Cameron's Christmas message

If no-one is trying to undermine the NHS niggly why was a top-down reorganisation that cost millions undertaken against all advice? Why did they say death was more likely if you were admitted at a weekend? Why did Hunt try to say doctors weren't working weekends? (social media scotched that one!). Why did they drive junior doctors to the brink of strike action? Why have they cut bursaries to nursing training?
I also have issues with this business of costs. When the NHS was set up having an operation meant a lengthy stay in hospital, numerous visits of a nurse after that and a huge long recuperation period. It must have cost. Now the same operation is done on a 48hour hospital stay- OK more procedures and more people but also less support.

Where have you been living, niggly?
Letwin said that once a Tory government got in there would be no NHS within five years.
You must have heard that, unless you've been living in a cave.

Jeremy Hunt co-authored a book on how to privatise the NHS.
Have you not heard about that either, or do you just not listen?

Nobody is on a 'mission' to undermine the NHS, that's ridiculous and simply not true. The truth is that the NHS is a bottomless pit into which more and more money is needed, and now has to finance more and more complicated treatments than were ever envisaged when it was set up all those years ago. The money has to come from somewhere, either from taxation or other sources. What else is the answer? Tax the rich I hear you say! but the rich whoever they are from DC's late father to Trade Union leaders make sure that their riches are tied up out of harms way, as they see it; even Tony Benn made sure that his family's wealth stayed intact after his death!!!! Nobody knows what the answers are in this very complicated world we live in, there are no quick fixes but to suggest that any government is deliberately undermining any national institution is just silly.

Rosequartz
You've been reading newspapers owned by foreign billionaires again haven't you

Totally by that very rude and personal remark. I don't generally read a newspaper, if I do it may be one of several going free or online.

If you really must know, more often than not I read the Cairns Post online.

Rosequartz if anything is not quite right with the NHS, the EA, the police etc it is because the senior managers are paid to much? You talk as if they are being paid millions. As far as I am concerned a job like running a hospital trust is incredibly demanding and horribly responsible.
A senior hospital consultant can earn nearly £200k. I don't see why the most senior NHS managers should not be on similar rates of pay. They pay a their taxes of course and they don't get many perks.
Our local NHS has recently had to search for a new Chief Exec and I really don't think they need someone mediocre to steer them under difficult circumstances.
Things are going badly wrong in NHS England because Hunt and Osborne are on a mission to undermine it and thus strengthen the private healthcare sector. Some of their tactics are:

Privatising chunks of NHS England without an electoral mandate or a parliamentary debate.
Starving trusts of the funding they need to cope with increasing demand.
Introducing a dotty 24/7 policy and using it as an excuse to try to make junior hospital doctors work longer hours. Leading to increased emigration of doctors - much more serious than a one day strike.
And the latest deliberately vicious move - reducing the public subsidy for nurse training so that they will be burdened with the same student loans as those studying normal university degrees.

You've been reading newspapers owned by foreign billionaires again haven't you. Don't you get fed up with having your opinions formed by this bunch of interfering foreigners who don't pay UK tax?

No more important than an afterthought - the people who decide the laws for others to follow?
By the way, the previous comment wasn't aimed at your religious thoughts.

You forgot to mention MPs, roseq,
probably they were included in my etc djen - an after-thought!

Of course you may djen
You may ignore my religious post (and any other!)
Anyone can say anything, can't they, unless it is a personal attack?

Teetime do you usually eat muffins for breakfast? Do you mean the sort or the English Breakfast muffins, split, toasted and buttered?

You forgot to mention MPs, roseq, who have just accepted a rather large pay rise when they could have refused it.

Am I not part of anyone?
Am I not allowed to put my opinions and comments on any thread?
You can ignore them. Feel free. Just as I will ignore yours.

A thread like that would get taken over Tegan .....

Sometimes threads have meandered right away from the OP and it is difficult to bring them back on course, but we can try:

Back to the OP:
Is it really Christian to see people in poverty
No, but can we be comforted by the fact that "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God"?
(Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke)
or
But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and [into] many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.?
(Timothy)

And certainly the leaders in the NHS, the EA, the police, quangoes etc are revelling in their million £ homes and tasting all the good things life has to offer at the expense of what they are supposed to be providing for the rest of us.

Charlie Brooker's 2015 Wipe is positively ....... about the government.
Very educational.

We have had many threads with discussions like that Tegan but they always end with our resident Socialists browbeating, link-ing, and generally carrying on alarmingly, so much so that nobody wants to comment.I think we can be sure that they exist though, as Labour have been beaten in the last two General Elections.

I don't understand why there aren't more threads about all the positive things that the current government are doing; I'd be quite happy to read them [even if they would be 'partisan']. Please feel free to educate me .

I agree, anyone is allowed to post their opinions and comments if within the rules of the forum, the same applies to links yet sarcastic posts pop up so often about posting links , posting links does not need permission ?

You have to remember djen that your comments are exactly that, your own comments and not facts. Slating everything that Cameron does and says so relentlessly, while treating Corbyn's moves and pronouncements as Gospel from up high is very wearing for the Gnetters who have to read it to get to the next posting.

I shall ignore that. Anyone is entitled to post their opinions or comments on any thread on GN, and they don't need your permission.

At least my comments are about the topic, not just niggling away at what other people have written.
I always thought that was the point of this forum. If you do not want to take part, you know what you can do.

Oh, give it rest.

' “For me, there are no new year’s resolutions, just the resolve to continue delivering what we promised in our manifesto,” said the prime minister, naming the problems of low home ownership, poverty, poor social mobility and extremism as his four priorities in 2016.

“If we really get to grips with these problems this year, we won’t just be a richer nation, but a stronger, more unified, more secure one,” he said. “It won’t be easy. These problems have been generations in the making. And many of them are tangled together.” '

From Cameron's speech. Hard to believe that his government has made poverty, home ownership, social mobility and extremism worse over the last five years.

Night night. Mwah.

Crikey Bags. You nearly wrote a thesis on it there.

Effin' toughen up, the lot of yer.

Oh, I wouldn't say it was funny. A little bit too 'old hat' for that. Not really original. But nothing to get the old under-garments shifted over either.

We old warriors can easily take that stuff on the chin.

Why not? It can be helpful to learn what others who don't usually get embroiled in partisan threads think of one's posts, surely?