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The money goes on Trump mounting a WH2024 challenge – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited October 2021 in General
imageThe money goes on Trump mounting a WH2024 challenge – politicalbetting.com

The odds on whether Trump will run in 2024 have now settled down as can be seen punters rate his chances at more than 71%. This is a good bet because of the way the market is defined:

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • First like Biden
  • Hard to see Trump not registering.
  • Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Looking at the state of US Presidential Politics its hard to come to any other conclusion.
  • Vanilla seems a bit sticky on this thread.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    First like Biden

    Naughty, Sunil. I bet you got your first in, er, first before you told everyone about the new thread. :smile:
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,909
    edited October 2021
    TOPPING said:

    First like Biden

    Naughty, Sunil. I bet you got your first in, er, first before you told everyone about the new thread. :smile:
    No, I saw the link to the new thread appear under the previous header, then told you all about it, and only then did I get my first in!
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Interesting market, thanks Mike.

    What’s the relevant fundraising law - is it that you can’t raise any money until you register, or that you only have to start declaring it after you do? The former will lead to him declaring earlier, and the latter to him declaring later.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,589
    edited October 2021

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    edited October 2021

    tlg86 said:

    Are Labour pro-independence for Wales?

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/18/wales-launches-drive-to-keep-young-people-in-their-homeland

    Or is this driven by what happened to them in Scotland?

    No, they are pro the Union.

    Once Scotland leave and Ireland is reunited the independence train in Wales will start rolling, and Labour here too, will be left at the station.

    I guess there's an important difference between Labour and Lafur? Drakeford seems pleasantly rational on the issue which may be the product of Plaid not being much of a threat at the moment? Though SLab were pretty anti SNP even before they were reduced to third party status (they're off the SNPbad scale now).
    FPT

    All 3 of Rhodri Morgan, Carwyn Jones & Mark Drakeford were/are fluent Welsh speakers.

    I think Drakeford said he considered joining Plaid Cymru as a young man, before settling on Llafur. So, Drakeford is popular with many Plaid Cymru voters.

    I suspect Drakeford prefers Wales to be in the UK -- but not in a UK run by Johnson or with endless Tory Govts in Westminster.

    Drakeford has surprised me (and others) on the upside. He looks like a bumbling, incompetent academic, but he has a set of skills and attributes that has proved electorally successful in Wales.

    In fact, I prefer Drakeford to any of his likely successors -- he is standing down as leader of Llafur before the next Senedd elections.

    Be interesting to see what happens next to Llafur. Incompetent, half-assed leadership is certainly one of the things that killed SLAB, and that Llafur have so far avoided.
  • Well of course Trump is running for President. He has been continuously since he had the election stolen from him.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038

    Well of course Trump is running for President. He has been continuously since he had the election stolen from him.

    Josh Glancey in S Times listed a lot of reasons why he probably wont run yesterday.

    I wasn't convinced by any of them.

    Unless he is actually dead he will run.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    First like Biden

    Naughty, Sunil. I bet you got your first in, er, first before you told everyone about the new thread. :smile:
    No, I saw the link to the new thread appear under the previous header, then told you all about it, and only then did I get my first in!
    Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,007
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    First like Biden

    Naughty, Sunil. I bet you got your first in, er, first before you told everyone about the new thread. :smile:
    No, I saw the link to the new thread appear under the previous header, then told you all about it, and only then did I get my first in!
    Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
    Once there was this kid who
    Got into an accident and couldn't come to school..
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,753

    Well of course Trump is running for President. He has been continuously since he had the election stolen from him.

    Josh Glancey in S Times listed a lot of reasons why he probably wont run yesterday.

    I wasn't convinced by any of them.

    Unless he is actually dead he will run.
    And even then.....
  • Re murdered politicians. I must confess the murder of the LibDem councillor Andrew Pennington GM, killed defending MP Nigel Jones in 2000, had slipped my mind. RIP.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Sandpit said:

    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff

    Anecdotally I know of several people who have recently graduated from proper universities with proper degrees, now training as Amazon drivers.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555
    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Diversity, not size, is America's problem. Identity politics is a zero sum game. That's why it's close to being ungovernable.

    (Of course diversity is also a huge strength, as a quick glance at any list of Silicon Valley CEO names will show).
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Royale, the fixation on race is to judge people on that metric. It's just racism rebranded.

    Fun watching the contortions whenever the superior educational, occupational, and IQ levels of Koreans is pointed out, though.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,589
    TOPPING said:

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
    A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,669

    Well of course Trump is running for President. He has been continuously since he had the election stolen from him.

    ... by getting 7 million fewer votes and losing the electoral college 306 to 232.
  • Sandpit said:

    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff

    It isn't purely good news either. We're back to there being an inelastic labour pool. At least in the short term we are going to see shortages because there simply aren't enough people to fill vacancies.
  • Fishing said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Diversity, not size, is America's problem. Identity politics is a zero sum game. That's why it's close to being ungovernable.

    (Of course diversity is also a huge strength, as a quick glance at any list of Silicon Valley CEO names will show).
    I like Morgan Freeman's suggestion that we stop talking about it.

    If we didn't endlessly talk about what race, sex, sexuality and gender everyone was - categorising and judging them accordingly - we might find out we had rather a lot in common.
    Judging people by their race is racism. It should never be acceptable.

    If racism exists it should be called out and opposed, so gestures like kneeling against intolerance are a good thing.

    But to be racist yourself in reply is a very bad thing. You don't fix racism, by being racist yourself.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    IshmaelZ said:

    Sandpit said:

    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff

    Anecdotally I know of several people who have recently graduated from proper universities with proper degrees, now training as Amazon drivers.
    Can’t say I’ve been following the UK graduate job market this year. Do we have a lower than usual number of vacancies because of pandemic/WFH effects, and/or a higher than usual number of graduates/firsts awarded?

    It appears there’s lots of opportunities for the enterprising young to earn some serious cash this winter, with pretty much unlimited hours available to people willing to work. I recall once putting in the December timesheet with more than 300 hours on it, in a hospitality job. Hourly paid, of course. That covered a lot of beer the costs of living for the next semester.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,589
    Sandpit said:

    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff

    I have promised, as future unDictator of Britain, to reintroduce a maximum wage (See the Act of 1515) for villeins and varlots of all kinds.

    4d a day in Summer, 5d a day in Winter.
  • Sandpit said:

    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff

    It isn't purely good news either. We're back to there being an inelastic labour pool. At least in the short term we are going to see shortages because there simply aren't enough people to fill vacancies.
    If you get shortages of bottled water, but the people serving you get a living wage, then you'd think that would be welcomed by those supposedly left wing.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    FPT

    .

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    MrEd said:

    kjh said:

    One thing I just thought about with the killing of David Amess is a few years ago we would have guessed straight away that it might have been Islamic terror.

    Whether its because of the lack of initial reports of the attacker saying "Allahu Akhbar" or for other reasons, that didn't enter the conversation until after the attacker was identified this time. Instead people talking about things like 'politicians being called scum' etc which while bad likely had absolutely no impact on this attack since it had entirely different motives.

    I don't know whether that's a good or a bad thing that it wasn't the first thought we went to. Whether its a sign of progress in combatting Islamic terror, or a sign of how bad things have gotten elsewhere?

    A well observed post. I think most people here did not jump to any conclusions. A couple seemed hell bent on making a political issue out of it by the scum reference to which most across the political spectrum here rejected as inappropriate at that moment. Another linked to Islam.

    The rest of us were just sad at the event with no prejudgement.

    Difficult to know if things have got better or there are more threats.
    kjh said:

    One thing I just thought about with the killing of David Amess is a few years ago we would have guessed straight away that it might have been Islamic terror.

    Whether its because of the lack of initial reports of the attacker saying "Allahu Akhbar" or for other reasons, that didn't enter the conversation until after the attacker was identified this time. Instead people talking about things like 'politicians being called scum' etc which while bad likely had absolutely no impact on this attack since it had entirely different motives.

    I don't know whether that's a good or a bad thing that it wasn't the first thought we went to. Whether its a sign of progress in combatting Islamic terror, or a sign of how bad things have gotten elsewhere?

    A well observed post. I think most people here did not jump to any conclusions. A couple seemed hell bent on making a political issue out of it by the scum reference to which most across the political spectrum here rejected as inappropriate at that moment. Another linked to Islam.

    The rest of us were just sad at the event with no prejudgement.

    Difficult to know if things have got better or there are more threats.
    I think one or two of us were also pointing out the discrepancies on the reactions depending on who was attacked and why. Nobody seemed to have an issue after Jo Cox's death of jumping into speculation and making political points, nor was there was much in the point of condemnation for doing so. Yet after this attack, it was suddenly deemed not the right thing to do. It would be nice to have the same standards applied to all events, not just pick n mix.

    So lets do that. Both sides can nitpick the other side. So its drop hands and actually work together.

    We need to de-radicalise politics. Draw the line with the he said she said shit. Bides have said bad. It must stop. We cannot call the opposition scum or traitors. We cannot brand judges enemies of the people. Calling a politician names is fine if it is based on their abilities as a politician. Calling them the enemy is not fine.

    Sadly the humanity has been smashed out of too many people over the last decade. We have gone from shared horror at a dead Syrian toddler face down on a beach to justifying the "accidental" drowning of the same in the channel with an immigration bill that breaks national and international law. We have gone from shared acceptance on language to describe opposition MPs to the deputy leader of the opposition denouncing government MPs as scum to huge cheers.

    Draw the line. Stop this. We have to be decent human beings so that the extremists and the racists and the lunatics no longer have anywhere to hide. It used to be the case that mainstream politicians condemned the extreme views that can bubble away under the surface of society. Now they fan those flames for votes. We are along the same road that America is on. Not too late for us to turn around back towards basic human decency.
    And yet you couldn’t resist putting quote marks around “accidental”
    Because they absolutely know the policy is going to drown kids. They are building immunity into it so that Border Force staff can't be prosecuted for carrying out the policy.

