#tory destruction of the nhs | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

welcometomy20s · 1 year

Text

April 26, 2023

Few weeks ago, Hank Green put out a poll asking people if the world is better off without humans… 41% of the audience seemed to agree, which alarmed him and me.

Technically, the answer is neither true nor false. We are the only arbiter of morality and therefore anything that cannot be experienced by humans definitionally cannot be labeled as good or evil, such a hypothetical world without humans. But to go further, when we say humans are bad to the planet, we are really saying that humans are bad to ourselves and to our conception of other things. Livestocks have no system of morality nor the ball of rock that we call earth. We see the destruction we do to ourselves in the past, present, and the future and some will conclude that this means humans are better off dead or non-existent.

But this is akin to saying that since we do terrible things to ourselves that we should kill ourselves. Most people will hear this argument and know the person is in a serious condition and they need to go get some mental help. But when we expand this argument to the world itself, apparently 41% of Hank's twitter audience merely nod in recognition.

There is a comment on videos talking about great government projects that oppose the idea because they do not trust the government to carry and maintain these projects. They imply (or outright state) that the government is not beholden to us, denying the stated democratic nature of the government, and as a corollary, we do not beholden to anyone, as in we simply do not matter in the working affairs of the government. Much like the imagery of Squid Game, we are just playthings for the rich. The violent imagery was supposed to shock us, make us coil in horror, but as violent imagery tends to do, most people’s actual response is one of submission.

Indeed this response makes us glad that the rich are pretty heartful to not make this into reality. If the rich were truly heartless then not only would Squid Game exist, it would likely be televised to the public, and in other fictions like The Hunger Games, they do show it to the public.

I guess it’s not the rich that are heartful but the poor that are still heartful. Rich still somewhat fear a revolution, even though the political apathy is still very high. Majority of Hank’s audience still rustles humanity to be awake in the morning, keep their chin up and move on.

The corporation was not what we know today, although some people (Aaron Burr) knew exactly what it can be. Corporation is a grant given by the government for a specific purpose. Basically a group of investors, called shareholders, come up and say they want to raise funds to do so-and-so, and the government agrees and post this project on a forum somewhere. Other people who are interested in the project buy shares and become part of this… company. Corporation then hires people to start and maintain the work and that’s basically it.

There is no profit motive written in the books. Fiduciary rule is about the long-term stability of the corporation, which may contradict with maximum short-term profits… in fact, it mostly does. Profit motive is a conspiracy, in the true sense of the word, between certain types of shareholders and the management, who are likely that same type of shareholder.

To go back a bit, in order for the non-trust theory to work, one needs to suppose that vested interest has no interest in the people to which they are among. In some sense, they believe in the arguments made by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged or more obliquely in Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, that most of us are not important to the conduct of civilization. And we must believe to be true, not just that they believe to be true, because if only the latter is true, then well… things are going to go belly-up and the vested interest would be ousted.

To be more clear with an example, even if Tories try to destroy the NHS, people would recognize that the NHS can be made better and will attack the government making the NHS worse, and therefore the interest in keeping the NHS in shape can be revived. If there is no such thing as the NHS, then all of the above would just be nonsense.

A large number of people want things to ‘just work’. But things do not ‘just work’. Work requires effort and the people to give that effort. Just because it takes effort to maintain something, doesn’t mean it would be impossible to do something, or we would be doing nothing.

Many people criticize a non-monetary economy as a ‘vibe-based economy’. They will likely point to such-and-such jobs that no one would likely take without monetary incentive. But the contention here is that… this is still a vibe-based economy. We are just shifting the vibe of jobs that do not ‘vibe’ by giving incentives. If one does not think coercion, a.k.a. slavery, is necessary for society, then you are saying that the economy can be maintained purely by shifting vibes.

People who support non-monetary economies are then merely asking, is money the best to shift vibes, or is there a more robust and less abuse-prone way to go about this vibe shift. This can be a contention, but people who support a monetary economy are barking up a wrong and actually quite harmful tree. Another twist in Capitalist Realism, that depression that I talked about in the first half of the post. Oops, you are arguing for slavery!

The cinch is this. There has been a revolution in our understanding of motivation (the fancy term for ‘vibes’ in this context) in the last twenty years or so, which questions the efficacy of monetary incentives among other common incentives. Study in motivation is also vital in AI research, and alignment of motivation is the key component in both AI Safety and Politics.

There are whole new ways of organizing societies that might be much more effective and humane than the current system we are living under. Unless those hopes are dashed, one should not count these so-called ‘vibes-based’ economies.

#economics #motivation #society

0 notes

crhlabour · 1 year

Text

Tweeted

Stories like this are becoming commonplace, thanks to the Tories' systematic destruction of the NHS. #ToryBritain #nhs #GeneralElectionNow https://t.co/WU0CCMu5by

— Labour CRH 🌹 (@CRHLabour) Dec 31, 2022

#IFTTT #Twitter

0 notes

confessions-of-a-paramedic · 2 years

Text

Why I Will Vote To Strike

I haven’t posted in awhile for that I’m sorry, just been thinking of what to actually write. For awhile now my motivation working in the NHS has been very low, the lowest for the last 7 years I’ve been in the ambulance service for.

So, the current climate in the UK has forced the NHS to ballot for strike action.

Why I’m voting to strike: people say you guys can’t strike people will die. Colleagues in the service are also saying they won’t as patients will die. Unfortunately, our patients are already dying. It’s become all to common to see 12, 13, 14 + ambulances queued outside of A&E departments all waiting for a hospital bed. Only too recently I took over a bigger crew looking after a 90year old who was having a stroke, who hadn’t been picked up by that night crew, nor the day crew before them but the night crew before them!! 35 hours in total that 90 year old spent laying on a uncomfortable ambulance bed in the same ambulance they were originally picked up from. 35hours!!!!!! And in that time despite multiple requests for food none ever appeared!! As they were on soft food only made it difficult for us to just grab them food. 35 hours!! And that’s not even the longest wait for a patient to be offloaded. Due to these waits patients in the community can’t get an ambulance as there isn’t any to send. It is now all to common for patients to wait 6+hours for an ambulance to be able to get to them. This is not the job I got into. I am currently unable to do my job. I have zero faith in the NHS to be able to treat my own family members in a timely fashion due to these delays.

