Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
How does the US govt go bankrupt whilst it is the global reserve currency? Which currencies have a greater than 1% chance of replacing the dollar as the global reserve currency* in the short to medium term?
* Unless the US does something silly like starting a massive global trade war perhaps.
Half the questions from Lab MPs seem to be about the Tories. It's supposed to be PM's questions.
So this is the first time you’ve ever watched PMQs?
This has been going on since they started televising it.
“So this is the first time you’ve ever watched PMQs?”
To be fair to Andy, BigG and others with strong tribal bias - perhaps tribal bias should come with blindness when 90% of backbench questions from your own party have been written by whips?
Where BigG says it’s noticeable and embarrassing today, in recent years the number of Tory backbench q’s written by whips “my constituents are delighted with money/factory/road or statue put up thanks to this Conservative Government” was if anything more obvious and embarrassing than what we have today, as it never really dealt with the elephant in the room - a party about to suffer record defeat due to owning historic erosion of incomes.
The next General Elections will be decided on how quickly that is forgotten and forgiven, not the yahboo nonsense of PMQs.
Fair comment
Having said that though, PMQs is ripe for some sort of reform - when half the questions are from the MPs from the party in power and written for them by whips, I too find it cringy and pointless, regardless which party is actually in power. Half pointless for sure, as only half the questions are actual questions, when they all should be to avoid prosecution under trade description act.
It’s been set up historically as Parliament backbenchers can ask Prime Minister a question - so this is what gets served up to us as the dish.
But is that dish put in front of us what we actually want and came for? Definitely not.
Does Parliament even need such a “backbench” flavoured dish every Wednesday, or our Democracy in 21st C. better served by the array of very different Opposition leaders having turn asking the questions instead?
But it needs a Prime Minister to accept the reform? A PM or party in power will never give up what’s great for them, but bad for us and democracy.
The reform needed is two fold: the speaker to have the power to declare that a question is not a real question to disallow speeches and rhetorical questions as questions; and to have a similar power to pursue and require an answer to all proper questions and delay all proceedings until he is content.
Can't be just disestablish the CofE, and be rid of it?
Absolutely not, it ensures Catholics and Evangelicals are both in our national church. It also ensures weddings and funerals for all parishioners who want them. Pleased to see most MPs at least voted to keep the Bishops in the Lords despite Labour voting to remove the remaining hereditary peers
But why should we havea national church at all? And why us it important that specifically those other two religions are included in it? And I think people have the right to get married or buried whether or not there are bishops in the HoL, or indeed whether the CoE exists at all.
Because it ensures all branches of Christianity are represented in it and because it annoys secular left liberal atheists like you which is an even better reason.
Of course if it was not the established Church C of E churches would start to refuse weddings and funerals to those who live in their area unless they regularly attend church as Catholic priests do for instance and rightly so
There are other places to get married than a church.
On your point 1a: you are arguing for what the thing should be like in response to my argument that the thing should not exist at all; and on your point 1b: I don't think I've ever been called 'left liberal' before!
And buried but if you want a Church wedding only or funeral the C of E being established church is the only reason you get that as of right and that is of course a pivotal reason for its existence.
Of course you are a left liberal, also precisely the type of person US voters voted Trump for purely to annoy the likes of you.
In the culture wars the likes of you are everything conservatives and rightwingers despise
I'm struggling to think what in my 19 years of posting here might have led you to classify me as 'left liberal'. Unless this is your rather dry humour poking through!
Come on cookie, you're just a closeted woke leftie liberal. We all know it, stop pretending (I do think you're pretty liberal for what it's worth)
That said, I'd be intrigued to see a list of posters (plural may be unjustified!) whom hyufd does not consider to be left liberal, remembering that he is, I think the only True Conservative in the village forum (BigG for example defintely does not cut it, I believe)
It seems ridiculous that a hugely political website like the Guardian are now boycotting the number one generator of clicks for political news/articles for established media companies. Way, way more clicks for this stuff comes from Twitter than Instagram, Facebook or Tiktok which are content platforms rather than redirectors to source content.
Twitter's daily use figures are down 30% YoY in the US and UK, so the Guardian may be working on the assumption it's heading for irrelevance in future and the loophole of journalists posting links to their own stories will suffice to drive traffic for now.
Others may have better data, but from what I can see Guardian traffic from Desktop devices is about 0.8% from Twitter. That is low enough that it may be worth taking a hit., depending on click throughs to revenue sources on the way out etc.
I don't have access to Mobile device numbers without some serious digging.
Popping back in here to mention that it’s very obvious that Starmer is rather rattled by Badenoch. He is in danger of taking a very dismissive/condescending tone to her (and for the second week seems to be getting the backbenchers to go after her too). She’s clunky and needs to improve the ability to think on her feet, but she has really touched a nerve it seems.
Lettuce focus on her performance.
She is looking to win gotchas. Six separate gotchas today. (Plus I should have notes, but Starmer shouldn't). She isn't very good at it. Davey on the other hand is asking sensible questions. Davey put Starmer on the rack particularly his follow up question.
You need Sunak to resign, Penny to win the by election then win the Tory leadership race.
As I say, she’s clunky, and very far from a finished article. She needs much better answers for when Starmer does his schoolmaster routine. I think she’s going for “plucky” but it’s coming across as a bit uncertain to me.
Starmer is reverting to the usual PM at PMQs type (which, hey, has been a tactic beloved of PMs since time immemorial. It works - by and large.) but Starmer’s weakness is he can’t help but sound a bit condescending and prissy when he does so. She is evidently needling him in the right places. And there is clearly enough concern in Labour circles that they are going after her with the backbench questions too.
As to the final point, I don’t really need anything. I don’t have a clue who I’ll vote for at the next GE at the moment. Badenoch, whilst interesting, would have a lot of persuading to do to make me vote Tory again. It’s true that I’ve been very disappointed with Labour in government so far, who I did vote for in 2024.
I noted that Davey's second question was listened to in pin-drop silence. Unusual at PMQs. And something Kemi has not managed so far.
It is all very early days.
Davey is in quite a good position with Labour backbenchers in that he can say things that are progressive but uncomfortable for the Labour frontbench.
He doesn't need to deny the existence of a budget blackhole to say "but GPs and pharmacies..." and can say Trump is a danger on Ukraine, which Starmer knows but cannot say in as many words.
Badenoch has a more difficult hand, although she's also not playing it well so far (but early days as you say). There was force in Starmer's point that she wants all the benefits of the budget and none of the costs - it's all very easy indeed to dismiss as non-serious, because it is. She needs to be more forensic.
She also needs to work on options with her team and be more flexible. She was undercut quite badly for Jardine happening to have the first question for the Lib Dems, and she happened to pr-empt one of Badenoch's. But she basically went ahead with it anyway, allowing Starmer to say he'd just answered the point.
Always have a spare question or 2. The fact she didn't shows that no-one is preparing things for her.
I suspect they are preparing her, but badly.
This is a minor manifestation of a bigger issue. The Conservatives are having to make enormous cuts across the organisation because when you go from 344 to 121 MPs, that's a huge drop in income (even before you look at membership etc). That does show up in the quality and quantity of support for the frontbench.
Even going from government to opposition is a pretty brutal cold shower in terms of the support available to a politician. One of the interesting things about this stage in the cycle is seeing which ex-ministers come to terms with that quickly.
Does musk give that much of a fuck if TwiX dies, anyway?
It has served its $44bn purpose. It got his choice of President elected and probably made Musk Inc $244bn in the process. And it is - via Trump - now destroying Woke, his big aim
He clearly doesn’t want TwiX to die, but if it does he can wrap it up with satisfaction: job done
He's the sort of person who might just wake up one day and say to himself: "I'm bored with this business, I'm closing it down immediately, without any warning".
Can't be just disestablish the CofE, and be rid of it?
Absolutely not, it ensures Catholics and Evangelicals are both in our national church. It also ensures weddings and funerals for all parishioners who want them. Pleased to see most MPs at least voted to keep the Bishops in the Lords despite Labour voting to remove the remaining hereditary peers
But why should we havea national church at all? And why us it important that specifically those other two religions are included in it? And I think people have the right to get married or buried whether or not there are bishops in the HoL, or indeed whether the CoE exists at all.
Because it ensures all branches of Christianity are represented in it and because it annoys secular left liberal atheists like you which is an even better reason.
Of course if it was not the established Church C of E churches would start to refuse weddings and funerals to those who live in their area unless they regularly attend church as Catholic priests do for instance and rightly so
There are other places to get married than a church.
On your point 1a: you are arguing for what the thing should be like in response to my argument that the thing should not exist at all; and on your point 1b: I don't think I've ever been called 'left liberal' before!
And buried but if you want a Church wedding only or funeral the C of E being established church is the only reason you get that as of right and that is of course a pivotal reason for its existence.
Of course you are a left liberal, also precisely the type of person US voters voted Trump for purely to annoy the likes of you.
In the culture wars the likes of you are everything conservatives and rightwingers despise
I'm struggling to think what in my 19 years of posting here might have led you to classify me as 'left liberal'. Unless this is your rather dry humour poking through!
Come on cookie, you're just a closeted woke leftie liberal. We all know it, stop pretending (I do think you're pretty liberal for what it's worth)
That said, I'd be intrigued to see a list of posters (plural may be unjustified!) whom hyufd does not consider to be left liberal, remembering that he is, I think the only True Conservative in the village forum (BigG for example defintely does not cut it, I believe)
I am not a pure and true [right wing] conservative and betrayed the party by voting for Blair but to be fair I have never voted Plaid unlike @HYUFD
Does musk give that much of a fuck if TwiX dies, anyway?
It has served its $44bn purpose. It got his choice of President elected and probably made Musk Inc $244bn in the process. And it is - via Trump - now destroying Woke, his big aim
He clearly doesn’t want TwiX to die, but if it does he can wrap it up with satisfaction: job done
Trump won mainly because of the cost of living in the USA, not because of TwiX. Almost all or his twitter supporters voted for him in 2020 too when he lost to Biden
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
Damn. I check in less frequently, but given the return of Cyclefree I need to restore my previous habit. She is a real asset to this site.
I'm at work and just checking in so will likely miss the chance to comment at length except to say in true David Cameron/Gordon Brown style - I agree with Cyclefree.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
Just abolish virtually all of it, let the poor and unemployed and those unable to afford healthcare die and just keep it for Trump backing generals and soldiers and non woke police to arrest those disrespecting the Dear Leader and stealing from those of the rich still voting Trump.
Surely that would be the true way to 'Drain the Swamp'?
Popping back in here to mention that it’s very obvious that Starmer is rather rattled by Badenoch. He is in danger of taking a very dismissive/condescending tone to her (and for the second week seems to be getting the backbenchers to go after her too). She’s clunky and needs to improve the ability to think on her feet, but she has really touched a nerve it seems.
He needs to be wary, Callaghan patronised Thatcher too
Does musk give that much of a fuck if TwiX dies, anyway?
It has served its $44bn purpose. It got his choice of President elected and probably made Musk Inc $244bn in the process. And it is - via Trump - now destroying Woke, his big aim
He clearly doesn’t want TwiX to die, but if it does he can wrap it up with satisfaction: job done
He's the sort of person who might just wake up one day and say to himself: "I'm bored with this business, I'm closing it down immediately, without any warning".
That's not very realistic as he didn't buy Twitter by opening his wallet - there are a lot of big banks with a lot at stake.
Now the old adage is true (albeit with some inflation) that, if you owe the bank a million, the bank owns you... but if you owe the bank a billion, you own the bank. However, there are legal agreements in place and he does need to retain a relationship with the banks - I know it looks like a personal plaything, but it isn't quite as simple as that.
I have seen the future of universities. And it’s called General Luna
It’s a classic backpacker town on Sirgao island in the Philippines. It’s grown up around a very nice surf break called “cloud 9”
The pace is idyllic half the people are barefoot the variety of bars and pubs and pizza shacks and special ice bath 24/7 juice bars with free pedicures is amazing. The sea is blue the air is soft the beer is cheap and there’s 3000 young people
There are signs everywhere for “digital nomad” conferences but I don’t think it’s stressed out consultants who will be attracted here in the future. Its kids. As most careers are progressively closed down and university becomes increasingly pointless why will kids take on massive debt to go to uni? For the social experience? Meeting people?
Maybe. But they could come to General luna and have a very nice life for $100 a week and maybe learn remotely if they insist or just surf and screw and drink and they will do all that socialising on the beach instead of in freezing expensive places like Paris london or New York - or Oxford or heidelberg or Harvard
Universities are fucked. All our kids will want to go to General Luna
You won't can an accredited degree from somewhere like this and you won't gain a degree that has any component of lab work, or patient interactive training. The open university has for many years shown a different model of University education yet we still have 140+ Unis in the country that students attend in person. Its not right for everyone, but in general having more university educated people in a society seems to be better for all.
We also see just how catastrophically poor it is when we try to teach remotely. Students find it far harder to engage. Watch a lecture in your bedroom and within minutes you are distracted. Watch in a lecture theatre and for the most part you get for more out of it.
I think you miss what a university education is about. For pharmacy (the main course I teach on) the expectations and outcomes for the students are tightly controlled by the professional body. If you want to be a pharmacist you must attend and gain a degree from an accredited course.
The current funding model isn't perfect. I believe it was a half-way house between the state paying for everything and a full blown graduate tax. The idea being that a graduate tax is unlimited whereas the loans can be paid back and then you stop. In practice many loans are going to be written off, and the loans can be seen as a graduate tax with limits. Most students accept this. Perhaps its mostly our generation, the ones who were the 5-10% who went to Uni for free that complain most about the fees?
And we are back to professional qualifications vs abstract academic study.
My daughter, at UCL, tells me that while she attends all the lectures, many do not. Everything is available online. Many do their tutorials online as well.
So, why go. Why get all the debt. Especially when 50-95% of cognitive jobs at the end of it are gonna disappear entirely
It;s fucking obvious. Universities are completely doomed, the model is collapsing in multiple ways, and like bankruptcy is happening slowly and then it will be very fast
A few super posh ones will survive as finishing schools, or for kids who urgently want to be in London, New York, Paris, and maybe some art schools, dance schools etc. Indeed the last-named may prosper
While not getting into this discussion there is a Hannah Fry podcast on comparing the AI learning of different types of jobs which I think you will agree with. It is somewhere with a mega computer running a bionic arm trying to learn how to thread something. That is not programmed to do it but learn how to do it. It is rubbish at it.
