I bow to no-one in my contempt for Ms Truss, but it has to be said that Sunak has done an impressive job of torpedoing what was supposed to be his USP, namely being the vaguely sane one of the two. For every Truss insanity (NIP, levelling down nurses' pay...), you can equally find a Sunak insanity (NIP, charging sick people for missed NHS appointments they probably didn't know they had..)
I can see why even the tiny remaining cohort of sensible party members might go for Liz. She's completely bonkers, of course, but the alternative doesn't seem much more sane, and is terrible at politics to boot.
Err, get the other stuff but fining people for missing GP appointments is insane?
Not really mate. That was suggested in the coalition years under Cameron.
Just like with 10p for plastic bags it's a sensible and efficient way of ensuring GP slots aren't wasted without a reasonable excuse.
The trouble is it will cost the NHS more than £10 to chase and fine the missing appointee the £10.
When I worked in Casualty in NZ they would bill people who called an ambulance for trivial things. I think hardly anyone ever paid, but the point was made, and no serious attempt at collection.
A bit like no-shows on airplanes, sometimes it is only the DNA*s that mean a clinic finish vaguely on time, because of overbooking.
* Did Not Attend
I suspect it won't work because people can't get appointments in the first place. I have been with my present group practice for 3 years now and never seen a doctor. Many nurses etc but no doctors.
I had 2 phone consultations which were worse than useless.
I can book face to face appointments with my GP via the NHS App.
I bow to no-one in my contempt for Ms Truss, but it has to be said that Sunak has done an impressive job of torpedoing what was supposed to be his USP, namely being the vaguely sane one of the two. For every Truss insanity (NIP, levelling down nurses' pay...), you can equally find a Sunak insanity (NIP, charging sick people for missed NHS appointments they probably didn't know they had..)
I can see why even the tiny remaining cohort of sensible party members might go for Liz. She's completely bonkers, of course, but the alternative doesn't seem much more sane, and is terrible at politics to boot.
Err, get the other stuff but fining people for missing GP appointments is insane?
Not really mate. That was suggested in the coalition years under Cameron.
Just like with 10p for plastic bags it's a sensible and efficient way of ensuring GP slots aren't wasted without a reasonable excuse.
GP missed appointments are something of a problem. I know one of the authors of this which reviews the situation internationally: https://bjgp.org/content/71/707/e406 But current UK GP missed appointment rates aren't usually too high. Ask GPs and they wouldn't say this was the top priority.
GP slots are rarely wasted. If a patient doesn't turn up, the GP isn't sat there twiddling their thumbs. They can see the next patient usually. There's plenty of paperwork to be done. They get a chance to pop to the loo!
Who misses appointments? Sunak said he'd be targeting people missing multiple appointments, not just occasional errors. One of the predictors of missing high numbers of appointments is poor mental health. We shouldn't be penalising those with poor mental health. Other reasons include being too ill (why should we be fining those people?) and childcare problems (you want a tax on being a parent?).
How are these fines administered? Chasing people for the money costs money. Nor is it good to set up antagonistic relationships between healthcare providers and patients.
If you introduce a fine, it can increase missed appointments. There was a study where a school introduced fines for people being late to collect their kids at the end of the day. Rates of late pick-up went up. For those who could afford it, it was worth paying the fine. Without fines, people felt guilty and didn't do it. Introduce a £10 fine for a missed GP appointment and some people will pay the fine as a reasonable cost of holding a possible appointment slot.
It's the usual fantasy nonsense from the Tory leadership contenders. There's some simple trick that will make public services better while saving money that, oddly, we didn't think to introduce 30 years ago.
The problem with "Starmer betrayed working people who won't vote for him" narrative is that it misunderstands who working people are.
In the Labour movement, "working people" are in trade unions. Or are told they should join a union. In the real world, most working people aren't in a trade union and likely never have been.
There remains a lot of "that's not fair what do I get" self focus when it comes to wages and conditions. People see striking train company staff and don't think "solidarity", they think "greedy bastards"...
Aka "divide and rule".
People think as you say...and then what happens? They get screwed, apart from a few individuals who take the "F*** you - I'm all right, Jack" attitude that Tories have always encouraged among the population. It's not rocket science.
Strength requires unity.
The Labour party isn't the answer, though. Although it used to be the party of the unions in some sense, it has never been the party of strikers, of workers' offensive solidarity. (Has it ever, as a party, even given money to strike funds?) The presence of senior Labour figures on picket lines winds less sensible Tories up far more than it contributes to helping strikers and the working class. By that I mean that
1. More sensible Tories welcome it because it indicates that the Labour party is divided and they feel safe with their much-loved theme that "Labour are a bunch of communists who want corpses to pile up in the crematoria because they're inhuman traitors".
2. Labour versus Tory is election stuff, there's no election on, and it's a distraction from spreading and winning strikes and otherwise acting collectively to defend living standards.
Jack Monroe, the Bootstrap Cook, has been pretty much cancelled on Twitter
Scenes
What for this time? Had her multitude of deceptions exposed?
Basically, yes, and they've got the receipts and the records, and she is unable to rebut
I actually quite like her. And I suspect she has genuine mental health issues, so I am sympathetic. But, really posing as terribly poor and asking for money from strangers, when you are living a fine middle class lifestyle? - that is quite grim. Same as Rachael Swindon and that Harry's last stand guy - another in a series of mewling, grifting leftwing frauds
She will probably survive, she has so many followers, but not great for her
On the important issue of British occupation of Rwanda, it does seem that British Imperial forces (Ugandan and Indian) succesfully invaded Rwanda in 1916 as logistic support for the Belgian invasion of the Congo.
Um, the Belgians already held the Congo long before WW1.
Jack Monroe, the Bootstrap Cook, has been pretty much cancelled on Twitter
Scenes
What for this time? Had her multitude of deceptions exposed?
Basically, yes, and they've got the receipts and the records, and she is unable to rebut
I actually quite like her. And I suspect she has genuine mental health issues, so I am sympathetic. But, really posing as terribly poor and asking for money from strangers, when you are living a fine middle class lifestyle? - that is quite grim. Same as Rachael Swindon and that Harry's last stand guy - another in a series of mewling, grifting leftwing frauds
She will probably survive, she has so many followers, but not great for her
Not surprised. I wonder what type of people cancelled her.
On the important issue of British occupation of Rwanda, it does seem that British Imperial forces (Ugandan and Indian) succesfully invaded Rwanda in 1916 as logistic support for the Belgian invasion of the Congo.
Um, the Belgians already held the Congo long before WW1.
Sorry, should read, from the Congo. Rwanda-Urundi was part of German East Africa until 1918, invaded by Belgian forces from the Congo in 1916.
I bow to no-one in my contempt for Ms Truss, but it has to be said that Sunak has done an impressive job of torpedoing what was supposed to be his USP, namely being the vaguely sane one of the two. For every Truss insanity (NIP, levelling down nurses' pay...), you can equally find a Sunak insanity (NIP, charging sick people for missed NHS appointments they probably didn't know they had..)
I can see why even the tiny remaining cohort of sensible party members might go for Liz. She's completely bonkers, of course, but the alternative doesn't seem much more sane, and is terrible at politics to boot.
Err, get the other stuff but fining people for missing GP appointments is insane?
Not really mate. That was suggested in the coalition years under Cameron.
Just like with 10p for plastic bags it's a sensible and efficient way of ensuring GP slots aren't wasted without a reasonable excuse.
It was suggested and rapidly binned when anyone looked at it. The NHS is appalling at making appointments. They send out a letter, often to the wrong address or which arrives when you're on holiday,, which sets a time without any reference to whether you can make it, with no easy way of rescheduling it. And that's even without considering the practical problems of patients actually getting there.
They are required to give 3 weeks notice, unless on the 2 week wait pathway.
If the letters go to the wrong address it is because the person has moved and not told the Hospital/Practice.
Most of our appointments are "Partial Booked" meaning someone is told when to expect an appointment, contacted a few weeks in advance, and a time booked either by phone, or online.
People often say they haven't had a letter, even we produce a copy!
You're describing how it's supposed to work.
I had the converse problem a few weeks ago. My optician recommended an urgent appointment at the local eye hospital, which was made by phone. When I got there the bank of six receptionists, who seemed to have very little to do, not only denied all knowledge of the appointment, but also claimed it was impossible to book an appointment.
As it happens, they weren't very busy and I was seen quickly and checked thoroughly, but what a shambles in administrative terms
The problem with "Starmer betrayed working people who won't vote for him" narrative is that it misunderstands who working people are.
In the Labour movement, "working people" are in trade unions. Or are told they should join a union. In the real world, most working people aren't in a trade union and likely never have been.
There remains a lot of "that's not fair what do I get" self focus when it comes to wages and conditions. People see striking train company staff and don't think "solidarity", they think "greedy bastards"...
This is so spot on.
Same reason why Momentum and the Corbyn cult couldn't understand (or admit) why the working class were deserting them.
How do you even define the ‘working class’? I work for an employer full time, but my salary is 50K. My wifes is around 40K. Are we working class?
The Marxist definition is to look at how much control you have over your own work and that of others. As, I believe, a university academic, you have a certain degree of autonomy in your work, but this has been eroded in recent decades, though you likely direct the work of junior academics and PhD students.
So broadly speaking you're middle class, but there have been moves by your university bosses to reduce your autonomy and to proletarianise your occupation.
Salary levels have nothing to do with it. The question is one of relative power.
An American book I read on this a year or two ago said that one of the key characteristics of the middle class is that they expect and accept that their off spring will move away for study and career reasons. The working class value very close family ties more and so expect their kids not to move away.
The problem with "Starmer betrayed working people who won't vote for him" narrative is that it misunderstands who working people are.
In the Labour movement, "working people" are in trade unions. Or are told they should join a union. In the real world, most working people aren't in a trade union and likely never have been.
There remains a lot of "that's not fair what do I get" self focus when it comes to wages and conditions. People see striking train company staff and don't think "solidarity", they think "greedy bastards"...
This is so spot on.
Same reason why Momentum and the Corbyn cult couldn't understand (or admit) why the working class were deserting them.
How do you even define the ‘working class’? I work for an employer full time, but my salary is 50K. My wifes is around 40K. Are we working class?
It's complicated.
I've never understood the obsession with class in this country.
Using my rough and ready calculator, were your parents professionals?
Did you go to a nice school?
Extremely few who went to down the road state schools have the slightest clue what life is like at top private boarding schools. The converse is also true.
On the important issue of British occupation of Rwanda, it does seem that British Imperial forces (Ugandan and Indian) succesfully invaded Rwanda in 1916 as logistic support for the Belgian invasion of the Congo.
Um, the Belgians already held the Congo long before WW1.
Sorry, should read, from the Congo. Rwanda-Urundi was part of German East Africa until 1918, invaded by Belgian forces from the Congo in 1916.
I don't think British forces entered Rwanda. The Battle of Tabora (which is now in Tanzania) seems to have been Belgium v. Germany.
In an alternate universe, 'senior Tories' are briefing their concern that Boris and Rishis economic relaunch hasnt shifted the polls and Angie and Sam Tarry have invited Keir over for a curry
I point PB-ers to this scintillating piece of invective, aimed by a left wing Labour voter directly at Kier Starmer. There is REAL hatred of Sir Beer Korma on the Corbynite left. Does it mean anything? Dunno. But if this feeling grows...
"What I need, really, what we all need, is the possibility of actually doing something: a pathway to the sort of concrete action that might actually make the world a better place. Keir Starmer, a wet-wipe, a fatberg, blocks this possibility ..."
Superbly cruel. Admire the nasty prose, if nothing else
He is impure. He does not bear the mark. He is neither beer and sandwiches nor is he Polly Toynbee. He does not say comrade nor does he dress as Emily Thornberry and sneer at self employed tradesmen. He is UNLABOUR.
Release the hounds
It is one of the best take-downs I have ever read of any politician. Each sentence rises over the last, until it becomes a a sustained and piercing howl of withering contempt. Genius
The finest, noblest, most chateau-bottled hatred is always WITHIN political parties
Bit feeble.
Low blood sugar getting the better if your judgment ?
Jack Monroe, the Bootstrap Cook, has been pretty much cancelled on Twitter
Scenes
What for this time? Had her multitude of deceptions exposed?
Basically, yes, and they've got the receipts and the records, and she is unable to rebut
I actually quite like her. And I suspect she has genuine mental health issues, so I am sympathetic. But, really posing as terribly poor and asking for money from strangers, when you are living a fine middle class lifestyle? - that is quite grim. Same as Rachael Swindon and that Harry's last stand guy - another in a series of mewling, grifting leftwing frauds
She will probably survive, she has so many followers, but not great for her
Not surprised. I wonder what type of people cancelled her.
An anonymous Twitter sleuth "pieced it all together". An entire career of ridiculous (alleged) lies and delusions
I don't approve of anonymous take-downs, nonetheless she does seem to have brought it on herself. She needs someone to take her off Twitter and get her some therapy
I bow to no-one in my contempt for Ms Truss, but it has to be said that Sunak has done an impressive job of torpedoing what was supposed to be his USP, namely being the vaguely sane one of the two. For every Truss insanity (NIP, levelling down nurses' pay...), you can equally find a Sunak insanity (NIP, charging sick people for missed NHS appointments they probably didn't know they had..)
