Tony Blair saying the private sector should not be a dirty word in respect of the NHS
Well the private sector has been such a success at running Social Care, public utilities, railways, even military flight school, so why not the NHS too as a source of dividends for private equity then collapse of a hollowed out service?
Must admit I struggled with your original comment.
The idea was that it was sponsored by the New York World. I've seen that stated as fact many times, but I couldn't point at exactly where the fact came from.
It’s always amusing how much overlap there is between crackpot conspiracy theorists and anti-semites there is
Antisemitism is possibly the oldest conspiracy theory there is ?
Genesis. The whole apple/serpent/God thing is a lot like lab escape. Much more likely that Death was out there in the wild, and Eve picked it up at a wet market.
Tony Blair saying the private sector should not be a dirty word in respect of the NHS
For fun - the NHS is already private. They don’t build hospitals, make beds or syringes or drugs. Or anything else.
They buy everything from the private sector, including hiring a lot of staff for admin work from contracting companies.
And that’s before you get to agency staff.
Using private hospitals etc isn’t a solution. Most of the staff also work in the NHS.
What makes sense, as with private schools, is looking at what they are doing, and why some things work better.
Testing, for example. I’m trying to find the study in the US - essentially , if there was any doubt about diagnosis at the initial stage, test for everything, MRI, the works. This saved money, IIRC, though faster diagnosis of complicated cases and earlier treatment.
More investment required:
The UK has 6.1 MRI systems per million people, fewer than countries including Estonia and Slovenia. By comparison, the US has 38.1 scanners per million and Germany has 30.5
Must admit I struggled with your original comment.
The idea was that it was sponsored by the New York World. I've seen that stated as fact many times, but I couldn't point at exactly where the fact came from.
Tony Blair saying the private sector should not be a dirty word in respect of the NHS
For fun - the NHS is already private. They don’t build hospitals, make beds or syringes or drugs. Or anything else.
They buy everything from the private sector, including hiring a lot of staff for admin work from contracting companies.
And that’s before you get to agency staff.
Using private hospitals etc isn’t a solution. Most of the staff also work in the NHS.
What makes sense, as with private schools, is looking at what they are doing, and why some things work better.
Testing, for example. I’m trying to find the study in the US - essentially , if there was any doubt about diagnosis at the initial stage, test for everything, MRI, the works. This saved money, IIRC, though faster diagnosis of complicated cases and earlier treatment.
More investment required:
The UK has 6.1 MRI systems per million people, fewer than countries including Estonia and Slovenia. By comparison, the US has 38.1 scanners per million and Germany has 30.5
Tony Blair saying the private sector should not be a dirty word in respect of the NHS
For fun - the NHS is already private. They don’t build hospitals, make beds or syringes or drugs. Or anything else.
They buy everything from the private sector, including hiring a lot of staff for admin work from contracting companies.
And that’s before you get to agency staff.
Using private hospitals etc isn’t a solution. Most of the staff also work in the NHS.
What makes sense, as with private schools, is looking at what they are doing, and why some things work better.
Testing, for example. I’m trying to find the study in the US - essentially , if there was any doubt about diagnosis at the initial stage, test for everything, MRI, the works. This saved money, IIRC, though faster diagnosis of complicated cases and earlier treatment.
More investment required:
The UK has 6.1 MRI systems per million people, fewer than countries including Estonia and Slovenia. By comparison, the US has 38.1 scanners per million and Germany has 30.5
Tony Blair saying the private sector should not be a dirty word in respect of the NHS
For fun - the NHS is already private. They don’t build hospitals, make beds or syringes or drugs. Or anything else.
They buy everything from the private sector, including hiring a lot of staff for admin work from contracting companies.
And that’s before you get to agency staff.
Using private hospitals etc isn’t a solution. Most of the staff also work in the NHS.
What makes sense, as with private schools, is looking at what they are doing, and why some things work better.
Testing, for example. I’m trying to find the study in the US - essentially , if there was any doubt about diagnosis at the initial stage, test for everything, MRI, the works. This saved money, IIRC, though faster diagnosis of complicated cases and earlier treatment.
More investment required:
The UK has 6.1 MRI systems per million people, fewer than countries including Estonia and Slovenia. By comparison, the US has 38.1 scanners per million and Germany has 30.5
Tony Blair saying the private sector should not be a dirty word in respect of the NHS
For fun - the NHS is already private. They don’t build hospitals, make beds or syringes or drugs. Or anything else.
They buy everything from the private sector, including hiring a lot of staff for admin work from contracting companies.
And that’s before you get to agency staff.
Using private hospitals etc isn’t a solution. Most of the staff also work in the NHS.
What makes sense, as with private schools, is looking at what they are doing, and why some things work better.
Testing, for example. I’m trying to find the study in the US - essentially , if there was any doubt about diagnosis at the initial stage, test for everything, MRI, the works. This saved money, IIRC, though faster diagnosis of complicated cases and earlier treatment.
More investment required:
The UK has 6.1 MRI systems per million people, fewer than countries including Estonia and Slovenia. By comparison, the US has 38.1 scanners per million and Germany has 30.5
Because the politicians like investment for the NHS… in lots of low level staff.
Investment in equipment and automation would improve productivity,
And yet the "efficiency savings" to fund the new pay settlements will come from looting training and capital equipment budgets, as always.
What was it you wanted the state to cut to fund them instead?
The triple lock on pensions and benefits. Should be the same as public sector pay.
Removing the triple lock now would not provide extra money as pensioners and those on benefit already got the raise this year. Care to try again?
Oh here is one as you identified the sector....lets make all public sector pensions direct contribution going forward with the state putting in a contribution based on the average contribution private sector firms. That would be an immediate boost to the state purse when they stop contributing 20% of wages to the db schemes every month
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
I really enjoyed baseball when I was a teenager in the States. Quite a subtle game, and one played for fun like basketball. No one plays gridiron for fun.
Tony Blair saying the private sector should not be a dirty word in respect of the NHS
For fun - the NHS is already private. They don’t build hospitals, make beds or syringes or drugs. Or anything else.
They buy everything from the private sector, including hiring a lot of staff for admin work from contracting companies.
And that’s before you get to agency staff.
Using private hospitals etc isn’t a solution. Most of the staff also work in the NHS.
What makes sense, as with private schools, is looking at what they are doing, and why some things work better.
Testing, for example. I’m trying to find the study in the US - essentially , if there was any doubt about diagnosis at the initial stage, test for everything, MRI, the works. This saved money, IIRC, though faster diagnosis of complicated cases and earlier treatment.
More investment required:
The UK has 6.1 MRI systems per million people, fewer than countries including Estonia and Slovenia. By comparison, the US has 38.1 scanners per million and Germany has 30.5
Because the politicians like investment for the NHS… in lots of low level staff.
Investment in equipment and automation would improve productivity,
And yet the "efficiency savings" to fund the new pay settlements will come from looting training and capital equipment budgets, as always.
What was it you wanted the state to cut to fund them instead?
The triple lock on pensions and benefits. Should be the same as public sector pay.
Raising the state pension to the level of public sector pay would be unaffordable. It's £10,000 a year. A doctor's pension will be what? Seven or eight times that?
Mr. JohnL, well, believing Boris Johnson cares about one and accidentally refusing a peerage do seem to be a similar level of... clumsiness, shall we say?