Now you maybe thinking if you strike how is that going to help. Well, the ambulance service and the NHS will not just refuse to come into work. Chances are strike action will more likely be a work to rule if on shift with some calls being redirected to self travel which to be honest would be quicker than waiting for an ambulance. Those who are off shift will be invited to picket lines I’m guessing outside of the ambulance stations. So patient care will not be compromised anymore than it already is.

The NHS staff are massively underpaid and haven’t received a liveable above inflation pay raise in well ever. So every pay rise has resulted in a real terms pay cut. Remember the big Brexit argument 250million per week goes to the EU let’s find the NHS instead. How the Tories said all that was never a thing. But don’t worry they came out and clapped us all during the toughest period the NHS has ever faced. That’ll pay the ever increasing bills, the ever increasing fuel costs, the increasing Morgage rates. 5.58% currently the cheapest when me and my partner looked to buy a house this week.

Now the only way anything is ever gonna change is if we take action! No one who works for the NHS wants to strike but we have been backed into a corner to much and now we left with no choice. I’m lucky that my living situation is favourable. However, many are not lucky enough. The pay is peanuts, considering the life saving decisions we make day in day out. As I am unable to do my job and help people who need us the most, seeing patients die preventable deaths if we could just be able to do our basic jobs. The very thing that made us able to do our role for the poor pay, the long hours, the destruction of our own mental well-being, facing abuse and assaults, the knowledge and skills we possess knowing that we are the only thing standing between life and death of someone no longer has any weight, as we are unable to use the skills, the knowledge, gained over years of training and hard work. There is no greater feeling saving someone’s life bringing them back from the dead to get discharged from hospital to the loving arms of their family, to stop someone on the brink of death of making their way to the pearly gates and helping them to recovery and prolonging their time on this earth with the people they love. We can not do this anymore. Instead our mental well-being is taking massive hits constantly seeing preventable deaths and saying the word SORRY over and over and over again for the delays. This strike won’t just be over our rightful pay rise that will allow us to live, but a highlight of things need to change. Many colleagues in the ambulance service and nurses, hospital staff and doctors have been forced to leave due to pay making a move to better paying jobs and the need to use food banks.

People with respected jobs, dedication to helping others, day in day out, forced to use food banks and to decide whether to heat their home or feed their kids!! How is this right? That is why we are voting to strike or not to. That is why I am voting to strike!!!!

1 note · View note

hjohn3 · 2 years

Text

Political Tribute Acts

Tories And Labour Both Want Play The Old Tunes

By Honest John

YOU COULD be forgiven to think that, politically, the U.K. is in a time warp. The country is faced with problems that can only be described as existential: inflation set to hit 11% by the end of the calendar year; an absence of meaningful growth; a dearth of affordable housing; a health and social care system unable to cope with the most basic demands placed upon it; chronic problems of supply and desperate social and regional inequality. The British economic model, always woefully imbalanced with an overeliance on Finance, and bedevilled by systemic lack of investment and poor productivity, could just about stagger on while a member of the EU, with its economic rules set in Brussels, frictionless access to some of the world’s richest markets and risk shared between its member states. Outside the EU, it no longer even makes sense.

Twelve years of hubristic Tory rule have simply exacerbated these fundamental weaknesses of the British system. The party of alleged sound economic management has foisted on the country ten years of growth sapping austerity; the destruction of its own neoliberal free trading model by wantonly exiting the EU with no alternative plan; a catastrophic response to the Covid pandemic and enabling the integrity free populist waste of the Boris Johnson years. The Tories have also presided over a possibly terminal weakening of the bonds of the United Kingdom itself. It is no understatement that in modern Britain, nothing works, everything is going backwards, and national optimism is at an all time low.

When the Conservatives realised that their supposedly vote winning wizard, Johnson, had become an electoral liability, rammed home by local and by election routs this year, his Cabinet suddenly rediscovered a sense of honesty and decency that had eluded them when for three years they cheered his corrupt and scandal strewn idiocy to the rafters in the House of Commons, and abruptly dispensed with him in a mass rebellion comprising what Keir Starmer termed “the sinking ship deserting the rat”. So now we have the dreary prospect of one of two Cabinet veterans and former Johnson loyalists, becoming Prime Minister after the absurdly unrepresentative Conservative Party membership have had their say. Although we won’t know the outcome of this restricted election until 5th September, all the smart money is on Liz Truss besting Rishi Sunak and completing a miserable trio of utterly inadequate Tory Prime Ministers that have been inflicted on the nation since 2016.

And what exactly are the wholly unimpressive Truss’ solutions to the intrinsic problems facing this country? It appears as though Truss believes she is back in 1986. Always a slightly absurd Margaret Thatcher tribute act in terms of her photo opps, she now seems to have doubled down on her latter day Thatcherism, prescribing tax cuts (including reversing the rise in National Insurance that is currently funding the gargantuan task of reducing NHS waiting lists), a “bonfire” of regulations, and an expansion of the Rwanda refugee offshoring policy to, perhaps Turkey, oh, and banning strikes of course. And that is pretty much it. Truss claims, with virtually no evidence, that tax cuts will combat inflation; she claims Britain is subject to a range of EU “rules” that are restricting enterprise which she will allow to lapse next year with no discussion of the implication of the resultant legal black hole, and asserts her low tax, low regulation, low wage economy will magically attract investment without explaining how. The economic illiteracy of the Truss “programme” is quite staggering and its wilful ignoring of the actual problems facing the country makes it almost irrelevant. In hoc to the Tory glory years of the 1980s, Truss seems to believe that tax cuts are not just a sweet spot for the party faithful, but also for the general electorate also - a magic formula for General Election success. But the former Liberal Democrat Truss clearly does not know her Conservative history: Thatcher did not cut taxes until her third term, after cuts to public expenditure and North Sea oil revenues had built a war chest of budgetary surpluses that made tax cuts affordable. The modern U.K. has a debt counted in the billions, and her promised £30bn of tax cuts, opening a massive hole in the public finances, would have appalled the Iron Lady in its irresponsibility. Even in Tory terms, tax cuts in current economic circumstances, makes no sense. The fact that Truss is talking about borrowing to fund her tax cuts tells you all you need to know about our likely future PM’s grip on the most basic fundamentals of economic management.

