I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
He shouldn't have been shot though.
He should have been jailed for fraud, for selling a product that was never going to be delivered.
Insurance companies should get bankrupted by the market, but they don't and that's market failure.
I don't find UK health insurers very different*, but at least there is back up via the NHS.
*Exeter Friendly seems about the best. I don't think they have ever refused cover or underpaid my modest bills.
He shouldn't have been no, but again this feels like justice to me and maybe that's wrong of me to say but that's how I and millions of others feel about the situation. I'd say the vast majority of Americans have the same outlook on it.
My experience of UK insurance providers is much more positive, I've literally never had a claim denied by AXA. They're truly brilliant, always pay out without any complaints and my heart condition is fully covered, again with no complaints.
You're not allowed to kill people in peacetime. I know it's irksome, but you are just going to have to get used to it...😃
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
Indeed, I don't think people here really realise how much anger there is in the US around health insurance. People are acting as though I'm gleefully celebrating this guy's death, I'm not and it is regrettable that this happened. I'm just not sorry about it. Why should anyone be sorry about the death of someone who has caused so much misery for sick people and so much death?
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
He was personally responsible for more deaths than any serial killer in history. It feels like a classic example of the trolley problem.
Kill the CEO. Save ten thousand of his customer's lives.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Yeah, but then who would you have to chat with on PB?
ChatGPT?
Seriously. Her conversation is now better than 98.93% of humanity. Sensationally well-informed, deeply empathetic, often very wise - and sometimes genuinely funny
If people are worried about social media now, wait til the moment when everyone is busier talking with their favourite chatbots
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
He shouldn't have been shot though.
He should have been jailed for fraud, for selling a product that was never going to be delivered.
Insurance companies should get bankrupted by the market, but they don't and that's market failure.
I don't find UK health insurers very different*, but at least there is back up via the NHS.
*Exeter Friendly seems about the best. I don't think they have ever refused cover or underpaid my modest bills.
I’ve used a couple (via work) never had a claim denied, or even delayed.
One thing my American relatives noticed, when we discussed this - the U.K. terms are much, much clearer on what is covered. The US ones are written to obfuscate.
I've noticed a lot of US people using 'AI' tools to spot gotcha's in their insurance documents. I'm sure it's just an arms race at this point.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
I've never seen Reddit so in agreement on an issue. If it's indicative of wider feeling offline I would expect copycat attacks.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
And yet the same people probably think that government provided healthcare is communism. Whatever you think of the US healthcare system, whacking CEOs is not the solution. But America has always been a violent society.
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
I've never seen Reddit so in agreement on an issue. If it's indicative of wider feeling offline I would expect copycat attacks.
It has to drive regulatory change on insurance claims by the Trump administration. They really need to address it or this is going to happen again and again as the radical left and right declare open season on the CEO class.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Yeah, but then who would you have to chat with on PB?
ChatGPT?
Seriously. Her conversation is now better than 98.93% of humanity. Sensationally well-informed, deeply empathetic, often very wise - and sometimes genuinely funny
If people are worried about social media now, wait til the moment when everyone is busier talking with their favourite chatbots
"Once you've had a lover robot, you'll never want a real man... again."
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
Indeed, I don't think people here really realise how much anger there is in the US around health insurance. People are acting as though I'm gleefully celebrating this guy's death, I'm not and it is regrettable that this happened. I'm just not sorry about it. Why should anyone be sorry about the death of someone who has caused so much misery for sick people and so much death?
But it's not him at fault, it's the system. His job is to maximize value for his shareholders. He will simply be replaced by someone else with the same objectives and better protection (paid for by policyholders). While his family are left to grieve.
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
I've never seen Reddit so in agreement on an issue. If it's indicative of wider feeling offline I would expect copycat attacks.
It has to drive regulatory change on insurance claims by the Trump administration. They really need to address it or this is going to happen again and again as the radical left and right declare open season on the CEO class.
Something else, I would expect China and Russia to be all over this issue, it's a huge new gold seam for disinfo pushers.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
And yet the same people probably think that government provided healthcare is communism. Whatever you think of the US healthcare system, whacking CEOs is not the solution. But America has always been a violent society.
It's not a solution, yet people aren't sorry about it. People are very angry at the insurance system for ripping them off and then not paying out when they need it. People's relatives have died because of this CEO's policy changes to delay, deny and defend more claims to drive shareholder value.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
Yes but I'd expect a PBer to come across as more reasonable than 99% of the comments on Reddit.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Yeah, but then who would you have to chat with on PB?
ChatGPT?
Seriously. Her conversation is now better than 98.93% of humanity. Sensationally well-informed, deeply empathetic, often very wise - and sometimes genuinely funny
If people are worried about social media now, wait til the moment when everyone is busier talking with their favourite chatbots
Her? Romance has blossomed as the lights dim (due to the massive drain on the power system from AI).
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
Indeed, I don't think people here really realise how much anger there is in the US around health insurance. People are acting as though I'm gleefully celebrating this guy's death, I'm not and it is regrettable that this happened. I'm just not sorry about it. Why should anyone be sorry about the death of someone who has caused so much misery for sick people and so much death?
But it's not him at fault, it's the system. His job is to maximize value for his shareholders. He will simply be replaced by someone else with the same objectives and better protection (paid for by policyholders). While his family are left to grieve.
I don't disagree with you and yet there's an element of fraud being perpetrated by UHC against policy holders who don't have the resources to fight back in the courts against these decisions to delay and deny claims. In 10 years time there will probably be a class action lawsuit against all of this and people will win millions in payouts against UHC, this is how it always happens in the US. Corporate malfeasance followed by a class action which drags out over 10 years or so while the company is dragged into paying restitution kicking and screaming.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
Indeed, I don't think people here really realise how much anger there is in the US around health insurance. People are acting as though I'm gleefully celebrating this guy's death, I'm not and it is regrettable that this happened. I'm just not sorry about it. Why should anyone be sorry about the death of someone who has caused so much misery for sick people and so much death?
But it's not him at fault, it's the system. His job is to maximize value for his shareholders. He will simply be replaced by someone else with the same objectives and better protection (paid for by policyholders). While his family are left to grieve.
I don't disagree with you and yet there's an element of fraud being perpetrated by UHC against policy holders who don't have the resources to fight back in the courts against these decisions to delay and deny claims. In 10 years time there will probably be a class action lawsuit against all of this and people will win millions in payouts against UHC, this is how it always happens in the US. Corporate malfeasance followed by a class action which drags out over 10 years or so while the company is dragged into paying restitution kicking and screaming.
The American justice system is in a sorry state at the moment, with things like Biden's pardon, etc, and the likes of Mike Lynch facing a 99% chance of being convicted.
EEESH. Depressing, Right I'm gonna watch the third last episode of Masterchef. What an amazing season! Maybe the best yet?
NO SPOILERS, ta
Heh. You're usually so interested and excited by political violence. But I suppose this time it's the wrong sort of elite.
What? I despise Sadiq Khan and Jeremy Corbyn and Philippe Sands and almost anyone who has willingly inflicted recent mass migration on the UK (and other western countries) but I do not want them slotted on the streets of London. We still live in a democracy and I believe we can still triumph, and THEN we can have our judicious revenge, and it won't be pretty (but it won't be murder, either)
Perfect example of the process state in action (hat tip @Malmesbury) today...
...at the last minute I've been asked to step in at school to mentor a new teacher going through qualification. It's extra work but enjoyable.
Part of the reason it is so much extra work is because I am expected by the DfE to do 20 hours of training in preparation for welcoming the trainee. This is challenging to fit in, in large part because I was asked to do it on Thursday and the trainee arrived on Monday.
Here's the process state in action: I skimmed through the training today; 3 hours of which was assessed by a 10 question multiple choice test. A monkey high on acid could have correctly completed the test.
Yet because I have filled in the correct boxes, my school now gets £120 of funding for the 3 hours I supposedly spent in training.
It's completely bonkers. Give me the gap fill first, allow me to self assess my training needs off the back of it, and fund any training needed. Save the DfE £120, save me being taught to suck eggs.
But that doesn't follow the right process I suppose.
Oh and as an aside @omnium are you about? After our discussion last week about percentage efficiency at work I did a minute by minute accounting of my day on Monday. I'm upping my claim for Monday's efficiency from 95% to 105%. From 0805 to 1610 I had the sum total of 6 minutes where I was not doing an activity necessary for my job (3 mins in the lunch queue, 3 mins drinking coffee and chatting about non work stuff). In the afternoon I was in compulsory training at the same time as emailing parents hence the 105%.
Congratulations on passing your multiple choice exam. You have won a secret prize - A monkey high on acid.
I’ve just done 2 course like that - data security in compliance. Clicked through, then got 100% on the exams and another PDF for no one to ever read.
Mentoring a new starter is one of the few things that puts a smile in my day.