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
Never attended, or even watched a game as an adult although played a couple of games in my youth. There’ve been a couple of efforts to set up some sort of British league, but AFAIK nothing’s worked.
We might know it as the Open but it is the British Open
British Open 2023 | Tickets 2023 | Royal Liverpool Golf Club
Yeah. I mean. It's not even in Liverpool.
That's pretty common with golf clubs. Reason being, golf takes up a lot of land, which urban areas don't typically have. A lot of people from tiwn x met long ago and decided the men of town x ought to have somewhere to play golf; it didn't follow that that somewhere had to be in town x itself.
Rail staff have been told to prepare for 2,000 job cuts from the closure of ticket offices — even though their fate has not been officially decided yet.
The Sunday Times has seen confidential documents setting out proposals by the train operators to cut staffing at stations by October, as part of a plan by the Rail Delivery Group to close hundreds of ticket offices.
Huw Merriman, the rail minister, has justified the closures on the ground that only one in ten tickets are bought in offices, down from a third a decade ago.
Oh there will be a lot of legal challenges - but it's the lies that are so annoying..
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
Never attended, or even watched a game as an adult although played a couple of games in my youth. There’ve been a couple of efforts to set up some sort of British league, but AFAIK nothing’s worked.
It's rounders, a game we are all familiar with from primary school. And that is why no-one over here will take it seriously. Next thing you know, they'll be putting skateboards in the Olympics.
Tony Blair saying the private sector should not be a dirty word in respect of the NHS
For fun - the NHS is already private. They don’t build hospitals, make beds or syringes or drugs. Or anything else.
They buy everything from the private sector, including hiring a lot of staff for admin work from contracting companies.
And that’s before you get to agency staff.
Using private hospitals etc isn’t a solution. Most of the staff also work in the NHS.
What makes sense, as with private schools, is looking at what they are doing, and why some things work better.
Testing, for example. I’m trying to find the study in the US - essentially , if there was any doubt about diagnosis at the initial stage, test for everything, MRI, the works. This saved money, IIRC, though faster diagnosis of complicated cases and earlier treatment.
More investment required:
The UK has 6.1 MRI systems per million people, fewer than countries including Estonia and Slovenia. By comparison, the US has 38.1 scanners per million and Germany has 30.5
Because the politicians like investment for the NHS… in lots of low level staff.
Investment in equipment and automation would improve productivity,
And yet the "efficiency savings" to fund the new pay settlements will come from looting training and capital equipment budgets, as always.
What was it you wanted the state to cut to fund them instead?
The triple lock on pensions and benefits. Should be the same as public sector pay.
Raising the state pension to the level of public sector pay would be unaffordable. It's £10,000 a year. A doctor's pension will be what? Seven or eight times that?
About a third of pensioners have no other income than the state pension. The vast majority of workers will get no more than 3 or 4k a year from private sector pensions. Foxy will have a comfortable retirement while they struggle. Yet he wants to cut what they get so he can get a payrise on an already damn good salary.
Having said that I do think the triple lock is a damn stupid thing and needs to be revisited but even so I find taking from the poorest to benefit some of the richest workers somewhat distasteful
Tony Blair saying the private sector should not be a dirty word in respect of the NHS
Well the private sector has been such a success at running Social Care, public utilities, railways, even military flight school, so why not the NHS too as a source of dividends for private equity then collapse of a hollowed out service?
I didn't watch him this morning. Back in 1997 the private sector role was hired in capacity to clear the massive waiting lists. As wait times for treatments are once again grotesque, does he propose the same plan for 2024?
YouGov have just sent me a survey and guess what one of the questions is about?
If it is good enough for YouGov and Tiger Woods then it is good enough for me.
Except they have to specify when and where it is. So obviously not good enough to call it the Open tout court. Needs to be distinguished from the Open at Berwick upon Tweed Magdalene Fields Golf Club, no?
I started playing golf at Magdalene Fields Golf Club when I was 11
Well, quite. So we must be quite clear about which Open this is.
"Open" could be the one down the road on Saturday week.
From the nation that gets its knickers in a twist over the spelling of whisk(e)y.
Thank you for an excellent article @Quincel (Pip Moss). I love it when someone bets with their head, even if this means placing apparently contradictory bets and / or betting against their own wishes. Some of my most profitable events have resulted when I remember to behave that way.
One minor quibble is that nationally Labour are averaging 46.3% over the last 10 polls which is a fair way off your 'almost 50%'.
I think (like @Foxy below) that Labour will win Mid Beds. Why? Because Labour are now the party of middle Britain. In areas where the LibDems aren't strong second, Labour are the comfortable choice for people who want solid, decent, Government. This has been Starmer's triumph. Yes, he (they) come across as dull, but chatting to people in old blue areas, that's exactly what they seem to want.
I'm less sure about Selby & Ainsty and I can see why @Quincel you have cashed in. I think it would be a remarkable win by Labour but I'd put their chances there at little better than evens. Is that expectation management? Perhaps.
One thing that we have to factor in here is neither the Labour nor LibDem vote: it's the Conservative one. I know that may seem obvious but their national poll share remains abysmal. In those same last 10 polls, the Conservative share averages just 26.2%. The real story at these by-elections may be more about their atrocious showing, following which we may well hear the, 'our vote stayed at home' meme.
Labour are on pretty much maximum vote.
Evidence?
Where are they going to get more votes from?
LibDems aren’t going to collapse Conservative core vote is 28% or so The Greens are Spare Labour for the Starmer Is A Tory clowns
I'm not sure about core vote. There's potentially a considerable difference between the 'would never consider voting Labour' core vote, and the smaller 'would always turn out to vote Conservative' core vote. Somewhere in that difference the true Tory floor is found and in that difference the greatest Tory danger lies.
Rail staff have been told to prepare for 2,000 job cuts from the closure of ticket offices — even though their fate has not been officially decided yet.
The Sunday Times has seen confidential documents setting out proposals by the train operators to cut staffing at stations by October, as part of a plan by the Rail Delivery Group to close hundreds of ticket offices.
Huw Merriman, the rail minister, has justified the closures on the ground that only one in ten tickets are bought in offices, down from a third a decade ago.
Oh there will be a lot of legal challenges - but it's the lies that are so annoying..
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
Yes, and even 10% is an awful lot of tickets. I'd have thought that closing ticket offices shouldn't be considered until that proportion is down to 1/2%.
I suspect that this is one of those decisions that will piss people off more than the Tories think, because as well as those who do use ticket offices, a lot of people who don't use them will think they should remain open. I don't use them - but very occasionally I have to when there's a problem with the machines or some other hitch.
Tory MP Andrew Rosindell is under police investigation for sexual offences and misconduct in public office.
He has not set foot in parliament since being arrested (over a year ago)
He has been reselected as candidate for next GE.
His constituents do not know.
It has started to be noted, for example in the letters page of the Romford Recorder. (Though that only involves the minority who read or contribute to the letters page of the Romford Recorder.)
Though it hasn't needed Sherlock Holmes to put the clues together for a long time.
The result might depend on how the party headquarters (informally, of course) carve up by-elections between themselves. Even assuming Nad ever stands down. Give her the peerage!
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
Never attended, or even watched a game as an adult although played a couple of games in my youth. There’ve been a couple of efforts to set up some sort of British league, but AFAIK nothing’s worked.