    It is of course right that they should have this immunity. It is completely wrong that they should be put in the position. Its "accidental" because whilst the BF staff will not set out to deliberately drown people, the peopl writing the policy know it will happen accidentally.

    Accidental by design drowning of children. And your party are doing it for votes. Stop being a politician and become a human being again and tell me as a person how the drowning of anyone can be justified.

    This is precisely the bottom feeding politics that has to stop. The difference is that I can condemn both the drown the kids policy and the "Tory scum" rant. You apparently cannot.
    There you are at it again: this government is evil because they are willing to accept a certain level of consequences as a result of their policy.

    The best way to limit drowning is to make sure that no one wants to cross the Channel is an unseaworthy vessel.

    That will save the greatest number of lives over time (equal to a policy of meeting them all in Calais with Rolls Royces and chauffeuring them on ferries - but that isn’t consistent with immigration policy)
    Where did I say evil? I think the policy is desperate more than anything else. They have made all kinds of claims about managed immigration they have no means of delivering on. This is the latest desperate measure to show some kind of control.

    The *policy* is the problem. "Accepting a certain level of consequences" - drowned people - is a policy "that will save the greatest number of lives" is the problem. Its deeply cynical designed to fan the flames of hate for all the people out there who see England as somehow under siege by jihadis and the like.

    We need to rehumanise people. Saying drowned children is an acceptable consequence is not the way to do so. Why not stand up to the element of the public baying for this kind of policy and say "no"? Same for the Labour lot engaging "Tory scum" chants at their conference or organised "March against the Tories" events so your delegates have to be inside a ring of steel to stay safe. Its wrong.
    Do you think no children are drowning at the moment?

    Tolerating dinghies crossing the Channel is saying drowned children is acceptable. If you want to stop children drowning, you need to stop the dinghies. It isn't safe to cross the Channel in a dinghy.
    Sure. We all agree that it isn't safe. But how have we concluded that the solution to drowning is to drown them ourselves? To discourage them from making the journey? Desperate people do desperate things - from their perspective how does drowned when the dinghy develops a leak differ from drowned because HMBF dragged them under?

    We're back to needing a rational border policy. We have told people that Britain uniquely is under siege when in reality we have far fewer asylum seekers than all our big neighbours. So of course they are the enemy. Perhaps if we treat them like human beings we can fix this. Stop lying to people about "1st safe country" and accept they have every right to claim asylum here. And then spend the money on the systems and facilities to quickly screen and process them. Valid claim, welcome, treated humanely. Invalid claim, off you go.
    Discouraging them from making the journey is the only thing that will stop the drownings, the question is how you get there.

    Drowning them ourselves is absolutely not the right solution. Deporting them can be.

    Nobody in France is desperate. And if they are then France should deal with that.
    France is dealing with them. According to the UNHCR (https://www.unhcr.org/uk/asylum-in-the-uk.html) we received 26,903 applications last year. France received 93,475. Of interest to the "deport them to Albania, the deal is nearly done" comments earlier is that Albania was the 2nd biggest source of asylum applications to the UK...

    For years - well beyond this government - we have had an asylum system not fit for purpose. We don't have the resources to manage and process them and then instead of fixing it we let the Home Office cut the budget even more and then resort to publicity-seeking stupid like the current bill.
    A lot of current issues came down to spending money on things where Departments don't seem to want to spend money on / invest in for reasons I just cannot understand.

    Investing in courts so cases are seen and dealt with quickly, investing in tribunals so that decisions are made and appealed quickly seem (to me) to be sensible places to spend money. Instead the home office seems to spend money on anything but the one central thing that would remove delays and made things run quickly.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff

    It isn't purely good news either. We're back to there being an inelastic labour pool. At least in the short term we are going to see shortages because there simply aren't enough people to fill vacancies.
    Oh indeed. It’s just all rather amusing to see pretty much the whole centre-left lining up in opposition to a sharp reduction in inequality.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,589
    DavidL said:

    Well of course Trump is running for President. He has been continuously since he had the election stolen from him.

    Josh Glancey in S Times listed a lot of reasons why he probably wont run yesterday.

    I wasn't convinced by any of them.

    Unless he is actually dead he will run.
    And even then.....
    A couple of Russians of my aquitance maintain that

    a) Chernenko was dead for his entire premiership.
    b) He was one of the better leaders in Soviet times.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,550
    .
    Sandpit said:

    Interesting market, thanks Mike.

    What’s the relevant fundraising law - is it that you can’t raise any money until you register, or that you only have to start declaring it after you do? The former will lead to him declaring earlier, and the latter to him declaring later.

    He's never stopped raising money.
    I don't think from his personal grifting POV it makes much difference when he declares. Though of course there are (some weakish) limitations on what he can do with cash raised before he declares.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    Fishing said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Diversity, not size, is America's problem. Identity politics is a zero sum game. That's why it's close to being ungovernable.

    (Of course diversity is also a huge strength, as a quick glance at any list of Silicon Valley CEO names will show).
    I like Morgan Freeman's suggestion that we stop talking about it.

    If we didn't endlessly talk about what race, sex, sexuality and gender everyone was - categorising and judging them accordingly - we might find out we had rather a lot in common.
    Judging people by their race is racism. It should never be acceptable.

    If racism exists it should be called out and opposed, so gestures like kneeling against intolerance are a good thing.

    But to be racist yourself in reply is a very bad thing. You don't fix racism, by being racist yourself.
    It's an interesting debate. Positive discrimination, for example, might have the ability to kickstart a process which otherwise would take a far longer time to address.

    Not enough black people in the workforce or as CEOs? Then positive discrimination would redress that balance at the expense of, what? "The best candidate for the job"? Perhaps. But as with, ahem, Brexit, a transition period would mean that there are costs which are justified for the longer term overall benefit.

    And I of course put "best candidate for the job" in quotation marks because it is far from clear that the best candidate for the job wouldn't be picked.
  • Sandpit said:

    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff

    It isn't purely good news either. We're back to there being an inelastic labour pool. At least in the short term we are going to see shortages because there simply aren't enough people to fill vacancies.
    If you get shortages of bottled water, but the people serving you get a living wage, then you'd think that would be welcomed by those supposedly left wing.
    Its great to see Amazon taking a positive lead for a change. And I know that you have a "whatever" approach to the coming crisis. The government can't afford to be so nonplussed about it - they're still in denial there is a problem.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,550

    DavidL said:

    Well of course Trump is running for President. He has been continuously since he had the election stolen from him.

    Josh Glancey in S Times listed a lot of reasons why he probably wont run yesterday.

    I wasn't convinced by any of them.

    Unless he is actually dead he will run.
    And even then.....
    A couple of Russians of my aquitance maintain that

    a) Chernenko was dead for his entire premiership.
    b) He was one of the better leaders in Soviet times.
    On the first point, how could they tell ?
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Some early stats on mental health crisis.

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/oct/18/psychosis-cases-soar-in-england-as-pandemic-hits-mental-health

    Partner receiving one new client enquiry per day. She is chock full. So is everyone she knows, so nowhere to refer to. NHS mental health waiting lists getting longer by the day. We have no idea what is happening to any of these folk.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,589
    Sandpit said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Sandpit said:

    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff

    Anecdotally I know of several people who have recently graduated from proper universities with proper degrees, now training as Amazon drivers.
    Can’t say I’ve been following the UK graduate job market this year. Do we have a lower than usual number of vacancies because of pandemic/WFH effects, and/or a higher than usual number of graduates/firsts awarded?

    It appears there’s lots of opportunities for the enterprising young to earn some serious cash this winter, with pretty much unlimited hours available to people willing to work. I recall once putting in the December timesheet with more than 300 hours on it, in a hospitality job. Hourly paid, of course. That covered a lot of beer the costs of living for the next semester.
    I would not be surprised that, how low pay can be for "credentialed jobs", that such substituting can occur.

    As a result of the degrees-for-all approach, there are alot of people looking a a career in some seriously low end "white collar" jobs.

    According to an Australian friend, once inside Amazon, there are (at least in some parts of the world) considerable opportunities to get up the rungs.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,392
    Surely Trump won't be eligible to run in 2024 as he is currently serving his second term?

    I think that even if he doesn't want it, he'll say that he does just to mess with the heads of any other GOP wannabes.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,589
    Nigelb said:

    DavidL said:

    Well of course Trump is running for President. He has been continuously since he had the election stolen from him.

    Josh Glancey in S Times listed a lot of reasons why he probably wont run yesterday.

    I wasn't convinced by any of them.

    Unless he is actually dead he will run.
    And even then.....
    A couple of Russians of my aquitance maintain that

    a) Chernenko was dead for his entire premiership.
    b) He was one of the better leaders in Soviet times.
    On the first point, how could they tell ?
    He apparently showed less signs of life than late stage Brezhnev. Who showed less interactivity than many pet rocks.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 7,979

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Looking at the state of US Presidential Politics its hard to come to any other conclusion.
    So you think the dire state of US Presidential Politics is because the population of the US is too large. And "its hard to come to any other conclusion". OK. Interesting argument. Not heard that one before.
  • pingping Posts: 3,724
    https://www.ft.com/content/89fc33b7-4029-4ca4-82c1-04065d84fe31

    “Klarna to offer “pay now” option”

    So… they’ve reinvented the wheel and become a pointless middle man, ie, an expensive payment processor.

    These people are just parasites inflating the cost of stuff. Regulate them into oblivion, I recon.