I can see why even the tiny remaining cohort of sensible party members might go for Liz. She's completely bonkers, of course, but the alternative doesn't seem much more sane, and is terrible at politics to boot.
Err, get the other stuff but fining people for missing GP appointments is insane?
Not really mate. That was suggested in the coalition years under Cameron.
Just like with 10p for plastic bags it's a sensible and efficient way of ensuring GP slots aren't wasted without a reasonable excuse.
It was suggested and rapidly binned when anyone looked at it. The NHS is appalling at making appointments. They send out a letter, often to the wrong address or which arrives when you're on holiday,, which sets a time without any reference to whether you can make it, with no easy way of rescheduling it. And that's even without considering the practical problems of patients actually getting there.
They are required to give 3 weeks notice, unless on the 2 week wait pathway.
If the letters go to the wrong address it is because the person has moved and not told the Hospital/Practice.
Most of our appointments are "Partial Booked" meaning someone is told when to expect an appointment, contacted a few weeks in advance, and a time booked either by phone, or online.
People often say they haven't had a letter, even we produce a copy!
You're describing how it's supposed to work.
I had the converse problem a few weeks ago. My optician recommended an urgent appointment at the local eye hospital, which was made by phone. When I got there the bank of six receptionists, who seemed to have very little to do, not only denied all knowledge of the appointment, but also claimed it was impossible to book an appointment.
As it happens, they weren't very busy and I was seen quickly and checked thoroughly, but what a shambles in administrative terms
Although I have no complaints re my hospital appointments for my broken legs I never got more than a week's notice for each one.
I bow to no-one in my contempt for Ms Truss, but it has to be said that Sunak has done an impressive job of torpedoing what was supposed to be his USP, namely being the vaguely sane one of the two. For every Truss insanity (NIP, levelling down nurses' pay...), you can equally find a Sunak insanity (NIP, charging sick people for missed NHS appointments they probably didn't know they had..)
I can see why even the tiny remaining cohort of sensible party members might go for Liz. She's completely bonkers, of course, but the alternative doesn't seem much more sane, and is terrible at politics to boot.
Err, get the other stuff but fining people for missing GP appointments is insane?
Not really mate. That was suggested in the coalition years under Cameron.
Just like with 10p for plastic bags it's a sensible and efficient way of ensuring GP slots aren't wasted without a reasonable excuse.
It was suggested and rapidly binned when anyone looked at it. The NHS is appalling at making appointments. They send out a letter, often to the wrong address or which arrives when you're on holiday,, which sets a time without any reference to whether you can make it, with no easy way of rescheduling it. And that's even without considering the practical problems of patients actually getting there.
They are required to give 3 weeks notice, unless on the 2 week wait pathway.
If the letters go to the wrong address it is because the person has moved and not told the Hospital/Practice.
Most of our appointments are "Partial Booked" meaning someone is told when to expect an appointment, contacted a few weeks in advance, and a time booked either by phone, or online.
People often say they haven't had a letter, even we produce a copy!
You're describing how it's supposed to work.
I had the converse problem a few weeks ago. My optician recommended an urgent appointment at the local eye hospital, which was made by phone. When I got there the bank of six receptionists, who seemed to have very little to do, not only denied all knowledge of the appointment, but also claimed it was impossible to book an appointment.
As it happens, they weren't very busy and I was seen quickly and checked thoroughly, but what a shambles in administrative terms
"Most of our appointments are "Partial Booked" meaning someone is told when to expect an appointment, contacted a few weeks in advance, and a time booked either by phone, or online."
I have had to deal with way more appointments in last ten years than most people have in a lifetime thanks to my wife's condition and this has literally never happened.
Talking of diets, I took my day's exercise today by walking to King's Cross from Camden Market, to see the latest iteration of the King's X development
I know I've mentioned this before, but it is astonishing, and just gets better. They've now extended it north with new gardens, boulevards, pavilions, a dozen new restaurants, new bars and shops, playgrounds, sculpture parks, schools, industrial sheds turned into mighty echoing art galleries where hipster students play table tennis
If you like dense, cultured urban life (and lots of restaurants) King's Cross might be the most desirable part of London to live in, right now. Which, for anyone that knew King's Cross in the 80s, is mind-boggling. I'm not sure there is anything like it anywhere else in the world
So we might have wrecked half of the UK's towns from 1945-2010, but maybe we are learning. Slowly
Good luck with the diet. I have the added incentive that the Pitts Special flight I have booked has a weight limit and currently I am 3 kg over it.
You in an S2?
Can I give you one word of advice: under absolutely no circumstances have anything to eat before flying.
There was an interview once with a journalist who was going up in a fighter jet. The pilot said to eat bananas beforehand. The journalist said why, will the potassium help with the pressure and the pilot said no it's because they taste the same coming up as they did going down
What fecks me off the most at the moment about my local NHS (GP, hospital, physiotherapy, OT etc etc) is that none of them allow me to simply logon to a nice interface and change an appointment.
They all expect me to phone and wait in a queue system etc.
There is absolutely no need to talk to a human to change the date of a routine appointment.
Yet Sainsbury's allow me to amend the time and date of a delivery in a few clicks.
Completely off topic, but we visited Lands End today (we were in the vicinity). My God, it is fucking grim. The Platonic ideal of how to do tourism badly.
The problem with "Starmer betrayed working people who won't vote for him" narrative is that it misunderstands who working people are.
In the Labour movement, "working people" are in trade unions. Or are told they should join a union. In the real world, most working people aren't in a trade union and likely never have been.
There remains a lot of "that's not fair what do I get" self focus when it comes to wages and conditions. People see striking train company staff and don't think "solidarity", they think "greedy bastards"...
This is so spot on.
Same reason why Momentum and the Corbyn cult couldn't understand (or admit) why the working class were deserting them.
How do you even define the ‘working class’? I work for an employer full time, but my salary is 50K. My wifes is around 40K. Are we working class?
It's complicated.
I've never understood the obsession with class in this country.
Using my rough and ready calculator, were your parents professionals?
Did you go to a nice school?
Dad was a policeman, retiring as acting superintendent. Mother ended up in medical records for the nhs. I went to a grammar school and am conflicted about this, as it served me well, but I understand the antipathy of many and the overall probably negative effect on wider society.
Do you shop at Waitrose?
Yes, but I do flirt with Lidl, Morrison’s and B and M.
Ok, I'm revoking your middle class membership.
The car parks at the German delicatessen stores look like the Geneva Motor Show.
Talking of diets, I took my day's exercise today by walking to King's Cross from Camden Market, to see the latest iteration of the King's X development
I know I've mentioned this before, but it is astonishing, and just gets better. They've now extended it north with new gardens, boulevards, pavilions, a dozen new restaurants, new bars and shops, playgrounds, sculpture parks, schools, industrial sheds turned into mighty echoing art galleries where hipster students play table tennis
If you like dense, cultured urban life (and lots of restaurants) King's Cross might be the most desirable part of London to live in, right now. Which, for anyone that knew King's Cross in the 80s, is mind-boggling. I'm not sure there is anything like it anywhere else in the world
So we might have wrecked half of the UK's towns from 1945-2010, but maybe we are learning. Slowly
Good luck with the diet. I have the added incentive that the Pitts Special flight I have booked has a weight limit and currently I am 3 kg over it.
You in an S2?
Can I give you one word of advice: under absolutely no circumstances have anything to eat before flying.
There was an interview once with a journalist who was going up in a fighter jet. The pilot said to eat bananas beforehand. The journalist said why, will the potassium help with the pressure and the pilot said no it's because they taste the same coming up as they did going down
I suspect it won't work because people can't get appointments in the first place. I have been with my present group practice for 3 years now and never seen a doctor. Many nurses etc but no doctors.
I had 2 phone consultations which were worse than useless.
I can book face to face appointments with my GP via the NHS App.
Admittedly the first available is 19th August.
It varies hugely. I asked my GP for a routine face-to-face checkup as it's been a few years, got an appointment a few days later. A friend in Croydon was with a GP who still had that horrible system where you have to keep redialling at 8am. She believed, entirely falsely, that she could only go to tha tone. I rang around for her a bit and found a perfectly sensible surgery a few hundred metres away from the idiot surgery.
The point is that GPs are independent contractors and within defined limits can organise themselves as they pleased. If Truss promised that all GPs would be required to have a sensible appointments system, that'd be a real vote-winner.
On the important issue of British occupation of Rwanda, it does seem that British Imperial forces (Ugandan and Indian) succesfully invaded Rwanda in 1916 as logistic support for the Belgian invasion of the Congo.
Um, the Belgians already held the Congo long before WW1.
Sorry, should read, from the Congo. Rwanda-Urundi was part of German East Africa until 1918, invaded by Belgian forces from the Congo in 1916.
I don't think British forces entered Rwanda. The Battle of Tabora (which is now in Tanzania) seems to have been Belgium v. Germany.
Belgium wouldn't allow their bearers to move from Congo into German East Africa, so the British Empire provided them, rather than let the Belgians live off the land.
In an alternate universe, 'senior Tories' are briefing their concern that Boris and Rishis economic relaunch hasnt shifted the polls and Angie and Sam Tarry have invited Keir over for a curry
I point PB-ers to this scintillating piece of invective, aimed by a left wing Labour voter directly at Kier Starmer. There is REAL hatred of Sir Beer Korma on the Corbynite left. Does it mean anything? Dunno. But if this feeling grows...
"What I need, really, what we all need, is the possibility of actually doing something: a pathway to the sort of concrete action that might actually make the world a better place. Keir Starmer, a wet-wipe, a fatberg, blocks this possibility ..."
Superbly cruel. Admire the nasty prose, if nothing else
He is impure. He does not bear the mark. He is neither beer and sandwiches nor is he Polly Toynbee. He does not say comrade nor does he dress as Emily Thornberry and sneer at self employed tradesmen. He is UNLABOUR.
Release the hounds
It is one of the best take-downs I have ever read of any politician. Each sentence rises over the last, until it becomes a a sustained and piercing howl of withering contempt. Genius
The finest, noblest, most chateau-bottled hatred is always WITHIN political parties
Bit feeble.
Low blood sugar getting the better if your judgment ?
No, it's superb. And quite profound
"I hate him like a malfunctioning bus stop sign that keeps telling me my bus is about to show up, but it never does. Keir Starmer exists, less as a person than as an institution: he is a decision that has been decreed from on high. And so there is nothing that I can do about him, except fume and moan and shitpost about him online. If I met him, I sometimes think, what would I say to him? I'm not sure I would say anything, to be honest. I'm not sure there would be any point"
I bow to no-one in my contempt for Ms Truss, but it has to be said that Sunak has done an impressive job of torpedoing what was supposed to be his USP, namely being the vaguely sane one of the two. For every Truss insanity (NIP, levelling down nurses' pay...), you can equally find a Sunak insanity (NIP, charging sick people for missed NHS appointments they probably didn't know they had..)
I can see why even the tiny remaining cohort of sensible party members might go for Liz. She's completely bonkers, of course, but the alternative doesn't seem much more sane, and is terrible at politics to boot.
Err, get the other stuff but fining people for missing GP appointments is insane?
Not really mate. That was suggested in the coalition years under Cameron.
Just like with 10p for plastic bags it's a sensible and efficient way of ensuring GP slots aren't wasted without a reasonable excuse.
GP missed appointments are something of a problem. I know one of the authors of this which reviews the situation internationally: https://bjgp.org/content/71/707/e406 But current UK GP missed appointment rates aren't usually too high. Ask GPs and they wouldn't say this was the top priority.
GP slots are rarely wasted. If a patient doesn't turn up, the GP isn't sat there twiddling their thumbs. They can see the next patient usually. There's plenty of paperwork to be done. They get a chance to pop to the loo!
Who misses appointments? Sunak said he'd be targeting people missing multiple appointments, not just occasional errors. One of the predictors of missing high numbers of appointments is poor mental health. We shouldn't be penalising those with poor mental health. Other reasons include being too ill (why should we be fining those people?) and childcare problems (you want a tax on being a parent?).
How are these fines administered? Chasing people for the money costs money. Nor is it good to set up antagonistic relationships between healthcare providers and patients.
If you introduce a fine, it can increase missed appointments. There was a study where a school introduced fines for people being late to collect their kids at the end of the day. Rates of late pick-up went up. For those who could afford it, it was worth paying the fine. Without fines, people felt guilty and didn't do it. Introduce a £10 fine for a missed GP appointment and some people will pay the fine as a reasonable cost of holding a possible appointment slot.
It's the usual fantasy nonsense from the Tory leadership contenders. There's some simple trick that will make public services better while saving money that, oddly, we didn't think to introduce 30 years ago.
What a lot of nonsense.
Why? All seems reasonable to me. Nobody is going to collect £10 fines. The only people likely to pay it is you and me who don't miss appointments deliberately. Serial offenders won't and you can't withdraw health care.