I had my first new start for a while take up post this week. First port of call - 14.5hrs of HR-mandated 'training' videos. "How not to be a massive racist", "How not to be a sex pest", "Why you shouldn't burn the building down", "Why pouring petrol on a burning building is a bad idea", ...
None of it remotely challenging, which at least would be a saving grace. Just hours of borderline am-dram actors saying "I don't like the furrins" and then being quizzed on "Do you think this was a) a good thing to say, or b) a bad thing to say?"
Question 26:
Your customer, Hans, suggests getting an international gang of terrorists together, taking over a Japanese company building and stealing a huge pile of bearer bonds from their safe.
Do you
a) Go along with the scheme b) Suggest doing it at Christmas c) Call Compliance.
Will he be sharing any personally identifiable data?
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Yeah, but then who would you have to chat with on PB?
ChatGPT?
Seriously. Her conversation is now better than 98.93% of humanity. Sensationally well-informed, deeply empathetic, often very wise - and sometimes genuinely funny
If people are worried about social media now, wait til the moment when everyone is busier talking with their favourite chatbots
"Once you've had a lover robot, you'll never want a real man... again."
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
Indeed, I don't think people here really realise how much anger there is in the US around health insurance. People are acting as though I'm gleefully celebrating this guy's death, I'm not and it is regrettable that this happened. I'm just not sorry about it. Why should anyone be sorry about the death of someone who has caused so much misery for sick people and so much death?
But it's not him at fault, it's the system. His job is to maximize value for his shareholders. He will simply be replaced by someone else with the same objectives and better protection (paid for by policyholders). While his family are left to grieve.
I agree it’s the system at fault. But given the system is capitalism, I don’t see sufficient appetite in the US to change that. The sensible thing is to take healthcare out of capitalism and have the state fund it, but Americans are too sceptical of the state, it seems, for that to get enough traction.
Perfect example of the process state in action (hat tip @Malmesbury) today...
...at the last minute I've been asked to step in at school to mentor a new teacher going through qualification. It's extra work but enjoyable.
Part of the reason it is so much extra work is because I am expected by the DfE to do 20 hours of training in preparation for welcoming the trainee. This is challenging to fit in, in large part because I was asked to do it on Thursday and the trainee arrived on Monday.
Here's the process state in action: I skimmed through the training today; 3 hours of which was assessed by a 10 question multiple choice test. A monkey high on acid could have correctly completed the test.
Yet because I have filled in the correct boxes, my school now gets £120 of funding for the 3 hours I supposedly spent in training.
It's completely bonkers. Give me the gap fill first, allow me to self assess my training needs off the back of it, and fund any training needed. Save the DfE £120, save me being taught to suck eggs.
But that doesn't follow the right process I suppose.
Oh and as an aside @omnium are you about? After our discussion last week about percentage efficiency at work I did a minute by minute accounting of my day on Monday. I'm upping my claim for Monday's efficiency from 95% to 105%. From 0805 to 1610 I had the sum total of 6 minutes where I was not doing an activity necessary for my job (3 mins in the lunch queue, 3 mins drinking coffee and chatting about non work stuff). In the afternoon I was in compulsory training at the same time as emailing parents hence the 105%.
Congratulations on passing your multiple choice exam. You have won a secret prize - A monkey high on acid.
I’ve just done 2 course like that - data security in compliance. Clicked through, then got 100% on the exams and another PDF for no one to ever read.
Mentoring a new starter is one of the few things that puts a smile in my day.
I had my first new start for a while take up post this week. First port of call - 14.5hrs of HR-mandated 'training' videos. "How not to be a massive racist", "How not to be a sex pest", "Why you shouldn't burn the building down", "Why pouring petrol on a burning building is a bad idea", ...
None of it remotely challenging, which at least would be a saving grace. Just hours of borderline am-dram actors saying "I don't like the furrins" and then being quizzed on "Do you think this was a) a good thing to say, or b) a bad thing to say?"
Question 26:
Your customer, Hans, suggests getting an international gang of terrorists together, taking over a Japanese company building and stealing a huge pile of bearer bonds from their safe.
Do you
a) Go along with the scheme b) Suggest doing it at Christmas c) Call Compliance.
Will he be sharing any personally identifiable data?
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
Indeed, I don't think people here really realise how much anger there is in the US around health insurance. People are acting as though I'm gleefully celebrating this guy's death, I'm not and it is regrettable that this happened. I'm just not sorry about it. Why should anyone be sorry about the death of someone who has caused so much misery for sick people and so much death?
But it's not him at fault, it's the system. His job is to maximize value for his shareholders. He will simply be replaced by someone else with the same objectives and better protection (paid for by policyholders). While his family are left to grieve.
I agree it’s the system at fault. But given the system is capitalism, I don’t see sufficient appetite in the US to change that. The sensible thing is to take healthcare out of capitalism and have the state fund it, but Americans are too sceptical of the state, it seems, for that to get enough traction.
The state funds the defence industry but I don't think you could say it's been taken out of capitalism.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
Indeed, I don't think people here really realise how much anger there is in the US around health insurance. People are acting as though I'm gleefully celebrating this guy's death, I'm not and it is regrettable that this happened. I'm just not sorry about it. Why should anyone be sorry about the death of someone who has caused so much misery for sick people and so much death?
But it's not him at fault, it's the system. His job is to maximize value for his shareholders. He will simply be replaced by someone else with the same objectives and better protection (paid for by policyholders). While his family are left to grieve.
I agree it’s the system at fault. But given the system is capitalism, I don’t see sufficient appetite in the US to change that. The sensible thing is to take healthcare out of capitalism and have the state fund it, but Americans are too sceptical of the state, it seems, for that to get enough traction.
The state funds the defence industry but I don't think you could say it's been taken out of capitalism.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
Wrong on current polls if we had PR we likely would get a Tory and Reform coalition government, under FPTP though a Labour minority government with LD support more likely
There is 0% chance of Conservative Party going into government with Reform. It would be the most stupidest thing the Conservative Party has ever done, and probably the last thing because it would be a real threat to the Conservative Parties existence.
You are also embarrassingly wrong when you always take the Reform polling, and tell us it equates to xxx seats. It doesn’t. 😌
You can get an awful lot of seats under FPTP if voters from other parties chose you when their preference can’t win. For example you go up just 0.6% from last election yet go from 11 to 72 seats, up just 1.6% and add 211, or get 14.3% of votes for just 5 seats. In this regard, Reform are friendless. Nobody, including Conservatives, lend their vote to help Reform.
So the Reform seat figures you post from the polling numbers are complete gibberish.
It’s stark it’s not an era of two party politics, it’s like minded on election outcome voting blocks, voting interchangeable in FPTP. Where Reform are friendless in the FPTP exploitation, this has to change.
Far from it, if there is a hung parliament and the only options with a majority are Conservative + Reform or Conservative + Labour then of course the Conservatives would go into government with Reform.
As to not do so and reelect a Labour minority government Tory voters despise really would be the end of the Conservative party and would see most of its remaining voters defect en masse to Reform (mind you if Labour formed a government with the Tories half of the remaining Labour vote would likely go Green too)
Absolute nonsense. Labour form government with Con and lose half voters to Green, yet Con form government with Reform without shattering into little pieces in all directions?
What you will find is, where a week is a long time in politics, the next two and a half years maybe interminable where more defections from Con to Reform, the more bitter this rivalry becomes.
Coalition together? This can only become a deathmatch.
One has to cannibalise the other out of existence. They can’t co exist and get near government - the last General Election result is all the evidence you need of that.
So when it comes to that cannibalism of our bitter deathmatch rival, how do you actually understand the key differences between Reform and Conservatives right now, when you knock on doors and explain the vote has to be Conservatives not reform?
Conservatives are more pro-capitalism, smaller state and lower taxes.
Reform are not.
The last 14 years suggest that the small state and low tax are somewhat of a lie
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
Indeed, I don't think people here really realise how much anger there is in the US around health insurance. People are acting as though I'm gleefully celebrating this guy's death, I'm not and it is regrettable that this happened. I'm just not sorry about it. Why should anyone be sorry about the death of someone who has caused so much misery for sick people and so much death?
US voters could vote for candidates promising 'Medicare for all' or universal health insurance with big state subsidies for the less well off but they don't on the whole. That is why the US is the only OECD nation without universal healthcare. Most US voters don't want to pay the extra taxes for state healthcare that would cost.
The CEO was only running a private health insurance firm in a way that would make a profit and not take excess risk as that was what he was paid to do and that is how US healthcare works. He certainly should not have been murdered and the murderer will rightly face the courts for it
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
Hang on: while I agree he was an arsehole, I'm not sure the best way to dispense justice is via silenced pistols on street corners.