    Problem is, MP’s like @Tissue_Price know on which side their bread is buttered. I don’t expect any meaningful action from govt.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,550
    Sandpit said:

    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff

    "Only the Guardian'... very much the same story in the Mail.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10101947/Amazon-3k-sign-bonus-sparks-Christmas-shopping-fear-high-street-staff-lured-retail-giant.html

    Whatever 'spin' there is comes from the other retailers.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,838
    On her way to work one morning,
    down the path and alongside the lake...
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,838
    ping said:

    https://www.ft.com/content/89fc33b7-4029-4ca4-82c1-04065d84fe31

    “Klarna to offer “pay now” option”

    So… they’ve reinvented the wheel and become a pointless middle man, ie, an expensive payment processor.

    These people are just parasites inflating the cost of stuff. Regulate them into oblivion, I recon.

    Problem is, MP’s like @Tissue_Price know on which side their bread is buttered. I don’t expect any meaningful action from govt.

    I'd have thought TP would recuse himself from anything related to this or similar with his interest in Dividebuy.
  • Carrie and BoJo broken lockdown rules, one rule for them and one rule for everyone else
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    Carrie and BoJo broken lockdown rules, one rule for them and one rule for everyone else

    "lockdown rules"....."lockdown rules".....

    Nope sorry - can't remember. What are those?
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Diversity, not size, is America's problem. Identity politics is a zero sum game. That's why it's close to being ungovernable.

    (Of course diversity is also a huge strength, as a quick glance at any list of Silicon Valley CEO names will show).
    I like Morgan Freeman's suggestion that we stop talking about it.

    If we didn't endlessly talk about what race, sex, sexuality and gender everyone was - categorising and judging them accordingly - we might find out we had rather a lot in common.
    Judging people by their race is racism. It should never be acceptable.

    If racism exists it should be called out and opposed, so gestures like kneeling against intolerance are a good thing.

    But to be racist yourself in reply is a very bad thing. You don't fix racism, by being racist yourself.
    It's an interesting debate. Positive discrimination, for example, might have the ability to kickstart a process which otherwise would take a far longer time to address.

    Not enough black people in the workforce or as CEOs? Then positive discrimination would redress that balance at the expense of, what? "The best candidate for the job"? Perhaps. But as with, ahem, Brexit, a transition period would mean that there are costs which are justified for the longer term overall benefit.

    And I of course put "best candidate for the job" in quotation marks because it is far from clear that the best candidate for the job wouldn't be picked.
    The problem arises from best candidate for the job quite often does not equal best person to do the job.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880

    Carrie and BoJo broken lockdown rules, one rule for them and one rule for everyone else

    I don't really think that is news to anybody at this point.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    dixiedean said:

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Diversity, not size, is America's problem. Identity politics is a zero sum game. That's why it's close to being ungovernable.

    (Of course diversity is also a huge strength, as a quick glance at any list of Silicon Valley CEO names will show).
    I like Morgan Freeman's suggestion that we stop talking about it.

    If we didn't endlessly talk about what race, sex, sexuality and gender everyone was - categorising and judging them accordingly - we might find out we had rather a lot in common.
    Judging people by their race is racism. It should never be acceptable.

    If racism exists it should be called out and opposed, so gestures like kneeling against intolerance are a good thing.

    But to be racist yourself in reply is a very bad thing. You don't fix racism, by being racist yourself.
    It's an interesting debate. Positive discrimination, for example, might have the ability to kickstart a process which otherwise would take a far longer time to address.

    Not enough black people in the workforce or as CEOs? Then positive discrimination would redress that balance at the expense of, what? "The best candidate for the job"? Perhaps. But as with, ahem, Brexit, a transition period would mean that there are costs which are justified for the longer term overall benefit.

    And I of course put "best candidate for the job" in quotation marks because it is far from clear that the best candidate for the job wouldn't be picked.
    The problem arises from best candidate for the job quite often does not equal best person to do the job.
    Yes I appreciate that. But they might also be. And for the longer term we would have a rebasing of the (whatever) sector.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    Thanks Mike, a good bet and I am tempted to put money onto it. Somebody had a question re the finance campaign laws possibly determining his timing but my view is Trump will wait to see what happens in the 2022 mid-terms before deciding to enter, hence you are likely to have a 1+ year to wait
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    edited October 2021
    TOPPING said:

    Carrie and BoJo broken lockdown rules, one rule for them and one rule for everyone else

    "lockdown rules"....."lockdown rules".....

    Nope sorry - can't remember. What are those?
    They had Carrie's optician over for Christmas. :wink:
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    eek said:

    FPT

    .

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    MrEd said:

    kjh said:

    One thing I just thought about with the killing of David Amess is a few years ago we would have guessed straight away that it might have been Islamic terror.

    Whether its because of the lack of initial reports of the attacker saying "Allahu Akhbar" or for other reasons, that didn't enter the conversation until after the attacker was identified this time. Instead people talking about things like 'politicians being called scum' etc which while bad likely had absolutely no impact on this attack since it had entirely different motives.

    I don't know whether that's a good or a bad thing that it wasn't the first thought we went to. Whether its a sign of progress in combatting Islamic terror, or a sign of how bad things have gotten elsewhere?

    A well observed post. I think most people here did not jump to any conclusions. A couple seemed hell bent on making a political issue out of it by the scum reference to which most across the political spectrum here rejected as inappropriate at that moment. Another linked to Islam.

    The rest of us were just sad at the event with no prejudgement.

    Difficult to know if things have got better or there are more threats.
    kjh said:

    One thing I just thought about with the killing of David Amess is a few years ago we would have guessed straight away that it might have been Islamic terror.

    Whether its because of the lack of initial reports of the attacker saying "Allahu Akhbar" or for other reasons, that didn't enter the conversation until after the attacker was identified this time. Instead people talking about things like 'politicians being called scum' etc which while bad likely had absolutely no impact on this attack since it had entirely different motives.

    I don't know whether that's a good or a bad thing that it wasn't the first thought we went to. Whether its a sign of progress in combatting Islamic terror, or a sign of how bad things have gotten elsewhere?

    A well observed post. I think most people here did not jump to any conclusions. A couple seemed hell bent on making a political issue out of it by the scum reference to which most across the political spectrum here rejected as inappropriate at that moment. Another linked to Islam.

    The rest of us were just sad at the event with no prejudgement.

    Difficult to know if things have got better or there are more threats.
    I think one or two of us were also pointing out the discrepancies on the reactions depending on who was attacked and why. Nobody seemed to have an issue after Jo Cox's death of jumping into speculation and making political points, nor was there was much in the point of condemnation for doing so. Yet after this attack, it was suddenly deemed not the right thing to do. It would be nice to have the same standards applied to all events, not just pick n mix.

    So lets do that. Both sides can nitpick the other side. So its drop hands and actually work together.

    We need to de-radicalise politics. Draw the line with the he said she said shit. Bides have said bad. It must stop. We cannot call the opposition scum or traitors. We cannot brand judges enemies of the people. Calling a politician names is fine if it is based on their abilities as a politician. Calling them the enemy is not fine.

    Sadly the humanity has been smashed out of too many people over the last decade. We have gone from shared horror at a dead Syrian toddler face down on a beach to justifying the "accidental" drowning of the same in the channel with an immigration bill that breaks national and international law. We have gone from shared acceptance on language to describe opposition MPs to the deputy leader of the opposition denouncing government MPs as scum to huge cheers.

    Draw the line. Stop this. We have to be decent human beings so that the extremists and the racists and the lunatics no longer have anywhere to hide. It used to be the case that mainstream politicians condemned the extreme views that can bubble away under the surface of society. Now they fan those flames for votes. We are along the same road that America is on. Not too late for us to turn around back towards basic human decency.
    And yet you couldn’t resist putting quote marks around “accidental”
    Because they absolutely know the policy is going to drown kids. They are building immunity into it so that Border Force staff can't be prosecuted for carrying out the policy.

    It is of course right that they should have this immunity. It is completely wrong that they should be put in the position. Its "accidental" because whilst the BF staff will not set out to deliberately drown people, the peopl writing the policy know it will happen accidentally.

    Accidental by design drowning of children. And your party are doing it for votes. Stop being a politician and become a human being again and tell me as a person how the drowning of anyone can be justified.

    This is precisely the bottom feeding politics that has to stop. The difference is that I can condemn both the drown the kids policy and the "Tory scum" rant. You apparently cannot.
    There you are at it again: this government is evil because they are willing to accept a certain level of consequences as a result of their policy.

    The best way to limit drowning is to make sure that no one wants to cross the Channel is an unseaworthy vessel.

    That will save the greatest number of lives over time (equal to a policy of meeting them all in Calais with Rolls Royces and chauffeuring them on ferries - but that isn’t consistent with immigration policy)
    Where did I say evil? I think the policy is desperate more than anything else. They have made all kinds of claims about managed immigration they have no means of delivering on. This is the latest desperate measure to show some kind of control.

    The *policy* is the problem. "Accepting a certain level of consequences" - drowned people - is a policy "that will save the greatest number of lives" is the problem. Its deeply cynical designed to fan the flames of hate for all the people out there who see England as somehow under siege by jihadis and the like.

    We need to rehumanise people. Saying drowned children is an acceptable consequence is not the way to do so. Why not stand up to the element of the public baying for this kind of policy and say "no"? Same for the Labour lot engaging "Tory scum" chants at their conference or organised "March against the Tories" events so your delegates have to be inside a ring of steel to stay safe. Its wrong.
    Do you think no children are drowning at the moment?

    Tolerating dinghies crossing the Channel is saying drowned children is acceptable. If you want to stop children drowning, you need to stop the dinghies. It isn't safe to cross the Channel in a dinghy.
    Sure. We all agree that it isn't safe. But how have we concluded that the solution to drowning is to drown them ourselves? To discourage them from making the journey? Desperate people do desperate things - from their perspective how does drowned when the dinghy develops a leak differ from drowned because HMBF dragged them under?