What fecks me off the most at the moment about my local NHS (GP, hospital, physiotherapy, OT etc etc) is that none of them allow me to simply logon to a nice interface and change an appointment.
They all expect me to phone and wait in a queue system etc.
There is absolutely no need to talk to a human to change the date of a routine appointment.
Yet Sainsbury's allow me to amend the time and date of a delivery in a few clicks.
I'm not going to start but I can rant for ages about "why can I do X on Amazon, but public services can't?" There are bits of public-facing government IT that aren't awful, things like the DVLA, but once you get down to council level it is almost all terrible, and even worse you end up on the phone or sending bits of paper for things that could be automated and self-service. And it's not just the time and money it wastes, but it's so error prone doing things in writing or over the phone.
Completely off topic, but we visited Lands End today (we were in the vicinity). My God, it is fucking grim. The Platonic ideal of how to do tourism badly.
Land's End has been hideous for decades. It is the perfect counterpart to John O Groats, which is also hideous, in a similar yet Scottish way
You need to go to Cape Cornwall, about three miles N of Lands End, which is magnificent, and - some say - the real Land's End
In an alternate universe, 'senior Tories' are briefing their concern that Boris and Rishis economic relaunch hasnt shifted the polls and Angie and Sam Tarry have invited Keir over for a curry
I point PB-ers to this scintillating piece of invective, aimed by a left wing Labour voter directly at Kier Starmer. There is REAL hatred of Sir Beer Korma on the Corbynite left. Does it mean anything? Dunno. But if this feeling grows...
"What I need, really, what we all need, is the possibility of actually doing something: a pathway to the sort of concrete action that might actually make the world a better place. Keir Starmer, a wet-wipe, a fatberg, blocks this possibility ..."
Superbly cruel. Admire the nasty prose, if nothing else
He is impure. He does not bear the mark. He is neither beer and sandwiches nor is he Polly Toynbee. He does not say comrade nor does he dress as Emily Thornberry and sneer at self employed tradesmen. He is UNLABOUR.
Release the hounds
It is one of the best take-downs I have ever read of any politician. Each sentence rises over the last, until it becomes a a sustained and piercing howl of withering contempt. Genius
The finest, noblest, most chateau-bottled hatred is always WITHIN political parties
Bit feeble.
Low blood sugar getting the better if your judgment ?
No, it's superb. And quite profound
"I hate him like a malfunctioning bus stop sign that keeps telling me my bus is about to show up, but it never does. Keir Starmer exists, less as a person than as an institution: he is a decision that has been decreed from on high. And so there is nothing that I can do about him, except fume and moan and shitpost about him online. If I met him, I sometimes think, what would I say to him? I'm not sure I would say anything, to be honest. I'm not sure there would be any point"
It captures an essence
The essence of depression in extremely online left youth, perhaps.
I suspect it won't work because people can't get appointments in the first place. I have been with my present group practice for 3 years now and never seen a doctor. Many nurses etc but no doctors.
I had 2 phone consultations which were worse than useless.
I can book face to face appointments with my GP via the NHS App.
Admittedly the first available is 19th August.
It varies hugely. I asked my GP for a routine face-to-face checkup as it's been a few years, got an appointment a few days later. A friend in Croydon was with a GP who still had that horrible system where you have to keep redialling at 8am. She believed, entirely falsely, that she could only go to tha tone. I rang around for her a bit and found a perfectly sensible surgery a few hundred metres away from the idiot surgery.
The point is that GPs are independent contractors and within defined limits can organise themselves as they pleased. If Truss promised that all GPs would be required to have a sensible appointments system, that'd be a real vote-winner.
The 8 AM phone in farce was brought about by government policy. The policy was that a certain percentage of appointments had to be same day or next. Hence GP surgery's would hold back appointments, and release them only on the day, to tick that target box. A classic example of unintended consequences.
My GP has a simpler system. No appointments for the morning surgery, just turn up and wait in a bus queue. It worked well and rarely was more than an hours wait, though the queue would generally be 20 strong when they opened the door. Afternoon appointments are on a booked system.
I bow to no-one in my contempt for Ms Truss, but it has to be said that Sunak has done an impressive job of torpedoing what was supposed to be his USP, namely being the vaguely sane one of the two. For every Truss insanity (NIP, levelling down nurses' pay...), you can equally find a Sunak insanity (NIP, charging sick people for missed NHS appointments they probably didn't know they had..)
I can see why even the tiny remaining cohort of sensible party members might go for Liz. She's completely bonkers, of course, but the alternative doesn't seem much more sane, and is terrible at politics to boot.
Err, get the other stuff but fining people for missing GP appointments is insane?
Not really mate. That was suggested in the coalition years under Cameron.
Just like with 10p for plastic bags it's a sensible and efficient way of ensuring GP slots aren't wasted without a reasonable excuse.
It was suggested and rapidly binned when anyone looked at it. The NHS is appalling at making appointments. They send out a letter, often to the wrong address or which arrives when you're on holiday,, which sets a time without any reference to whether you can make it, with no easy way of rescheduling it. And that's even without considering the practical problems of patients actually getting there.
They are required to give 3 weeks notice, unless on the 2 week wait pathway.
If the letters go to the wrong address it is because the person has moved and not told the Hospital/Practice.
Most of our appointments are "Partial Booked" meaning someone is told when to expect an appointment, contacted a few weeks in advance, and a time booked either by phone, or online.
People often say they haven't had a letter, even we produce a copy!
You're describing how it's supposed to work.
I had the converse problem a few weeks ago. My optician recommended an urgent appointment at the local eye hospital, which was made by phone. When I got there the bank of six receptionists, who seemed to have very little to do, not only denied all knowledge of the appointment, but also claimed it was impossible to book an appointment.
As it happens, they weren't very busy and I was seen quickly and checked thoroughly, but what a shambles in administrative terms
Although I have no complaints re my hospital appointments for my broken legs I never got more than a week's notice for each one.
In an alternate universe, 'senior Tories' are briefing their concern that Boris and Rishis economic relaunch hasnt shifted the polls and Angie and Sam Tarry have invited Keir over for a curry
I point PB-ers to this scintillating piece of invective, aimed by a left wing Labour voter directly at Kier Starmer. There is REAL hatred of Sir Beer Korma on the Corbynite left. Does it mean anything? Dunno. But if this feeling grows...
"What I need, really, what we all need, is the possibility of actually doing something: a pathway to the sort of concrete action that might actually make the world a better place. Keir Starmer, a wet-wipe, a fatberg, blocks this possibility ..."
Superbly cruel. Admire the nasty prose, if nothing else
He is impure. He does not bear the mark. He is neither beer and sandwiches nor is he Polly Toynbee. He does not say comrade nor does he dress as Emily Thornberry and sneer at self employed tradesmen. He is UNLABOUR.
Release the hounds
It is one of the best take-downs I have ever read of any politician. Each sentence rises over the last, until it becomes a a sustained and piercing howl of withering contempt. Genius
The finest, noblest, most chateau-bottled hatred is always WITHIN political parties
Bit feeble.
Low blood sugar getting the better if your judgment ?
" The finest, noblest, most chateau-bottled hatred is always WITHIN political parties"
Dunno. This bloke comes across as exactly the sort of young idealistic magic grandpa cultist who has now left the labour party.
For a couple of brief summers they imagined the world could be remade as some kind of socialist paradise.
What fecks me off the most at the moment about my local NHS (GP, hospital, physiotherapy, OT etc etc) is that none of them allow me to simply logon to a nice interface and change an appointment.
They all expect me to phone and wait in a queue system etc.
There is absolutely no need to talk to a human to change the date of a routine appointment.
Yet Sainsbury's allow me to amend the time and date of a delivery in a few clicks.
The problem of patients booking appointments is that they very often book them with the wrong person. So I get "choose and book" appointments at my cottage hospital clinic to see me, but needing an investigation that isn't available there, so a waste of everybody's time.
Completely off topic, but we visited Lands End today (we were in the vicinity). My God, it is fucking grim. The Platonic ideal of how to do tourism badly.
Land's End has been hideous for decades. It is the perfect counterpart to John O Groats, which is also hideous, in a similar yet Scottish way
You need to go to Cape Cornwall, about three miles N of Lands End, which is magnificent, and - some say - the real Land's End
And Dunnet Head is the real John O'Groats, the most northerly point of island GB.
I suspect it won't work because people can't get appointments in the first place. I have been with my present group practice for 3 years now and never seen a doctor. Many nurses etc but no doctors.
I had 2 phone consultations which were worse than useless.
I can book face to face appointments with my GP via the NHS App.
Admittedly the first available is 19th August.
It varies hugely. I asked my GP for a routine face-to-face checkup as it's been a few years, got an appointment a few days later. A friend in Croydon was with a GP who still had that horrible system where you have to keep redialling at 8am. She believed, entirely falsely, that she could only go to tha tone. I rang around for her a bit and found a perfectly sensible surgery a few hundred metres away from the idiot surgery.
The point is that GPs are independent contractors and within defined limits can organise themselves as they pleased. If Truss promised that all GPs would be required to have a sensible appointments system, that'd be a real vote-winner.
The 8 AM phone in farce was brought about by government policy. The policy was that a certain percentage of appointments had to be same day or next. Hence GP surgery's would hold back appointments, and release them only on the day, to tick that target box. A classic example of unintended consequences. [snip]
I admire your tact, in not specifying which government brought in that lunacy..
In an alternate universe, 'senior Tories' are briefing their concern that Boris and Rishis economic relaunch hasnt shifted the polls and Angie and Sam Tarry have invited Keir over for a curry
I point PB-ers to this scintillating piece of invective, aimed by a left wing Labour voter directly at Kier Starmer. There is REAL hatred of Sir Beer Korma on the Corbynite left. Does it mean anything? Dunno. But if this feeling grows...
"What I need, really, what we all need, is the possibility of actually doing something: a pathway to the sort of concrete action that might actually make the world a better place. Keir Starmer, a wet-wipe, a fatberg, blocks this possibility ..."
Superbly cruel. Admire the nasty prose, if nothing else
He is impure. He does not bear the mark. He is neither beer and sandwiches nor is he Polly Toynbee. He does not say comrade nor does he dress as Emily Thornberry and sneer at self employed tradesmen. He is UNLABOUR.
Release the hounds
It is one of the best take-downs I have ever read of any politician. Each sentence rises over the last, until it becomes a a sustained and piercing howl of withering contempt. Genius
The finest, noblest, most chateau-bottled hatred is always WITHIN political parties
Bit feeble.
Low blood sugar getting the better if your judgment ?
" The finest, noblest, most chateau-bottled hatred is always WITHIN political parties"
Dunno. This bloke comes across as exactly the sort of young idealistic magic grandpa cultist who has now left the labour party.
For a couple of brief summers they imagined the world could be remade as some kind of socialist paradise.
And then the voters got involved.
But both can be true. It's some beautiful, poetic invective. And also sadly.deluded.
Go to Penzance, then Mousehole, see the Men an Tol, the Minack Theatre, do the walk to Nanjizel, check the Merry Maidens, have a picnic by Ding Dong Mine, stand atop Cape Cornwall, have a pasty in St Just in Penwith, gawp at amazing Botallack mine on the cliffs, see the rocks of Morvah, hike from St Ives to Zennor, where you must have a pint in the Tinners, where D H Lawrence drank (and many other artists), but....
On the important issue of British occupation of Rwanda, it does seem that British Imperial forces (Ugandan and Indian) succesfully invaded Rwanda in 1916 as logistic support for the Belgian invasion of the Congo.
Um, the Belgians already held the Congo long before WW1.
Sorry, should read, from the Congo. Rwanda-Urundi was part of German East Africa until 1918, invaded by Belgian forces from the Congo in 1916.
I don't think British forces entered Rwanda. The Battle of Tabora (which is now in Tanzania) seems to have been Belgium v. Germany.
Belgium wouldn't allow their bearers to move from Congo into German East Africa, so the British Empire provided them, rather than let the Belgians live off the land.
But they weren't combat troops, so the occupation of Rwanda-Urundi was entirely Belgian. By contrast, the combat troops of Lake Force headed due south from Lake Victoria towards Mwanza, also in modern Tanzania.
"In May 1916, Lake Force sent 5,000 porters and 100 oxwagons to serve with their allies, the Force publique of the Belgian Congo under Charles Tombeur"
What fecks me off the most at the moment about my local NHS (GP, hospital, physiotherapy, OT etc etc) is that none of them allow me to simply logon to a nice interface and change an appointment.
They all expect me to phone and wait in a queue system etc.
There is absolutely no need to talk to a human to change the date of a routine appointment.
Yet Sainsbury's allow me to amend the time and date of a delivery in a few clicks.
We can change appointments online with the community phlebotomy service. Although last time it sent me to the name of one clinic at the address of a quite different one, so computers are not foolproof. And when I phoned to let them know about the bug in their system, I was told their email system was down; this might or might not have been due to the Google cloud outage on the hottest day.