No, I don't think it's the best way either, yet justice was done where it wouldn't otherwise have been by the regulators or justice system. I'm honestly going to be surprised if they can find 12 jurors to convict this guy in New York, there's a lot of sympathy for this guy across the political spectrum from what I can tell. Trump voters and Dems alike are aligned.
The chances of one juror nullifying is huge.
This is what I was saying the other day....when people feel they can no longer have confidence in to police to bother to investigate and the courts to actually do anything if they bother normally law abiding people like me turn to other means....now a silenced pistol is extreme its true but even less extreme methods will have accidents
Imagine what a French revolution style event in the USA would do to the world...
On point, one of the Lady's greatest quotes:
“It took us a long time to get rid of the effects of the French Revolution 200 years ago. We don’t want another one.”
— Margaret Thatcher
Especially not in a country that matters.
The USA has no monarchy and no aristocrats, the only French Revolution it could have would be for the Trump family given they will be the de facto US royal family from January. However in democracies we now exercise our revolutions via the ballot box not the streets
Imagine what a French revolution style event in the USA would do to the world...
On point, one of the Lady's greatest quotes:
“It took us a long time to get rid of the effects of the French Revolution 200 years ago. We don’t want another one.”
— Margaret Thatcher
Especially not in a country that matters.
The USA has no monarchy and no aristocrats, the only French Revolution it could have would be for the Trump family given they will be the de facto US royal family from January. However in democracies we now exercise our revolutions via the ballot box not the streets
Maybe we would get less crap politicians if we took a more robust view to removing them
Imagine what a French revolution style event in the USA would do to the world...
On point, one of the Lady's greatest quotes:
“It took us a long time to get rid of the effects of the French Revolution 200 years ago. We don’t want another one.”
— Margaret Thatcher
Especially not in a country that matters.
Nevertheless she accepted Mitterand's invitation to Paris in 1989 to commemorate the fall of the Bastille. Disappointing lapse of judgment for a law'n'order fan.
I went to one of those Turkish barbers today for a haircut. About 4 or 5 of them have opened recently in what is a fairly small town.
Do they actually cut hair? It's tempting to assume they're just another money-laundering operation.
They do cut hair. I've hear the rumours about some of them but the authorities never seem to say anything about it. You'd think they would do if there was a problem with them.
Imagine what a French revolution style event in the USA would do to the world...
On point, one of the Lady's greatest quotes:
“It took us a long time to get rid of the effects of the French Revolution 200 years ago. We don’t want another one.”
— Margaret Thatcher
Especially not in a country that matters.
The USA has no monarchy and no aristocrats, the only French Revolution it could have would be for the Trump family given they will be the de facto US royal family from January. However in democracies we now exercise our revolutions via the ballot box not the streets
Maybe we would get less crap politicians if we took a more robust view to removing them
After David Amess and Jo Cox not a sensible comment at all
I went to one of those Turkish barbers today for a haircut. About 4 or 5 of them have opened recently in what is a fairly small town.
Do they actually cut hair? It's tempting to assume they're just another money-laundering operation.
They do cut hair. I've hear the rumours about some of them but the authorities never seem to say anything about it. You'd think they would do if there was a problem with them.
I can see a big flaw in your logic.....the authorities didn't do anything about the US Sweet Shop scam for years, despite everybody and their dog knowing they were up to no good.
The massive expansion of barbers fails the logical business case of matching supply and demand. There are more people in the UK than 10 years ago, but we haven't 5x'ed our population, while most people still only get their haircut every couple of weeks. And the the dodgy Turkish barbers are never run by Turks, always the likes of Albanians, who erhhh, it isn't a big secret now run vast amounts of the drugs trade in the UK.
Kill the CEO. Save ten thousand of his customer's lives.
There's an argument there.
Fuck that guy. He got less than he deserved. The only dark cloud on an otherwise joyous event was that Luigi the CEO Slayer (put some fucking respect on his name) got locked up before he got round to Musk.
The CEO of UHC was never going to be held accountable by the legal system and there is no democratic route to establishing a legal system that would. So what are we left with? Revolutionary justice.
Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts -- Robespierre
You know: the US does have a point about Canada being very liberal with their tourist visas, and a substantial number of people (tens of thousands each year) using that to get into North America and then bussing to the US border and claiming asylum. Donald Trump is absolutely right to call that out.
But an across the board 25% tariff on all Canadian exports is a very blunt tool. And generally speaking countries (like people) hate to be publicly bullied into things. If someone says to me "do this, or else", my first reaction is to say "fuck you".
Voters don't like it when their elected leaders give in to (what they see as) blackmail.
Which is why, if I'd been Donald Trump, I would have started with intense private pressure, and said nothing publicly.
Kill the CEO. Save ten thousand of his customer's lives.
There's an argument there.
Fuck that guy. He got less than he deserved. The only dark cloud on an otherwise joyous event was that Luigi the CEO Slayer (put some fucking respect on his name) got locked up before he got round to Musk.
The CEO of UHC was never going to be held accountable by the legal system and there is no democratic route to establishing a legal system that would. So what are we left with? Revolutionary justice.
Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts -- Robespierre
Robespierre - who invented the modern style of tyranny? Complete with judicial murder of opponents? Who became a byword for injustice and arbitrary savagery?
Introduce ‘fat tax’ on junk food, Chris Whitty tells Government
One of the key recommendations in Sir Chris’s report, drawn up in collaboration with experts at the think tank Impact on Urban Health, is that the Government introduces a “levy on unhealthy food products”.
Introduce ‘fat tax’ on junk food, Chris Whitty tells Government
One of the key recommendations in Sir Chris’s report, drawn up in collaboration with experts at the think tank Impact on Urban Health, is that the Government introduces a “levy on unhealthy food products”.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
He was personally responsible for more deaths than any serial killer in history. It feels like a classic example of the trolley problem.
Kill the CEO. Save ten thousand of his customer's lives.
There's an argument there.
Brian Thompson defrauded people from whom he collected insurance premiums. And, he benefitted personally from defrauding them.
He sold insurance policies that he had no intention of honouring. Under his leadership, UHC’s rate of refusal of claims soared.
What he deserved was not death, but a very long period of incarceration.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
Every American poster I’ve read, right or left, sees it as justice.
Striking how many speakers at the @ChathamHouse conference on 'Safeguarding Europe' have said - correctly, in my view- that many Western capitals are more worried about Russia losing than about Ukraine losing
This was a great response:
Our addiction to maintaining the status quo is, ultimately, what is ensuring the destruction of our precious “rules based order”. Can’t keep it, if we won’t fight for it.
Increasingly, I’m thinking that Pokrovsk is the battle that’s destroying the Russian army.
As an aside, one of the big problems with the US insurance industry is fraud.
Now, I'm on the auto insurance side rather than the health insurance side, but we receive a staggering number of fraudulent claims.
Some are minor, such as when someone with Third Party - i.e. Liability Only - upgrades their policy and within 30 seconds submits a claim for a broken windshield.
Others are clearly long planned large scale fraudulent claims: two years after a policy is issued (and which is often only "live" for week, you get a claim for accident that (allegedly) happened during the period, where there is no police report, and no witnesses, and you are presented with a bill for $50,000 of medical expenses from a doctor whose only business seems to be treating people make auto insurance claims.
I suspect that health insurance will be similar: you see the fraudulent claimants will have done all their research, so that the insurance company (while knowing the claim is likely fraudulent) will need to pay up. This obviously screws over real claimants and insurance companies.
The fundamental problem is the US healthcare system, which is horrendously expensive and bureaucratic. The system needs to change, and it needs root and branch reform, and across every element. Because right now, the only people who win are lawyers and liars.
Interesting to read the NZ media take on events in Syria which seems to be everyone’s else. Complete bewilderment at the sudden collapse of the Assad regime. The parallel is more Eastern Europe in late 1989 - apparently certainties swept away and regimes which looked impregnable fell apart quicker than a sandcastle at high tide.
The questions are how, why and what happens next? Syria remains fragmented though the new rulers in Damascus seem to be moving quickly into some of the Kurdish controlled areas.
Trying to rebuild and restore a ruined country is a huge challenge - the main prerequisite is unity and that means the whole population not just the half with one gender. Bringing women into the Government and the reconstruction and reconciliation processes is vital.
It seems Israel is making Tartus unuseable but the former Russian air base looks different - I don’t know what contacts HTS have had with the Russians but it looks a serious strategic setback for Moscow in the eastern Mediterranean as the bases were also strategic midpoints on the way to Russian bases in Africa.
We’ve had the final Verian poll for 2024 conducted for One News and it shows National leading Labour 37-29 with the Greens on 10, ACT on 8, the Māori Party on 7 and New Zealand First on 6.
The governing coalition leads 51-46 and would be comfortably re-elected on these numbers despite the clear tensions between ACT and NZF.
