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Is this good for Sunak or bad? – politicalbetting.com

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  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,022

    Driver said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Driver said:

    I wonder how many times a poster is allowed to post the same off-topic thing as an attempt to divert the conversation before the mods get involved.

    It depends who they are but usually a very large number. How many thousands of times have we been subjected to CV's monomaniacal obession with the minute intersection of trans rights and Scottish politics.
    Yeah, I'm not sure why you see someone posting tweets and links to articles - that are different every time - on a subject that interests them as the same thing as the tedious spamming we are currently being subjected to.

    And if it is, Scotty would have been banned years ago.
    Should whining endlessly about 'Scotty' incur a similar ban?
    The thing I find about Scott's frequent tweeting is that they're annoying when I disagree with them, and fine when I agree with them...
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,778
    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other thing we need to do is reverse the degree requirement for nursing. Labour introduced it as a way of meeting their 50% target for students going ti university after 6th form. There's no practical need for it and all it has done is restrict labour supply and leave nurses with £40k in debt when they start work.

    I'm not sure of this. Much of the nursing degree is undertaken in clinical settings - they are learning on the job. Nursing is also a much more highly skilled role than the day of Carry On Nurse etc. I generally tend to think of having better educated staff being a good thing.

    Perhaps understanding and utilization of appropriate staff is the key? I am certain that a ward will have a mix of staffing - some able to do more complex things, some less so. There is no one 'nurse' role.
    Arguably we should go the other way. Want to be a doctor? First you have to train and serve as a nurse for three years.
    Medic training is also highly clinical. There is an emphasis on IPE (inter professional education) including with pharmacists. The system of training isn't broken, the salaries are.
    Certainly no shortage of people who want to be doctors...

    https://www.themedicportal.com/blog/update-ucas-application-stats-for-2022-entry-medicine/
    6 figures average salary for GPs who are partners in medical practices and good pensions of course
    Barely 6 figures. You're being misleading. You need also to allow for the fact that they are effectively cimpany directors. The *salary* for salaried GPs is much less, 2/3 I think.
    Average salary of a GP partner is £121k, close to top 1% of earners in the UK

    https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/practice-personal-finance/gp-earnings-increase-but-expenses-rise-faster-than-income/
    But you were lumping together partners and salaried GPs in the first place. Now suddenly you're ignoring salaried GPs.,
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,778
    edited December 2022

    checklist said:

    I think the Scotswoman is still at large, why not toddle down to the IoM for a citizen's arrest?

    Her Scottish husband is due a spell of chokey in Spain if that helps?
    When she was Better Together’s star frontwoman she was a British heroine.

    Now she has apparently defrauded the Exchequer she is unceremoniously demoted to “the Scotswoman”.

    Shades of Andy Murray et al.
    Not least because she is now an Englishwoman. At least on one definition.

    Mind: she did make a very big performance of leaving Scotland, too.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,008

    Driver said:

    MaxPB said:

    It’s bad for everybody.

    People are going to die, there are no winners from this.

    I mat have to sedate my father as he is furious at the profession putting lives at risk.

    The issue is the farcical request for 19%, they'd have many, many more supporters at 7%. At 19% their fight looks ideologically driven against the Tories. There's no government who would agree to those terms, not Tory nor Labour.
    I saw a clip with Ian Hislop the other day, where he was saying the government has forgotten how strikes work since the 70s and 80s. Back then, unions went on strike, demanded whatever per cent, unions and government negotiated and they came to agreement.

    Now, the unions have gone on strike, demanding whatever per cent, and the government are just saying ‘we can’t afford that, but we’re not negotiating, independent pay review, burble burble, wibble wibble’.

    So, to me, there are two possible intentions at work. Either, the government does indeed have institutional amnesia - which I doubt - or they are happy to see the strikes because they see a double benefit: culture war bollocks, divide and conquer and continuing to run the NHS down so they can say it’s broken, we’re going to privatise it.

    So they’re happy for people to die, for the country to continue to have shockingly bad healthcare for god knows how long, to pursue their ideological goals.

    They’re a government of sociopaths. They figure they’ve got two years left in power, they’re intent on doing as much damage as they can. They’re happy to damage the country with their ideological Brexit, they’re happy to damage the country with their ideological desire to get rid of the NHS. And there’s the happy side effect of salting the ground so badly for Labour that, if they win next time, they’ll just be clearing up the Tory bin fire they’ll be bequeathed with.

    This shower of shite are pound shop Trumps, gaslighting the public while they and their mates grift the country to the bone.
    BIB: Incredibly unlikely. As you surely know, the party with the biggest history of privatising the NHS is not currently in government.
    What about, what about, what about, burble burble, wibble, wibble.

    The NHS’s performance has declined dramatically since 2010. That isn’t an accident. There are multiple reasons, not least massive bed blocking because social care is so woeful. Of course the government can’t seriously address that cos it would mean taking money from their core voters. Can’t shrink the inheritance can we?

    This government wants US-style inequalities. They want terrible public services, they want health insurance not free at the point of use healthcare, they don’t give a flying fuck about ordinary people. They only care about getting richer and making sure their taxes don’t go to improving the lives of their perceived inferiors - the poor, the feckless, the scroungers - in the slightest way. Yet they wrap themselves in the the flag and gibber on about bollocks - sovereignty! Immigrants! - to deceive the gullible amd incurious and to give ‘legitimate concerns’ talking points for the misanthropic and venal. Trumpian.
    What crap.

    If that was the case there would already be no NHS, most would have to have private health insurance.

    Instead we still have the most statist taxpayer funded and bureaucratic health system in the developed world, even Europe has mainly social insurance funded healthcare

  • Options

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    You know that 19% is a bargaining mechanism starting point. Everyone does.

    The Government would be better off accomodating the NHS workers and if union destruction is their manifesto, crush the rail workers.

    I note all the PB Conservatives are falling into their 1980s Thatcherite line over this issue. Remember though, Thatcher picked and chose her battles.
    Modern Tories often misunderstand what Margaret Thatcher was really like. She loved to come across as gung-ho, but in reality she was a careful and cunning strategist. She picked her fights extremely carefully. She would never have gone head to head with nurses FFS.
    Interesting as well that she was opposed to two of the most contentious post-Thatcher privatisations - that of the Royal Mail and the Railways.
    She was also opposed, quite rightly, to the establishment of the National Lottery. She fought it for years, against a skilled internal campaign within her own party. She quite rightly saw that it was a cynical tool for removing vast sums of cash from poor and stupid people in order to suppress the tax bills of people that could easily afford to fund public services.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,008
    edited December 2022

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Fpt

    HYUFD said:



    So what, she also chose to give up being a working royal and do media interviews trashing the King and Prince and Princess of Wales

    Clarkson is anyway employed by the Sun not the Royal Household, he is Murdoch's responsibility not theirs

    Nothing to do with us, guv.


    The British Establishment are currently proving that everything Diana Spencer and Meghan Markle said about Camilla Shand and her cronies was spot on.
    No just proving leftists like you have always hated the Queen Consort and always will
    I am not a leftist. I am a centre-right liberal. I only appear “leftist” to you because you are an admirer of General Franco.

    I don’t hate Camilla, I pity her.
    You are not even centre right in Swedish terms now given you did not vote for the current right of centre Swedish government let alone in UK terms
    More mendacity.

    I voted for the centre-right Centre Party for the Riksdag and for the regional council, and for the centre-right Liberals for the local council. Both parties are allies of the Liberal Democrats.
    The Centre Party are not in the right of centre government and backed the Social Democrats
  • Options
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Fpt

    HYUFD said:



    So what, she also chose to give up being a working royal and do media interviews trashing the King and Prince and Princess of Wales

    Clarkson is anyway employed by the Sun not the Royal Household, he is Murdoch's responsibility not theirs

    Nothing to do with us, guv.


    The British Establishment are currently proving that everything Diana Spencer and Meghan Markle said about Camilla Shand and her cronies was spot on.
    No just proving leftists like you have always hated the Queen Consort and always will
    I am not a leftist. I am a centre-right liberal. I only appear “leftist” to you because you are an admirer of General Franco.

    I don’t hate Camilla, I pity her.
    You are not even centre right in Swedish terms now given you did not vote for the current right of centre Swedish government let alone in UK terms
    More mendacity.

    I voted for the centre-right Centre Party for the Riksdag and for the regional council, and for the centre-right Liberals for the local council. Both parties are allies of the Liberal Democrats.
    Neither party are in the right of centre government
    Huh? That’ll be news to Johan Pehrson.
  • Options
    Carnyx said:

    checklist said:

    I think the Scotswoman is still at large, why not toddle down to the IoM for a citizen's arrest?

    Her Scottish husband is due a spell of chokey in Spain if that helps?
    When she was Better Together’s star frontwoman she was a British heroine.

    Now she has apparently defrauded the Exchequer she is unceremoniously demoted to “the Scotswoman”.

    Shades of Andy Murray et al.
    Not least because she is now an Englishwoman. At least on one definition.

    Mind: she did make a very big performance of leaving Scotland, too.
    That old “I’m leaving if my side don’t win” shtick. Except she gave it a novel twist: her side won and she still left. Almost as if she was economic with the truth.
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 9,631
    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    MaxPB said:

    It’s bad for everybody.

    People are going to die, there are no winners from this.

    I mat have to sedate my father as he is furious at the profession putting lives at risk.

    The issue is the farcical request for 19%, they'd have many, many more supporters at 7%. At 19% their fight looks ideologically driven against the Tories. There's no government who would agree to those terms, not Tory nor Labour.
    I saw a clip with Ian Hislop the other day, where he was saying the government has forgotten how strikes work since the 70s and 80s. Back then, unions went on strike, demanded whatever per cent, unions and government negotiated and they came to agreement.

    Now, the unions have gone on strike, demanding whatever per cent, and the government are just saying ‘we can’t afford that, but we’re not negotiating, independent pay review, burble burble, wibble wibble’.

    So, to me, there are two possible intentions at work. Either, the government does indeed have institutional amnesia - which I doubt - or they are happy to see the strikes because they see a double benefit: culture war bollocks, divide and conquer and continuing to run the NHS down so they can say it’s broken, we’re going to privatise it.

    So they’re happy for people to die, for the country to continue to have shockingly bad healthcare for god knows how long, to pursue their ideological goals.

    They’re a government of sociopaths. They figure they’ve got two years left in power, they’re intent on doing as much damage as they can. They’re happy to damage the country with their ideological Brexit, they’re happy to damage the country with their ideological desire to get rid of the NHS. And there’s the happy side effect of salting the ground so badly for Labour that, if they win next time, they’ll just be clearing up the Tory bin fire they’ll be bequeathed with.

    This shower of shite are pound shop Trumps, gaslighting the public while they and their mates grift the country to the bone.
    BIB: Incredibly unlikely. As you surely know, the party with the biggest history of privatising the NHS is not currently in government.
    What about, what about, what about, burble burble, wibble, wibble.

    The NHS’s performance has declined dramatically since 2010. That isn’t an accident. There are multiple reasons, not least massive bed blocking because social care is so woeful. Of course the government can’t seriously address that cos it would mean taking money from their core voters. Can’t shrink the inheritance can we?

    This government wants US-style inequalities. They want terrible public services, they want health insurance not free at the point of use healthcare, they don’t give a flying fuck about ordinary people. They only care about getting richer and making sure their taxes don’t go to improving the lives of their perceived inferiors - the poor, the feckless, the scroungers - in the slightest way. Yet they wrap themselves in the the flag and gibber on about bollocks - sovereignty! Immigrants! - to deceive the gullible amd incurious and to give ‘legitimate concerns’ talking points for the misanthropic and venal. Trumpian.
    And yet for all the left-wing scaremongering about the Tories privatising the NHS, they never do. Funny that.
    British politics has a problem that straddles all the parties. A binary fallacy of healthcare systems that says the only two options are the NHS or the USA. The anglophone curse
  • Options
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Fpt

    HYUFD said:



    So what, she also chose to give up being a working royal and do media interviews trashing the King and Prince and Princess of Wales

    Clarkson is anyway employed by the Sun not the Royal Household, he is Murdoch's responsibility not theirs

    Nothing to do with us, guv.


    The British Establishment are currently proving that everything Diana Spencer and Meghan Markle said about Camilla Shand and her cronies was spot on.
    No just proving leftists like you have always hated the Queen Consort and always will
    I am not a leftist. I am a centre-right liberal. I only appear “leftist” to you because you are an admirer of General Franco.

    I don’t hate Camilla, I pity her.
    You are not even centre right in Swedish terms now given you did not vote for the current right of centre Swedish government let alone in UK terms
    More mendacity.

    I voted for the centre-right Centre Party for the Riksdag and for the regional council, and for the centre-right Liberals for the local council. Both parties are allies of the Liberal Democrats.
    The Centre Party are not in the right of centre government and backed the Social Democrats
    Neither of those facts counters the fact that the Centre Party are a centre-right political party.
  • Options

    Carnyx said:

    checklist said:

    I think the Scotswoman is still at large, why not toddle down to the IoM for a citizen's arrest?

    Her Scottish husband is due a spell of chokey in Spain if that helps?
    When she was Better Together’s star frontwoman she was a British heroine.

    Now she has apparently defrauded the Exchequer she is unceremoniously demoted to “the Scotswoman”.

    Shades of Andy Murray et al.
    Not least because she is now an Englishwoman. At least on one definition.

    Mind: she did make a very big performance of leaving Scotland, too.
    That old “I’m leaving if my side don’t win” shtick. Except she gave it a novel twist: her side won and she still left. Almost as if she was economic with the truth.
    Interesting. "Mone" is the sort of surname that would be most appropriate for a whinging Scottish Nationalist. Perhaps you should consider it as a nom de plume?
  • Options
    rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 54,001
    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,418

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    You know that 19% is a bargaining mechanism starting point. Everyone does.

    The Government would be better off accomodating the NHS workers and if union destruction is their manifesto, crush the rail workers.

    I note all the PB Conservatives are falling into their 1980s Thatcherite line over this issue. Remember though, Thatcher picked and chose her battles.
    Modern Tories often misunderstand what Margaret Thatcher was really like. She loved to come across as gung-ho, but in reality she was a careful and cunning strategist. She picked her fights extremely carefully. She would never have gone head to head with nurses FFS.
    Interesting as well that she was opposed to two of the most contentious post-Thatcher privatisations - that of the Royal Mail and the Railways.
    She was also opposed, quite rightly, to the establishment of the National Lottery. She fought it for years, against a skilled internal campaign within her own party. She quite rightly saw that it was a cynical tool for removing vast sums of cash from poor and stupid people in order to suppress the tax bills of people that could easily afford to fund public services.
    The original purpose of the Lottery money was to fund things that were traditionally outside government spending - the classic was the “save this work of art for the nation”, a case of which caused John Major to put his support behind it, IIRC.