As I think you have argued it is going to be much easier automating a writer, accountant, lawyer than it is to learn how to load a dishwasher. When you buy a new dishwasher there will be a lot of broken plates before the robot cracks it.
I used to believe this, as a kind of consoling fallback, but the latest robotics are astonishing
They can now absolutely load dishwashers. Slowly, but they can do it. In a year they will be brilliant
This is the frightening thing on all fronts: the speed of advance is not slowing, if anything it is accelerating
Scary times. Exciting but scary
@leon do you mean the dexterity they can programme into robots eg human and dog lookalikes or actual learning ability. The former I agree, the latter I thought was still way off, although I am by no means an expert, nor have I followed it.
So I assumed you could programme a human like robot to fill a dishwasher, but if you changed to a different designed dishwasher you can not get an AI robot to learn how to load it yet. Regardless that is clearly more difficult than stuff that can be interpreted, then searched from the internet and construct a response.
"This time next year, Rodney..."
This is, (if it is the Samsung one we're talking about), the self-same tech AMR tech we've had for decades: object identification in a source area, picking, and then placing it into a space defined by a well-known geometry. Only we've moved it out of a factory or warehouse and into a "demonstration home". With no prospect of it becoming an actual consumer product any time soon.
ETA: or is it the German Aerospace Center one? Which is the one that's over-engineered with fingers?
I'd sooner toss hundreds of political appointees out, but there we are.
A small step in taking back control from our unelected rulers.
Would you accept hereditary doctors? If not, then you shouldn't accept hereditary parliamentarians.
They are better than appointed parliamentarians
The promise was that they would be removed IF AND ONLY WHEN the Lords was properly reconstituted
Labour lied, once again, and are messing with the constitution for partisan advantage.
But, of course, we hear no complaints from the hypocrites on here who were so focused on voter ID and other changes made by the Tories
It was in their manifesto
Although Labour recognises the good work of many peers who scrutinise the government and improve the quality of legislation passed in Parliament, reform is long over-due and essential. Too many peers do not play a proper role in our democracy. Hereditary peers remain indefensible. And because appointments are for life, the second chamber of Parliament has become too big. The next Labour government will therefore bring about an immediate modernisation, by introducing legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. Labour will also introduce a mandatory retirement age. At the end of the Parliament in which a member reaches 80 years of age, they will be
required to retire from the House of Lords
So?
Changes to the constitution are not matters that should be pursued on a partisan basis.
And the fundamental principle of Blair’s reforms was that the hereditary peers would remain *until* there was a proper reform of the House
A house appointed by the PM will be a disaster for good governance. It’s kicking out a control mechanism.
Moreover given that (in my view) the size of this government’s majority was a one off because of unique circumstances you are introducing a long-term distortion into parliament.
There are 664 life peers at the moment. In 2020 there were a total of 451 peers over 70 (so over 79 by the end of this parliament). Let’s assume - unrealistically - that all 91 hereditaries were in this group, that means that you will have c. 360 life peers retiring at the end of this parliament.
Labour could easily argue that they should appoint 250 replacements over the next 5 years and that 160 should be Labour appontments (in line with their membership of the commons).
If they appoint a bunch of lords under 40 then they are baking in a significant partisan advantage for the next 40 years on the basis of what was - most likely - a freak favourable result for them.
Reform the House of Lords. But do it properly!
You need a lesson in constitutional history.
1) Blair hasn’t been in power for **checks notes** seventeen years
2) No parliament can bind its successors, so the latest manifesto supersedes all that comes before it
3) FPTP was endorsed by the electorate, the country knows what can happen
4) Labour’s motive is to reduce the number of peers.
5) We have a control mechanism on the PM, commonly known as general elections
I have seen the future of universities. And it’s called General Luna
It’s a classic backpacker town on Sirgao island in the Philippines. It’s grown up around a very nice surf break called “cloud 9”
The pace is idyllic half the people are barefoot the variety of bars and pubs and pizza shacks and special ice bath 24/7 juice bars with free pedicures is amazing. The sea is blue the air is soft the beer is cheap and there’s 3000 young people
There are signs everywhere for “digital nomad” conferences but I don’t think it’s stressed out consultants who will be attracted here in the future. Its kids. As most careers are progressively closed down and university becomes increasingly pointless why will kids take on massive debt to go to uni? For the social experience? Meeting people?
Maybe. But they could come to General luna and have a very nice life for $100 a week and maybe learn remotely if they insist or just surf and screw and drink and they will do all that socialising on the beach instead of in freezing expensive places like Paris london or New York - or Oxford or heidelberg or Harvard
Universities are fucked. All our kids will want to go to General Luna
You won't can an accredited degree from somewhere like this and you won't gain a degree that has any component of lab work, or patient interactive training. The open university has for many years shown a different model of University education yet we still have 140+ Unis in the country that students attend in person. Its not right for everyone, but in general having more university educated people in a society seems to be better for all.
We also see just how catastrophically poor it is when we try to teach remotely. Students find it far harder to engage. Watch a lecture in your bedroom and within minutes you are distracted. Watch in a lecture theatre and for the most part you get for more out of it.
I think you miss what a university education is about. For pharmacy (the main course I teach on) the expectations and outcomes for the students are tightly controlled by the professional body. If you want to be a pharmacist you must attend and gain a degree from an accredited course.
The current funding model isn't perfect. I believe it was a half-way house between the state paying for everything and a full blown graduate tax. The idea being that a graduate tax is unlimited whereas the loans can be paid back and then you stop. In practice many loans are going to be written off, and the loans can be seen as a graduate tax with limits. Most students accept this. Perhaps its mostly our generation, the ones who were the 5-10% who went to Uni for free that complain most about the fees?
And we are back to professional qualifications vs abstract academic study.
My daughter, at UCL, tells me that while she attends all the lectures, many do not. Everything is available online. Many do their tutorials online as well.
What's the point in being at university if you do most of it online? (Unless you have special reasons for only being able to do it online).
When I arrived at Cambridge, one of the very first things I was told was "you will learn far more from your fellow students than from lectures and tutorials".
And that was true.
Which is the problem about going all online; how do you replace the interactions you have with other students?
Can't be just disestablish the CofE, and be rid of it?
Absolutely not, it ensures Catholics and Evangelicals are both in our national church. It also ensures weddings and funerals for all parishioners who want them. Pleased to see most MPs at least voted to keep the Bishops in the Lords despite Labour voting to remove the remaining hereditary peers
But why should we havea national church at all? And why us it important that specifically those other two religions are included in it? And I think people have the right to get married or buried whether or not there are bishops in the HoL, or indeed whether the CoE exists at all.
Because it ensures all branches of Christianity are represented in it and because it annoys secular left liberal atheists like you which is an even better reason.
Of course if it was not the established Church C of E churches would start to refuse weddings and funerals to those who live in their area unless they regularly attend church as Catholic priests do for instance and rightly so
There are other places to get married than a church.
On your point 1a: you are arguing for what the thing should be like in response to my argument that the thing should not exist at all; and on your point 1b: I don't think I've ever been called 'left liberal' before!
And buried but if you want a Church wedding only or funeral the C of E being established church is the only reason you get that as of right and that is of course a pivotal reason for its existence.
Of course you are a left liberal, also precisely the type of person US voters voted Trump for purely to annoy the likes of you.
In the culture wars the likes of you are everything conservatives and rightwingers despise
I'm struggling to think what in my 19 years of posting here might have led you to classify me as 'left liberal'. Unless this is your rather dry humour poking through!
Come on cookie, you're just a closeted woke leftie liberal. We all know it, stop pretending (I do think you're pretty liberal for what it's worth)
That said, I'd be intrigued to see a list of posters (plural may be unjustified!) whom hyufd does not consider to be left liberal, remembering that he is, I think the only True Conservative in the village forum (BigG for example defintely does not cut it, I believe)
Popping back in here to mention that it’s very obvious that Starmer is rather rattled by Badenoch. He is in danger of taking a very dismissive/condescending tone to her (and for the second week seems to be getting the backbenchers to go after her too). She’s clunky and needs to improve the ability to think on her feet, but she has really touched a nerve it seems.
He needs to be wary, Callaghan patronised Thatcher too
Did it really damage Callaghan, though?
He lost in 1979 because of the Winter of Discontent, not because of a widely held view that he was a patronising git who mansplained too much at the dispatch box.
He did win their head to heads... but the rubbish piling up in the streets etc rather outweighed a few favourable parliamentary sketches in the Times.
Can't be just disestablish the CofE, and be rid of it?
Absolutely not, it ensures Catholics and Evangelicals are both in our national church. It also ensures weddings and funerals for all parishioners who want them. Pleased to see most MPs at least voted to keep the Bishops in the Lords despite Labour voting to remove the remaining hereditary peers
But why should we havea national church at all? And why us it important that specifically those other two religions are included in it? And I think people have the right to get married or buried whether or not there are bishops in the HoL, or indeed whether the CoE exists at all.
Because it ensures all branches of Christianity are represented in it and because it annoys secular left liberal atheists like you which is an even better reason.
Of course if it was not the established Church C of E churches would start to refuse weddings and funerals to those who live in their area unless they regularly attend church as Catholic priests do for instance and rightly so
There are other places to get married than a church.
On your point 1a: you are arguing for what the thing should be like in response to my argument that the thing should not exist at all; and on your point 1b: I don't think I've ever been called 'left liberal' before!
And buried but if you want a Church wedding only or funeral the C of E being established church is the only reason you get that as of right and that is of course a pivotal reason for its existence.
Of course you are a left liberal, also precisely the type of person US voters voted Trump for purely to annoy the likes of you.
In the culture wars the likes of you are everything conservatives and rightwingers despise
I'm struggling to think what in my 19 years of posting here might have led you to classify me as 'left liberal'. Unless this is your rather dry humour poking through!
Come on cookie, you're just a closeted woke leftie liberal. We all know it, stop pretending (I do think you're pretty liberal for what it's worth)
That said, I'd be intrigued to see a list of posters (plural may be unjustified!) whom hyufd does not consider to be left liberal, remembering that he is, I think the only True Conservative in the village forum (BigG for example defintely does not cut it, I believe)
I am not a pure and true [right wing] conservative and betrayed the party by voting for Blair but to be fair I have never voted Plaid unlike @HYUFD
Heretic.
Please step this way to your involuntary cremation. In the interests of recycling we are using this location
Can't be just disestablish the CofE, and be rid of it?
Absolutely not, it ensures Catholics and Evangelicals are both in our national church. It also ensures weddings and funerals for all parishioners who want them. Pleased to see most MPs at least voted to keep the Bishops in the Lords despite Labour voting to remove the remaining hereditary peers
But why should we havea national church at all? And why us it important that specifically those other two religions are included in it? And I think people have the right to get married or buried whether or not there are bishops in the HoL, or indeed whether the CoE exists at all.
Because it ensures all branches of Christianity are represented in it and because it annoys secular left liberal atheists like you which is an even better reason.
Of course if it was not the established Church C of E churches would start to refuse weddings and funerals to those who live in their area unless they regularly attend church as Catholic priests do for instance and rightly so
There are other places to get married than a church.
On your point 1a: you are arguing for what the thing should be like in response to my argument that the thing should not exist at all; and on your point 1b: I don't think I've ever been called 'left liberal' before!
And buried but if you want a Church wedding only or funeral the C of E being established church is the only reason you get that as of right and that is of course a pivotal reason for its existence.
Of course you are a left liberal, also precisely the type of person US voters voted Trump for purely to annoy the likes of you.
In the culture wars the likes of you are everything conservatives and rightwingers despise
I'm struggling to think what in my 19 years of posting here might have led you to classify me as 'left liberal'. Unless this is your rather dry humour poking through!
Don't worry about it, he's called JohnO a liberal, John who has been a member of the Tory party for fifty years, first became aTory councillor in 1979, and until quite recently was the leader of a Tory council.
Popping back in here to mention that it’s very obvious that Starmer is rather rattled by Badenoch. He is in danger of taking a very dismissive/condescending tone to her (and for the second week seems to be getting the backbenchers to go after her too). She’s clunky and needs to improve the ability to think on her feet, but she has really touched a nerve it seems.
He needs to be wary, Callaghan patronised Thatcher too
Did it really damage Callaghan, though?
He lost in 1979 because of the Winter of Discontent, not because of a widely held view that he was a patronising git who mansplained too much at the dispatch box.
He did win their head to heads... but the rubbish piling up in the streets etc rather outweighed a few favourable parliamentary sketches in the Times.
Half the questions from Lab MPs seem to be about the Tories. It's supposed to be PM's questions.
So this is the first time you’ve ever watched PMQs?
This has been going on since they started televising it.
“So this is the first time you’ve ever watched PMQs?”
To be fair to Andy, BigG and others with strong tribal bias - perhaps tribal bias should come with blindness when 90% of backbench questions from your own party have been written by whips?
Where BigG says it’s noticeable and embarrassing today, in recent years the number of Tory backbench q’s written by whips “my constituents are delighted with money/factory/road or statue put up thanks to this Conservative Government” was if anything more obvious and embarrassing than what we have today, as it never really dealt with the elephant in the room - a party about to suffer record defeat due to owning historic erosion of incomes.
The next General Elections will be decided on how quickly that is forgotten and forgiven, not the yahboo nonsense of PMQs.
Fair comment
Having said that though, PMQs is ripe for some sort of reform - when half the questions are from the MPs from the party in power and written for them by whips, I too find it cringy and pointless, regardless which party is actually in power. Half pointless for sure, as only half the questions are actual questions, when they all should be to avoid prosecution under trade description act.
It’s been set up historically as Parliament backbenchers can ask Prime Minister a question - so this is what gets served up to us as the dish.
But is that dish put in front of us what we actually want and came for? Definitely not.
Does Parliament even need such a “backbench” flavoured dish every Wednesday, or our Democracy in 21st C. better served by the array of very different Opposition leaders having turn asking the questions instead?
But it needs a Prime Minister to accept the reform? A PM or party in power will never give up what’s great for them, but bad for us and democracy.
If I were PM, I would revert to two quarter hour segments on a Tuesday and a Thursday. It was a mistake of Cameron not to do that. I would also get rid of the Diary bollocks. It is noticable that an honest open written question can be much harder to answer than a closed question. Third rate TV "journalists", not just LK, revel in the Gotcha moment but a solid Brian Walden question will always be harder to answer and much more satisfying all round.
