"Since Health is devolved are you arguing Westminster should take it back?"
Christ, no. We've only just begun repairing the catastrophic damage done by 292 years of Westminster control - do you want to set us back even more decades?
And of course life expectancy figures are affected by policy areas that are still firmly under Westminster control. The male suicide rate is much higher in Scotland, for example. Poor life chances under London rule undoubtedly contribute to that.
As I noted the other day and was rubbished for saying so:
"Consider: a Conservative health spokesman has used the word "rotten" about the NHS. Since he did so, the sky has not fallen on his head. He has not been pilloried, birched or put on trial on the BBC for his heresy against our national religion. l/
Lol. Kirkup is ever so slightly mistaking his own Rightwing fantasies for reality in that piece.
But you're right, it does seem the Tories have a deliberate strategy of trying to undermine the NHS purely for cynical party political reasons.
Given where public opinion is on the matter, that's a very - shall we say "bold" - move by your Party, Plato.
They could still come out ahead despite everything if they made it about saving the NHS from the target culture and the nomen - it's a family affair - klatura but they won't for the obvious reason i.e. they don't want to save it.
Given the lack of good options - apart from the one they don't want i.e. making the NHS better and therefore harder to privatize - then trying to trash Labour's reputation on the issue makes logical sense imo. If they really get stuck in looking for dirt then it shouldn't be too hard.
Of course, there was no standardised Anglo-Saxon spelling - which is why you get borough, burgh, burh, bury and brough. They all mean the same thing: fortified township. Alfred the Great developed quite a few as planned settlements. His version of new towns.
Boris scraped home against an opponent who was unelectable.
He wasn't unelectable. If he'd left off the comments about Jews/homosexuals and compensated by doing a Galloway instead then he would have won comfortably.
Boris scraped home against an opponent who was unelectable.
He wasn't unelectable. If he'd left off the comments about Jews/homosexuals and compensated by doing a Galloway instead then he would have won comfortably.
Boris scraped home against an opponent who was unelectable.
He wasn't unelectable. If he'd left off the comments about Jews/homosexuals and compensated by doing a Galloway instead then he would have won comfortably.
But he didn't. That's what made him unelectable.
That should have been "and/or" doing a Galloway. I still think he'd have won if he'd made more of the wars.
Scottish life expectancy was actually pretty comparable to that enjoyed in other parts of the developed world until the 1950s, then rates of increase slowed; a process that has accelerated over the last 30 years or so.
"Since Health is devolved are you arguing Westminster should take it back?"
Christ, no. We've only just begun repairing the catastrophic damage done by 292 years of Westminster control - do you want to set us back even more decades?
And of course life expectancy figures are affected by policy areas that are still firmly under Westminster control. The male suicide rate is much higher in Scotland, for example. Poor life chances under London rule undoubtedly contribute to that.
I can't find directly comparable figures, but it looks as though life expectancy might have been higher in Scotland, than in England, when Victoria was Queen, and so not all of the 292 years of Union have been bad for Scotland.
Boris scraped home against an opponent who was unelectable.
He wasn't unelectable. If he'd left off the comments about Jews/homosexuals and compensated by doing a Galloway instead then he would have won comfortably.
But he didn't. That's what made him unelectable.
That should have been "and/or" doing a Galloway. I still think he'd have won if he'd made more of the wars.
No, he'd burned too many bridges by then. And the tax stuff killed him in 2012.
Boris scraped home against an opponent who was unelectable.
He wasn't unelectable. If he'd left off the comments about Jews/homosexuals and compensated by doing a Galloway instead then he would have won comfortably.
He certainly did a lot better than I'd anticipated. It's possible that the comments which you refer to gained, rather than lost, votes for him.
Boris scraped home against an opponent who was unelectable.
He wasn't unelectable. If he'd left off the comments about Jews/homosexuals and compensated by doing a Galloway instead then he would have won comfortably.
But he didn't. That's what made him unelectable.
That should have been "and/or" doing a Galloway. I still think he'd have won if he'd made more of the wars.
No, he'd burned too many bridges by then. And the tax stuff killed him in 2012.
I guess in California it's cheaper to just send off the threatening legal letter, rather than taking five minutes to find out what it is you're threatening to litigate about. There doesn't seem to be any actual lawsuit there - just somebody threatening to sue the core developers unless they stop doing something they're not actually doing.
Isn't life expectancy in Scotland worse due to poor diet and alcohol abuse?
That would then beg the question of what produces the prevalence of poor diet and alcohol abuse. However those don't appear to be the proven causes of lower life expectancy.