    There have been a number of attempts to divert more money from it to “schools and hospitals spending”, since. Mostly beaten iff. The government still takes the vast majority of the ticket price in tax, though.

    The other point is that due to globalisation, other countries lotteries were beginning to make their mark in the U.K. - the huge Spanish lottery, for example. One argument for the U.K. lottery was that it would dominate the U.K. market, keeping the money and regulation in the U.K.
  • Options
    kjhkjh Posts: 10,631

    tlg86 said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    I also think at 7% the strike would not be going ahead, the government would already have done the deal. Which, again, makes this look ideology driven by lefty unions.

    Don't most people understand that the 19 percent is an initial pitch to give room to move?

    It's blooming obvious that the "right" answer is somewhere between 6 and 8 percent. But any union going in asking for 8 percent wouldn't be rewarded for reasonableness, it would be squeezed down to five.
    Except 19% makes them look ridiculous. Even 10% would be seen as "sure, after COVID they probably deserve it". 19% looks ideologically driven by unions who want to bring down the Tory government.
    There would be no strikes if hundreds of thousands of ordinary, non-militant, men and women had not felt there was no other option. Politically-inspired cod-Thatcherism designed to appeal to the Tory base will not solve the problems. At some point, the government is going to have to put the country first.

    I'm a public sector worker. Do you think I deserve a 7% pay rise?
    You personally? Absolutely not.

    I liked because it made me laugh, not because I have anything against @tlg86 who I am sure is worth every penny if not more.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226
    TimS said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    MaxPB said:

    It’s bad for everybody.

    People are going to die, there are no winners from this.

    I mat have to sedate my father as he is furious at the profession putting lives at risk.

    The issue is the farcical request for 19%, they'd have many, many more supporters at 7%. At 19% their fight looks ideologically driven against the Tories. There's no government who would agree to those terms, not Tory nor Labour.
    I saw a clip with Ian Hislop the other day, where he was saying the government has forgotten how strikes work since the 70s and 80s. Back then, unions went on strike, demanded whatever per cent, unions and government negotiated and they came to agreement.

    Now, the unions have gone on strike, demanding whatever per cent, and the government are just saying ‘we can’t afford that, but we’re not negotiating, independent pay review, burble burble, wibble wibble’.

    So, to me, there are two possible intentions at work. Either, the government does indeed have institutional amnesia - which I doubt - or they are happy to see the strikes because they see a double benefit: culture war bollocks, divide and conquer and continuing to run the NHS down so they can say it’s broken, we’re going to privatise it.

    So they’re happy for people to die, for the country to continue to have shockingly bad healthcare for god knows how long, to pursue their ideological goals.

    They’re a government of sociopaths. They figure they’ve got two years left in power, they’re intent on doing as much damage as they can. They’re happy to damage the country with their ideological Brexit, they’re happy to damage the country with their ideological desire to get rid of the NHS. And there’s the happy side effect of salting the ground so badly for Labour that, if they win next time, they’ll just be clearing up the Tory bin fire they’ll be bequeathed with.

    This shower of shite are pound shop Trumps, gaslighting the public while they and their mates grift the country to the bone.
    BIB: Incredibly unlikely. As you surely know, the party with the biggest history of privatising the NHS is not currently in government.
    What about, what about, what about, burble burble, wibble, wibble.

    The NHS’s performance has declined dramatically since 2010. That isn’t an accident. There are multiple reasons, not least massive bed blocking because social care is so woeful. Of course the government can’t seriously address that cos it would mean taking money from their core voters. Can’t shrink the inheritance can we?

    This government wants US-style inequalities. They want terrible public services, they want health insurance not free at the point of use healthcare, they don’t give a flying fuck about ordinary people. They only care about getting richer and making sure their taxes don’t go to improving the lives of their perceived inferiors - the poor, the feckless, the scroungers - in the slightest way. Yet they wrap themselves in the the flag and gibber on about bollocks - sovereignty! Immigrants! - to deceive the gullible amd incurious and to give ‘legitimate concerns’ talking points for the misanthropic and venal. Trumpian.
    And yet for all the left-wing scaremongering about the Tories privatising the NHS, they never do. Funny that.
    British politics has a problem that straddles all the parties. A binary fallacy of healthcare systems that says the only two options are the NHS or the USA. The anglophone curse
    I think the problem is more that reforming the health system is too hard for our politics. Ditto education. Ditto the economy. Most things of major importance, in fact.
  • Options
    TimS said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    You know that 19% is a bargaining mechanism starting point. Everyone does.

    The Government would be better off accomodating the NHS workers and if union destruction is their manifesto, crush the rail workers.

    I note all the PB Conservatives are falling into their 1980s Thatcherite line over this issue. Remember though, Thatcher picked and chose her battles.
    Modern Tories often misunderstand what Margaret Thatcher was really like. She loved to come across as gung-ho, but in reality she was a careful and cunning strategist. She picked her fights extremely carefully. She would never have gone head to head with nurses FFS.
    I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating.

    Maggie left office over thirty years ago, her finest hours were more like forty years ago.

    We now have a generation of politicians whose only direct experience of Thatcher was seeing her on John Craven's Newsround, if that. And the real, interesting politician has been replaced by a cartoon.

    It happens. But it causes people to have a funny idea about What Would Maggie Do?
    Yes, the John Craven's newsround generation. A set of early news memories that included the miner's strike, the Falklands, Band Aid and Live Aid, the space shuttle, Charles and Diana, Reagan's star-wars programme, the Iran-Iraq war and hostages in Beirut.
    I am old enough to remember watching Maggie’s St Francis of Assisi speech in Downing Street, on the proper BBC news, not the bairns’ version. A lot of the intrigues of that era are still fresh in my memory. The cartoon version of Thatcher that is obviously imprinted on the minds of young Tories perplexes me. She was much more complex and nuanced, especially in her first decade as Con leader.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,626

    Fpt

    HYUFD said:



    So what, she also chose to give up being a working royal and do media interviews trashing the King and Prince and Princess of Wales

    Clarkson is anyway employed by the Sun not the Royal Household, he is Murdoch's responsibility not theirs

    Nothing to do with us, guv.


    The British Establishment are currently proving that everything Diana Spencer and Meghan Markle said about Camilla Shand and her cronies was spot on.
    "VERY Glamorous" ??
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,226
    kjh said:

    tlg86 said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    I also think at 7% the strike would not be going ahead, the government would already have done the deal. Which, again, makes this look ideology driven by lefty unions.

    Don't most people understand that the 19 percent is an initial pitch to give room to move?

    It's blooming obvious that the "right" answer is somewhere between 6 and 8 percent. But any union going in asking for 8 percent wouldn't be rewarded for reasonableness, it would be squeezed down to five.
    Except 19% makes them look ridiculous. Even 10% would be seen as "sure, after COVID they probably deserve it". 19% looks ideologically driven by unions who want to bring down the Tory government.
    There would be no strikes if hundreds of thousands of ordinary, non-militant, men and women had not felt there was no other option. Politically-inspired cod-Thatcherism designed to appeal to the Tory base will not solve the problems. At some point, the government is going to have to put the country first.

    I'm a public sector worker. Do you think I deserve a 7% pay rise?
    You personally? Absolutely not.

    I liked because it made me laugh, not because I have anything against @tlg86 who I am sure is worth every penny if not more.
    Not what I hear.
  • Options
    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,954
    NHS staff often feel that they're letting patients down. That (totally undeserved) sense of guilt gnaws away at many of them.

    But as nurses and ambulance staff prepare to strike, where's the guilt felt by ministers?

    https://inews.co.uk/opinion/the-government-is-about-to-feel-as-powerless-as-striking-nhs-staff-have-when-lives-are-put-at-risk-2037803

    Many people forget that we've been here before. I was a cub reporter in 1989 during the last ambulance strike and it's worth remembering that even Margaret Thatcher's government had to back down amid huge public support for NHS staff.

    But guess what? The strikers won a 16.9% pay rise over 18 months, a £500 bonus, and more importantly a commitment to training that turned the service into the paramedics you see today.
    Eric Roberts later became President of @unisontheunion Sadly he passed away in 2016.
  • Options
    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,954
    🔴 Nurses have "no option" but to continue strikes in January unless the Government negotiates, a union boss as thousands walked out this morning.

    Follow the latest on our politics live blog ⬇️
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/20/strikes-latest-news-nurses-have-no-option-walk-next-year-no/
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,201
    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    Its not a solution. Why not do the same for 90 % of university courses? I think people have the wrong idea of what a nursing degree is. Most of the time is in the clinic (wards etc), training on the job, in effect. Nursing isn't just bum wiping.
  • Options

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Driver said:

    I wonder how many times a poster is allowed to post the same off-topic thing as an attempt to divert the conversation before the mods get involved.

    It depends who they are but usually a very large number. How many thousands of times have we been subjected to CV's monomaniacal obession with the minute intersection of trans rights and Scottish politics.
    Yeah, I'm not sure why you see someone posting tweets and links to articles - that are different every time - on a subject that interests them as the same thing as the tedious spamming we are currently being subjected to.

    And if it is, Scotty would have been banned years ago.
    Should whining endlessly about 'Scotty' incur a similar ban?
    When was the last time I mentioned him?
    Dunno, not an assiduous follower of your posts. By contrast it would appear that Scott's posts seem to be living in your head for a peppercorn rent.
    @Scott_xP would make a great Scottish nationalist. He’s very annoying 😄
  • Options
    HYUFD said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    MaxPB said:

    The other thing we need to do is reverse the degree requirement for nursing. Labour introduced it as a way of meeting their 50% target for students going ti university after 6th form. There's no practical need for it and all it has done is restrict labour supply and leave nurses with £40k in debt when they start work.

    I'm not sure of this. Much of the nursing degree is undertaken in clinical settings - they are learning on the job. Nursing is also a much more highly skilled role than the day of Carry On Nurse etc. I generally tend to think of having better educated staff being a good thing.

    Perhaps understanding and utilization of appropriate staff is the key? I am certain that a ward will have a mix of staffing - some able to do more complex things, some less so. There is no one 'nurse' role.
    Arguably we should go the other way. Want to be a doctor? First you have to train and serve as a nurse for three years.
    Medic training is also highly clinical. There is an emphasis on IPE (inter professional education) including with pharmacists. The system of training isn't broken, the salaries are.
    Certainly no shortage of people who want to be doctors...

    https://www.themedicportal.com/blog/update-ucas-application-stats-for-2022-entry-medicine/
    6 figures average salary for GPs who are partners in medical practices and good pensions of course
    Barely 6 figures. You're being misleading. You need also to allow for the fact that they are effectively cimpany directors. The *salary* for salaried GPs is much less, 2/3 I think.
    Average salary of a GP partner is £121k, close to top 1% of earners in the UK

    https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/practice-personal-finance/gp-earnings-increase-but-expenses-rise-faster-than-income/
    Company directors? I have wet myself!!!!!! GPs? The safest job in the entire Known Universe? You will be saying University Chancellors are CEOs next. Oh, yes, public sector fat cats have been making that ludicrous comparison for years too.

    Personally I would love it if GPs really were the equivalent of company directors. Those who give a shit service could go bust, but no, it never happens. Doctors in UK are completely featherbedded, in particular GPs. The media always give them an easy ride including the bloodsucking self interest group known as the BMA. Ask why there isn't sufficient for nurses? Partly because doctors are greedily earning too much and drawing years of final salary pension schemes that the nation can't afford. Yes there really are fat cat doctors who take zero career risk and get rewarded very very handsomely. Will the media question it? No because they are pathetically supine if someone has the often honorific title of Dr in front of their name.
  • Options
    DriverDriver Posts: 4,522

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    You know that 19% is a bargaining mechanism starting point. Everyone does.

    The Government would be better off accomodating the NHS workers and if union destruction is their manifesto, crush the rail workers.

    I note all the PB Conservatives are falling into their 1980s Thatcherite line over this issue. Remember though, Thatcher picked and chose her battles.
    Modern Tories often misunderstand what Margaret Thatcher was really like. She loved to come across as gung-ho, but in reality she was a careful and cunning strategist. She picked her fights extremely carefully. She would never have gone head to head with nurses FFS.
    Interesting as well that she was opposed to two of the most contentious post-Thatcher privatisations - that of the Royal Mail and the Railways.
    She was also opposed, quite rightly, to the establishment of the National Lottery. She fought it for years, against a skilled internal campaign within her own party. She quite rightly saw that it was a cynical tool for removing vast sums of cash from poor and stupid people in order to suppress the tax bills of people that could easily afford to fund public services.
    The original purpose of the Lottery money was to fund things that were traditionally outside government spending - the classic was the “save this work of art for the nation”, a case of which caused John Major to put his support behind it, IIRC.

    There have been a number of attempts to divert more money from it to “schools and hospitals spending”, since. Mostly beaten iff. The government still takes the vast majority of the ticket price in tax, though.

    The other point is that due to globalisation, other countries lotteries were beginning to make their mark in the U.K. - the huge Spanish lottery, for example. One argument for the U.K. lottery was that it would dominate the U.K. market, keeping the money and regulation in the U.K.
    "vast majority"?

    https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/life-changing/where-the-money-goes

    From total ticket sales of £8,090.7 million in the year ending 31 March 2022:

    £1,911.8 million was raised for National Lottery projects
    £4,612.3 million was paid to players in prizes
    £970.9 million went to the Government in Lottery Duty
    £265.4 million was earned by retailers in commission


    That's 57% prize money, 24% "good causes", 12% tax, 3% retailers and 4% admin.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,778

    TimS said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    You know that 19% is a bargaining mechanism starting point. Everyone does.

    The Government would be better off accomodating the NHS workers and if union destruction is their manifesto, crush the rail workers.

    I note all the PB Conservatives are falling into their 1980s Thatcherite line over this issue. Remember though, Thatcher picked and chose her battles.
    Modern Tories often misunderstand what Margaret Thatcher was really like. She loved to come across as gung-ho, but in reality she was a careful and cunning strategist. She picked her fights extremely carefully. She would never have gone head to head with nurses FFS.
    I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating.

    Maggie left office over thirty years ago, her finest hours were more like forty years ago.

    We now have a generation of politicians whose only direct experience of Thatcher was seeing her on John Craven's Newsround, if that. And the real, interesting politician has been replaced by a cartoon.

    It happens. But it causes people to have a funny idea about What Would Maggie Do?
    Yes, the John Craven's newsround generation. A set of early news memories that included the miner's strike, the Falklands, Band Aid and Live Aid, the space shuttle, Charles and Diana, Reagan's star-wars programme, the Iran-Iraq war and hostages in Beirut.
    I am old enough to remember watching Maggie’s St Francis of Assisi speech in Downing Street, on the proper BBC news, not the bairns’ version. A lot of the intrigues of that era are still fresh in my memory. The cartoon version of Thatcher that is obviously imprinted on the minds of young Tories perplexes me. She was much more complex and nuanced, especially in her first decade as Con leader.
    Not to mention the Sermon on the Mound. Which had unintended associations in locals' minds, of course, with the tubthumpers who normally resided on the Mound.
  • Options

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    You know that 19% is a bargaining mechanism starting point. Everyone does.