The big story here is about the Interislander Ferries, which are the route for passengers, cars and freight to cross the Cook Strait. Labour had proposed buying two new ferries when in Government but Nicola Willis, the incoming National finance minister, cancelled the order.
The problem is the current ferries are old and frequently break down. Yesterday Willis announced a new company would source two new ferries but the original replacements were due to enter service in 2026 but that’s now gone to 2029. It looks short sighted as an example of a critical infrastructure requirement needing to be updated but rather like Reeves in the UK with winter fuel allowance, Willis came in and wanted to set a new tone.
As an aside, one of the big problems with the US insurance industry is fraud.
Now, I'm on the auto insurance side rather than the health insurance side, but we receive a staggering number of fraudulent claims.
Some are minor, such as when someone with Third Party - i.e. Liability Only - upgrades their policy and within 30 seconds submits a claim for a broken windshield.
Others are clearly long planned large scale fraudulent claims: two years after a policy is issued (and which is often only "live" for week, you get a claim for accident that (allegedly) happened during the period, where there is no police report, and no witnesses, and you are presented with a bill for $50,000 of medical expenses from a doctor whose only business seems to be treating people make auto insurance claims.
I suspect that health insurance will be similar: you see the fraudulent claimants will have done all their research, so that the insurance company (while knowing the claim is likely fraudulent) will need to pay up. This obviously screws over real claimants and insurance companies.
The fundamental problem is the US healthcare system, which is horrendously expensive and bureaucratic. The system needs to change, and it needs root and branch reform, and across every element. Because right now, the only people who win are lawyers and liars.
This sounds a less than ideal climate to operate a business in.....
As an aside, one of the big problems with the US insurance industry is fraud.
Now, I'm on the auto insurance side rather than the health insurance side, but we receive a staggering number of fraudulent claims.
Some are minor, such as when someone with Third Party - i.e. Liability Only - upgrades their policy and within 30 seconds submits a claim for a broken windshield.
Others are clearly long planned large scale fraudulent claims: two years after a policy is issued (and which is often only "live" for week, you get a claim for accident that (allegedly) happened during the period, where there is no police report, and no witnesses, and you are presented with a bill for $50,000 of medical expenses from a doctor whose only business seems to be treating people make auto insurance claims.
I suspect that health insurance will be similar: you see the fraudulent claimants will have done all their research, so that the insurance company (while knowing the claim is likely fraudulent) will need to pay up. This obviously screws over real claimants and insurance companies.
The fundamental problem is the US healthcare system, which is horrendously expensive and bureaucratic. The system needs to change, and it needs root and branch reform, and across every element. Because right now, the only people who win are lawyers and liars.
This sounds a less than ideal climate to operate a business in.....
Rates are obviously insane to compensate for the rampant fraud.
An example for rcs1000: Years ago, the fraud problem with bus accidents in northern New Jersey became so bad that insurers staged faked accidents to catch repeaters. (Typically, when a real accident occurred, fraudsters would rush in to claim that they had been in the bus that had the accident. I hate to mention this, but it is possible that some lawyers may have helped the fraudsters.)
Just to complicate matters further, I should add that Medicaid is administered by the states, plus DC and Puerto Rico, which can add benefits -- and often do. So one can say, truthfully, that there are 52 different Medicaid systems.
(There are two smaller government programs, for Indians and veterans, each of which have some similarities to your NHS.)
Then there are the private parts -- which vary wildly. Some programs -- often negotiated by powerful unions -- are so lavish that they were called "Cadillac" programs by Rahm Immanuel while he was serving in the Obama administration. (He wanted to tax them.)
If you are going to criticize US health care -- and there is much to criticize -- you ought to be clear which of these many systems you are criticizing.
Insurance companies have always been sh*ts. It's a profession containing very few honourable people.
Decades ago, my ankle went wrong, three years after a previous operation on the NHS. Those three years had mostly been pain-free. After a lot of effort, I eventually found a very good professor who operated on me.
Sadly, the operation did not work, and six months later he wanted to try again. But the insurance company refused, saying it was a 'pre-existing complaint'. Despite the professor saying it was a follow-up to his previous operation. I told the prof about the refusal, and he got angry, in a very focussed way.
About a week later, my parents got a phone call, and then a letter from the insurance company, saying that they were sorry a mistake had been made, and they were happy to pay for as many operations (four, from memory, over another five years) that it would take to fix me.
Apparently the prof threatened not to do any work with them again, and neither would his colleagues.
TL:DR it’s getting close to the point where the defaults start happening. Very close, at which point the banks start to fail and will need to be bailed out by government. Result is distrust leading to withdrawals, and even more inflation, let’s hope it happens soon!
An example for rcs1000: Years ago, the fraud problem with bus accidents in northern New Jersey became so bad that insurers staged faked accidents to catch repeaters. (Typically, when a real accident occurred, fraudsters would rush in to claim that they had been in the bus that had the accident. I hate to mention this, but it is possible that some lawyers may have helped the fraudsters.)
Just to complicate matters further, I should add that Medicaid is administered by the states, plus DC and Puerto Rico, which can add benefits -- and often do. So one can say, truthfully, that there are 52 different Medicaid systems.
(There are two smaller government programs, for Indians and veterans, each of which have some similarities to your NHS.)
Then there are the private parts -- which vary wildly. Some programs -- often negotiated by powerful unions -- are so lavish that they were called "Cadillac" programs by Rahm Immanuel while he was serving in the Obama administration. (He wanted to tax them.)
If you are going to criticize US health care -- and there is much to criticize -- you ought to be clear which of these many systems you are criticizing.
And the amazing thing is that the combined cost of the schemes you mention to the US taxpayer, per head, is greater than the entire cost of the NHS to the UK taxpayer. Yet our arrangement covers everyone.
Then again given the cost of US healthcare, god knows how much a proper national scheme covering everyone would cost….
"Among all UK voters, 68% of respondents would now back free movement in exchange for single market access, with 19% opposed and majority support among supporters of every party apart from Reform UK (44% of whose voters also backed the idea)."
TL:DR it’s getting close to the point where the defaults start happening. Very close, at which point the banks start to fail and will need to be bailed out by government. Result is distrust leading to withdrawals, and even more inflation, let’s hope it happens soon!
The real estate market looks to be in particular trouble, and the risk of cascading failures has to be significant.
There are multiple risk points for Russia right now: the domestic corporate bond market, the oil market, the battle for Pokrovsk, the chaotic retreat from Syria laying bare their imperial ambition in Africa, and the Caucuses, where there has been a significant uptick (should you believe Twitter) in trouble.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
He shouldn't have been shot though.
He should have been jailed for fraud, for selling a product that was never going to be delivered.
Insurance companies should get bankrupted by the market, but they don't and that's market failure.
I don't find UK health insurers very different*, but at least there is back up via the NHS.
*Exeter Friendly seems about the best. I don't think they have ever refused cover or underpaid my modest bills.
He shouldn't have been no, but again this feels like justice to me and maybe that's wrong of me to say but that's how I and millions of others feel about the situation. I'd say the vast majority of Americans have the same outlook on it.
My experience of UK insurance providers is much more positive, I've literally never had a claim denied by AXA. They're truly brilliant, always pay out without any complaints and my heart condition is fully covered, again with no complaints.
You're not allowed to kill people in peacetime. I know it's irksome, but you are just going to have to get used to it...😃
Usually whenever there’s a shooting in the US, left wing media is full of calls for gun control. Not noticing much of that this week…
TL:DR it’s getting close to the point where the defaults start happening. Very close, at which point the banks start to fail and will need to be bailed out by government. Result is distrust leading to withdrawals, and even more inflation, let’s hope it happens soon!
What does Russia have left of value to underpin any bail-out of the banks? Or does it just print more of those oh-so-valuable roubles?
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
He shouldn't have been shot though.
He should have been jailed for fraud, for selling a product that was never going to be delivered.
Insurance companies should get bankrupted by the market, but they don't and that's market failure.
I don't find UK health insurers very different*, but at least there is back up via the NHS.
*Exeter Friendly seems about the best. I don't think they have ever refused cover or underpaid my modest bills.
He shouldn't have been no, but again this feels like justice to me and maybe that's wrong of me to say but that's how I and millions of others feel about the situation. I'd say the vast majority of Americans have the same outlook on it.
My experience of UK insurance providers is much more positive, I've literally never had a claim denied by AXA. They're truly brilliant, always pay out without any complaints and my heart condition is fully covered, again with no complaints.
You're not allowed to kill people in peacetime. I know it's irksome, but you are just going to have to get used to it...😃
Usually whenever there’s a shooting in the US, left wing media is full of calls for gun control. Not noticing much of that this week…
His gun was already illegal, so no need for more laws.
TL:DR it’s getting close to the point where the defaults start happening. Very close, at which point the banks start to fail and will need to be bailed out by government. Result is distrust leading to withdrawals, and even more inflation, let’s hope it happens soon!
