Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
An ageing population. A lot of the ambulance delays relate to inadequate social care.
The causes of these increased waits are complex and are a symptom of pressures within the NHS and social care system. Waits for social care mean it is difficult to discharge patients from hospital, which means there is a lack of hospital beds, which means that accident and emergency (A&E) staff can’t get patients out of their department, and, ultimately, paramedics queuing outside hospitals can’t hand their patients over to A&E staff.
I'm sorry. £188bn is more than £500m a day. And they can't even produce an ambulance? Their performance is literally killing people every day. It is time we stopped pretending that that is ok.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
I remember when my Dad fell over and hit his head in his old peoples home when we visited we called an ambulance and a helpful staff member basically told me to lie and exaggerate the symptoms, ie make out he was drifting in and out of consciousness and slurring his speech, otherwise it would be hours before they turned up.
The UK’s population is also ageing. In 2022, there were around 12.7 million people aged 65 or over in the UK, making up 19% of the population. [...] 50 years ago in 1972 there were around 7.5 million people aged 65 or over, or 13% of the population. [...]
According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), there are currently around 33 people aged 65 or over for every 100 people aged 20 to 64 in the UK. This ratio is similar to the average for the European Union, but higher than some countries.
Personally, I would never let my child go to University in a LibDem constituency.
Why not?
She'd leave a healthy, normal, well adjusted young adult. And then she'd return wearing sandals.
Ridiculous - I've been a Lib Dem supporter most of my adult life and I've never worn sandals. That would be like saying all male Conservatives wear pinstripe suits all the time which they don't.
It's time you emptied the cache of your political stereotypes.
The health-care systems in the UK and Australia, already hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, remain overstretched. While some elements of care provision are improving (eg, waiting times for routine surgeries), others remain a source of concern. One of the most pressing issues for both systems is the increasing frequency of so-called ambulance ramping, whereby ambulances are required to queue outside overcrowded emergency departments, forced to wait before handing over patients. While this practice ensures that paramedics continue to be with the patient in event of emergency, this can mean that a single ambulance crew is occupied with just one patient for their entire shift or even longer; in some parts of the UK, waiting times of up to 23 h have been recorded. It also means that fewer ambulances are available to respond to other urgent calls, which has led to increasingly long waits for an ambulance to arrive, even for the most life-threatening emergencies. [...] in the UK, the response time for the highest-priority calls (eg, stroke or heart attack) reached a record high in August, 2022, at an average of 9 min 36 sec, exceeding the 7-min response target.
My point is, we know what the problem is.
We do indeed.
My Trust put up a marquee in the carpark outside the Emergency Dept so that Ambulance waits could be eliminated, and the paramedics get to their next job. Far from perfect, but it worked.
But we all know that the problem with ED is the back door, not the front door. We do get the odd attendance for trivial things, but they just have to wait while the serious stuff gets priority. The problem is the back door because we cannot admit to a full hospital, and the hospital is full because Social Care and Primary Care do not work as they should.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
An ageing population. A lot of the ambulance delays relate to inadequate social care.
The causes of these increased waits are complex and are a symptom of pressures within the NHS and social care system. Waits for social care mean it is difficult to discharge patients from hospital, which means there is a lack of hospital beds, which means that accident and emergency (A&E) staff can’t get patients out of their department, and, ultimately, paramedics queuing outside hospitals can’t hand their patients over to A&E staff.
I'm sorry. £188bn is more than £500m a day. And they can't even produce an ambulance? Their performance is literally killing people every day. It is time we stopped pretending that that is ok.
The health-care systems in the UK and Australia, already hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, remain overstretched. While some elements of care provision are improving (eg, waiting times for routine surgeries), others remain a source of concern. One of the most pressing issues for both systems is the increasing frequency of so-called ambulance ramping, whereby ambulances are required to queue outside overcrowded emergency departments, forced to wait before handing over patients. While this practice ensures that paramedics continue to be with the patient in event of emergency, this can mean that a single ambulance crew is occupied with just one patient for their entire shift or even longer; in some parts of the UK, waiting times of up to 23 h have been recorded. It also means that fewer ambulances are available to respond to other urgent calls, which has led to increasingly long waits for an ambulance to arrive, even for the most life-threatening emergencies. [...] in the UK, the response time for the highest-priority calls (eg, stroke or heart attack) reached a record high in August, 2022, at an average of 9 min 36 sec, exceeding the 7-min response target.
My point is, we know what the problem is.
We do indeed.
My Trust put up a marquee in the carpark outside the Emergency Dept so that Ambulance waits could be eliminated, and the paramedics get to their next job. Far from perfect, but it worked.
But we all know that the problem with ED is the back door, not the front door. We do get the odd attendance for trivial things, but they just have to wait while the serious stuff gets priority. The problem is the back door because we cannot admit to a full hospital, and the hospital is full because Social Care and Primary Care do not work as they should.
I am bemused to learn that Erectile Dysfunction is a back door and not a front door problem. Maybe I have been going about this the wrong way.
Cool Hand Luke forgive me doing a Leon but perhaps the most significant commercial of my career. I'd been asked by the agency to shoot a poster for Greenhall using the commercials location and actor. We shot in Almeria and Shepperton.The producer was Tony Scott's wife Glynnis and the first assistant was Roger Lyons.
Two Rogers we became friends. He wanted to direct and the agency creative asked me if I'd like to give it a try. I was a fashion photographer at the time . We both went on to direct. Roger L became the hottest director in town and did Levi's Laundrette among other stuff.
He later had a shoot in Italy and fell over a cliff and died. Tony left Glynnis and later took his own life....Back at Shepperton Ridley shot 1984 Apple with Roger L as his first assistant Reckoned to be the best commercial ever made......
So that's how you got started, 🫡
Number 2 son has gone into your line of work, at a small agency down in the Smoke. Mostly he is editing and fettling the videos, as befits a junior, but he is very creative and ambitious, and beginning to catch the eye of the bosses.
Yep, them poor old bosses need all the help they can get
Well, that is actually what he is paid to do!
It’s a quote from Cool Hand Luke. I wondered whether you’d used ‘bosses’ as a nod to the film
Ah, I missed that. Strangely I watched Cool Hand Luke a few weeks back too. I think it was on BBC iplayer. It's an odd film, and I don't think would be made the same way now. I haven't got round to writing a letterboxd review yet as still mulling over what I made of it.
I’ve watched it dozens of times. The book reveals more about Luke and the reasons behind his unusual behaviour. WW2 has a lot to do with it.
Paul Newman plays a very similar character in Hombre, another of my favourite films.
Yes, it's really a film about post-traumatic stress disorder.
I have seen a fair number of homeless ex-soldiers get into trouble in a very similar way.
I don't support the poppy appeal any more, but one of my favourite charities is "Combat Stress" for their workers on soldiers with PTSD. Civilian health care systems don't understand it and the military ones don't care after discharge.
Cool Hand Luke forgive me doing a Leon but perhaps the most significant commercial of my career. I'd been asked by the agency to shoot a poster for Greenhall using the commercials location and actor. We shot in Almeria and Shepperton.The producer was Tony Scott's wife Glynnis and the first assistant was Roger Lyons.
Two Rogers we became friends. He wanted to direct and the agency creative asked me if I'd like to give it a try. I was a fashion photographer at the time . We both went on to direct. Roger L became the hottest director in town and did Levi's Laundrette among other stuff.
He later had a shoot in Italy and fell over a cliff and died. Tony left Glynnis and later took his own life....Back at Shepperton Ridley shot 1984 Apple with Roger L as his first assistant Reckoned to be the best commercial ever made......
So that's how you got started, 🫡
Number 2 son has gone into your line of work, at a small agency down in the Smoke. Mostly he is editing and fettling the videos, as befits a junior, but he is very creative and ambitious, and beginning to catch the eye of the bosses.
Yep, them poor old bosses need all the help they can get
Well, that is actually what he is paid to do!
It’s a quote from Cool Hand Luke. I wondered whether you’d used ‘bosses’ as a nod to the film
Ah, I missed that. Strangely I watched Cool Hand Luke a few weeks back too. I think it was on BBC iplayer. It's an odd film, and I don't think would be made the same way now. I haven't got round to writing a letterboxd review yet as still mulling over what I made of it.
I’ve watched it dozens of times. The book reveals more about Luke and the reasons behind his unusual behaviour. WW2 has a lot to do with it.
Paul Newman plays a very similar character in Hombre, another of my favourite films.
Yes, it's really a film about post-traumatic stress disorder.
I have seen a fair number of homeless ex-soldiers get into trouble in a very similar way.
I don't support the poppy appeal any more, but one of my favourite charities is "Combat Stress" for their workers on soldiers with PTSD. Civilian health care systems don't understand it and the military ones don't care after discharge.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
An ageing population. A lot of the ambulance delays relate to inadequate social care.
The causes of these increased waits are complex and are a symptom of pressures within the NHS and social care system. Waits for social care mean it is difficult to discharge patients from hospital, which means there is a lack of hospital beds, which means that accident and emergency (A&E) staff can’t get patients out of their department, and, ultimately, paramedics queuing outside hospitals can’t hand their patients over to A&E staff.