    The Government would be better off accomodating the NHS workers and if union destruction is their manifesto, crush the rail workers.

    I note all the PB Conservatives are falling into their 1980s Thatcherite line over this issue. Remember though, Thatcher picked and chose her battles.
    Modern Tories often misunderstand what Margaret Thatcher was really like. She loved to come across as gung-ho, but in reality she was a careful and cunning strategist. She picked her fights extremely carefully. She would never have gone head to head with nurses FFS.
    Interesting as well that she was opposed to two of the most contentious post-Thatcher privatisations - that of the Royal Mail and the Railways.
    She was also opposed, quite rightly, to the establishment of the National Lottery. She fought it for years, against a skilled internal campaign within her own party. She quite rightly saw that it was a cynical tool for removing vast sums of cash from poor and stupid people in order to suppress the tax bills of people that could easily afford to fund public services.
    The original purpose of the Lottery money was to fund things that were traditionally outside government spending - the classic was the “save this work of art for the nation”, a case of which caused John Major to put his support behind it, IIRC.

    There have been a number of attempts to divert more money from it to “schools and hospitals spending”, since. Mostly beaten iff. The government still takes the vast majority of the ticket price in tax, though.

    The other point is that due to globalisation, other countries lotteries were beginning to make their mark in the U.K. - the huge Spanish lottery, for example. One argument for the U.K. lottery was that it would dominate the U.K. market, keeping the money and regulation in the U.K.
    As I said: “skilled internal campaign”. Still defrauding the poor.
  • Options
    DriverDriver Posts: 4,522
    kinabalu said:

    TimS said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    MaxPB said:

    It’s bad for everybody.

    People are going to die, there are no winners from this.

    I mat have to sedate my father as he is furious at the profession putting lives at risk.

    The issue is the farcical request for 19%, they'd have many, many more supporters at 7%. At 19% their fight looks ideologically driven against the Tories. There's no government who would agree to those terms, not Tory nor Labour.
    I saw a clip with Ian Hislop the other day, where he was saying the government has forgotten how strikes work since the 70s and 80s. Back then, unions went on strike, demanded whatever per cent, unions and government negotiated and they came to agreement.

    Now, the unions have gone on strike, demanding whatever per cent, and the government are just saying ‘we can’t afford that, but we’re not negotiating, independent pay review, burble burble, wibble wibble’.

    So, to me, there are two possible intentions at work. Either, the government does indeed have institutional amnesia - which I doubt - or they are happy to see the strikes because they see a double benefit: culture war bollocks, divide and conquer and continuing to run the NHS down so they can say it’s broken, we’re going to privatise it.

    So they’re happy for people to die, for the country to continue to have shockingly bad healthcare for god knows how long, to pursue their ideological goals.

    They’re a government of sociopaths. They figure they’ve got two years left in power, they’re intent on doing as much damage as they can. They’re happy to damage the country with their ideological Brexit, they’re happy to damage the country with their ideological desire to get rid of the NHS. And there’s the happy side effect of salting the ground so badly for Labour that, if they win next time, they’ll just be clearing up the Tory bin fire they’ll be bequeathed with.

    This shower of shite are pound shop Trumps, gaslighting the public while they and their mates grift the country to the bone.
    BIB: Incredibly unlikely. As you surely know, the party with the biggest history of privatising the NHS is not currently in government.
    What about, what about, what about, burble burble, wibble, wibble.

    The NHS’s performance has declined dramatically since 2010. That isn’t an accident. There are multiple reasons, not least massive bed blocking because social care is so woeful. Of course the government can’t seriously address that cos it would mean taking money from their core voters. Can’t shrink the inheritance can we?

    This government wants US-style inequalities. They want terrible public services, they want health insurance not free at the point of use healthcare, they don’t give a flying fuck about ordinary people. They only care about getting richer and making sure their taxes don’t go to improving the lives of their perceived inferiors - the poor, the feckless, the scroungers - in the slightest way. Yet they wrap themselves in the the flag and gibber on about bollocks - sovereignty! Immigrants! - to deceive the gullible amd incurious and to give ‘legitimate concerns’ talking points for the misanthropic and venal. Trumpian.
    And yet for all the left-wing scaremongering about the Tories privatising the NHS, they never do. Funny that.
    British politics has a problem that straddles all the parties. A binary fallacy of healthcare systems that says the only two options are the NHS or the USA. The anglophone curse
    I think the problem is more that reforming the health system is too hard for our politics. Ditto education. Ditto the economy. Most things of major importance, in fact.
    Right, but why is it too hard? Not least because any attempt to reform the health system is always howled down as "wanting to make it like America", "privatisation" (which in this context is pretty much code for Americanisation) and similar.
  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 24,981

    Driver said:

    MaxPB said:

    It’s bad for everybody.

    People are going to die, there are no winners from this.

    I mat have to sedate my father as he is furious at the profession putting lives at risk.

    The issue is the farcical request for 19%, they'd have many, many more supporters at 7%. At 19% their fight looks ideologically driven against the Tories. There's no government who would agree to those terms, not Tory nor Labour.
    I saw a clip with Ian Hislop the other day, where he was saying the government has forgotten how strikes work since the 70s and 80s. Back then, unions went on strike, demanded whatever per cent, unions and government negotiated and they came to agreement.

    Now, the unions have gone on strike, demanding whatever per cent, and the government are just saying ‘we can’t afford that, but we’re not negotiating, independent pay review, burble burble, wibble wibble’.

    So, to me, there are two possible intentions at work. Either, the government does indeed have institutional amnesia - which I doubt - or they are happy to see the strikes because they see a double benefit: culture war bollocks, divide and conquer and continuing to run the NHS down so they can say it’s broken, we’re going to privatise it.

    So they’re happy for people to die, for the country to continue to have shockingly bad healthcare for god knows how long, to pursue their ideological goals.

    They’re a government of sociopaths. They figure they’ve got two years left in power, they’re intent on doing as much damage as they can. They’re happy to damage the country with their ideological Brexit, they’re happy to damage the country with their ideological desire to get rid of the NHS. And there’s the happy side effect of salting the ground so badly for Labour that, if they win next time, they’ll just be clearing up the Tory bin fire they’ll be bequeathed with.

    This shower of shite are pound shop Trumps, gaslighting the public while they and their mates grift the country to the bone.
    BIB: Incredibly unlikely. As you surely know, the party with the biggest history of privatising the NHS is not currently in government.
    What about, what about, what about, burble burble, wibble, wibble.

    The NHS’s performance has declined dramatically since 2010. That isn’t an accident. There are multiple reasons, not least massive bed blocking because social care is so woeful. Of course the government can’t seriously address that cos it would mean taking money from their core voters. Can’t shrink the inheritance can we?
    A cynic would say that social care needs to be woeful. If it was merely bad those using social care would be in a position to vote for it to be improved, because most people encounter it at the very end of life they don’t get time to vote for money to improve I.

    However a whole set of nhs issues (even ambulance availability) could be solved by a relatively small extra amount being spent on social care
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,418

    Driver said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Driver said:

    I wonder how many times a poster is allowed to post the same off-topic thing as an attempt to divert the conversation before the mods get involved.

    It depends who they are but usually a very large number. How many thousands of times have we been subjected to CV's monomaniacal obession with the minute intersection of trans rights and Scottish politics.
    Yeah, I'm not sure why you see someone posting tweets and links to articles - that are different every time - on a subject that interests them as the same thing as the tedious spamming we are currently being subjected to.

    And if it is, Scotty would have been banned years ago.
    Should whining endlessly about 'Scotty' incur a similar ban?
    The thing I find about Scott's frequent tweeting is that they're annoying when I disagree with them, and fine when I agree with them...
    Indeed. It’s almost as if…

    Anyway - OT

    It can go any one if a bunch of ways. The general public sees huge hospitals*, piles of “stuff” associated with the NHS. So far, they seem happy to say “more”.

    But you do hear some people asking the critical question - why? Why does it work slowly? Why does it work badly?

    So far the blame is still a ball on the roulette wheel.

    I saw We Streeting was talking about using private health care to relieve the system. That’s fatuous on one level - most of the staff in the private system work on both the NHS and private. There isn’t a huge pile of doctors and nurses twiddling their thumbs, asking for work. But. In some parts of the private healthcare system, they have modern, efficient management.

    I’ve experienced this - rapid testing, diagnosis, systems that connect to each other. Patient experience valued. A system where doctors doing their job isn’t a battle against the system they work in.

    Not all the private system is like that, of course.

    But perhaps the private medicines greatest value to the country is showing how is can be done better. No, not privatisation. But using organisational structures that help get things done.

    *often laid out so that you walk for miles in them. Wouldn’t high rise - smaller floors - be better for patients?
  • Options
    Carnyx said:

    TimS said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    You know that 19% is a bargaining mechanism starting point. Everyone does.

    The Government would be better off accomodating the NHS workers and if union destruction is their manifesto, crush the rail workers.

    I note all the PB Conservatives are falling into their 1980s Thatcherite line over this issue. Remember though, Thatcher picked and chose her battles.
    Modern Tories often misunderstand what Margaret Thatcher was really like. She loved to come across as gung-ho, but in reality she was a careful and cunning strategist. She picked her fights extremely carefully. She would never have gone head to head with nurses FFS.
    I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating.

    Maggie left office over thirty years ago, her finest hours were more like forty years ago.

    We now have a generation of politicians whose only direct experience of Thatcher was seeing her on John Craven's Newsround, if that. And the real, interesting politician has been replaced by a cartoon.

    It happens. But it causes people to have a funny idea about What Would Maggie Do?
    Yes, the John Craven's newsround generation. A set of early news memories that included the miner's strike, the Falklands, Band Aid and Live Aid, the space shuttle, Charles and Diana, Reagan's star-wars programme, the Iran-Iraq war and hostages in Beirut.
    I am old enough to remember watching Maggie’s St Francis of Assisi speech in Downing Street, on the proper BBC news, not the bairns’ version. A lot of the intrigues of that era are still fresh in my memory. The cartoon version of Thatcher that is obviously imprinted on the minds of young Tories perplexes me. She was much more complex and nuanced, especially in her first decade as Con leader.
    Not to mention the Sermon on the Mound. Which had unintended associations in locals' minds, of course, with the tubthumpers who normally resided on the Mound.
    Indeed. Preaching ministers of the Kirk on the topic of morality was one of her infrequent, surreal forays into Scottish public life. She was clearly outwith her comfort zone when in the northern colony.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,626

    Is Michelle Mone in police custody yet?

    This is becoming criminally tedious.
    You should be banged up if you carry on with this every day.

    And if you've been following the story, you'll be aware there is an ongoing criminal investigation.
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/19/ppe-medpro-uk-government-issues-breach-of-contract-proceedings
    ...PPE Medpro is the subject of an ongoing potential fraud investigation by the National Crime Agency. In April this year, NCA officers searched several addresses, including the mansion Mone and Barrowman occupy in the Isle of Man. At the time, lawyers for PPE Medpro declined to comment on the NCA investigation...
  • Options
    kjhkjh Posts: 10,631

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Driver said:

    I wonder how many times a poster is allowed to post the same off-topic thing as an attempt to divert the conversation before the mods get involved.

    It depends who they are but usually a very large number. How many thousands of times have we been subjected to CV's monomaniacal obession with the minute intersection of trans rights and Scottish politics.
    Yeah, I'm not sure why you see someone posting tweets and links to articles - that are different every time - on a subject that interests them as the same thing as the tedious spamming we are currently being subjected to.

    And if it is, Scotty would have been banned years ago.
    Should whining endlessly about 'Scotty' incur a similar ban?
    When was the last time I mentioned him?
    Dunno, not an assiduous follower of your posts. By contrast it would appear that Scott's posts seem to be living in your head for a peppercorn rent.
    @Scott_xP would make a great Scottish nationalist. He’s very annoying 😄
    I enjoy his posts. Often very informative and often with some good humour.
  • Options
    eekeek Posts: 24,981
    OldBasing said:

    The government seems to want the strikes to happen as it believes they are a political opportunity. That will backfire.

    I think so. Sunak is so bad at politics. He could have done a reasonable deal for the nurses and ambulance staff (more public sympathy) and gone hard with the RMT and posties (less public sympathy). He and the government would have looked better in the public's eyes. But he isn't good at politics.
    Posties are a private company - nothing to do with the government.

    On the RMT the government have ended up carrying the can because even the rail companies are happy to point out that it’s the department of transport being awkward here

    The only thing the rail strikes prove is that it’s not just Sunak who is bad at politics, grant shapps and the subsequent department of transport ministers aren’t great at it either.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,626

    MaxPB said:

    It’s bad for everybody.

    People are going to die, there are no winners from this.

    I mat have to sedate my father as he is furious at the profession putting lives at risk.

    The issue is the farcical request for 19%, they'd have many, many more supporters at 7%. At 19% their fight looks ideologically driven against the Tories. There's no government who would agree to those terms, not Tory nor Labour.
    I saw a clip with Ian Hislop the other day, where he was saying the government has forgotten how strikes work since the 70s and 80s. Back then, unions went on strike, demanded whatever per cent, unions and government negotiated and they came to agreement.

    Now, the unions have gone on strike, demanding whatever per cent, and the government are just saying ‘we can’t afford that, but we’re not negotiating, independent pay review, burble burble, wibble wibble’.

    So, to me, there are two possible intentions at work. Either, the government does indeed have institutional amnesia - which I doubt - or they are happy to see the strikes because they see a double benefit...
    It is the latter.
    Reported this morning that government have briefed that they're prepared for a lengthy dispute.
  • Options
    Nigelb said:

    Is Michelle Mone in police custody yet?

    This is becoming criminally tedious.
    You should be banged up if you carry on with this every day.

    And if you've been following the story, you'll be aware there is an ongoing criminal investigation.
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/19/ppe-medpro-uk-government-issues-breach-of-contract-proceedings
    ...PPE Medpro is the subject of an ongoing potential fraud investigation by the National Crime Agency. In April this year, NCA officers searched several addresses, including the mansion Mone and Barrowman occupy in the Isle of Man. At the time, lawyers for PPE Medpro declined to comment on the NCA investigation...
    Dae fash yersel laddie. I’ll be keeping you well abreast of matters. Said the actress to the moderator.
  • Options
    kjh said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Driver said:

    I wonder how many times a poster is allowed to post the same off-topic thing as an attempt to divert the conversation before the mods get involved.

    It depends who they are but usually a very large number. How many thousands of times have we been subjected to CV's monomaniacal obession with the minute intersection of trans rights and Scottish politics.
    Yeah, I'm not sure why you see someone posting tweets and links to articles - that are different every time - on a subject that interests them as the same thing as the tedious spamming we are currently being subjected to.