What does Russia have left of value to underpin any bail-out of the banks? Or does it just print more of those oh-so-valuable roubles?
The Russian Central Bank will print Roubles, because that is the path of least resistance.
This in turn will increase inflation, making the lives of everyday Russians even worse.
The question is whether it reaches a point where resistance to the regime becomes easier than acquiescing with it. Right now - thanks to Putin's internal security apparatus - resistance to the regime is almost unknown, even though Russians are hurting. At a certain point, though, a switch is flipped. And demonstrations start that the regime cannot crack down on, which encourages more demonstrations, etc.
Now, this doesn't mean that Putin can't pull a rabbit out of the hat: of course he could. But the risk are mounting. He's bet all on Trump forcing a favorable peace in Ukraine, and him being able to declare "victory". But if the Ukrainians don't back down, then those spinning plates might just come a'crashing.
TL:DR it’s getting close to the point where the defaults start happening. Very close, at which point the banks start to fail and will need to be bailed out by government. Result is distrust leading to withdrawals, and even more inflation, let’s hope it happens soon!
What does Russia have left of value to underpin any bail-out of the banks? Or does it just print more of those oh-so-valuable roubles?
I guess they have a few dozen old tanks they could sell to various African factions who can’t afford real tanks. Otherwise it’s turn on the printing presses baby.
Pretty much their only source of hard currency is O&G exports, so there needs to be huge international pressure on China and India who are buying it at a large discount. If Trump can convince the Saudis to start pumping and drop the price for a year or so, then even better, and he’s already said that getting energy prices down is one of his top priorities. The Russian economy would be totally screwed if oil goes below about $60.
Robert mentioned the real estate market as well. Judging by the sandpit real estate market, there’s currently lots of sellers and few buyers in Moscow or St. Petersburg at the moment. Something that the elites in those cities will definitely have noticed. How many large mortgages will be under water in those cities I wonder?
TL:DR it’s getting close to the point where the defaults start happening. Very close, at which point the banks start to fail and will need to be bailed out by government. Result is distrust leading to withdrawals, and even more inflation, let’s hope it happens soon!
What does Russia have left of value to underpin any bail-out of the banks? Or does it just print more of those oh-so-valuable roubles?
The Russian Central Bank will print Roubles, because that is the path of least resistance.
This in turn will increase inflation, making the lives of everyday Russians even worse.
The question is whether it reaches a point where resistance to the regime becomes easier than acquiescing with it. Right now - thanks to Putin's internal security apparatus - resistance to the regime is almost unknown, even though Russians are hurting. At a certain point, though, a switch is flipped. And demonstrations start that the regime cannot crack down on, which encourages more demonstrations, etc.
Now, this doesn't mean that Putin can't pull a rabbit out of the hat: of course he could. But the risk are mounting. He's bet all on Trump forcing a favorable peace in Ukraine, and him being able to declare "victory". But if the Ukrainians don't back down, then those spinning plates might just come a'crashing.
Inflation is already disastrous in Russia. Further increases risk it spiralling out of control.
If we are ever to see hyper-inflation again in a major economy, Russia is far and away the best candidate.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
Every American poster I’ve read, right or left, sees it as justice.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
He was personally responsible for more deaths than any serial killer in history. It feels like a classic example of the trolley problem.
Kill the CEO. Save ten thousand of his customer's lives.
There's an argument there.
Brian Thompson defrauded people from whom he collected insurance premiums. And, he benefitted personally from defrauding them.
He sold insurance policies that he had no intention of honouring. Under his leadership, UHC’s rate of refusal of claims soared.
What he deserved was not death, but a very long period of incarceration.
A chastening lesson to those on the Right of British politics who wish to destroy our NHS and foist upon us a system loosely based on the American model.
For ALL it's faults we simply have to retain the NHS as the CORE medical provision.
The British public know that - opinion polls invariably support this fact and LABOUR are the only Party who can be trusted with it.
The evidence of rebuild and improvement 1997 to 2010 and then the usual Tory destruction 2020 to 2024 is crystal clear!
This is the topic that DESTROYS REFORM and their zealots!
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
He was personally responsible for more deaths than any serial killer in history. It feels like a classic example of the trolley problem.
Kill the CEO. Save ten thousand of his customer's lives.
There's an argument there.
Brian Thompson defrauded people from whom he collected insurance premiums. And, he benefitted personally from defrauding them.
He sold insurance policies that he had no intention of honouring. Under his leadership, UHC’s rate of refusal of claims soared.
What he deserved was not death, but a very long period of incarceration.
A chastening lesson to those on the Right of British politics who wish to destroy our NHS and foist upon us a system loosely based on the American model.
For ALL it's faults we simply have to retain the NHS as the CORE medical provision.
The British public know that - opinion polls invariably support this fact and LABOUR are the only Party who can be trusted with it.
The evidence of rebuild and improvement 1997 to 2010 and then the usual Tory destruction 2020 to 2024 is crystal clear!
This is the topic that DESTROYS REFORM and their zealots!
It would help if you opened both eyes instead of relying on one.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
You're not sorry he was murdered??!
Don't be a prat
I'm not. I know it sounds horrible but I can't get exercised by it. The CEO knew what he was doing when he screwed over millions of policy holders by delaying and denying procedures and payments. It was his changes to the company's business practices that saw thousands of Americans die because they weren't getting treatment they'd paid insurance to receive. He really got what was coming to him in the end, it might just put the other health insurance company CEOs on notice too.
Yeah, but NO
This is cold-blooded murder on a Manhattan street, nothing else. Now, I can think of several hundred people I'd quite like - emotionally - to be gunned down on the streets of London - and many of them deserve it, morally - but I accept it is not right and should not happen, absent total war. You do yourself a disservice with remarks like this. Don't go mad. You're a valued PB commenter
Have you had a look on Reddit? Max is coming across as more reasonable than 99% of comments on there. And it's cross cutting - r/Conservative and r/Republican are vicious too. I think it's very difficult to comprehend from a UK perspective.
Top comment on latest thread on r/Conservative: I work in a very conservative industry. This is the general sentiment across it right now. No body give a a shit about this CEO. Did Luigi likely do something wrong? Sure. But these bastards have been fucking us over for decades. Nobody is bothered by his death.
And yet the same people probably think that government provided healthcare is communism. Whatever you think of the US healthcare system, whacking CEOs is not the solution. But America has always been a violent society.
It's not a solution, yet people aren't sorry about it. People are very angry at the insurance system for ripping them off and then not paying out when they need it. People's relatives have died because of this CEO's policy changes to delay, deny and defend more claims to drive shareholder value.
If it’s even halfway accurate I see little chance of a conviction. Three hung juries and a discharge seem more likely, although it will probably take about six years to get there.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
Trump channels the anger, sure, but it seems likely that he will make the situation worse not better.
Once more for those of you at the back: 1. In business, don't be greedy, leave something on the table for everyone else. 2. In politics, it's better to concede reform than wait for revolution.
I suppose the question is whether the dead CEO was a uniquely bad apple, or just someone doing what he had to do to get to the top in a horrible business. (And yes, he could have walked at any moment, but how many of us would have had the guts to do that?) The striking thing is how little condemnation the murderer seems to have got.
I don't think Trump will make anything better either, but it may lead to someone like Bernie winning next time who will definitely make serious changes to the US economy. If Trump doesn't make changes to the healthcare industrial profit machine then I think the US will swing to whatever candidate can get through the primary process who does promise it.
I think back to 2016 now and I think in a rerun I'd have voted for Bernie all the way through. I think if he hadn't been shafted out of the candidacy by the DNC then he'd have won and what I've learned is that millions of voters who backed Bernie just backed Trump. It's the promise of change that US voters are looking for and the Democratic party really needs to see that before they put forwards another corpo candidate like Harris.
This clip shows why Bernie was unelectable. He was a rabbit in the headlights faced with the modern activist left.
A chastening lesson to those on the Right of British politics who wish to destroy our NHS and foist upon us a system loosely based on the American model.
For ALL it's faults we simply have to retain the NHS as the CORE medical provision.
The British public know that - opinion polls invariably support this fact and LABOUR are the only Party who can be trusted with it.
The evidence of rebuild and improvement 1997 to 2010 and then the usual Tory destruction 2020 to 2024 is crystal clear!
Rubbish. NHS productivity increased by 1.5% per year between 2010 and the pandemic but only 0.6% between 1997 and 2010 as Brown showered money on the NHS without reforming it, as Blair to do him justice later realised. Labour would have been worse since the pandemic as they believed in even longer lockdowns, which damaged the health service so heavily.
And that's before even mentioning their disastrous record with NHS Wales, where despite more funding, the health service is less efficient and delivers significantly worse patient outcomes than NHS England.
The Conservatives aren't great, but Labour is wasteful and incompetent at running the health service, just like they are at everything else.