I remember an arsehole radio journalist asking Michael Jopling an arsehole question in the mid 90s. He answered with honesty and about half a dozen examples straight down the line leaving the journalist begging the studio to take him off the air.
Can't be just disestablish the CofE, and be rid of it?
Absolutely not, it ensures Catholics and Evangelicals are both in our national church. It also ensures weddings and funerals for all parishioners who want them. Pleased to see most MPs at least voted to keep the Bishops in the Lords despite Labour voting to remove the remaining hereditary peers
But why should we havea national church at all? And why us it important that specifically those other two religions are included in it? And I think people have the right to get married or buried whether or not there are bishops in the HoL, or indeed whether the CoE exists at all.
Because it ensures all branches of Christianity are represented in it and because it annoys secular left liberal atheists like you which is an even better reason.
Of course if it was not the established Church C of E churches would start to refuse weddings and funerals to those who live in their area unless they regularly attend church as Catholic priests do for instance and rightly so
There are other places to get married than a church.
On your point 1a: you are arguing for what the thing should be like in response to my argument that the thing should not exist at all; and on your point 1b: I don't think I've ever been called 'left liberal' before!
And buried but if you want a Church wedding only or funeral the C of E being established church is the only reason you get that as of right and that is of course a pivotal reason for its existence.
Of course you are a left liberal, also precisely the type of person US voters voted Trump for purely to annoy the likes of you.
In the culture wars the likes of you are everything conservatives and rightwingers despise
I'm struggling to think what in my 19 years of posting here might have led you to classify me as 'left liberal'. Unless this is your rather dry humour poking through!
Come on cookie, you're just a closeted woke leftie liberal. We all know it, stop pretending (I do think you're pretty liberal for what it's worth)
That said, I'd be intrigued to see a list of posters (plural may be unjustified!) whom hyufd does not consider to be left liberal, remembering that he is, I think the only True Conservative in the village forum (BigG for example defintely does not cut it, I believe)
I am not a pure and true [right wing] conservative and betrayed the party by voting for Blair but to be fair I have never voted Plaid unlike @HYUFD
Heretic.
Please step this way to your involuntary cremation. In the interests of recycling we are using this location
Half the questions from Lab MPs seem to be about the Tories. It's supposed to be PM's questions.
It is becoming so obvious it is embarrassing
Same old rubbish his honourable friends were asking Johnson and Sunak. It is very annoying, but no more so than the stupid planted questions Johnson and Sunak had to field from their shills. Jonathan Gullis, Chris Philp and our very own Alun Cairns were great exponents.
What did you think of Badenoch's performance? Should we be making the same jokes we were making about the incompetent LOTO Starmer when he started out against Johnson?
Kemi is doing fine and it would be foolish to underestimate her
She was worse than last week. You need Cleverly or Mordaunt. You have time to get Mordaunt I to Parliament.
She is a real danger to labour and you underestimate her at your peril
She's very good at giving people reasons to underestimate her.
After accusing Starmer of reading last week, she's proved herself incapable of reading today. Maybe her team should put it in larger type?
She reminds me of Mrs T.
Sadly that is Mrs Truss.
Nah. Early days. I remember Ruth Davidson really struggling at FMQs early on - to the despair of colleagues. However she buckled down, learned on the job, and grew in stature and popularity. Its not pre-ordained but far too soon to write off Kemi. She's no IDS.
The best programmes I have ever heard on the compromises and complications of medical ethics was a series called "Inside the Ethics Committee" by Joan Bakewell / Vivianne Parry. Where they took the time to think things through, and recognised how complex it all is.
Made at 3 per series for 12 series.
Radio 4 and still on the BBC website as recordings and / or transcripts.
Withdrawal of Treatment: (Transcript) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012r7jn The panel discusses the difficult ethics surrounding treatment withdrawal. This week they consider the case of a man in his late 60s with a chronic lung condition.
Withdrawing Treatment (Transcript, Recording) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012r7jn Palliative Care teams are used to supporting patients at the end of life. But recent requests by two patients with motor neurone disease make some medical staff feel uncomfortable.
They both want to stop using the ventilator mask that is keeping them alive.
Initially prescribed to support breathing at night, their symptoms have progressed to such a degree that they can nolonger breathe without the mask.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00cxr1v (Recording / Transcript) An 86-year-old man with dementia who has had a bad fall wants to go home but his son is concerned that he cannot look after himself and needs to be in residential care. The programme looks at how medical staff and families work out what is in his best interests and whether he has the capacity to make decisions about his care, and how his previous preferences should be included in the decision.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t97xc (Transcript / Recording) Advance Directive A woman is brought to A&E by her husband . She is unconscious having attempted suicide. She's been in pain for more than 30 years with severe arthritis. Having witnessed elderly relatives' death in distressing circumstances years ago, she and her husband have written living wills or advance directives. They ask for no medical treatment in certain circumstances. She has always maintained with everyone she knew that she doesn't ever want to be admitted to intensive care. She has left five copies of her advance directive with her husband, sister, daughter, lawyer and GP. The staff in A&E are torn about what to do - should they admit her to intensive care and save her life, or let her die ? What should hospital staff do? Do they admit her to A&E against the spirit of her advanced directive or give basic treatment knowing it might prolong her life against her wishes but prevent a slow painful death caused by the overdose?
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
Yes, the easy bit is identifying all the waste in budgets and legislation, of which there is plenty in the US.
The difficult bit is then passing whatever legislation is required to fix the problem. It’s even more of a nightmare when most of those involved in passing legislation are bought and paid for by the corporates and industries that are the largest beneficiaries of the waste.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
He's just retweeted Liz Truss saying that we need DOGE in Britain.
Just children. I bet they wouldn't have written that if Harris had won.
They're going to find the number of clicks they generate slow down quite a lot over the next few months and quietly early next year they'll come back.
The fact they’re making a song and dance about it, says it was a political decision. They just don’t like that Elon Musk is working with Donald Trump.
As you say they’ll realise they’re losing a load of clicks-through, and quietly go back to Twitter in a few months’ time.
It seems ridiculous that a hugely political website like the Guardian are now boycotting the number one generator of clicks for political news/articles for established media companies. Way, way more clicks for this stuff comes from Twitter than Instagram, Facebook or Tiktok which are content platforms rather than redirectors to source content.
Are the clicks generated by the Guardian posting or others sharing their articles, though?
They are withdrawing from the first rather than the second.
Spot on.
The actual impact is likely to be very small, because somebody will setup GuardianBot that just automatically Tweets Guardian news stories.
Just children. I bet they wouldn't have written that if Harris had won.
They're going to find the number of clicks they generate slow down quite a lot over the next few months and quietly early next year they'll come back.
The fact they’re making a song and dance about it, says it was a political decision. They just don’t like that Elon Musk is working with Donald Trump.
As you say they’ll realise they’re losing a load of clicks-through, and quietly go back to Twitter in a few months’ time.
It seems ridiculous that a hugely political website like the Guardian are now boycotting the number one generator of clicks for political news/articles for established media companies. Way, way more clicks for this stuff comes from Twitter than Instagram, Facebook or Tiktok which are content platforms rather than redirectors to source content.
Are the clicks generated by the Guardian posting or others sharing their articles, though?
They are withdrawing from the first rather than the second.
Spot on.
The actual impact is likely to be very small, because somebody will setup GuardianBot that just automatically Tweets Guardian news stories.
Have you seen what twitter charge for API access? Actually you can post 50 a day for free so not as bad as I remember their prices being...
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
He's just retweeted Liz Truss saying that we need DOGE in Britain.
Just children. I bet they wouldn't have written that if Harris had won.
They're going to find the number of clicks they generate slow down quite a lot over the next few months and quietly early next year they'll come back.
The fact they’re making a song and dance about it, says it was a political decision. They just don’t like that Elon Musk is working with Donald Trump.
As you say they’ll realise they’re losing a load of clicks-through, and quietly go back to Twitter in a few months’ time.
It seems ridiculous that a hugely political website like the Guardian are now boycotting the number one generator of clicks for political news/articles for established media companies. Way, way more clicks for this stuff comes from Twitter than Instagram, Facebook or Tiktok which are content platforms rather than redirectors to source content.
Are the clicks generated by the Guardian posting or others sharing their articles, though?
They are withdrawing from the first rather than the second.
Spot on.
The actual impact is likely to be very small, because somebody will setup GuardianBot that just automatically Tweets Guardian news stories.
Wild to think that the Guardian is going to do what Trump did a couple of years ago.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
Yes, the easy bit is identifying all the waste in budgets and legislation, of which there is plenty in the US.
The difficult bit is then passing whatever legislation is required to fix the problem. It’s even more of a nightmare when most of those involved in passing legislation are bought and paid for by the corporates and industries that are the largest beneficiaries of the waste.
It's the US - the reason why their is so much bloat is because it kept a bit of NASA say in that State...
So there is a lot that could be saved but good luck trying to get congress / senate to agree..
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
He's just retweeted Liz Truss saying that we need DOGE in Britain.
The Tories have already tried that, for too long.
Not really. The recent Tory approach was to squeeze budgets while continuing to accrue obligations. We need to do it the other way round.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
How does the US govt go bankrupt whilst it is the global reserve currency? Which currencies have a greater than 1% chance of replacing the dollar as the global reserve currency* in the short to medium term?
* Unless the US does something silly like starting a massive global trade war perhaps.
Massive capital flight to the Eurozone, anyone?
The proposed trade war might actually hasten that - a mixture of tariffs and quotas, combined with free exchange controls resembles the policy of the Gold bloc in the early-mid 1930s. Not sure that worked out well for anyone...
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
Yes, the easy bit is identifying all the waste in budgets and legislation, of which there is plenty in the US.
The difficult bit is then passing whatever legislation is required to fix the problem. It’s even more of a nightmare when most of those involved in passing legislation are bought and paid for by the corporates and industries that are the largest beneficiaries of the waste.
Hasn't Trump an advantage here? He can't stand for President again so if he leaves a mess does he care? Especially if, in 2028/9, he's quarrelled with even more people than he has now.
Thanks for another awesome and thought-provoking thread heading, Miss Cycle.
I can see arguments on both sides but I do worry that a "right to die" could eventually become a "duty to die" for the sick, elderly and vulnerable...
Yes, they will see it as their duty to die and stop being a burden, when they are actually much loved!
Is why “right to die” laws will always be rejected by a UK parliament. We ain’t weird and dumb like some countries around the world.
You don't think Labour, with their big majority, will vote it through?
It's a free vote. But, yes, I think it will go through. I'd be against it for the time being, purely because of the lack of time given to consider it. I'm with @Casino_Royale on this.
Does musk give that much of a fuck if TwiX dies, anyway?
It has served its $44bn purpose. It got his choice of President elected and probably made Musk Inc $244bn in the process. And it is - via Trump - now destroying Woke, his big aim
He clearly doesn’t want TwiX to die, but if it does he can wrap it up with satisfaction: job done
Trump won mainly because of the cost of living in the USA, not because of TwiX. Almost all or his twitter supporters voted for him in 2020 too when he lost to Biden
Beside the point. Its won him the undying gratitude of Trump (well, for now) and huge influence in US Govt. Not a bad buy. The other Bros will be grinding teeth in envy.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
He's just retweeted Liz Truss saying that we need DOGE in Britain.
Musk getting hired by Trump reminds me of when Gordon Brown ennobled Alan Sugar to give him a job advising him on business. And I suspect will be about as successful.
As has already been observed, slashing and burning vested interests can get tricky. Will Musk and his coterie have the patience? They will certainly have the political capital for the first few months. But I am sceptical that they'll have the staying power to make a real difference.
I suspect that, like Dominic Cummings, they may be good at identifying the causes of problems in public administration, but will they be any good at curing them?
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
He's just retweeted Liz Truss saying that we need DOGE in Britain.
Liz Truss, the former Prime Minister of a sovereign state, pushes a cryptocurrency designed to bypass the currency of that sovereign state.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
The problem is that most of the spending - as I detailed below - is mandated by law. And Congress will need to change the law.
It's also the case that the vast majority of spending is not on civil servants, but on people. People who voted. And many of whom did not vote for Trump.
Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Support for Low Income Americans, and Debt Interest make up around 70% of the US budget - and maybe more.
The place where there is the most opportunity to cut costs is undoubtedly healthcare, where the US system is hideously expensive. (The US federal government spends more, as a percentage of GDP, on healthcare than the UK government. And we get universal healthcare, and they do not.)
But changing this would require wholesale reform of the entire system, way beyond merely allowing Medicare/Medicaid to negotiate drug prices*.
The fundamental problem is that medical procedures cost at least 5x more in the US than in the UK**, because (a) doctors are paid much more, (b) hospitals get sued all the time, and (c) the process of charging is incredibly complicated because hospitals are private institutions that have many different contracts.
* Medicare/Medicaid between them spend around $150bn a year on prescription medicines, which works out as about 8% of total US government healthcare spending.
** A MRI scan in the US typically costs around $3,000 against around £400 in the UK.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
Yes, the easy bit is identifying all the waste in budgets and legislation, of which there is plenty in the US.
The difficult bit is then passing whatever legislation is required to fix the problem. It’s even more of a nightmare when most of those involved in passing legislation are bought and paid for by the corporates and industries that are the largest beneficiaries of the waste.
It's the US - the reason why their is so much bloat is because it kept a bit of NASA say in that State...
So there is a lot that could be saved but good luck trying to get congress / senate to agree..
18 minutes till we see the depth of the swamp...
Scott's previous dealings show he's no angel but he's a better bet than continuity McConnell imo.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
I have seen the future of universities. And it’s called General Luna
It’s a classic backpacker town on Sirgao island in the Philippines. It’s grown up around a very nice surf break called “cloud 9”
The pace is idyllic half the people are barefoot the variety of bars and pubs and pizza shacks and special ice bath 24/7 juice bars with free pedicures is amazing. The sea is blue the air is soft the beer is cheap and there’s 3000 young people
There are signs everywhere for “digital nomad” conferences but I don’t think it’s stressed out consultants who will be attracted here in the future. Its kids. As most careers are progressively closed down and university becomes increasingly pointless why will kids take on massive debt to go to uni? For the social experience? Meeting people?