Jack Monroe, the Bootstrap Cook, has been pretty much cancelled on Twitter
Scenes
What for this time? Had her multitude of deceptions exposed?
Basically, yes, and they've got the receipts and the records, and she is unable to rebut
I actually quite like her. And I suspect she has genuine mental health issues, so I am sympathetic. But, really posing as terribly poor and asking for money from strangers, when you are living a fine middle class lifestyle? - that is quite grim. Same as Rachael Swindon and that Harry's last stand guy - another in a series of mewling, grifting leftwing frauds
She will probably survive, she has so many followers, but not great for her
Not surprised. I wonder what type of people cancelled her.
An anonymous Twitter sleuth "pieced it all together". An entire career of ridiculous (alleged) lies and delusions
I don't approve of anonymous take-downs, nonetheless she does seem to have brought it on herself. She needs someone to take her off Twitter and get her some therapy
The twitter thread is very thin. It's taken a bunch of things from over ten years and conflated a sense of contradictions, but people's circumstances can change rapidly over time. There's no real evidence as such.
For example, I have also described myself as a single parent while keeping up a pretence that my ex was a supportive co-parent. This isn't an example of a lie, except insofar as people in that sort of situation will often try to put a brave face on things.
If Putin's little evil elves were planning to hack the tory vote which candidate would they favour?
Perhaps they'd engineer a tie, forcing the whole thing to be re-run, and proving that even the FSB (or whatever they call themselves now) has a sense of humour.
In an alternate universe, 'senior Tories' are briefing their concern that Boris and Rishis economic relaunch hasnt shifted the polls and Angie and Sam Tarry have invited Keir over for a curry
I point PB-ers to this scintillating piece of invective, aimed by a left wing Labour voter directly at Kier Starmer. There is REAL hatred of Sir Beer Korma on the Corbynite left. Does it mean anything? Dunno. But if this feeling grows...
"What I need, really, what we all need, is the possibility of actually doing something: a pathway to the sort of concrete action that might actually make the world a better place. Keir Starmer, a wet-wipe, a fatberg, blocks this possibility ..."
Superbly cruel. Admire the nasty prose, if nothing else
He is impure. He does not bear the mark. He is neither beer and sandwiches nor is he Polly Toynbee. He does not say comrade nor does he dress as Emily Thornberry and sneer at self employed tradesmen. He is UNLABOUR.
Release the hounds
It is one of the best take-downs I have ever read of any politician. Each sentence rises over the last, until it becomes a a sustained and piercing howl of withering contempt. Genius
The finest, noblest, most chateau-bottled hatred is always WITHIN political parties
Bit feeble.
Low blood sugar getting the better if your judgment ?
No, it's superb. And quite profound
"I hate him like a malfunctioning bus stop sign that keeps telling me my bus is about to show up, but it never does. Keir Starmer exists, less as a person than as an institution: he is a decision that has been decreed from on high. And so there is nothing that I can do about him, except fume and moan and shitpost about him online. If I met him, I sometimes think, what would I say to him? I'm not sure I would say anything, to be honest. I'm not sure there would be any point"
It captures an essence
I note you haven't mentioned the extensive eulogy to Jeremy Corbyn that is contained within the article that articulates such a superb put-down of Starmer. Are you by any chance a fan of Corbyn's?
What fecks me off the most at the moment about my local NHS (GP, hospital, physiotherapy, OT etc etc) is that none of them allow me to simply logon to a nice interface and change an appointment.
They all expect me to phone and wait in a queue system etc.
There is absolutely no need to talk to a human to change the date of a routine appointment.
Yet Sainsbury's allow me to amend the time and date of a delivery in a few clicks.
It's not a matter of allowing. It takes investment in IT infrastructure to set up a secure system like that, and politicians are continually promising the voters that money will be prioritised for the front line nurses and doctors, and not boring back office functions like IT.
It’s a) very poorly written and b ) doesn’t substantiate the headline.
I’m surprised Mr Milne liked the post, not because one suspects he agrees with the headline, but because the article is just terribly written garbage. Milne is a smart chap.
Go to Penzance, then Mousehole, see the Men an Tol, the Minack Theatre, do the walk to Nanjizel, check the Merry Maidens, have a picnic by Ding Dong Mine, stand atop Cape Cornwall, have a pasty in St Just in Penwith, gawp at amazing Botallack mine on the cliffs, see the rocks of Morvah, hike from St Ives to Zennor, where you must have a pint in the Tinners, where D H Lawrence drank (and many other artists), but....
Jack Monroe, the Bootstrap Cook, has been pretty much cancelled on Twitter
Scenes
What for this time? Had her multitude of deceptions exposed?
Basically, yes, and they've got the receipts and the records, and she is unable to rebut
I actually quite like her. And I suspect she has genuine mental health issues, so I am sympathetic. But, really posing as terribly poor and asking for money from strangers, when you are living a fine middle class lifestyle? - that is quite grim. Same as Rachael Swindon and that Harry's last stand guy - another in a series of mewling, grifting leftwing frauds
She will probably survive, she has so many followers, but not great for her
Not surprised. I wonder what type of people cancelled her.
An anonymous Twitter sleuth "pieced it all together". An entire career of ridiculous (alleged) lies and delusions
I don't approve of anonymous take-downs, nonetheless she does seem to have brought it on herself. She needs someone to take her off Twitter and get her some therapy
The twitter thread is very thin. It's taken a bunch of things from over ten years and conflated a sense of contradictions, but people's circumstances can change rapidly over time. There's no real evidence as such.
For example, I have also described myself as a single parent while keeping up a pretence that my ex was a supportive co-parent. This isn't an example of a lie, except insofar as people in that sort of situation will often try to put a brave face on things.
You are generous
Some of her claims are simply mad, to my mind. And morally dubious, seeing as she is asking for money, constantly. She has 500k followers, a Guardian gig, she sells herself on Patreon (quite well), she is a published author who sold 100,000 copies, she is on TV a lot, she just can't be poor - still - unless she is making outrageously terrible life choices again and again (like buying expensive dogs?)
Does it matter? Not to me, particularly. But to a lot of people who are ACTUALLY poor she is coming across as fraudulent. And they seem upset
Given that she has made herself via social media I guess she is now being tested by social media. It is the modern way
I suspect it won't work because people can't get appointments in the first place. I have been with my present group practice for 3 years now and never seen a doctor. Many nurses etc but no doctors.
I had 2 phone consultations which were worse than useless.
I can book face to face appointments with my GP via the NHS App.
Admittedly the first available is 19th August.
It varies hugely. I asked my GP for a routine face-to-face checkup as it's been a few years, got an appointment a few days later. A friend in Croydon was with a GP who still had that horrible system where you have to keep redialling at 8am. She believed, entirely falsely, that she could only go to tha tone. I rang around for her a bit and found a perfectly sensible surgery a few hundred metres away from the idiot surgery.
The point is that GPs are independent contractors and within defined limits can organise themselves as they pleased. If Truss promised that all GPs would be required to have a sensible appointments system, that'd be a real vote-winner.
The 8 AM phone in farce was brought about by government policy. The policy was that a certain percentage of appointments had to be same day or next. Hence GP surgery's would hold back appointments, and release them only on the day, to tick that target box. A classic example of unintended consequences.
My GP has a simpler system. No appointments for the morning surgery, just turn up and wait in a bus queue. It worked well and rarely was more than an hours wait, though the queue would generally be 20 strong when they opened the door. Afternoon appointments are on a booked system.
I love that policy - it allows me to book a same-day appointment with any doctor I want, just by logging in to the system just after midnight, when the day's batch of slots are released.
What fecks me off the most at the moment about my local NHS (GP, hospital, physiotherapy, OT etc etc) is that none of them allow me to simply logon to a nice interface and change an appointment.
They all expect me to phone and wait in a queue system etc.
There is absolutely no need to talk to a human to change the date of a routine appointment.
Yet Sainsbury's allow me to amend the time and date of a delivery in a few clicks.
It's not a matter of allowing. It takes investment in IT infrastructure to set up a secure system like that, and politicians are continually promising the voters that money will be prioritised for the front line nurses and doctors, and not boring back office functions like IT.
Why don't they just declare that IT is a frontline service, being as it is often the first contact a patient might have and shovel some dosh their way.
In an alternate universe, 'senior Tories' are briefing their concern that Boris and Rishis economic relaunch hasnt shifted the polls and Angie and Sam Tarry have invited Keir over for a curry
I point PB-ers to this scintillating piece of invective, aimed by a left wing Labour voter directly at Kier Starmer. There is REAL hatred of Sir Beer Korma on the Corbynite left. Does it mean anything? Dunno. But if this feeling grows...
"What I need, really, what we all need, is the possibility of actually doing something: a pathway to the sort of concrete action that might actually make the world a better place. Keir Starmer, a wet-wipe, a fatberg, blocks this possibility ..."
Superbly cruel. Admire the nasty prose, if nothing else
He is impure. He does not bear the mark. He is neither beer and sandwiches nor is he Polly Toynbee. He does not say comrade nor does he dress as Emily Thornberry and sneer at self employed tradesmen. He is UNLABOUR.
Release the hounds
It is one of the best take-downs I have ever read of any politician. Each sentence rises over the last, until it becomes a a sustained and piercing howl of withering contempt. Genius
The finest, noblest, most chateau-bottled hatred is always WITHIN political parties
Bit feeble.
Low blood sugar getting the better if your judgment ?
No, it's superb. And quite profound
"I hate him like a malfunctioning bus stop sign that keeps telling me my bus is about to show up, but it never does. Keir Starmer exists, less as a person than as an institution: he is a decision that has been decreed from on high. And so there is nothing that I can do about him, except fume and moan and shitpost about him online. If I met him, I sometimes think, what would I say to him? I'm not sure I would say anything, to be honest. I'm not sure there would be any point"
It captures an essence
I note you haven't mentioned the extensive eulogy to Jeremy Corbyn that is contained within the article that articulates such a superb put-down of Starmer. Are you by any chance a fan of Corbyn's?
No. Because I am just admiring the stylishness of the prose and the sharpness of the put-downs, while noting that it is remarkable that this eloquent hatred for Starmer comes from another Labour party member
I have expressed no opinion on the internal politics, as politics
Jack Monroe, the Bootstrap Cook, has been pretty much cancelled on Twitter
Scenes
What for this time? Had her multitude of deceptions exposed?
Basically, yes, and they've got the receipts and the records, and she is unable to rebut
I actually quite like her. And I suspect she has genuine mental health issues, so I am sympathetic. But, really posing as terribly poor and asking for money from strangers, when you are living a fine middle class lifestyle? - that is quite grim. Same as Rachael Swindon and that Harry's last stand guy - another in a series of mewling, grifting leftwing frauds
She will probably survive, she has so many followers, but not great for her
Not surprised. I wonder what type of people cancelled her.
An anonymous Twitter sleuth "pieced it all together". An entire career of ridiculous (alleged) lies and delusions
I don't approve of anonymous take-downs, nonetheless she does seem to have brought it on herself. She needs someone to take her off Twitter and get her some therapy
The twitter thread is very thin. It's taken a bunch of things from over ten years and conflated a sense of contradictions, but people's circumstances can change rapidly over time. There's no real evidence as such.
For example, I have also described myself as a single parent while keeping up a pretence that my ex was a supportive co-parent. This isn't an example of a lie, except insofar as people in that sort of situation will often try to put a brave face on things.
You are generous
Some of her claims are simply mad, to my mind. And morally dubious, seeing as she is asking for money, constantly. She has 500k followers, a Guardian gig, she sells herself on Patreon (quite well), she is a published author who sold 100,000 copies, she is on TV a lot, she just can't be poor - still - unless she is making outrageously terrible life choices again and again (like buying expensive dogs?)
Does it matter? Not to me, particularly. But to a lot of people who are ACTUALLY poor she is coming across as fraudulent. And they seem upset
Given that she has made herself via social media I guess she is now being tested by social media. It is the modern way
She did quite well out of libel settlements as I recall, though I vaguely remember her donating some (all?) of her winnings from one famous case.
Go to Penzance, then Mousehole, see the Men an Tol, the Minack Theatre, do the walk to Nanjizel, check the Merry Maidens, have a picnic by Ding Dong Mine, stand atop Cape Cornwall, have a pasty in St Just in Penwith, gawp at amazing Botallack mine on the cliffs, see the rocks of Morvah, hike from St Ives to Zennor, where you must have a pint in the Tinners, where D H Lawrence drank (and many other artists), but....
DO NOT GO TO LAND'S END
Too many people?
No it's some awful tacky micro theme park, and always has been AFAIK. Ghastly. Never go
On the important issue of British occupation of Rwanda, it does seem that British Imperial forces (Ugandan and Indian) succesfully invaded Rwanda in 1916 as logistic support for the Belgian invasion of the Congo.
Um, the Belgians already held the Congo long before WW1.
Sorry, should read, from the Congo. Rwanda-Urundi was part of German East Africa until 1918, invaded by Belgian forces from the Congo in 1916.