A chastening lesson to those on the Right of British politics who wish to destroy our NHS and foist upon us a system loosely based on the American model.
For ALL it's faults we simply have to retain the NHS as the CORE medical provision.
The British public know that - opinion polls invariably support this fact and LABOUR are the only Party who can be trusted with it.
The evidence of rebuild and improvement 1997 to 2010 and then the usual Tory destruction 2020 to 2024 is crystal clear!
Rubbish. NHS productivity increased by 1.5% per year between 2010 and the pandemic but only 0.6% between 1997 and 2010 as Brown showered money on the NHS without reforming it, as Blair to do him justice later realised. Labour would have been worse since the pandemic as they believed in even longer lockdowns, which damaged the health service so heavily.
And that's before even mentioning their disastrous record with NHS Wales, where despite more funding, the health service is less efficient and delivers significantly worse patient outcomes than NHS England.
The Conservatives aren't great, but Labour is wasteful and incompetent at running the health service, just like they are at everything else.
This just smacks of Tory "whataboutism". The Conservative government presided over a disaster in almost every part of the public sector, so their criticism should at least be leavened with a little humility. Yet as always they just charge into some American inspired extremist hinterland.
It is the case that the NHS has significant structural issues. It is not the case that the US system should be any kind of model for NHS reform.
TL:DR it’s getting close to the point where the defaults start happening. Very close, at which point the banks start to fail and will need to be bailed out by government. Result is distrust leading to withdrawals, and even more inflation, let’s hope it happens soon!
What does Russia have left of value to underpin any bail-out of the banks? Or does it just print more of those oh-so-valuable roubles?
I guess they have a few dozen old tanks they could sell to various African factions who can’t afford real tanks. Otherwise it’s turn on the printing presses baby.
Pretty much their only source of hard currency is O&G exports, so there needs to be huge international pressure on China and India who are buying it at a large discount. If Trump can convince the Saudis to start pumping and drop the price for a year or so, then even better, and he’s already said that getting energy prices down is one of his top priorities. The Russian economy would be totally screwed if oil goes below about $60.
Robert mentioned the real estate market as well. Judging by the sandpit real estate market, there’s currently lots of sellers and few buyers in Moscow or St. Petersburg at the moment. Something that the elites in those cities will definitely have noticed. How many large mortgages will be under water in those cities I wonder?
At a base rate of 21% and rising? Pretty much all of them.
Tesla's letter to the Govt wanting more tax on petrol and diesel. No wonder he's pissed after the budget - a politician who won't do what he wants, even after he said please. At least he had the sense not to puff the Cybertruck, though he does promote his Semi.
I wouldn't get a Tesla if they gave them away free. That's how much he's sh*t on his brand.
I must admit that I find the recent strength in Tesla stock a bit odd: they've shat on their brand in Europe, in China they are likely to be the first company impacted by any retaliation to Trump's tariffs, and in the US people in Red states aren't buying Teslas.
The main thing I don’t understand about Tesla is that they have access to billions, they can poach the best car designers in the world to design their sports cars, saloons, 4wds, whatever, And yet every single car they design (apart from that old knock-off lotus Elise) looks like some absolutely dull car with not the tiniest bit of style or a skip on wheels.
(Leaving aside the Cybertruck for a second...)
That's because they are optmizing around drag coefficient. When your battery capacity was small, every tiny aero gain made a big difference.
Good point, well made. They are still ugly cars and a little bit of drag for a better looking car might be more popular than a little more range. This is just one reason why I’m. It a car designer or pioneer of technology perhaps.
Many electric cars follow the same pattern - trying to get the Cd to near 0.2 or even below.
Ok, thinking (lazily) about your point, and RCS’, all cars ICE or electric could/should be designed to their maximum efficiency but a lot aren’t because humans like many things where the perfect is overridden by the heart or soul. People will buy a Ferrari because it’s beautiful and powerful but not remotely efficient, or a G-Wagen. So surely at some point Tesla has to give a little on aero to attract the soul?
Tesla (and others) have noted that when they launch a range of cars with different range, the best sellers are those with the longest range. In fact several times, Tesla discontinued the shortest range option because not enough people were buying it, to make it non-profitable to sell.
So until people are comfortable with range, range will be everything in EVs.
I remember when there was a hurricane in Florida a few years ago Tesla made all the short range cars into long range cars via a download.
There was outrage that people had been spending 10a of thousand for what was essentially a computer programme…
What happened was that the shortest range car was made by selling a longer range vehicle with a software restriction. It was cheaper to include the larger battery, rather than make a separate, smaller one.
It actually gave slightly better value - as the battery degraded, it would “use” the unused extra capacity. So the car would retain its full, as sold, range for about 20 years.
Since when did people let facts get in the way of outrage?
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
Hang on: while I agree he was an arsehole, I'm not sure the best way to dispense justice is via silenced pistols on street corners.
It’s slightly depressing that you felt the need to post that…
Tesla's letter to the Govt wanting more tax on petrol and diesel. No wonder he's pissed after the budget - a politician who won't do what he wants, even after he said please. At least he had the sense not to puff the Cybertruck, though he does promote his Semi.
I wouldn't get a Tesla if they gave them away free. That's how much he's sh*t on his brand.
I must admit that I find the recent strength in Tesla stock a bit odd: they've shat on their brand in Europe, in China they are likely to be the first company impacted by any retaliation to Trump's tariffs, and in the US people in Red states aren't buying Teslas.
The main thing I don’t understand about Tesla is that they have access to billions, they can poach the best car designers in the world to design their sports cars, saloons, 4wds, whatever, And yet every single car they design (apart from that old knock-off lotus Elise) looks like some absolutely dull car with not the tiniest bit of style or a skip on wheels.
(Leaving aside the Cybertruck for a second...)
That's because they are optmizing around drag coefficient. When your battery capacity was small, every tiny aero gain made a big difference.
Good point, well made. They are still ugly cars and a little bit of drag for a better looking car might be more popular than a little more range. This is just one reason why I’m. It a car designer or pioneer of technology perhaps.
Many electric cars follow the same pattern - trying to get the Cd to near 0.2 or even below.
Ok, thinking (lazily) about your point, and RCS’, all cars ICE or electric could/should be designed to their maximum efficiency but a lot aren’t because humans like many things where the perfect is overridden by the heart or soul. People will buy a Ferrari because it’s beautiful and powerful but not remotely efficient, or a G-Wagen. So surely at some point Tesla has to give a little on aero to attract the soul?
Tesla (and others) have noted that when they launch a range of cars with different range, the best sellers are those with the longest range. In fact several times, Tesla discontinued the shortest range option because not enough people were buying it, to make it non-profitable to sell.
So until people are comfortable with range, range will be everything in EVs.
I remember when there was a hurricane in Florida a few years ago Tesla made all the short range cars into long range cars via a download.
There was outrage that people had been spending 10a of thousand for what was essentially a computer programme…
What happened was that the shortest range car was made by selling a longer range vehicle with a software restriction. It was cheaper to include the larger battery, rather than make a separate, smaller one.
It actually gave slightly better value - as the battery degraded, it would “use” the unused extra capacity. So the car would retain its full, as sold, range for about 20 years.
Since when did people let facts get in the way of outrage?
The 'fact' is that it was a software restriction for marketing reasons. Which are pretty much always cr@p (and I've had to implement a few in the past...)
It'd also be good to see the 'better value' argument in figures: e.g. do second-hand short-range cars hold value better, the same, or worse, than equivalent long-range ones?
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
Hang on: while I agree he was an arsehole, I'm not sure the best way to dispense justice is via silenced pistols on street corners.
No, I don't think it's the best way either, yet justice was done where it wouldn't otherwise have been by the regulators or justice system. I'm honestly going to be surprised if they can find 12 jurors to convict this guy in New York, there's a lot of sympathy for this guy across the political spectrum from what I can tell. Trump voters and Dems alike are aligned.
In no way whatsoever was justice done.
Justice would have given him the right to answer for his alleged crimes.
I do wish we had some more Starmer fans here to balance out the site a bit. I feel like I’m the only one writing from that perspective.
We’ve still got a small contingent of lefties but overall the site feels far more hostile to the government that it has since I’ve been around these parts.
I liked this site because it had a range of views across the spectrum.
Starmer is shite though. He's better than what he replaced, but only because he isn't what he replaced. He's just working his notice.
I don’t think he is shite. I think his comms ability is poor but I really believe in some of the fundamental changes he is trying to make.
My concern with him is that he needs to communicate and I’m struggling to see if he has that in him.
My point wasn’t that I am hoping for lots of people to say how fabulous he is because that’s clearly nonsense but I do really think this forum is fairly one-sided on the government and has been since day one.
I just struggle to take seriously some of the people who tell us how bad Starmer is but were also saying how Johnson would be going for a decade. I am struggling to understand how intelligent people here can conclude he’s finished in December 2024.