It's rounders, a game we are all familiar with from primary school. And that is why no-one over here will take it seriously. Next thing you know, they'll be putting skateboards in the Olympics.
To be fair, in America "soccer" used to have the same problem: it was perceived as a game played by young girls. It was the growing immigrant communities that made the beautiful game viable there.
The result might depend on how the party headquarters (informally, of course) carve up by-elections between themselves. Even assuming Nad ever stands down. Give her the peerage!
Give her the boot
If they re-elect her after this prime display of idiocy then they are bigger fools than she is
Rail staff have been told to prepare for 2,000 job cuts from the closure of ticket offices — even though their fate has not been officially decided yet.
The Sunday Times has seen confidential documents setting out proposals by the train operators to cut staffing at stations by October, as part of a plan by the Rail Delivery Group to close hundreds of ticket offices.
Huw Merriman, the rail minister, has justified the closures on the ground that only one in ten tickets are bought in offices, down from a third a decade ago.
Oh there will be a lot of legal challenges - but it's the lies that are so annoying..
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
Yes, and even 10% is an awful lot of tickets. I'd have thought that closing ticket offices shouldn't be considered until that proportion is down to 1/2%.
I suspect that this is one of those decisions that will piss people off more than the Tories think, because as well as those who do use ticket offices, a lot of people who don't use them will think they should remain open. I don't use them - but very occasionally I have to when there's a problem with the machines or some other hitch.
If I'm buying a ticket for immediate use - I use the ticket office.
Because if I'm in TPEs window which is over 15 minutes from departure the ticket office will still sell you a reduced price ticket for the next train which a machine can't do...
Rail staff have been told to prepare for 2,000 job cuts from the closure of ticket offices — even though their fate has not been officially decided yet.
The Sunday Times has seen confidential documents setting out proposals by the train operators to cut staffing at stations by October, as part of a plan by the Rail Delivery Group to close hundreds of ticket offices.
Huw Merriman, the rail minister, has justified the closures on the ground that only one in ten tickets are bought in offices, down from a third a decade ago.
Oh there will be a lot of legal challenges - but it's the lies that are so annoying..
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
Yes, and even 10% is an awful lot of tickets. I'd have thought that closing ticket offices shouldn't be considered until that proportion is down to 1/2%.
I suspect that this is one of those decisions that will piss people off more than the Tories think, because as well as those who do use ticket offices, a lot of people who don't use them will think they should remain open. I don't use them - but very occasionally I have to when there's a problem with the machines or some other hitch.
Perhaps Conservative voters only travel on journeys booked by their secretary / butler / dogsbody? Maybe the 'calculation' is that the people using ticket offices are the sweaty types who vote for Marxism so no votes lost?
They badly need to fund a pre-election giveaway. It's traditional.
YouGov have just sent me a survey and guess what one of the questions is about?
If it is good enough for YouGov and Tiger Woods then it is good enough for me.
Except they have to specify when and where it is. So obviously not good enough to call it the Open tout court. Needs to be distinguished from the Open at Berwick upon Tweed Magdalene Fields Golf Club, no?
I started playing golf at Magdalene Fields Golf Club when I was 11
Well, quite. So we must be quite clear about which Open this is.
"Open" could be the one down the road on Saturday week.
From the nation that gets its knickers in a twist over the spelling of whisk(e)y.
Rail staff have been told to prepare for 2,000 job cuts from the closure of ticket offices — even though their fate has not been officially decided yet.
The Sunday Times has seen confidential documents setting out proposals by the train operators to cut staffing at stations by October, as part of a plan by the Rail Delivery Group to close hundreds of ticket offices.
Huw Merriman, the rail minister, has justified the closures on the ground that only one in ten tickets are bought in offices, down from a third a decade ago.
Oh there will be a lot of legal challenges - but it's the lies that are so annoying..
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
Yes, and even 10% is an awful lot of tickets. I'd have thought that closing ticket offices shouldn't be considered until that proportion is down to 1/2%.
I suspect that this is one of those decisions that will piss people off more than the Tories think, because as well as those who do use ticket offices, a lot of people who don't use them will think they should remain open. I don't use them - but very occasionally I have to when there's a problem with the machines or some other hitch.
It is likely the occasional rail users who prefer speaking to humans in ticket offices. The regulars will have long since figured out which buttons to press, what platform they need and where to change trains.
Rail staff have been told to prepare for 2,000 job cuts from the closure of ticket offices — even though their fate has not been officially decided yet.
The Sunday Times has seen confidential documents setting out proposals by the train operators to cut staffing at stations by October, as part of a plan by the Rail Delivery Group to close hundreds of ticket offices.
Huw Merriman, the rail minister, has justified the closures on the ground that only one in ten tickets are bought in offices, down from a third a decade ago.
Oh there will be a lot of legal challenges - but it's the lies that are so annoying..
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
Yes, and even 10% is an awful lot of tickets. I'd have thought that closing ticket offices shouldn't be considered until that proportion is down to 1/2%.
I suspect that this is one of those decisions that will piss people off more than the Tories think, because as well as those who do use ticket offices, a lot of people who don't use them will think they should remain open. I don't use them - but very occasionally I have to when there's a problem with the machines or some other hitch.
It's another frantic scramble for something, anything, that can be sent down the pawn shop to release a few quid.
As a country, we have had decades of something for nothing, when we didn't save enough for our retirements, didn't spend enough on equipment, buildings and infrastructure, when we cheered as all that spare cash dripped into house prices.
And now we're going to have to have nothing for something. Because that's how arithmetic works.
Rail staff have been told to prepare for 2,000 job cuts from the closure of ticket offices — even though their fate has not been officially decided yet.
The Sunday Times has seen confidential documents setting out proposals by the train operators to cut staffing at stations by October, as part of a plan by the Rail Delivery Group to close hundreds of ticket offices.
Huw Merriman, the rail minister, has justified the closures on the ground that only one in ten tickets are bought in offices, down from a third a decade ago.
Oh there will be a lot of legal challenges - but it's the lies that are so annoying..
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
Yes, and even 10% is an awful lot of tickets. I'd have thought that closing ticket offices shouldn't be considered until that proportion is down to 1/2%.
I suspect that this is one of those decisions that will piss people off more than the Tories think, because as well as those who do use ticket offices, a lot of people who don't use them will think they should remain open. I don't use them - but very occasionally I have to when there's a problem with the machines or some other hitch.
Perhaps Conservative voters only travel on journeys booked by their secretary / butler / dogsbody? Maybe the 'calculation' is that the people using ticket offices are the sweaty types who vote for Marxism so no votes lost?
They badly need to fund a pre-election giveaway. It's traditional.
You missed our discussion on Friday after the notion of abolishing inheritance tax was floated then? It only collects a mere £7b, so what is the point?
Rishi is the free money at no cost Chancellor and PM. No other politician has balanced tax cuts and free money with no downside like Rishi.
Tony Blair saying the private sector should not be a dirty word in respect of the NHS
For fun - the NHS is already private. They don’t build hospitals, make beds or syringes or drugs. Or anything else.
They buy everything from the private sector, including hiring a lot of staff for admin work from contracting companies.
And that’s before you get to agency staff.
Using private hospitals etc isn’t a solution. Most of the staff also work in the NHS.
What makes sense, as with private schools, is looking at what they are doing, and why some things work better.