    We're back to needing a rational border policy. We have told people that Britain uniquely is under siege when in reality we have far fewer asylum seekers than all our big neighbours. So of course they are the enemy. Perhaps if we treat them like human beings we can fix this. Stop lying to people about "1st safe country" and accept they have every right to claim asylum here. And then spend the money on the systems and facilities to quickly screen and process them. Valid claim, welcome, treated humanely. Invalid claim, off you go.
    Discouraging them from making the journey is the only thing that will stop the drownings, the question is how you get there.

    Drowning them ourselves is absolutely not the right solution. Deporting them can be.

    Nobody in France is desperate. And if they are then France should deal with that.
    France is dealing with them. According to the UNHCR (https://www.unhcr.org/uk/asylum-in-the-uk.html) we received 26,903 applications last year. France received 93,475. Of interest to the "deport them to Albania, the deal is nearly done" comments earlier is that Albania was the 2nd biggest source of asylum applications to the UK...

    For years - well beyond this government - we have had an asylum system not fit for purpose. We don't have the resources to manage and process them and then instead of fixing it we let the Home Office cut the budget even more and then resort to publicity-seeking stupid like the current bill.
    A lot of current issues came down to spending money on things where Departments don't seem to want to spend money on / invest in for reasons I just cannot understand.

    Investing in courts so cases are seen and dealt with quickly, investing in tribunals so that decisions are made and appealed quickly seem (to me) to be sensible places to spend money. Instead the home office seems to spend money on anything but the one central thing that would remove delays and made things run quickly.
    The delays are the policy. The policy is to accept as few people as refugees as possible.

    So instead of trying to come to an accurate decision quickly the Home Office find any pretext to reject claims, or to stop financial support (so that claimants have to scramble to get financial support restarted instead of working through their asylum application), forcing applicants to go through multiple appeals before having refugee status granted.

    This is in the hope of forcing people to give up and go away, whether into the illegal economy, or out of the country, makes no difference.

    Delay is the policy.
  • Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Looking at the state of US Presidential Politics its hard to come to any other conclusion.
    So you think the dire state of US Presidential Politics is because the population of the US is too large. And "its hard to come to any other conclusion". OK. Interesting argument. Not heard that one before.
    Absolutely. Trying to get one President who can adequately reflect 330 million people, one individual who is as good as representing the Midwest, the East Coast, the Deep South and the West Coast etc, is becoming nigh on impossible as they're just too different.

    If the fifty states were each choosing their own President without reference to or in a union with each other I think it'd be much healthier.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,874

    TOPPING said:

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
    A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
    We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.

    I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us.
    People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then?
    Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    IshmaelZ said:

    Sandpit said:

    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff

    Anecdotally I know of several people who have recently graduated from proper universities with proper degrees, now training as Amazon drivers.
    Social services/journalism 'research'?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,706
    Trump's aides have been suggesting he will decide whether to run again based on next year's Midterms. If the Republicans win Congress then he will certainly run for President in 2024.

    If Biden's approval rating remains under 50% he would then have a reasonable chance of winning the EC again and being the first President since Grover Cleveland to lose his re election bid and then win the Presidency back in 4 years.

    If the Democrats hold Congress though next year I doubt Trump will run again. If the GOP win back the House but the Democrats hold the Senate he might run again but he would not be able to object to the EC results in 2024 if he has lost as the Republicans would need control of both chambers for that
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,706
    edited October 2021

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Looking at the state of US Presidential Politics its hard to come to any other conclusion.
    So you think the dire state of US Presidential Politics is because the population of the US is too large. And "its hard to come to any other conclusion". OK. Interesting argument. Not heard that one before.
    Absolutely. Trying to get one President who can adequately reflect 330 million people, one individual who is as good as representing the Midwest, the East Coast, the Deep South and the West Coast etc, is becoming nigh on impossible as they're just too different.

    If the fifty states were each choosing their own President without reference to or in a union with each other I think it'd be much healthier.
    Yes but the US also has significant states rights.

    Most domestic policy in the US for example is decided by the state governor and state legislature, the President is mainly responsible for foreign policy and national security and a few Federal programmes and Federal taxes along with the US Congress.

    In effect every US state is already as independent from Washington DC as Scotland is from Westminster
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,243
    My only fear with these markets is that Trump is laying the hell out of himself for personal profit :lol:
  • TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Diversity, not size, is America's problem. Identity politics is a zero sum game. That's why it's close to being ungovernable.

    (Of course diversity is also a huge strength, as a quick glance at any list of Silicon Valley CEO names will show).
    I like Morgan Freeman's suggestion that we stop talking about it.

    If we didn't endlessly talk about what race, sex, sexuality and gender everyone was - categorising and judging them accordingly - we might find out we had rather a lot in common.
    Judging people by their race is racism. It should never be acceptable.

    If racism exists it should be called out and opposed, so gestures like kneeling against intolerance are a good thing.

    But to be racist yourself in reply is a very bad thing. You don't fix racism, by being racist yourself.
    It's an interesting debate. Positive discrimination, for example, might have the ability to kickstart a process which otherwise would take a far longer time to address.

    Not enough black people in the workforce or as CEOs? Then positive discrimination would redress that balance at the expense of, what? "The best candidate for the job"? Perhaps. But as with, ahem, Brexit, a transition period would mean that there are costs which are justified for the longer term overall benefit.

    And I of course put "best candidate for the job" in quotation marks because it is far from clear that the best candidate for the job wouldn't be picked.
    Kickstart what process?

    I don't think an artificial, unjustified "balance" helps anyone. Hiring someone as your "token" minority individual doesn't really do either them, their "community" or your team any favours. Nor does it deal with any impediments of racism that made such an imbalance happen - and it creates a backlash that potentially makes such impediments worse not better.

    Lets say you have an impediment stopping black people working in your team and want to address that. If you find out what impediments were stopping you from getting the good black applicants through then great, job done. But if you're not doing that then unless you suddenly have a way to eg find the best black person (in which case why aren't you hiring them in the first place?) if you're just hiring to meet "quota" requirements then you're going to overlook the best black person and potentially hire a dud because you overlooked the star that you were supposed to hire because you were too busy worrying about quotas rather than looking at the individuals involved.

    That "positive discrimination" doesn't help the star that you should have hired but still hasn't been, and it doesn't help your team.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,111

    Sandpit said:

    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff

    I have promised, as future unDictator of Britain, to reintroduce a maximum wage (See the Act of 1515) for villeins and varlots of all kinds.

    4d a day in Summer, 5d a day in Winter.
    Er, why that way round? Much more work in summer. Longer days.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,111
    HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Looking at the state of US Presidential Politics its hard to come to any other conclusion.
    So you think the dire state of US Presidential Politics is because the population of the US is too large. And "its hard to come to any other conclusion". OK. Interesting argument. Not heard that one before.
    Absolutely. Trying to get one President who can adequately reflect 330 million people, one individual who is as good as representing the Midwest, the East Coast, the Deep South and the West Coast etc, is becoming nigh on impossible as they're just too different.

    If the fifty states were each choosing their own President without reference to or in a union with each other I think it'd be much healthier.
    Yes but the US also has significant states rights.

    Most domestic policy in the US for example is decided by the state governor and state legislature, the President is mainly responsible for foreign policy and national security and a few Federal programmes and Federal taxes along with the US Congress.

    In effect every US state is already as independent from Washington DC as Scotland is from Westminster
    Not so. Look at the basis of devolution. Completely different.
  • HYUFD said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Looking at the state of US Presidential Politics its hard to come to any other conclusion.
    So you think the dire state of US Presidential Politics is because the population of the US is too large. And "its hard to come to any other conclusion". OK. Interesting argument. Not heard that one before.
    Absolutely. Trying to get one President who can adequately reflect 330 million people, one individual who is as good as representing the Midwest, the East Coast, the Deep South and the West Coast etc, is becoming nigh on impossible as they're just too different.

    If the fifty states were each choosing their own President without reference to or in a union with each other I think it'd be much healthier.
    Yes but the US also has significant states rights.

    Most domestic policy in the US for example is decided by the state governor and state legislature, the President is mainly responsible for foreign policy and national security and a few Federal programmes and Federal taxes along with the US Congress.

    In effect every US state is already as independent from Washington DC as Scotland is from Westminster
    So not very independent then?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,706
    edited October 2021

    tlg86 said:

    Are Labour pro-independence for Wales?

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/18/wales-launches-drive-to-keep-young-people-in-their-homeland

    Or is this driven by what happened to them in Scotland?

    No, they are pro the Union.

    Once Scotland leave and Ireland is reunited the independence train in Wales will start rolling, and Labour here too, will be left at the station.

    I guess there's an important difference between Labour and Lafur? Drakeford seems pleasantly rational on the issue which may be the product of Plaid not being much of a threat at the moment? Though SLab were pretty anti SNP even before they were reduced to third party status (they're off the SNPbad scale now).
    FPT

    All 3 of Rhodri Morgan, Carwyn Jones & Mark Drakeford were/are fluent Welsh speakers.

    I think Drakeford said he considered joining Plaid Cymru as a young man, before settling on Llafur. So, Drakeford is popular with many Plaid Cymru voters.

    I suspect Drakeford prefers Wales to be in the UK -- but not in a UK run by Johnson or with endless Tory Govts in Westminster.

    Drakeford has surprised me (and others) on the upside. He looks like a bumbling, incompetent academic, but he has a set of skills and attributes that has proved electorally successful in Wales.

    In fact, I prefer Drakeford to any of his likely successors -- he is standing down as leader of Llafur before the next Senedd elections.

    Be interesting to see what happens next to Llafur. Incompetent, half-assed leadership is certainly one of the things that killed SLAB, and that Llafur have so far avoided.
    Wales also voted for Brexit, just like England and its 2 main parties are Labour and the Conservatives, just like England.

