Cost of the Market in our NHS

Ur car is a Saracin

At the risk of becoming some kind of Sunak apologist: the tobacco ban was never going to make it into the “wash up” batch of legislation to be pushed through between calling the election and dissolving parliament. It was too big, too complicated and too early. The plans weren’t clear and the Lords would have opposed and amended it.

That’s a world away from taking a donation from Bernie Ecclestone and then giving his business a special exemption. There’s no defending that – why even deploy whataboutery?

My condolences fwiw @thecaptain

We are being priced out of having a family….

having kids is now a luxury many can’t afford…. what state to get into

This is totally the wrong lesson to draw from the data, and yet these articles always do. NB that the long term decline of fertility below the replacement rate occurred in the UK through economic boom and decline, and the same trends are seen in countries richer (Japan) and poorer (Italy) than the UK. Women in a society generally have fewer children when they are better educated, greater participation in the labour force, and better access to contraception/reproductive health. This is why baby incentivisation plans (in Hungary or Korea or Russia for example) never ever work across the whole population, and why people still have kids in recessions. UK’s declining birthrate is not due to short term cozzy livs.

Yikes that sounds worrying. Glad it sounds like the little one has settled.

We are very lucky to have the NHS in the UK.

It doesn’t cover Turkey but it’s always worth having the Global Health Insurance Card (replaces the European Health Insurance Card) too: https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/get-healthcare-cover-travelling-abroad/where-you-can-use-your-card

Don’t suppose the holiday was paid for with a credit card that automatically chucks in travel insurance, was it? Some of them do, some of them don’t.

2010 – 2024 government achievements? Same sex marriage.

Didn’t they need Labour support to pass the bill because so many of their own MPs opposed it

To be fair…it was the Lib Dems that proposed it within the coalition. It was Cameron that made sure it got parliamentary time. Labour hadn’t got around to it in all their years in government and didn’t propose it in opposition. Tories and Labour whips alike made it a free vote/vote of conscience so MPs did not have to vote with their party. And 22 Labour MPs (disproportionately from Scotland and the North of England) voted against it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21346220

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21346694

I guess a way to define our Ad Free offering is ‘No 3rd party delivered display ads’. But again, that means nothing to most people I bet. Like, what is a 2nd party ad if we have 1st party and 3rd party stuff?

There are no 2nd party ads. The 2nd party is the user.

 ‘Fewer ads’ doesn’t really sell it from a marketing pov. And we DO have to market ourselves.

I’m very sympathetic to you, and appreciate I’m still just a freeloader (I’m struggling with the sign up process as I can’t get the embedded Google Pay to work and I can’t find my bloody wallet to input the details manually – give me a couple of hours), but…isn’t “fewer ads” the simplest way of describing what membership gets you here?

I’m glad the ‘MSM’ (well Sky news) have picked up on the young conservative nazi fanboy’s (and possibly girls) at Warwick Uni.

1) It’s pretty awful. Actually probably more shocking/disappointing than “purple-faced Clacton landlord doesn’t like minorities”. Clearly some of the crowd knew the song already, but even if you didn’t know it, wouldn’t it seem a bit weird for a German polka to come on? Like a socialist student group playing Katyusha.

2) There did seem to be glimpses of a couple of Nazi fangirls but it seems to have overwhelmingly been a bratwurst party.

in point of fact its just not possible to have a coolbox remain cold for 5 days.

Yeah naw mate

The Best Esky Australia 2024

Farage’s ill-fitting double-breasted suit looks a little like a military tunic (for someone much larger than him, obviously).

As reported by the BBC.

You’re not going to believe anything the British Bureau of Communism says, are you?

As an Extreme Centrist™, I think Mark’s OP was reasonable, the complaint was reasonable, the ASA response was reasonable (although I didn’t understand the middle bit), and the comments to which Rubber referred were ungracious and totally predictable. I’m sympathetic to Mark and the rest at STW Towers and can see how this might seem like a time-wasting action – but the fix doesn’t seem to have been very onerous and it’s fair enough that offers should mean what they say imvho.

And on that note I’m about to finally sign up for a paid membership if I can remember my password…

Bon voyage @Kramer!

Sunak probably hated the P word not so much as it’s racist bit because he’s of Indian heritage. I worked with a British Indian guy and he used that term to describe Pakistanis – absolutely hated them due to partition.

I absolutely cannot stand Sunak as a politician and person, but I think that is unfair. He can tell his own story but I would be very surprised if he and his family hadn’t received a lot of racial abuse growing up, and he is still getting plenty of it now. I am aware of his father-in-law’s associations with Modi and I believe Sunak’s references to loving crispy bacon had a dual role (and is bullshit). But all the same I don’t see any reason to suspect he’s annoyed by Farageite racial abuse because he really hates Pakistanis. I think he is entitled to a presumption of innocence on this one.

You don’t have to, you know, @Edukator. You could actually not.

I’ve never had Seatfrog actually offer me a deal.

LNER is running about 40% so delayed that I get 50-100% of my money back on approx 20 trips up the ECML in the last year

Ooh I love bold experiments with democracy, they’ve all gone so well recently

It’s completely mad. Asking the ticket office people at mainline train stations is preferable but not always practical.

Kilt-dom sounds like a slightly niche kink.

There’s a naughty man loose aboot this hoose

That could cause chaos in Scotland. Is it a kilt or a skirt?

A kilt is a skirt both by literal meaning of the word and examination of the object. Or to put it another way, kilt-dom is a social construct…

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/kilt

I was surprised with how nice Dunbar is

Dunbar has a couple of nice little community initiatives and cafes, and the harbour and swimming pool are nice, and the train is a big plus.

And actually – Haddington has some really nice streets and parks and libraries and there’s a couple of little microbreweries and bakeries. There’s no trains, true, but tons of buses to Edinburgh and elsewhere. I think (maybe like Howick?) it had a reputation in the past for being rough but maybe that’s exaggerated (esp if you discount the closing time pub fights…?)

https://www.rages.org.uk/Haddington.html

OP: have a look at this seller on eBay. He seems to focus on “boring” Toyotas of the type you’re looking for.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/387116227029?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=VPEBKRpqTWW&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=cT8UWKDCSK2&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

the ad reads like it’s written by a trader

As an “elderly lady”, I too often talk about LED numberplate upgrades and paint details…

The car might actually be fine but the seller is either a dealer or a kid.

I wouldn’t ride along the canal paths – on a summer Sunday they’ll be busy as anything and they’re quite narrow.

You can do better than a Tesco meal deal. Go to Spitalfields or the street food hall at the Old Truman Brewery at least, that’s about halfway through the route. What stuff do you like?

Don’t park here when you’re in Richmond, OP: https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/1dlbr3i/the_thames_swallows_car/

This debate about hypocrisy on the death penalty probably belongs somewhere other than on the UK election thread, and ideally once a non-hypothetical hypocrite has actually been identified…