Testing, for example. I’m trying to find the study in the US - essentially , if there was any doubt about diagnosis at the initial stage, test for everything, MRI, the works. This saved money, IIRC, though faster diagnosis of complicated cases and earlier treatment.
More investment required:
The UK has 6.1 MRI systems per million people, fewer than countries including Estonia and Slovenia. By comparison, the US has 38.1 scanners per million and Germany has 30.5
Because the politicians like investment for the NHS… in lots of low level staff.
Investment in equipment and automation would improve productivity,
And yet the "efficiency savings" to fund the new pay settlements will come from looting training and capital equipment budgets, as always.
What was it you wanted the state to cut to fund them instead?
The triple lock on pensions and benefits. Should be the same as public sector pay.
Raising the state pension to the level of public sector pay would be unaffordable. It's £10,000 a year. A doctor's pension will be what? Seven or eight times that?
About a third of pensioners have no other income than the state pension. The vast majority of workers will get no more than 3 or 4k a year from private sector pensions. Foxy will have a comfortable retirement while they struggle. Yet he wants to cut what they get so he can get a payrise on an already damn good salary.
Having said that I do think the triple lock is a damn stupid thing and needs to be revisited but even so I find taking from the poorest to benefit some of the richest workers somewhat distasteful
It was ever thus for Tories, they always rob the poor to feed the rich. Doctors nowadays are just money grubbing Tories , Hippocratic oath my arse.
The Lib Dems are still working Mid Beds, Labour have relaxed somewhat. The key in that Opinium polling was the Independent vote. That is and will probably be squeezed by the Lib Dems and the Tories. The Lib Dems will win the by election, if it happens with about 40 - 45% of the vote, squeezing the Labour vote in the last 3 weeks of the campaign. However I do not see the by election taking place, Nadine will need a place in Parliament and a credit either MP or Lady/Baroness for as long as possible.
FPT: My apologies as I was out last night and too engrossed in other stuff to look at my phone, so would just like to thank @Andy_JS for replying to my question. I didn't mean to ignore you and your reply was appreciated and I am going to follow up and look at some of the archived PB stuff. And to @viewcode on all the history stuff on PB. Both really appreciated.
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
I really enjoyed baseball when I was a teenager in the States. Quite a subtle game, and one played for fun like basketball. No one plays gridiron for fun.
We moved to DC when I was 12 and I played two seasons in the outfield for my school team. We weren't very good but it's a fun game and I quite enjoy the Moneyball style deep statistical analysis it provokes.
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
I watched a game when we lived in the US and it was boring AF. And they try to make you stand up for their horrible national anthem at the start. That's several hours of my life I'll never get back.
The Lib Dems are still working Mid Beds, Labour have relaxed somewhat. The key in that Opinium polling was the Independent vote. That is and will probably be squeezed by the Lib Dems and the Tories. The Lib Dems will win the by election, if it happens with about 40 - 45% of the vote, squeezing the Labour vote in the last 3 weeks of the campaign. However I do not see the by election taking place, Nadine will need a place in Parliament and a credit either MP or Lady/Baroness for as long as possible.
Not sure about slackening off - do you live there? I've no personasl experience but this sounds pretty active:
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
I watched a game when we lived in the US and it was boring AF. And they try to make you stand up for their horrible national anthem at the start. That's several hours of my life I'll never get back.
I became an accidental follower of baseball in 2010 when my beloved Liverpool FC were bought by the people who own the Boston Red Sox.
Baseball is bloody rounders, a game played by children under the age of 11 in the UK.
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
I watched a game when we lived in the US and it was boring AF. And they try to make you stand up for their horrible national anthem at the start. That's several hours of my life I'll never get back.
I went to one in Colorado a few years ago. Dull as dishwater.
Part of the problem, surely, is that it is not the train operator who man's (and pays for) the ticket office. Network Rail will earn just a 10% commission on a ticket sale, while the operator takes the other 90%.
Rail staff have been told to prepare for 2,000 job cuts from the closure of ticket offices — even though their fate has not been officially decided yet.
The Sunday Times has seen confidential documents setting out proposals by the train operators to cut staffing at stations by October, as part of a plan by the Rail Delivery Group to close hundreds of ticket offices.
Huw Merriman, the rail minister, has justified the closures on the ground that only one in ten tickets are bought in offices, down from a third a decade ago.
Oh there will be a lot of legal challenges - but it's the lies that are so annoying..
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
And season tickets for short distance repetitive travel to known locations on known trains distorts the stats too.
Rail staff have been told to prepare for 2,000 job cuts from the closure of ticket offices — even though their fate has not been officially decided yet.
The Sunday Times has seen confidential documents setting out proposals by the train operators to cut staffing at stations by October, as part of a plan by the Rail Delivery Group to close hundreds of ticket offices.
Huw Merriman, the rail minister, has justified the closures on the ground that only one in ten tickets are bought in offices, down from a third a decade ago.
Oh there will be a lot of legal challenges - but it's the lies that are so annoying..
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
Yes, and even 10% is an awful lot of tickets. I'd have thought that closing ticket offices shouldn't be considered until that proportion is down to 1/2%.
I suspect that this is one of those decisions that will piss people off more than the Tories think, because as well as those who do use ticket offices, a lot of people who don't use them will think they should remain open. I don't use them - but very occasionally I have to when there's a problem with the machines or some other hitch.
It is likely the occasional rail users who prefer speaking to humans in ticket offices. The regulars will have long since figured out which buttons to press, what platform they need and where to change trains.
And are often the ones with season tickets anyway, so don't need the machines.
Rail staff have been told to prepare for 2,000 job cuts from the closure of ticket offices — even though their fate has not been officially decided yet.
The Sunday Times has seen confidential documents setting out proposals by the train operators to cut staffing at stations by October, as part of a plan by the Rail Delivery Group to close hundreds of ticket offices.
Huw Merriman, the rail minister, has justified the closures on the ground that only one in ten tickets are bought in offices, down from a third a decade ago.
Oh there will be a lot of legal challenges - but it's the lies that are so annoying..
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
Yes, and even 10% is an awful lot of tickets. I'd have thought that closing ticket offices shouldn't be considered until that proportion is down to 1/2%.
I suspect that this is one of those decisions that will piss people off more than the Tories think, because as well as those who do use ticket offices, a lot of people who don't use them will think they should remain open. I don't use them - but very occasionally I have to when there's a problem with the machines or some other hitch.
UK train ticketing is horrendously complicated. Most apps don't support split ticketing and none will offer options other than the one you ask for. Mostly fine for trains going up and down one line; not so fine for connecting services, hence the stubborn 10% I'm thinking.
Rail staff have been told to prepare for 2,000 job cuts from the closure of ticket offices — even though their fate has not been officially decided yet.
The Sunday Times has seen confidential documents setting out proposals by the train operators to cut staffing at stations by October, as part of a plan by the Rail Delivery Group to close hundreds of ticket offices.
Huw Merriman, the rail minister, has justified the closures on the ground that only one in ten tickets are bought in offices, down from a third a decade ago.
Oh there will be a lot of legal challenges - but it's the lies that are so annoying..
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
Yes, and even 10% is an awful lot of tickets. I'd have thought that closing ticket offices shouldn't be considered until that proportion is down to 1/2%.