    Nationalism in Wales is just confined to mainly a few Welsh speaking areas on the West coast and in the NorthWest and Anglesey and parts of the Rhondda.

    Hence Labour can easily ignore Plaid
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    TOPPING said:

    dixiedean said:

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Diversity, not size, is America's problem. Identity politics is a zero sum game. That's why it's close to being ungovernable.

    (Of course diversity is also a huge strength, as a quick glance at any list of Silicon Valley CEO names will show).
    I like Morgan Freeman's suggestion that we stop talking about it.

    If we didn't endlessly talk about what race, sex, sexuality and gender everyone was - categorising and judging them accordingly - we might find out we had rather a lot in common.
    Judging people by their race is racism. It should never be acceptable.

    If racism exists it should be called out and opposed, so gestures like kneeling against intolerance are a good thing.

    But to be racist yourself in reply is a very bad thing. You don't fix racism, by being racist yourself.
    It's an interesting debate. Positive discrimination, for example, might have the ability to kickstart a process which otherwise would take a far longer time to address.

    Not enough black people in the workforce or as CEOs? Then positive discrimination would redress that balance at the expense of, what? "The best candidate for the job"? Perhaps. But as with, ahem, Brexit, a transition period would mean that there are costs which are justified for the longer term overall benefit.

    And I of course put "best candidate for the job" in quotation marks because it is far from clear that the best candidate for the job wouldn't be picked.
    The problem arises from best candidate for the job quite often does not equal best person to do the job.
    Yes I appreciate that. But they might also be. And for the longer term we would have a rebasing of the (whatever) sector.
    I think I was agreeing with you, but posting whilst doing several other things.
    Right now we have a situation where "best candidate for the job" usually equals "person most similar to the person or people doing the appointing." Whether conscious or not.
    Race is only one factor amongst many, but a significant one.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,589

    TOPPING said:

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
    A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
    We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.

    I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us.
    People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then?
    Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
    A lot of GPs make appointments very hard to get. 5 weeks in the future is ridiculous. Expecting people to repeat speed dial at exactly 8am to get one of 2 appointments reserved to be open that day.....

    No wonder people just go to A&E....
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,457
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff

    It isn't purely good news either. We're back to there being an inelastic labour pool. At least in the short term we are going to see shortages because there simply aren't enough people to fill vacancies.
    Oh indeed. It’s just all rather amusing to see pretty much the whole centre-left lining up in opposition to a sharp reduction in inequality.
    Speaking as a member of the centre-left, I'm all in favour of a sharp reduction in inequality, and am delighted that so many members of the centre-right are as well, in these strange times.

    However, I'm less in favour of global domination by Amazon. I know I'm swimming against the tide, but there's little doubt that the growth of Amazon (and a few others) has a negative impact on small retailers, and on our high streets. We may live to regret the demise of town centre shops, and the concomitant impact on communities, in the future.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    edited October 2021

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    That sort of monitoring would overwhelmingly be for the practice nurse to do, not the Doc, for most conditions which are stable. An experienced nurse will know more about the practicalities 90% of the time, as a GP is by definition General.

    I've had a couple in the last week - an annual (Type 1) Diabetes checkup with the specialist nurse at the hospital, and a 6-monthly post-leukemia phone call from the haematology nurse with a set of blood tests done first via the drop-in clinic. I have another one at the GP tomorrow, also for Diabetes, with the practice nurse.

    That suggests there is a possible confused boundary between hospital supervision and GP supervision, but it was ever thus as clinical need changes.

    Also an eye test this morning, where at Specsavers they have separated diabetic screenings (ie have you any eye complications) from eye tests, which is something I have never seen before. To do with the 2 workstreams getting out of sync and people having to wait too long on the premises. Mask discipline strong on the premises (asked at the door if there is a reason why I could not put a mask on).

    There's a big backlog of diabetic eye screenings.

    More generally town very quiet.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    edited October 2021

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Diversity, not size, is America's problem. Identity politics is a zero sum game. That's why it's close to being ungovernable.

    (Of course diversity is also a huge strength, as a quick glance at any list of Silicon Valley CEO names will show).
    I like Morgan Freeman's suggestion that we stop talking about it.

    If we didn't endlessly talk about what race, sex, sexuality and gender everyone was - categorising and judging them accordingly - we might find out we had rather a lot in common.
    Judging people by their race is racism. It should never be acceptable.

    If racism exists it should be called out and opposed, so gestures like kneeling against intolerance are a good thing.

    But to be racist yourself in reply is a very bad thing. You don't fix racism, by being racist yourself.
    It's an interesting debate. Positive discrimination, for example, might have the ability to kickstart a process which otherwise would take a far longer time to address.

    Not enough black people in the workforce or as CEOs? Then positive discrimination would redress that balance at the expense of, what? "The best candidate for the job"? Perhaps. But as with, ahem, Brexit, a transition period would mean that there are costs which are justified for the longer term overall benefit.

    And I of course put "best candidate for the job" in quotation marks because it is far from clear that the best candidate for the job wouldn't be picked.
    Kickstart what process?

    I don't think an artificial, unjustified "balance" helps anyone. Hiring someone as your "token" minority individual doesn't really do either them, their "community" or your team any favours. Nor does it deal with any impediments of racism that made such an imbalance happen - and it creates a backlash that potentially makes such impediments worse not better.

    Lets say you have an impediment stopping black people working in your team and want to address that. If you find out what impediments were stopping you from getting the good black applicants through then great, job done. But if you're not doing that then unless you suddenly have a way to eg find the best black person (in which case why aren't you hiring them in the first place?) if you're just hiring to meet "quota" requirements then you're going to overlook the best black person and potentially hire a dud because you overlooked the star that you were supposed to hire because you were too busy worrying about quotas rather than looking at the individuals involved.

    That "positive discrimination" doesn't help the star that you should have hired but still hasn't been, and it doesn't help your team.
    The process of workforces being more reflective of the population and to correct what could be egregious examples of discrimination.

    How many FTSE CEOs are black for example? No idea but I'm guessing not as many as the proportion of black people in the population. So to have a policy of appointing more black CEOs would create a society in which there is less discrimination against black people becoming CEOs and then sooner or later it would become the norm and the habit of discrimination would be reduced if not eliminated.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    TOPPING said:

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
    A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
    We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.

    I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us.
    People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then?
    Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
    A lot of GPs make appointments very hard to get. 5 weeks in the future is ridiculous. Expecting people to repeat speed dial at exactly 8am to get one of 2 appointments reserved to be open that day.....

    No wonder people just go to A&E....
    The problem is GP's want an easy job, living in lovely surroundings. And who doesn't?
    Leafy middle class village like mine. Same day, no problem.
    Red Wall ex-mining, elderly population with chronic ill-health like my Mother? Weeks and weeks.
    We need something like the London Challenge for schools. It would be genuine levelling up.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    interesting debate on terror this morning.

    I am inclined to ask which has killed more, 5 years of terrorism, or Extinction Rebellion and associates stopping all those patients getting to hospital.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,706
    edited October 2021
    HYUFD said:

    tlg86 said:

    Are Labour pro-independence for Wales?

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/18/wales-launches-drive-to-keep-young-people-in-their-homeland

    Or is this driven by what happened to them in Scotland?

    No, they are pro the Union.

    Once Scotland leave and Ireland is reunited the independence train in Wales will start rolling, and Labour here too, will be left at the station.

    I guess there's an important difference between Labour and Lafur? Drakeford seems pleasantly rational on the issue which may be the product of Plaid not being much of a threat at the moment? Though SLab were pretty anti SNP even before they were reduced to third party status (they're off the SNPbad scale now).
    FPT

    All 3 of Rhodri Morgan, Carwyn Jones & Mark Drakeford were/are fluent Welsh speakers.

    I think Drakeford said he considered joining Plaid Cymru as a young man, before settling on Llafur. So, Drakeford is popular with many Plaid Cymru voters.

    I suspect Drakeford prefers Wales to be in the UK -- but not in a UK run by Johnson or with endless Tory Govts in Westminster.

    Drakeford has surprised me (and others) on the upside. He looks like a bumbling, incompetent academic, but he has a set of skills and attributes that has proved electorally successful in Wales.

    In fact, I prefer Drakeford to any of his likely successors -- he is standing down as leader of Llafur before the next Senedd elections.

    Be interesting to see what happens next to Llafur. Incompetent, half-assed leadership is certainly one of the things that killed SLAB, and that Llafur have so far avoided.
    Wales also voted for Brexit, just like England and its 2 main parties are Labour and the Conservatives, just like England.

    Nationalism in Wales is just confined to mainly a few Welsh speaking areas on the West coast and in the NorthWest and Anglesey and parts of the Rhondda.

    Hence Labour can easily ignore Plaid
    If the report linked to is correct and Wales is becoming increasingly a place for English people to retire to with Welsh youngsters moving to London and other English cities like Manchester or Birmingham then that is also great news for Welsh Tories.

    The older the Welsh population the more Tory it will become
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080

    TOPPING said:

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
    A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
    We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.

    I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us.
    People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then?
    Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
    My GP is similar - 50k town - and they have adjusted their systems a couple of times so that now, in addition to a number of emergency appointments, they have also some early-start appointments and some late after work-time.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited October 2021
    dixiedean said:

    TOPPING said:

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
    A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
    We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.

    I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us.
    People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then?
    Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
    A lot of GPs make appointments very hard to get. 5 weeks in the future is ridiculous. Expecting people to repeat speed dial at exactly 8am to get one of 2 appointments reserved to be open that day.....

    No wonder people just go to A&E....
    The problem is GP's want an easy job, living in lovely surroundings. And who doesn't?
    Leafy middle class village like mine. Same day, no problem.
    Red Wall ex-mining, elderly population with chronic ill-health like my Mother? Weeks and weeks.
    We need something like the London Challenge for schools. It would be genuine levelling up.
    I don't have any problem seeing a Dr the same day - I suspect the issue isn't up North, it's way more likely to be down South where even GPs are priced out of the local housing market.
  • TOPPING said:

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
    A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
    We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.