    And if it is, Scotty would have been banned years ago.
    Should whining endlessly about 'Scotty' incur a similar ban?
    When was the last time I mentioned him?
    Dunno, not an assiduous follower of your posts. By contrast it would appear that Scott's posts seem to be living in your head for a peppercorn rent.
    @Scott_xP would make a great Scottish nationalist. He’s very annoying 😄
    I enjoy his posts. Often very informative and often with some good humour.
    My favourite was his rock-solid, from-on-the-ground betting tip that the Scottish Conservatives were about to triumph in Edinburgh Pentlands.

    He’s good at politics.
    But betting? Not so much.
  • Options
    DriverDriver Posts: 4,522
    edited December 2022
    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    You know that 19% is a bargaining mechanism starting point. Everyone does.

    The Government would be better off accomodating the NHS workers and if union destruction is their manifesto, crush the rail workers.

    I note all the PB Conservatives are falling into their 1980s Thatcherite line over this issue. Remember though, Thatcher picked and chose her battles.
    Modern Tories often misunderstand what Margaret Thatcher was really like. She loved to come across as gung-ho, but in reality she was a careful and cunning strategist. She picked her fights extremely carefully. She would never have gone head to head with nurses FFS.
    Interesting as well that she was opposed to two of the most contentious post-Thatcher privatisations - that of the Royal Mail and the Railways.
    She was also opposed, quite rightly, to the establishment of the National Lottery. She fought it for years, against a skilled internal campaign within her own party. She quite rightly saw that it was a cynical tool for removing vast sums of cash from poor and stupid people in order to suppress the tax bills of people that could easily afford to fund public services.
    The original purpose of the Lottery money was to fund things that were traditionally outside government spending - the classic was the “save this work of art for the nation”, a case of which caused John Major to put his support behind it, IIRC.

    There have been a number of attempts to divert more money from it to “schools and hospitals spending”, since. Mostly beaten iff. The government still takes the vast majority of the ticket price in tax, though.

    The other point is that due to globalisation, other countries lotteries were beginning to make their mark in the U.K. - the huge Spanish lottery, for example. One argument for the U.K. lottery was that it would dominate the U.K. market, keeping the money and regulation in the U.K.
    As I said: “skilled internal campaign”. Still defrauding the poor.
    A lottery isn't defrauding anyone.
    You spend a pound on a lottery ticket, you get a pound's worth of pleasure in anticipating a life of ease in which all your problems are solved and replaced by other, more expensive problems. It's no less rational a use for a pound than any one of a number of other ways you can fritter your money. From where I'm sitting now I can see half a dozen things which are superficially wastes of money - a bottle of beer, a plant, a small child's toy, a birthday card, and so on - none of these things make my life better in any measurable way, all of them put off the moment at which I can retire. But we don't say any of these things are defrauding the poor.
    It's certainly a lot less bad than all those commercial radio "£2 plus your standard network rate" competitions which only have one prize.
  • Options
    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    It’s bad for everybody.

    People are going to die, there are no winners from this.

    I mat have to sedate my father as he is furious at the profession putting lives at risk.

    The issue is the farcical request for 19%, they'd have many, many more supporters at 7%. At 19% their fight looks ideologically driven against the Tories. There's no government who would agree to those terms, not Tory nor Labour.
    I saw a clip with Ian Hislop the other day, where he was saying the government has forgotten how strikes work since the 70s and 80s. Back then, unions went on strike, demanded whatever per cent, unions and government negotiated and they came to agreement.

    Now, the unions have gone on strike, demanding whatever per cent, and the government are just saying ‘we can’t afford that, but we’re not negotiating, independent pay review, burble burble, wibble wibble’.

    So, to me, there are two possible intentions at work. Either, the government does indeed have institutional amnesia - which I doubt - or they are happy to see the strikes because they see a double benefit...
    It is the latter.
    Reported this morning that government have briefed that they're prepared for a lengthy dispute.
    Maggie and co made detailed plans worthy of Barbarossa for their fight against their enemy within, the NUM. This lot otoh have barely reached Putin SMO levels of preparedness.
  • Options
    kinabalu said:

    kjh said:

    tlg86 said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    I also think at 7% the strike would not be going ahead, the government would already have done the deal. Which, again, makes this look ideology driven by lefty unions.

    Don't most people understand that the 19 percent is an initial pitch to give room to move?

    It's blooming obvious that the "right" answer is somewhere between 6 and 8 percent. But any union going in asking for 8 percent wouldn't be rewarded for reasonableness, it would be squeezed down to five.
    Except 19% makes them look ridiculous. Even 10% would be seen as "sure, after COVID they probably deserve it". 19% looks ideologically driven by unions who want to bring down the Tory government.
    There would be no strikes if hundreds of thousands of ordinary, non-militant, men and women had not felt there was no other option. Politically-inspired cod-Thatcherism designed to appeal to the Tory base will not solve the problems. At some point, the government is going to have to put the country first.

    I'm a public sector worker. Do you think I deserve a 7% pay rise?
    You personally? Absolutely not.

    I liked because it made me laugh, not because I have anything against @tlg86 who I am sure is worth every penny if not more.
    Not what I hear.
    I can assure you I am worth every penny of my 0% pay rise this year. (public sector too)
  • Options
    MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,416

    kjh said:

    Question for Christians on here (@hyufd) re something that just popped into my brain yesterday. Having not read further than Genesis of the bible can someone tell me is there much (anything) in the bible about Jesus between being born and being an adult?

    In Luke's Gospel, Joseph and Mary take the fam to the Temple when Jesus was twelve. He somehow gets left behind there for a couple of days, ending up in deep conversation with the Temple elders. He's then a bit sassy to his worried mum.
    I am a Christian on here like HY, and I can build a bit on what you have said Stu and give an honest answer to kjh.

    The honest answer kjh is no - there’s not much in Bible or out of it on Jesus life before his ministry started. As well as having Faith and big supporter of CoE but also attend services outside CoE, I am also a big fan of history - but there is nothing I’ve seen that sheds light on Jesus youth before his ministry, and not much historical Jesus outside of the Bible even of his ministry. The first bit of Bible written is Paul’s letters from Greek Islands where he is helping non Jews realise how important Jesus is to everyone, and this was more than a decade after Jesus had been crucified by the Jewish leaders and Roman Empire.

    But to build on what you said Stu - Uncle Joseph is big in Jesus life especially all what he does after the crucifixion, and Uncle Joseph was a big political figure on council, and who he represented likely sheds light onto which sect Jesus belonged too.

    Sects. That’s got your attention. It’s important to remember there’s sectarian disagreements Jesus is a part of. Hence the incidence you mentioned, and much later Jewish leaders wanting him executed by Romans.

    Also I read something that through his mothers side Jesus was close to Royalty.

    If you are interested in more I can recommend AN Wilson biography of Jesus.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,778

    Carnyx said:

    checklist said:

    I think the Scotswoman is still at large, why not toddle down to the IoM for a citizen's arrest?

    Her Scottish husband is due a spell of chokey in Spain if that helps?
    When she was Better Together’s star frontwoman she was a British heroine.

    Now she has apparently defrauded the Exchequer she is unceremoniously demoted to “the Scotswoman”.

    Shades of Andy Murray et al.
    Not least because she is now an Englishwoman. At least on one definition.

    Mind: she did make a very big performance of leaving Scotland, too.
    That old “I’m leaving if my side don’t win” shtick. Except she gave it a novel twist: her side won and she still left. Almost as if she was economic with the truth.
    Interesting. "Mone" is the sort of surname that would be most appropriate for a whinging Scottish Nationalist. Perhaps you should consider it as a nom de plume?
    I don't think you understand Scottish politics. She would be absolutely horrified to hear that. Ms Mone, as she was then, was the absolute poster lady for British nationalism north of the border for years. We had more photos of her than the Sun has photos of undressed ladies - actually, we more or less got those as well because there were plenty of photos of her lingerie models beside Ms Mone in various expensive-looking dresses.
  • Options

    kjh said:

    Question for Christians on here (@hyufd) re something that just popped into my brain yesterday. Having not read further than Genesis of the bible can someone tell me is there much (anything) in the bible about Jesus between being born and being an adult?

    In Luke's Gospel, Joseph and Mary take the fam to the Temple when Jesus was twelve. He somehow gets left behind there for a couple of days, ending up in deep conversation with the Temple elders. He's then a bit sassy to his worried mum.
    I am a Christian on here like HY, and I can build a bit on what you have said Stu and give an honest answer to kjh.

    The honest answer kjh is no - there’s not much in Bible or out of it on Jesus life before his ministry started. As well as having Faith and big supporter of CoE but also attend services outside CoE, I am also a big fan of history - but there is nothing I’ve seen that sheds light on Jesus youth before his ministry, and not much historical Jesus outside of the Bible even of his ministry. The first bit of Bible written is Paul’s letters from Greek Islands where he is helping non Jews realise how important Jesus is to everyone, and this was more than a decade after Jesus had been crucified by the Jewish leaders and Roman Empire.

    But to build on what you said Stu - Uncle Joseph is big in Jesus life especially all what he does after the crucifixion, and Uncle Joseph was a big political figure on council, and who he represented likely sheds light onto which sect Jesus belonged too.

    Sects. That’s got your attention. It’s important to remember there’s sectarian disagreements Jesus is a part of. Hence the incidence you mentioned, and much later Jewish leaders wanting him executed by Romans.

    Also I read something that through his mothers side Jesus was close to Royalty.

    If you are interested in more I can recommend AN Wilson biography of Jesus.
    You're a Christian on here? What are you the rest of the time?
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,778
    edited December 2022

    Carnyx said:

    TimS said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    You know that 19% is a bargaining mechanism starting point. Everyone does.

    The Government would be better off accomodating the NHS workers and if union destruction is their manifesto, crush the rail workers.

    I note all the PB Conservatives are falling into their 1980s Thatcherite line over this issue. Remember though, Thatcher picked and chose her battles.
    Modern Tories often misunderstand what Margaret Thatcher was really like. She loved to come across as gung-ho, but in reality she was a careful and cunning strategist. She picked her fights extremely carefully. She would never have gone head to head with nurses FFS.
    I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating.

    Maggie left office over thirty years ago, her finest hours were more like forty years ago.

    We now have a generation of politicians whose only direct experience of Thatcher was seeing her on John Craven's Newsround, if that. And the real, interesting politician has been replaced by a cartoon.

    It happens. But it causes people to have a funny idea about What Would Maggie Do?
    Yes, the John Craven's newsround generation. A set of early news memories that included the miner's strike, the Falklands, Band Aid and Live Aid, the space shuttle, Charles and Diana, Reagan's star-wars programme, the Iran-Iraq war and hostages in Beirut.
    I am old enough to remember watching Maggie’s St Francis of Assisi speech in Downing Street, on the proper BBC news, not the bairns’ version. A lot of the intrigues of that era are still fresh in my memory. The cartoon version of Thatcher that is obviously imprinted on the minds of young Tories perplexes me. She was much more complex and nuanced, especially in her first decade as Con leader.
    Not to mention the Sermon on the Mound. Which had unintended associations in locals' minds, of course, with the tubthumpers who normally resided on the Mound.
    Indeed. Preaching ministers of the Kirk on the topic of morality was one of her infrequent, surreal forays into Scottish public life. She was clearly outwith her comfort zone when in the northern colony.
    tbf the tubthumpers at the foot were often of a different ilk from the minister mannies who met halfway up the Mound in the Assembly Hall.
  • Options
    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,190
    kinabalu said:

    kjh said:

    tlg86 said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    I also think at 7% the strike would not be going ahead, the government would already have done the deal. Which, again, makes this look ideology driven by lefty unions.

    Don't most people understand that the 19 percent is an initial pitch to give room to move?

    It's blooming obvious that the "right" answer is somewhere between 6 and 8 percent. But any union going in asking for 8 percent wouldn't be rewarded for reasonableness, it would be squeezed down to five.
    Except 19% makes them look ridiculous. Even 10% would be seen as "sure, after COVID they probably deserve it". 19% looks ideologically driven by unions who want to bring down the Tory government.
    There would be no strikes if hundreds of thousands of ordinary, non-militant, men and women had not felt there was no other option. Politically-inspired cod-Thatcherism designed to appeal to the Tory base will not solve the problems. At some point, the government is going to have to put the country first.

    I'm a public sector worker. Do you think I deserve a 7% pay rise?
    You personally? Absolutely not.

    I liked because it made me laugh, not because I have anything against @tlg86 who I am sure is worth every penny if not more.
    Not what I hear.
    Too much time on a certain website...
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,449
    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    It’s bad for everybody.

    People are going to die, there are no winners from this.

    I mat have to sedate my father as he is furious at the profession putting lives at risk.

    The issue is the farcical request for 19%, they'd have many, many more supporters at 7%. At 19% their fight looks ideologically driven against the Tories. There's no government who would agree to those terms, not Tory nor Labour.
    I saw a clip with Ian Hislop the other day, where he was saying the government has forgotten how strikes work since the 70s and 80s. Back then, unions went on strike, demanded whatever per cent, unions and government negotiated and they came to agreement.

    Now, the unions have gone on strike, demanding whatever per cent, and the government are just saying ‘we can’t afford that, but we’re not negotiating, independent pay review, burble burble, wibble wibble’.

    So, to me, there are two possible intentions at work. Either, the government does indeed have institutional amnesia - which I doubt - or they are happy to see the strikes because they see a double benefit...
    It is the latter.
    Reported this morning that government have briefed that they're prepared for a lengthy dispute.
    It's true that that's how strikes worked in the 70s. I'd argue though that that approach worked well for the unions but less well for the government or the country. Perhaps the government remembers the 70s all too well.

    It's a pity, because I like trains. But the last few years have shown us that rail actually isn't as essential as it used to be, just as in the 80s coal was suddenly less essential than it used to be. I'm not sure the unions have caught up with this. The RMT will kill off the rail industry as surely as the NUM killed off the coal industry.
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 9,631
    Today's concocted Twitter controversy seems to be a handful of right wingers claiming nobody's allowed to say Merry Christmas anymore even though they all wish happy Hannukkah and Eid Mubarak. That old chestnut.

    And of course the lefties are rising to it.

    Of all the make-believe culture war battles the whole "we have to call it Winterval" thing is up there with imaginary poppy fascism in the shut up stakes.
  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,205
    I find this topic a personally unbearable one.

    My father died because of industrial action by health workers (junior doctors) in the mid-1970's. He developed an enlarged prostrate and the treatment to deal with it was postponed. By the time he got it, the cancer had spread and there was nothing to be done. He died in January 1979 during the Winter of Discontent. I was in my 2nd year at university. It was a long lonely cold winter - a winter of real personal discontent.