Maybe. But they could come to General luna and have a very nice life for $100 a week and maybe learn remotely if they insist or just surf and screw and drink and they will do all that socialising on the beach instead of in freezing expensive places like Paris london or New York - or Oxford or heidelberg or Harvard
Universities are fucked. All our kids will want to go to General Luna
You won't can an accredited degree from somewhere like this and you won't gain a degree that has any component of lab work, or patient interactive training. The open university has for many years shown a different model of University education yet we still have 140+ Unis in the country that students attend in person. Its not right for everyone, but in general having more university educated people in a society seems to be better for all.
We also see just how catastrophically poor it is when we try to teach remotely. Students find it far harder to engage. Watch a lecture in your bedroom and within minutes you are distracted. Watch in a lecture theatre and for the most part you get for more out of it.
I think you miss what a university education is about. For pharmacy (the main course I teach on) the expectations and outcomes for the students are tightly controlled by the professional body. If you want to be a pharmacist you must attend and gain a degree from an accredited course.
The current funding model isn't perfect. I believe it was a half-way house between the state paying for everything and a full blown graduate tax. The idea being that a graduate tax is unlimited whereas the loans can be paid back and then you stop. In practice many loans are going to be written off, and the loans can be seen as a graduate tax with limits. Most students accept this. Perhaps its mostly our generation, the ones who were the 5-10% who went to Uni for free that complain most about the fees?
And we are back to professional qualifications vs abstract academic study.
My daughter, at UCL, tells me that while she attends all the lectures, many do not. Everything is available online. Many do their tutorials online as well.
What's the point in being at university if you do most of it online? (Unless you have special reasons for only being able to do it online).
When I arrived at Cambridge, one of the very first things I was told was "you will learn far more from your fellow students than from lectures and tutorials".
And that was true.
Which is the problem about going all online; how do you replace the interactions you have with other students?
I agree. Just interesting that the current generation are acting out that bit from an American film from years back - Students start by attending lectures, then in a montage, they attend less and less, using take recorders to record the lecture. In the final scene, there are no students. Just tape recorders.
The camera then pans to show that the lecturer has been replaced by a reel-to-reel tape deck playing a recorded seminar.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
He's just retweeted Liz Truss saying that we need DOGE in Britain.
The Tories have already tried that, for too long.
Not really. The recent Tory approach was to squeeze budgets while continuing to accrue obligations. We need to do it the other way round.
I was more referring to dodgy, but it stands either interpretation.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
The problem is that most of the spending - as I detailed below - is mandated by law. And Congress will need to change the law.
It's also the case that the vast majority of spending is not on civil servants, but on people. People who voted. And many of whom did not vote for Trump.
Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Support for Low Income Americans, and Debt Interest make up around 70% of the US budget - and maybe more.
The place where there is the most opportunity to cut costs is undoubtedly healthcare, where the US system is hideously expensive. (The US federal government spends more, as a percentage of GDP, on healthcare than the UK government. And we get universal healthcare, and they do not.)
But changing this would require wholesale reform of the entire system, way beyond merely allowing Medicare/Medicaid to negotiate drug prices*.
The fundamental problem is that medical procedures cost at least 5x more in the US than in the UK**, because (a) doctors are paid much more, (b) hospitals get sued all the time, and (c) the process of charging is incredibly complicated because hospitals are private institutions that have many different contracts.
* Medicare/Medicaid between them spend around $150bn a year on prescription medicines, which works out as about 8% of total US government healthcare spending.
** A MRI scan in the US typically costs around $3,000 against around £400 in the UK.
I've heard it suggested that negotiating the drug prices would mean a reduction in spending of 70% - thoughts?
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
The problem is that most of the spending - as I detailed below - is mandated by law. And Congress will need to change the law.
It's also the case that the vast majority of spending is not on civil servants, but on people. People who voted. And many of whom did not vote for Trump.
Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Support for Low Income Americans, and Debt Interest make up around 70% of the US budget - and maybe more.
The place where there is the most opportunity to cut costs is undoubtedly healthcare, where the US system is hideously expensive. (The US federal government spends more, as a percentage of GDP, on healthcare than the UK government. And we get universal healthcare, and they do not.)
But changing this would require wholesale reform of the entire system, way beyond merely allowing Medicare/Medicaid to negotiate drug prices*.
The fundamental problem is that medical procedures cost at least 5x more in the US than in the UK**, because (a) doctors are paid much more, (b) hospitals get sued all the time, and (c) the process of charging is incredibly complicated because hospitals are private institutions that have many different contracts.
* Medicare/Medicaid between them spend around $150bn a year on prescription medicines, which works out as about 8% of total US government healthcare spending.
** A MRI scan in the US typically costs around $3,000 against around £400 in the UK.
$3,000? A prudent family should just buy a scanner and train one of their kids up in using it.
I have seen the future of universities. And it’s called General Luna
It’s a classic backpacker town on Sirgao island in the Philippines. It’s grown up around a very nice surf break called “cloud 9”
The pace is idyllic half the people are barefoot the variety of bars and pubs and pizza shacks and special ice bath 24/7 juice bars with free pedicures is amazing. The sea is blue the air is soft the beer is cheap and there’s 3000 young people
There are signs everywhere for “digital nomad” conferences but I don’t think it’s stressed out consultants who will be attracted here in the future. Its kids. As most careers are progressively closed down and university becomes increasingly pointless why will kids take on massive debt to go to uni? For the social experience? Meeting people?
Maybe. But they could come to General luna and have a very nice life for $100 a week and maybe learn remotely if they insist or just surf and screw and drink and they will do all that socialising on the beach instead of in freezing expensive places like Paris london or New York - or Oxford or heidelberg or Harvard
Universities are fucked. All our kids will want to go to General Luna
You won't can an accredited degree from somewhere like this and you won't gain a degree that has any component of lab work, or patient interactive training. The open university has for many years shown a different model of University education yet we still have 140+ Unis in the country that students attend in person. Its not right for everyone, but in general having more university educated people in a society seems to be better for all.
We also see just how catastrophically poor it is when we try to teach remotely. Students find it far harder to engage. Watch a lecture in your bedroom and within minutes you are distracted. Watch in a lecture theatre and for the most part you get for more out of it.
I think you miss what a university education is about. For pharmacy (the main course I teach on) the expectations and outcomes for the students are tightly controlled by the professional body. If you want to be a pharmacist you must attend and gain a degree from an accredited course.
The current funding model isn't perfect. I believe it was a half-way house between the state paying for everything and a full blown graduate tax. The idea being that a graduate tax is unlimited whereas the loans can be paid back and then you stop. In practice many loans are going to be written off, and the loans can be seen as a graduate tax with limits. Most students accept this. Perhaps its mostly our generation, the ones who were the 5-10% who went to Uni for free that complain most about the fees?
And we are back to professional qualifications vs abstract academic study.
My daughter, at UCL, tells me that while she attends all the lectures, many do not. Everything is available online. Many do their tutorials online as well.
What's the point in being at university if you do most of it online? (Unless you have special reasons for only being able to do it online).
When I arrived at Cambridge, one of the very first things I was told was "you will learn far more from your fellow students than from lectures and tutorials".
And that was true.
Which is the problem about going all online; how do you replace the interactions you have with other students?
I agree. Just interesting that the current generation are acting out that bit from an American film from years back - Students start by attending lectures, then in a montage, they attend less and less, using take recorders to record the lecture. In the final scene, there are no students. Just tape recorders.
The camera then pans to show that the lecturer has been replaced by a reel-to-reel tape deck playing a recorded seminar.
What was the movie?
"Real Genius," a 1985 comedy directed by Martha Coolidge.
Let's not forget that one of the few speeches over the decades from Lord Ali in the HoL was in support of assisted dying. No surprise this is trying to be rushed through without much scrutiny or debate.
On PMQs, Badenoch did fine. She is still clunky, but she is making sure that Starmer is personally wrapping himself to the budget and the consequences of it.
It isn't popular, the implications for many will be dire and he is appearing churlish, condescending and rude to those who are questioning it.
I think PMQs is an exercise of getting the PM to say clipable comments that the Tories can rely on right wing content creators to pick apart on social media. Starmer is falling for it.
Starmer is prissy and rude and Kemi still isn't very confident. She needs to work on that.
There's a standard line she should use every time a Labour drone or the PM try and ask her a question: "if the honorable member wants me to answer the questions I'm very happy to cross the floor and take his place as PM! If not, the PM will need to answer mine..."
I have seen the future of universities. And it’s called General Luna
It’s a classic backpacker town on Sirgao island in the Philippines. It’s grown up around a very nice surf break called “cloud 9”
The pace is idyllic half the people are barefoot the variety of bars and pubs and pizza shacks and special ice bath 24/7 juice bars with free pedicures is amazing. The sea is blue the air is soft the beer is cheap and there’s 3000 young people
There are signs everywhere for “digital nomad” conferences but I don’t think it’s stressed out consultants who will be attracted here in the future. Its kids. As most careers are progressively closed down and university becomes increasingly pointless why will kids take on massive debt to go to uni? For the social experience? Meeting people?
Maybe. But they could come to General luna and have a very nice life for $100 a week and maybe learn remotely if they insist or just surf and screw and drink and they will do all that socialising on the beach instead of in freezing expensive places like Paris london or New York - or Oxford or heidelberg or Harvard
Universities are fucked. All our kids will want to go to General Luna
You won't can an accredited degree from somewhere like this and you won't gain a degree that has any component of lab work, or patient interactive training. The open university has for many years shown a different model of University education yet we still have 140+ Unis in the country that students attend in person. Its not right for everyone, but in general having more university educated people in a society seems to be better for all.
We also see just how catastrophically poor it is when we try to teach remotely. Students find it far harder to engage. Watch a lecture in your bedroom and within minutes you are distracted. Watch in a lecture theatre and for the most part you get for more out of it.
I think you miss what a university education is about. For pharmacy (the main course I teach on) the expectations and outcomes for the students are tightly controlled by the professional body. If you want to be a pharmacist you must attend and gain a degree from an accredited course.
The current funding model isn't perfect. I believe it was a half-way house between the state paying for everything and a full blown graduate tax. The idea being that a graduate tax is unlimited whereas the loans can be paid back and then you stop. In practice many loans are going to be written off, and the loans can be seen as a graduate tax with limits. Most students accept this. Perhaps its mostly our generation, the ones who were the 5-10% who went to Uni for free that complain most about the fees?
And we are back to professional qualifications vs abstract academic study.
My daughter, at UCL, tells me that while she attends all the lectures, many do not. Everything is available online. Many do their tutorials online as well.
What's the point in being at university if you do most of it online? (Unless you have special reasons for only being able to do it online).
When I arrived at Cambridge, one of the very first things I was told was "you will learn far more from your fellow students than from lectures and tutorials".
And that was true.
Which is the problem about going all online; how do you replace the interactions you have with other students?
I agree. Just interesting that the current generation are acting out that bit from an American film from years back - Students start by attending lectures, then in a montage, they attend less and less, using take recorders to record the lecture. In the final scene, there are no students. Just tape recorders.
The camera then pans to show that the lecturer has been replaced by a reel-to-reel tape deck playing a recorded seminar.
What was the movie?
"Real Genius," a 1985 comedy directed by Martha Coolidge.
Can't be just disestablish the CofE, and be rid of it?
Absolutely not, it ensures Catholics and Evangelicals are both in our national church. It also ensures weddings and funerals for all parishioners who want them. Pleased to see most MPs at least voted to keep the Bishops in the Lords despite Labour voting to remove the remaining hereditary peers
But why should we havea national church at all? And why us it important that specifically those other two religions are included in it? And I think people have the right to get married or buried whether or not there are bishops in the HoL, or indeed whether the CoE exists at all.
Because it ensures all branches of Christianity are represented in it and because it annoys secular left liberal atheists like you which is an even better reason.
Of course if it was not the established Church C of E churches would start to refuse weddings and funerals to those who live in their area unless they regularly attend church as Catholic priests do for instance and rightly so
There are other places to get married than a church.
On your point 1a: you are arguing for what the thing should be like in response to my argument that the thing should not exist at all; and on your point 1b: I don't think I've ever been called 'left liberal' before!
And buried but if you want a Church wedding only or funeral the C of E being established church is the only reason you get that as of right and that is of course a pivotal reason for its existence.
Of course you are a left liberal, also precisely the type of person US voters voted Trump for purely to annoy the likes of you.
In the culture wars the likes of you are everything conservatives and rightwingers despise
I'm struggling to think what in my 19 years of posting here might have led you to classify me as 'left liberal'. Unless this is your rather dry humour poking through!
Come on cookie, you're just a closeted woke leftie liberal. We all know it, stop pretending (I do think you're pretty liberal for what it's worth)
That said, I'd be intrigued to see a list of posters (plural may be unjustified!) whom hyufd does not consider to be left liberal, remembering that he is, I think the only True Conservative in the village forum (BigG for example defintely does not cut it, I believe)
I am not a pure and true [right wing] conservative and betrayed the party by voting for Blair but to be fair I have never voted Plaid unlike @HYUFD
Heretic.
Please step this way to your involuntary cremation. In the interests of recycling we are using this location
It's also a topic where religion needs to keep its nose well out.
Why?
Many people - not you evidently - see their faith as an important part of their ethical framework. Why would you deny them leadership from people they respect?
Yes. Quite
The PB atheists are extremely wearying. Fine. They don’t believe. I feel sorry for them that they don’t have that solace - as they no doubt pity believers for their credulity
They have no right to force their sad desolate nihilism on those of us that do believe
For many religious people the question in the header goes to the core of what religious belief means
A bit like people who avoid animal products. They seem to need everyone else to avoid them to validate their decision.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
How does the US govt go bankrupt whilst it is the global reserve currency? Which currencies have a greater than 1% chance of replacing the dollar as the global reserve currency* in the short to medium term?
* Unless the US does something silly like starting a massive global trade war perhaps.
Massive capital flight to the Eurozone, anyone?
The proposed trade war might actually hasten that - a mixture of tariffs and quotas, combined with free exchange controls resembles the policy of the Gold bloc in the early-mid 1930s. Not sure that worked out well for anyone...
I think it's unlikely that the Euro will replace the US Dollar as a reserve currency for many, many reasons, but the biggest of which is that the Eurozone simply doesn't borrow a lot. And if you want to be a reserve currency, then there has to be lots of your currency washing around, and if you aren't borrowing a lot... then there's not a lot of Euros to go round. By contrast, the US as a debtor nation, has generated lots and lots of dollars.