I don't think British forces entered Rwanda. The Battle of Tabora (which is now in Tanzania) seems to have been Belgium v. Germany.
Belgium wouldn't allow their bearers to move from Congo into German East Africa, so the British Empire provided them, rather than let the Belgians live off the land.
But they weren't combat troops, so the occupation of Rwanda-Urundi was entirely Belgian. By contrast, the combat troops of Lake Force headed due south from Lake Victoria towards Mwanza, also in modern Tanzania.
"In May 1916, Lake Force sent 5,000 porters and 100 oxwagons to serve with their allies, the Force publique of the Belgian Congo under Charles Tombeur"
I didn't say they were combat troops, but rather were logistic support from the British Imperial forces, so we did have a presence in Rwanda, at least for a brief period.
Jack Monroe, the Bootstrap Cook, has been pretty much cancelled on Twitter
Scenes
What for this time? Had her multitude of deceptions exposed?
Basically, yes, and they've got the receipts and the records, and she is unable to rebut
I actually quite like her. And I suspect she has genuine mental health issues, so I am sympathetic. But, really posing as terribly poor and asking for money from strangers, when you are living a fine middle class lifestyle? - that is quite grim. Same as Rachael Swindon and that Harry's last stand guy - another in a series of mewling, grifting leftwing frauds
She will probably survive, she has so many followers, but not great for her
Not surprised. I wonder what type of people cancelled her.
An anonymous Twitter sleuth "pieced it all together". An entire career of ridiculous (alleged) lies and delusions
I don't approve of anonymous take-downs, nonetheless she does seem to have brought it on herself. She needs someone to take her off Twitter and get her some therapy
The twitter thread is very thin. It's taken a bunch of things from over ten years and conflated a sense of contradictions, but people's circumstances can change rapidly over time. There's no real evidence as such.
For example, I have also described myself as a single parent while keeping up a pretence that my ex was a supportive co-parent. This isn't an example of a lie, except insofar as people in that sort of situation will often try to put a brave face on things.
You are generous
Some of her claims are simply mad, to my mind. And morally dubious, seeing as she is asking for money, constantly. She has 500k followers, a Guardian gig, she sells herself on Patreon (quite well), she is a published author who sold 100,000 copies, she is on TV a lot, she just can't be poor - still - unless she is making outrageously terrible life choices again and again (like buying expensive dogs?)
Does it matter? Not to me, particularly. But to a lot of people who are ACTUALLY poor she is coming across as fraudulent. And they seem upset
Given that she has made herself via social media I guess she is now being tested by social media. It is the modern way
She did quite well out of libel settlements as I recall, though I vaguely remember her donating some (all?) of her winnings from one famous case.
An angry feminist SNP member has pointed out this quote from her, about ten years ago, and notes that she has since redefined herself as "working class", despite this expressed contempt?
I suspect it won't work because people can't get appointments in the first place. I have been with my present group practice for 3 years now and never seen a doctor. Many nurses etc but no doctors.
I had 2 phone consultations which were worse than useless.
I can book face to face appointments with my GP via the NHS App.
Admittedly the first available is 19th August.
It varies hugely. I asked my GP for a routine face-to-face checkup as it's been a few years, got an appointment a few days later. A friend in Croydon was with a GP who still had that horrible system where you have to keep redialling at 8am. She believed, entirely falsely, that she could only go to tha tone. I rang around for her a bit and found a perfectly sensible surgery a few hundred metres away from the idiot surgery.
The point is that GPs are independent contractors and within defined limits can organise themselves as they pleased. If Truss promised that all GPs would be required to have a sensible appointments system, that'd be a real vote-winner.
The 8 AM phone in farce was brought about by government policy. The policy was that a certain percentage of appointments had to be same day or next. Hence GP surgery's would hold back appointments, and release them only on the day, to tick that target box. A classic example of unintended consequences. [snip]
I admire your tact, in not specifying which government brought in that lunacy..
May I remind you that I left the Labour Party in the early naughties for two reasons:
1) opposition to the invasion of Iraq 2) opposition to Labour's NHS policy.
I suspect it won't work because people can't get appointments in the first place. I have been with my present group practice for 3 years now and never seen a doctor. Many nurses etc but no doctors.
I had 2 phone consultations which were worse than useless.
I can book face to face appointments with my GP via the NHS App.
Admittedly the first available is 19th August.
It varies hugely. I asked my GP for a routine face-to-face checkup as it's been a few years, got an appointment a few days later. A friend in Croydon was with a GP who still had that horrible system where you have to keep redialling at 8am. She believed, entirely falsely, that she could only go to tha tone. I rang around for her a bit and found a perfectly sensible surgery a few hundred metres away from the idiot surgery.
The point is that GPs are independent contractors and within defined limits can organise themselves as they pleased. If Truss promised that all GPs would be required to have a sensible appointments system, that'd be a real vote-winner.
The 8 AM phone in farce was brought about by government policy. The policy was that a certain percentage of appointments had to be same day or next. Hence GP surgery's would hold back appointments, and release them only on the day, to tick that target box. A classic example of unintended consequences. [snip]
I admire your tact, in not specifying which government brought in that lunacy..
Have to say my GP's are stunning compared to what I read day in day out about elsewhere.
Can always get a telephone appointment within a three or four day horizon - bit longer maybe if you want your regular named doctor. And if you phone in the morning and it is obviously urgent the reception books a call with the 'on call' GP and they usually ring back within three or four hours.
I have even recently phoned for my wife at 11am with what might be an urgent matter that needs her to be actually looked at and been at the surgery going in for an appt with the on call GP at 1pm.
They are doing all this by working their bloody nuts off, I know. As an example my wife's regular GP works 2 days a week on frontline because I think he is some kind of bigwig in the wider CCG and so has a ton of management stuff yet he often rings back within hours even though it is not one of his official working days. It may not be sustainable in the long term.
I tell you what - I aint planning to move house anytime soon!!!
Talking of diets, I took my day's exercise today by walking to King's Cross from Camden Market, to see the latest iteration of the King's X development
I know I've mentioned this before, but it is astonishing, and just gets better. They've now extended it north with new gardens, boulevards, pavilions, a dozen new restaurants, new bars and shops, playgrounds, sculpture parks, schools, industrial sheds turned into mighty echoing art galleries where hipster students play table tennis
If you like dense, cultured urban life (and lots of restaurants) King's Cross might be the most desirable part of London to live in, right now. Which, for anyone that knew King's Cross in the 80s, is mind-boggling. I'm not sure there is anything like it anywhere else in the world
So we might have wrecked half of the UK's towns from 1945-2010, but maybe we are learning. Slowly
Good luck with the diet. I have the added incentive that the Pitts Special flight I have booked has a weight limit and currently I am 3 kg over it.
You in an S2?
Can I give you one word of advice: under absolutely no circumstances have anything to eat before flying.
There was an interview once with a journalist who was going up in a fighter jet. The pilot said to eat bananas beforehand. The journalist said why, will the potassium help with the pressure and the pilot said no it's because they taste the same coming up as they did going down
I've flown (but not as PIC) a spitfire, a Pitts Special and an L-39.
The Pitts was by far the most extreme. That thing can roll and pull so many Gs so quickly I genuinely didn't know whether I was coming or going.
In an alternate universe, 'senior Tories' are briefing their concern that Boris and Rishis economic relaunch hasnt shifted the polls and Angie and Sam Tarry have invited Keir over for a curry
I point PB-ers to this scintillating piece of invective, aimed by a left wing Labour voter directly at Kier Starmer. There is REAL hatred of Sir Beer Korma on the Corbynite left. Does it mean anything? Dunno. But if this feeling grows...
"What I need, really, what we all need, is the possibility of actually doing something: a pathway to the sort of concrete action that might actually make the world a better place. Keir Starmer, a wet-wipe, a fatberg, blocks this possibility ..."
Superbly cruel. Admire the nasty prose, if nothing else
He is impure. He does not bear the mark. He is neither beer and sandwiches nor is he Polly Toynbee. He does not say comrade nor does he dress as Emily Thornberry and sneer at self employed tradesmen. He is UNLABOUR.
Release the hounds
It is one of the best take-downs I have ever read of any politician. Each sentence rises over the last, until it becomes a a sustained and piercing howl of withering contempt. Genius
The finest, noblest, most chateau-bottled hatred is always WITHIN political parties
Bit feeble.
Low blood sugar getting the better if your judgment ?
No, it's superb. And quite profound
"I hate him like a malfunctioning bus stop sign that keeps telling me my bus is about to show up, but it never does. Keir Starmer exists, less as a person than as an institution: he is a decision that has been decreed from on high. And so there is nothing that I can do about him, except fume and moan and shitpost about him online. If I met him, I sometimes think, what would I say to him? I'm not sure I would say anything, to be honest. I'm not sure there would be any point"
It captures an essence
It’s just spleen. Profound it is not.
I’m no fan of Starmer, but the spectacle of all the Tories here who spent this morning defending Truss’s absurd policy, and this evening praising her remarkable acumen at abandoning it, sitting in judgment on the leader of the opposition - as if they had any judgment - is pretty risible.
I bow to no-one in my contempt for Ms Truss, but it has to be said that Sunak has done an impressive job of torpedoing what was supposed to be his USP, namely being the vaguely sane one of the two. For every Truss insanity (NIP, levelling down nurses' pay...), you can equally find a Sunak insanity (NIP, charging sick people for missed NHS appointments they probably didn't know they had..)
I can see why even the tiny remaining cohort of sensible party members might go for Liz. She's completely bonkers, of course, but the alternative doesn't seem much more sane, and is terrible at politics to boot.
Err, get the other stuff but fining people for missing GP appointments is insane?
Not really mate. That was suggested in the coalition years under Cameron.
Just like with 10p for plastic bags it's a sensible and efficient way of ensuring GP slots aren't wasted without a reasonable excuse.
GP missed appointments are something of a problem. I know one of the authors of this which reviews the situation internationally: https://bjgp.org/content/71/707/e406 But current UK GP missed appointment rates aren't usually too high. Ask GPs and they wouldn't say this was the top priority.
GP slots are rarely wasted. If a patient doesn't turn up, the GP isn't sat there twiddling their thumbs. They can see the next patient usually. There's plenty of paperwork to be done. They get a chance to pop to the loo!
Who misses appointments? Sunak said he'd be targeting people missing multiple appointments, not just occasional errors. One of the predictors of missing high numbers of appointments is poor mental health. We shouldn't be penalising those with poor mental health. Other reasons include being too ill (why should we be fining those people?) and childcare problems (you want a tax on being a parent?).
How are these fines administered? Chasing people for the money costs money. Nor is it good to set up antagonistic relationships between healthcare providers and patients.
If you introduce a fine, it can increase missed appointments. There was a study where a school introduced fines for people being late to collect their kids at the end of the day. Rates of late pick-up went up. For those who could afford it, it was worth paying the fine. Without fines, people felt guilty and didn't do it. Introduce a £10 fine for a missed GP appointment and some people will pay the fine as a reasonable cost of holding a possible appointment slot.
It's the usual fantasy nonsense from the Tory leadership contenders. There's some simple trick that will make public services better while saving money that, oddly, we didn't think to introduce 30 years ago.
What a lot of nonsense.
Why? All seems reasonable to me. Nobody is going to collect £10 fines. The only people likely to pay it is you and me who don't miss appointments deliberately. Serial offenders won't and you can't withdraw health care.
You do it the other way around: £10 to book, and you get it back upon arrival (or cancellation).
Go to Penzance, then Mousehole, see the Men an Tol, the Minack Theatre, do the walk to Nanjizel, check the Merry Maidens, have a picnic by Ding Dong Mine, stand atop Cape Cornwall, have a pasty in St Just in Penwith, gawp at amazing Botallack mine on the cliffs, see the rocks of Morvah, hike from St Ives to Zennor, where you must have a pint in the Tinners, where D H Lawrence drank (and many other artists), but....
DO NOT GO TO LAND'S END
Too many people?
No it's some awful tacky micro theme park, and always has been AFAIK. Ghastly. Never go
Ditto The Needles on the Isle of Wight, though that too is popular, so obviously there is a market.
Nearby Tennyson Down is much nicer, and even has UK space programme sites to look at.
In an alternate universe, 'senior Tories' are briefing their concern that Boris and Rishis economic relaunch hasnt shifted the polls and Angie and Sam Tarry have invited Keir over for a curry
I point PB-ers to this scintillating piece of invective, aimed by a left wing Labour voter directly at Kier Starmer. There is REAL hatred of Sir Beer Korma on the Corbynite left. Does it mean anything? Dunno. But if this feeling grows...
"What I need, really, what we all need, is the possibility of actually doing something: a pathway to the sort of concrete action that might actually make the world a better place. Keir Starmer, a wet-wipe, a fatberg, blocks this possibility ..."
Superbly cruel. Admire the nasty prose, if nothing else
He is impure. He does not bear the mark. He is neither beer and sandwiches nor is he Polly Toynbee. He does not say comrade nor does he dress as Emily Thornberry and sneer at self employed tradesmen. He is UNLABOUR.