    His death changed everything for me, for my mother, my brother. Everything. It remains the single most defining event in my life. The security, the stability of life had been broken and that break never ever heals, that security never ever wholly returns. You never get over the death of someone you love. You get past it somehow. But never over it.

    There will be people now and in the future who will suffer similar pain and sorrow because of what is happening, because of the actions that are and are not being taken.

    Pinning political blame seems somehow both insignificant and a contemptuous distraction from what this means to people who do not have a choice about becoming ill and needing help. For what it's worth, it left me with a certain amount of cynicism about the whole "everyone in the NHS is an angel" line that was trotted out during the Thatcher years. While I have sympathy for nurses and others who see their living standards fall, there is a part of me that still finds it hard to see how a health professional can turn away from someone needing help knowing the consequences. For me that feels too raw.

    It was a Labour government which had to make hard choices which led to the junior doctors' go-slow action. All governments do. Workers and unions take the action they do in their own interests. Both act rationally in their own interests. Both choose to forget that other lives are at stake and that others will suffer, no matter how much agreement there is about categories 1 & 2 and emergency care. Truth is it is not just emergencies which lead to lives being lost and pain being caused. People will suffer as a result of what the government and the unions are doing. Rather than pretend otherwise they should accept this and say that this is the price they are willing for others to pay.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,418
    Driver said:

    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    You know that 19% is a bargaining mechanism starting point. Everyone does.

    The Government would be better off accomodating the NHS workers and if union destruction is their manifesto, crush the rail workers.

    I note all the PB Conservatives are falling into their 1980s Thatcherite line over this issue. Remember though, Thatcher picked and chose her battles.
    Modern Tories often misunderstand what Margaret Thatcher was really like. She loved to come across as gung-ho, but in reality she was a careful and cunning strategist. She picked her fights extremely carefully. She would never have gone head to head with nurses FFS.
    Interesting as well that she was opposed to two of the most contentious post-Thatcher privatisations - that of the Royal Mail and the Railways.
    She was also opposed, quite rightly, to the establishment of the National Lottery. She fought it for years, against a skilled internal campaign within her own party. She quite rightly saw that it was a cynical tool for removing vast sums of cash from poor and stupid people in order to suppress the tax bills of people that could easily afford to fund public services.
    The original purpose of the Lottery money was to fund things that were traditionally outside government spending - the classic was the “save this work of art for the nation”, a case of which caused John Major to put his support behind it, IIRC.

    There have been a number of attempts to divert more money from it to “schools and hospitals spending”, since. Mostly beaten iff. The government still takes the vast majority of the ticket price in tax, though.

    The other point is that due to globalisation, other countries lotteries were beginning to make their mark in the U.K. - the huge Spanish lottery, for example. One argument for the U.K. lottery was that it would dominate the U.K. market, keeping the money and regulation in the U.K.
    As I said: “skilled internal campaign”. Still defrauding the poor.
    A lottery isn't defrauding anyone.
    You spend a pound on a lottery ticket, you get a pound's worth of pleasure in anticipating a life of ease in which all your problems are solved and replaced by other, more expensive problems. It's no less rational a use for a pound than any one of a number of other ways you can fritter your money. From where I'm sitting now I can see half a dozen things which are superficially wastes of money - a bottle of beer, a plant, a small child's toy, a birthday card, and so on - none of these things make my life better in any measurable way, all of them put off the moment at which I can retire. But we don't say any of these things are defrauding the poor.
    It's certainly a lot less bad than all those commercial radio "£2 plus your standard network rate" competitions which only have one prize.
    The real scam with radio competitions is/was the insane rates on phone in lines. Some were over a £1 a minute and the system structured to keep you online, waiting.
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,906
    There is a new law on twitter - if you wind someone on the right up enough they will, eventually, call you a trans rights activist.

    I've managed it 5 times so far, on cycle lanes and re-wilding.
  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,607
    Selebian said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    I work in one of the big UK university departments training nurses and midwives (although I'm little involved myself - occasional lecture - and not employed for that at all). The course is very hands-on, mostly practical training, including placements and the vast majority taught by qualified clinicians rather than traditional academics.

    There's a bit on research methods, critical appraisal etc (the bit I sometimes contribute to) which I do think has some value. Obviously more important for doctors, but nurses sometimes end up in charge of care decisions, particularly those in primary care - helps to prevent them being taken in by and pushing evidence-free bollocks such as homeopathy. We also teach midwives and there's definitely a need there for an understanding of what has evidence and what does not!

    But, whatever views on the above paragraph, a non-university training course would look very similar to what we deliver.
    Which is the point of the nurse practitioner qualification still having the university degree bar. The point is that we've created an artificial limitation on who can qualify in certain professions and then there's a huge shortage of labour in them. Nursing is one of those professions where a university degree is mostly unnecessary and for those who want to go on to be nurse practitioners the degree would still be available anyway.

    It's sort of like how tech industry jobs used to require a computer science degree but companies realised this was unnecessary and all they really wanted were people who could code, so anyone with 6 months in a bootcamp was able to a junior programmer job and work their way up. I have no formal qualifications for what I do, my chemistry degree has been worse than useless since I graduated, I'm just lucky it only resulted in £14k worth of debt rather than £45k as students are lumbered with now.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,626
    Cyclefree said:

    I find this topic a personally unbearable one.

    My father died because of industrial action by health workers (junior doctors) in the mid-1970's. He developed an enlarged prostrate and the treatment to deal with it was postponed. By the time he got it, the cancer had spread and there was nothing to be done. He died in January 1979 during the Winter of Discontent. I was in my 2nd year at university. It was a long lonely cold winter - a winter of real personal discontent.

    His death changed everything for me, for my mother, my brother. Everything. It remains the single most defining event in my life. The security, the stability of life had been broken and that break never ever heals, that security never ever wholly returns. You never get over the death of someone you love. You get past it somehow. But never over it.

    There will be people now and in the future who will suffer similar pain and sorrow because of what is happening, because of the actions that are and are not being taken.

    Pinning political blame seems somehow both insignificant and a contemptuous distraction from what this means to people who do not have a choice about becoming ill and needing help. For what it's worth, it left me with a certain amount of cynicism about the whole "everyone in the NHS is an angel" line that was trotted out during the Thatcher years. While I have sympathy for nurses and others who see their living standards fall, there is a part of me that still finds it hard to see how a health professional can turn away from someone needing help knowing the consequences. For me that feels too raw.

    It was a Labour government which had to make hard choices which led to the junior doctors' go-slow action. All governments do. Workers and unions take the action they do in their own interests. Both act rationally in their own interests. Both choose to forget that other lives are at stake and that others will suffer, no matter how much agreement there is about categories 1 & 2 and emergency care. Truth is it is not just emergencies which lead to lives being lost and pain being caused. People will suffer as a result of what the government and the unions are doing. Rather than pretend otherwise they should accept this and say that this is the price they are willing for others to pay.

    To be fair to the media, they do raise this repeatedly when interviewing the protagonists.
    The answers from either side are less than convincing.
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 9,631
    Cookie said:

    Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    It’s bad for everybody.

    People are going to die, there are no winners from this.

    I mat have to sedate my father as he is furious at the profession putting lives at risk.

    The issue is the farcical request for 19%, they'd have many, many more supporters at 7%. At 19% their fight looks ideologically driven against the Tories. There's no government who would agree to those terms, not Tory nor Labour.
    I saw a clip with Ian Hislop the other day, where he was saying the government has forgotten how strikes work since the 70s and 80s. Back then, unions went on strike, demanded whatever per cent, unions and government negotiated and they came to agreement.

    Now, the unions have gone on strike, demanding whatever per cent, and the government are just saying ‘we can’t afford that, but we’re not negotiating, independent pay review, burble burble, wibble wibble’.

    So, to me, there are two possible intentions at work. Either, the government does indeed have institutional amnesia - which I doubt - or they are happy to see the strikes because they see a double benefit...
    It is the latter.
    Reported this morning that government have briefed that they're prepared for a lengthy dispute.
    It's true that that's how strikes worked in the 70s. I'd argue though that that approach worked well for the unions but less well for the government or the country. Perhaps the government remembers the 70s all too well.

    It's a pity, because I like trains. But the last few years have shown us that rail actually isn't as essential as it used to be, just as in the 80s coal was suddenly less essential than it used to be. I'm not sure the unions have caught up with this. The RMT will kill off the rail industry as surely as the NUM killed off the coal industry.
    Like many other things this is one of those binary fallacies. Neither unions and government are automatically virtuous or right. Sometimes one has a stronger case, sometimes the other.

    Unions in the late 70s by most accounts overreached and weakened their case. Government by just about all accounts in the early 2020s has overreached on the union bashing and needs to face reality.

    In both cases the protagonists lost sight of the primary purpose of their role in negotiations and started making it about more ideological political ambitions.
  • Options
    JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    edited December 2022
    Sunak is not good a politics. He’s one of those politicians that inherited high office off the back of the work of others. He seems to have more ego than political antennae. His predecessors would have known better than to fight a political battle on multiple fronts from such a position of weakness.

    His USP was the man to end the chaos of Truss and Johnson. He’s forgotten that.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,778
    Eabhal said:

    There is a new law on twitter - if you wind someone on the right up enough they will, eventually, call you a trans rights activist.

    I've managed it 5 times so far, on cycle lanes and re-wilding.

    Trans-port I get. But not the wilding. Trans-species?
  • Options
    TimSTimS Posts: 9,631
    Eabhal said:

    There is a new law on twitter - if you wind someone on the right up enough they will, eventually, call you a trans rights activist.

    I've managed it 5 times so far, on cycle lanes and re-wilding.

    Like the new law of geopolitics which leads to the Russians calling entire nations LGBTQ satanists.
  • Options
    MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,416

    kjh said:

    Question for Christians on here (@hyufd) re something that just popped into my brain yesterday. Having not read further than Genesis of the bible can someone tell me is there much (anything) in the bible about Jesus between being born and being an adult?

    In Luke's Gospel, Joseph and Mary take the fam to the Temple when Jesus was twelve. He somehow gets left behind there for a couple of days, ending up in deep conversation with the Temple elders. He's then a bit sassy to his worried mum.
    I am a Christian on here like HY, and I can build a bit on what you have said Stu and give an honest answer to kjh.

    The honest answer kjh is no - there’s not much in Bible or out of it on Jesus life before his ministry started. As well as having Faith and big supporter of CoE but also attend services outside CoE, I am also a big fan of history - but there is nothing I’ve seen that sheds light on Jesus youth before his ministry, and not much historical Jesus outside of the Bible even of his ministry. The first bit of Bible written is Paul’s letters from Greek Islands where he is helping non Jews realise how important Jesus is to everyone, and this was more than a decade after Jesus had been crucified by the Jewish leaders and Roman Empire.

    But to build on what you said Stu - Uncle Joseph is big in Jesus life especially all what he does after the crucifixion, and Uncle Joseph was a big political figure on council, and who he represented likely sheds light onto which sect Jesus belonged too.

    Sects. That’s got your attention. It’s important to remember there’s sectarian disagreements Jesus is a part of. Hence the incidence you mentioned, and much later Jewish leaders wanting him executed by Romans.

    Also I read something that through his mothers side Jesus was close to Royalty.

    If you are interested in more I can recommend AN Wilson biography of Jesus.
    You're a Christian on here? What are you the rest of the time?
    A Christian. A lover. And a poet. 😇

    I was responding to how kjh phrased it.

    Do you believe Divvie?
  • Options
    Eabhal said:

    There is a new law on twitter - if you wind someone on the right up enough they will, eventually, call you a trans rights activist.

    I've managed it 5 times so far, on cycle lanes and re-wilding.

    Are you a trans rights supporter?
  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,607

    Selebian said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    I work in one of the big UK university departments training nurses and midwives (although I'm little involved myself - occasional lecture - and not employed for that at all). The course is very hands-on, mostly practical training, including placements and the vast majority taught by qualified clinicians rather than traditional academics.

    There's a bit on research methods, critical appraisal etc (the bit I sometimes contribute to) which I do think has some value. Obviously more important for doctors, but nurses sometimes end up in charge of care decisions, particularly those in primary care - helps to prevent them being taken in by and pushing evidence-free bollocks such as homeopathy. We also teach midwives and there's definitely a need there for an understanding of what has evidence and what does not!

    But, whatever views on the above paragraph, a non-university training course would look very similar to what we deliver.
    That certain PB contributors pronounce definitively on subjects about which they know Jack shit comes as no surprise… this time it’s the content of nursing degrees. That the same voices argue vehemently to deny nurses and police officers the prestige of having a degree to their name, whilst defending independent schools to the hilt, says it all. Keep the working man and woman in their place.
    I assume, then, you'd refuse treatment from any nurse aged 50 or over given they don't have degrees or report any crime to a police officer older than 50 because it's unlikely they'd have come from the degree route as well? I thought not.
  • Options
    DriverDriver Posts: 4,522
    edited December 2022

    kjh said:

    Question for Christians on here (@hyufd) re something that just popped into my brain yesterday. Having not read further than Genesis of the bible can someone tell me is there much (anything) in the bible about Jesus between being born and being an adult?

    In Luke's Gospel, Joseph and Mary take the fam to the Temple when Jesus was twelve. He somehow gets left behind there for a couple of days, ending up in deep conversation with the Temple elders. He's then a bit sassy to his worried mum.
    I am a Christian on here like HY, and I can build a bit on what you have said Stu and give an honest answer to kjh.

    The honest answer kjh is no - there’s not much in Bible or out of it on Jesus life before his ministry started. As well as having Faith and big supporter of CoE but also attend services outside CoE, I am also a big fan of history - but there is nothing I’ve seen that sheds light on Jesus youth before his ministry, and not much historical Jesus outside of the Bible even of his ministry. The first bit of Bible written is Paul’s letters from Greek Islands where he is helping non Jews realise how important Jesus is to everyone, and this was more than a decade after Jesus had been crucified by the Jewish leaders and Roman Empire.

    But to build on what you said Stu - Uncle Joseph is big in Jesus life especially all what he does after the crucifixion, and Uncle Joseph was a big political figure on council, and who he represented likely sheds light onto which sect Jesus belonged too.

    Sects. That’s got your attention. It’s important to remember there’s sectarian disagreements Jesus is a part of. Hence the incidence you mentioned, and much later Jewish leaders wanting him executed by Romans.

    Also I read something that through his mothers side Jesus was close to Royalty.

    If you are interested in more I can recommend AN Wilson biography of Jesus.
    You're a Christian on here? What are you the rest of the time?
    A Christian. A lover. And a poet. 😇

    I was responding to how kjh phrased it.

    Do you believe Divvie?
    I believe that Shakin' Stevens really shakes
    And that Mr Kipling bakes exceedingly good cakes

    https://youtu.be/kir3EdR07iU
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,449

    Selebian said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    I work in one of the big UK university departments training nurses and midwives (although I'm little involved myself - occasional lecture - and not employed for that at all). The course is very hands-on, mostly practical training, including placements and the vast majority taught by qualified clinicians rather than traditional academics.