I'm sorry. £188bn is more than £500m a day. And they can't even produce an ambulance? Their performance is literally killing people every day. It is time we stopped pretending that that is ok.
I suspect it would be cheaper to pay an adult social care worker to do a home safety assessment and if necessary get some chap with an electric screwdriver to fit a hand rail or ramp to assist mobility issues.
But that would go against the grain of hating on Councils. Pretending that all they do is diversity.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
An ageing population. A lot of the ambulance delays relate to inadequate social care.
The causes of these increased waits are complex and are a symptom of pressures within the NHS and social care system. Waits for social care mean it is difficult to discharge patients from hospital, which means there is a lack of hospital beds, which means that accident and emergency (A&E) staff can’t get patients out of their department, and, ultimately, paramedics queuing outside hospitals can’t hand their patients over to A&E staff.
I'm sorry. £188bn is more than £500m a day. And they can't even produce an ambulance? Their performance is literally killing people every day. It is time we stopped pretending that that is ok.
So the solution is the same solution it’s been for decades. More money. Right.
Perhaps there comes a time when throwing money at a problem isn’t the answer and looking at what works elsewhere and learning from it is.
Please pick from one of the below answers:
a) It's not just about money. A key problem here is social care. Problems in social care stop people being discharged from hospital. Hospitals fill up, and that stops people being admitted to hospitals, leading to ambulances sitting waiting outside A&E. Unfortunately, Labour has delayed its review into social care. We could also spend other healthcare money better, with more on public health (hit by cuts to local council funding) and primary care.
b) The population is ageing. Most healthcare costs are associated with old age. So, yes, more money is needed. There's no fancy way around that. What works elsehwere? What works in France, Germany, Sweden etc. is spending more money on health. We haven't been throwing money at the problem for years. We've been skimping for years.
Cool Hand Luke forgive me doing a Leon but perhaps the most significant commercial of my career. I'd been asked by the agency to shoot a poster for Greenhall using the commercials location and actor. We shot in Almeria and Shepperton.The producer was Tony Scott's wife Glynnis and the first assistant was Roger Lyons.
Two Rogers we became friends. He wanted to direct and the agency creative asked me if I'd like to give it a try. I was a fashion photographer at the time . We both went on to direct. Roger L became the hottest director in town and did Levi's Laundrette among other stuff.
He later had a shoot in Italy and fell over a cliff and died. Tony left Glynnis and later took his own life....Back at Shepperton Ridley shot 1984 Apple with Roger L as his first assistant Reckoned to be the best commercial ever made......
So that's how you got started, 🫡
Number 2 son has gone into your line of work, at a small agency down in the Smoke. Mostly he is editing and fettling the videos, as befits a junior, but he is very creative and ambitious, and beginning to catch the eye of the bosses.
Yep, them poor old bosses need all the help they can get
Well, that is actually what he is paid to do!
It’s a quote from Cool Hand Luke. I wondered whether you’d used ‘bosses’ as a nod to the film
Ah, I missed that. Strangely I watched Cool Hand Luke a few weeks back too. I think it was on BBC iplayer. It's an odd film, and I don't think would be made the same way now. I haven't got round to writing a letterboxd review yet as still mulling over what I made of it.
I’ve watched it dozens of times. The book reveals more about Luke and the reasons behind his unusual behaviour. WW2 has a lot to do with it.
Paul Newman plays a very similar character in Hombre, another of my favourite films.
Yes, it's really a film about post-traumatic stress disorder.
I have seen a fair number of homeless ex-soldiers get into trouble in a very similar way.
I don't support the poppy appeal any more, but one of my favourite charities is "Combat Stress" for their workers on soldiers with PTSD. Civilian health care systems don't understand it and the military ones don't care after discharge.
I stopped in 2018 as I thought 100 years was long enough.
I think it has degenerated into mawkish sentimentality tinged with jingoism. I do care about ex soldiers, so I support a number of disability charities aimed at them, particularly Combat Stress. I just can't stand Poppymas and it's absurdities.
Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said on the BBC Radio 4 Today news programme on 1 December that he had not seen these kinds of delays in admission since the 1990s and that he feared it was leading to excess deaths. [...]
Boyle said the problems were due to a combination of factors, adding, “The reason we’re seeing these awful long ambulance waits is because our emergency departments are full and our hospitals are full. Going back 20 years, we were able, as a country, to turn this around.
“There was the political will to establish things like the four hour access target, which was a huge piece of work and took quite a long time to get going, but it emptied the corridors and actually pushed people through the system in a way that avoided all of these problems.”
Reducing the delays relied on discharges and proper use of beds, said Boyle. “At the moment there are 13 000 people waiting in hospitals—about 10% of the bed base—who are waiting to be discharged either to home with a little bit more support or to a care facility. That’s a massive own goal. We need to reform the interface between acute hospitals and social care.”
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
An ageing population. A lot of the ambulance delays relate to inadequate social care.
The causes of these increased waits are complex and are a symptom of pressures within the NHS and social care system. Waits for social care mean it is difficult to discharge patients from hospital, which means there is a lack of hospital beds, which means that accident and emergency (A&E) staff can’t get patients out of their department, and, ultimately, paramedics queuing outside hospitals can’t hand their patients over to A&E staff.
I'm sorry. £188bn is more than £500m a day. And they can't even produce an ambulance? Their performance is literally killing people every day. It is time we stopped pretending that that is ok.
I suspect it would be cheaper to pay an adult social care worker to do a home safety assessment and if necessary get some chap with an electric screwdriver to fit a hand rail or ramp to assist mobility issues.
But that would go against the grain of hating on Councils. Pretending that all they do is diversity.
Our press is poison.
Hunt was right to bring social care and health into the same department but the benefits have been less than we might have hoped.
I have mentioned this before but the hospital my daughter works at, Ninewells in Dundee, has a department who start working on the discharge of every patient when they are admitted so by the time they finish their treatment their social care package that allows them to go home is already in place preventing bed blocking. It does involve the NHS taking on responsibilities and costs that are not really theirs but the savings are so obvious that there is a stream of visitors from other Trusts looking to see how they do it.
And further to that if Truss ran for Reform in her SW Norfolk it would be an enormous Tory gain (Reform likely gain it as we stand)
I think Reform would win the seat regardless of who the candidate is, and that includes Truss.
SW Norfolk will be very hard to call. Where the 14% Bagge votes go is key. Reform should win the Thetford wards easily but the rest of the constituency is up for a close fight
If Reform win 200-300 seats overall, SW Norfolk would be an absolute shoo-in for them.
Personally, I would never let my child go to University in a LibDem constituency.
Why not?
She'd leave a healthy, normal, well adjusted young adult. And then she'd return wearing sandals.
Ridiculous - I've been a Lib Dem supporter most of my adult life and I've never worn sandals. That would be like saying all male Conservatives wear pinstripe suits all the time which they don't.
It's time you emptied the cache of your political stereotypes.
Cool Hand Luke forgive me doing a Leon but perhaps the most significant commercial of my career. I'd been asked by the agency to shoot a poster for Greenhall using the commercials location and actor. We shot in Almeria and Shepperton.The producer was Tony Scott's wife Glynnis and the first assistant was Roger Lyons.
Two Rogers we became friends. He wanted to direct and the agency creative asked me if I'd like to give it a try. I was a fashion photographer at the time . We both went on to direct. Roger L became the hottest director in town and did Levi's Laundrette among other stuff.
He later had a shoot in Italy and fell over a cliff and died. Tony left Glynnis and later took his own life....Back at Shepperton Ridley shot 1984 Apple with Roger L as his first assistant Reckoned to be the best commercial ever made......
So that's how you got started, 🫡
Number 2 son has gone into your line of work, at a small agency down in the Smoke. Mostly he is editing and fettling the videos, as befits a junior, but he is very creative and ambitious, and beginning to catch the eye of the bosses.
Yep, them poor old bosses need all the help they can get
Well, that is actually what he is paid to do!
It’s a quote from Cool Hand Luke. I wondered whether you’d used ‘bosses’ as a nod to the film
Ah, I missed that. Strangely I watched Cool Hand Luke a few weeks back too. I think it was on BBC iplayer. It's an odd film, and I don't think would be made the same way now. I haven't got round to writing a letterboxd review yet as still mulling over what I made of it.
I’ve watched it dozens of times. The book reveals more about Luke and the reasons behind his unusual behaviour. WW2 has a lot to do with it.
Paul Newman plays a very similar character in Hombre, another of my favourite films.
Yes, it's really a film about post-traumatic stress disorder.
I have seen a fair number of homeless ex-soldiers get into trouble in a very similar way.
I don't support the poppy appeal any more, but one of my favourite charities is "Combat Stress" for their workers on soldiers with PTSD. Civilian health care systems don't understand it and the military ones don't care after discharge.
I stopped in 2018 as I thought 100 years was long enough.
I think it has degenerated into mawkish sentimentality tinged with jingoism. I do care about ex soldiers, so I support a number of disability charities aimed at them, particularly Combat Stress. I just can't stand Poppymas and it's absurdities.