Is Truss’ wilful naivety and refusal to address the real issues facing the country a symptom of her own cluelessness or of the paucity of any new thinking within Conservatism, or both? In some respects, it doesn’t matter: a 1980s tribute act is all that’s on offer from the Tory front runner, recently matched by a desperate Sunak, palpably failing to break through to the Tory membership.

Given the Sunak/ Truss race to the bottom to create a minimal state right wing nirvana, this must surely be an opportunity for Labour, to be able to exploit Tory internecine warfare and put forward a compelling vision for national renewal to contrast the small minded irrelevance of the two leadership candidates? Sadly not. Keir Starmer and his unimaginative team seem determined to dial forward just ten years from the Tories’ 80s cul-de-sac. Starmer’s sweet spot is 1996.

The extent to which the dead hand of Peter Mandelson is behind this is a subject of debate (particularly in fevered left wing circles), but Starmer’s move to emulate Blair and Brown’s march to power in the late 1990s has been as rapid as it is unthinking. For Blair’s “Education, education, education”, we have Starmer’s “Growth, growth, growth”; for Gordon’s Brown’s 1997 “Golden Rule” governing borrowing, we have Rachel Reeves’ suddenly made up “fiscal rules”; for Blair’s distancing from the trade union movement, we have Starmer’s bizarre banning of Cabinet members from picket lines. This is less a 1990s tribute act, as much as direct copying of the Blair playbook. In an unironic mirror image of Truss’ witless pursuit of tax cuts, so Starmer’s circle seem to believe emulating every feature of Blair’s pre 1997 positioning, will be a magical passport to Downing Street, regardless of the utterly changed political and economic circumstances of the U.K. in 2022 compared to the country then.

In truth, the New Labour stance on macro economics was, in essence, a political tactic. After having lost four elections in a row, and a major factor of each being the public’s suspicion of Labour’s ability to run the economy effectively after the disasters of 1978/79, Blair and Brown took the view that the Thatcherite settlement of deregulation, privatisation and free trade within Europe, should be accepted in full. This eventually morphed into the conceit of the “Third Way” and a genuine belief on the part of the New Labour high command that they had discovered a formula that could fuse neoliberal economics with an emphasis at home on social justice and win elections indefinitely. This belief appears to have now captured the team surrounding the Labour leadership. However the Blairite model of global free trade and public spending programmes fuelled by easy credit and the resultant growth, did not last more than eleven years. For the Blair tribute act, it is as if the 2008 crash, a decade of austerity, the loss of virtually all Labour’s Scottish seats in 2015, Brexit, Covid and the loss of the red wall didn’t happen. Over a decade of stagnant growth, exacerbated by leaving the European Union, which itself clearly requires government intervention in a British economy now on its own, will apparently be addressed by being “business friendly”, encouraging “growth” and “making Brexit work”. It seems has though Starmer has imbibed Blair’s penchant for the slogan, but without the policy detail behind them that made New Labour such a formidable governing force when it came to power.

A broken economic model without the protection of the EU, beset by runaway inflation, anaemic growth post covid, suffering from Brexit induced trade barriers, with public services failing now to even cover the basics, needs radical reform. A reform programme for the 2020s which could convert the despair of the final collapse of belief in the Tory market state, to address climate change, regional redistribution of wealth, post Brexit trade with Europe, and electoral and constitutional reform. Starmer proudly informs the nation on a regular basis what Labour is not going to do (public ownership; joining the European single market; agreeing a non Tory programme for government with the Liberal Democrats) but gives no detail of what Labour would do if it manages to come to power at the next election. The adherence to the electoral tactics of 27 years ago inspires no one and disappoints many. It is entirely feasible that Starmer’s lack of vision, courage and optimism, will see the easy blandishments of Truss’ faux insurgent Thatcherism overhaul the unexciting Labour pitch of being honest and competent. Starmer’s team behave as if all was well with the good ship Britannia before Johnson appeared from nowhere and upset everything and now all that is needed is a decent PM, governing from a mythical centre ground to put things right. What neither Truss nor Starmer seem to want to acknowledge, was that in his dim, cynical way, Johnson was actually onto something. His promise of a post Brexit active state seeking to “level up” the nation, free of European restrictions on state aid, could have been genuinely transformative if he had had the energy and competence to see it through. The current political circumstances favour real boldness of vision and genuine innovation: it could not be a more propitious time for an opposition seeking to end a long period of rule by a governing party with literally nothing left to offer. Instead Starmer’s Labour wishes to match Truss’ Toryism in its absence of new ideas and its cleaving to the past. Both Tories and Labour offer the country nothing, peddling old and busted ideas like two clapped out Queen or Oasis tribute bands.

What a choice to put before the British people.

31st July 2022

#british politics #conservative government #labour #keir starmer #liz truss

0 notes

outlanderalien · 5 years

Text

@fullheartedlyprovocative

Very good point! Many people who aren’t from the UK are probably not aware of the impending disaster that is Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

I keep describing him as a clown, incompetent and overall destructive to society as a whole, but i’ve failed to go into detail. And the reason is simple: There’s just far too much to cover in a concise and efficient way. It is very literally a massive rabbit hole that knows no end.

