What is suddenly happening in politics???

There are still widespread calls for a general election.

I make no secret of the fact I'd like to see the tories gone. They seem to be the U turn party. Not just recently. When they took over from labour, who seemed to like borrowing and spending, they did years of austerity which really ruined a lot of people, only to more recently bin that plan off and go on a borrowing and spending spree, exactly what they criticised labour for.

But all that said, I think right now, in this precise moment in history, a general election would be a really bad idea for a number of reasons. Most obviously, the last thing we need now is more disruption. But also, can we trust ourselves to vote with our heads right now? Any election result now would be largely reactionary. I think picking a government for the next five years based purely on the utter chaos of the last few weeks would be a terrible mistake.

 

I can't ever remember half the working population being told to stay at home for 6months and the government will pay your wages before.
Is that the spending spree you mean .

 

Apparently Biden said Rashy Sanook.

 

Did anyone else see Larry the number 10 cat pooping in the border whilst everyone was waiting for Rishi to come out and deliver his speech?
It cracked me up...
Well spotted that camera man...
Larry keeping things in perspective...
Hope it gets on u tube before long,
Jenny namaste

 

That's not what I had in mind.

Furlough was a sensible decision. I'm not just saying that because I got put on it for a while. It was sensible because the alternative was mass unemployment, which in the long run would have cost the country a hell of a lot more.

I was thinking more about the claimed increase in NHS spending (quite where that money is going is another question), and the farce that is HS2 as examples.

Recently in the news, there was talk of increasing defence spending in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's increasingly Imperialistic activities, but today there's talk of defence cuts.

 

Well you could throw money at the NHS and it would just soak it up.
I'm not sure where the money goes and rarely has any increase in NHS spending had a massive noticable effect.
I do think that the extra is slowly making a difference to waiting lists, it has in my case anyway, and hospital consultants do seem to be working Saturdays.
Until they unlock bed blocking I don't think you will notice a big difference to the A&E problems.
Doctors surgeries are definitely not a big help in what is going on.

HS2 is and should be considered an investment into the future.

So do you consider an increase in defense, when there is a war in Europe, a spending spree, I don't and I hope the new bloke doesn't cut defense, if he does he won't be very popular with the Europeans and the Yanks.

 

HS2 could be considered an investment in the future. What kind of future is another question. It doesn't even reach very far up the country. They scrapped plans to take it up to Leeds I believe. It's behind schedule and massively over budget and is only expected to knock about 20 minutes off the longest journey times. To achieve these things they're closing people's businesses along the route, cutting communities in half and clearing natural forests. All this at a time when more and more people are shifting to working from home.

On the defence spending side, if it was up to me I'd massively increase defence spending. Not just on conventional kit but I'd invest in research and development in the fields of space and cyber, as well as novel projects making better use of leading edge tech. But it's not up to me, nor is it even about me. I just think it doesn't help anyone when the government hints and spending increases then spending cuts. Imagine you're the CEO of a company that supplies the defence sector, would you waste money sending your top consultants out to prepare to invest somewhere where the government constantly changes their mind, or would you look at countries with a track record of doing what they said they were going to do?

 

The single biggest thing they could do to improve the NHS would be to sort out the pension tax arrangements for doctors. The interaction between the NHS pension scheme and pension taxation policies has created a perfect storm in which the most sensible course of action for many to not lose out financially is to reduce their work or even cease working in the NHS altogether. Increased contribution rates and changes to the annual and lifetime allowances have impacted on clinicians perhaps more than any other group in the country.
I worked in the NHS for the last five years of my working life and levels of efficiency were terrible. I worked in the Estates Department responsible for the maintenance of buildings and equipment and if things in "the real world" were run as poorly a private company would go to the wall.

 

Goes into more mangement posts and consultancy fees to decide what to spend the extra on.

 

HS2 has always been a London oriented vanity project. The money would be better off improving East West connections and removing bottlenecks from the already good North South links.
If you want to come down to Exeter and beyond it's still diesel trains.

 

Regarding HS2, I have shares in one of the companies building it so it must continue, I rest my case.
But I would add, that it should be just the start of a country wide high speed rail link, and obviously going all the way to Scotland and East West as well, to build it all in one go would be impossible, you have to start somewhere, and that happened when they put the rail link into London from the Channel tunnel, but that was years ago and its never been extended past London.
The Greens are always waffling on about cutting out air travel in the future and how green rail is so let get on with it Like Europe has.

Its very reminiscent of all the old nationalised industries of the 70s.

3 people to do one persons job, but these days we also have Health and Safety so probably more like 4 now.

 

Interesting....
75 years ago we pulled out of ruling India.
And here we are, 75 years later with an Indian PM ruling us,
Jenny namaste

 

He's British.

 

Larry the cat has glued himself to the floor in protest at yet another new PM

 

It was always going to happen.
Watch this space.