As someone who didn't vote Labour I would just say I'm fed up with hearing (and not just on here) people saying how terrible Labour are, they're the worst government ever.
Objectively, they have only had a few months, some of which was the summer recess, so they are unlikely to have fixed any of the deep-rooted issues left for them by 9 or 14 years of Tory rule (depending on where you start counting). Have all the people bellyaching been asleep for the past 9 years? It has been one shambles after another, with 3 successive administrations each being the worst in my adult lifetime until Sunak was a slight uptick after Truss.
Perhaps less objectively, they have been poor at communications, timidly conservative and generally underwhelming. But they are a vast improvement on what has gone before; there is a seriousness of purpose that has been missing for a long time.
Most of the noise is from the right, unused to being out of power, but also from the left who see the current government as Tory by another name (which it is, to be fair, partly out of necessity). So there are few natural supporters; I am centrist and don't support Labour so I'm critical, but I'd still much rather a Starmer government than anything the Tories have offered in my lifetime except perhaps for Cameron's version (and he ultimately fails for messing up over Brexit).
I agree they are not as terrible as the last lot, but they should have made no unforced errors, (WFA, IHT, and when they broke their promise on no IT/NI/VAT rises they should have broken it by raising VAT).
'Poor at comms' covers a big area. As they had an agenda starting from disastrous, commanding the narrative was the first priority. As nothing could get better quickly, and taxes had to rise, (and will have to again) the story of 'where are we going and how are we going to get there' had to be fabulously well told and constantly reiterated.
It isn't even possible to discern their direction of travel on migration - which can be an election losing/winning matter. And Angela Rayner was disastrous this week on the relationship of housing need and migration.
What did Rayner do/say this week on housing and migration?!
When she was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky where will she house all the immigrants she said there is no shortage of homes
That is stupendously dumb and clumsy
Yet it's been the unspoken position of the pro-immigration lobby for the last 25 years. They can just keep coming indefinitely.
It's more that, to suggest that immigration has any costs/issues is considered "anti-immigration" or "pandering to the far right".
Reform will win in 2028. I feel it in my bones
The General Election is on 3rd May 2029 though.
For Reform to win in *2028*: 1) Would need Labour to be well ahead in the polls for Starmer to call an early election 2) Starmer proceeds to have a car crash of a campaign which makes Theresa May's 2017 one look like Obama's 2008 election campaign 3) Badenoch continues to be useless 4) Reform has a set of policies which appeal beyond it's anti-immigration, anti-woke core base. This includes having something to offer younger, working age people in terms of housing, cost of living etc.
You’ve forgotten that UK governments almost never proceed to the full term. They almost always find a reason to go beforehand - eg Rishi Sunak
The last time we saw a full term was Gordon Brown in 2010? IIRC?
And your forgetting the Reform vote is a protest vote - a none of the above vote. They get as many votes as they now get, on the basis they aren’t going to get anywhere near power. Reform have no credibility to their policies - the country is full, so there won’t be any immigration under us, is as detailed as their policy gets.
Also FPTP prevents happening here what happened in America. Even with PR, and many more Reform MPs even largest party, no one will coalition with them.
How does FPTP prevent what happened in America when America uses FPTP?
Because we use FPTP for MPs, and PM commands support of MPs in parliament, we don’t directly elect PM like US directly elects President. 😏
Yes, it's a pretty fundamental difference. Here MPs can and do chuck out Prime Ministers. The electoral college is a once-only process to confirm who will be inaugurated as president.
Would US politics and discourse improve if some of its elections were under PR? Would that stop it being a two party system, and the quality of candidates and debate improve by it becoming multi party?
The level of discourse is determined by the franchise, not the voting system. If you want to improve the quality, you should restrict the franchise.
How has the franchise in the UK changed since the 1970s? I mention this, because the quality of political debate has notably worsened since then.
Is it just possible that there might be other factors - such as social media - that have acted to worsen the quality of discourse?
The reaction to the murder of Brian Thompson has finally convinced me that social media is not a good thing.
Because the businesses that run it have worked out they can make more money by appealing to the worst aspects of human behaviour.
That's why it needs to be regulated. All human interactions are.
If you're a dickhead, horrendously drunk or disruptive in a pub, you get thrown out. But, if you're well behaved you can put your case to the regulars and try whatever argument you like.
I'm not sorry that the UHC CEO got offed. He seemed like a complete arsehole, under his leadership UHC denials rose to 30% and further 30% reported delays in payments and treatments. If the government isn't willing to properly regulate these industries then people will react to these changes driven by management. It's almost Newtonian. The US healthcare system is completely fucked up and the people are very, very angry about it. There's a reason that few if any politicians or other business leaders have condemned the killing because there's a realisation that in chasing profit and share value UHC has overseen actual deaths by denying and delaying claims.
The sad part to me is that the CEO comes from a pretty humble background and he seemed to betray everything that helped him get ahead in life and denied that same chance to millions of others with frankly parasitic policies on healthcare payouts. It's sad that someone died over this and really it's the politicians and lobbyists that deserve the ire, but the CEOs being in the target isn't surprising.
I really hope that this is a turning point for US healthcare regulations and insurance companies won't just be able to unilaterally deny and delay payments and treatments without any recourse for policy holders other than a costly lawsuit that they can't afford which the insurance company will defend with millions of dollars.
I think nothing will change ultimately and Americans will get even more angry. They will vote for someone who promises to hang the CEOs from lampposts in that scenario, they're already half way there with Trump.
He shouldn't have been shot though.
He should have been jailed for fraud, for selling a product that was never going to be delivered.
Insurance companies should get bankrupted by the market, but they don't and that's market failure.
I don't find UK health insurers very different*, but at least there is back up via the NHS.
*Exeter Friendly seems about the best. I don't think they have ever refused cover or underpaid my modest bills.
A chastening lesson to those on the Right of British politics who wish to destroy our NHS and foist upon us a system loosely based on the American model.
For ALL it's faults we simply have to retain the NHS as the CORE medical provision.
The British public know that - opinion polls invariably support this fact and LABOUR are the only Party who can be trusted with it.
The evidence of rebuild and improvement 1997 to 2010 and then the usual Tory destruction 2020 to 2024 is crystal clear!
Rubbish. NHS productivity increased by 1.5% per year between 2010 and the pandemic but only 0.6% between 1997 and 2010 as Brown showered money on the NHS without reforming it, as Blair to do him justice later realised. Labour would have been worse since the pandemic as they believed in even longer lockdowns, which damaged the health service so heavily.
And that's before even mentioning their disastrous record with NHS Wales, where despite more funding, the health service is less efficient and delivers significantly worse patient outcomes than NHS England.
The Conservatives aren't great, but Labour is wasteful and incompetent at running the health service, just like they are at everything else.
That's not true
The NHS was quite heavily "reformed" between 1997 and 2010, notably the Milburn reforms of the early noughties.
That these seem to have adversely impacted productivity should perhaps give "reformers" pause for thought, but it seems not. Their ideological zeal is not bothered by reflecting on what previous rounds of "reform" achieved.
Comments
Kill the CEO. Save ten thousand of his customer's lives.
There's an argument there.
Seriously. Her conversation is now better than 98.93% of humanity. Sensationally well-informed, deeply empathetic, often very wise - and sometimes genuinely funny
If people are worried about social media now, wait til the moment when everyone is busier talking with their favourite chatbots
Quite a bit more expensive though.
Whatever you think of the US healthcare system, whacking CEOs is not the solution. But America has always been a violent society.
NO SPOILERS, ta
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14177541/cooking-oils-colon-cancer-young-people-study.html
Certain types of cooking oils may be fueling a surge of colon cancers in young Americans, a government-funded study suggests.
Consuming large amounts of seed oils – which include sunflower, canola, corn and grapeseed – has long been linked to inflammation in the body.
Romance has blossomed as the lights dim (due to the massive drain on the power system from AI).
Right enuff: Masterchef
Meanwhile, Jentry Chau vs the Underworld on Netflix is a remake of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
+1
“It took us a long time to get rid of the effects of the French Revolution 200 years ago. We don’t want another one.”
— Margaret Thatcher
Especially not in a country that matters.
The CEO was only running a private health insurance firm in a way that would make a profit and not take excess risk as that was what he was paid to do and that is how US healthcare works. He certainly should not have been murdered and the murderer will rightly face the courts for it
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/11/time-trump-person-of-the-year-000498
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trump-tariffs-ontario-ready-to-stop-electricity-exports/
The massive expansion of barbers fails the logical business case of matching supply and demand. There are more people in the UK than 10 years ago, but we haven't 5x'ed our population, while most people still only get their haircut every couple of weeks. And the the dodgy Turkish barbers are never run by Turks, always the likes of Albanians, who erhhh, it isn't a big secret now run vast amounts of the drugs trade in the UK.