I suspect that this is one of those decisions that will piss people off more than the Tories think, because as well as those who do use ticket offices, a lot of people who don't use them will think they should remain open. I don't use them - but very occasionally I have to when there's a problem with the machines or some other hitch.
It is likely the occasional rail users who prefer speaking to humans in ticket offices. The regulars will have long since figured out which buttons to press, what platform they need and where to change trains.
Another point of interest is that one wants to encourage such folk - they'll be long distance and off-peak much more than the ones with season tickets.
Tony Blair saying the private sector should not be a dirty word in respect of the NHS
For fun - the NHS is already private. They don’t build hospitals, make beds or syringes or drugs. Or anything else.
They buy everything from the private sector, including hiring a lot of staff for admin work from contracting companies.
And that’s before you get to agency staff.
Using private hospitals etc isn’t a solution. Most of the staff also work in the NHS.
What makes sense, as with private schools, is looking at what they are doing, and why some things work better.
Testing, for example. I’m trying to find the study in the US - essentially , if there was any doubt about diagnosis at the initial stage, test for everything, MRI, the works. This saved money, IIRC, though faster diagnosis of complicated cases and earlier treatment.
More investment required:
The UK has 6.1 MRI systems per million people, fewer than countries including Estonia and Slovenia. By comparison, the US has 38.1 scanners per million and Germany has 30.5
Because the politicians like investment for the NHS… in lots of low level staff.
Investment in equipment and automation would improve productivity,
And yet the "efficiency savings" to fund the new pay settlements will come from looting training and capital equipment budgets, as always.
What was it you wanted the state to cut to fund them instead?
The triple lock on pensions and benefits. Should be the same as public sector pay.
Raising the state pension to the level of public sector pay would be unaffordable. It's £10,000 a year. A doctor's pension will be what? Seven or eight times that?
About a third of pensioners have no other income than the state pension. The vast majority of workers will get no more than 3 or 4k a year from private sector pensions. Foxy will have a comfortable retirement while they struggle. Yet he wants to cut what they get so he can get a payrise on an already damn good salary.
Having said that I do think the triple lock is a damn stupid thing and needs to be revisited but even so I find taking from the poorest to benefit some of the richest workers somewhat distasteful
It was ever thus for Tories, they always rob the poor to feed the rich. Doctors nowadays are just money grubbing Tories , Hippocratic oath my arse.
The consultants are just taking the piss.
One of their main issues, the lifetime cap in pension contributions, the govt rolled over on. As they did with the amount you an put in per year.
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
Never attended, or even watched a game as an adult although played a couple of games in my youth. There’ve been a couple of efforts to set up some sort of British league, but AFAIK nothing’s worked.
It's rounders, a game we are all familiar with from primary school. And that is why no-one over here will take it seriously. Next thing you know, they'll be putting skateboards in the Olympics.
Just had a look on Wikipedia and there is fact quite a considerable structure. Apparently quite a few universities are taking it up.
It's actually quite sad to see older folk in reactionary mode: raging against the dying of the light.
You don't have to live this way. It is possible to move with the times and be happy.
Enlarge your horizons. Embrace change.
Have a nice day xx
You realise that it is young people driving the rise in support for what you would call reactionary politics on the continent?
Some people can't see beyond the UK when it comes to politics. They think because older people are the most reactionary over here it must be true everywhere else.
Part of the problem, surely, is that it is not the train operator who man's (and pays for) the ticket office. Network Rail will earn just a 10% commission on a ticket sale, while the operator takes the other 90%.
Um all stations are managed by the appropriate operator of the station (so up here it's Northern, WCML Avenda, ECML LNER....)
The only exception are a few mainline stations (mainly London) who Network Rail run as the land is worth a lot. However even there the ticket office will again be staffed by train operator staff.
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
I watched a game when we lived in the US and it was boring AF. And they try to make you stand up for their horrible national anthem at the start. That's several hours of my life I'll never get back.
I went to one in Colorado a few years ago. Dull as dishwater.
Great for having beer and hotdogs etc. Tailgate BBQ's etc , Americans are much more family oriented in their sports than UK.
Part of the problem, surely, is that it is not the train operator who man's (and pays for) the ticket office. Network Rail will earn just a 10% commission on a ticket sale, while the operator takes the other 90%.
Um all stations are managed by the appropriate operator of the station (so up here it's Northern, WCML Avenda, ECML LNER....)
The only exception are a few mainline stations (mainly London) who Network Rail run as the land is worth a lot. However even there the ticket office will again be staffed by train operator staff.
Tony Blair saying the private sector should not be a dirty word in respect of the NHS
For fun - the NHS is already private. They don’t build hospitals, make beds or syringes or drugs. Or anything else.
They buy everything from the private sector, including hiring a lot of staff for admin work from contracting companies.
And that’s before you get to agency staff.
Using private hospitals etc isn’t a solution. Most of the staff also work in the NHS.
What makes sense, as with private schools, is looking at what they are doing, and why some things work better.
Testing, for example. I’m trying to find the study in the US - essentially , if there was any doubt about diagnosis at the initial stage, test for everything, MRI, the works. This saved money, IIRC, though faster diagnosis of complicated cases and earlier treatment.
More investment required:
The UK has 6.1 MRI systems per million people, fewer than countries including Estonia and Slovenia. By comparison, the US has 38.1 scanners per million and Germany has 30.5
Because the politicians like investment for the NHS… in lots of low level staff.
Investment in equipment and automation would improve productivity,
And yet the "efficiency savings" to fund the new pay settlements will come from looting training and capital equipment budgets, as always.
What was it you wanted the state to cut to fund them instead?
The triple lock on pensions and benefits. Should be the same as public sector pay.
Raising the state pension to the level of public sector pay would be unaffordable. It's £10,000 a year. A doctor's pension will be what? Seven or eight times that?
About a third of pensioners have no other income than the state pension. The vast majority of workers will get no more than 3 or 4k a year from private sector pensions. Foxy will have a comfortable retirement while they struggle. Yet he wants to cut what they get so he can get a payrise on an already damn good salary.
Having said that I do think the triple lock is a damn stupid thing and needs to be revisited but even so I find taking from the poorest to benefit some of the richest workers somewhat distasteful
It was ever thus for Tories, they always rob the poor to feed the rich. Doctors nowadays are just money grubbing Tories , Hippocratic oath my arse.
The consultants are just taking the piss.
One of their main issues, the lifetime cap in pension contributions, the govt rolled over on. As they did with the amount you an put in per year.
Exactly and the constant lying by junior doctors that they only get 14 pounds an hour is pathetic. One thing you will never ever see is a poor doctor , a tough job but not happy being among the very highest paid in the country with the most gold plated pensions in the country. Greed and entitlement personified.
Well, he has kind of got a point provided you accept prior conspiracy theories. If China had been engineering Covid for biological warfare, it would make sense to seek a variant that did not affect their own people. Not sure where the Jews come in, mind.
No, he doesn't. Even if you believe China deliberately engineered the virus, which is highly improbable, such targeting is simply not possible. Which is why he's an idiot too.
Nature manages it. There are diseases (not necessarily virus-borne) that affect some ethnic groups more than others. The poster child would be sickle cell anaemia. And possible or not, that does not preclude Biowarfare Research Group Number 17 aiming for ethnic specificity.
