UK - December 2019 General Election

[Vixen]

Yeah..... no.

You wrote:

"When I worked for a leading heart and lung hospital (finance) in Chelsea I was struck by just how many of the nurses were dependent on means-tested benefits to top up their pitiable salaries. Their living quarters were like cells. Many of the other type of nurses came from the upper classes and so could rely on the bank of mummy and daddy to pursue their dream of being a nurse."

So you were clearly stating that when you worked for a (leading!!!) heart and lung hospital (in Chelsea!!!) you discovered a) the private income and benefits arrangements of many of the nurses, b) the dimensions and nature of the nurses' living quarters, and c) the demographic/income backgrounds of "many of the other types of nurses".

Yet now you're claiming that your knowledge of nurses' apparent benefits status actually came from "reading about it", and that your knowledge about certain other nurses being "Sloane Rangery and certainly not strapped for money" actually came from your personal experience as a patient in hospital.

So should we now assume that your initial claims about how you (allegedly) came to know these things were....... economies with the actualité?

Can you stop personalising your posts. I did indeed work at said hospital, in fact, a hospital group. I have also spent time in hospital. As I had a desk job it doesn't follow I ought to know the ins and outs of nurses and doctors grades. In fact part of the job was to reconcile the payroll for the entire group every month and this included over 5,000 staff.

 

[LondonJohn]

Can you stop personalising your posts. I did indeed work at said hospital, in fact, a hospital group. I have also spent time in hospital. As I had a desk job it doesn't follow I ought to know the ins and outs of nurses and doctors grades. In fact part of the job was to reconcile the payroll for the entire group every month and this included over 5,000 staff.

YOU were the one who made all these claims in the first place! And then you appeared to contradict them when challenged. And you then had the chutzpah to try to call me out for exposing those *inconsistencies*

Maybe you should try not personalising your own posts in the first place if you don't want others to assess the veracity (or otherwise) of those personalisations. OK?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Can you both give it a rest!

 

[LondonJohn]

I'm more than happy to (provided I'm not wrongly accused of any more things, of course!)

 

[Graham2001]

Former Labour leader Ed Miliband will be one of those to head up a major inquest into the party’s disastrous election result.

The review, set up by Labour Together, will include interviewing all 59 MPs who lost their seats during the crumbling of Labour’s so-called “red wall” of constituencies in the North, the Midlands and Wales.

Party leader Jeremy Corbyn only opted to write a generic letter thanking those who were toppled after facing a backlash from the Parliamentary Labour Party at a fiery meeting in Westminster last week.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/labour-inquest-ed-miliband-a4320051.html

 

[LondonJohn]

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/labour-inquest-ed-miliband-a4320051.html

Oh yep, I saw that news too. My flippant initial thought was "So they're hiring a proven election winner to figure out what went wrong"....

But for all his failings as a perceived future PM, I do think Ed Miliband at least has the intellect, analytical chops and levels of access to potentially do a good job. I do think, however, that it's important for him to give significant weight to these two factors:

1) talking to intellectually-able figures from outside the "Westminster Village" - I think people within that bubble (from all parties) tend to project distorted assumptions into the heads of real voters; and

2) analysing how Labour actually addressed the mechanics of this (and any) General Election - there's already been discussion of how (incredibly) Labour failed to carry out proper proportionate targeting of resources (finance, media exposure of candidates, visits from senior shadow cabinet members, etc) to where they were needed the most: trying to attract/sway floating voters in key marginal constituencies.

I've already heard from two people (a journalist friend and a lobbyist) that the impression was that Labour was "preaching to the choir" in this election, and focusing solely on socialist ideology, rather than actually finding out what people wanted and trying to address those wants. It's not a betrayal of the movement to engage in a little election Realpolitik at times - but I have a feeling that Corbyn and his top team always despised the way in which Blair was perceived (by some) to have "sold out" to attract voters, and that this engendered in them a conscious decision to stick rigidly to their idealogical principles.

And I guess the other interesting thing will be this: given that Labour has publicly announced this review and its appointed leader, will it be publicly announcing the review's results and recommendations? I'd assume not (or, at the very most, a very high-level watered-down version). But at the same time, it's a given that every major political party which doesn't win an election will conduct this sort of "what went wrong, and what can we do better next time" review, yet rarely (if ever) do they make public announcements about it...

 

[Information Analyst]

If all the cleaners and all the advertising executives disappeared overnight, which do you think you'd miss first?

 

[IsThisTheLife]

Eloquent commentary found on another forum;

Strap in, this is going to be a long one. You might want to grab a cup of tea. I'm going to go in-depth on how the left abandoned the working class, and how the Tories won the election by becoming the party of the workers (even adopting left-wing language by referring to the People's Government).

As a kid my parents were staunchly Labour, and naturally it followed that I was the same. The nasty Tories screwing the workers every possible way, trying to privatise the NHS, underfunding schools, stopping people's benefits, cutting funding more in Labour areas than Tory ones, and these things were broadly true. And I took that into adulthood and have for the vast majority of my life been a Labour supporter.

Edited by Agatha: 

Edited to trim quote for rule 4 and to add link to original: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/brit...ber-2019-lets-try-again-again.1512226/page-20

 

[trustbutverify]

Eloquent commentary found on another forum;

You've got an odd sense of what constitutes "eloquence". How about a link to this other forum?