Release the hounds
It is one of the best take-downs I have ever read of any politician. Each sentence rises over the last, until it becomes a a sustained and piercing howl of withering contempt. Genius
The finest, noblest, most chateau-bottled hatred is always WITHIN political parties
Bit feeble.
Low blood sugar getting the better if your judgment ?
No, it's superb. And quite profound
"I hate him like a malfunctioning bus stop sign that keeps telling me my bus is about to show up, but it never does. Keir Starmer exists, less as a person than as an institution: he is a decision that has been decreed from on high. And so there is nothing that I can do about him, except fume and moan and shitpost about him online. If I met him, I sometimes think, what would I say to him? I'm not sure I would say anything, to be honest. I'm not sure there would be any point"
It captures an essence
It’s just spleen. Profound it is not.
I’m no fan of Starmer, but the spectacle of all the Tories here who spent this morning defending Truss’s absurd policy, and this evening praising her remarkable acumen at abandoning it, sitting in judgment on the leader of the opposition - as if they had any judgment - is pretty risible.
"he is a decision that has been decreed from on high."
No - he won membership vote.
The author gives the game away all to easily. He is clearly a Corbyn cultist who has never forgiven the party.
I bet a pineapple pizza he let his actual membership lapse months ago.
I suspect it won't work because people can't get appointments in the first place. I have been with my present group practice for 3 years now and never seen a doctor. Many nurses etc but no doctors.
I had 2 phone consultations which were worse than useless.
I can book face to face appointments with my GP via the NHS App.
Admittedly the first available is 19th August.
It varies hugely. I asked my GP for a routine face-to-face checkup as it's been a few years, got an appointment a few days later. A friend in Croydon was with a GP who still had that horrible system where you have to keep redialling at 8am. She believed, entirely falsely, that she could only go to tha tone. I rang around for her a bit and found a perfectly sensible surgery a few hundred metres away from the idiot surgery.
The point is that GPs are independent contractors and within defined limits can organise themselves as they pleased. If Truss promised that all GPs would be required to have a sensible appointments system, that'd be a real vote-winner.
The 8 AM phone in farce was brought about by government policy. The policy was that a certain percentage of appointments had to be same day or next. Hence GP surgery's would hold back appointments, and release them only on the day, to tick that target box. A classic example of unintended consequences.
My GP has a simpler system. No appointments for the morning surgery, just turn up and wait in a bus queue. It worked well and rarely was more than an hours wait, though the queue would generally be 20 strong when they opened the door. Afternoon appointments are on a booked system.
As I've mentioned previously, I had to wait 27 days for a telephone appointment with my GP. He then found time to see me later the same day. Weird system.
On the important issue of British occupation of Rwanda, it does seem that British Imperial forces (Ugandan and Indian) succesfully invaded Rwanda in 1916 as logistic support for the Belgian invasion of the Congo.
Um, the Belgians already held the Congo long before WW1.
Sorry, should read, from the Congo. Rwanda-Urundi was part of German East Africa until 1918, invaded by Belgian forces from the Congo in 1916.
I don't think British forces entered Rwanda. The Battle of Tabora (which is now in Tanzania) seems to have been Belgium v. Germany.
Belgium wouldn't allow their bearers to move from Congo into German East Africa, so the British Empire provided them, rather than let the Belgians live off the land.
But they weren't combat troops, so the occupation of Rwanda-Urundi was entirely Belgian. By contrast, the combat troops of Lake Force headed due south from Lake Victoria towards Mwanza, also in modern Tanzania.
"In May 1916, Lake Force sent 5,000 porters and 100 oxwagons to serve with their allies, the Force publique of the Belgian Congo under Charles Tombeur"
I didn't say they were combat troops, but rather were logistic support from the British Imperial forces, so we did have a presence in Rwanda, at least for a brief period.
Sorry, British forces weren't part of the administration. And in 1917, far from Britain vacating former German East Africa territory in favour of the Belgians, it was Belgium who agreed to withdraw back to the borders of what we now call Rwanda and Burundi.
Compare with Togo, which was an actual Anglo-French condominium from 1914 to 1916, and the Mozambique port of Chinde, which was leased by Britain from 1891 to 1923.
I suspect it won't work because people can't get appointments in the first place. I have been with my present group practice for 3 years now and never seen a doctor. Many nurses etc but no doctors.
I had 2 phone consultations which were worse than useless.
I can book face to face appointments with my GP via the NHS App.
Admittedly the first available is 19th August.
It varies hugely. I asked my GP for a routine face-to-face checkup as it's been a few years, got an appointment a few days later. A friend in Croydon was with a GP who still had that horrible system where you have to keep redialling at 8am. She believed, entirely falsely, that she could only go to tha tone. I rang around for her a bit and found a perfectly sensible surgery a few hundred metres away from the idiot surgery.
The point is that GPs are independent contractors and within defined limits can organise themselves as they pleased. If Truss promised that all GPs would be required to have a sensible appointments system, that'd be a real vote-winner.
The 8 AM phone in farce was brought about by government policy. The policy was that a certain percentage of appointments had to be same day or next. Hence GP surgery's would hold back appointments, and release them only on the day, to tick that target box. A classic example of unintended consequences. [snip]
I admire your tact, in not specifying which government brought in that lunacy..
Have to say my GP's are stunning compared to what I read day in day out about elsewhere.
Can always get a telephone appointment within a three or four day horizon - bit longer maybe if you want your regular named doctor. And if you phone in the morning and it is obviously urgent the reception books a call with the 'on call' GP and they usually ring back within three or four hours.
I have even recently phoned for my wife at 11am with what might be an urgent matter that needs her to be actually looked at and been at the surgery going in for an appt with the on call GP at 1pm.
They are doing all this by working their bloody nuts off, I know. As an example my wife's regular GP works 2 days a week on frontline because I think he is some kind of bigwig in the wider CCG and so has a ton of management stuff yet he often rings back within hours even though it is not one of his official working days. It may not be sustainable in the long term.
I tell you what - I aint planning to move house anytime soon!!!
But...
I think the reason they can deliver like this is they have totally embraced telephone appointment as first base. You cannot as far as I can see actually book a face-to-face via reception. The only f2f are after an initial telephone chat with a GP who then decides they actually need to see the massive tumour on your ear or whatever.
Far more efficient. And the only three or four times in last year we have needed a f2f - the waiting room was utterly dead.
I think its great. Most of the time I used to find it a pain in the arse going down to the GPs just to do something that could be done in 2 mins on the phone.
But I can imagine how many people are up in arms about it.
In an alternate universe, 'senior Tories' are briefing their concern that Boris and Rishis economic relaunch hasnt shifted the polls and Angie and Sam Tarry have invited Keir over for a curry
I point PB-ers to this scintillating piece of invective, aimed by a left wing Labour voter directly at Kier Starmer. There is REAL hatred of Sir Beer Korma on the Corbynite left. Does it mean anything? Dunno. But if this feeling grows...
"What I need, really, what we all need, is the possibility of actually doing something: a pathway to the sort of concrete action that might actually make the world a better place. Keir Starmer, a wet-wipe, a fatberg, blocks this possibility ..."
Superbly cruel. Admire the nasty prose, if nothing else
He is impure. He does not bear the mark. He is neither beer and sandwiches nor is he Polly Toynbee. He does not say comrade nor does he dress as Emily Thornberry and sneer at self employed tradesmen. He is UNLABOUR.
Release the hounds
It is one of the best take-downs I have ever read of any politician. Each sentence rises over the last, until it becomes a a sustained and piercing howl of withering contempt. Genius
The finest, noblest, most chateau-bottled hatred is always WITHIN political parties
Bit feeble.
Low blood sugar getting the better if your judgment ?
No, it's superb. And quite profound
"I hate him like a malfunctioning bus stop sign that keeps telling me my bus is about to show up, but it never does. Keir Starmer exists, less as a person than as an institution: he is a decision that has been decreed from on high. And so there is nothing that I can do about him, except fume and moan and shitpost about him online. If I met him, I sometimes think, what would I say to him? I'm not sure I would say anything, to be honest. I'm not sure there would be any point"
It captures an essence
It’s just spleen. Profound it is not.
I’m no fan of Starmer, but the spectacle of all the Tories here who spent this morning defending Truss’s absurd policy, and this evening praising her remarkable acumen at abandoning it, sitting in judgment on the leader of the opposition - as if they had any judgment - is pretty risible.
I don't know who or what you're talking about. You are projecting
My original and only point is that this is superb invective prose. And it is. And denying it is futile, and betrays peculiarly hurt feelings. And it is also interesting that this aggression is internecine. C'est tout
Jack Monroe, the Bootstrap Cook, has been pretty much cancelled on Twitter
Scenes
What for this time? Had her multitude of deceptions exposed?
Basically, yes, and they've got the receipts and the records, and she is unable to rebut
I actually quite like her. And I suspect she has genuine mental health issues, so I am sympathetic. But, really posing as terribly poor and asking for money from strangers, when you are living a fine middle class lifestyle? - that is quite grim. Same as Rachael Swindon and that Harry's last stand guy - another in a series of mewling, grifting leftwing frauds
She will probably survive, she has so many followers, but not great for her
Not surprised. I wonder what type of people cancelled her.
An anonymous Twitter sleuth "pieced it all together". An entire career of ridiculous (alleged) lies and delusions
I don't approve of anonymous take-downs, nonetheless she does seem to have brought it on herself. She needs someone to take her off Twitter and get her some therapy
The twitter thread is very thin. It's taken a bunch of things from over ten years and conflated a sense of contradictions, but people's circumstances can change rapidly over time. There's no real evidence as such.
For example, I have also described myself as a single parent while keeping up a pretence that my ex was a supportive co-parent. This isn't an example of a lie, except insofar as people in that sort of situation will often try to put a brave face on things.
You are generous
Some of her claims are simply mad, to my mind. And morally dubious, seeing as she is asking for money, constantly. She has 500k followers, a Guardian gig, she sells herself on Patreon (quite well), she is a published author who sold 100,000 copies, she is on TV a lot, she just can't be poor - still - unless she is making outrageously terrible life choices again and again (like buying expensive dogs?)
Does it matter? Not to me, particularly. But to a lot of people who are ACTUALLY poor she is coming across as fraudulent. And they seem upset
Given that she has made herself via social media I guess she is now being tested by social media. It is the modern way
I am generous, yes. I've even said positive things about Boris Johnson *and* Liz Truss before. I *know*.
But some of the criticism in the twitter thread are risible. I've seen lots of property adverts that incorrectly use the identifier bungalow. A picture of stairs in a bungalow is not evidence of lying, sadly. It's evidence of the inevitable drift and corruption of the English language - which is why we love it.
Go to Penzance, then Mousehole, see the Men an Tol, the Minack Theatre, do the walk to Nanjizel, check the Merry Maidens, have a picnic by Ding Dong Mine, stand atop Cape Cornwall, have a pasty in St Just in Penwith, gawp at amazing Botallack mine on the cliffs, see the rocks of Morvah, hike from St Ives to Zennor, where you must have a pint in the Tinners, where D H Lawrence drank (and many other artists), but....
I can see why it has angered people. The self pity is fantastical. This one line about her having to move into a hovel made me laugh out loud (I'm sorry)
"Having no stairs will be good for my arthritic bones"
And yet, and yet. It is REALLY well written. She can REALLY write. If she's not making a living from her writing she should sack her agent and editor and get ones that will make her money, because she could easily earn it and then she wouldn't be destitute, or have to pretend she's destitute (whatever it is). And then she wouldn't be in a Twitter-storm
I bow to no-one in my contempt for Ms Truss, but it has to be said that Sunak has done an impressive job of torpedoing what was supposed to be his USP, namely being the vaguely sane one of the two. For every Truss insanity (NIP, levelling down nurses' pay...), you can equally find a Sunak insanity (NIP, charging sick people for missed NHS appointments they probably didn't know they had..)
I can see why even the tiny remaining cohort of sensible party members might go for Liz. She's completely bonkers, of course, but the alternative doesn't seem much more sane, and is terrible at politics to boot.
Err, get the other stuff but fining people for missing GP appointments is insane?
Not really mate. That was suggested in the coalition years under Cameron.
Just like with 10p for plastic bags it's a sensible and efficient way of ensuring GP slots aren't wasted without a reasonable excuse.
GP missed appointments are something of a problem. I know one of the authors of this which reviews the situation internationally: https://bjgp.org/content/71/707/e406 But current UK GP missed appointment rates aren't usually too high. Ask GPs and they wouldn't say this was the top priority.
GP slots are rarely wasted. If a patient doesn't turn up, the GP isn't sat there twiddling their thumbs. They can see the next patient usually. There's plenty of paperwork to be done. They get a chance to pop to the loo!
Who misses appointments? Sunak said he'd be targeting people missing multiple appointments, not just occasional errors. One of the predictors of missing high numbers of appointments is poor mental health. We shouldn't be penalising those with poor mental health. Other reasons include being too ill (why should we be fining those people?) and childcare problems (you want a tax on being a parent?).