100 years for veterans of WW1, but we still have people injured physically and/or mentally from military service, so I don't really see why you need to stop, but that's your choice. I do agree with how it's gone, driven, sadly, by the BBC and it's insane insistence that all shall wear poppies from mid Oct.
Are the Basques fond of virtue signalling, millionaire pensioners cosplaying as refugees? ✊🏻
We’ve been thinking about where to escape to if the nationalist right does take power in the UK. It’s looking like the Basque Country. They will never, ever take fascist shit. Ever. Even if Spain goes PP/Vox, the Basques will not and they will fight against it. Gora Euskadi ✊️
Are the Basques fond of virtue signalling, millionaire pensioners cosplaying as refugees? ✊🏻
We’ve been thinking about where to escape to if the nationalist right does take power in the UK. It’s looking like the Basque Country. They will never, ever take fascist shit. Ever. Even if Spain goes PP/Vox, the Basques will not and they will fight against it. Gora Euskadi ✊️
Personally, I would never let my child go to University in a LibDem constituency.
Why not?
She'd leave a healthy, normal, well adjusted young adult. And then she'd return wearing sandals.
Ridiculous - I've been a Lib Dem supporter most of my adult life and I've never worn sandals. That would be like saying all male Conservatives wear pinstripe suits all the time which they don't.
It's time you emptied the cache of your political stereotypes.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
And further to that if Truss ran for Reform in her SW Norfolk it would be an enormous Tory gain (Reform likely gain it as we stand)
I think Reform would win the seat regardless of who the candidate is, and that includes Truss.
SW Norfolk will be very hard to call. Where the 14% Bagge votes go is key. Reform should win the Thetford wards easily but the rest of the constituency is up for a close fight
If Reform win 200-300 seats overall, SW Norfolk would be an absolute shoo-in for them.
Sorry i dont agree with that. Theyd likely win it on 300 seats overall, 200 not so much Ill be interested in the Norfolk council elections next year, and the mayoral which might shed a bit more light. Im leaning Ref gain at the moment but if, for example, the Tories hold Mid Norfolk they will probably regain SW Norfolk
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
An ageing population. A lot of the ambulance delays relate to inadequate social care.
The causes of these increased waits are complex and are a symptom of pressures within the NHS and social care system. Waits for social care mean it is difficult to discharge patients from hospital, which means there is a lack of hospital beds, which means that accident and emergency (A&E) staff can’t get patients out of their department, and, ultimately, paramedics queuing outside hospitals can’t hand their patients over to A&E staff.
I'm sorry. £188bn is more than £500m a day. And they can't even produce an ambulance? Their performance is literally killing people every day. It is time we stopped pretending that that is ok.
I suspect it would be cheaper to pay an adult social care worker to do a home safety assessment and if necessary get some chap with an electric screwdriver to fit a hand rail or ramp to assist mobility issues.
But that would go against the grain of hating on Councils. Pretending that all they do is diversity.
Our press is poison.
Hunt was right to bring social care and health into the same department but the benefits have been less than we might have hoped.
I have mentioned this before but the hospital my daughter works at, Ninewells in Dundee, has a department who start working on the discharge of every patient when they are admitted so by the time they finish their treatment their social care package that allows them to go home is already in place preventing bed blocking. It does involve the NHS taking on responsibilities and costs that are not really theirs but the savings are so obvious that there is a stream of visitors from other Trusts looking to see how they do it.
That is very interesting. Hopefully other trusts will take this up if they don't already.
Sadly, I have far too much experience of the interface between NHS and social care through my own family's experiences.
An issue that is not discussed enough imho is the ridiculous level of box ticking and risk aversion that hospitals display about discharge. I presume it is our litigation culture but it is nuts and government needs to sort it out.
I have found, and it has been confirmed by others I know in similar situations, that getting someone out of hospital when there is some level of care need - EVEN IF THE NEED IS CLEARLY MET - is like getting blood out of the proverbial stone. In one situation I was involved in very directly involving a family member - six different professional disciplines had to all sign off on discharge. The ward doctor was almost a pawn in the game frankly. Everyone of these disciplines seemed to be looking for reasons to delay discharge just in case...
Cool Hand Luke forgive me doing a Leon but perhaps the most significant commercial of my career. I'd been asked by the agency to shoot a poster for Greenhall using the commercials location and actor. We shot in Almeria and Shepperton.The producer was Tony Scott's wife Glynnis and the first assistant was Roger Lyons.
Two Rogers we became friends. He wanted to direct and the agency creative asked me if I'd like to give it a try. I was a fashion photographer at the time . We both went on to direct. Roger L became the hottest director in town and did Levi's Laundrette among other stuff.
He later had a shoot in Italy and fell over a cliff and died. Tony left Glynnis and later took his own life....Back at Shepperton Ridley shot 1984 Apple with Roger L as his first assistant Reckoned to be the best commercial ever made......
So that's how you got started, 🫡
Number 2 son has gone into your line of work, at a small agency down in the Smoke. Mostly he is editing and fettling the videos, as befits a junior, but he is very creative and ambitious, and beginning to catch the eye of the bosses.
Yep, them poor old bosses need all the help they can get
Well, that is actually what he is paid to do!
It’s a quote from Cool Hand Luke. I wondered whether you’d used ‘bosses’ as a nod to the film
Ah, I missed that. Strangely I watched Cool Hand Luke a few weeks back too. I think it was on BBC iplayer. It's an odd film, and I don't think would be made the same way now. I haven't got round to writing a letterboxd review yet as still mulling over what I made of it.
I’ve watched it dozens of times. The book reveals more about Luke and the reasons behind his unusual behaviour. WW2 has a lot to do with it.
Paul Newman plays a very similar character in Hombre, another of my favourite films.
Yes, it's really a film about post-traumatic stress disorder.
I have seen a fair number of homeless ex-soldiers get into trouble in a very similar way.
I don't support the poppy appeal any more, but one of my favourite charities is "Combat Stress" for their workers on soldiers with PTSD. Civilian health care systems don't understand it and the military ones don't care after discharge.
I stopped in 2018 as I thought 100 years was long enough.
I think it has degenerated into mawkish sentimentality tinged with jingoism. I do care about ex soldiers, so I support a number of disability charities aimed at them, particularly Combat Stress. I just can't stand Poppymas and it's absurdities.
Thanks for answering. I find that illogical though. It's certainly not '100years' since the last soldiers were sent on our behalf into God knows what (Barely 10years) . They are still young and will need and deserve our support for years to come. Your choice. Combat Stress is an excellent charity but so is the RBL imo and Remembrance Sunday always strikes me as an increasingly rare opportunity for a truly collective national occasion and coming together.
Are the Basques fond of virtue signalling, millionaire pensioners cosplaying as refugees? ✊🏻
We’ve been thinking about where to escape to if the nationalist right does take power in the UK. It’s looking like the Basque Country. They will never, ever take fascist shit. Ever. Even if Spain goes PP/Vox, the Basques will not and they will fight against it. Gora Euskadi ✊️
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
Are the Basques fond of virtue signalling, millionaire pensioners cosplaying as refugees? ✊🏻
We’ve been thinking about where to escape to if the nationalist right does take power in the UK. It’s looking like the Basque Country. They will never, ever take fascist shit. Ever. Even if Spain goes PP/Vox, the Basques will not and they will fight against it. Gora Euskadi ✊️
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
Daley Thompson just whistled
Apparently England fans tonight were singing - Starmer is a w....r !!!!!
The UK’s population is also ageing. In 2022, there were around 12.7 million people aged 65 or over in the UK, making up 19% of the population. [...] 50 years ago in 1972 there were around 7.5 million people aged 65 or over, or 13% of the population. [...]
According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), there are currently around 33 people aged 65 or over for every 100 people aged 20 to 64 in the UK. This ratio is similar to the average for the European Union, but higher than some countries.
People in their forties: net fiscal contribution +£20k per year. People in their nineties: net fiscal contribution -£50k per year. This is why we are broke.
Are the Basques fond of virtue signalling, millionaire pensioners cosplaying as refugees? ✊🏻
We’ve been thinking about where to escape to if the nationalist right does take power in the UK. It’s looking like the Basque Country. They will never, ever take fascist shit. Ever. Even if Spain goes PP/Vox, the Basques will not and they will fight against it. Gora Euskadi ✊️
Bluesky is now, almost completely, ludicrous prats like him
A truly fascinating individual. Equal parts Brent, Partridge and James O’Brien.
I just read his last 40 Bluesky posts. My god
So there really is a centrist equivalent of Graham Linehan or Lozza Fox. And it’s happened to him
Musk’s purchase of X may, in retrospect, be one of the most significant political events of the 2020s. Yes we all know it allowed right wing voices new room to speak (for good and bad) but at the same time it forced centre lefties and lefties (like Southam) into a silo - Bluesky - where they’ve gone bonkers. Radicalised by Echoes, rabbitholed in mirrors
Are the Basques fond of virtue signalling, millionaire pensioners cosplaying as refugees? ✊🏻
We’ve been thinking about where to escape to if the nationalist right does take power in the UK. It’s looking like the Basque Country. They will never, ever take fascist shit. Ever. Even if Spain goes PP/Vox, the Basques will not and they will fight against it. Gora Euskadi ✊️
Bluesky is now, almost completely, ludicrous prats like him
Where do you go these days if you want neither prattish centrist dads nor racist shitbags?