But i should probably collate some of his more memorable moments, so that everyone can get a rough idea about who he is exactly and why we’re all dead inside.

Bojo is often described as clownish, but don’t let that fool you into thinking he’s harmless. He’s as Machiavellian as a politician can get, and he weaponises his clownish behaviour in order to cover up his corruption. He has this down to an Art.

A recent example of his perception manipulation:

During the Brexit referendum, Boris was heavily campaigning for Leave, and he infamously commissioned a big red Bus with this message on it, claiming that the 350 million currently going to EU membership will be redirected to the UKs NHS (National Health Service), this was a massive deal and fueled the leave campaign.

This was also a massive lie, and he was (rightly) hated for it.

The Bus Lie hung over Boris long after the referendum. When you’d type up Boris Johnson on Google, it would suggest the Bus scandal as an auto-complete search, bringing up countless articles on the lie that had clearly tarnished Boris’ reputation.

However, during the leadership campaign, Boris did something extraordinary. While being interviewed about his leadership bid, he was asked what he does for fun. This was his response:

youtube

Hilarious. Ridiculous. Blustering. Making it up as he went along. It quickly became an interview widely mocked across social media and news outlets. Why did he make himself sound like such an idiot? Why buses? This is why:

He is not only immune to being mocked, he has weaponised it to cover up his biggest controversies. Typing up “Boris Johnson Bus” now yields funny clips of him struggling to get through an interview talking about painting little buses. His Bus Scandal has almost been entirely pushed out of the picture.

That is only the tip of the Boris shaped iceberg.

His clowning has gotten him national and international mockery. Who can forget that time Boris (while Mayor of London) got stuck on a zip-line because he was too heavy?

Or that time that he got overly competitive in a game of rugby against kids and tackled a child.

Or that time during a recent Leadership debate where he pulled out a literal Kipper and waved it about, declaring that “we will get our Kippers BACK when we leave the EU!”

What a silly man. How completely harmless he must be.

Well while the nation struggles to get these images out of their heads, collectively we have forgotten many of his greatest sins.

One sin still hangs above him... An ongoing scandal that has endangered the life of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

In 2017 Nazanin had travelled to Iran from the UK to visit her parents, when she was detained by authorities under suspicion of coming to Iran in order to train journalists. In 2017 when Boris was Foreign Secretary and during Nazanins trial, Boris made this statement to the news:

“When I look at what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing, she was simply teaching people journalism, as I understand it,”

This was considered damning evidence that was used against Nazanin. She is still imprisoned today. Her husband in the UK has been tirelessly campaigning for her release, going on a joint hunger-strike with her. Boris refuses to take any responsibility for his comments or apologise for what he has caused.

This isn’t the first or last time Boris has been reckless with his words.

Very recently, Sir Kim Darroch (the UKs (now former) ambassador to the US) suffered a memo leak, in which unflattering remarks regarding Donald Trumps presidency surfaced. The leak was unfortunate, but the comments made were not unprofessional and entirely expected from a foreign diplomat. But Trump wasn’t happy and applied pressure to the UK government to fire Darroch for doing his job. The entire UK government united behind Darroch and supported him...... well... almost the entire government. During a live debate, the final two leadership candidates were asked about the Darroch situation, and whether Darroch would remain in his job if they become PM. Boris refused to comment and avoided the question as usual. However since Boris was the favourite to win, Darroch realised he had no hope, so he resigned. Boris was cited as the main reason and was widely criticised.

Before Boris was a politician, he was a journalist. And in recent years, a very unsavoury recording surfaced from his time as a Journalist in 1990...A phone recording between him and Darius Guppy, where the two conspired to have a reporter physically hurt. (Somehow this is the only youtube video available on this...)

youtube

Boris has also been known to have absolutely no filter and speaks before he thinks. Such comments are a result of this.

He had referred to black people as “Piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”

In 2018 he had referred to Muslim women wearing burkas as looking like “letter-boxes”

At a conference on Libya in 2017 he claimed that the country could become a thriving luxury resort once they “cleared the dead bodies away”

In 2013 he claimed that Malyasian women went to University because they “have to find men to marry”

In 2006 he claimed that Barack Obama had an “ancestral dislike of the British empire – of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender”

All of this... and we haven’t even covered his politics yet.

This is the big reason why he’s becoming PM and it’s simple. He’s lying to everyone.

He’s promising everything to everyone. He’s promised a soft brexit to some, a hard brexit to others. But he refuses to explain how he would achieve either. He’s only now clearly settling on the side of a hard-brexit, or what’s considered a No-Deal brexit (walking away from the EU without striking a trade deal), but he has no answers for any questions posed to him.

His debating strategy, and interview strategy is to make people laugh until they forget what they asked him.

When asked "Is austerity a dead duck at this point?” he ended up rambling about ducks for a solid minute and making the audience giggle before giving a very vague and nothing answer

When debating with leadership rival Jeremy Hunt, he won over the audiences heart by interrupting Hunt with immature jokes.

After declaring that he knows exactly what he’s doing in regards to a No-Deal brexit, he tells everyone that he will follow “Paragraph 5B” of a document that will supposedly solve the Brexit crisis. He repeats “Paragraph 5B” constantly, giving the impression that he’s a man of detail and knows the entire document like the back of his hand. When asked if he knew what was in Paragraph 5C, he simply states “no” and tries to play it off like it’s funny. Without a studio audience to laugh at him, he was simply left in the silence of an astounded interviewer. This is one of the many reasons why he had avoided as many interviews as possible during his leadership campaign.