    There's a bit on research methods, critical appraisal etc (the bit I sometimes contribute to) which I do think has some value. Obviously more important for doctors, but nurses sometimes end up in charge of care decisions, particularly those in primary care - helps to prevent them being taken in by and pushing evidence-free bollocks such as homeopathy. We also teach midwives and there's definitely a need there for an understanding of what has evidence and what does not!

    But, whatever views on the above paragraph, a non-university training course would look very similar to what we deliver.
    That certain PB contributors pronounce definitively on subjects about which they know Jack shit comes as no surprise… this time it’s the content of nursing degrees. That the same voices argue vehemently to deny nurses and police officers the prestige of having a degree to their name, whilst defending independent schools to the hilt, says it all. Keep the working man and woman in their place.
    The main effect of turning various forms of training into degrees has been to harden the barriers to progress for those without a degree.

    In many areas, getting a job without a degree has become impossible. The previous avenues into various skills and trades for the non-degree possessing, have vanished.

    So 50% of the population is classified, for life as “low value”.
    Yes, and at the same time getting a degree has become much, much, much more expensive.
    I'd say the 'everything needs a degree' approach is the 'keeping working man and woman in their place' approach, rather than the reverse.
  • Options
    £80 billion in extra tax heading to Westminster in the next 6 years from North Sea oil/gas. Aberdeen should look like Dubai by now but instead it has food banks. The mishandling of Scotland’s oil wealth by London govs is one of the biggest scandals in post war European history.



    https://twitter.com/malcolmwebster2/status/1604927613855744000?s=46&t=mvgHYhIsrd1_IriIWSQPpQ
  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,607
    Cookie said:

    Selebian said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    I work in one of the big UK university departments training nurses and midwives (although I'm little involved myself - occasional lecture - and not employed for that at all). The course is very hands-on, mostly practical training, including placements and the vast majority taught by qualified clinicians rather than traditional academics.

    There's a bit on research methods, critical appraisal etc (the bit I sometimes contribute to) which I do think has some value. Obviously more important for doctors, but nurses sometimes end up in charge of care decisions, particularly those in primary care - helps to prevent them being taken in by and pushing evidence-free bollocks such as homeopathy. We also teach midwives and there's definitely a need there for an understanding of what has evidence and what does not!

    But, whatever views on the above paragraph, a non-university training course would look very similar to what we deliver.
    That certain PB contributors pronounce definitively on subjects about which they know Jack shit comes as no surprise… this time it’s the content of nursing degrees. That the same voices argue vehemently to deny nurses and police officers the prestige of having a degree to their name, whilst defending independent schools to the hilt, says it all. Keep the working man and woman in their place.
    The main effect of turning various forms of training into degrees has been to harden the barriers to progress for those without a degree.

    In many areas, getting a job without a degree has become impossible. The previous avenues into various skills and trades for the non-degree possessing, have vanished.

    So 50% of the population is classified, for life as “low value”.
    Yes, and at the same time getting a degree has become much, much, much more expensive.
    I'd say the 'everything needs a degree' approach is the 'keeping working man and woman in their place' approach, rather than the reverse.
    Indeed, it's quite a warped world view that suggests the working man/woman needs to have this £45k certificate to get on in life and that professions should be off limits to those who can't afford it.
  • Options
    moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,244
    Zelensky has gone walkabout in Bakhmut. Vinegar in the eye to Putin that is.
  • Options
    NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,337

    MaxPB said:

    I also think at 7% the strike would not be going ahead, the government would already have done the deal. Which, again, makes this look ideology driven by lefty unions.

    Don't most people understand that the 19 percent is an initial pitch to give room to move?

    It's blooming obvious that the "right" answer is somewhere between 6 and 8 percent. But any union going in asking for 8 percent wouldn't be rewarded for reasonableness, it would be squeezed down to five.
    It's also laying the ground for pay negotiations in future years. After accepting below inflation this year they will want to create the expectation of above inflation payrises when inflation is lower to catch up on what is lost now.
    I think that 19% is a bit ambitious though I understand the catch-up argument. In PR terms they might have been better off asking for 11.1% and going big on anything less being lower than inflation so actually a wage CUT. But in negotiating terms of course one starts by asking for more than the minimum acceptable.

    Quite apart from the rights and wrongs, though, the service is not attracting enough people willing to provide it. In private industry that would call for pay rises, regardless of considerations of fairness, angelity etc. If the Government wins, how will they fill the gaps in staff?
  • Options
    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,954
    NEW: Fresh strikes on the railways. Aslef has announced new strikes for train drivers across 15 rail companies on 5th January. That’ll be between strikes already announced by RMT, running between 3-4th and 6-7th January.
  • Options
    MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,416
    Driver said:

    kjh said:

    Question for Christians on here (@hyufd) re something that just popped into my brain yesterday. Having not read further than Genesis of the bible can someone tell me is there much (anything) in the bible about Jesus between being born and being an adult?

    In Luke's Gospel, Joseph and Mary take the fam to the Temple when Jesus was twelve. He somehow gets left behind there for a couple of days, ending up in deep conversation with the Temple elders. He's then a bit sassy to his worried mum.
    I am a Christian on here like HY, and I can build a bit on what you have said Stu and give an honest answer to kjh.

    The honest answer kjh is no - there’s not much in Bible or out of it on Jesus life before his ministry started. As well as having Faith and big supporter of CoE but also attend services outside CoE, I am also a big fan of history - but there is nothing I’ve seen that sheds light on Jesus youth before his ministry, and not much historical Jesus outside of the Bible even of his ministry. The first bit of Bible written is Paul’s letters from Greek Islands where he is helping non Jews realise how important Jesus is to everyone, and this was more than a decade after Jesus had been crucified by the Jewish leaders and Roman Empire.

    But to build on what you said Stu - Uncle Joseph is big in Jesus life especially all what he does after the crucifixion, and Uncle Joseph was a big political figure on council, and who he represented likely sheds light onto which sect Jesus belonged too.

    Sects. That’s got your attention. It’s important to remember there’s sectarian disagreements Jesus is a part of. Hence the incidence you mentioned, and much later Jewish leaders wanting him executed by Romans.

    Also I read something that through his mothers side Jesus was close to Royalty.

    If you are interested in more I can recommend AN Wilson biography of Jesus.
    You're a Christian on here? What are you the rest of the time?
    A Christian. A lover. And a poet. 😇

    I was responding to how kjh phrased it.

    Do you believe Divvie?
    I believe that Shakin' Stevens really shakes
    And that Mr Kipling bakes exceedingly good cakes

    https://youtu.be/kir3EdR07iU
    I make even better cakes than that. Believe in me, a Goddess with the best cup cakes in the world!
  • Options
    MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,416
    I’ve actually changed my mind about the Nurses 19% pay demand.

    Many nurses don’t come into the profession to get rich, it’s a calling to help people and make a connection with people when they are not well and in trouble - and they can’t do this after the Tories have run the service into the ground with so many vacancies. That is what the strike is about and the point the 19% figure is making.

    The 4% figure will not address the main point, services struggling due to lack of staff. That’s what the strike and feelings are about. What the 4% figure is telling every voter is Sunak’s government actually unbothered about sorting out the actual problems in the NHS - service bad due to too many vacancies, what Sunak’s governments vocal unwillingness to budge from 4% and have proper discussions is telling us, is they have no interest in actually sorting the real problem out. Which is a disgraceful position.

    Starmer and Labour and Lib Dems should bloody well call Sunak out about this. 19% is what is better to help stop the staff shortages - leaving and recruitment issues - and 4% actually means the government not serious about sorting the real issue.
  • Options
    moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,244
    Scott_xP said:

    NEW: Fresh strikes on the railways. Aslef has announced new strikes for train drivers across 15 rail companies on 5th January. That’ll be between strikes already announced by RMT, running between 3-4th and 6-7th January.

    Good stuff. Full week of WFH to kick off the new year then.
  • Options

    kjh said:

    Question for Christians on here (@hyufd) re something that just popped into my brain yesterday. Having not read further than Genesis of the bible can someone tell me is there much (anything) in the bible about Jesus between being born and being an adult?

    In Luke's Gospel, Joseph and Mary take the fam to the Temple when Jesus was twelve. He somehow gets left behind there for a couple of days, ending up in deep conversation with the Temple elders. He's then a bit sassy to his worried mum.
    I am a Christian on here like HY, and I can build a bit on what you have said Stu and give an honest answer to kjh.

    The honest answer kjh is no - there’s not much in Bible or out of it on Jesus life before his ministry started. As well as having Faith and big supporter of CoE but also attend services outside CoE, I am also a big fan of history - but there is nothing I’ve seen that sheds light on Jesus youth before his ministry, and not much historical Jesus outside of the Bible even of his ministry. The first bit of Bible written is Paul’s letters from Greek Islands where he is helping non Jews realise how important Jesus is to everyone, and this was more than a decade after Jesus had been crucified by the Jewish leaders and Roman Empire.

    But to build on what you said Stu - Uncle Joseph is big in Jesus life especially all what he does after the crucifixion, and Uncle Joseph was a big political figure on council, and who he represented likely sheds light onto which sect Jesus belonged too.

    Sects. That’s got your attention. It’s important to remember there’s sectarian disagreements Jesus is a part of. Hence the incidence you mentioned, and much later Jewish leaders wanting him executed by Romans.

    Also I read something that through his mothers side Jesus was close to Royalty.

    If you are interested in more I can recommend AN Wilson biography of Jesus.
    You're a Christian on here? What are you the rest of the time?
    A Christian. A lover. And a poet. 😇

    I was responding to how kjh phrased it.

    Do you believe Divvie?
    As I said to my recently deceased pal ante mortem, the only thing I believe is that we all go to the same place. I did not add as it didn't seem the time or place that most likely that place is black unknowing oblivion, though I suspect he may have agreed with me.

    I shall be most most disappointed if I end up in some hierachic spiritual twatfest as envisaged by the likes of pretendy Christians like HYUFD.
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,201
    MaxPB said:

    Selebian said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    I work in one of the big UK university departments training nurses and midwives (although I'm little involved myself - occasional lecture - and not employed for that at all). The course is very hands-on, mostly practical training, including placements and the vast majority taught by qualified clinicians rather than traditional academics.

    There's a bit on research methods, critical appraisal etc (the bit I sometimes contribute to) which I do think has some value. Obviously more important for doctors, but nurses sometimes end up in charge of care decisions, particularly those in primary care - helps to prevent them being taken in by and pushing evidence-free bollocks such as homeopathy. We also teach midwives and there's definitely a need there for an understanding of what has evidence and what does not!

    But, whatever views on the above paragraph, a non-university training course would look very similar to what we deliver.
    That certain PB contributors pronounce definitively on subjects about which they know Jack shit comes as no surprise… this time it’s the content of nursing degrees. That the same voices argue vehemently to deny nurses and police officers the prestige of having a degree to their name, whilst defending independent schools to the hilt, says it all. Keep the working man and woman in their place.
    I assume, then, you'd refuse treatment from any nurse aged 50 or over given they don't have degrees or report any crime to a police officer older than 50 because it's unlikely they'd have come from the degree route as well? I thought not.
    Thats a rather odd point. Any clinician, nurse etc are deemed competent to practice. What route that has been arrived at is not the issue. You don't seem to understand that the nursing degree is broadly on the job training, pretty much like it was before it was a degree.
    Do you need your degree to do your job?
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,201
    MaxPB said:

    Cookie said:

    Selebian said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    I work in one of the big UK university departments training nurses and midwives (although I'm little involved myself - occasional lecture - and not employed for that at all). The course is very hands-on, mostly practical training, including placements and the vast majority taught by qualified clinicians rather than traditional academics.

    There's a bit on research methods, critical appraisal etc (the bit I sometimes contribute to) which I do think has some value. Obviously more important for doctors, but nurses sometimes end up in charge of care decisions, particularly those in primary care - helps to prevent them being taken in by and pushing evidence-free bollocks such as homeopathy. We also teach midwives and there's definitely a need there for an understanding of what has evidence and what does not!

    But, whatever views on the above paragraph, a non-university training course would look very similar to what we deliver.
    That certain PB contributors pronounce definitively on subjects about which they know Jack shit comes as no surprise… this time it’s the content of nursing degrees. That the same voices argue vehemently to deny nurses and police officers the prestige of having a degree to their name, whilst defending independent schools to the hilt, says it all. Keep the working man and woman in their place.
    The main effect of turning various forms of training into degrees has been to harden the barriers to progress for those without a degree.

    In many areas, getting a job without a degree has become impossible. The previous avenues into various skills and trades for the non-degree possessing, have vanished.

    So 50% of the population is classified, for life as “low value”.
    Yes, and at the same time getting a degree has become much, much, much more expensive.
    I'd say the 'everything needs a degree' approach is the 'keeping working man and woman in their place' approach, rather than the reverse.
    Indeed, it's quite a warped world view that suggests the working man/woman needs to have this £45k certificate to get on in life and that professions should be off limits to those who can't afford it.
    This is not the case. Degree apprenticeships offer a different, and paid route into the profession.

    At the heart is competency. Clinicians need to show that they are competent, have met the required standards. Nursing degree is one route (mostly attained in clinical settings), the nurse apprenticeship is another.

    You have a strange attitude on this. The issue is staff retention, not the training of new staff.
  • Options
    SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,442
    Cookie said:

    Selebian said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    I work in one of the big UK university departments training nurses and midwives (although I'm little involved myself - occasional lecture - and not employed for that at all). The course is very hands-on, mostly practical training, including placements and the vast majority taught by qualified clinicians rather than traditional academics.

    There's a bit on research methods, critical appraisal etc (the bit I sometimes contribute to) which I do think has some value. Obviously more important for doctors, but nurses sometimes end up in charge of care decisions, particularly those in primary care - helps to prevent them being taken in by and pushing evidence-free bollocks such as homeopathy. We also teach midwives and there's definitely a need there for an understanding of what has evidence and what does not!

    But, whatever views on the above paragraph, a non-university training course would look very similar to what we deliver.
    That certain PB contributors pronounce definitively on subjects about which they know Jack shit comes as no surprise… this time it’s the content of nursing degrees. That the same voices argue vehemently to deny nurses and police officers the prestige of having a degree to their name, whilst defending independent schools to the hilt, says it all. Keep the working man and woman in their place.
    The main effect of turning various forms of training into degrees has been to harden the barriers to progress for those without a degree.

    In many areas, getting a job without a degree has become impossible. The previous avenues into various skills and trades for the non-degree possessing, have vanished.

    So 50% of the population is classified, for life as “low value”.
    Yes, and at the same time getting a degree has become much, much, much more expensive.
    I'd say the 'everything needs a degree' approach is the 'keeping working man and woman in their place' approach, rather than the reverse.
    One solution to which is, of course, to make getting a degree much, much, much less expensive.