Go down the pub. Spend time with friends or family. Avoid social media. Or come to pb.com where the racist shitbags and prattish centrist dads are in perfect balance.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
I went to the Proclamation Ceremony in Bristol, a sound system was linked to The Cathedral, when the organist played The National Anthem, I'm certain that there was a confused crowd trying hard to adjust. Not everyone sang God Save The King.
Are the Basques fond of virtue signalling, millionaire pensioners cosplaying as refugees? ✊🏻
We’ve been thinking about where to escape to if the nationalist right does take power in the UK. It’s looking like the Basque Country. They will never, ever take fascist shit. Ever. Even if Spain goes PP/Vox, the Basques will not and they will fight against it. Gora Euskadi ✊️
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
I'm Freemason and we sing the national anthem at each Lodge meeting. It's also often used to mark the end of events like Carols on the highstreet etc.
There was a facinating article in the Daily Mirror (it came up on my feed) where some poor millennial reporter went to Frinton and was appaled to find the national anthem was played at the end of some event at the local there and there was a picture of the Queen behind the bar. Poor dear couldn't wait till she got back to London to 'breathe ' again
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
An ageing population. A lot of the ambulance delays relate to inadequate social care.
The causes of these increased waits are complex and are a symptom of pressures within the NHS and social care system. Waits for social care mean it is difficult to discharge patients from hospital, which means there is a lack of hospital beds, which means that accident and emergency (A&E) staff can’t get patients out of their department, and, ultimately, paramedics queuing outside hospitals can’t hand their patients over to A&E staff.
I'm sorry. £188bn is more than £500m a day. And they can't even produce an ambulance? Their performance is literally killing people every day. It is time we stopped pretending that that is ok.
I suspect it would be cheaper to pay an adult social care worker to do a home safety assessment and if necessary get some chap with an electric screwdriver to fit a hand rail or ramp to assist mobility issues.
But that would go against the grain of hating on Councils. Pretending that all they do is diversity.
Our press is poison.
Hunt was right to bring social care and health into the same department but the benefits have been less than we might have hoped.
I have mentioned this before but the hospital my daughter works at, Ninewells in Dundee, has a department who start working on the discharge of every patient when they are admitted so by the time they finish their treatment their social care package that allows them to go home is already in place preventing bed blocking. It does involve the NHS taking on responsibilities and costs that are not really theirs but the savings are so obvious that there is a stream of visitors from other Trusts looking to see how they do it.
That is very interesting. Hopefully other trusts will take this up if they don't already.
Sadly, I have far too much experience of the interface between NHS and social care through my own family's experiences.
An issue that is not discussed enough imho is the ridiculous level of box ticking and risk aversion that hospitals display about discharge. I presume it is our litigation culture but it is nuts and government needs to sort it out.
I have found, and it has been confirmed by others I know in similar situations, that getting someone out of hospital when there is some level of care need - EVEN IF THE NEED IS CLEARLY MET - is like getting blood out of the proverbial stone. In one situation I was involved in very directly involving a family member - six different professional disciplines had to all sign off on discharge. The ward doctor was almost a pawn in the game frankly. Everyone of these disciplines seemed to be looking for reasons to delay discharge just in case...
My mother in law has severe dementia but is being cared for at home.
Sometimes it is very hard to work out what might be wrong.
She had a swollen wrist and was grabbing it with her other hand and screeching a lot, so we got her to the hospital for an x-ray (elective, not A&E).
There was nothing much wrong with the wrist but they decided she had a slight infection and needed antibiotics.
It was very late by this time and she was barely awake so was not able to swallow any.
They therefore insisted on admitting her for an IV because they couldn't just send her home without giving her the first dose. Why the first dose mattered so much when the other 27 would have been at home anyway, I have no idea.
It took 11 days to get her out again. 11 days where they didn't really look after her properly but couldn't let her out to a home where she had been safe for the past year. Of course, she deteriorated somewhat through being bed ridden because they couldn't risk getting her out of it.
It is definitely risk aversion, but a perverse kind of risk aversion where the harms of being in hospital are ignored.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
Big sports events usually. So international rugby for me, and cup finals etc.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
We can add More in Common’s Luke Tryl to the list alongside Chris Mason & Matthew Goodwin
Reform voters look like the average Briton. Starmer does not
The appeal of Nigel Farage’s party is broadening rapidly as Labour struggles to show it can make the changes it promised when it was elected
If last summer, in the afterglow of Labour’s general election victory, I had told you that a little over a year later Sir Keir Starmer’s party would slip to be just three or four points ahead of the recently defeated Conservatives, you might have dismissed it as early midterm blues.
Not ideal for the government, but not unprecedented. If then I told you Labour was two or three points ahead of the Tories, not in the battle for first but for second place — with Reform UK more than ten points clear of both — you might have started to question my psephological credentials. Yet that is the world we find ourselves in today.
For all the hullabaloo about the grown ups being back in the room, a majority this big on such a low vote share always meant there was a lot of air in the seat numbers. Could happen again with Reform at this rate
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
There’s always a sense of optimism and euphoria for a party that’s soaring in the polls.
That is, except the Lib Dems. We’ve soared in the polls too many times then fallen back to earth with a thud, so the soaring these days is usually accompanied by a sort of wry fatalism.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
An ageing population. A lot of the ambulance delays relate to inadequate social care.
The causes of these increased waits are complex and are a symptom of pressures within the NHS and social care system. Waits for social care mean it is difficult to discharge patients from hospital, which means there is a lack of hospital beds, which means that accident and emergency (A&E) staff can’t get patients out of their department, and, ultimately, paramedics queuing outside hospitals can’t hand their patients over to A&E staff.
I'm sorry. £188bn is more than £500m a day. And they can't even produce an ambulance? Their performance is literally killing people every day. It is time we stopped pretending that that is ok.
I suspect it would be cheaper to pay an adult social care worker to do a home safety assessment and if necessary get some chap with an electric screwdriver to fit a hand rail or ramp to assist mobility issues.
But that would go against the grain of hating on Councils. Pretending that all they do is diversity.
Our press is poison.
Hunt was right to bring social care and health into the same department but the benefits have been less than we might have hoped.
I have mentioned this before but the hospital my daughter works at, Ninewells in Dundee, has a department who start working on the discharge of every patient when they are admitted so by the time they finish their treatment their social care package that allows them to go home is already in place preventing bed blocking. It does involve the NHS taking on responsibilities and costs that are not really theirs but the savings are so obvious that there is a stream of visitors from other Trusts looking to see how they do it.
That is very interesting. Hopefully other trusts will take this up if they don't already.
Sadly, I have far too much experience of the interface between NHS and social care through my own family's experiences.
An issue that is not discussed enough imho is the ridiculous level of box ticking and risk aversion that hospitals display about discharge. I presume it is our litigation culture but it is nuts and government needs to sort it out.
I have found, and it has been confirmed by others I know in similar situations, that getting someone out of hospital when there is some level of care need - EVEN IF THE NEED IS CLEARLY MET - is like getting blood out of the proverbial stone. In one situation I was involved in very directly involving a family member - six different professional disciplines had to all sign off on discharge. The ward doctor was almost a pawn in the game frankly. Everyone of these disciplines seemed to be looking for reasons to delay discharge just in case...
My mother in law has severe dementia but is being cared for at home.
Sometimes it is very hard to work out what might be wrong.
She had a swollen wrist and was grabbing it with her other hand and screeching a lot, so we got her to the hospital for an x-ray (elective, not A&E).
There was nothing much wrong with the wrist but they decided she had a slight infection and needed antibiotics.
It was very late by this time and she was barely awake so was not able to swallow any.
They therefore insisted on admitting her for an IV because they couldn't just send her home without giving her the first dose. Why the first dose mattered so much when the other 27 would have been at home anyway, I have no idea.
It took 11 days to get her out again. 11 days where they didn't really look after her properly but couldn't let her out to a home where she had been safe for the past year. Of course, she deteriorated somewhat through being bed ridden because they couldn't risk getting her out of it.
It is definitely risk aversion, but a perverse kind of risk aversion where the harms of being in hospital are ignored.
This. 100x this.
I have similar experience.
My experience is hospital is a bloody disaster for a lot of these types of elderly patiences. They go downhill. They become more frail. they lose mobility. they get more confused. They become or get worse with incontinence. They are not looked after as well as at home with care agency staff coming in.
It gives me absolutely no, sorry I mean immense pleasure to see a graph like this. Sir Keir was always a sham. How did I manage to lose money opposing him?
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
There’s always a sense of optimism and euphoria for a party that’s soaring in the polls.
That is, except the Lib Dems. We’ve soared in the polls too many times then fallen back to earth with a thud, so the soaring these days is usually accompanied by a sort of wry fatalism.
Several key differences tho
Reform are entirely new. They have a charismatic leader. Their policies are untested - or unknown. They look like they might actually win
So the analogy does not hold, at all. Reform are sui generis in British politics
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
There’s always a sense of optimism and euphoria for a party that’s soaring in the polls.