How are these fines administered? Chasing people for the money costs money. Nor is it good to set up antagonistic relationships between healthcare providers and patients.
If you introduce a fine, it can increase missed appointments. There was a study where a school introduced fines for people being late to collect their kids at the end of the day. Rates of late pick-up went up. For those who could afford it, it was worth paying the fine. Without fines, people felt guilty and didn't do it. Introduce a £10 fine for a missed GP appointment and some people will pay the fine as a reasonable cost of holding a possible appointment slot.
It's the usual fantasy nonsense from the Tory leadership contenders. There's some simple trick that will make public services better while saving money that, oddly, we didn't think to introduce 30 years ago.
What a lot of nonsense.
Why? All seems reasonable to me. Nobody is going to collect £10 fines. The only people likely to pay it is you and me who don't miss appointments deliberately. Serial offenders won't and you can't withdraw health care.
You do it the other way around: £10 to book, and you get it back upon arrival (or cancellation).
Two points:
1) Back in the days before covid and mass telephone triage the GPs actually needed the buffer of having a couple of no shows for each session so it actually helped is my understanding.
2) No show is pretty meaningless under the new NHS telephone triage first as the vast majority of stuff is dealt with over the phone. If the feckers don't answer the mobile you move onto the next one on the list.
Looks like strop, rather than sulk. OGH isn’t on holiday, is he ?
Live-fire military exercises announced by Chinese state media reveal that China plans to send its military forces into both Taiwan's sovereign territorial waters and its internal waters (where Taiwan has as many rights as its land). Gravely escalatory and dangerous steps. https://twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1554510858784755712
I bow to no-one in my contempt for Ms Truss, but it has to be said that Sunak has done an impressive job of torpedoing what was supposed to be his USP, namely being the vaguely sane one of the two. For every Truss insanity (NIP, levelling down nurses' pay...), you can equally find a Sunak insanity (NIP, charging sick people for missed NHS appointments they probably didn't know they had..)
I can see why even the tiny remaining cohort of sensible party members might go for Liz. She's completely bonkers, of course, but the alternative doesn't seem much more sane, and is terrible at politics to boot.
Err, get the other stuff but fining people for missing GP appointments is insane?
Not really mate. That was suggested in the coalition years under Cameron.
Just like with 10p for plastic bags it's a sensible and efficient way of ensuring GP slots aren't wasted without a reasonable excuse.
GP missed appointments are something of a problem. I know one of the authors of this which reviews the situation internationally: https://bjgp.org/content/71/707/e406 But current UK GP missed appointment rates aren't usually too high. Ask GPs and they wouldn't say this was the top priority.
GP slots are rarely wasted. If a patient doesn't turn up, the GP isn't sat there twiddling their thumbs. They can see the next patient usually. There's plenty of paperwork to be done. They get a chance to pop to the loo!
Who misses appointments? Sunak said he'd be targeting people missing multiple appointments, not just occasional errors. One of the predictors of missing high numbers of appointments is poor mental health. We shouldn't be penalising those with poor mental health. Other reasons include being too ill (why should we be fining those people?) and childcare problems (you want a tax on being a parent?).
How are these fines administered? Chasing people for the money costs money. Nor is it good to set up antagonistic relationships between healthcare providers and patients.
If you introduce a fine, it can increase missed appointments. There was a study where a school introduced fines for people being late to collect their kids at the end of the day. Rates of late pick-up went up. For those who could afford it, it was worth paying the fine. Without fines, people felt guilty and didn't do it. Introduce a £10 fine for a missed GP appointment and some people will pay the fine as a reasonable cost of holding a possible appointment slot.
It's the usual fantasy nonsense from the Tory leadership contenders. There's some simple trick that will make public services better while saving money that, oddly, we didn't think to introduce 30 years ago.
What a lot of nonsense.
Why? All seems reasonable to me. Nobody is going to collect £10 fines. The only people likely to pay it is you and me who don't miss appointments deliberately. Serial offenders won't and you can't withdraw health care.
You do it the other way around: £10 to book, and you get it back upon arrival (or cancellation).
Two points:
1) Back in the days before covid and mass telephone triage the GPs actually needed the buffer of having a couple of no shows for each session so it actually helped is my understanding.
2) No show is pretty meaningless under the new NHS telephone triage first as the vast majority of stuff is dealt with over the phone. If the feckers don't answer the mobile you move onto the next one on the list.
That's reminded me...
On the day I was due to have a telephone appointment I had to take the phone with me every time I needed a piss just in case the doctor phoned at that precise moment.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 24m Sunak was never going to beat Truss with the members. He was never going to get close to beating Truss with the members. His role in this contest has been to keep any candidate out of the final two that might have given Truss a problem.
I bow to no-one in my contempt for Ms Truss, but it has to be said that Sunak has done an impressive job of torpedoing what was supposed to be his USP, namely being the vaguely sane one of the two. For every Truss insanity (NIP, levelling down nurses' pay...), you can equally find a Sunak insanity (NIP, charging sick people for missed NHS appointments they probably didn't know they had..)
I can see why even the tiny remaining cohort of sensible party members might go for Liz. She's completely bonkers, of course, but the alternative doesn't seem much more sane, and is terrible at politics to boot.
Err, get the other stuff but fining people for missing GP appointments is insane?
Not really mate. That was suggested in the coalition years under Cameron.
Just like with 10p for plastic bags it's a sensible and efficient way of ensuring GP slots aren't wasted without a reasonable excuse.
GP missed appointments are something of a problem. I know one of the authors of this which reviews the situation internationally: https://bjgp.org/content/71/707/e406 But current UK GP missed appointment rates aren't usually too high. Ask GPs and they wouldn't say this was the top priority.
GP slots are rarely wasted. If a patient doesn't turn up, the GP isn't sat there twiddling their thumbs. They can see the next patient usually. There's plenty of paperwork to be done. They get a chance to pop to the loo!
Who misses appointments? Sunak said he'd be targeting people missing multiple appointments, not just occasional errors. One of the predictors of missing high numbers of appointments is poor mental health. We shouldn't be penalising those with poor mental health. Other reasons include being too ill (why should we be fining those people?) and childcare problems (you want a tax on being a parent?).
How are these fines administered? Chasing people for the money costs money. Nor is it good to set up antagonistic relationships between healthcare providers and patients.
If you introduce a fine, it can increase missed appointments. There was a study where a school introduced fines for people being late to collect their kids at the end of the day. Rates of late pick-up went up. For those who could afford it, it was worth paying the fine. Without fines, people felt guilty and didn't do it. Introduce a £10 fine for a missed GP appointment and some people will pay the fine as a reasonable cost of holding a possible appointment slot.
It's the usual fantasy nonsense from the Tory leadership contenders. There's some simple trick that will make public services better while saving money that, oddly, we didn't think to introduce 30 years ago.
What a lot of nonsense.
Why? All seems reasonable to me. Nobody is going to collect £10 fines. The only people likely to pay it is you and me who don't miss appointments deliberately. Serial offenders won't and you can't withdraw health care.
You do it the other way around: £10 to book, and you get it back upon arrival (or cancellation).
Two points:
1) Back in the days before covid and mass telephone triage the GPs actually needed the buffer of having a couple of no shows for each session so it actually helped is my understanding.
2) No show is pretty meaningless under the new NHS telephone triage first as the vast majority of stuff is dealt with over the phone. If the feckers don't answer the mobile you move onto the next one on the list.
That's reminded me...
On the day I was due to have a telephone appointment I had to take the phone with me every time I needed a piss just in case the doctor phoned at that precise moment.
The best part is when you miss the call, you call the surgery back and (If you can get through) you're like "the doctor literally just called me a second ago"...
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 24m Sunak was never going to beat Truss with the members. He was never going to get close to beating Truss with the members. His role in this contest has been to keep any candidate out of the final two that might have given Truss a problem.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 24m Sunak was never going to beat Truss with the members. He was never going to get close to beating Truss with the members. His role in this contest has been to keep any candidate out of the final two that might have given Truss a problem.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 24m Sunak was never going to beat Truss with the members. He was never going to get close to beating Truss with the members. His role in this contest has been to keep any candidate out of the final two that might have given Truss a problem.
Looks like strop, rather than sulk. OGH isn’t on holiday, is he ?
Live-fire military exercises announced by Chinese state media reveal that China plans to send its military forces into both Taiwan's sovereign territorial waters and its internal waters (where Taiwan has as many rights as its land). Gravely escalatory and dangerous steps. https://twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1554510858784755712
Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum · 15h imagine being *this scared* of Nancy Pelosi
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 24m Sunak was never going to beat Truss with the members. He was never going to get close to beating Truss with the members. His role in this contest has been to keep any candidate out of the final two that might have given Truss a problem.
I can see why it has angered people. The self pity is fantastical. This one line about her having to move into a hovel made me laugh out loud (I'm sorry)
"Having no stairs will be good for my arthritic bones"
And yet, and yet. It is REALLY well written. She can REALLY write. If she's not making a living from her writing she should sack her agent and editor and get ones that will make her money, because she could easily earn it and then she wouldn't be destitute, or have to pretend she's destitute (whatever it is). And then she wouldn't be in a Twitter-storm
Twitter followers don't - in themselves - generate income. And Guardian articles don't make much in the way of moolah.
Patreon, I'm sure, generates her some income: a thousand here, a thousand there. But the stats on the number of people who make more than a couple of thousand a year from it are telling... it's not many.
Her books will make her some money. But when did she last publish one? Old royalties arrive - particularly thanks to Kindle. But I know that websites don't make much either.
I don't know what her income is, but I could well believe it was 2k/month...
But 2k a month is not nothing, especially as she seems to spend almost nothing on food. How fancy is her apartment that it takes 90+% of her income?
Or is the whole thing an elaborate hoax, and she's rolling in it?
Go to Penzance, then Mousehole, see the Men an Tol, the Minack Theatre, do the walk to Nanjizel, check the Merry Maidens, have a picnic by Ding Dong Mine, stand atop Cape Cornwall, have a pasty in St Just in Penwith, gawp at amazing Botallack mine on the cliffs, see the rocks of Morvah, hike from St Ives to Zennor, where you must have a pint in the Tinners, where D H Lawrence drank (and many other artists), but....
DO NOT GO TO LAND'S END
Too many people?
No it's some awful tacky micro theme park, and always has been AFAIK. Ghastly. Never go
I can see why it has angered people. The self pity is fantastical. This one line about her having to move into a hovel made me laugh out loud (I'm sorry)
"Having no stairs will be good for my arthritic bones"
And yet, and yet. It is REALLY well written. She can REALLY write. If she's not making a living from her writing she should sack her agent and editor and get ones that will make her money, because she could easily earn it and then she wouldn't be destitute, or have to pretend she's destitute (whatever it is). And then she wouldn't be in a Twitter-storm
Indeed.
She seems to say she is on her 8th book which sadly shows how authors are totally abused these days as she clearly it seems not making a living at it.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2071 … Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States...
I can see why it has angered people. The self pity is fantastical. This one line about her having to move into a hovel made me laugh out loud (I'm sorry)
"Having no stairs will be good for my arthritic bones"
And yet, and yet. It is REALLY well written. She can REALLY write. If she's not making a living from her writing she should sack her agent and editor and get ones that will make her money, because she could easily earn it and then she wouldn't be destitute, or have to pretend she's destitute (whatever it is). And then she wouldn't be in a Twitter-storm
Twitter followers don't - in themselves - generate income. And Guardian articles don't make much in the way of moolah.
Patreon, I'm sure, generates her some income: a thousand here, a thousand there. But the stats on the number of people who make more than a couple of thousand a year from it are telling... it's not many.
Her books will make her some money. But when did she last publish one? Old royalties arrive - particularly thanks to Kindle. But I know that websites don't make much either.
I don't know what her income is, but I could well believe it was 2k/month...
But 2k a month is not nothing, especially as she seems to spend almost nothing on food. How fancy is her apartment that it takes 90+% of her income?
Or is the whole thing an elaborate hoax, and she's rolling in it?
She’s definitely not poor. In one of her social media posts she talks about being unable to buy the house she REALLY wants as it is “£800k” and she can “only afford £500k”
So she has a deposit and an ongoing income for a mortgage. Unsurprisingly, as selling 100k books means a LOT of money when all the additionals roll in
And good luck to her! She’s a talented writer and good on tv and she - I believe - genuinely means well
My guess is that she is a bit of a mess, a drinker (she mentions this) her life is quite chaotic - so I’m rather sympathetic. Her problem is maybe that she’s sold herself as a dirt poor working class cook eating scraps and she really is not that any more but she has to keep pretending - so she’s ended up tangled in her own contradictions
She should start afresh and be a good talented cook and writer. Cease the self pitying and the begging letters which annoy people
I can see why it has angered people. The self pity is fantastical. This one line about her having to move into a hovel made me laugh out loud (I'm sorry)
"Having no stairs will be good for my arthritic bones"
And yet, and yet. It is REALLY well written. She can REALLY write. If she's not making a living from her writing she should sack her agent and editor and get ones that will make her money, because she could easily earn it and then she wouldn't be destitute, or have to pretend she's destitute (whatever it is). And then she wouldn't be in a Twitter-storm
Twitter followers don't - in themselves - generate income. And Guardian articles don't make much in the way of moolah.
