Government Watch - 2

We have to get our laughs where we can with the NHS, Jess.

Have you heard that Hunt wants A&Es to refuse access to people who just arrive there.
They have to go through 111 or their GPs. That's real emergency isn't it? It'll kill a few thousand off a month, which should make the NHS more affordable - until people catch on and start listening to what some groups like KONP have been saying for years.

How long does it take you to see your GP?

I've just been reading this. We are fast becoming a police state.

www.heraldscotland.com/news/15597078.Revealed__how_Police_Scotland_treated_a_political_activist_like_a_terrorist/?ref=mr&lp=2

This is very worrying.

www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb-kills-panama-papers-journalist

Just listening to a bit about the Homelessness Reduction Act - even its name is worrying. Does the shipping out of the homeless by giving them a one way ticked to 'elsewhere' remind anyone else of sending children to the colonies? It sounds an appalling way to threat people.

OECD latest UK economic survey is out and is saying a second referendum that reversed the leave vote would have a positive and significant impact on the UK economy which, it says, is on track to be crippled by its EU divorce.

Wouldn’t it be such a relief?

These are probably only experts though and you know how they are no good at all!!!

Interesting article here: Is world-leading NHS healthcare an affordable proposition?

The introduction says:

The unquestioned assertion that a highly developed currency-issuing nation cannot afford high quality healthcare [1] is based upon a set of inter-related and almost universally-held false assumptions:

Money is in limited supply (as there is no ‘magic money tree’).
Taxes fund government spending.
Private banks lend out pre-existing savings.
NHS spending is a burden on the economy rather than a boost to the economy.

Well explained and covering areas we have discussed on here before such as economic churn - although they use the gentler 'flow', and a good explanation of 'good' taxation.

It's really good to see the myths of free-market capitalism challenged - as they are being more and more.

'They have to go through 111 or their GPs'. Don't people often go to A&E because they can't get doctors appointments. And, isn't 111 pretty bad? [don't quote me on this but I'm sure I've heard people in the medical profession say so].

111 worked for me years ago, but that was when Durham was trialling it.
Last year when I broke my wrist, my son rang 111. He was told to ring the surgery, who just said they would send me to A&E so ring them. He rang the nearest who said they had no xray facility after 5 pm, and told us to go to the main one, but there was no paperwork or anything to say that's what we had done.
I wonder what would happen now. Would I be sent back home to ask the GP for a letter?

Of course, while we are more concerned about Brexit, the NHS is collapsing.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/17/brexit-nhs-collapse-nurses-leave-flu-epidemic-hospitals

There was a time, and right now I can't remember how long ago it was, when I felt very proud to be British.

We were a democracy. We had free education, right up to university level. The NHS provided a wonderful heath service free at the point of need. We had an unarmed police force, and there was a sense of decency and fairness.

All that mattered more to me than the fact that the UK was an important country in the world, but I felt proud that we had moved on from our colonial past to develop a good relationship with our former colonies.

I really was proud and grateful to have been born British.

I wish I could still feel like that.

Our politicians have let us down. They have stepped back from their role as leaders and become docile followers of the right-wing foreign billionaire newspaper proprietors who control the gutter press and manipulate public opinion.

We are no longer a free country.

varian what a good post! I so much feel like that

Quite right Varian
But what can we say about all those people completely taken in with the rhetoric and lies? Sometimes I just despair.

Spot on varian

I am sorry to say this, but it seems to me that the UK is already a smaller, meaner, nastier country than it was even two years ago, and if the worst happens and the brexiters have their way, we will rue the day that we threw away our heritage -because a guillible minority of the population were fooled and deluded on one day last year.

Oh varian, Sadly very well said.

Our politicians have let us down. They have stepped back from their role as leaders and become docile followers of the right-wing foreign billionaire newspaper proprietors who control the gutter press and manipulate public opinion.

I think that this has been happening for far longer than we consciously realise. It's just that while we were jogging along quite nicely, thank you, it didn't really affect us greatly.

Have you seen the mess that Grayling made of the new trains?
It was embarrassing. Yes, they had teething problems with the air-conditioning, which wasn't his fault, but it was his fault that they have to have diesel as well as electric engines, because the lines haven't been electrified; in fact the electrification of that line was cancelled.
Brand new train, fasted one in the country, and on its first run it did the run at an average 50 miles an hour. All the people on the train can claim compensation. Pathetic.

John Crace brilliant as usual.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/16/hybrid-trains-late-arrival-fails-to-electrify-mps-let-alone-the-rail-network

Which do you live nearest to, a lorry park, a market garden or a train that doesn't work properly?

John Crace called him ‘Failing Grayling’

Watching PMQs. If the PM points that finger much more some or something will bite it off.

Yup the people in Swansea who were promised electrification only to have it taken away are pretty annoyed with him. And what, if anything, is he doing to lessen the amount of unproductive time people spend in traffic jams? They keep saying we should be more productive as a workforce. But they have no idea how they can somehow make us more productive. Better transport would help. As would fewer people forced into non productive work in order to get them off the unemployment figures.

Same up here, Jess. We were promised electrification of the lines.
What's rubbing it in even more is that they are made in Newton Aycliffe, in Durham.
May had the nerve to say again that they were the party of the Northern Powerhouse in PMQs.
Do you know how many of the front bench live in Surrey? At least six at the last count. They are really concerned about the Northern trains.
It was noticeable that it broke down at Reading, just outside May's constituency. Hope it was Reading West, as that's a tory seat. Labour took Reading East this year.

After Grenfell, May promised that all councils would get financial help if they needed it to make housing safe for residents.
Yesterday she reneged on it. Now Sajid Javid has said the opposite.
You'd think the government could agree on something.

www.24housing.co.uk/news/javid-stresses-post-grenfell-support-for-councils/