The fact is, no one knows what he really stands for, no one knows what he’ll really do. He’s a wild-card, or more appropriately, the Joker card. He seems crazy enough and chaotic enough to go through with No-Deal that people are voting for him. But so many people are going to be disappointed. This is a man who says he’s always wanted to be Prime Minister ever since he was 15. He wants power for the sake of power. And for some reason, the Tory party are handing him that power.

There’s so much more to go into, but this is a good initial crash-course into Bojo, the literal clown.

#Boris Johnson #uk politics #brexit #uk #politics

18K notes · View notes

jakeperalta · 4 years

Note

"Jews would’ve felt completely unsafe with corbyn" - so they voted Tory? Fine. Every death caused by the tories is now on them. The destruction of the NHS, that's their fault. The mass destitution of the weak and vulnerable; caused by them. The vilification of the unemployed, coming out of their mouth. The Jewish people had a choice this election; They chose to be Evil.

1) not voting labour doesn't necessarily = voting tory. SNP, lib dem, green, plaid cymru all have seats, which may have been voted for in part by jewish people who felt unsafe/uncomfortable with labour.

2) I agree that anyone who voted tory is partially responsible for the horrible things that will happen under this government and I've made it clear how I feel about tory voters. however I am uncomfortable with the suggestion that this responsibility falls solely on jewish people because that's simply not fair.

#answered #anonymous #uk politics #politics #antisemitism cw

16 notes · View notes

earhartsease · 1 year

Text

healthcare in tory Britain - this is from North Wales NHS

#tory destruction of the nhs #covid crisis

0 notes

bisquid · 4 years

Note

This is probably a stupid question and I’m sorry for asking but what IS going to happen to the uk now? Like I know tories have won and it’s bad but at the same time I don’t understand it. What are they doing and why would anyone vote for them if they plainly stated that they are going to ruin everything??

Please note I'm just a person not a lawyer or anything.

Short answer: people are stupid

Slightly longer answer: the Tories are the 'rich man's party' they're mostly interested in improving things for the wealthy, at the expense of everyone else. Currently the two things we're most stressed about is the destruction of the NHS - a process that has already begun through financial means - and Brexit, the ludicrous plan to leave the EU.

Why is this ludicrous? Apart from the fact that May and Johnson have failed miserably to sort any kind of replacement trade deal with the EU, it makes 0 economic, social or political sense to leave one of the more functional international unions in the world.

The Tories want to do it because the EU has sensible rules about a lot of stuff that they feel is stifling Britain's god-given right to do dumb shit. Plus they hate brown people. Who, as we all know, exclusively cross the border legally from EU countries and don't fill any important roles like doctors.

They have a long bizarre history of being voted for by large numbers of the working class, through a mishmash of propaganda and straight-up lies, plus pandering to all the lovely lovely racism still alive and well in our great nation.

Also austerity. Austerity is the conservative eugenics strategy idea that in times of financial distress the government should reduce spending, particularly on welfare programs, because who cares if those dirty poor people can't afford to eat, right?

There's a a REASON we all celebrated Maggie Thatcher's death

#animecookietrash #ask #uk politics

9 notes · View notes

aonahht · 4 years

Text

Brexit yo

im ranting boys so strap in, sorry not sorry

So Brexit happened yesterday, (or at midnight last night I guess, its whatever), and while I, like most young people, was pro-remain, my opinion is that despite the sham that was the referendum, with literally no independent coverage of the pros and cons of leaving/remaining (love that for our democracy), the results were the results, and as far as I was concerned that was that and we should honour them and move on. cant help whats happened etc, just get it done and move forward, focus on actually funding the NHS and shit. (I respect that not everyone holds that opinion though, and go for it dudes, this is just where im at :))))

bit pissed the fuck off now though, bc (no shade to the Tory society at my uni, you do you and express your lil angry political selves or whatever) when I was on campus yesterday I saw them legit out doing a victory march in the piazza like wtf

to contextualise why im pissed: Brexit has been the most polarising and destructive-to-society political change/event or whatever in my living memory: legit its been like watching my parents divorce again- no one is happy, everyone is stressed and upset and arguing, and the people on each spouse’s side automatically are against the other spouse and their friends bc they all disagree- ITS JUST NOT A GOOD SITUATION AND EVERYONE IS BEING HURT BY THE ARGUING AND UNWILLINGNESS BY ANYONE TO TRY AND COMPROMISE BASICALLY BUT YEAH

so yeah everyone’s mad, politics is now some cesspit of jabs between politicians and random citizens alike all assigning blame for the country’s problems and defaming each other’s character bc they disagree- literally most of the serious arguments ive had with my parents and family have been about the politics and ideology that informed their decision to vote leave and the putridness of their reaction to any liberal (including me) questioning why they voted leave, but bc at my uni most people are quite intensely left but come from liberal households I almost feel like I have to defend my family bc voting leave doesn't make them bad people, they just have a different perspective than others, and different priorities (as we all do ayy democracy) so its just one big mess and everything’s fucked and the future is so uncertain bc rather than making concrete steps forward everyone’s spent four years arguing, and I don't know how to have opinions and not feel guilty anymore

….and these people are having a fuckin party about it??

ive been seeing pics of people waving their union jack flags, and going to rallies like the pope’s in town for a gav, and they’re acting like this is some kind of ‘victory’ or ‘triumph’ for the united kingdom?? United kingdom my arse bro, we haven't been this divided since (idek when actually, im 19 lol) but POINT BEING this is a fucking shambles and it just makes me angry-

- im angry that despite my attempts to always respect the opinions of the people around me and their voices, their backgrounds, their perspectives on life that I maybe don't share, people aren't willing to do the same for me

- im angry that people would hold up the union jack, a flag which symbolises in its literal composition the coming together of different demographics into one united kingdom, and wave it as though Brexit has been anything other than the worst and most divisive thing to happen to democracy in 21st century britain

- im angry that some of these people not only hold up this flag, but then legit start referring to yesterday/today as ‘independence day’ like oh my FUCking god do you literally not understand at all the premise of what independence day means to so many people- the words literally represent for so many countries the moment where they, as a nation, took back political agency and control from literal colonisers (spoiler: a shameful amount of those times the coloniser was Britain, so wind your neck in maybe??) and began governing their country again independently of powers who stripped them of their agency against their will. How the fuck, sirs, can one compare Brexit which legit is just pulling out of a CONSENSUAL AGREEMENT WE ENTERED INTO OF OUR OWN FREE WILL, with no resistance from the other party other than the expected attempts to use their power to negotiate (literally we would have done the same, I don't get why ppl were so mad that the EU didn't want us to leave and didn't just hand every perk to us on a silver platter, why would they, our politicians were being dicky and offensive from the get go, how british) but yeah, compare that to LITERAL COLONIALISM WHY DONT YOU- the fucking insensitivity and stupidity just makes me so mad, like read a fucking book.