Please explain how you engineer a pandemic virus not to mutate ? There are variations in disease susceptibility across populations - but they are variations, not absolutes. Viruses can jump species; dealing with the minor variation across humans is nothing in comparison,
And that's assuming that we have any idea how to target particular populations, which we don't. Any such effort, starting now, with the vastly improved gene sequencing we have compared to pre pandemic, would be an enormous decades long project, not something that could happen in a secret lab. And very likely pointless.
Kennedy is an unpleasant nut, flirting with antisemitism.
FPT: My apologies as I was out last night and too engrossed in other stuff to look at my phone, so would just like to thank @Andy_JS for replying to my question. I didn't mean to ignore you and your reply was appreciated and I am going to follow up and look at some of the archived PB stuff. And to @viewcode on all the history stuff on PB. Both really appreciated.
I might withdraw my thanks to @Andy_JS (only joking) as I have just been looking at the old PB threads and I can see I am going to waste so much time looking at these. So many memories came flooding back. The only current poster I could remember posting in 2005 was @Leon, but how wrong was I. I have already spotted @NickPalmer. @Roger, @JohnO and of course @Sean_F, not only posting but doing his weekly local election round up thread, which I now remember so well and used to enjoy. I'm sure there are lots more as this was just a quick look. And so many posters that I used to enjoy who have disappeared (or possibly post under a different name) and of course there are those that have sadly died.
YouGov have just sent me a survey and guess what one of the questions is about?
If it is good enough for YouGov and Tiger Woods then it is good enough for me.
Except they have to specify when and where it is. So obviously not good enough to call it the Open tout court. Needs to be distinguished from the Open at Berwick upon Tweed Magdalene Fields Golf Club, no?
I started playing golf at Magdalene Fields Golf Club when I was 11
Well, quite. So we must be quite clear about which Open this is.
"Open" could be the one down the road on Saturday week.
From the nation that gets its knickers in a twist over the spelling of whisk(e)y.
YouGov have just sent me a survey and guess what one of the questions is about?
If it is good enough for YouGov and Tiger Woods then it is good enough for me.
Except they have to specify when and where it is. So obviously not good enough to call it the Open tout court. Needs to be distinguished from the Open at Berwick upon Tweed Magdalene Fields Golf Club, no?
I started playing golf at Magdalene Fields Golf Club when I was 11
Well, quite. So we must be quite clear about which Open this is.
"Open" could be the one down the road on Saturday week.
From the nation that gets its knickers in a twist over the spelling of whisk(e)y.
Rail staff have been told to prepare for 2,000 job cuts from the closure of ticket offices — even though their fate has not been officially decided yet.
The Sunday Times has seen confidential documents setting out proposals by the train operators to cut staffing at stations by October, as part of a plan by the Rail Delivery Group to close hundreds of ticket offices.
Huw Merriman, the rail minister, has justified the closures on the ground that only one in ten tickets are bought in offices, down from a third a decade ago.
Oh there will be a lot of legal challenges - but it's the lies that are so annoying..
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
Yes, and even 10% is an awful lot of tickets. I'd have thought that closing ticket offices shouldn't be considered until that proportion is down to 1/2%.
I suspect that this is one of those decisions that will piss people off more than the Tories think, because as well as those who do use ticket offices, a lot of people who don't use them will think they should remain open. I don't use them - but very occasionally I have to when there's a problem with the machines or some other hitch.
Perhaps Conservative voters only travel on journeys booked by their secretary / butler / dogsbody? Maybe the 'calculation' is that the people using ticket offices are the sweaty types who vote for Marxism so no votes lost?
They badly need to fund a pre-election giveaway. It's traditional.
You missed our discussion on Friday ...
Perhaps it was a cricket day? It is hardly worth bothering with this place on cricket days...
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
It's not. The single way in which it is superior is in putting the batter closer to a small fraction of the crowd than is possible in cricket. But even then his back is to them.
Well, he has kind of got a point provided you accept prior conspiracy theories. If China had been engineering Covid for biological warfare, it would make sense to seek a variant that did not affect their own people. Not sure where the Jews come in, mind.
No, he doesn't. Even if you believe China deliberately engineered the virus, which is highly improbable, such targeting is simply not possible. Which is why he's an idiot too.
Nature manages it. There are diseases (not necessarily virus-borne) that affect some ethnic groups more than others. The poster child would be sickle cell anaemia. And possible or not, that does not preclude Biowarfare Research Group Number 17 aiming for ethnic specificity.
Please explain how you engineer a pandemic virus not to mutate ? There are variations in disease susceptibility across populations - but they are variations, not absolutes. Viruses can jump species; dealing with the minor variation across humans is nothing in comparison,
And that's assuming that we have any idea how to target particular populations, which we don't. Any such effort, starting now, with the vastly improved gene sequencing we have compared to pre pandemic, would be an enormous decades long project, not something that could happen in a secret lab. And very likely pointless.
Kennedy is an unpleasant nut, flirting with antisemitism.
Shit, if that's flirting I would hate to see him sexually assaulting it.
YouGov have just sent me a survey and guess what one of the questions is about?
If it is good enough for YouGov and Tiger Woods then it is good enough for me.
Except they have to specify when and where it is. So obviously not good enough to call it the Open tout court. Needs to be distinguished from the Open at Berwick upon Tweed Magdalene Fields Golf Club, no?
I started playing golf at Magdalene Fields Golf Club when I was 11
Well, quite. So we must be quite clear about which Open this is.
"Open" could be the one down the road on Saturday week.
From the nation that gets its knickers in a twist over the spelling of whisk(e)y.
Whisky is Scottish
Whiskey is Irish
Hard for some people to take that in
They could try watering it down then, rather than drinking it neat ?
It's actually quite sad to see older folk in reactionary mode: raging against the dying of the light.
You don't have to live this way. It is possible to move with the times and be happy.
Enlarge your horizons. Embrace change.
Have a nice day xx
You realise that it is young people driving the rise in support for what you would call reactionary politics on the continent?
Some people can't see beyond the UK when it comes to politics. They think because older people are the most reactionary over here it must be true everywhere else.
I remember watching, quite a long time ago, Lord Tebbit talking about the then current Russian elections. The interviewer said something about older people being conservative and voting for times past, which in Russia meant voting for the left. Tebbit missed the point and said that he thought the party people had voted for was conservative.
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
I watched a game when we lived in the US and it was boring AF. And they try to make you stand up for their horrible national anthem at the start. That's several hours of my life I'll never get back.
To be fair to the game, it has spawned far superior movies and TV series.
Well, he has kind of got a point provided you accept prior conspiracy theories. If China had been engineering Covid for biological warfare, it would make sense to seek a variant that did not affect their own people. Not sure where the Jews come in, mind.
No, he doesn't. Even if you believe China deliberately engineered the virus, which is highly improbable, such targeting is simply not possible. Which is why he's an idiot too.
Nature manages it. There are diseases (not necessarily virus-borne) that affect some ethnic groups more than others. The poster child would be sickle cell anaemia. And possible or not, that does not preclude Biowarfare Research Group Number 17 aiming for ethnic specificity.
In 1998 the Sunday Times published the following article, giving their sources as Israeli military and western intelligence sources and people from the BMA and Porton Down:
AFAIAA that report is not available for free online. It's at Amazon for £4.99.