Patreon, I'm sure, generates her some income: a thousand here, a thousand there. But the stats on the number of people who make more than a couple of thousand a year from it are telling... it's not many.
Her books will make her some money. But when did she last publish one? Old royalties arrive - particularly thanks to Kindle. But I know that websites don't make much either.
I don't know what her income is, but I could well believe it was 2k/month...
But 2k a month is not nothing, especially as she seems to spend almost nothing on food. How fancy is her apartment that it takes 90+% of her income?
Or is the whole thing an elaborate hoax, and she's rolling in it?
She’s definitely not poor. In one of her social media posts she talks about being unable to buy the house she REALLY wants as it is “£800k” and she can “only afford £500k”
So she has a deposit and an ongoing income for a mortgage. Unsurprisingly, as selling 100k books means a LOT of money when all the additionals roll in
And good luck to her! She’s a talented writer and good on tv and she - I believe - genuinely means well
My guess is that she is a bit of a mess, a drinker (she mentions this) her life is quite chaotic - so I’m rather sympathetic. Her problem is maybe that she’s sold herself as a dirt poor working class cook eating scraps and she really is not that any more but she has to keep pretending - so she’s ended up tangled in her own contradictions
She should start afresh and be a good talented cook and writer. Cease the self pitying and the begging letters which annoy people
Comments
Admittedly the first available is 19th August.
People think as you say...and then what happens? They get screwed, apart from a few individuals who take the "F*** you - I'm all right, Jack" attitude that Tories have always encouraged among the population. It's not rocket science.
Strength requires unity.
The Labour party isn't the answer, though. Although it used to be the party of the unions in some sense, it has never been the party of strikers, of workers' offensive solidarity. (Has it ever, as a party, even given money to strike funds?) The presence of senior Labour figures on picket lines winds less sensible Tories up far more than it contributes to helping strikers and the working class. By that I mean that
1. More sensible Tories welcome it because it indicates that the Labour party is divided and they feel safe with their much-loved theme that "Labour are a bunch of communists who want corpses to pile up in the crematoria because they're inhuman traitors".
2. Labour versus Tory is election stuff, there's no election on, and it's a distraction from spreading and winning strikes and otherwise acting collectively to defend living standards.
I actually quite like her. And I suspect she has genuine mental health issues, so I am sympathetic. But, really posing as terribly poor and asking for money from strangers, when you are living a fine middle class lifestyle? - that is quite grim. Same as Rachael Swindon and that Harry's last stand guy - another in a series of mewling, grifting leftwing frauds
She will probably survive, she has so many followers, but not great for her
I had the converse problem a few weeks ago. My optician recommended an urgent appointment at the local eye hospital, which was made by phone. When I got there the bank of six receptionists, who seemed to have very little to do, not only denied all knowledge of the appointment, but also claimed it was impossible to book an appointment.
As it happens, they weren't very busy and I was seen quickly and checked thoroughly, but what a shambles in administrative terms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tabora
Low blood sugar getting the better if your judgment ?
I don't approve of anonymous take-downs, nonetheless she does seem to have brought it on herself. She needs someone to take her off Twitter and get her some therapy
I have had to deal with way more appointments in last ten years than most people have in a lifetime thanks to my wife's condition and this has literally never happened.
They all expect me to phone and wait in a queue system etc.
There is absolutely no need to talk to a human to change the date of a routine appointment.
Yet Sainsbury's allow me to amend the time and date of a delivery in a few clicks.
The point is that GPs are independent contractors and within defined limits can organise themselves as they pleased. If Truss promised that all GPs would be required to have a sensible appointments system, that'd be a real vote-winner.
DNV VI is important this time around. Punters ought to consider the stats.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_African_campaign_(World_War_I)
Belgium wouldn't allow their bearers to move from Congo into German East Africa, so the British Empire provided them, rather than let the Belgians live off the land.
Jeremy Corbyn's former director of communications has been liking some interesting tweets recently:
https://twitter.com/OzKaterji/status/1554563506103533569
"I hate him like a malfunctioning bus stop sign that keeps telling me my bus is about to show up, but it never does. Keir Starmer exists, less as a person than as an institution: he is a decision that has been decreed from on high. And so there is nothing that I can do about him, except fume and moan and shitpost about him online. If I met him, I sometimes think, what would I say to him? I'm not sure I would say anything, to be honest. I'm not sure there would be any point"
It captures an essence
You need to go to Cape Cornwall, about three miles N of Lands End, which is magnificent, and - some say - the real Land's End
My GP has a simpler system. No appointments for the morning surgery, just turn up and wait in a bus queue. It worked well and rarely was more than an hours wait, though the queue would generally be 20 strong when they opened the door. Afternoon appointments are on a booked system.
Dunno. This bloke comes across as exactly the sort of young idealistic magic grandpa cultist who has now left the labour party.
For a couple of brief summers they imagined the world could be remade as some kind of socialist paradise.
And then the voters got involved.
Do NOT go to Land's End
Go to Penzance, then Mousehole, see the Men an Tol, the Minack Theatre, do the walk to Nanjizel, check the Merry Maidens, have a picnic by Ding Dong Mine, stand atop Cape Cornwall, have a pasty in St Just in Penwith, gawp at amazing Botallack mine on the cliffs, see the rocks of Morvah, hike from St Ives to Zennor, where you must have a pint in the Tinners, where D H Lawrence drank (and many other artists), but....
DO NOT GO TO LAND'S END
"In May 1916, Lake Force sent 5,000 porters and 100 oxwagons to serve with their allies, the Force publique of the Belgian Congo under Charles Tombeur"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Force
For example, I have also described myself as a single parent while keeping up a pretence that my ex was a supportive co-parent. This isn't an example of a lie, except insofar as people in that sort of situation will often try to put a brave face on things.
Betfair next prime minister
1.13 Liz Truss 88%
8.6 Rishi Sunak 12%
Next Conservative leader
1.12 Liz Truss 89%
9 Rishi Sunak 11%
It’s a) very poorly written and b ) doesn’t substantiate the headline.
I’m surprised Mr Milne liked the post, not because one suspects he agrees with the headline, but because the article is just terribly written garbage. Milne is a smart chap.
Some of her claims are simply mad, to my mind. And morally dubious, seeing as she is asking for money, constantly. She has 500k followers, a Guardian gig, she sells herself on Patreon (quite well), she is a published author who sold 100,000 copies, she is on TV a lot, she just can't be poor - still - unless she is making outrageously terrible life choices again and again (like buying expensive dogs?)
Does it matter? Not to me, particularly. But to a lot of people who are ACTUALLY poor she is coming across as fraudulent. And they seem upset
Given that she has made herself via social media I guess she is now being tested by social media. It is the modern way
I have expressed no opinion on the internal politics, as politics
All a bit of a mess, I'd say
1) opposition to the invasion of Iraq
2) opposition to Labour's NHS policy.
Can always get a telephone appointment within a three or four day horizon - bit longer maybe if you want your regular named doctor. And if you phone in the morning and it is obviously urgent the reception books a call with the 'on call' GP and they usually ring back within three or four hours.
I have even recently phoned for my wife at 11am with what might be an urgent matter that needs her to be actually looked at and been at the surgery going in for an appt with the on call GP at 1pm.
They are doing all this by working their bloody nuts off, I know. As an example my wife's regular GP works 2 days a week on frontline because I think he is some kind of bigwig in the wider CCG and so has a ton of management stuff yet he often rings back within hours even though it is not one of his official working days. It may not be sustainable in the long term.
I tell you what - I aint planning to move house anytime soon!!!
The Pitts was by far the most extreme. That thing can roll and pull so many Gs so quickly I genuinely didn't know whether I was coming or going.
I’m no fan of Starmer, but the spectacle of all the Tories here who spent this morning defending Truss’s absurd policy, and this evening praising her remarkable acumen at abandoning it, sitting in judgment on the leader of the opposition - as if they had any judgment - is pretty risible.
Nearby Tennyson Down is much nicer, and even has UK space programme sites to look at.
It's one of the reasons I don't like online voting. It's also a gift for conspiracy theorists.
No - he won membership vote.
The author gives the game away all to easily. He is clearly a Corbyn cultist who has never forgiven the party.
I bet a pineapple pizza he let his actual membership lapse months ago.
Compare with Togo, which was an actual Anglo-French condominium from 1914 to 1916, and the Mozambique port of Chinde, which was leased by Britain from 1891 to 1923.
I think the reason they can deliver like this is they have totally embraced telephone appointment as first base. You cannot as far as I can see actually book a face-to-face via reception. The only f2f are after an initial telephone chat with a GP who then decides they actually need to see the massive tumour on your ear or whatever.
Far more efficient. And the only three or four times in last year we have needed a f2f - the waiting room was utterly dead.
I think its great. Most of the time I used to find it a pain in the arse going down to the GPs just to do something that could be done in 2 mins on the phone.
But I can imagine how many people are up in arms about it.
My original and only point is that this is superb invective prose. And it is. And denying it is futile, and betrays peculiarly hurt feelings. And it is also interesting that this aggression is internecine. C'est tout
It is not the most westerly point of mainland Great Britain, nor is it the most southerly point.
I have never visited but it sounds like a tacky dump with nothing but a creation myth underpinning it.
But some of the criticism in the twitter thread are risible. I've seen lots of property adverts that incorrectly use the identifier bungalow. A picture of stairs in a bungalow is not evidence of lying, sadly. It's evidence of the inevitable drift and corruption of the English language - which is why we love it.
Things like that in the thread are just weak.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMNqVCQ1T/?k=1
This is the blogpost she wrote which seems to have broken the dam of criticism
https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2022/07/31/the-curse-of-the-poverty-hangover-ten-years-on/
I can see why it has angered people. The self pity is fantastical. This one line about her having to move into a hovel made me laugh out loud (I'm sorry)
"Having no stairs will be good for my arthritic bones"
And yet, and yet. It is REALLY well written. She can REALLY write. If she's not making a living from her writing she should sack her agent and editor and get ones that will make her money, because she could easily earn it and then she wouldn't be destitute, or have to pretend she's destitute (whatever it is). And then she wouldn't be in a Twitter-storm
1) Back in the days before covid and mass telephone triage the GPs actually needed the buffer of having a couple of no shows for each session so it actually helped is my understanding.
2) No show is pretty meaningless under the new NHS telephone triage first as the vast majority of stuff is dealt with over the phone. If the feckers don't answer the mobile you move onto the next one on the list.
OGH isn’t on holiday, is he ?
Live-fire military exercises announced by Chinese state media reveal that China plans to send its military forces into both Taiwan's sovereign territorial waters and its internal waters (where Taiwan has as many rights as its land). Gravely escalatory and dangerous steps.
https://twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1554510858784755712
On the day I was due to have a telephone appointment I had to take the phone with me every time I needed a piss just in case the doctor phoned at that precise moment.
Andrew Lilico
@andrew_lilico
·
24m
Sunak was never going to beat Truss with the members. He was never going to get close to beating Truss with the members. His role in this contest has been to keep any candidate out of the final two that might have given Truss a problem.
https://twitter.com/andrew_lilico
===
Eh? Is he saying the big MP vote Sunak got was just a way of fixing the final two?
I still think that’s a little low.
Anne Applebaum
@anneapplebaum
·
15h
imagine being *this scared* of Nancy Pelosi
Patreon, I'm sure, generates her some income: a thousand here, a thousand there. But the stats on the number of people who make more than a couple of thousand a year from it are telling... it's not many.
Her books will make her some money. But when did she last publish one? Old royalties arrive - particularly thanks to Kindle. But I know that websites don't make much either.
I don't know what her income is, but I could well believe it was 2k/month...
But 2k a month is not nothing, especially as she seems to spend almost nothing on food. How fancy is her apartment that it takes 90+% of her income?
Or is the whole thing an elaborate hoax, and she's rolling in it?
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/3585008-dod-wiped-phones-of-trump-era-leaders-erasing-jan-6-texts/
Anyone want to explain what was going on here?
https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1554566226524999687
She seems to say she is on her 8th book which sadly shows how authors are totally abused these days as she clearly it seems not making a living at it.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2071
… Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States...
So she has a deposit and an ongoing income for a mortgage. Unsurprisingly, as selling 100k books means a LOT of money when all the additionals roll in
And good luck to her! She’s a talented writer and good on tv and she - I believe - genuinely means well
My guess is that she is a bit of a mess, a drinker (she mentions this) her life is quite chaotic - so I’m rather sympathetic. Her problem is maybe that she’s sold herself as a dirt poor working class cook eating scraps and she really is not that any more but she has to keep pretending - so she’s ended up tangled in her own contradictions
She should start afresh and be a good talented
cook and writer. Cease the self pitying and the begging letters which annoy people
It means publishers will want your books and companies will want your endorsement and Spotify will want your podcast etc etc etc
But that is over 8 years since her debut.
Isn't it ironic...