But this also highlights the issue with the US trying to solve its trade imbalance. Ultimately, global savings end up in US dollars, and that means the currency is relatively expensive and imports are cheap. So long as the rest of the world's excesses savings head off to the US, then a US trade deficit is going to be impossible to solve.
If the US government was serious about solving its current account deficit, it should do two things:
Firstly, it should pursue policies that suppress domestic consumption - like significant tax breaks for saving. Make the interest on your first hundred thousand dollars in a savings account tax free, for example.
Secondly, it should encourage countries that have pursued policies that suppress domestic consumption - like Germany and China -to do the opposite. The policy that would do most to encourage spending would almost certainly be mortgage interest tax relief. It would make borrowing dramatically cheaper, and encourage people to spend more. (It would probably also be politically popular in these countries.) Such encouragement would also probably be a lot more likely to be listened to, and much less likely to result in a trade war, than tariffs.
@Cyclefree You are against this bill but are you against assisted dying in principle? As a liberal I would have assumed (perhaps wrongly) that you would supportive if drafting and safeguards were better?
I think that you assume that being a liberal means supporting the idea that a person can do what they like so long as it doesn't affect others. And to a certain extent I do support that view.
But many many decisions do in fact affect others and we have, I fear, rather too often taken the view that we should be able to do whatever we want regardless of the effect on others. I think this Bill falls into that trap. Allowing - actually requiring (because the Bill places a legal duty on the state's health service to offer this service) - state approved killing crosses a boundary which affects all of us. Claiming otherwise is intellectually and morally dishonest IMO.
Second, if there is one thing that underpins many of my comments and headers it is the belief that while people are free to act as they wish, they must always accept the consequences of their actions. This is far too often missing. People want the freedom without the responsibility or the consequences. That is childish and morally unserious. And I am afraid that approach underpins the approach of this bill. It takes what is a hugely morally freighted decision, perhaps the most difficult one of all, and treats it as if it were simply a matter of following a bureaucratic process, a matter of ticking the right boxes on a form, making the declaration in the right template.
It is the epitome of the "process is all, ignore the substance" mentality which has been so prevalent in our society and institutions, which has degraded their decision-making and judgment and the trust we ought to have in them and which has, all too often, led to appalling substantive decisions, scandals and tragedies.
Thirdly, I do not think - and the evidence from other countries - bears this out, you can have effective safeguards. This Bill does not even try. It allows a declaration by the person wanting to die to be signed by proxy for any reason. Ponder the implications of that. The second doctor is nominated by the first and so is not independent at all. The family and friends do not need to be told. If there is a concern about coercion, there is no appeal process so the only way this can be established is by a criminal process with its higher burden of proof and of course after the person is dead. The financial benefit which the doctors may get from providing this service cannot be taken into account when determining whether there has been a conflict of interest or coercion. Come on! People will do the most horrible and fraudulent things for really quite small sums of money. This financial incentive is exactly the sort of thing which ought not to exist and which ought to be taken into account.
There is a strong streak of sly dishonesty throughout this Bill which pretends to implement safeguards while in reality doing no such thing.
@Cyclefree You are against this bill but are you against assisted dying in principle? As a liberal I would have assumed (perhaps wrongly) that you would supportive if drafting and safeguards were better?
I think that you assume that being a liberal means supporting the idea that a person can do what they like so long as it doesn't affect others. And to a certain extent I do support that view.
But many many decisions do in fact affect others and we have, I fear, rather too often taken the view that we should be able to do whatever we want regardless of the effect on others. I think this Bill falls into that trap. Allowing - actually requiring (because the Bill places a legal duty on the state's health service to offer this service) - state approved killing crosses a boundary which affects all of us. Claiming otherwise is intellectually and morally dishonest IMO.
Second, if there is one thing that underpins many of my comments and headers it is the belief that while people are free to act as they wish, they must always accept the consequences of their actions. This is far too often missing. People want the freedom without the responsibility or the consequences. That is childish and morally unserious. And I am afraid that approach underpins the approach of this bill. It takes what is a hugely morally freighted decision, perhaps the most difficult one of all, and treats it as if it were simply a matter of following a bureaucratic process, a matter of ticking the right boxes on a form, making the declaration in the right template.
It is the epitome of the "process is all, ignore the substance" mentality which has been so prevalent in our society and institutions, which has degraded their decision-making and judgment and the trust we ought to have in them and which has, all too often, led to appalling substantive decisions, scandals and tragedies.
Thirdly, I do not think - and the evidence from other countries - bears this out, you can have effective safeguards. This Bill does not even try. It allows a declaration by the person wanting to die to be signed by proxy for any reason. Ponder the implications of that. The second doctor is nominated by the first and so is not independent at all. The family and friends do not need to be told. If there is a concern about coercion, there is no appeal process so the only way this can be established is by a criminal process with its higher burden of proof and of course after the person is dead. The financial benefit which the doctors may get from providing this service cannot be taken into account when determining whether there has been a conflict of interest or coercion. Come on! People will do the most horrible and fraudulent things for really quite small sums of money. This financial incentive is exactly the sort of thing which ought not to exist and which ought to be taken into account.
There is a strong streak of sly dishonesty throughout this Bill which pretends to implement safeguards while in reality doing no such thing.
Finally, you should read the current CPS guidance on when mercy killings might be prosecuted. It is really very good because it strives to take a balance between the need to maintain the prohibition against killing with the need for mercy. It is not neat and tidy like a bureaucratic form but it is all the better for that. Man is a crooked timber. Those who try to tidy it up are to be mistrusted. Mercy and judgment and taking responsibility for one's actions are a better way of dealing with difficult decisions than the formalistic bureaucratic mind.
Popping back in here to mention that it’s very obvious that Starmer is rather rattled by Badenoch. He is in danger of taking a very dismissive/condescending tone to her (and for the second week seems to be getting the backbenchers to go after her too). She’s clunky and needs to improve the ability to think on her feet, but she has really touched a nerve it seems.
He needs to be wary, Callaghan patronised Thatcher too
Did it really damage Callaghan, though?
He lost in 1979 because of the Winter of Discontent, not because of a widely held view that he was a patronising git who mansplained too much at the dispatch box.
He did win their head to heads... but the rubbish piling up in the streets etc rather outweighed a few favourable parliamentary sketches in the Times.
Yes, I was around back then, and have zero recollection of anything from PMQs - and fairly vivid ones of the rubbish in the streets headlines.
Underestimating Badenoch might be a mistake, but how Starmer addresses her at PMQs is largely irrelevant.
Let's not forget that one of the few speeches over the decades from Lord Ali in the HoL was in support of assisted dying. No surprise this is trying to be rushed through without much scrutiny or debate.
On PMQs, Badenoch did fine. She is still clunky, but she is making sure that Starmer is personally wrapping himself to the budget and the consequences of it.
It isn't popular, the implications for many will be dire and he is appearing churlish, condescending and rude to those who are questioning it.
I think PMQs is an exercise of getting the PM to say clipable comments that the Tories can rely on right wing content creators to pick apart on social media. Starmer is falling for it.
Starmer is prissy and rude and Kemi still isn't very confident. She needs to work on that.
There's a standard line she should use every time a Labour drone or the PM try and ask her a question: "if the honorable member wants me to answer the questions I'm very happy to cross the floor and take his place as PM! If not, the PM will need to answer mine..."
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
The problem is that most of the spending - as I detailed below - is mandated by law. And Congress will need to change the law.
It's also the case that the vast majority of spending is not on civil servants, but on people. People who voted. And many of whom did not vote for Trump.
Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Support for Low Income Americans, and Debt Interest make up around 70% of the US budget - and maybe more.
The place where there is the most opportunity to cut costs is undoubtedly healthcare, where the US system is hideously expensive. (The US federal government spends more, as a percentage of GDP, on healthcare than the UK government. And we get universal healthcare, and they do not.)
But changing this would require wholesale reform of the entire system, way beyond merely allowing Medicare/Medicaid to negotiate drug prices*.
The fundamental problem is that medical procedures cost at least 5x more in the US than in the UK**, because (a) doctors are paid much more, (b) hospitals get sued all the time, and (c) the process of charging is incredibly complicated because hospitals are private institutions that have many different contracts.
* Medicare/Medicaid between them spend around $150bn a year on prescription medicines, which works out as about 8% of total US government healthcare spending.
** A MRI scan in the US typically costs around $3,000 against around £400 in the UK.
I've heard it suggested that negotiating the drug prices would mean a reduction in spending of 70% - thoughts?
Can't be just disestablish the CofE, and be rid of it?
Absolutely not, it ensures Catholics and Evangelicals are both in our national church. It also ensures weddings and funerals for all parishioners who want them. Pleased to see most MPs at least voted to keep the Bishops in the Lords despite Labour voting to remove the remaining hereditary peers
But why should we havea national church at all? And why us it important that specifically those other two religions are included in it? And I think people have the right to get married or buried whether or not there are bishops in the HoL, or indeed whether the CoE exists at all.
Because it ensures all branches of Christianity are represented in it and because it annoys secular left liberal atheists like you which is an even better reason.
Of course if it was not the established Church C of E churches would start to refuse weddings and funerals to those who live in their area unless they regularly attend church as Catholic priests do for instance and rightly so
There are other places to get married than a church.
On your point 1a: you are arguing for what the thing should be like in response to my argument that the thing should not exist at all; and on your point 1b: I don't think I've ever been called 'left liberal' before!
And buried but if you want a Church wedding only or funeral the C of E being established church is the only reason you get that as of right and that is of course a pivotal reason for its existence.
Of course you are a left liberal, also precisely the type of person US voters voted Trump for purely to annoy the likes of you.
In the culture wars the likes of you are everything conservatives and rightwingers despise
I'm struggling to think what in my 19 years of posting here might have led you to classify me as 'left liberal'. Unless this is your rather dry humour poking through!
Don't worry about it, he's called JohnO a liberal, John who has been a member of the Tory party for fifty years, first became a Tory councillor in 1979, and until quite recently was the leader of a Tory council.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
The problem is that most of the spending - as I detailed below - is mandated by law. And Congress will need to change the law.
It's also the case that the vast majority of spending is not on civil servants, but on people. People who voted. And many of whom did not vote for Trump.
Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Support for Low Income Americans, and Debt Interest make up around 70% of the US budget - and maybe more.
The place where there is the most opportunity to cut costs is undoubtedly healthcare, where the US system is hideously expensive. (The US federal government spends more, as a percentage of GDP, on healthcare than the UK government. And we get universal healthcare, and they do not.)
But changing this would require wholesale reform of the entire system, way beyond merely allowing Medicare/Medicaid to negotiate drug prices*.
The fundamental problem is that medical procedures cost at least 5x more in the US than in the UK**, because (a) doctors are paid much more, (b) hospitals get sued all the time, and (c) the process of charging is incredibly complicated because hospitals are private institutions that have many different contracts.
* Medicare/Medicaid between them spend around $150bn a year on prescription medicines, which works out as about 8% of total US government healthcare spending.
** A MRI scan in the US typically costs around $3,000 against around £400 in the UK.
$3,000? A prudent family should just buy a scanner and train one of their kids up in using it.
Bit like CORGI certifying at least one of your children.
Jason Groves @JasonGroves1 NEW: Downing Street confirms council tax rises will be capped at 5% again next year - roughly three times the rate of inflation. Paves the way for £110 increase on an average Band D bill
That's a tax on working people. Before we get to an mayoral precept. Luckily our council has just announced it's latest £10m deficit to it's staff.
@Cyclefree You are against this bill but are you against assisted dying in principle? As a liberal I would have assumed (perhaps wrongly) that you would supportive if drafting and safeguards were better?
I think that you assume that being a liberal means supporting the idea that a person can do what they like so long as it doesn't affect others. And to a certain extent I do support that view.
But many many decisions do in fact affect others and we have, I fear, rather too often taken the view that we should be able to do whatever we want regardless of the effect on others. I think this Bill falls into that trap. Allowing - actually requiring (because the Bill places a legal duty on the state's health service to offer this service) - state approved killing crosses a boundary which affects all of us. Claiming otherwise is intellectually and morally dishonest IMO.
Second, if there is one thing that underpins many of my comments and headers it is the belief that while people are free to act as they wish, they must always accept the consequences of their actions. This is far too often missing. People want the freedom without the responsibility or the consequences. That is childish and morally unserious. And I am afraid that approach underpins the approach of this bill. It takes what is a hugely morally freighted decision, perhaps the most difficult one of all, and treats it as if it were simply a matter of following a bureaucratic process, a matter of ticking the right boxes on a form, making the declaration in the right template.
It is the epitome of the "process is all, ignore the substance" mentality which has been so prevalent in our society and institutions, which has degraded their decision-making and judgment and the trust we ought to have in them and which has, all too often, led to appalling substantive decisions, scandals and tragedies.
Thirdly, I do not think - and the evidence from other countries - bears this out, you can have effective safeguards. This Bill does not even try. It allows a declaration by the person wanting to die to be signed by proxy for any reason. Ponder the implications of that. The second doctor is nominated by the first and so is not independent at all. The family and friends do not need to be told. If there is a concern about coercion, there is no appeal process so the only way this can be established is by a criminal process with its higher burden of proof and of course after the person is dead. The financial benefit which the doctors may get from providing this service cannot be taken into account when determining whether there has been a conflict of interest or coercion. Come on! People will do the most horrible and fraudulent things for really quite small sums of money. This financial incentive is exactly the sort of thing which ought not to exist and which ought to be taken into account.
There is a strong streak of sly dishonesty throughout this Bill which pretends to implement safeguards while in reality doing no such thing.
Finally, you should read the current CPS guidance on when mercy killings might be prosecuted. It is really very good because it strives to take a balance between the need to maintain the prohibition against killing with the need for mercy. It is not neat and tidy like a bureaucratic form but it is all the better for that. Man is a crooked timber. Those who try to tidy it up are to be mistrusted. Mercy and judgment and taking responsibility for one's actions are a better way of dealing with difficult decisions than the formalistic bureaucratic mind.
Humans are non linear. This is why attempts to make them conform to linear rule sets vary between failure, farce and despotism.
Discretion (in the sense of discretion in enforcement of rules) is not a dirty word.
Can't be just disestablish the CofE, and be rid of it?
Absolutely not, it ensures Catholics and Evangelicals are both in our national church. It also ensures weddings and funerals for all parishioners who want them. Pleased to see most MPs at least voted to keep the Bishops in the Lords despite Labour voting to remove the remaining hereditary peers
But why should we havea national church at all? And why us it important that specifically those other two religions are included in it? And I think people have the right to get married or buried whether or not there are bishops in the HoL, or indeed whether the CoE exists at all.