If only you'd been around then, eh, NigelB? You could have screamed at everyone that such targeting isn't possible and that everyone who said it was (e.g. people at the BMA, Porton Down, in the Israeli military, and in western intelligence services) were anti-Semites or idiots. Or maybe they weren't saying what they really thought, and were in a conspiracy to delude everyone else. No flies on you, eh, Nige?
I assume that Sunak is already rehearsing his answer to the question how much his family will save from the abolition of IHT.
Yes. The LOL is that the actual answer is Not one penny, because we are far too smart and well-advised to have any liability for it in the first place. But not easy for a PM to say that.
I assume that Sunak is already rehearsing his answer to the question how much his family will save from the abolition of IHT.
Yes. The LOL is that the actual answer is Not one penny, because we are far too smart and well-advised to have any liability for it in the first place. But not easy for a PM to say that.
Well, he has kind of got a point provided you accept prior conspiracy theories. If China had been engineering Covid for biological warfare, it would make sense to seek a variant that did not affect their own people. Not sure where the Jews come in, mind.
No, he doesn't. Even if you believe China deliberately engineered the virus, which is highly improbable, such targeting is simply not possible. Which is why he's an idiot too.
Nature manages it. There are diseases (not necessarily virus-borne) that affect some ethnic groups more than others. The poster child would be sickle cell anaemia. And possible or not, that does not preclude Biowarfare Research Group Number 17 aiming for ethnic specificity.
Please explain how you engineer a pandemic virus not to mutate ? There are variations in disease susceptibility across populations - but they are variations, not absolutes. Viruses can jump species; dealing with the minor variation across humans is nothing in comparison,
And that's assuming that we have any idea how to target particular populations, which we don't. Any such effort, starting now, with the vastly improved gene sequencing we have compared to pre pandemic, would be an enormous decades long project, not something that could happen in a secret lab. And very likely pointless.
Kennedy is an unpleasant nut, flirting with antisemitism.
Absolutely no idea and you seem to have missed the point so let's just agree RFK is a bad actor.
It's actually quite sad to see older folk in reactionary mode: raging against the dying of the light.
You don't have to live this way. It is possible to move with the times and be happy.
Enlarge your horizons. Embrace change.
Have a nice day xx
You realise that it is young people driving the rise in support for what you would call reactionary politics on the continent?
That does seem to be true in a number of places. I think we can too easily assume our own divisions, and particular the age division (itself not that longstanding) is the case everywhere.
I assume that Sunak is already rehearsing his answer to the question how much his family will save from the abolition of IHT.
The filthy rich don't pay IHT.
Edit: Miklosvar got there first.
Labour have long been chickensh** about personalising attacks on Tory leaders, except when their dirty doings are all over the Tory media. Labour are a right bunch of forelock tuggers when it comes down to it.
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
I watched a game when we lived in the US and it was boring AF. And they try to make you stand up for their horrible national anthem at the start. That's several hours of my life I'll never get back.
I became an accidental follower of baseball in 2010 when my beloved Liverpool FC were bought by the people who own the Boston Red Sox.
Baseball is bloody rounders, a game played by children under the age of 11 in the UK.
Isn't the joke that that used to be the problem for the USA when it came to soccer, that it was something you dropped your 10 year daughter off to play, not something you watched yourself?
It's actually quite sad to see older folk in reactionary mode: raging against the dying of the light.
You don't have to live this way. It is possible to move with the times and be happy.
Enlarge your horizons. Embrace change.
Have a nice day xx
You realise that it is young people driving the rise in support for what you would call reactionary politics on the continent?
That does seem to be true in a number of places. I think we can too easily assume our own divisions, and particular the age division (itself not that longstanding) is the case everywhere.
I assume that Sunak is already rehearsing his answer to the question how much his family will save from the abolition of IHT.
The filthy rich don't pay IHT.
The richer you become the more unfair it becomes to tax you, and suddenly looking at the raw amount paid becomes fairer.
Weirdly, taxing rich people less makes them likely to thrive and end up paying more, whereas taxing poorer people less is just an idea that we'll get to if we can, maybe.
I assume that Sunak is already rehearsing his answer to the question how much his family will save from the abolition of IHT.
The filthy rich don't pay IHT.
The richer you become the more unfair it becomes to tax you, and suddenly looking at the raw amount paid becomes fairer.
Weirdly, taxing rich people less makes them likely to thrive and end up paying more, whereas taxing poorer people less is just an idea that we'll get to if we can, maybe.
The most extreme example of this, is the payments out of income exemption. If joe Bloggs who is worth £500,000 gives his child £50,000, that's capital, and IHTable unless Joe lives 7 years. If a billionaire gives his child £50,000 a month out of income, it's not capital from his POV so it is IHT exempt.
It's actually quite sad to see older folk in reactionary mode: raging against the dying of the light.
You don't have to live this way. It is possible to move with the times and be happy.
Enlarge your horizons. Embrace change.
Have a nice day xx
You realise that it is young people driving the rise in support for what you would call reactionary politics on the continent?
That does seem to be true in a number of places. I think we can too easily assume our own divisions, and particular the age division (itself not that longstanding) is the case everywhere.
Well, he has kind of got a point provided you accept prior conspiracy theories. If China had been engineering Covid for biological warfare, it would make sense to seek a variant that did not affect their own people. Not sure where the Jews come in, mind.
No, he doesn't. Even if you believe China deliberately engineered the virus, which is highly improbable, such targeting is simply not possible. Which is why he's an idiot too.
Nature manages it. There are diseases (not necessarily virus-borne) that affect some ethnic groups more than others. The poster child would be sickle cell anaemia. And possible or not, that does not preclude Biowarfare Research Group Number 17 aiming for ethnic specificity.
In 1998 the Sunday Times published the following article, giving their sources as Israeli military and western intelligence sources and people from the BMA and Porton Down:
AFAIAA that report is not available for free online. It's at Amazon for £4.99.
If only you'd been around then, eh, NigelB? You could have screamed at everyone that such targeting isn't possible and that everyone who said it was (e.g. people at the BMA, Porton Down, in the Israeli military, and in western intelligence services) were anti-Semites or idiots. Or maybe they weren't saying what they really thought, and were in a conspiracy to delude everyone else. No flies on you, eh, Nige?
And how does that relate to engineering a pandemic virus ?
What you're talking about remains a theoretic possibility (as you'll see the articles you cite describe it), but bears no relation at all to creating such a virus.
Rail staff have been told to prepare for 2,000 job cuts from the closure of ticket offices — even though their fate has not been officially decided yet.
The Sunday Times has seen confidential documents setting out proposals by the train operators to cut staffing at stations by October, as part of a plan by the Rail Delivery Group to close hundreds of ticket offices.
Huw Merriman, the rail minister, has justified the closures on the ground that only one in ten tickets are bought in offices, down from a third a decade ago.
Oh there will be a lot of legal challenges - but it's the lies that are so annoying..
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
And season tickets for short distance repetitive travel to known locations on known trains distorts the stats too.
There are also discrimination problems with these proposals, which are a warmed over Grant Shapps project.
The Office of Rail Regulation and EHRC have been excluded from consultations.
For example, I have a friend who is unable to walk, and travels using the 50% discount on a normal walk-up ticket when you remain in your wheelchair on the train. AIUI the discounted tickets are only available from ticket offices, not the ticket machines.
That imposes a substantial disadvantage on people with a protected characteristic in their use of a service provided to the public.