'The Glasgow effect refers to the poor health and low life expectancy of Glaswegians compared to the rest of the UK and Europe. The hypothesis among epidemiologists is that poverty alone does not appear to account for the disparity. Equally deprived areas of the UK such as Liverpool and Manchester have higher life expectancies, and the wealthiest ten percent of the Glasgow population have a lower life expectancy than the same group in other cities. Various hypotheses have been proposed to account for the effect, including vitamin D deficiency, cold winters, higher levels of poverty than the figures suggest, high levels of stress, and a culture of alienation and pessimism.'
Boris scraped home against an opponent who was unelectable.
He wasn't unelectable. If he'd left off the comments about Jews/homosexuals and compensated by doing a Galloway instead then he would have won comfortably.
He certainly did a lot better than I'd anticipated. It's possible that the comments which you refer to gained, rather than lost, votes for him.
Yes, quite possible but doing a Galloway would have gained the same while losing less - and imo gained him some extra young/green/LD votes on top.
Between 1990 and 2010 the UK saw a sharp rise in these, compared to falls or no significant rises in most other European countries, especially from the mid-90s onwards (see page 15). Given the comparatively lower numbers of patents we file it's probably true to say that a very large proportion (maybe even a majority) of UK inventions considered to be worth protecting internationally have been invented by people born outside the UK.
No wonder immigraiton reform is such an issue in the US. You have to hope that at some stage over here we can start to have a sensible debate on whether absolute targets are a good idea or whether they are, in fact, doing more harm than good.
Between 1990 and 2010 the UK saw a sharp rise in these, compared to falls or no significant rises in most other European countries, especially from the mid-90s onwards (see page 15). Given the comparatively lower numbers of patents we file it's probably true to say that a very large proportion (maybe even a majority) of UK inventions considered to be worth protecting internationally have been invented by people born outside the UK.
No wonder immigraiton reform is such an issue in the US. You have to hope that at some stage over here we can start to have a sensible debate on whether absolute targets are a good idea or whether they are, in fact, doing more harm than good.
"Given the comparatively lower numbers of patents we file"
Comments
Christ, no. We've only just begun repairing the catastrophic damage done by 292 years of Westminster control - do you want to set us back even more decades?
And of course life expectancy figures are affected by policy areas that are still firmly under Westminster control. The male suicide rate is much higher in Scotland, for example. Poor life chances under London rule undoubtedly contribute to that.
Given the lack of good options - apart from the one they don't want i.e. making the NHS better and therefore harder to privatize - then trying to trash Labour's reputation on the issue makes logical sense imo. If they really get stuck in looking for dirt then it shouldn't be too hard.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-12898723
Thankyou for identifying my absolute favourite of the 'union dividends', Charles. How can the No campaign lose with a track record like that?
No, apparently its due to Scots committing suicide because they can no longer live under the rule of the hated English or some such...
Thankyou for identifying my second favourite of the 'union dividends', SquareRoot.
"No, apparently its due to Scots committing suicide because they can no longer live under the rule of the hated English or some such..."
Thankyou for living down to my expectations of you, Jonathan.
I am reminded of something great Scotsman Ian Rankin wrote in 'Set in Darkness'
"Big Women they were, addicted to Scotland's pantry: cigarettes and lard. Training shoes, elasticated waistbands...."
'The Glasgow effect refers to the poor health and low life expectancy of Glaswegians compared to the rest of the UK and Europe. The hypothesis among epidemiologists is that poverty alone does not appear to account for the disparity. Equally deprived areas of the UK such as Liverpool and Manchester have higher life expectancies, and the wealthiest ten percent of the Glasgow population have a lower life expectancy than the same group in other cities.
Various hypotheses have been proposed to account for the effect, including vitamin D deficiency, cold winters, higher levels of poverty than the figures suggest, high levels of stress, and a culture of alienation and pessimism.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_effect
Referendum could attract investment in #Scotland, say economists http://bit.ly/12dwzwb
http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/econ_stat/en/economics/pdf/Working_Paper_9-WEB.pdf
Between 1990 and 2010 the UK saw a sharp rise in these, compared to falls or no significant rises in most other European countries, especially from the mid-90s onwards (see page 15). Given the comparatively lower numbers of patents we file it's probably true to say that a very large proportion (maybe even a majority) of UK inventions considered to be worth protecting internationally have been invented by people born outside the UK.
No wonder immigraiton reform is such an issue in the US. You have to hope that at some stage over here we can start to have a sensible debate on whether absolute targets are a good idea or whether they are, in fact, doing more harm than good.
http://www.worldmapper.org/images/largepng/167.png