That is, except the Lib Dems. We’ve soared in the polls too many times then fallen back to earth with a thud, so the soaring these days is usually accompanied by a sort of wry fatalism.
Several key differences tho
Reform are entirely new. They have a charismatic leader. Their policies are untested - or unknown. They look like they might actually win
So the analogy does not hold, at all. Reform are sui generis in British politics
They’re not really new though. They’re the Farage party, which has been doing and saying the same things for 2 decades.
Their time in the spotlight has come because the centre-left government is deeply unpopular but the centre-right opposition is even more unpopular.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
Yes. I read it. He discovered exactly what the Guardian reporter discovered - a genuine sense of optimism allied with serious money, scale and intent. Yet also a sense it could go wrong
For that he is labelled a “Nazi journalist”??
There are many reasons to despise the PB centrist dad. But perhaps the most salient is their lame, feeble, cringeworthy stupidity
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
I'm Freemason and we sing the national anthem at each Lodge meeting. It's also often used to mark the end of events like Carols on the highstreet etc.
There was a facinating article in the Daily Mirror (it came up on my feed) where some poor millennial reporter went to Frinton and was appaled to find the national anthem was played at the end of some event at the local there and there was a picture of the Queen behind the bar. Poor dear couldn't wait till she got back to London to 'breathe ' again
I wonder what the event was. Hopefully not just the bingo.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.
We can add More in Common’s Luke Tryl to the list alongside Chris Mason & Matthew Goodwin
Reform voters look like the average Briton. Starmer does not
The appeal of Nigel Farage’s party is broadening rapidly as Labour struggles to show it can make the changes it promised when it was elected
If last summer, in the afterglow of Labour’s general election victory, I had told you that a little over a year later Sir Keir Starmer’s party would slip to be just three or four points ahead of the recently defeated Conservatives, you might have dismissed it as early midterm blues.
Not ideal for the government, but not unprecedented. If then I told you Labour was two or three points ahead of the Tories, not in the battle for first but for second place — with Reform UK more than ten points clear of both — you might have started to question my psephological credentials. Yet that is the world we find ourselves in today.
Although as John Curtice states on a range of issues from immigration, equal opportunities policies, and climate change measures and government spending Reform voters are some difference from the average voter. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy853rj2kzo
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
Big sports events usually. So international rugby for me, and cup finals etc.
Yes that's what springs to mind. I was at the England Scotland Euro96, the Gazza goal etc, so perhaps I mumbled it then. Probably did.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.
It’s no more a term of abuse than ‘leftie’ or ‘rightie’, and many people apply the label to themselves.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
There’s always a sense of optimism and euphoria for a party that’s soaring in the polls.
That is, except the Lib Dems. We’ve soared in the polls too many times then fallen back to earth with a thud, so the soaring these days is usually accompanied by a sort of wry fatalism.
Several key differences tho
Reform are entirely new. They have a charismatic leader. Their policies are untested - or unknown. They look like they might actually win
So the analogy does not hold, at all. Reform are sui generis in British politics
They’re not really new though. They’re the Farage party, which has been doing and saying the same things for 2 decades.
Their time in the spotlight has come because the centre-left government is deeply unpopular but the centre-right opposition is even more unpopular.
This is a dumb take. And you’re not dumb. Do better
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
An ageing population. A lot of the ambulance delays relate to inadequate social care.
The causes of these increased waits are complex and are a symptom of pressures within the NHS and social care system. Waits for social care mean it is difficult to discharge patients from hospital, which means there is a lack of hospital beds, which means that accident and emergency (A&E) staff can’t get patients out of their department, and, ultimately, paramedics queuing outside hospitals can’t hand their patients over to A&E staff.
I'm sorry. £188bn is more than £500m a day. And they can't even produce an ambulance? Their performance is literally killing people every day. It is time we stopped pretending that that is ok.
I suspect it would be cheaper to pay an adult social care worker to do a home safety assessment and if necessary get some chap with an electric screwdriver to fit a hand rail or ramp to assist mobility issues.
But that would go against the grain of hating on Councils. Pretending that all they do is diversity.
Our press is poison.
Hunt was right to bring social care and health into the same department but the benefits have been less than we might have hoped.
I have mentioned this before but the hospital my daughter works at, Ninewells in Dundee, has a department who start working on the discharge of every patient when they are admitted so by the time they finish their treatment their social care package that allows them to go home is already in place preventing bed blocking. It does involve the NHS taking on responsibilities and costs that are not really theirs but the savings are so obvious that there is a stream of visitors from other Trusts looking to see how they do it.
That is very interesting. Hopefully other trusts will take this up if they don't already.
Sadly, I have far too much experience of the interface between NHS and social care through my own family's experiences.
An issue that is not discussed enough imho is the ridiculous level of box ticking and risk aversion that hospitals display about discharge. I presume it is our litigation culture but it is nuts and government needs to sort it out.
I have found, and it has been confirmed by others I know in similar situations, that getting someone out of hospital when there is some level of care need - EVEN IF THE NEED IS CLEARLY MET - is like getting blood out of the proverbial stone. In one situation I was involved in very directly involving a family member - six different professional disciplines had to all sign off on discharge. The ward doctor was almost a pawn in the game frankly. Everyone of these disciplines seemed to be looking for reasons to delay discharge just in case...
My mother in law has severe dementia but is being cared for at home.
Sometimes it is very hard to work out what might be wrong.
She had a swollen wrist and was grabbing it with her other hand and screeching a lot, so we got her to the hospital for an x-ray (elective, not A&E).
There was nothing much wrong with the wrist but they decided she had a slight infection and needed antibiotics.
It was very late by this time and she was barely awake so was not able to swallow any.
They therefore insisted on admitting her for an IV because they couldn't just send her home without giving her the first dose. Why the first dose mattered so much when the other 27 would have been at home anyway, I have no idea.
It took 11 days to get her out again. 11 days where they didn't really look after her properly but couldn't let her out to a home where she had been safe for the past year. Of course, she deteriorated somewhat through being bed ridden because they couldn't risk getting her out of it.
It is definitely risk aversion, but a perverse kind of risk aversion where the harms of being in hospital are ignored.
This. 100x this.
I have similar experience.
My experience is hospital is a bloody disaster for a lot of these types of elderly patiences. They go downhill. They become more frail. they lose mobility. they get more confused. They become or get worse with incontinence. They are not looked after as well as at home with care agency staff coming in.
The most basic care - adequate fluids and nutrition - is, in my (completely anecdotal) experience, the worst.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
“Centrist” has had quite the journey. From term of abuse by very online lefties at people they consider worse than Tories, to term of abuse by very online righties at people they consider worse than communists.
It’s no more a term of abuse than ‘leftie’ or ‘rightie’, and many people apply the label to themselves.
It seems to be applied on PB to everyone from socialist Labour supporters to one nation Tories. It’s become the go-to insult for anyone not fully on the Reform bandwagon.
We can add More in Common’s Luke Tryl to the list alongside Chris Mason & Matthew Goodwin
Reform voters look like the average Briton. Starmer does not
The appeal of Nigel Farage’s party is broadening rapidly as Labour struggles to show it can make the changes it promised when it was elected
If last summer, in the afterglow of Labour’s general election victory, I had told you that a little over a year later Sir Keir Starmer’s party would slip to be just three or four points ahead of the recently defeated Conservatives, you might have dismissed it as early midterm blues.
Not ideal for the government, but not unprecedented. If then I told you Labour was two or three points ahead of the Tories, not in the battle for first but for second place — with Reform UK more than ten points clear of both — you might have started to question my psephological credentials. Yet that is the world we find ourselves in today.
Luke Tryl (although I don't see it myself) and Goodwin are perfectly entitled to promote Farage and Reform. Mason (and Kuennsberg before him) as BBC Political Editor is supposed to be scrupulously impartial.
Balance is important, like Newsnight equalising Andrea Leadsom's expertise with that of Pascal Lamy of the WTO. Where is the balance here?
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
There’s always a sense of optimism and euphoria for a party that’s soaring in the polls.
That is, except the Lib Dems. We’ve soared in the polls too many times then fallen back to earth with a thud, so the soaring these days is usually accompanied by a sort of wry fatalism.
Several key differences tho
Reform are entirely new. They have a charismatic leader. Their policies are untested - or unknown. They look like they might actually win
So the analogy does not hold, at all. Reform are sui generis in British politics
They’re not really new though. They’re the Farage party, which has been doing and saying the same things for 2 decades.
Their time in the spotlight has come because the centre-left government is deeply unpopular but the centre-right opposition is even more unpopular.
This is a dumb take. And you’re not dumb. Do better
I struggle to see any meaningful difference between their current policy platform and that of UKIP circa 2005, save that Brexit has already happened.
Anti immigration, anti woke (back then it was called PC), anti environmentalist, fiscally a bit confused, somewhat sympathetic towards some foreign autocrats.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
According to the BBC charter he is supposed to be scrupulously impartial (see Lineker, see Vorderman). He is there to report not to opine and eulogise. If he wants to do that he can join LBC, Talk TV or even GBNews.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
There’s always a sense of optimism and euphoria for a party that’s soaring in the polls.