    I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us.
    People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then?
    Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
    A lot of GPs make appointments very hard to get. 5 weeks in the future is ridiculous. Expecting people to repeat speed dial at exactly 8am to get one of 2 appointments reserved to be open that day.....

    No wonder people just go to A&E....
    It is interesting that the experiences of people around the country are so different. I know of one case in Grantham last year where a stomach cancer patient who had been in remission and started to get symptoms again could not get an appointment with the GP and by the time things were so bad they went to A&E it was too late and they died. Another of my closest friend who became seriously ill after an infection in his leg and was unable to get an appointment so ended up in hospital where they thankfully managed to save his leg. And yet at the same time the country surgeries which are using the Ask My GP app are doing so in such a way that if need be you can get an appointment within a couple of hours. They have assigned a doctor to do online triage but with the expectation of offering face to face visits if either the Doctor or the patient request it and it is meaning they can effectively deal with a much higher workload and those who do need to be seen get a much quicker response.

    The problem to me seems to be with those GPs who, for whatever reason, simply don't want to do face to face at all anymore. If that is their attitude then they should find another job.
  • We have an ageing population, plus the effects of Covid, and yet in general the number of GPs has fallen over the past few years

    https://news.sky.com/story/the-number-of-doctors-is-falling-and-appointments-are-going-up-but-thats-only-part-of-the-problem-12431982

    Getting an appointment is being made somewhat worse by this.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 7,979

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Looking at the state of US Presidential Politics its hard to come to any other conclusion.
    So you think the dire state of US Presidential Politics is because the population of the US is too large. And "its hard to come to any other conclusion". OK. Interesting argument. Not heard that one before.
    Absolutely. Trying to get one President who can adequately reflect 330 million people, one individual who is as good as representing the Midwest, the East Coast, the Deep South and the West Coast etc, is becoming nigh on impossible as they're just too different.

    If the fifty states were each choosing their own President without reference to or in a union with each other I think it'd be much healthier.
    So you don't think there would be a problem in say Texas? At the last presential election, Trump got 52% of the vote in Texas and Biden got 46%. It is as divided and troubled as the whole of the US. Overall size doesn't come into it.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    eek said:

    dixiedean said:

    TOPPING said:

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
    A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
    We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.

    I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us.
    People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then?
    Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
    A lot of GPs make appointments very hard to get. 5 weeks in the future is ridiculous. Expecting people to repeat speed dial at exactly 8am to get one of 2 appointments reserved to be open that day.....

    No wonder people just go to A&E....
    The problem is GP's want an easy job, living in lovely surroundings. And who doesn't?
    Leafy middle class village like mine. Same day, no problem.
    Red Wall ex-mining, elderly population with chronic ill-health like my Mother? Weeks and weeks.
    We need something like the London Challenge for schools. It would be genuine levelling up.
    I don't have any problem seeing a Dr the same day - I suspect the issue isn't up North, it's way more likely to be down South where even GPs are priced out of the local housing market.
    From anecdotes just on here, it isn't a situation we would tolerate in Education without action being taken.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    TOPPING said:

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
    A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
    We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.

    I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us.
    People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then?
    Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
    A lot of GPs make appointments very hard to get. 5 weeks in the future is ridiculous. Expecting people to repeat speed dial at exactly 8am to get one of 2 appointments reserved to be open that day.....

    No wonder people just go to A&E....
    It is interesting that the experiences of people around the country are so different. I know of one case in Grantham last year where a stomach cancer patient who had been in remission and started to get symptoms again could not get an appointment with the GP and by the time things were so bad they went to A&E it was too late and they died. Another of my closest friend who became seriously ill after an infection in his leg and was unable to get an appointment so ended up in hospital where they thankfully managed to save his leg. And yet at the same time the country surgeries which are using the Ask My GP app are doing so in such a way that if need be you can get an appointment within a couple of hours. They have assigned a doctor to do online triage but with the expectation of offering face to face visits if either the Doctor or the patient request it and it is meaning they can effectively deal with a much higher workload and those who do need to be seen get a much quicker response.

    The problem to me seems to be with those GPs who, for whatever reason, simply don't want to do face to face at all anymore. If that is their attitude then they should find another job.
    Say farewell to GPs then.

    The reality is we don't have enough GPs and those that are qualified to do it don't need the money anymore.,
  • TOPPING said:

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
    A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
    We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.

    I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us.
    People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then?
    Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
    A lot of GPs make appointments very hard to get. 5 weeks in the future is ridiculous. Expecting people to repeat speed dial at exactly 8am to get one of 2 appointments reserved to be open that day.....

    No wonder people just go to A&E....
    It is interesting that the experiences of people around the country are so different. I know of one case in Grantham last year where a stomach cancer patient who had been in remission and started to get symptoms again could not get an appointment with the GP and by the time things were so bad they went to A&E it was too late and they died. Another of my closest friend who became seriously ill after an infection in his leg and was unable to get an appointment so ended up in hospital where they thankfully managed to save his leg. And yet at the same time the country surgeries which are using the Ask My GP app are doing so in such a way that if need be you can get an appointment within a couple of hours. They have assigned a doctor to do online triage but with the expectation of offering face to face visits if either the Doctor or the patient request it and it is meaning they can effectively deal with a much higher workload and those who do need to be seen get a much quicker response.

    The problem to me seems to be with those GPs who, for whatever reason, simply don't want to do face to face at all anymore. If that is their attitude then they should find another job.
    Not sure a good solution to this issue is encouraging GPs to leave the profession!
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    This is a good bet if you can cash out, which you can. The point is not whether Trump will be the GOP nominee which I rate at below 20%.

    Anthony Zurcher for the BBC asks if Trump's allure is starting to fade with the Republicans: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58904507

    What you MUST remember here is that this is one of the three most glittering prizes in world politics. Power is the reason that politicians draw breath. Trump might appear like a shoo-in right now but when the pincer movement by other candidates begins they will really start laying into him. They have a huge amount of ammo with which to do so. Their aim will be simple: defenestrate Trump and then its an open dog-fight amongst themselves.

    No opposition has ever coasted a candidate, especially one who lost last time (whatever he thinks). Only an incumbent President gets the right to coast a nomination.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,457
    eek said:

    dixiedean said:

    TOPPING said:

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
    A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
    We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.

    I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us.
    People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then?
    Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
    A lot of GPs make appointments very hard to get. 5 weeks in the future is ridiculous. Expecting people to repeat speed dial at exactly 8am to get one of 2 appointments reserved to be open that day.....

    No wonder people just go to A&E....
    The problem is GP's want an easy job, living in lovely surroundings. And who doesn't?
    Leafy middle class village like mine. Same day, no problem.
    Red Wall ex-mining, elderly population with chronic ill-health like my Mother? Weeks and weeks.
    We need something like the London Challenge for schools. It would be genuine levelling up.
    I don't have any problem seeing a Dr the same day - I suspect the issue isn't up North, it's way more likely to be down South where even GPs are priced out of the local housing market.
    GP / NHS anecdote - down south. The boss made me ring my GP as she was concerned about a few moles on my face. Face-to-face appointment made the next day. Because of my history, GP said she was going to refer me; I expected a long wait. Far from it - the next day (Friday) I got a phone call for an appointment with the dermatology department at the local hospital for the following Monday. So from GP to dermatology appointment in five (three working) days. (Even better, they had no concerns and swiftly removed one mole that was a bit itchy).

    So it's not all bad out there.
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    Fishing said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Diversity, not size, is America's problem. Identity politics is a zero sum game. That's why it's close to being ungovernable.

    (Of course diversity is also a huge strength, as a quick glance at any list of Silicon Valley CEO names will show).
    I like Morgan Freeman's suggestion that we stop talking about it.

    If we didn't endlessly talk about what race, sex, sexuality and gender everyone was - categorising and judging them accordingly - we might find out we had rather a lot in common.
    Judging people by their race is racism. It should never be acceptable.

    If racism exists it should be called out and opposed, so gestures like kneeling against intolerance are a good thing.

    But to be racist yourself in reply is a very bad thing. You don't fix racism, by being racist yourself.
    It's an interesting debate. Positive discrimination, for example, might have the ability to kickstart a process which otherwise would take a far longer time to address.

    Not enough black people in the workforce or as CEOs? Then positive discrimination would redress that balance at the expense of, what? "The best candidate for the job"? Perhaps. But as with, ahem, Brexit, a transition period would mean that there are costs which are justified for the longer term overall benefit.

    And I of course put "best candidate for the job" in quotation marks because it is far from clear that the best candidate for the job wouldn't be picked.
    Kickstart what process?

    I don't think an artificial, unjustified "balance" helps anyone. Hiring someone as your "token" minority individual doesn't really do either them, their "community" or your team any favours. Nor does it deal with any impediments of racism that made such an imbalance happen - and it creates a backlash that potentially makes such impediments worse not better.

    Lets say you have an impediment stopping black people working in your team and want to address that. If you find out what impediments were stopping you from getting the good black applicants through then great, job done. But if you're not doing that then unless you suddenly have a way to eg find the best black person (in which case why aren't you hiring them in the first place?) if you're just hiring to meet "quota" requirements then you're going to overlook the best black person and potentially hire a dud because you overlooked the star that you were supposed to hire because you were too busy worrying about quotas rather than looking at the individuals involved.

    That "positive discrimination" doesn't help the star that you should have hired but still hasn't been, and it doesn't help your team.
    The process of workforces being more reflective of the population and to correct what could be egregious examples of discrimination.

    How many FTSE CEOs are black for example? No idea but I'm guessing not as many as the proportion of black people in the population. So to have a policy of appointing more black CEOs would create a society in which there is less discrimination against black people becoming CEOs and then sooner or later it would become the norm and the habit of discrimination would be reduced if not eliminated.
    No it wouldn't.