Because it ensures all branches of Christianity are represented in it and because it annoys secular left liberal atheists like you which is an even better reason.
Of course if it was not the established Church C of E churches would start to refuse weddings and funerals to those who live in their area unless they regularly attend church as Catholic priests do for instance and rightly so
There are other places to get married than a church.
On your point 1a: you are arguing for what the thing should be like in response to my argument that the thing should not exist at all; and on your point 1b: I don't think I've ever been called 'left liberal' before!
And buried but if you want a Church wedding only or funeral the C of E being established church is the only reason you get that as of right and that is of course a pivotal reason for its existence.
Of course you are a left liberal, also precisely the type of person US voters voted Trump for purely to annoy the likes of you.
In the culture wars the likes of you are everything conservatives and rightwingers despise
I'm struggling to think what in my 19 years of posting here might have led you to classify me as 'left liberal'. Unless this is your rather dry humour poking through!
Come on cookie, you're just a closeted woke leftie liberal. We all know it, stop pretending (I do think you're pretty liberal for what it's worth)
That said, I'd be intrigued to see a list of posters (plural may be unjustified!) whom hyufd does not consider to be left liberal, remembering that he is, I think the only True Conservative in the village forum (BigG for example defintely does not cut it, I believe)
I am not a pure and true [right wing] conservative and betrayed the party by voting for Blair but to be fair I have never voted Plaid unlike @HYUFD
Heretic.
Please step this way to your involuntary cremation. In the interests of recycling we are using this location
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
The problem is that most of the spending - as I detailed below - is mandated by law. And Congress will need to change the law.
It's also the case that the vast majority of spending is not on civil servants, but on people. People who voted. And many of whom did not vote for Trump.
Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Support for Low Income Americans, and Debt Interest make up around 70% of the US budget - and maybe more.
The place where there is the most opportunity to cut costs is undoubtedly healthcare, where the US system is hideously expensive. (The US federal government spends more, as a percentage of GDP, on healthcare than the UK government. And we get universal healthcare, and they do not.)
But changing this would require wholesale reform of the entire system, way beyond merely allowing Medicare/Medicaid to negotiate drug prices*.
The fundamental problem is that medical procedures cost at least 5x more in the US than in the UK**, because (a) doctors are paid much more, (b) hospitals get sued all the time, and (c) the process of charging is incredibly complicated because hospitals are private institutions that have many different contracts.
* Medicare/Medicaid between them spend around $150bn a year on prescription medicines, which works out as about 8% of total US government healthcare spending.
** A MRI scan in the US typically costs around $3,000 against around £400 in the UK.
I've heard it suggested that negotiating the drug prices would mean a reduction in spending of 70% - thoughts?
A 70% reduction on $150bn would save about $90bn a year - i.e. more than the entire budget of the Department of Education. It would be amazing if the US government could push it through.
However, it would require a change in the law, and the pharmaceutical companies have some of the most expensive and best lobbyists in the world. Their pitch will be: if you do this, then we'll have to cut back dramatically on R&D spending and then we won't cure cancer. Or - worse - that the Chinese will cure cancer, and then we'll all be in hock to China.
Can Trump persuade essentially every Republican Congressman to vote through a change? Well, we'll see, but there are going to be some Congressmen in districts where Pharma companies have massive facilities, and they will have a lot of pull.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
The problem is that most of the spending - as I detailed below - is mandated by law. And Congress will need to change the law.
It's also the case that the vast majority of spending is not on civil servants, but on people. People who voted. And many of whom did not vote for Trump.
Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Support for Low Income Americans, and Debt Interest make up around 70% of the US budget - and maybe more.
The place where there is the most opportunity to cut costs is undoubtedly healthcare, where the US system is hideously expensive. (The US federal government spends more, as a percentage of GDP, on healthcare than the UK government. And we get universal healthcare, and they do not.)
But changing this would require wholesale reform of the entire system, way beyond merely allowing Medicare/Medicaid to negotiate drug prices*.
The fundamental problem is that medical procedures cost at least 5x more in the US than in the UK**, because (a) doctors are paid much more, (b) hospitals get sued all the time, and (c) the process of charging is incredibly complicated because hospitals are private institutions that have many different contracts.
* Medicare/Medicaid between them spend around $150bn a year on prescription medicines, which works out as about 8% of total US government healthcare spending.
** A MRI scan in the US typically costs around $3,000 against around £400 in the UK.
I've heard it suggested that negotiating the drug prices would mean a reduction in spending of 70% - thoughts?
Isn't that likely to upset some part, at least, of Big Pharma? And doesn't Big Pharma support some Congress Members and Senators? Republicans included!
Jason Groves @JasonGroves1 NEW: Downing Street confirms council tax rises will be capped at 5% again next year - roughly three times the rate of inflation. Paves the way for £110 increase on an average Band D bill
That's a tax on working people. Before we get to an mayoral precept. Luckily our council has just announced it's latest £10m deficit to it's staff.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
Yes, the easy bit is identifying all the waste in budgets and legislation, of which there is plenty in the US.
The difficult bit is then passing whatever legislation is required to fix the problem. It’s even more of a nightmare when most of those involved in passing legislation are bought and paid for by the corporates and industries that are the largest beneficiaries of the waste.
Hasn't Trump an advantage here? He can't stand for President again so if he leaves a mess does he care? Especially if, in 2028/9, he's quarrelled with even more people than he has now.
Trump has the advantage of not standing again, but there’s not a lot he can do without support from the House and Senate, which are full of people reliant on donations from big industries to be re-elected. Industries that have worked hard over decades to make sure they are present in every State and most Congressional districts, so any talk of budget cuts is immediately linked to jobs in their home towns.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
He's just retweeted Liz Truss saying that we need DOGE in Britain.
Musk getting hired by Trump reminds me of when Gordon Brown ennobled Alan Sugar to give him a job advising him on business. And I suspect will be about as successful.
As has already been observed, slashing and burning vested interests can get tricky. Will Musk and his coterie have the patience? They will certainly have the political capital for the first few months. But I am sceptical that they'll have the staying power to make a real difference.
I suspect that, like Dominic Cummings, they may be good at identifying the causes of problems in public administration, but will they be any good at curing them?
We'll see but what I suspect is it won't be about saving lots of money. Just as they smeared the electoral process for their own benefit they'll try to do the same with "federal government". They'll turn up (and if not invent) examples of where money is being spent in ways that look wasteful (and some of it will be wasteful, tbf, bound to find a few fish in such a large pond), and they'll make a big song and dance about this whilst failing to make material reductions in the total. The whole exercise will set them up with a convenient enemy which few of their voters have affinity for - Reagan's "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" ho ho bla bla - and keep Trump operating under his preferred optics as an outsider even as he is, in fact, that self same government.
Popping back in here to mention that it’s very obvious that Starmer is rather rattled by Badenoch. He is in danger of taking a very dismissive/condescending tone to her (and for the second week seems to be getting the backbenchers to go after her too). She’s clunky and needs to improve the ability to think on her feet, but she has really touched a nerve it seems.
He needs to be wary, Callaghan patronised Thatcher too
Did it really damage Callaghan, though?
He lost in 1979 because of the Winter of Discontent, not because of a widely held view that he was a patronising git who mansplained too much at the dispatch box.
He did win their head to heads... but the rubbish piling up in the streets etc rather outweighed a few favourable parliamentary sketches in the Times.
Yes, I was around back then, and have zero recollection of anything from PMQs - and fairly vivid ones of the rubbish in the streets headlines.
Underestimating Badenoch might be a mistake, but how Starmer addresses her at PMQs is largely irrelevant.
PMQs only really matters for how it affects the morale of the parliamentary parties and, to a lesser extent, the activist bases.
It's also a topic where religion needs to keep its nose well out.
Why?
Many people - not you evidently - see their faith as an important part of their ethical framework. Why would you deny them leadership from people they respect?
Yes. Quite
The PB atheists are extremely wearying. Fine. They don’t believe. I feel sorry for them that they don’t have that solace - as they no doubt pity believers for their credulity
They have no right to force their sad desolate nihilism on those of us that do believe
For many religious people the question in the header goes to the core of what religious belief means
But both believers and unbelievers are represented through the democratic process. The perspective of a believer is valid but not special. Why should believers get an extra go at representation? I have no qualms with the churches expressing a view but the fact that that view is religiously informed does not lend it more weight than the view of those whose view is based on secular reasoning. FWIW, I probably agree with the position of the CoE on this subject.
All true. But religion informs the ethical framework of many of those who will be involved in this. Denying that is one option. But, as an atheist, I think that is inefficient and self defeating.
What will be accepted by society, is the societal "average" of moral and ethical constraints. The law (should) just try and run to catch up. So you will be feeding religious concerns into the law, regardless of whether you do this implicit, or explicitly.
Trying to dictate to society via the law is an attempt at the Rule of The Philosopher Kings. Which has always failed.
Who says anything about religious people not using it as an 'ethical' framework (*)? Of course they can. But their view and opinion is no more valid or invalid than mine, just because it is their reading of their religion. Their views get no extra validity or strength through being based on their individual reading of a religion.
(*) Although again I state that 'ethical' in many religious people seems to be more what advantages them, and not what is right, what their holy book says, or what their God might want.
You did. You said “religion should keep its nose well out”.
People can use whatever basis they want to form their views. Lobby groups - on whatever side - and other interested parties have the right to express their views.
Why are you so eager to cut down on debate?
I am not trying to cut down debate. But given religion's rich history of doing exactly that on a whole host of issues, I think your intervention is fairly hilarious.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
Yes, the easy bit is identifying all the waste in budgets and legislation, of which there is plenty in the US.
The difficult bit is then passing whatever legislation is required to fix the problem. It’s even more of a nightmare when most of those involved in passing legislation are bought and paid for by the corporates and industries that are the largest beneficiaries of the waste.
Hasn't Trump an advantage here? He can't stand for President again so if he leaves a mess does he care? Especially if, in 2028/9, he's quarrelled with even more people than he has now.
Trump has the advantage of not standing again, but there’s not a lot he can do without support from the House and Senate, which are full of people reliant on donations from big industries to be re-elected. Industries that have worked hard over decades to make sure they are present in every State and most Congressional districts, so any talk of budget cuts is immediately linked to jobs in their home towns.
The assumption that they are reliant on donations from big industries to be re-elected must be due for a reassessment given that Kamala Harris has just failed to get elected despite spending a billion dollars.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
The problem is that most of the spending - as I detailed below - is mandated by law. And Congress will need to change the law.
It's also the case that the vast majority of spending is not on civil servants, but on people. People who voted. And many of whom did not vote for Trump.
Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Support for Low Income Americans, and Debt Interest make up around 70% of the US budget - and maybe more.
The place where there is the most opportunity to cut costs is undoubtedly healthcare, where the US system is hideously expensive. (The US federal government spends more, as a percentage of GDP, on healthcare than the UK government. And we get universal healthcare, and they do not.)
But changing this would require wholesale reform of the entire system, way beyond merely allowing Medicare/Medicaid to negotiate drug prices*.
The fundamental problem is that medical procedures cost at least 5x more in the US than in the UK**, because (a) doctors are paid much more, (b) hospitals get sued all the time, and (c) the process of charging is incredibly complicated because hospitals are private institutions that have many different contracts.
* Medicare/Medicaid between them spend around $150bn a year on prescription medicines, which works out as about 8% of total US government healthcare spending.
** A MRI scan in the US typically costs around $3,000 against around £400 in the UK.
I've heard it suggested that negotiating the drug prices would mean a reduction in spending of 70% - thoughts?
Seems unlikely. Note that the Inflation Reduction Act already attempted some of this.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2796056 ..Some parts of the legislation were expected in any budget deal, including extending the enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, first enacted as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The enhanced subsidies are now in place through 2025 and may well become permanent.
The changes to Medicare’s purchases of prescription drugs were particularly unexpected and are more controversial.1,2 Medicare purchases pharmaceuticals through 2 mechanisms: through Part D for prescribed drugs dispensed through pharmacies, and in Part B for physician-administered drugs. Each of these programs will undergo changes.
For Part D, beneficiary access will be improved in several ways. For the first time, there will be a limit on total spending for prescription drugs, $2000 per year. In addition, cost sharing for Medicare beneficiaries who use insulin will be capped at $35 per month and vaccines covered under Part D will be available without cost sharing. Several million people will benefit from these provisions, and the use of pharmaceuticals will increase accordingly.
The pharmaceutical industry will face several cost-reduction provisions, however. Starting in 2023, pharmaceutical companies will have to pay rebates to Medicare if their Medicare prices increase more rapidly than inflation. This provision applies to almost all Part D drugs, along with single-source and biologic drugs covered under Part B. Such inflation rebates are already in place for Medicaid and thus are familiar to market participants.
Most controversially, the bill requires Medicare to negotiate prices for a small set of drugs. In all, up to 60 drugs will be subject to negotiation, spread over a 4-year period from 2026 through 2029. Negotiations are designed for drugs that are top sellers and have been on the market for many years, but do not have competition.. ..For drugs that are subject to negotiation, the law establishes a maximum fair price that is roughly 25% below current prices, with the ability for negotiation to take prices even lower. Even without significant bargaining, some price reductions are guaranteed.
Despite the fact that the drug negotiation provision is expected to save only a little more than the inflation provision ($102 billion vs $62 billion over 10 years), much more controversy has attended the negotiation provision than the inflation provision. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America came out strongly opposed to the negotiation provision and has threatened to sue to prevent it from taking effect...
Interesting thread. I agree with this - as vehicles to encourage venture capital investment, they're a multi decade failure. Reeves should take a look.
Angel investment tax breaks like EIS and VCT are one of the sacred cows of the UK tech and VC ecosystem.
Let's not forget that one of the few speeches over the decades from Lord Ali in the HoL was in support of assisted dying. No surprise this is trying to be rushed through without much scrutiny or debate.
On PMQs, Badenoch did fine. She is still clunky, but she is making sure that Starmer is personally wrapping himself to the budget and the consequences of it.
It isn't popular, the implications for many will be dire and he is appearing churlish, condescending and rude to those who are questioning it.
I think PMQs is an exercise of getting the PM to say clipable comments that the Tories can rely on right wing content creators to pick apart on social media. Starmer is falling for it.
Starmer is prissy and rude and Kemi still isn't very confident. She needs to work on that.