The CEO of UHC was never going to be held accountable by the legal system and there is no democratic route to establishing a legal system that would. So what are we left with? Revolutionary justice.
Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts -- Robespierre
But an across the board 25% tariff on all Canadian exports is a very blunt tool. And generally speaking countries (like people) hate to be publicly bullied into things. If someone says to me "do this, or else", my first reaction is to say "fuck you".
Voters don't like it when their elected leaders give in to (what they see as) blackmail.
Which is why, if I'd been Donald Trump, I would have started with intense private pressure, and said nothing publicly.
One of the key recommendations in Sir Chris’s report, drawn up in collaboration with experts at the think tank Impact on Urban Health, is that the Government introduces a “levy on unhealthy food products”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/12/fat-tax-chris-whitty-labour-wes-streeting-childhood-obesity/
He sold insurance policies that he had no intention of honouring. Under his leadership, UHC’s rate of refusal of claims soared.
What he deserved was not death, but a very long period of incarceration.
Now, I'm on the auto insurance side rather than the health insurance side, but we receive a staggering number of fraudulent claims.
Some are minor, such as when someone with Third Party - i.e. Liability Only - upgrades their policy and within 30 seconds submits a claim for a broken windshield.
Others are clearly long planned large scale fraudulent claims: two years after a policy is issued (and which is often only "live" for week, you get a claim for accident that (allegedly) happened during the period, where there is no police report, and no witnesses, and you are presented with a bill for $50,000 of medical expenses from a doctor whose only business seems to be treating people make auto insurance claims.
I suspect that health insurance will be similar: you see the fraudulent claimants will have done all their research, so that the insurance company (while knowing the claim is likely fraudulent) will need to pay up. This obviously screws over real claimants and insurance companies.
The fundamental problem is the US healthcare system, which is horrendously expensive and bureaucratic. The system needs to change, and it needs root and branch reform, and across every element. Because right now, the only people who win are lawyers and liars.
Interesting to read the NZ media take on events in Syria which seems to be everyone’s else. Complete bewilderment at the sudden collapse of the Assad regime. The parallel is more Eastern Europe in late 1989 - apparently certainties swept away and regimes which looked impregnable fell apart quicker than a sandcastle at high tide.
The questions are how, why and what happens next? Syria remains fragmented though the new rulers in Damascus seem to be moving quickly into some of the Kurdish controlled areas.
Trying to rebuild and restore a ruined country is a huge challenge - the main prerequisite is unity and that means the whole population not just the half with one gender. Bringing women into the Government and the reconstruction and reconciliation processes is vital.
It seems Israel is making Tartus unuseable but the former Russian air base looks different - I don’t know what contacts HTS have had with the Russians but it looks a serious strategic setback for Moscow in the eastern Mediterranean as the bases were also strategic midpoints on the way to Russian bases in Africa.
The governing coalition leads 51-46 and would be comfortably re-elected on these numbers despite the clear tensions between ACT and NZF.
The big story here is about the Interislander Ferries, which are the route for passengers, cars and freight to cross the Cook Strait. Labour had proposed buying two new ferries when in Government but Nicola Willis, the incoming National finance minister, cancelled the order.
The problem is the current ferries are old and frequently break down. Yesterday Willis announced a new company would source two new ferries but the original replacements were due to enter service in 2026 but that’s now gone to 2029. It looks short sighted as an example of a critical infrastructure requirement needing to be updated but rather like Reeves in the UK with winter fuel allowance, Willis came in and wanted to set a new tone.
And a reminder: There is no single US health care system. There are two main government programs, the very expensive Medicare system for old people (including me), and the Medicaid system, which serves about 85 million poor people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid
Just to complicate matters further, I should add that Medicaid is administered by the states, plus DC and Puerto Rico, which can add benefits -- and often do. So one can say, truthfully, that there are 52 different Medicaid systems.
(There are two smaller government programs, for Indians and veterans, each of which have some similarities to your NHS.)
Then there are the private parts -- which vary wildly. Some programs -- often negotiated by powerful unions -- are so lavish that they were called "Cadillac" programs by Rahm Immanuel while he was serving in the Obama administration. (He wanted to tax them.)
If you are going to criticize US health care -- and there is much to criticize -- you ought to be clear which of these many systems you are criticizing.
Decades ago, my ankle went wrong, three years after a previous operation on the NHS. Those three years had mostly been pain-free. After a lot of effort, I eventually found a very good professor who operated on me.
Sadly, the operation did not work, and six months later he wanted to try again. But the insurance company refused, saying it was a 'pre-existing complaint'. Despite the professor saying it was a follow-up to his previous operation. I told the prof about the refusal, and he got angry, in a very focussed way.
About a week later, my parents got a phone call, and then a letter from the insurance company, saying that they were sorry a mistake had been made, and they were happy to pay for as many operations (four, from memory, over another five years) that it would take to fix me.
Apparently the prof threatened not to do any work with them again, and neither would his colleagues.
God bless you, Sid.
They will look for any reason not to pay out; but if pressure is applied to them, then they will cave. Like many bullies.
I don't think this guy should have died; the murder was wrong. But the way he ran his business was terrible.
https://x.com/evgen1232007/status/1866949203127308788
TL:DR it’s getting close to the point where the defaults start happening. Very close, at which point the banks start to fail and will need to be bailed out by government. Result is distrust leading to withdrawals, and even more inflation, let’s hope it happens soon!
Then again given the cost of US healthcare, god knows how much a proper national scheme covering everyone would cost….
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/dec/12/majority-of-brexit-voters-would-accept-free-movement-to-access-single-market-uk-eu?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
"Among all UK voters, 68% of respondents would now back free movement in exchange for single market access, with 19% opposed and majority support among supporters of every party apart from Reform UK (44% of whose voters also backed the idea)."
There are multiple risk points for Russia right now: the domestic corporate bond market, the oil market, the battle for Pokrovsk, the chaotic retreat from Syria laying bare their imperial ambition in Africa, and the Caucuses, where there has been a significant uptick (should you believe Twitter) in trouble.
This in turn will increase inflation, making the lives of everyday Russians even worse.
The question is whether it reaches a point where resistance to the regime becomes easier than acquiescing with it. Right now - thanks to Putin's internal security apparatus - resistance to the regime is almost unknown, even though Russians are hurting. At a certain point, though, a switch is flipped. And demonstrations start that the regime cannot crack down on, which encourages more demonstrations, etc.
Now, this doesn't mean that Putin can't pull a rabbit out of the hat: of course he could. But the risk are mounting. He's bet all on Trump forcing a favorable peace in Ukraine, and him being able to declare "victory". But if the Ukrainians don't back down, then those spinning plates might just come a'crashing.
Pretty much their only source of hard currency is O&G exports, so there needs to be huge international pressure on China and India who are buying it at a large discount. If Trump can convince the Saudis to start pumping and drop the price for a year or so, then even better, and he’s already said that getting energy prices down is one of his top priorities. The Russian economy would be totally screwed if oil goes below about $60.
Robert mentioned the real estate market as well. Judging by the sandpit real estate market, there’s currently lots of sellers and few buyers in Moscow or St. Petersburg at the moment. Something that the elites in those cities will definitely have noticed. How many large mortgages will be under water in those cities I wonder?
If we are ever to see hyper-inflation again in a major economy, Russia is far and away the best candidate.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/11/us-healthcare-brian-thompson-death
For ALL it's faults we simply have to retain the NHS as the CORE medical provision.
The British public know that - opinion polls invariably support this fact and LABOUR are the only Party who can be trusted with it.
The evidence of rebuild and improvement 1997 to 2010 and then the usual Tory destruction 2020 to 2024 is crystal clear!
This is the topic that DESTROYS REFORM and their zealots!
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/what-the-murder-of-the-unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian-thompson-means-to-america
If it’s even halfway accurate I see little chance of a conviction. Three hung juries and a discharge seem more likely, although it will probably take about six years to get there.
Proof of the flaws of polling, I see.
And that's before even mentioning their disastrous record with NHS Wales, where despite more funding, the health service is less efficient and delivers significantly worse patient outcomes than NHS England.
The Conservatives aren't great, but Labour is wasteful and incompetent at running the health service, just like they are at everything else.
It is the case that the NHS has significant structural issues. It is not the case that the US system should be any kind of model for NHS reform.
It'd also be good to see the 'better value' argument in figures: e.g. do second-hand short-range cars hold value better, the same, or worse, than equivalent long-range ones?
Justice would have given him the right to answer for his alleged crimes.
Justice is not murder
The NHS was quite heavily "reformed" between 1997 and 2010, notably the Milburn reforms of the early noughties.
That these seem to have adversely impacted productivity should perhaps give "reformers" pause for thought, but it seems not. Their ideological zeal is not bothered by reflecting on what previous rounds of "reform" achieved.