    If you tamper with the outcomes instead of the real problems then there's still the discrimination against black people becoming CEOs, even if you've got token black CEOs. The talented black people that should have risen to the top to become CEO are still facing discrimination preventing them from doing so even if other black people are lifted up as a token. Indeed if companies feel they've already made their token hires then that could make the discrimination they face even worse.

    If you positively discriminate instead of choosing by talent, then how do you know you're discriminating in favour of the right person? Two wrongs don't make a right.

    Only by eliminating the discrimination in the first place will you allow the talented black person who should become CEO to do so, and if you do that there's no reason for positive discrimination.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Andrew Lilico
    @andrew_lilico
    ·
    1h
    One way to think about this. Cases in non-kids are currently ~1/2 their level in July & have hardly changed since. Cases in kids are about to crash. So for total cases to rise, cases in non-kids wld need to nearly double, despite having bn stable up to now. Why wld they do that?
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Heathener said:

    This is a good bet if you can cash out, which you can. The point is not whether Trump will be the GOP nominee which I rate at below 20%.

    Anthony Zurcher for the BBC asks if Trump's allure is starting to fade with the Republicans: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58904507

    What you MUST remember here is that this is one of the three most glittering prizes in world politics. Power is the reason that politicians draw breath. Trump might appear like a shoo-in right now but when the pincer movement by other candidates begins they will really start laying into him. They have a huge amount of ammo with which to do so. Their aim will be simple: defenestrate Trump and then its an open dog-fight amongst themselves.

    No opposition has ever coasted a candidate, especially one who lost last time (whatever he thinks). Only an incumbent President gets the right to coast a nomination.

    Trump is all over the GOP doantion framework.

    Like idiots the GOP acquiesced to many of Trump's demands when he was candidate and President which means Trump effectively controls the flow of funds from small donors to candidates.

    By embracing the Trumpian base into the party, like they did with the Tea Party before them, the Establishment GOP have a terrifying problem where non can admit that Biden won the election nor disavow insane Q-Anon conspiracy thoeries.

    It is Trump's party.
  • Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Looking at the state of US Presidential Politics its hard to come to any other conclusion.
    So you think the dire state of US Presidential Politics is because the population of the US is too large. And "its hard to come to any other conclusion". OK. Interesting argument. Not heard that one before.
    Absolutely. Trying to get one President who can adequately reflect 330 million people, one individual who is as good as representing the Midwest, the East Coast, the Deep South and the West Coast etc, is becoming nigh on impossible as they're just too different.

    If the fifty states were each choosing their own President without reference to or in a union with each other I think it'd be much healthier.
    So you don't think there would be a problem in say Texas? At the last presential election, Trump got 52% of the vote in Texas and Biden got 46%. It is as divided and troubled as the whole of the US. Overall size doesn't come into it.
    Overall size does come into it and its easier for a 46/52 divide to be settled in a single state than across fifty of them.

    Indeed adversarial FPTP politics will tend towards 48/52 style splits excluding don't knows as each side attempts to get just over half. But in a single entity instead of across them the split will be on the issues that matter to them rather than on issues that are priorities for elsewhere.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,111
    O/T but just drawn to my attention by a friend in medicine:

    https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2497

    "Fatalism is the awkward conclusion of the joint inquiry by the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee and the Science and Technology Committee into the UK’s pandemic response (doi:10.1136/bmj.n2487; doi:10.1136/bmj.n2485; https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/10/12/chris-ham-dithering-and-delays-hampered-the-uks-covid-19-response).789 The verdict is damning, but the wording is a weasel explanation for the UK’s calamitous pandemic failures. Negligence, incompetence, and dereliction of duty are closer to the mark. Indeed, the report skips over the government’s misuse of billions of pounds of public funds to enrich associates."
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,838
    My PG has a ringback system. You make the appointment through the online system, then wait for a call back.
    If you miss the call, even by a second there is absolutely no way to get in contact with the doctor who just called you unless they decide to call you back. It's infuriating when you miss the call.
  • Etymology Etcetera would like your endorsement. But not that kind..

    The word 'endorse' is from the Old French endosser - to put on the back - which is the prefix en- with the Latin dossum or dorsum for 'back', from which we also get the adjective 'dorsal'

    Care should perhaps be taking when offering or accepting endorsement, given an 18th Century meaning of 'endorse' or 'indorse' as it was alternatively spelt.

    According to A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, (by Grose), London, 1785, an indorser was "a sodomite"

    And researching today's topic, I came across an interesting use of the word in this sense from A trip through London: containing observations on men and things, 1728, and this passage where the author meets a man who wants to share his affection with other men, and a (brothel owning/running) "Gentlewoman", who blames "these endorsing sons of bitches" for her reduced trade

    A pale, livid looking Fellow, who had sat silently by me a long while, at last began to accost me about the Weather, and the Times, and then proceeded to talk of what Love and Affection Men ought to bear to one another; he complained grievously of the Lewdness of Women, and the Inconveniencies that the Male Sex too frequently brought themselves into, by a too free Conversation with them, and inveigh'd bitterly against some late Proceedings of the Law; adding, if a speedy Stop was not put thereto, there would be an End of Society and Fellowship. He invited me to his Lodgings, and said a great many soft and kind Things to me.

    An elderly Gentlewoman who sat on my right Hand, in a short Silk Cloak, with a Number of Patches on a wrinkled Face, hearing this, fell upon the Man in a most unmerciful Manner, saying, It was along with such Villains as he, that she was so reduc'd in the World; that Time had been when she could boast of as fine a Covey of sound, plump, and juicy Sluts in her House, as any Gentlewoman in London, and had kept Eigteen of as good Feather Beds going, as a Brace of Fornicators need desire to regale their Limbs upon; but that now, what with China Shops, Hackney Coaches, Taverns, and these endorsing Sons of Bitcheś together, it was as much as she could do, to make both Ends meet; and solemnly declar'd that she did not foul more than à dozen Pair of Sheets in a whole Week. This she express'd with Tears in her Eyes, and farther said, she had in her Custody at that Instant a pretty black Ey'd Filley, of about Fifteen, who could carry the Weight of a Lord, and had never yet been Back'd, but that the Business had been so spoil'd of late by these Practices, she doubted whether she should be able to make the Money that she had cost in fetching from Lancashire

    https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/A_trip_through_London_containing_observa/folhAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,706
    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    One interesting difference between the USA and the EU is that despite America actually being a single country there doesn't seem to be the same inclination to stop States from competing against each other.

    Texas is quite happy to go out of its way to attract investment away from California.

    Whenever a company like Tesla or Amazon are looking to build a new base of operations then cities and states basically whore themselves in an auction to see who can be most attractive for it.

    The USA views competition as a healthy thing, the EU does not. That is why the USA is and the EU is not successful.

    If post-Brexit the EU start to view themselves in competition with the UK [as they did in the vaccines debacle] then that might make life better for both Europeans and Brits in the end.

    Competition makes us become the best versions of ourselves.

    It's argued that H. sapiens ability to work together in reasonably large groups was a significant part of the reason for it's success vis-a-vis the Neanderthals, Denisovians etc.
    Absolutely and 67 million people is a reasonably large group to be working with. Its possibly too large still.
    Is 1450 million people in China too large for them?
    Yes.

    There's a reason China lacks democracy and there's a reason that the average salary in Taiwan is considerably better than the average in China.
    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?
    Looking at the state of US Presidential Politics its hard to come to any other conclusion.
    So you think the dire state of US Presidential Politics is because the population of the US is too large. And "its hard to come to any other conclusion". OK. Interesting argument. Not heard that one before.
    Absolutely. Trying to get one President who can adequately reflect 330 million people, one individual who is as good as representing the Midwest, the East Coast, the Deep South and the West Coast etc, is becoming nigh on impossible as they're just too different.

    If the fifty states were each choosing their own President without reference to or in a union with each other I think it'd be much healthier.
    So you don't think there would be a problem in say Texas? At the last presential election, Trump got 52% of the vote in Texas and Biden got 46%. It is as divided and troubled as the whole of the US. Overall size doesn't come into it.
    Biden won the US popular vote by 51% to 47% for Trump, so Texas is actually slightly more pro Trump and pro GOP than the US is pro Biden
  • Heathener said:

    This is a good bet if you can cash out, which you can. The point is not whether Trump will be the GOP nominee which I rate at below 20%.

    Anthony Zurcher for the BBC asks if Trump's allure is starting to fade with the Republicans: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58904507

    What you MUST remember here is that this is one of the three most glittering prizes in world politics. Power is the reason that politicians draw breath. Trump might appear like a shoo-in right now but when the pincer movement by other candidates begins they will really start laying into him. They have a huge amount of ammo with which to do so. Their aim will be simple: defenestrate Trump and then its an open dog-fight amongst themselves.

    No opposition has ever coasted a candidate, especially one who lost last time (whatever he thinks). Only an incumbent President gets the right to coast a nomination.

    The selectorate believe he is the rightful incumbent! Or at least have to say so in public.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,111

    eek said:

    dixiedean said:

    TOPPING said:

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
    A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
    We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.

    I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us.
    People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then?
    Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
    A lot of GPs make appointments very hard to get. 5 weeks in the future is ridiculous. Expecting people to repeat speed dial at exactly 8am to get one of 2 appointments reserved to be open that day.....