    That said, I am against lack of degree being used as some kind of ceiling. As I've posted before, we (for academic/research posts) don't require degrees in any of our job advertisements - there's always an 'or equivalent experience'. Doesn't happen often nowadays, but it does happen. There should be routes into pretty much anything without a degree, probably taking longer, but of course also earning during that time.
  • Options

    kjh said:

    Question for Christians on here (@hyufd) re something that just popped into my brain yesterday. Having not read further than Genesis of the bible can someone tell me is there much (anything) in the bible about Jesus between being born and being an adult?

    In Luke's Gospel, Joseph and Mary take the fam to the Temple when Jesus was twelve. He somehow gets left behind there for a couple of days, ending up in deep conversation with the Temple elders. He's then a bit sassy to his worried mum.
    I am a Christian on here like HY, and I can build a bit on what you have said Stu and give an honest answer to kjh.

    The honest answer kjh is no - there’s not much in Bible or out of it on Jesus life before his ministry started. As well as having Faith and big supporter of CoE but also attend services outside CoE, I am also a big fan of history - but there is nothing I’ve seen that sheds light on Jesus youth before his ministry, and not much historical Jesus outside of the Bible even of his ministry. The first bit of Bible written is Paul’s letters from Greek Islands where he is helping non Jews realise how important Jesus is to everyone, and this was more than a decade after Jesus had been crucified by the Jewish leaders and Roman Empire.

    But to build on what you said Stu - Uncle Joseph is big in Jesus life especially all what he does after the crucifixion, and Uncle Joseph was a big political figure on council, and who he represented likely sheds light onto which sect Jesus belonged too.

    Sects. That’s got your attention. It’s important to remember there’s sectarian disagreements Jesus is a part of. Hence the incidence you mentioned, and much later Jewish leaders wanting him executed by Romans.

    Also I read something that through his mothers side Jesus was close to Royalty.

    If you are interested in more I can recommend AN Wilson biography of Jesus.
    You're a Christian on here? What are you the rest of the time?
    A Christian. A lover. And a poet. 😇

    I was responding to how kjh phrased it.

    Do you believe Divvie?
    As I said to my recently deceased pal ante mortem, the only thing I believe is that we all go to the same place. I did not add as it didn't seem the time or place that most likely that place is black unknowing oblivion, though I suspect he may have agreed with me.

    I shall be most most disappointed if I end up in some hierachic spiritual twatfest as envisaged by the likes of pretendy Christians like HYUFD.
    If you end up in the same post-mortem twatfest as Franco Fan then you’ll have mightily displeased St Peter.
  • Options
    ⚠️THERMONUCLEAR BAD—Hospitals completely overwhelmed in China ever since restrictions dropped. Epidemiologist estimate >60% of 🇨🇳 & 10% of Earth’s population likely infected over next 90 days. Deaths likely in the millions—plural. This is just the start—🧵

    https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1604748747640119296?s=46&t=mvgHYhIsrd1_IriIWSQPpQ
  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,607

    MaxPB said:

    Selebian said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    I work in one of the big UK university departments training nurses and midwives (although I'm little involved myself - occasional lecture - and not employed for that at all). The course is very hands-on, mostly practical training, including placements and the vast majority taught by qualified clinicians rather than traditional academics.

    There's a bit on research methods, critical appraisal etc (the bit I sometimes contribute to) which I do think has some value. Obviously more important for doctors, but nurses sometimes end up in charge of care decisions, particularly those in primary care - helps to prevent them being taken in by and pushing evidence-free bollocks such as homeopathy. We also teach midwives and there's definitely a need there for an understanding of what has evidence and what does not!

    But, whatever views on the above paragraph, a non-university training course would look very similar to what we deliver.
    That certain PB contributors pronounce definitively on subjects about which they know Jack shit comes as no surprise… this time it’s the content of nursing degrees. That the same voices argue vehemently to deny nurses and police officers the prestige of having a degree to their name, whilst defending independent schools to the hilt, says it all. Keep the working man and woman in their place.
    I assume, then, you'd refuse treatment from any nurse aged 50 or over given they don't have degrees or report any crime to a police officer older than 50 because it's unlikely they'd have come from the degree route as well? I thought not.
    Thats a rather odd point. Any clinician, nurse etc are deemed competent to practice. What route that has been arrived at is not the issue. You don't seem to understand that the nursing degree is broadly on the job training, pretty much like it was before it was a degree.
    Do you need your degree to do your job?
    I do understand the point, it's actually the point I'm trying to make. That the degree bar has been added to the profession where it's unnecessary is limiting the number of people going into it. If we removed that bar the level of competence wouldn't change but we'd have many more people entering the funnel.

    And as to my job, no I don't. I've made this point time and again. Loads of careers don't require a degree and yet companies and the government add that requirement for jobs within those fields. It's slowly changing in the private sector but the state needs to also recognise it as well.
  • Options
    MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,416
    Ghedebrav said:

    slade said:

    I often lift my gaze above local by-election results and have been listening to a lot of classical music in recent weeks. I have noticed the increasing femininisation of the genre - in terms of soloists and orchestra members ( but not yet conductors). Leading the charge is Katya Buniatishvili the sexy Georgian pianist. Check out her Hungarian Rhapsody by Liszt. The newest star is Maria Duenas, a Spanish violinist who is not sexy but is astonishing. Watch her Paganini Violin Concerto No. 1.

    Khatia is so perfect for the dazzle and razzle of Liszt! If you find this one on YouTube, I love what’s going on with her hair -
    Khatia Buniatishvili - Liszt Piano Concerto no. 2 - L'Orchestre de Paris - Andrey Boreyko
    Incredible performer; I love this.

    I’m sure Liszt wrote his Piano concertos for audiences to enjoy showmanship and rollicking tunes, so Khatia and Liszt a match made in heaven. I think Liszt is undervalued. I remembering saying I love Les Preludes and a friend dismissed it as mere organ at a fairground music. I still disagree and think it more than that, even though I joined this thread calling Liszt music razzle and dazzle, I want to point out.
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,139

    ⚠️THERMONUCLEAR BAD—Hospitals completely overwhelmed in China ever since restrictions dropped. Epidemiologist estimate >60% of 🇨🇳 & 10% of Earth’s population likely infected over next 90 days. Deaths likely in the millions—plural. This is just the start—🧵

    https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1604748747640119296?s=46&t=mvgHYhIsrd1_IriIWSQPpQ

    I’ve always loved Eric’s understatement and lack of hyperbole. He’s like Leon in that way.
  • Options

  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,449

    £80 billion in extra tax heading to Westminster in the next 6 years from North Sea oil/gas. Aberdeen should look like Dubai by now but instead it has food banks. The mishandling of Scotland’s oil wealth by London govs is one of the biggest scandals in post war European history.



    https://twitter.com/malcolmwebster2/status/1604927613855744000?s=46&t=mvgHYhIsrd1_IriIWSQPpQ

    Rather odd to blame London for that. Public spending per head is massively higher in Scotland than in England. So if Scotland is mired in poverty and England is not, the place to look would seem to be the Scottish government.
    My understanding is that it is rather cheaper to get oil out of the Arabian sands than out of the North Sea. The mere presence of oil isn't a ticket to wealth.

  • Options
    EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,976

    kjh said:

    Question for Christians on here (@hyufd) re something that just popped into my brain yesterday. Having not read further than Genesis of the bible can someone tell me is there much (anything) in the bible about Jesus between being born and being an adult?

    In Luke's Gospel, Joseph and Mary take the fam to the Temple when Jesus was twelve. He somehow gets left behind there for a couple of days, ending up in deep conversation with the Temple elders. He's then a bit sassy to his worried mum.
    I am a Christian on here like HY, and I can build a bit on what you have said Stu and give an honest answer to kjh.

    The honest answer kjh is no - there’s not much in Bible or out of it on Jesus life before his ministry started. As well as having Faith and big supporter of CoE but also attend services outside CoE, I am also a big fan of history - but there is nothing I’ve seen that sheds light on Jesus youth before his ministry, and not much historical Jesus outside of the Bible even of his ministry. The first bit of Bible written is Paul’s letters from Greek Islands where he is helping non Jews realise how important Jesus is to everyone, and this was more than a decade after Jesus had been crucified by the Jewish leaders and Roman Empire.

    But to build on what you said Stu - Uncle Joseph is big in Jesus life especially all what he does after the crucifixion, and Uncle Joseph was a big political figure on council, and who he represented likely sheds light onto which sect Jesus belonged too.

    Sects. That’s got your attention. It’s important to remember there’s sectarian disagreements Jesus is a part of. Hence the incidence you mentioned, and much later Jewish leaders wanting him executed by Romans.

    Also I read something that through his mothers side Jesus was close to Royalty.

    If you are interested in more I can recommend AN Wilson biography of Jesus.
    You're a Christian on here? What are you the rest of the time?
    A Christian. A lover. And a poet. 😇

    I was responding to how kjh phrased it.

    Do you believe Divvie?
    As I said to my recently deceased pal ante mortem, the only thing I believe is that we all go to the same place. I did not add as it didn't seem the time or place that most likely that place is black unknowing oblivion, though I suspect he may have agreed with me.

    I shall be most most disappointed if I end up in some hierachic spiritual twatfest as envisaged by the likes of pretendy Christians like HYUFD.
    I think twatfest comes from a different belief system than Christianity, and even then you have to do some pretty extreme things to get it.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,626

    Ghedebrav said:

    slade said:

    I often lift my gaze above local by-election results and have been listening to a lot of classical music in recent weeks. I have noticed the increasing femininisation of the genre - in terms of soloists and orchestra members ( but not yet conductors). Leading the charge is Katya Buniatishvili the sexy Georgian pianist. Check out her Hungarian Rhapsody by Liszt. The newest star is Maria Duenas, a Spanish violinist who is not sexy but is astonishing. Watch her Paganini Violin Concerto No. 1.

    Khatia is so perfect for the dazzle and razzle of Liszt! If you find this one on YouTube, I love what’s going on with her hair -
    Khatia Buniatishvili - Liszt Piano Concerto no. 2 - L'Orchestre de Paris - Andrey Boreyko
    Incredible performer; I love this.

    I’m sure Liszt wrote his Piano concertos for audiences to enjoy showmanship and rollicking tunes, so Khatia and Liszt a match made in heaven. I think Liszt is undervalued. I remembering saying I love Les Preludes and a friend dismissed it as mere organ at a fairground music. I still disagree and think it more than that, even though I joined this thread calling Liszt music razzle and dazzle, I want to point out.
    Is Liszt undervalued ? I rate his work quite highly.

    The late great Claudio Arrau was a superb interpreter.
  • Options
    MaxPB said:

    Selebian said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    I work in one of the big UK university departments training nurses and midwives (although I'm little involved myself - occasional lecture - and not employed for that at all). The course is very hands-on, mostly practical training, including placements and the vast majority taught by qualified clinicians rather than traditional academics.

    There's a bit on research methods, critical appraisal etc (the bit I sometimes contribute to) which I do think has some value. Obviously more important for doctors, but nurses sometimes end up in charge of care decisions, particularly those in primary care - helps to prevent them being taken in by and pushing evidence-free bollocks such as homeopathy. We also teach midwives and there's definitely a need there for an understanding of what has evidence and what does not!

    But, whatever views on the above paragraph, a non-university training course would look very similar to what we deliver.
    That certain PB contributors pronounce definitively on subjects about which they know Jack shit comes as no surprise… this time it’s the content of nursing degrees. That the same voices argue vehemently to deny nurses and police officers the prestige of having a degree to their name, whilst defending independent schools to the hilt, says it all. Keep the working man and woman in their place.
    I assume, then, you'd refuse treatment from any nurse aged 50 or over given they don't have degrees or report any crime to a police officer older than 50 because it's unlikely they'd have come from the degree route as well? I thought not.
    I'd like treatment from a nurse who has been properly trained. Whether you call that training a degree or not is entirely immaterial to me, though a nurse might appreciate that their professional training is worthy of graduate status. Whether and how much they should pay for that training (whether you call it a degree or not) is an entirely different argument.
  • Options
    MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,607

    MaxPB said:

    Cookie said:

    Selebian said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    I work in one of the big UK university departments training nurses and midwives (although I'm little involved myself - occasional lecture - and not employed for that at all). The course is very hands-on, mostly practical training, including placements and the vast majority taught by qualified clinicians rather than traditional academics.

    There's a bit on research methods, critical appraisal etc (the bit I sometimes contribute to) which I do think has some value. Obviously more important for doctors, but nurses sometimes end up in charge of care decisions, particularly those in primary care - helps to prevent them being taken in by and pushing evidence-free bollocks such as homeopathy. We also teach midwives and there's definitely a need there for an understanding of what has evidence and what does not!

    But, whatever views on the above paragraph, a non-university training course would look very similar to what we deliver.
    That certain PB contributors pronounce definitively on subjects about which they know Jack shit comes as no surprise… this time it’s the content of nursing degrees. That the same voices argue vehemently to deny nurses and police officers the prestige of having a degree to their name, whilst defending independent schools to the hilt, says it all. Keep the working man and woman in their place.
    The main effect of turning various forms of training into degrees has been to harden the barriers to progress for those without a degree.

    In many areas, getting a job without a degree has become impossible. The previous avenues into various skills and trades for the non-degree possessing, have vanished.

    So 50% of the population is classified, for life as “low value”.
    Yes, and at the same time getting a degree has become much, much, much more expensive.
    I'd say the 'everything needs a degree' approach is the 'keeping working man and woman in their place' approach, rather than the reverse.
    Indeed, it's quite a warped world view that suggests the working man/woman needs to have this £45k certificate to get on in life and that professions should be off limits to those who can't afford it.
    This is not the case. Degree apprenticeships offer a different, and paid route into the profession.

    At the heart is competency. Clinicians need to show that they are competent, have met the required standards. Nursing degree is one route (mostly attained in clinical settings), the nurse apprenticeship is another.

    You have a strange attitude on this. The issue is staff retention, not the training of new staff.
    Staff retention is an issue because we're not training enough new nurses every year to keep up with healthcare demand. There's enough people who want to go into nursing (and medicine) to meet demand but places are artificially limited in both fields. Remove the artificial limit for nursing and within a few years the shortages will ease because every year there's many thousands of additional nurses gaining qualification.

    I guarantee if the government went down this route the unions would scream bloody murder because they know holding onto the artificial limit on entry into the sector is the reason they're able to ask for 19% rises.
  • Options
    MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,416

    kjh said:

    Question for Christians on here (@hyufd) re something that just popped into my brain yesterday. Having not read further than Genesis of the bible can someone tell me is there much (anything) in the bible about Jesus between being born and being an adult?