There's a standard line she should use every time a Labour drone or the PM try and ask her a question: "if the honorable member wants me to answer the questions I'm very happy to cross the floor and take his place as PM! If not, the PM will need to answer mine..."
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
He's just retweeted Liz Truss saying that we need DOGE in Britain.
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
The problem is that most of the spending - as I detailed below - is mandated by law. And Congress will need to change the law.
It's also the case that the vast majority of spending is not on civil servants, but on people. People who voted. And many of whom did not vote for Trump.
Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Support for Low Income Americans, and Debt Interest make up around 70% of the US budget - and maybe more.
The place where there is the most opportunity to cut costs is undoubtedly healthcare, where the US system is hideously expensive. (The US federal government spends more, as a percentage of GDP, on healthcare than the UK government. And we get universal healthcare, and they do not.)
But changing this would require wholesale reform of the entire system, way beyond merely allowing Medicare/Medicaid to negotiate drug prices*.
The fundamental problem is that medical procedures cost at least 5x more in the US than in the UK**, because (a) doctors are paid much more, (b) hospitals get sued all the time, and (c) the process of charging is incredibly complicated because hospitals are private institutions that have many different contracts.
* Medicare/Medicaid between them spend around $150bn a year on prescription medicines, which works out as about 8% of total US government healthcare spending.
** A MRI scan in the US typically costs around $3,000 against around £400 in the UK.
I've heard it suggested that negotiating the drug prices would mean a reduction in spending of 70% - thoughts?
A 70% reduction on $150bn would save about $90bn a year - i.e. more than the entire budget of the Department of Education. It would be amazing if the US government could push it through.
However, it would require a change in the law, and the pharmaceutical companies have some of the most expensive and best lobbyists in the world. Their pitch will be: if you do this, then we'll have to cut back dramatically on R&D spending and then we won't cure cancer. Or - worse - that the Chinese will cure cancer, and then we'll all be in hock to China.
Can Trump persuade essentially every Republican Congressman to vote through a change? Well, we'll see, but there are going to be some Congressmen in districts where Pharma companies have massive facilities, and they will have a lot of pull.
Oh indeed. It would be one of the few populist measures that would be
1) Popular among the vast majority of the population, not just the MAGA mob 2) Be vaguely sensible 3) Actually achieve what it sets out to do.
Popping back in here to mention that it’s very obvious that Starmer is rather rattled by Badenoch. He is in danger of taking a very dismissive/condescending tone to her (and for the second week seems to be getting the backbenchers to go after her too). She’s clunky and needs to improve the ability to think on her feet, but she has really touched a nerve it seems.
He needs to be wary, Callaghan patronised Thatcher too
Did it really damage Callaghan, though?
He lost in 1979 because of the Winter of Discontent, not because of a widely held view that he was a patronising git who mansplained too much at the dispatch box.
He did win their head to heads... but the rubbish piling up in the streets etc rather outweighed a few favourable parliamentary sketches in the Times.
Yes, I was around back then, and have zero recollection of anything from PMQs - and fairly vivid ones of the rubbish in the streets headlines.
Underestimating Badenoch might be a mistake, but how Starmer addresses her at PMQs is largely irrelevant.
It’s also related to political Shareprice. You can belittle something unpopular - like Badenoch is with the voters right now - but if something is popular it takes much more thought in how you publicly tackle it.
Much in the same way at some point it doesn’t matter what a politician is saying if no one is listening anymore, the share price is all gone.
75% of voters in US election for example, decided their vote before September - Sept/October the actual White Heat of the US election campaigning when Harris was likely at her most prominent ever, and Trump at the worst of his political career so far, didn’t move votes as they had already been decided, the voters already tuned out just wanting it over.
This is the key danger of Badenoch - in the coming years a few crazy broad brush positions or policies, and the voters will decide early and just tune out. If you havn’t a clue what I’m talking about today, you will know when it happens.
Apart from geeky places like PB, sniffing every bit of detail, even though details never decide General Elections, how tuned in to UK politics are the voters who matter right now?
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
Yes, the easy bit is identifying all the waste in budgets and legislation, of which there is plenty in the US.
The difficult bit is then passing whatever legislation is required to fix the problem. It’s even more of a nightmare when most of those involved in passing legislation are bought and paid for by the corporates and industries that are the largest beneficiaries of the waste.
Hasn't Trump an advantage here? He can't stand for President again so if he leaves a mess does he care? Especially if, in 2028/9, he's quarrelled with even more people than he has now.
Trump has the advantage of not standing again, but there’s not a lot he can do without support from the House and Senate, which are full of people reliant on donations from big industries to be re-elected. Industries that have worked hard over decades to make sure they are present in every State and most Congressional districts, so any talk of budget cuts is immediately linked to jobs in their home towns.
Shouldn't we save the excuses for after he's failed?
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
Yes, the easy bit is identifying all the waste in budgets and legislation, of which there is plenty in the US.
The difficult bit is then passing whatever legislation is required to fix the problem. It’s even more of a nightmare when most of those involved in passing legislation are bought and paid for by the corporates and industries that are the largest beneficiaries of the waste.
Hasn't Trump an advantage here? He can't stand for President again so if he leaves a mess does he care? Especially if, in 2028/9, he's quarrelled with even more people than he has now.
Trump has the advantage of not standing again, but there’s not a lot he can do without support from the House and Senate, which are full of people reliant on donations from big industries to be re-elected. Industries that have worked hard over decades to make sure they are present in every State and most Congressional districts, so any talk of budget cuts is immediately linked to jobs in their home towns.
The assumption that they are reliant on donations from big industries to be re-elected must be due for a reassessment given that Kamala Harris has just failed to get elected despite spending a billion dollars.
The top ten political donors of the election period were all Republican. Their donations totalled around a billion dollars, too (but weren't made directly to the Trump campaign).
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
The problem is that most of the spending - as I detailed below - is mandated by law. And Congress will need to change the law.
It's also the case that the vast majority of spending is not on civil servants, but on people. People who voted. And many of whom did not vote for Trump.
Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Support for Low Income Americans, and Debt Interest make up around 70% of the US budget - and maybe more.
The place where there is the most opportunity to cut costs is undoubtedly healthcare, where the US system is hideously expensive. (The US federal government spends more, as a percentage of GDP, on healthcare than the UK government. And we get universal healthcare, and they do not.)
But changing this would require wholesale reform of the entire system, way beyond merely allowing Medicare/Medicaid to negotiate drug prices*.
The fundamental problem is that medical procedures cost at least 5x more in the US than in the UK**, because (a) doctors are paid much more, (b) hospitals get sued all the time, and (c) the process of charging is incredibly complicated because hospitals are private institutions that have many different contracts.
* Medicare/Medicaid between them spend around $150bn a year on prescription medicines, which works out as about 8% of total US government healthcare spending.
** A MRI scan in the US typically costs around $3,000 against around £400 in the UK.
I've heard it suggested that negotiating the drug prices would mean a reduction in spending of 70% - thoughts?
Isn't that likely to upset some part, at least, of Big Pharma? And doesn't Big Pharma support some Congress Members and Senators? Republicans included!
Yes. That is why the stupid law exists. And why they used back the last time Trump tried to change it. Only Trump was stupid enough to try changing it.
Let's not forget that one of the few speeches over the decades from Lord Ali in the HoL was in support of assisted dying. No surprise this is trying to be rushed through without much scrutiny or debate.
On PMQs, Badenoch did fine. She is still clunky, but she is making sure that Starmer is personally wrapping himself to the budget and the consequences of it.
It isn't popular, the implications for many will be dire and he is appearing churlish, condescending and rude to those who are questioning it.
I think PMQs is an exercise of getting the PM to say clipable comments that the Tories can rely on right wing content creators to pick apart on social media. Starmer is falling for it.
Starmer is prissy and rude and Kemi still isn't very confident. She needs to work on that.
There's a standard line she should use every time a Labour drone or the PM try and ask her a question: "if the honorable member wants me to answer the questions I'm very happy to cross the floor and take his place as PM! If not, the PM will need to answer mine..."
She needs to say this every time.
Said of every opposition leader I can recall.
I wonder if Kemi is quite isolated within the party. She hasn't promoted anyone in the Jenrick/Hayes wing except RJ hinself to a fairly junior role, so they're not going to be falling over themselves to help. At the same time, she can't really embrace the soggy element or she will completely lose all credibility in her reform/learn from the election agenda. Who is coaching her for PMQs?
Either we get government efficient or America goes bankrupt.
That’s what it comes down to.
Wish I were wrong, but it’s true.
This is why I think Musk won't be associated with Trump by 2026.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
Yes, the easy bit is identifying all the waste in budgets and legislation, of which there is plenty in the US.
The difficult bit is then passing whatever legislation is required to fix the problem. It’s even more of a nightmare when most of those involved in passing legislation are bought and paid for by the corporates and industries that are the largest beneficiaries of the waste.
Hasn't Trump an advantage here? He can't stand for President again so if he leaves a mess does he care? Especially if, in 2028/9, he's quarrelled with even more people than he has now.
Trump has the advantage of not standing again, but there’s not a lot he can do without support from the House and Senate, which are full of people reliant on donations from big industries to be re-elected. Industries that have worked hard over decades to make sure they are present in every State and most Congressional districts, so any talk of budget cuts is immediately linked to jobs in their home towns.
The assumption that they are reliant on donations from big industries to be re-elected must be due for a reassessment given that Kamala Harris has just failed to get elected despite spending a billion dollars.
The big corporations are utterly ruthless when it comes to these things though. They routinely do stuff like take a Congressman in a safe disctrict, with a job for life, and close a facility in that area, while throwing millions at a primary challenger who will start campigning immediately on the single issue of the Congressman being responsible for the facility closure.
Jason Groves @JasonGroves1 NEW: Downing Street confirms council tax rises will be capped at 5% again next year - roughly three times the rate of inflation. Paves the way for £110 increase on an average Band D bill
That's a tax on working people. Before we get to an mayoral precept. Luckily our council has just announced it's latest £10m deficit to it's staff.
No it's not. It's a tax on property.
There is a lot of chat on PB about making the tax system relatively better for working people. Increasing council tax in lieu of other tax increases (like NICs) would meet that objective.
Political suicide, but I'd reform council tax and link it to home values (with a big discount for flats and terraced housing, to make it a proxy land tax) and double it as a proportion of the tax burden.
It's also a topic where religion needs to keep its nose well out.
Why?
Many people - not you evidently - see their faith as an important part of their ethical framework. Why would you deny them leadership from people they respect?
Yes. Quite
The PB atheists are extremely wearying. Fine. They don’t believe. I feel sorry for them that they don’t have that solace - as they no doubt pity believers for their credulity
They have no right to force their sad desolate nihilism on those of us that do believe
For many religious people the question in the header goes to the core of what religious belief means
But both believers and unbelievers are represented through the democratic process. The perspective of a believer is valid but not special. Why should believers get an extra go at representation? I have no qualms with the churches expressing a view but the fact that that view is religiously informed does not lend it more weight than the view of those whose view is based on secular reasoning. FWIW, I probably agree with the position of the CoE on this subject.
All true. But religion informs the ethical framework of many of those who will be involved in this. Denying that is one option. But, as an atheist, I think that is inefficient and self defeating.
What will be accepted by society, is the societal "average" of moral and ethical constraints. The law (should) just try and run to catch up. So you will be feeding religious concerns into the law, regardless of whether you do this implicit, or explicitly.
Trying to dictate to society via the law is an attempt at the Rule of The Philosopher Kings. Which has always failed.
Who says anything about religious people not using it as an 'ethical' framework (*)? Of course they can. But their view and opinion is no more valid or invalid than mine, just because it is their reading of their religion. Their views get no extra validity or strength through being based on their individual reading of a religion.
(*) Although again I state that 'ethical' in many religious people seems to be more what advantages them, and not what is right, what their holy book says, or what their God might want.
You did. You said “religion should keep its nose well out”.
People can use whatever basis they want to form their views. Lobby groups - on whatever side - and other interested parties have the right to express their views.
Why are you so eager to cut down on debate?
I am not trying to cut down debate. But given religion's rich history of doing exactly that on a whole host of issues, I think your intervention is fairly hilarious.
When it comes to assisted dying science is no use in evaluating its merits - it deals in empirical data, not moral decisions; people are wanting to 'keep religion out of it', and I agree that religion in itself doesn't help much in deciding when killing is justified despite the universal agreement that murder is wrong, it is hard to reach agreement about the exact borderline of justification.
So how should the debate proceed, except by personal sentiment?
Popping back in here to mention that it’s very obvious that Starmer is rather rattled by Badenoch. He is in danger of taking a very dismissive/condescending tone to her (and for the second week seems to be getting the backbenchers to go after her too). She’s clunky and needs to improve the ability to think on her feet, but she has really touched a nerve it seems.
He needs to be wary, Callaghan patronised Thatcher too
Did it really damage Callaghan, though?
He lost in 1979 because of the Winter of Discontent, not because of a widely held view that he was a patronising git who mansplained too much at the dispatch box.
He did win their head to heads... but the rubbish piling up in the streets etc rather outweighed a few favourable parliamentary sketches in the Times.
Yes, I was around back then, and have zero recollection of anything from PMQs - and fairly vivid ones of the rubbish in the streets headlines.
Underestimating Badenoch might be a mistake, but how Starmer addresses her at PMQs is largely irrelevant.
It’s also related to political Shareprice. You can belittle something unpopular - like Badenoch is with the voters right now - but if something is popular it takes much more thought in how you publicly tackle it.
Much in the same way at some point it doesn’t matter what a politician is saying if no one is listening anymore, the share price is all gone.
75% of voters in US election for example, decided their vote before September - Sept/October the actual White Heat of the US election campaigning when Harris was likely at her most prominent ever, and Trump at the worst of his political career so far, didn’t move votes as they had already been decided, the voters already tuned out just wanting it over.
This is the key danger of Badenoch - in the coming years a few crazy broad brush positions or policies, and the voters will decide early and just tune out. If you havn’t a clue what I’m talking about today, you will know when it happens.
Apart from geeky places like PB, sniffing every bit of detail, even though details never decide General Elections, how tuned in to UK politics are the voters who matter right now?
PS quick edit. Nearly doxxed myself.
Among the Normal People (not political obsessives)
- a minority know that she is the Conservative leader - a slightly larger group know that a black lady is the Conservative leader - saw something on the news etc - 97% have no idea if she has even started the job yet.