- also side note, also mad bc people act like they’re the most educated person in the room bc they read the news on facebook, and then dismiss you when you bring up a relevant point that you literally learned from your academic reading and political engagement across a range of news sources from a range of political biases, and then act like formal education is a conspiracy theory formed by the left (its not, and its literally history dude, im not making it up)

so yeah, in summary this is just a sad and a shit day, that people are now so divided and polarised that they can look at the hurt and anger caused by the last four years and think of today as a victory. I don't know what it means to be british anymore dudes, other than being angry, frustrated and divided

#brexit #politics #uk politics #im sad okay #rip democracy

5 notes · View notes

pocmothon · 4 years

Text

I F*cking HATE The UKgov

https://grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com/2020/02/19/the-new-slave-labour-is-on-the-way/

When I was in Scotland, and doing what I could to fight for independence, I warned folks this was coming. And that was *before* the last indyref.

Later, I warned folks about the destruction of the NHS, of dangerous foods and meds, “exempt” from the stricter health and safety regulations of the EU. I spoke of austerity measures that would worsen to the point they would kill people, and they have (disability deaths through policy sanction soar under the Tory regime, likewise deaths due to homelessness, poverty and Jobseeker Allowance sanction yet NOBODY holds them to account)

And I felt then like Cassandra. I still do, when it comes to Scotland. Because THE SCOTTISH PEOPLE ARE SOVEREIGN AND THEY COULD FORCE THEIR GOVERNMENT INTO UDI BUT THEY’RE TOO DAMN FEART TAE.

On yer ain heids be it, Scotland. Whatever the Tories put in the watter tae mak ye lie doon, roll ower and show yer soft underbellies in defeat, it’s fecking working just fine. Just you keep on complaining at Westminster, insteid o’ whar the REAL responsibility lies..yer ain selves, and the sainted “Dae feck a” SNP.

Meanwhile, there’s mair, much mair, o’ *this* coming your wey....

“Patel has said that basically the unemployment and feckless can pick the fruit and veg, probably for their starvation benefits. “

#Scottish independence #English government #Slave labour #heartlessness #UDI IS the answer #SNP are fecking useless

2 notes · View notes

sirro85-blog · 5 years

Text

Humans are Space Orcs: 2019

The galactic council looked at professor Gleax as he finished his report on humanity.

"In a decade humans have created a utopia that's created the technology required to make first contact!?" The Rhul representative exclaimed.

"Quite simply, yes." The professor replied.

His translator seemed to glow too bright as the representatives of 28 systems all cried out at once, a series of brays, clicks, ethereal whistles bubbling noises and coordinated displays of light and colours all called out. His translator lit up, "How?"

Professor Gleax gestured at his report, "2019."

2019 the year it all changed, it started with a simple moment, a young woman made to meet the leader of her country didn't follow the rules, shaking hands with the prime minister known as "May" the paramedic lost her temper, she demanded to know why they let a Tory in the building, why staff of the NHS were pretending this grey haired descendant of a dementor and Ayn Rand wasn't perpetuating a social cleansing. She railed at the prime minister infront of a live tv audience and then with the security guards standing back and allowing it threw her bodily from the building.

Social media; old media; word of mouth; it spread like wildfire, the people and those that served the people were on the same side and they demonstrated it was peaceful, but it was powerful, new government new politicians. Now! A general election in the UK swept in a new government, younger, more diverse with representatives of all walks of life, the minister for environment was an environmental scientist and the minister for health was a nurse.

Brexit was reversed and austerity was halted, closer and more passionate ties with Europe pushed through the closure of tax loopholes for corporations, the rise of the right was halted and harder right wing powers were thrown out of office.

The USA so often the influence on others was influenced and as the President was indicted a nation wide election was called, time for a change, Millenials for the first time had some Gen Z allies and they were allies the internet had brought two generations together to speak with a shared voice. Millenials guilty of "killing" so many things killed a corrupt system, sweeping changes were brought in, Glass-Steagal was brought in and modernised, President Obama became the first woman president. Vice-president Cannon was a particularly strong ally of the LGBTQIA population and helped roll back some particularly poisonous legislation and science was given a stronger voice in the seats of power.

Economic, political and social will toppled corrupt governments and for once Western state meddling was supportive elected officials weren't assisted to office but once there received fair trade deals, relief from debt and access to new markets. Globalisation was working for the global population. Men like Duterte and Putin were brought down from within, and the world turned its attention to problems it could solve.

Equality meant that brilliant minds that once were held back reached the top, and those at the top already found that they still had plenty of space to work, it seems that when the playing field is level it doesn't hush the ideas of those once at the top it gives voice to the ideas of those who just got there.

A new world of art, entertainment and literature was swept along with a world of new economic models, trade ideas and most importantly science. Climate change was reversed as new measures were implemented and world governments were given new priorities.

The first manned mission to mars and the first space station past Saturn were completed within 5 years of the paramedic throwing Maybot from an ambulance garage.