That is, except the Lib Dems. We’ve soared in the polls too many times then fallen back to earth with a thud, so the soaring these days is usually accompanied by a sort of wry fatalism.
Several key differences tho
Reform are entirely new. They have a charismatic leader. Their policies are untested - or unknown. They look like they might actually win
So the analogy does not hold, at all. Reform are sui generis in British politics
Evening, PB.
They look a lot to me like a cross between Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia financial vehicle, and Maga.
I suppose the UK’s not the worst when it comes to rightwing populists. Otoh this semi-literate twat is never going to be elected a political leader of Ireland.
Llandudno RNLI inshore lifeboat was called to an injury to a lady in her 70s have fallen in a local speedboat on a trip and, whilst the speedboat came alongside the jetty, she couldn't move and the 4 person crew administered Entonox [ they are trained to do this] and with the help of the coastguards carried her to a local hotel to await ambulance
It arrived 9 [Nine] hours later to take her to hospital !!!!!!
That is shocking. I, and I suspect most, have already concluded that if I or my wife ever need a hip or knee replacement or rapid attention to a variety of ailments then there is little option other than to go private with the NHS being a literal and unacceptable pain. But A&E is one of the things they are supposed to be good at. £188bn in a year. WTF are they spending it on other than themselves?
An ageing population. A lot of the ambulance delays relate to inadequate social care.
The causes of these increased waits are complex and are a symptom of pressures within the NHS and social care system. Waits for social care mean it is difficult to discharge patients from hospital, which means there is a lack of hospital beds, which means that accident and emergency (A&E) staff can’t get patients out of their department, and, ultimately, paramedics queuing outside hospitals can’t hand their patients over to A&E staff.
I'm sorry. £188bn is more than £500m a day. And they can't even produce an ambulance? Their performance is literally killing people every day. It is time we stopped pretending that that is ok.
I suspect it would be cheaper to pay an adult social care worker to do a home safety assessment and if necessary get some chap with an electric screwdriver to fit a hand rail or ramp to assist mobility issues.
But that would go against the grain of hating on Councils. Pretending that all they do is diversity.
Our press is poison.
Hunt was right to bring social care and health into the same department but the benefits have been less than we might have hoped.
I have mentioned this before but the hospital my daughter works at, Ninewells in Dundee, has a department who start working on the discharge of every patient when they are admitted so by the time they finish their treatment their social care package that allows them to go home is already in place preventing bed blocking. It does involve the NHS taking on responsibilities and costs that are not really theirs but the savings are so obvious that there is a stream of visitors from other Trusts looking to see how they do it.
That is very interesting. Hopefully other trusts will take this up if they don't already.
Sadly, I have far too much experience of the interface between NHS and social care through my own family's experiences.
An issue that is not discussed enough imho is the ridiculous level of box ticking and risk aversion that hospitals display about discharge. I presume it is our litigation culture but it is nuts and government needs to sort it out.
I have found, and it has been confirmed by others I know in similar situations, that getting someone out of hospital when there is some level of care need - EVEN IF THE NEED IS CLEARLY MET - is like getting blood out of the proverbial stone. In one situation I was involved in very directly involving a family member - six different professional disciplines had to all sign off on discharge. The ward doctor was almost a pawn in the game frankly. Everyone of these disciplines seemed to be looking for reasons to delay discharge just in case...
My mother in law has severe dementia but is being cared for at home.
Sometimes it is very hard to work out what might be wrong.
She had a swollen wrist and was grabbing it with her other hand and screeching a lot, so we got her to the hospital for an x-ray (elective, not A&E).
There was nothing much wrong with the wrist but they decided she had a slight infection and needed antibiotics.
It was very late by this time and she was barely awake so was not able to swallow any.
They therefore insisted on admitting her for an IV because they couldn't just send her home without giving her the first dose. Why the first dose mattered so much when the other 27 would have been at home anyway, I have no idea.
It took 11 days to get her out again. 11 days where they didn't really look after her properly but couldn't let her out to a home where she had been safe for the past year. Of course, she deteriorated somewhat through being bed ridden because they couldn't risk getting her out of it.
It is definitely risk aversion, but a perverse kind of risk aversion where the harms of being in hospital are ignored.
This. 100x this.
I have similar experience.
My experience is hospital is a bloody disaster for a lot of these types of elderly patiences. They go downhill. They become more frail. they lose mobility. they get more confused. They become or get worse with incontinence. They are not looked after as well as at home with care agency staff coming in.
The most basic care - adequate fluids and nutrition - is, in my (completely anecdotal) experience, the worst.
I remember a friend of mine going into hospital after a heart attack. By the time I found him he was in the hospital corridor, under a blanket, on the floor, with some sort of centipede crawling over him.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
Daley Thompson just whistled
Apparently England fans tonight were singing - Starmer is a w....r !!!!!
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
Luckily we are allowed different political beliefs, they aren’t for me but they still aren’t remotely as horrific as many of their peers in other European countries are.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
Big sports events usually. So international rugby for me, and cup finals etc.
Yes that's what springs to mind. I was at the England Scotland Euro96, the Gazza goal etc, so perhaps I mumbled it then. Probably did.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
They're not racist and not weird.
What, none of them? Fair play for not attempting to claim they’re not grifters though.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I was kicked out of the Scouts for refusing to sing the national anthem.
I was kicked out of the Beavers for sharing my keyring-bottle of whisky round the group.
I also have no idea why I had - at age about six - a whisky keyring.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
According to the BBC charter he is supposed to be scrupulously impartial (see Lineker, see Vorderman). He is there to report not to opine and eulogise. If he wants to do that he can join LBC, Talk TV or even GBNews.
If Mason had written that article about Labour after one anti-vaxxer and a convicted criminal who wanted people burnt to death had appeared at their conference he would have been accused of bias .
The right are now coming to his aid because he wrote effectively a press release for Reform . I think we all get it , yes the people there were enthusiastic and it was a much bigger event than their previous ones .
But to ignore what else happened today can’t be justified under any sense of impartiality.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
Yes. I read it. He discovered exactly what the Guardian reporter discovered - a genuine sense of optimism allied with serious money, scale and intent. Yet also a sense it could go wrong
For that he is labelled a “Nazi journalist”??
There are many reasons to despise the PB centrist dad. But perhaps the most salient is their lame, feeble, cringeworthy stupidity
All that report on Reform is fine in itself line by line, but we've seen bits of the deeply MAGA stuff today, anti vaxx, Connolly, so to say that Farage called for "discipline" without even mentioning all that is, in itself, an act of sane washing.
I think tomorrow is National Test the National Emergency Alert day on the phones.
Should trigger a dozen or more conspiracy theories.
Like something out of a dystopian novel.
If the dystopian novels people have read centre on 'somewhat annoying beeps from a phone', I have a whole big list to give that are much, much worse. Which reminds me - this is premiering soon :
"Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck takes a deep dive into the writing of George Orwell (1984) to explore its potent relevancy to our current times."
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
They're not racist and not weird.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest one or two are both.
Cool Hand Luke forgive me doing a Leon but perhaps the most significant commercial of my career. I'd been asked by the agency to shoot a poster for Greenhall using the commercials location and actor. We shot in Almeria and Shepperton.The producer was Tony Scott's wife Glynnis and the first assistant was Roger Lyons.
Two Rogers we became friends. He wanted to direct and the agency creative asked me if I'd like to give it a try. I was a fashion photographer at the time . We both went on to direct. Roger L became the hottest director in town and did Levi's Laundrette among other stuff.
He later had a shoot in Italy and fell over a cliff and died. Tony left Glynnis and later took his own life....Back at Shepperton Ridley shot 1984 Apple with Roger L as his first assistant Reckoned to be the best commercial ever made......
So that's how you got started, 🫡
Number 2 son has gone into your line of work, at a small agency down in the Smoke. Mostly he is editing and fettling the videos, as befits a junior, but he is very creative and ambitious, and beginning to catch the eye of the bosses.
That's great news. There are many ways in and editing is one of the most popular. When he gets to know a few people and gets liked then relied on its possible to move up quite fast.There's some luck but if he's good and hard working it's possible to get anywhere. It's a very honest and straight profession and as everyon'e freelance you just have to do your job well and wait your chance. I was a stills photographer which at the time was a way in. It was a time when a lot of commercials were very styalised so well suited to stills photographers.
Roger Lyons came from assistant directing which was rare. A few worked their way up through being crew but as many through editing. It depends where he's up to and if he's a runner who he's running for but a lot try their hand at shorts for competions. Brian Percival a friend did a short which won him a Bafta. He then got picked up by the BBC which gave him Shakespeare retold then Fellows gave him Downton . It is a great profession and if he's good enough with a bit of luck he'll work his way up. Much more concentrated than stills.In all the time I shot commercials no member of the crew was ever late wherever you had to be they'd find a way. Where's he doing his editing?