    In Luke's Gospel, Joseph and Mary take the fam to the Temple when Jesus was twelve. He somehow gets left behind there for a couple of days, ending up in deep conversation with the Temple elders. He's then a bit sassy to his worried mum.
    I am a Christian on here like HY, and I can build a bit on what you have said Stu and give an honest answer to kjh.

    The honest answer kjh is no - there’s not much in Bible or out of it on Jesus life before his ministry started. As well as having Faith and big supporter of CoE but also attend services outside CoE, I am also a big fan of history - but there is nothing I’ve seen that sheds light on Jesus youth before his ministry, and not much historical Jesus outside of the Bible even of his ministry. The first bit of Bible written is Paul’s letters from Greek Islands where he is helping non Jews realise how important Jesus is to everyone, and this was more than a decade after Jesus had been crucified by the Jewish leaders and Roman Empire.

    But to build on what you said Stu - Uncle Joseph is big in Jesus life especially all what he does after the crucifixion, and Uncle Joseph was a big political figure on council, and who he represented likely sheds light onto which sect Jesus belonged too.

    Sects. That’s got your attention. It’s important to remember there’s sectarian disagreements Jesus is a part of. Hence the incidence you mentioned, and much later Jewish leaders wanting him executed by Romans.

    Also I read something that through his mothers side Jesus was close to Royalty.

    If you are interested in more I can recommend AN Wilson biography of Jesus.
    You're a Christian on here? What are you the rest of the time?
    A Christian. A lover. And a poet. 😇

    I was responding to how kjh phrased it.

    Do you believe Divvie?
    As I said to my recently deceased pal ante mortem, the only thing I believe is that we all go to the same place. I did not add as it didn't seem the time or place that most likely that place is black unknowing oblivion, though I suspect he may have agreed with me.

    I shall be most most disappointed if I end up in some hierachic spiritual twatfest as envisaged by the likes of pretendy Christians like HYUFD.
    If your worst fears turn out to be true, you are welcome to share my cloud on Tuesday afternoons. 😇

    We can play Four Winds or Japanese Chess as we will have infinity to learn how to play them.
  • Options
    EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,906

    Eabhal said:

    There is a new law on twitter - if you wind someone on the right up enough they will, eventually, call you a trans rights activist.

    I've managed it 5 times so far, on cycle lanes and re-wilding.

    Are you a trans rights supporter?
    Yes, with a couple of obvious reservations. Certainly not going to push that debate on here or on twitter. Too much heat even for me.
  • Options

    MaxPB said:

    I also think at 7% the strike would not be going ahead, the government would already have done the deal. Which, again, makes this look ideology driven by lefty unions.

    Don't most people understand that the 19 percent is an initial pitch to give room to move?

    It's blooming obvious that the "right" answer is somewhere between 6 and 8 percent. But any union going in asking for 8 percent wouldn't be rewarded for reasonableness, it would be squeezed down to five.
    It's also laying the ground for pay negotiations in future years. After accepting below inflation this year they will want to create the expectation of above inflation payrises when inflation is lower to catch up on what is lost now.
    I think that 19% is a bit ambitious though I understand the catch-up argument. In PR terms they might have been better off asking for 11.1% and going big on anything less being lower than inflation so actually a wage CUT. But in negotiating terms of course one starts by asking for more than the minimum acceptable.

    Quite apart from the rights and wrongs, though, the service is not attracting enough people willing to provide it. In private industry that would call for pay rises, regardless of considerations of fairness, angelity etc. If the Government wins, how will they fill the gaps in staff?
    The 5 best countries for nursing jobs outside the UK:

    Australia
    New Zealand
    Ireland
    United Arab Emirates
    Norway

    https://www.nurses.co.uk/blog/the-5-best-countries-for-nursing-jobs-outside-the-uk/

    Practice Nurse Monaghan
    € 50000 - 55000 per year

    https://www.healthcarejobs.ie/jobs/nursing/
  • Options
    SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,442
    MaxPB said:

    Selebian said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    I work in one of the big UK university departments training nurses and midwives (although I'm little involved myself - occasional lecture - and not employed for that at all). The course is very hands-on, mostly practical training, including placements and the vast majority taught by qualified clinicians rather than traditional academics.

    There's a bit on research methods, critical appraisal etc (the bit I sometimes contribute to) which I do think has some value. Obviously more important for doctors, but nurses sometimes end up in charge of care decisions, particularly those in primary care - helps to prevent them being taken in by and pushing evidence-free bollocks such as homeopathy. We also teach midwives and there's definitely a need there for an understanding of what has evidence and what does not!

    But, whatever views on the above paragraph, a non-university training course would look very similar to what we deliver.
    Which is the point of the nurse practitioner qualification still having the university degree bar. The point is that we've created an artificial limitation on who can qualify in certain professions and then there's a huge shortage of labour in them. Nursing is one of those professions where a university degree is mostly unnecessary and for those who want to go on to be nurse practitioners the degree would still be available anyway.

    It's sort of like how tech industry jobs used to require a computer science degree but companies realised this was unnecessary and all they really wanted were people who could code, so anyone with 6 months in a bootcamp was able to a junior programmer job and work their way up. I have no formal qualifications for what I do, my chemistry degree has been worse than useless since I graduated, I'm just lucky it only resulted in £14k worth of debt rather than £45k as students are lumbered with now.
    You do also get some people entering nursing who are only doing so because it's now seen as potentially a higher status/skill job with the degree (which will be useful to open other doors* even if turning away from nursing) and the enhanced roles etc.

    Can you not still enter nursing without a degree? I thought there were still routes?

    *that it's needed/perceived to be needed to open other doors is of course part of a problem that we both agree on
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,201
    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Selebian said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    I work in one of the big UK university departments training nurses and midwives (although I'm little involved myself - occasional lecture - and not employed for that at all). The course is very hands-on, mostly practical training, including placements and the vast majority taught by qualified clinicians rather than traditional academics.

    There's a bit on research methods, critical appraisal etc (the bit I sometimes contribute to) which I do think has some value. Obviously more important for doctors, but nurses sometimes end up in charge of care decisions, particularly those in primary care - helps to prevent them being taken in by and pushing evidence-free bollocks such as homeopathy. We also teach midwives and there's definitely a need there for an understanding of what has evidence and what does not!

    But, whatever views on the above paragraph, a non-university training course would look very similar to what we deliver.
    That certain PB contributors pronounce definitively on subjects about which they know Jack shit comes as no surprise… this time it’s the content of nursing degrees. That the same voices argue vehemently to deny nurses and police officers the prestige of having a degree to their name, whilst defending independent schools to the hilt, says it all. Keep the working man and woman in their place.
    I assume, then, you'd refuse treatment from any nurse aged 50 or over given they don't have degrees or report any crime to a police officer older than 50 because it's unlikely they'd have come from the degree route as well? I thought not.
    Thats a rather odd point. Any clinician, nurse etc are deemed competent to practice. What route that has been arrived at is not the issue. You don't seem to understand that the nursing degree is broadly on the job training, pretty much like it was before it was a degree.
    Do you need your degree to do your job?
    I do understand the point, it's actually the point I'm trying to make. That the degree bar has been added to the profession where it's unnecessary is limiting the number of people going into it. If we removed that bar the level of competence wouldn't change but we'd have many more people entering the funnel.

    And as to my job, no I don't. I've made this point time and again. Loads of careers don't require a degree and yet companies and the government add that requirement for jobs within those fields. It's slowly changing in the private sector but the state needs to also recognise it as well.
    Do you have any evidence that the degree 'bar' is preventing people entering nursing? The staffing crisis is down to retention. People have left after the trauma of covid, or have retired or changed job, or sadly for some, have died or are too ill to work. Pay more and retention will be better.
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,449


    Was it only ever the English involved in Imperial adventures?
  • Options
    tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,190
    edited December 2022


    Lol, Lord Elgin was Scottish (or Scotch as he's described at the the scene of the crime).
  • Options

    MaxPB said:

    I also think at 7% the strike would not be going ahead, the government would already have done the deal. Which, again, makes this look ideology driven by lefty unions.

    Don't most people understand that the 19 percent is an initial pitch to give room to move?

    It's blooming obvious that the "right" answer is somewhere between 6 and 8 percent. But any union going in asking for 8 percent wouldn't be rewarded for reasonableness, it would be squeezed down to five.
    It's also laying the ground for pay negotiations in future years. After accepting below inflation this year they will want to create the expectation of above inflation payrises when inflation is lower to catch up on what is lost now.
    I think that 19% is a bit ambitious though I understand the catch-up argument. In PR terms they might have been better off asking for 11.1% and going big on anything less being lower than inflation so actually a wage CUT. But in negotiating terms of course one starts by asking for more than the minimum acceptable.

    Quite apart from the rights and wrongs, though, the service is not attracting enough people willing to provide it. In private industry that would call for pay rises, regardless of considerations of fairness, angelity etc. If the Government wins, how will they fill the gaps in staff?
    We know the answer to that one. It will be a mix of they won't, leading to further attrition, time off with stress and patients facing long wait times which blocks them returning to employment (and paying taxes) elsewhere, and paying agency nurses many multiples of what the salaried nurses get.

    It just does not add up.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,223


    Your daily reminder that the man who waltzed off with the Parthenon marbles, on behalf of the British Empire, was Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine, born in Broomhall, Fife, Scotland
  • Options
    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    There is a new law on twitter - if you wind someone on the right up enough they will, eventually, call you a trans rights activist.

    I've managed it 5 times so far, on cycle lanes and re-wilding.

    Are you a trans rights supporter?
    Yes, with a couple of obvious reservations. Certainly not going to push that debate on here or on twitter. Too much heat even for me.
    Fortunately, your chosen political party did stick their heads above the parapet and support the Scottish Government. As did the Scottish Liberal Democrats. Credit where credit is due.
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,201
    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Cookie said:

    Selebian said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    TimS said:

    Carnyx said:

    HYUFD said:

    A 6% nurses payrise in line with the national average may be coming but not the 19% they want

    In which case lots will clear off and become telephone sanitisers in accordance with Conservative philosophy of the free market.
    That's the penny that still hasn't dropped yet. The strikes are just accelerating the inevitable unless pay rises to meet market expectations or labour supply is increased by other means.

    There is no magic nurse tree.
    If you get rid of the university degree requirement there probably is, there's no practical benefit of nurses going to university.
    Although presumably that is a longer term solution: nurses without University degrees will still need training, and presumably they previously got some of that training on university nursing courses.
    I work in one of the big UK university departments training nurses and midwives (although I'm little involved myself - occasional lecture - and not employed for that at all). The course is very hands-on, mostly practical training, including placements and the vast majority taught by qualified clinicians rather than traditional academics.

    There's a bit on research methods, critical appraisal etc (the bit I sometimes contribute to) which I do think has some value. Obviously more important for doctors, but nurses sometimes end up in charge of care decisions, particularly those in primary care - helps to prevent them being taken in by and pushing evidence-free bollocks such as homeopathy. We also teach midwives and there's definitely a need there for an understanding of what has evidence and what does not!

    But, whatever views on the above paragraph, a non-university training course would look very similar to what we deliver.
    That certain PB contributors pronounce definitively on subjects about which they know Jack shit comes as no surprise… this time it’s the content of nursing degrees. That the same voices argue vehemently to deny nurses and police officers the prestige of having a degree to their name, whilst defending independent schools to the hilt, says it all. Keep the working man and woman in their place.
    The main effect of turning various forms of training into degrees has been to harden the barriers to progress for those without a degree.

    In many areas, getting a job without a degree has become impossible. The previous avenues into various skills and trades for the non-degree possessing, have vanished.

    So 50% of the population is classified, for life as “low value”.
    Yes, and at the same time getting a degree has become much, much, much more expensive.
    I'd say the 'everything needs a degree' approach is the 'keeping working man and woman in their place' approach, rather than the reverse.
    Indeed, it's quite a warped world view that suggests the working man/woman needs to have this £45k certificate to get on in life and that professions should be off limits to those who can't afford it.
    This is not the case. Degree apprenticeships offer a different, and paid route into the profession.

    At the heart is competency. Clinicians need to show that they are competent, have met the required standards. Nursing degree is one route (mostly attained in clinical settings), the nurse apprenticeship is another.

    You have a strange attitude on this. The issue is staff retention, not the training of new staff.
    Staff retention is an issue because we're not training enough new nurses every year to keep up with healthcare demand. There's enough people who want to go into nursing (and medicine) to meet demand but places are artificially limited in both fields. Remove the artificial limit for nursing and within a few years the shortages will ease because every year there's many thousands of additional nurses gaining qualification.

    I guarantee if the government went down this route the unions would scream bloody murder because they know holding onto the artificial limit on entry into the sector is the reason they're able to ask for 19% rises.
    How will you train the extra nurses? Training places don't magically appear. Typically you see supply and demand in places. Medics have expanded course numbers in recent years, but there will always be a limit on training places. The same is the case for nurses. Even if you abolished the degree element, the training would be pretty much unchanged, led by the same people. You are trying to solve the wrong problem.
  • Options
    kjhkjh Posts: 10,631

    kjh said:

    Question for Christians on here (@hyufd) re something that just popped into my brain yesterday. Having not read further than Genesis of the bible can someone tell me is there much (anything) in the bible about Jesus between being born and being an adult?

    In Luke's Gospel, Joseph and Mary take the fam to the Temple when Jesus was twelve. He somehow gets left behind there for a couple of days, ending up in deep conversation with the Temple elders. He's then a bit sassy to his worried mum.
    I am a Christian on here like HY, and I can build a bit on what you have said Stu and give an honest answer to kjh.

    The honest answer kjh is no - there’s not much in Bible or out of it on Jesus life before his ministry started. As well as having Faith and big supporter of CoE but also attend services outside CoE, I am also a big fan of history - but there is nothing I’ve seen that sheds light on Jesus youth before his ministry, and not much historical Jesus outside of the Bible even of his ministry. The first bit of Bible written is Paul’s letters from Greek Islands where he is helping non Jews realise how important Jesus is to everyone, and this was more than a decade after Jesus had been crucified by the Jewish leaders and Roman Empire.

    But to build on what you said Stu - Uncle Joseph is big in Jesus life especially all what he does after the crucifixion, and Uncle Joseph was a big political figure on council, and who he represented likely sheds light onto which sect Jesus belonged too.

    Sects. That’s got your attention. It’s important to remember there’s sectarian disagreements Jesus is a part of. Hence the incidence you mentioned, and much later Jewish leaders wanting him executed by Romans.

    Also I read something that through his mothers side Jesus was close to Royalty.

    If you are interested in more I can recommend AN Wilson biography of Jesus.
    Thanks for the replies everyone. Don't know why it took me 68 years to think of that question.
  • Options
    Mr. B, et al, thanks for the mentioning of Liszt. Been unusually productive this morning, perhaps due to listening to classical music, so I shall have a search for some Liszt once the Nutcracker Suite has concluded.
This discussion has been closed.