If Harper wanted to be rational, he would have addressed such questions first, but imo this is cynical, and Harper is proving himself to be the next Shapps.
I think there's already a Judicial Review running from a transport user organisation, but I can't find it.
I assume that Sunak is already rehearsing his answer to the question how much his family will save from the abolition of IHT.
The filthy rich don't pay IHT.
The richer you become the more unfair it becomes to tax you, and suddenly looking at the raw amount paid becomes fairer.
Weirdly, taxing rich people less makes them likely to thrive and end up paying more, whereas taxing poorer people less is just an idea that we'll get to if we can, maybe.
The most extreme example of this, is the payments out of income exemption. If joe Bloggs who is worth £500,000 gives his child £50,000, that's capital, and IHTable unless Joe lives 7 years. If a billionaire gives his child £50,000 a month out of income, it's not capital from his POV so it is IHT exempt.
I'd not heard of that exemption, and I don't think my Dad had when he was doing probate on my Grandad's estate, as he was asking for all the details of all our Christmas/birthday gifts from Grandad, and I'm fairly confident his pension was absurdly generous enough that they would have come out of income rather than capital - he'd given us all lump sums when he sold his house and moved into sheltered accommodation, so he wasn't holding onto much capital.
I guess that's another exemption that would disappear if you switched IHT from an estate tax to a recipient tax.
Baseball is a superior game, both to play and watch, than cricket but it would just look wrong in the UK. LIke wearing fringed chaps in M&S.
I've tried watching it and it's useless compared to cricket IMO. But then I am probably the world's biggest cricket fan so I'm a bit biased. 😊
On the other hand I would not watch cricket even if you attached electrodes to my knackers but I would watch baseball.
Really? There's almost nothing I wouldn't do if the alternative was fried testicles.
I am fecking stupid and stubborn to the point that there are probably quite a few things that I wouldn't do even if the alternative was fried testes. I don't think it's one of my finer qualities however.
Comments
Accidentally refusing a peerage does seem an odd way for a political career to sputter out.
F1: some lovely Sunday reading about the best non-Red Bull teams in F1:
https://medium.com/@rkilner/best-of-the-rest-in-f1-a-quick-review-43c785f98cc0
Oh here is one as you identified the sector....lets make all public sector pensions direct contribution going forward with the state putting in a contribution based on the average contribution private sector firms. That would be an immediate boost to the state purse when they stop contributing 20% of wages to the db schemes every month
Tory MP Andrew Rosindell is under police investigation for sexual offences and misconduct in public office.
He has not set foot in parliament since being arrested (over a year ago)
He has been reselected as candidate for next GE.
His constituents do not know.
Also it's stupid because although it may be 10% of tickets its something like 25% of all revenue - most tickets bought are for immediate travel so way more expensive than tickets bought earlier).
Having said that I do think the triple lock is a damn stupid thing and needs to be revisited but even so I find taking from the poorest to benefit some of the richest workers somewhat distasteful
Whiskey is Irish
I suspect that this is one of those decisions that will piss people off more than the Tories think, because as well as those who do use ticket offices, a lot of people who don't use them will think they should remain open. I don't use them - but very occasionally I have to when there's a problem with the machines or some other hitch.
Though it hasn't needed Sherlock Holmes to put the clues together for a long time.
Because if I'm in TPEs window which is over 15 minutes from departure the ticket office will still sell you a reduced price ticket for the next train which a machine can't do...
They badly need to fund a pre-election giveaway. It's traditional.
As a country, we have had decades of something for nothing, when we didn't save enough for our retirements, didn't spend enough on equipment, buildings and infrastructure, when we cheered as all that spare cash dripped into house prices.
And now we're going to have to have nothing for something. Because that's how arithmetic works.
Rishi is the free money at no cost Chancellor and PM. No other politician has balanced tax cuts and free money with no downside like Rishi.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/15/labour-byelection-activists-respect-tory-voters-conservative-constituencies
Credit to OGH for publishing the header, reinforcing the point that this is a betting and prediction site rather than tied to any one party.
Baseball is bloody rounders, a game played by children under the age of 11 in the UK.
Part of the problem, surely, is that it is not the train operator who man's (and pays for) the ticket office. Network Rail will earn just a 10% commission on a ticket sale, while the operator takes the other 90%.
One of their main issues, the lifetime cap in pension contributions, the govt rolled over on. As they did with the amount you an put in per year.
The only exception are a few mainline stations (mainly London) who Network Rail run as the land is worth a lot. However even there the ticket office will again be staffed by train operator staff.
Network Rail only really manage tracks...
There are variations in disease susceptibility across populations - but they are variations, not absolutes. Viruses can jump species; dealing with the minor variation across humans is nothing in comparison,
And that's assuming that we have any idea how to target particular populations, which we don't. Any such effort, starting now, with the vastly improved gene sequencing we have compared to pre pandemic, would be an enormous decades long project, not something that could happen in a secret lab.
And very likely pointless.
Kennedy is an unpleasant nut, flirting with antisemitism.
Thank you for providing that.
The single way in which it is superior is in putting the batter closer to a small fraction of the crowd than is possible in cricket.
But even then his back is to them.
That's roughly one in every 270 pitches.
Tebbit missed the point and said that he thought the party people had voted for was conservative.
https://homepages.uc.edu/~chengy/times.html
More on the BMA report:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114775/
AFAIAA that report is not available for free online. It's at Amazon for £4.99.
If only you'd been around then, eh, NigelB? You could have screamed at everyone that such targeting isn't possible and that everyone who said it was (e.g. people at the BMA, Porton Down, in the Israeli military, and in western intelligence services) were anti-Semites or idiots. Or maybe they weren't saying what they really thought, and were in a conspiracy to delude everyone else. No flies on you, eh, Nige?
Edit: Miklosvar got there first.
Labour have long been chickensh** about personalising attacks on Tory leaders, except when their dirty doings are all over the Tory media. Labour are a right bunch of forelock tuggers when it comes down to it.
Probably not true now.
Weirdly, taxing rich people less makes them likely to thrive and end up paying more, whereas taxing poorer people less is just an idea that we'll get to if we can, maybe.
What you're talking about remains a theoretic possibility (as you'll see the articles you cite describe it), but bears no relation at all to creating such a virus.
The Office of Rail Regulation and EHRC have been excluded from consultations.
For example, I have a friend who is unable to walk, and travels using the 50% discount on a normal walk-up ticket when you remain in your wheelchair on the train. AIUI the discounted tickets are only available from ticket offices, not the ticket machines.
That imposes a substantial disadvantage on people with a protected characteristic in their use of a service provided to the public.
If Harper wanted to be rational, he would have addressed such questions first, but imo this is cynical, and Harper is proving himself to be the next Shapps.
I think there's already a Judicial Review running from a transport user organisation, but I can't find it.
There is, however, a petition from organisations for disabled people running, here:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/636542?reveal_response=yes
The Government response so far parrots the industry group Rail Delivery Group, even down to the same misleading stats.
I guess that's another exemption that would disappear if you switched IHT from an estate tax to a recipient tax.
Time to make a pizza.
Trump on Trial: A Model Prosecution Memo for Federal Election Interference Crimes
https://www.justsecurity.org/87236/trump-on-trial-a-model-prosecution-memo-for-federal-election-interference-crimes/