Humanity turned itself around from the brink of destruction in 10 years. It's important to note they're still maniacs, they still eat, drink, inject and play with poisons and toxins, and even fixed their planet is still a death world.

The Glak representative chittered a question.

"The paramedic? Oh she still works as a paramedic, she was offered all sorts of honorary positions but she declined them all, she says she loves her job too much to stop"

"Surely she requested some reward for saving the world?" Demanded the T'pau representative.

"When pressed she asked for exactly three things, re-hire James Gunn, new seasons of firefly and a t-shirt that read 'yoga-loving-pirate-queen' nobody understands the last one"

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Ok so obviously I'm a complete Mary Sue in this but it's a nice idea isn't it?

#humans are space oddities #humans are space australians #space australia #space orcs #humans are space orcs #space #humans are insane #humans are weird #human rights #save our nhs #nhs england #nhs

263 notes · View notes

lhs3020b · 4 years

Text

Some notes on recent polling developments (long, fairly depressing)...

The YouGov MRP figures came out last night. This is notable because in 2017, the multilevel-regression approach was the sole one that spotted the possibility of a hung parliament. We all ridiculed it at the time - I'll confess that I side-eyed it too. And then - well, we all know what happened to Theresa May, don't we? So, the MRP thing deserves to be taken seriously. And unfortunately, this year, it's looking grim for us. Briefly, the MRP is forecasting a Tory majority. They're also predicting that all opposition parties (bar the SNP, who only stand in Scotland) will lose seats. Labour in particular look in the danger-zone for a collapse, and contrary to their bullish predictions, the Liberal Democrats are also forecast to lose seats. (Note that this is with respect to their current strength - technically, the MRP result gives them a gain of 2 seats on where they were on the 9th of June. They currently have 19, due to defections from various other parties.)

I'll admit that I don't want to believe the MRP results, but this has never been a data-denialist blog, and I don't intend to start on that road today.

One caveat is that the reporting on the MRP results has ben remarkably-bad. The actual YouGov page is here: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/11/27/yougov-mrp-conservatives-359-labour-211-snp-43-ld- Buried a long way down the page, they say this: "Taking into account the margins of error, our model puts the number of Conservative seats at between 328 and 385, meaning that while we can be confident that the Conservatives would currently get a majority, it could range from a modest one to a landslide." As far as I can tell, the "majority of 68" figure is derived by treating 317 as a working majority and assuming that the Tory vote lands right at the upper end of their confidence-interval. This is poor statistical practice for a variety of reasons. It's also a bit questionable in terms of parliamentary arithmetic - the "working majority" thing depends on how many Sinn Fein MPs Northern Ireland elects (they don't take their seats, so count toward neither Government nor Opposition tallies). And we won't necessarily know how many that is until, well, December the 13th.

(Also, a further health-warning is that apparently the model isn't able to fully-represent some local phenomena, such as independent candidates, and the effect of the Brexit Party's partial stand-down is also apparently somewhat-unclear. The last caveat is that the analysis assumes data that has already been collected - that is, if public opinion changes between now and polling day, then obviously existing projections could become obsolete. This will still be a possible source of error even if the MRP sample is statistically-unbiased and the underlying theory/analysis is all sound.)

However, even the best-case scenario for us gives the Tories 328 seats, which is both a working and a (very small) absolute majority.

Obviously, this is not a good situation for us.

While not quite a landslide, nonetheless an inflated Tory majority will be devastating for this country. The stuff they'll do will be awful. Brexit will happen. There'll be a bus crash late next year, when the transition period ends. (No, they will have no plan for this - they won't feel they need one, as they'll be secure in power until 2024.) There'll be a Windrush for resident EU citizens. They'll trash the economy. They'll probably crash the NHS - the only question there is whether they do it through accidental negligence or through deliberate malice (say, an ideologically-driven trade "deal" that gives President Trump everything he wants on a silver platter). Nothing will be done about the country’s escalating housing crisis. They'll double down on all the maddest of the madcap "law-n-order" stuff - expect an explosion in jailable offences, accompanied by lengthy minimum-sentence tariffs and further restrictions on legal aid. They'll also resuscitate their plans to manipulate the parliamentary boundaries, and change electoral laws in their favour. The media? Expect no surprises from them. The newspapers are largely already Conservative Pravdas. The BBC - nervous about its precious Royal Charter - seems to be in the process of declaring itself for the Tories too.

Bluntly, if the Tories get re-elected this year, they'll gerrymander things so you have little chance of getting rid of them in 2024.

Perhaps this is the key thing to understand about Boris Johnson: really, he's less Britain's Trump, and more Britain's Victor Orban. He'll leave just enough vestigial democracy intact to make what he's doing plausibly-deniable, but he'll busily rearrange the furniture to favour himself and his friends. If he gets re-elected this December, you can expect to be seeing his face into the 2030s. The only reason I put the cut-off as early as that is that I expect the coming climate-crisis will wreak havoc with the Tories' internal coalition. (Oh you've built all your luxury millionaire mansions by the seaside? How nice for you, especially now that the sea is literally in your parlour. Umm, whoops.)

What can be done? Well, the first thing is to reiterate some discussions I've seen on Twitter recently. The TL;DR of them is that hope doesn't have to be something you feel - it can be something you do. (And that's just as well, because I'll admit that 2019 has destroyed what traces of social optimism I was clinging to. I'm dreading the bad end that's coming to us next month, but I also fully-expect it.)

So, my advice remains as it has been: on December the 12th, turn up, and vote for whoever you judge most likely to beat the Tory.

Remember, the MRP approach is fallible. "Mortal, finite, temporary" is absolutely in play here; no model is any better than the data that went into it. Or, indeed, the date when it was calculated. And at the end of the day, the only poll that genuinely-matters is the one on December the 12th, and that hasn't actually happened yet. (Though admittedly, given the storm-surge of pre-emptive grief that's flooding Twitter today, you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.)