Comments
* Unless the US does something silly like starting a massive global trade war perhaps.
And the Guardian is a left wing newspaper and was vehemently anti-Trump.
The pretence that these things are not so is bizarre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi1tIrwm0e4
That said, I'd be intrigued to see a list of posters (plural may be unjustified!) whom hyufd does not consider to be left liberal, remembering that he is, I think the only True Conservative in the village forum (BigG for example defintely does not cut it, I believe)
I don't have access to Mobile device numbers without some serious digging.
A lot of businessmen struggle with this going in. They think they are the CEO, will dictate what needs doing, and it will be done. Then they realise that Iowa has farmers, West Virginia has miners, and everywhere has pensioners... laying down the law to members of congress, senators and governors, particularly after the honeymoon wears off, is really hard. As soon as it gets into the political sausage-maker stage, he'll find it really difficult, and his mind isn't really wired in that way at the best of times.
I'm at work and just checking in so will likely miss the chance to comment at length except to say in true David Cameron/Gordon Brown style - I agree with Cyclefree.
Surely that would be the true way to 'Drain the Swamp'?
I can see arguments on both sides but I do worry that a "right to die" could eventually become a "duty to die" for the sick, elderly and vulnerable...
Now the old adage is true (albeit with some inflation) that, if you owe the bank a million, the bank owns you... but if you owe the bank a billion, you own the bank. However, there are legal agreements in place and he does need to retain a relationship with the banks - I know it looks like a personal plaything, but it isn't quite as simple as that.
This is, (if it is the Samsung one we're talking about), the self-same tech AMR tech we've had for decades: object identification in a source area, picking, and then placing it into a space defined by a well-known geometry. Only we've moved it out of a factory or warehouse and into a "demonstration home". With no prospect of it becoming an actual consumer product any time soon.
ETA: or is it the German Aerospace Center one? Which is the one that's over-engineered with fingers?
Is why “right to die” laws will always be rejected by a UK parliament. We ain’t weird and dumb like some countries around the world.
And that was true.
Which is the problem about going all online; how do you replace the interactions you have with other students?
He lost in 1979 because of the Winter of Discontent, not because of a widely held view that he was a patronising git who mansplained too much at the dispatch box.
He did win their head to heads... but the rubbish piling up in the streets etc rather outweighed a few favourable parliamentary sketches in the Times.
Please step this way to your involuntary cremation. In the interests of recycling we are using this location
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAyIAJCWVxA
I remember an arsehole radio journalist asking Michael Jopling an arsehole question in the mid 90s. He answered with honesty and about half a dozen examples straight down the line leaving the journalist begging the studio to take him off the air.
Made at 3 per series for 12 series.
Radio 4 and still on the BBC website as recordings and / or transcripts.
All episodes:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007xbtd/episodes/guide
Examples:
Withdrawal of Treatment: (Transcript)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012r7jn
The panel discusses the difficult ethics surrounding treatment withdrawal. This week they consider the case of a man in his late 60s with a chronic lung condition.
Withdrawing Treatment (Transcript, Recording)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012r7jn
Palliative Care teams are used to supporting patients at the end of life. But recent requests by two patients with motor neurone disease make some medical staff feel uncomfortable.
They both want to stop using the ventilator mask that is keeping them alive.
Initially prescribed to support breathing at night, their symptoms have progressed to such a degree that they can nolonger breathe without the mask.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00cxr1v (Recording / Transcript)
An 86-year-old man with dementia who has had a bad fall wants to go home but his son is concerned that he cannot look after himself and needs to be in residential care. The programme looks at how medical staff and families work out what is in his best interests and whether he has the capacity to make decisions about his care, and how his previous preferences should be included in the decision.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t97xc (Transcript / Recording)
Advance Directive
A woman is brought to A&E by her husband . She is unconscious having attempted suicide. She's been in pain for more than 30 years with severe arthritis. Having witnessed elderly relatives' death in distressing circumstances years ago, she and her husband have written living wills or advance directives. They ask for no medical treatment in certain circumstances. She has always maintained with everyone she knew that she doesn't ever want to be admitted to intensive care. She has left five copies of her advance directive with her husband, sister, daughter, lawyer and GP. The staff in A&E are torn about what to do - should they admit her to intensive care and save her life, or let her die ?
What should hospital staff do? Do they admit her to A&E against the spirit of her advanced directive or give basic treatment knowing it might prolong her life against her wishes but prevent a slow painful death caused by the overdose?
The difficult bit is then passing whatever legislation is required to fix the problem. It’s even more of a nightmare when most of those involved in passing legislation are bought and paid for by the corporates and industries that are the largest beneficiaries of the waste.
The actual impact is likely to be very small, because somebody will setup GuardianBot that just automatically Tweets Guardian news stories.
So there is a lot that could be saved but good luck trying to get congress / senate to agree..
The proposed trade war might actually hasten that - a mixture of tariffs and quotas, combined with free exchange controls resembles the policy of the Gold bloc in the early-mid 1930s. Not sure that worked out well for anyone...
But, yes, I think it will go through.
I'd be against it for the time being, purely because of the lack of time given to consider it.
I'm with @Casino_Royale on this.
I do wonder if 4 years of the Trump agenda will queer the pitch for Republicans as badly as she did for Conservatives here
As has already been observed, slashing and burning vested interests can get tricky. Will Musk and his coterie have the patience? They will certainly have the political capital for the first few months. But I am sceptical that they'll have the staying power to make a real difference.
I suspect that, like Dominic Cummings, they may be good at identifying the causes of problems in public administration, but will they be any good at curing them?
(facepalm)
It's also the case that the vast majority of spending is not on civil servants, but on people. People who voted. And many of whom did not vote for Trump.
Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Support for Low Income Americans, and Debt Interest make up around 70% of the US budget - and maybe more.
The place where there is the most opportunity to cut costs is undoubtedly healthcare, where the US system is hideously expensive. (The US federal government spends more, as a percentage of GDP, on healthcare than the UK government. And we get universal healthcare, and they do not.)
But changing this would require wholesale reform of the entire system, way beyond merely allowing Medicare/Medicaid to negotiate drug prices*.
The fundamental problem is that medical procedures cost at least 5x more in the US than in the UK**, because (a) doctors are paid much more, (b) hospitals get sued all the time, and (c) the process of charging is incredibly complicated because hospitals are private institutions that have many different contracts.
* Medicare/Medicaid between them spend around $150bn a year on prescription medicines, which works out as about 8% of total US government healthcare spending.
** A MRI scan in the US typically costs around $3,000 against around £400 in the UK.
Scott's previous dealings show he's no angel but he's a better bet than continuity McConnell imo.
The camera then pans to show that the lecturer has been replaced by a reel-to-reel tape deck playing a recorded seminar.
What was the movie?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EueMqc8i4GI
There's a standard line she should use every time a Labour drone or the PM try and ask her a question: "if the honorable member wants me to answer the questions I'm very happy to cross the floor and take his place as PM! If not, the PM will need to answer mine..."
She needs to say this every time.
Though not yet hopefully
He has just said assisted dying will take resources away from other areas of the NHS - because of the need for two doctors to give approval.
A friend of mine died from MND recently. During his last few months the cost of his care (paid entirely by the NHS) was £250,000 per year.
It is blindingly obvious that the savings from people taking an assisted death will massively outweigh the costs of two doctors giving approval.
But this also highlights the issue with the US trying to solve its trade imbalance. Ultimately, global savings end up in US dollars, and that means the currency is relatively expensive and imports are cheap. So long as the rest of the world's excesses savings head off to the US, then a US trade deficit is going to be impossible to solve.
If the US government was serious about solving its current account deficit, it should do two things:
Firstly, it should pursue policies that suppress domestic consumption - like significant tax breaks for saving. Make the interest on your first hundred thousand dollars in a savings account tax free, for example.
Secondly, it should encourage countries that have pursued policies that suppress domestic consumption - like Germany and China -to do the opposite. The policy that would do most to encourage spending would almost certainly be mortgage interest tax relief. It would make borrowing dramatically cheaper, and encourage people to spend more. (It would probably also be politically popular in these countries.) Such encouragement would also probably be a lot more likely to be listened to, and much less likely to result in a trade war, than tariffs.
But many many decisions do in fact affect others and we have, I fear, rather too often taken the view that we should be able to do whatever we want regardless of the effect on others. I think this Bill falls into that trap. Allowing - actually requiring (because the Bill places a legal duty on the state's health service to offer this service) - state approved killing crosses a boundary which affects all of us. Claiming otherwise is intellectually and morally dishonest IMO.
Second, if there is one thing that underpins many of my comments and headers it is the belief that while people are free to act as they wish, they must always accept the consequences of their actions. This is far too often missing. People want the freedom without the responsibility or the consequences. That is childish and morally unserious. And I am afraid that approach underpins the approach of this bill. It takes what is a hugely morally freighted decision, perhaps the most difficult one of all, and treats it as if it were simply a matter of following a bureaucratic process, a matter of ticking the right boxes on a form, making the declaration in the right template.
It is the epitome of the "process is all, ignore the substance" mentality which has been so prevalent in our society and institutions, which has degraded their decision-making and judgment and the trust we ought to have in them and which has, all too often, led to appalling substantive decisions, scandals and tragedies.
Thirdly, I do not think - and the evidence from other countries - bears this out, you can have effective safeguards. This Bill does not even try. It allows a declaration by the person wanting to die to be signed by proxy for any reason. Ponder the implications of that. The second doctor is nominated by the first and so is not independent at all. The family and friends do not need to be told. If there is a concern about coercion, there is no appeal process so the only way this can be established is by a criminal process with its higher burden of proof and of course after the person is dead. The financial benefit which the doctors may get from providing this service cannot be taken into account when determining whether there has been a conflict of interest or coercion. Come on! People will do the most horrible and fraudulent things for really quite small sums of money. This financial incentive is exactly the sort of thing which ought not to exist and which ought to be taken into account.
There is a strong streak of sly dishonesty throughout this Bill which pretends to implement safeguards while in reality doing no such thing.
Underestimating Badenoch might be a mistake, but how Starmer addresses her at PMQs is largely irrelevant.
Jason Groves
@JasonGroves1
NEW: Downing Street confirms council tax rises will be capped at 5% again next year - roughly three times the rate of inflation. Paves the way for £110 increase on an average Band D bill
That's a tax on working people. Before we get to an mayoral precept. Luckily our council has just announced it's latest £10m deficit to it's staff.
Discretion (in the sense of discretion in enforcement of rules) is not a dirty word.
However, it would require a change in the law, and the pharmaceutical companies have some of the most expensive and best lobbyists in the world. Their pitch will be: if you do this, then we'll have to cut back dramatically on R&D spending and then we won't cure cancer. Or - worse - that the Chinese will cure cancer, and then we'll all be in hock to China.
Can Trump persuade essentially every Republican Congressman to vote through a change? Well, we'll see, but there are going to be some Congressmen in districts where Pharma companies have massive facilities, and they will have a lot of pull.
Dead at 65 from thyroid cancer.
Note that the Inflation Reduction Act already attempted some of this.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2796056
..Some parts of the legislation were expected in any budget deal, including extending the enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, first enacted as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The enhanced subsidies are now in place through 2025 and may well become permanent.
The changes to Medicare’s purchases of prescription drugs were particularly unexpected and are more controversial.1,2 Medicare purchases pharmaceuticals through 2 mechanisms: through Part D for prescribed drugs dispensed through pharmacies, and in Part B for physician-administered drugs. Each of these programs will undergo changes.
For Part D, beneficiary access will be improved in several ways. For the first time, there will be a limit on total spending for prescription drugs, $2000 per year. In addition, cost sharing for Medicare beneficiaries who use insulin will be capped at $35 per month and vaccines covered under Part D will be available without cost sharing. Several million people will benefit from these provisions, and the use of pharmaceuticals will increase accordingly.
The pharmaceutical industry will face several cost-reduction provisions, however. Starting in 2023, pharmaceutical companies will have to pay rebates to Medicare if their Medicare prices increase more rapidly than inflation. This provision applies to almost all Part D drugs, along with single-source and biologic drugs covered under Part B. Such inflation rebates are already in place for Medicaid and thus are familiar to market participants.
Most controversially, the bill requires Medicare to negotiate prices for a small set of drugs. In all, up to 60 drugs will be subject to negotiation, spread over a 4-year period from 2026 through 2029. Negotiations are designed for drugs that are top sellers and have been on the market for many years, but do not have competition..
..For drugs that are subject to negotiation, the law establishes a maximum fair price that is roughly 25% below current prices, with the ability for negotiation to take prices even lower. Even without significant bargaining, some price reductions are guaranteed.
Despite the fact that the drug negotiation provision is expected to save only a little more than the inflation provision ($102 billion vs $62 billion over 10 years), much more controversy has attended the negotiation provision than the inflation provision. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America came out strongly opposed to the negotiation provision and has threatened to sue to prevent it from taking effect...
1) Popular among the vast majority of the population, not just the MAGA mob
2) Be vaguely sensible
3) Actually achieve what it sets out to do.
I therefore think it very unlikely to happen.
Much in the same way at some point it doesn’t matter what a politician is saying if no one is listening anymore, the share price is all gone.
75% of voters in US election for example, decided their vote before September - Sept/October the actual White Heat of the US election campaigning when Harris was likely at her most prominent ever, and Trump at the worst of his political career so far, didn’t move votes as they had already been decided, the voters already tuned out just wanting it over.
This is the key danger of Badenoch - in the coming years a few crazy broad brush positions or policies, and the voters will decide early and just tune out. If you havn’t a clue what I’m talking about today, you will know when it happens.
Apart from geeky places like PB, sniffing every bit of detail, even though details never decide General Elections, how tuned in to UK politics are the voters who matter right now?
PS quick edit. Nearly doxxed myself.
Their donations totalled around a billion dollars, too (but weren't made directly to the Trump campaign).
There is a lot of chat on PB about making the tax system relatively better for working people. Increasing council tax in lieu of other tax increases (like NICs) would meet that objective.
Political suicide, but I'd reform council tax and link it to home values (with a big discount for flats and terraced housing, to make it a proxy land tax) and double it as a proportion of the tax burden.
So how should the debate proceed, except by personal sentiment?
- a minority know that she is the Conservative leader
- a slightly larger group know that a black lady is the Conservative leader - saw something on the news etc
- 97% have no idea if she has even started the job yet.