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
Luckily we are allowed different political beliefs, they aren’t for me but they still aren’t remotely as horrific as many of their peers in other European countries are.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
Yes. I read it. He discovered exactly what the Guardian reporter discovered - a genuine sense of optimism allied with serious money, scale and intent. Yet also a sense it could go wrong
For that he is labelled a “Nazi journalist”??
There are many reasons to despise the PB centrist dad. But perhaps the most salient is their lame, feeble, cringeworthy stupidity
All that report on Reform is fine in itself line by line, but we've seen bits of the deeply MAGA stuff today, anti vaxx, Connolly, so to say that Farage called for "discipline" without even mentioning all that is, in itself, an act of sane washing.
The Connolly stuff is the aspect of Reform that could turn to the far-right, or the more extreme end of Maga. They are currently poised between this and Farage's personal business vanity project, with the Telegraph and GB News helpfully and partly even playing the role that Berlusconi's own TV channels used to in his popular boosterism.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
Yes. I read it. He discovered exactly what the Guardian reporter discovered - a genuine sense of optimism allied with serious money, scale and intent. Yet also a sense it could go wrong
For that he is labelled a “Nazi journalist”??
There are many reasons to despise the PB centrist dad. But perhaps the most salient is their lame, feeble, cringeworthy stupidity
All that report on Reform is fine in itself line by line, but we've seen bits of the deeply MAGA stuff today, anti vaxx, Connolly, so to say that Farage called for "discipline" without even mentioning all that is, in itself, an act of sane washing.
The content of Lucy Connolly's interview was I thought quite interesting for the PB lefty brigade, given that she has seemingly emerged from prison thinking that half the women in the prison estate should be let out and need rehabilitation instead. She has also repeatedly refused to condemn Ricky Jones and is glad that he has avoided gaol time.
The first opinion I think puts her somewhat at odds with Reform, given their 'Nightingale prisons' policy. It's at odds with me too - though I am interested in what Connolly has to say.
All of which is rather discomfiting for Reform, and something our Starmer rescue squad might have enjoyed chewing over if they'd actually troubled themselves to watch the interview rather than just have fits of the vapours about it.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
Yes. I read it. He discovered exactly what the Guardian reporter discovered - a genuine sense of optimism allied with serious money, scale and intent. Yet also a sense it could go wrong
For that he is labelled a “Nazi journalist”??
There are many reasons to despise the PB centrist dad. But perhaps the most salient is their lame, feeble, cringeworthy stupidity
All that report on Reform is fine in itself line by line, but we've seen bits of the deeply MAGA stuff today, anti vaxx, Connolly, so to say that Farage called for "discipline" without even mentioning all that is, in itself, an act of sane washing.
The Connolly stuff is the aspect of Reform that could turn to the far-right, or the more extreme end of Maga. They are currently poised between this and Farage's personal business vanity project, with the Telegraph and GB News helpfully and partly playing the role that Berluscomi's own TV channels used to in this.
I find it all quite vexing. I'm the sort of voter who on the face of it ought to be Reform-curious. I'm the sort of culturally-right voter who never felt fully at home with the Conservatives. I'm exasperated with the way we are governed. Hurray that this voice is being heard, for what feels like the first time in my lifetime. But I don't want Putinism with that. I think the closure of tge North Sea oilfield is madness, but that doesn't mean I hate renewables and love fossil fuels. I definitely don't want antivaxery. I'd like to stand firm against the culture warriors who've dragged us into madness in the last fifteen years, but that doesn't mean I want to be opening new fronts like abortion. I hate compulsory enthusiasm for Pride, but that doesn't mean I want to put the gays back in the closet. Reform appear to have taken a promising niche and extrapolated it far far too far. I don't want to be contrarian on everything.
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
It seems the BBC’s Chris Mason is copping a load of flak for honestly reporting what he saw rather than what centrists want to read
Yes. I read it. He discovered exactly what the Guardian reporter discovered - a genuine sense of optimism allied with serious money, scale and intent. Yet also a sense it could go wrong
For that he is labelled a “Nazi journalist”??
There are many reasons to despise the PB centrist dad. But perhaps the most salient is their lame, feeble, cringeworthy stupidity
All that report on Reform is fine in itself line by line, but we've seen bits of the deeply MAGA stuff today, anti vaxx, Connolly, so to say that Farage called for "discipline" without even mentioning all that is, in itself, an act of sane washing.
The content of Lucy Connolly's interview was I thought quite interesting for the PB lefty brigade, given that she has seemingly emerged from prison thinking that half the women in the prison estate should be let out and need rehabilitation instead. She has also repeatedly refused to condemn Ricky Jones and is glad that he has avoided gaol time.
The first opinion I think puts her somewhat at odds with Reform, given their 'Nightingale prisons' policy. It's at odds with me too - though I am interested in what Connolly has to say.
All of which is rather discomfiting for Reform, and something our Starmer rescue squad might have enjoyed chewing over if they'd actually troubled themselves to watch the interview rather than just have fits of the vapours about it.
Yes, I think she may well be right (and at considerable odds with both Reform and Tory Parties) that we lock up far too many people that would be better dealt with via mental health and addiction programmes than prison. I think that probably true of male convicts too.
On the other hand as she seems to think that calling for arson and murder in the middle of nationwide riots is just free speech then she may not be a very good judge of what is right or wrong conduct.
At least she looked embarrassed at singing “God save the Queen”. We’ve all been there…
This reads as if people often sing the national anthem. I'm not sure I ever have. Not that I've avoided it or anything, the scenario just hasn't arisen. Is this unusual? Do PBers have a lot of singing the national anthem in their lives?
You have lived a largely “safe” life. You have had a good career and lived in a country which, bar the odd uncomfortable time has not realistically been under threat in your lifetime.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
I thought this terrific privileged country which we all should be proud of was becoming such a hellhole it's understandable that a new party of racists, grifters and weirdos is 10 pts clear in polls?
Luckily we are allowed different political beliefs, they aren’t for me but they still aren’t remotely as horrific as many of their peers in other European countries are.
But the signs are there. It's very concerning and not one iota understandable let alone justified. I'm astonished that so many feel it is. Keep saying airy stuff like "well if mainstream politicians don't deliver, what do you expect?" I mean, c'mon.
Comments
Pride of the world, rNHS.
The UK’s population is also ageing. In 2022, there were around 12.7 million people aged 65 or over in the UK, making up 19% of the population. [...] 50 years ago in 1972 there were around 7.5 million people aged 65 or over, or 13% of the population. [...]
According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), there are currently around 33 people aged 65 or over for every 100 people aged 20 to 64 in the UK. This ratio is similar to the average for the European Union, but higher than some countries.
My Trust put up a marquee in the carpark outside the Emergency Dept so that Ambulance waits could be eliminated, and the paramedics get to their next job. Far from perfect, but it worked.
But we all know that the problem with ED is the back door, not the front door. We do get the odd attendance for trivial things, but they just have to wait while the serious stuff gets priority. The problem is the back door because we cannot admit to a full hospital, and the hospital is full because Social Care and Primary Care do not work as they should.
Perhaps there comes a time when throwing money at a problem isn’t the answer and looking at what works elsewhere and learning from it is.
Free hit for the Tories. Expect them to announce theyve disowned the policy now
I have seen a fair number of homeless ex-soldiers get into trouble in a very similar way.
I don't support the poppy appeal any more, but one of my favourite charities is "Combat Stress" for their workers on soldiers with PTSD. Civilian health care systems don't understand it and the military ones don't care after discharge.
https://combatstress.org.uk/about-us
But that would go against the grain of hating on Councils. Pretending that all they do is diversity.
Our press is poison.
a) It's not just about money. A key problem here is social care. Problems in social care stop people being discharged from hospital. Hospitals fill up, and that stops people being admitted to hospitals, leading to ambulances sitting waiting outside A&E. Unfortunately, Labour has delayed its review into social care. We could also spend other healthcare money better, with more on public health (hit by cuts to local council funding) and primary care.
b) The population is ageing. Most healthcare costs are associated with old age. So, yes, more money is needed. There's no fancy way around that. What works elsehwere? What works in France, Germany, Sweden etc. is spending more money on health. We haven't been throwing money at the problem for years. We've been skimping for years.
I think it has degenerated into mawkish sentimentality tinged with jingoism. I do care about ex soldiers, so I support a number of disability charities aimed at them, particularly Combat Stress. I just can't stand Poppymas and it's absurdities.
I have mentioned this before but the hospital my daughter works at, Ninewells in Dundee, has a department who start working on the discharge of every patient when they are admitted so by the time they finish their treatment their social care package that allows them to go home is already in place preventing bed blocking. It does involve the NHS taking on responsibilities and costs that are not really theirs but the savings are so obvious that there is a stream of visitors from other Trusts looking to see how they do it.
I'm just being silly.
We’ve been thinking about where to escape to if the nationalist right does take power in the UK. It’s looking like the Basque Country. They will never, ever take fascist shit. Ever. Even if Spain goes PP/Vox, the Basques will not and they will fight against it. Gora Euskadi ✊️
https://bsky.app/profile/jwsidders.bsky.social/post/3ly6w3omuzk2h
Ill be interested in the Norfolk council elections next year, and the mayoral which might shed a bit more light.