 

[Garrison]

Okay so you can argue this is a small issue but it hardly inspires confidence in the government to handle the big ones:

New Year Honours: Publication of addresses a 'complete disaster'

 

[catsmate]

You've got an odd sense of what constitutes "eloquence". How about a link to this other forum?

It's NeoGaf, a rather childish video game site with a history of biased moderation (admitted by their sexual harasser owner).

 

[ceptimus]

Okay so you can argue this is a small issue but it hardly inspires confidence in the government to handle the big ones:

New Year Honours: Publication of addresses a 'complete disaster'

Because there have never ever been any other data breaches under previous UK governments, nor in countries unaffected by Brexit, nor from any non-governmental widely used platforms.

There are data breaches from everywhere many times each year - we all know that. This is one of the main reasons NOT to have a national identity card scheme - a leak from a database that contains everyone and is relied on by all agencies would be even more catastrophic than the usual leak from Facebook/Banks/Universites/Honours lists.

Massive leak leaves 267 million Facebook users' data exposed | Android Central

 

[Garrison]

Because there have never ever been any other data breaches under previous UK governments, nor in countries unaffected by Brexit, nor from any non-governmental widely used platforms.

There are data breaches from everywhere many times each year - we all know that. This is one of the main reasons NOT to have a national identity card scheme - a leak from a database that contains everyone and is relied on by all agencies would be even more catastrophic than the usual leak from Facebook/Banks/Universites/Honours lists.

Massive leak leaves 267 million Facebook users' data exposed | Android Central

Here's a hint that might help you in life Ceptimus, pointing out that others are just as incompetent as you are isn't really a defence. Nor is pointing out that other people commit burgulary a defence when you are caught breaking and entering.

 

[trustbutverify]

Because there have never ever been any other data breaches under previous UK governments, nor in countries unaffected by Brexit, nor from any non-governmental widely used platforms.

There are data breaches from everywhere many times each year - we all know that. This is one of the main reasons NOT to have a national identity card scheme - a leak from a database that contains everyone and is relied on by all agencies would be even more catastrophic than the usual leak from Facebook/Banks/Universites/Honours lists.

Massive leak leaves 267 million Facebook users' data exposed | Android Central

So you're depending on fragmentation of data among several government data bases to protect from the dangers of hacking?

 

[ceptimus]

Here's a hint that might help you in life Ceptimus, pointing out that others are just as incompetent as you are isn't really a defence. Nor is pointing out that other people commit burgulary a defence when you are caught breaking and entering.

Here's a hint to you. Don't claim that everything bad that happens is due to Brexit or a government you don't like. And don't claim that anything good that happens is despite the things you don't like.

If you do that you'll appear more intelligent and more like a person who has studied history and learned from it.

And it wasn't me that was incompetent. I see you are still unable to quote one of my posts without throwing in a casual insult.

 

[ceptimus]

So you're depending on fragmentation of data among several government data bases to protect from the dangers of hacking?

No. Simply read my post. I'm claiming that a significant fraction of big databases experience leaks due to the incompetence of those whose job it is to protect that data. Maybe sometimes due to malice or criminality of those running the databases, but I think more often just plain incompetence. Accepting this regrettable fact, leads me to think that all-encompassing government databases that will practically define everyone's identity are a bad idea.

If database security improves to the point where we go for decades without evidence of data breaches then I might reconsider - but I very much doubt it will happen in my lifetime: we seem to get reports of major breaches about every month right now

 

[cullennz]

No. Simply read my post. I'm claiming that a significant fraction of big databases experience leaks due to the incompetence of those whose job it is to protect that data. Maybe sometimes due to malice or criminality of those running the databases, but I think more often just plain incompetence. Accepting this regrettable fact, leads me to think that all-encompassing government databases that will practically define everyone's identity are a bad idea.

If database security improves to the point where we go for decades without evidence of data breaches then I might reconsider - but I very much doubt it will happen in my lifetime: we seem to get reports of major breaches about every month right now

Think as long as you have companies having dim high access employees with the ability to have "Password1" as their main entry and VPN, she is always going to be a bit dodge on the old secured side.

Doesn't help if they leave laptops on trains etc

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Think as long as you have companies having dim high access employees with the ability to have "Password1" as their main entry and VPN, she is always going to be a bit dodge on the old secured side.

Doesn't help if they leave laptops on trains etc

Lucky PM Johnson had those extra Tech Lessons then

 

[Darat]

Thought I'd post this here.

In NHS England we are constantly missing a target that was set something like 10 years ago for A&E treatment.

As we know the NHSs were going to be safe in the Tory hands...

And yes they have a fantastic plan to deal with the problem of missing the targets....

They are going to scrap the targets.

Problem of missing targets solved.

 

[Ian Osborne]

Thought I'd post this here.

In NHS England we are constantly missing a target that was set something like 10 years ago for A&E treatment.

As we know the NHSs were going to be safe in the Tory hands...

And yes they have a fantastic plan to deal with the problem of missing the targets....

They are going to scrap the targets.

Problem of missing targets solved.

Don't be so pessimistic. Next year, the NHS will get an extra £350m a week, so it will be fine.