    No wonder people just go to A&E....
    The problem is GP's want an easy job, living in lovely surroundings. And who doesn't?
    Leafy middle class village like mine. Same day, no problem.
    Red Wall ex-mining, elderly population with chronic ill-health like my Mother? Weeks and weeks.
    We need something like the London Challenge for schools. It would be genuine levelling up.
    I don't have any problem seeing a Dr the same day - I suspect the issue isn't up North, it's way more likely to be down South where even GPs are priced out of the local housing market.
    GP / NHS anecdote - down south. The boss made me ring my GP as she was concerned about a few moles on my face. Face-to-face appointment made the next day. Because of my history, GP said she was going to refer me; I expected a long wait. Far from it - the next day (Friday) I got a phone call for an appointment with the dermatology department at the local hospital for the following Monday. So from GP to dermatology appointment in five (three working) days. (Even better, they had no concerns and swiftly removed one mole that was a bit itchy).

    So it's not all bad out there.
    Similar here in Scotland a few weeks back for me (some sort of lump in tongue). This time dentist/NHS hospital.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Only the Guardian would try and spin a company offering low-paid staff more money, as being purely bad news.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/17/small-firms-fury-as-amazon-offers-3000-sign-up-bonus-to-attract-christmas-staff

    It isn't purely good news either. We're back to there being an inelastic labour pool. At least in the short term we are going to see shortages because there simply aren't enough people to fill vacancies.
    Oh indeed. It’s just all rather amusing to see pretty much the whole centre-left lining up in opposition to a sharp reduction in inequality.
    Speaking as a member of the centre-left, I'm all in favour of a sharp reduction in inequality, and am delighted that so many members of the centre-right are as well, in these strange times.

    However, I'm less in favour of global domination by Amazon. I know I'm swimming against the tide, but there's little doubt that the growth of Amazon (and a few others) has a negative impact on small retailers, and on our high streets. We may live to regret the demise of town centre shops, and the concomitant impact on communities, in the future.
    We're at a moment in time where there is a concentration of retail in the form of Amazon, and also a growth in people buying directly from producers.

    I think that where local retail can prosper is where it is genuinely providing something local and distinctive, and so it takes advantage of the trend to buy directly from producers.

    Retailers who are simply selling stuff from a range of suppliers, and not providing any additional value, will all get squashed by Amazon, or another high-volume internet retailer.

    I think this split is probably good. I can buy generic commodities in the most efficient way, and I can make sure the producer receives maximum value for other purchases.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,838
    eek said:

    TOPPING said:

    Given the huge pressures on the NHS, surely it makes sense to try to tackle behaviour which adds, unnecessarily, to that pressure. Namely:

    a) people visiting their GPs when it really isn't necessary.
    b) people attending A&E when it really isn't necessary.

    These are both very difficult to solve, without risking turning people away when they actually do need to be seen. But if phone consultations with GPs can reduce some of the pressure on a), that's all to the good. Similarly on b), more efficient ways of rapidly diagnosing whether a visit to A&E justifies joining the queue would be useful. The problem is, of course, that as soon as somebody is mistakenly turned away, the press would have a field day.

    One problem is that of long-term-treatable conditions.

    More and more conditions can be treated. The patient takes x pills a week. They can then live their life without much apparent difficulty (in many cases).

    A couple of relatives have such conditions. Their health requires monitoring because of the powerful medications. So, every couple of months, they get blood tests etc. Then go to the GP, who smiles, and says that this iso put of her knowledge and sends them on to their usual consultant.

    The appointment with the GP adds nothing.

    What they really need is a permanent booking in the diary of the consultant in question, once every x months.

    EDIT: A&E is often used as a substitute for seeing a GP, since GPs don't generally work weekends, or out of working hours. In experiments where they triaged the A&E queues to see (in effect) GPs in the hospital, much of the A&E queue moved that way.
    A friend who is a GP said that there was a system during the pandemic (doctors correct/enlighten me) whereby if someone registered online they could see a GP at 24-hrs notice. This was playing havoc with their weekends as people would do it throughout. They then turned this facility off at the weekends and, as many peoples' symptoms had disappeared by Monday, they saw a vastly reduced number of applications vs previously.
    A lot of those people will be back to going to A&E...
    We have made use of drop in GP clinics in recent times. These are a good alternative, to be available alongside the normal GP's.

    I think one of the issues we have at the moment is the perception that GP's are hard to see, or get to. Many surgeries that wont be an issue. My parents surgery, based in a village, is easy to get same day appointments. My surgery, a medium sized town, getting a physical GP appointment has been hard for many years, with typical offerings of 5 weeks in the future. However they have worked hard on other provision, and the e-consult has worked really well for us.
    People don't really like change, and I don't think GP surgeries have always explained things to their patients that well. As an example I was contact by text in mid August to arrange my flu jab. I was on holiday and missed the allocated 7 days. I assumed I would ne contacted again. Up to last week, nothing, so I rang the surgery, only for the receptionist to be faintly rude, and say there is no news as they have no flu vaccine. Why not put that on the web-page then?
    Patients also do not like receptionists conducting triage for patients. I think at least a nurse would be better than a nosy. middle-aged gossip who you might bump into in Waitrose. (Last bit was a JOKE, but only just...)
    A lot of GPs make appointments very hard to get. 5 weeks in the future is ridiculous. Expecting people to repeat speed dial at exactly 8am to get one of 2 appointments reserved to be open that day.....

    No wonder people just go to A&E....
    It is interesting that the experiences of people around the country are so different. I know of one case in Grantham last year where a stomach cancer patient who had been in remission and started to get symptoms again could not get an appointment with the GP and by the time things were so bad they went to A&E it was too late and they died. Another of my closest friend who became seriously ill after an infection in his leg and was unable to get an appointment so ended up in hospital where they thankfully managed to save his leg. And yet at the same time the country surgeries which are using the Ask My GP app are doing so in such a way that if need be you can get an appointment within a couple of hours. They have assigned a doctor to do online triage but with the expectation of offering face to face visits if either the Doctor or the patient request it and it is meaning they can effectively deal with a much higher workload and those who do need to be seen get a much quicker response.

    The problem to me seems to be with those GPs who, for whatever reason, simply don't want to do face to face at all anymore. If that is their attitude then they should find another job.
    Say farewell to GPs then.

    The reality is we don't have enough GPs and those that are qualified to do it don't need the money anymore.,
    The truth is the vast pay increases and reductions in workload brought about by the previous Labour Gov't were amazing for GPs and absolutely disastrous for patients.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,111
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    tlg86 said:

    Are Labour pro-independence for Wales?

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/18/wales-launches-drive-to-keep-young-people-in-their-homeland

    Or is this driven by what happened to them in Scotland?

    No, they are pro the Union.

    Once Scotland leave and Ireland is reunited the independence train in Wales will start rolling, and Labour here too, will be left at the station.

    I guess there's an important difference between Labour and Lafur? Drakeford seems pleasantly rational on the issue which may be the product of Plaid not being much of a threat at the moment? Though SLab were pretty anti SNP even before they were reduced to third party status (they're off the SNPbad scale now).
    FPT

    All 3 of Rhodri Morgan, Carwyn Jones & Mark Drakeford were/are fluent Welsh speakers.

    I think Drakeford said he considered joining Plaid Cymru as a young man, before settling on Llafur. So, Drakeford is popular with many Plaid Cymru voters.

    I suspect Drakeford prefers Wales to be in the UK -- but not in a UK run by Johnson or with endless Tory Govts in Westminster.

    Drakeford has surprised me (and others) on the upside. He looks like a bumbling, incompetent academic, but he has a set of skills and attributes that has proved electorally successful in Wales.

    In fact, I prefer Drakeford to any of his likely successors -- he is standing down as leader of Llafur before the next Senedd elections.

    Be interesting to see what happens next to Llafur. Incompetent, half-assed leadership is certainly one of the things that killed SLAB, and that Llafur have so far avoided.
    Wales also voted for Brexit, just like England and its 2 main parties are Labour and the Conservatives, just like England.

    Nationalism in Wales is just confined to mainly a few Welsh speaking areas on the West coast and in the NorthWest and Anglesey and parts of the Rhondda.

    Hence Labour can easily ignore Plaid
    If the report linked to is correct and Wales is becoming increasingly a place for English people to retire to with Welsh youngsters moving to London and other English cities like Manchester or Birmingham then that is also great news for Welsh Tories.

    The older the Welsh population the more Tory it will become
    "Welsh" having two rather different meanings there.
  • jonny83jonny83 Posts: 1,261

    Andrew Lilico
    @andrew_lilico
    ·
    1h
    One way to think about this. Cases in non-kids are currently ~1/2 their level in July & have hardly changed since. Cases in kids are about to crash. So for total cases to rise, cases in non-kids wld need to nearly double, despite having bn stable up to now. Why wld they do that?

    Waning immunity in the double vaccinated will take over from kids being the main source of cases and keep those cases rising or at similar levels heading into the winter months. Particularly in the UK where a great deal of the population had Astrazeneca which wanes quicker compared to Pfizer against Delta. It's one of the reasons why Europe isn't experiencing the level of cases and deaths that we are.

    It's imperative that the booster programme needs ramping up.
  • Barnesian said:



    Is 333 million people in the US too large for them?

    Is 1,371 million people in India too large for them?

  • What do you call four wickets in four balls?
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cricket/58260913
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,838
    jonny83 said:

    Andrew Lilico
    @andrew_lilico
    ·
    1h
    One way to think about this. Cases in non-kids are currently ~1/2 their level in July & have hardly changed since. Cases in kids are about to crash. So for total cases to rise, cases in non-kids wld need to nearly double, despite having bn stable up to now. Why wld they do that?

    Waning immunity in the double vaccinated will take over from kids being the main source of cases and keep those cases rising or at similar levels heading into the winter months. Particularly in the UK where a great deal of the population had Astrazeneca which wanes quicker compared to Pfizer against Delta. It's one of the reasons why Europe isn't experiencing the level of cases and deaths that we are.

    It's imperative that the booster programme needs ramping up.
    Anecdotally in my office of 4, 2 are off with Covid at the moment both double AZ; myself and another colleague are Pfizer.
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