Im leaning Ref gain at the moment but if, for example, the Tories hold Mid Norfolk they will probably regain SW Norfolk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#2025
Sadly, I have far too much experience of the interface between NHS and social care through my own family's experiences.
An issue that is not discussed enough imho is the ridiculous level of box ticking and risk aversion that hospitals display about discharge. I presume it is our litigation culture but it is nuts and government needs to sort it out.
I have found, and it has been confirmed by others I know in similar situations, that getting someone out of hospital when there is some level of care need - EVEN IF THE NEED IS CLEARLY MET - is like getting blood out of the proverbial stone. In one situation I was involved in very directly involving a family member - six different professional disciplines had to all sign off on discharge. The ward doctor was almost a pawn in the game frankly. Everyone of these disciplines seemed to be looking for reasons to delay discharge just in case...
Your choice.
Combat Stress is an excellent charity but so is the RBL imo and Remembrance Sunday always strikes me as an increasingly rare opportunity for a truly collective national occasion and coming together.
People in their nineties: net fiscal contribution -£50k per year.
This is why we are broke.
So there really is a centrist equivalent of Graham Linehan or Lozza Fox. And it’s happened to him
Musk’s purchase of X may, in retrospect, be one of the most significant political events of the 2020s. Yes we all
know it allowed right wing voices new room to speak (for good and bad) but at the same time it forced centre lefties and lefties (like Southam) into a silo - Bluesky - where they’ve gone bonkers. Radicalised by Echoes, rabbitholed in mirrors
Or come to pb.com where the racist shitbags and prattish centrist dads are in perfect balance.
All the tories defecting to Reform are happy with this?
There was a facinating article in the Daily Mirror (it came up on my feed) where some poor millennial reporter went to Frinton and was appaled to find the national anthem was played at the end of some event at the local there and there was a picture of the Queen behind the bar. Poor dear couldn't wait till she got back to London to 'breathe ' again
Sometimes it is very hard to work out what might be wrong.
She had a swollen wrist and was grabbing it with her other hand and screeching a lot, so we got her to the hospital for an x-ray (elective, not A&E).
There was nothing much wrong with the wrist but they decided she had a slight infection and needed antibiotics.
It was very late by this time and she was barely awake so was not able to swallow any.
They therefore insisted on admitting her for an IV because they couldn't just send her home without giving her the first dose. Why the first dose mattered so much when the other 27 would have been at home anyway, I have no idea.
It took 11 days to get her out again. 11 days where they didn't really look after her properly but couldn't let her out to a home where she had been safe for the past year. Of course, she deteriorated somewhat through being bed ridden because they couldn't risk getting her out of it.
It is definitely risk aversion, but a perverse kind of risk aversion where the harms of being in hospital are ignored.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/05/such-a-vibrant-feeling-reform-uk-devotees-gather-party-conference
It seems to be the one political place you go if you want to be optimistic and positive about Britain - and your own political future
That’s an incredible asset and Reform own it. All the other parties are a downbeat melange of apology, protest, whining or guilt. Reform remind me of the SNP in the noughties, but in a much wider British context
It may be the wave they surf into government. Or it may overturn them, surfboard flipping
Reform voters look like the average Briton. Starmer does not
The appeal of Nigel Farage’s party is broadening rapidly as Labour struggles to show it can make the changes it promised when it was elected
If last summer, in the afterglow of Labour’s general election victory, I had told you that a little over a year later Sir Keir Starmer’s party would slip to be just three or four points ahead of the recently defeated Conservatives, you might have dismissed it as early midterm blues.
Not ideal for the government, but not unprecedented. If then I told you Labour was two or three points ahead of the Tories, not in the battle for first but for second place — with Reform UK more than ten points clear of both — you might have started to question my psephological credentials. Yet that is the world we find ourselves in today.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/b6378957-1068-48fd-b60d-9e71e949c813?shareToken=32bed686f66734caffcdd0106e6ba026
That is, except the Lib Dems. We’ve soared in the polls too many times then fallen back to earth with a thud, so the soaring these days is usually accompanied by a sort of wry fatalism.
I have similar experience.
My experience is hospital is a bloody disaster for a lot of these types of elderly patiences. They go downhill. They become more frail. they lose mobility. they get more confused. They become or get worse with incontinence. They are not looked after as well as at home with care agency staff coming in.
Reform are entirely new. They have a charismatic leader. Their policies are untested - or unknown. They look like they might actually win
So the analogy does not hold, at all. Reform are sui generis in British politics
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/06/doctor-aseem-malhotra-reform-conference-speech-royal-family-cancer-covid-vaccine
Just what is he playing at?
Their time in the spotlight has come because the centre-left government is deeply unpopular but the centre-right opposition is even more unpopular.
You take for granted a factor of soft nationalism that many people in most countries don’t take for granted. To a huge amount of people on the planet, whether they live in democracies or dictatorships, the state protects them. There will always be minorities who the state oppresses but your average man on the street believes that the state, their state is protecting them.
Back to the whole lack of understanding because of the privilege of living in a very free and tolerant country. You have no cultural or direct knowledge of what it’s like to lose it so the things that attach you to that state, the UK, it’s flag and anthem are disposable.
I live in a place that has largely the same protections but it also has people alive who lived under the Nazis, they lived in fear and it was physically and mentally awful. The national anthem and display of flags is very important culturally because there is a cultural memory of losing that.
So you can cock a snook at it but maybe think about the fact that seemingly minor trivial and silly things like “a song” or a “bit of cloth” represent something more - they represent a country where someone from the arse end of nowhere can move through the system and get a well paid city career that allows them a comfortable late age existence where they can freely criticise the govern,ent or future government without fear of someone knocking on the door one night.
It’s not a bad thing to have love for your country and often that’s as simple as singing a patriotic song, like pretty much every nation in the world does, often very happily. Don’t mock, it’s allowed you to exist the way you do.
For that he is labelled a “Nazi journalist”??
There are many reasons to despise the PB centrist dad. But perhaps the most salient is their lame, feeble, cringeworthy stupidity
See 6mins in....100s of people for a 30s shot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XXwZROjckI
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy853rj2kzo
Meanwhile one of the high profile ex Reform supporters at their party conference, Joseph Afrane, is revealed as an ex Corbyn supporter
https://x.com/The_NewReformer/status/1837885571819073875
Balance is important, like Newsnight equalising Andrea Leadsom's expertise with that of Pascal Lamy of the WTO. Where is the balance here?
Should trigger a dozen or more conspiracy theories.
Anti immigration, anti woke (back then it was called PC), anti environmentalist, fiscally a bit confused, somewhat sympathetic towards some foreign autocrats.
They look a lot to me like a cross between Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia financial vehicle, and Maga.
https://x.com/mcgregormma11/status/1964264017783836969?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Would not recommend. A-- provider.
Fair play for not attempting to claim they’re not grifters though.
I was kicked out of the Beavers for sharing my keyring-bottle of whisky round the group.
I also have no idea why I had - at age about six - a whisky keyring.
The right are now coming to his aid because he wrote effectively a press release for Reform . I think we all get it , yes the people there were enthusiastic and it was a much bigger event than their previous ones .
But to ignore what else happened today can’t be justified under any sense of impartiality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGMEOdPxpWs
ORWELL: 2+2=5 Trailer
"Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck takes a deep dive into the writing of George Orwell (1984) to explore its potent relevancy to our current times."
Did I say one or two? I meant loads of them.
Roger Lyons came from assistant directing which was rare. A few worked their way up through being crew but as many through editing. It depends where he's up to and if he's a runner who he's running for but a lot try their hand at shorts for competions. Brian Percival a friend did a short which won him a Bafta. He then got picked up by the BBC which gave him Shakespeare retold then Fellows gave him Downton . It is a great profession and if he's good enough with a bit of luck he'll work his way up. Much more concentrated than stills.In all the time I shot commercials no member of the crew was ever late wherever you had to be they'd find a way. Where's he doing his editing?
The first opinion I think puts her somewhat at odds with Reform, given their 'Nightingale prisons' policy. It's at odds with me too - though I am interested in what Connolly has to say.
All of which is rather discomfiting for Reform, and something our Starmer rescue squad might have enjoyed chewing over if they'd actually troubled themselves to watch the interview rather than just have fits of the vapours about it.
I'm the sort of voter who on the face of it ought to be Reform-curious. I'm the sort of culturally-right voter who never felt fully at home with the Conservatives. I'm exasperated with the way we are governed. Hurray that this voice is being heard, for what feels like the first time in my lifetime.
But I don't want Putinism with that. I think the closure of tge North Sea oilfield is madness, but that doesn't mean I hate renewables and love fossil fuels. I definitely don't want antivaxery. I'd like to stand firm against the culture warriors who've dragged us into madness in the last fifteen years, but that doesn't mean I want to be opening new fronts like abortion. I hate compulsory enthusiasm for Pride, but that doesn't mean I want to put the gays back in the closet. Reform appear to have taken a promising niche and extrapolated it far far too far. I don't want to be contrarian on everything.
On the other hand as she seems to think that calling for arson and murder in the middle of nationwide riots is just free speech then she may not be a very good judge of what is right or wrong conduct.