As for the horrible mess that are our opposition parties, I'll repeat what I said in 2017: it's OK to vote for a least-worst option. You're not perjuring yourself or committing any moral sin, rather you're trying to be a grown-up. Part of the package of being an adult is making the best of bad situations.

It absolutely does suck - believe me, this is one of the most soul-destroying election campaigns I've ever seen. Every single party has clown-show'd itself. All of them have done things that are ridiculous, inept or otherwise ghastly. (Well, maybe not the Greens - I haven't heard of any specific scandals surrounding them - but their cardinal sin is that they have no plausible prospect of winning the election.) But even then, the barrel we're going to have to stare down is going and voting for them anyway.

(As a related case-in-point, one factor that seems to have helped the Tories win their unexpected 2015 majority was that a contingent of left-wing voters simply stayed at home on the day. While it's hard to find concrete statistics on, nonetheless anecdotally, this absolutely was a thing. A lot of people were demotivated by Labour's confused and incoherent campaign, left cold by all the bothering about fiscal rules, and alienated by things like the mug with "controls on immigration" on it. All of those are 100% valid criticisms. Except, except, except ... it helped an even worse party back into office. The theory of "if the choices are bad, sit it out" has been tested to destruction. It turns out that looking the other way is also a choice, and not necessarily the best one.)

I would add that there are also real questions to be asked about the utter vacuum of political strategy of people nominally on the anti-Tory side - it seems the Opposition spent the summer fixated on the minutiae of House procedures, while never stopping to ask why they were on this battlefield to begin with. Meanwhile the Tories largely-ignored Commons process, and instead sent a political appeal straight to Leave voters. It lost them a lot of individual legislative battles (and I'm not minimising their defeats - they were important!), but it put them in a good strategic place to win an election. And in the long run, it turns out that was what mattered.

It's hard not to feel bitter while thinking about the events of spring and summer. Perhaps if Jo Swinson had been less blinkered about Jeremy Corbyn, perhaps if Labour could have had the minimum sense to call a Vote of No Confidence when BoJo was vulnerable, perhaps if the collective Opposition had been able to recognise the huge wave of unharnessed political energy washing through the country during the petition back in March, perhaps if Change UK had managed to be something other than an unfunny joke, maybe if Corbyn had taken the anti-semitism problem seriously in 2018 and had actually done something instead of sitting on his hands and letting it metastasize to the point where it derailed his election campaign ... but, no. That's for some other, better timeline, not the one we live in. We seem to live in the world that resolutely and firmly chooses the wrong fork in every road. I don't know whether our timeline quite qualifies as the Bad Place, but it's certainly a place full of bad choices.

In a weird sort of way, though, this brings us back to the key theme. Whatever you might think of what's happening in this election - and goodness knows I'm as appalled as anyone else - nonetheless, your vote matters. Use it. As we're seeing, this is the ultimate limitation on their power, and the one chance we have of stopping them.

So once more, let me reiterate: turn up. Vote against the Tory. Do it as a hopeful action, even if you don't feel hopeful. If nothing else, do it so that when the bad things happen, at least you can say you tried to stop it. I wish I had something less bleak to offer here, but this is where we are.

#UK internal politics #diary of a disaster #needed to get that wail of despair out of my system really #still feeling quite despairing though

2 notes · View notes

andysouldancer · 5 years

Photo

RIGHT-WING LIES ! Everything is the EU's fault ! Understand the depth and scale of the lies and deceit of the right-wing. This is from UKIP, but the Tories and the right-wing media have made these into 'urban truths'. The right-wing have repeated and repeated so often that all our problems are due to the EU it has become accepted as fact. Here's the fact – these* are not the result of the EU ! These are due to neo-liberal economic ideology. The agenda that has been followed by the Tories ever since Thatcher. And this the economic policy supported by UKIP. UKIP are more right-wing and pro-privatisation than the Tories and of course, never once opposed any of these sell-off. Privatisation , the selling off of public assets , utilities and services is the ideology of neo-liberalism. Steel making and ship building ended because Thatcher thought we didn't need to make things ourselves (Neo-liberalism = It's cheaper to pay someone else to do it.) The Tories killed off our coal industry as an act of revenge ! Fracking is being allowed by this Tory government. The railways , privatised by the Tories – and how well has that worked ! Gas, sold by the Tories. Electric, sold by the Tories. Water, sold by the Tories. BT, sold by the Tories. Royal Mail, sold by the Tories. Our NHS ! Started by the Thatcher and Co, continued by the neo-liberals of Blair's 'new labour' and if we don't do something major soon to oppose things – these Tories will complete the destruction and then selling off of our NHS ! *Fishing – this is the only thing that can be blamed on the EU ! Sovereignty, we have been losing our sovereignty ever since Thatcher, undermining democracy by removing power from our elected institutions : councils etc. and placing it in the hands of Qangos, NGO's, individual 'Tsars' and via privatisation. Look at Fracking, the whole general public oppose it. Every council where fracking is to be carried out, opposed it and this sovereign , democracy has been overruled by the Tory central government. Attacking, corrupting and undermining the 'will of the people' and local democratic organisations. This right-wing Tory government has lost every court case it has had, where it has tried to impose fracking. It went to court to overthrow local democracy ! If you now think parliament and the house of lords needs reform ? Welcome to the band wagon. Socialists, the left-wing, have been trying to reform our political system and make it more democratic for decades ! Corrupt politicians and Lords. This is because of the neo-liberal agenda of 'elect us and leave it to us' politics that has controlled this country since the 1980's. Political involvement has been discouraged. Activism discouraged or suppressed. Democracy downplayed. The manipulation of politics rather than democracy. Look at the house of lords 'reforms' replacing the heredity peers, with selected party nominees. No elections. No democracy. None of this has anything to do with the EU. All this has happened here, in our own country, due to our own parliament and our own neo-liberal politicians !

3 notes · View notes