If this doesn't wake people up to the vile person Farage is ....

Plenty of Tories wouldn't vote Reform. If Reform has momentum, why is its polling going the wrong way just now?

Fascinating hysterics…

Reform don’t care about much, it seems. That’s the problem. Farage can be bought. He’s selling this country out to Russia.

He’s the only political leader who has shares in a news entertainment propaganda channel and presents it. The whole operation makes a fucking mockery of our democracy.

Normally, party members elect a leader and party members get a say what what goes on in the party. They don’t do that with reform because reform is a limited company and Farage is the boss, yet talks about democracy constantly

Oh, and which other party do you think is profiting from £350 football shirts? 😂 They are a complete joke.

Disagree - reform have the momentum and the right wing vote (ref + cons) is still substantial. About time we had a proper right wing party.

I think we all know hardcore Reform supporters won't care. But it does prove the (pathetic) measure of the man and won't win him any new voters. Some less zealous supporters might even drift away.

A lot of his hardcore voters do seem pissed off about Jenrick and Zahawi. I don't think they'll welcome the Labour defector Farage is promising us either.

It’s not that, I’m just not sure that this is the ‘gotcha’ you think it is for farage. Reform voters won’t care. I don’t care. It won’t resonate with the polls.

Yes, it is. I was starting to think we’d have nothing to agree on, but it is desperate that Farage did that. It’s good that there are some things so over the line that we can all agree on them.

Truth hurts, does it?

Not fake. Farage has admitted it happened (and downplayed it).

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/nigel-farage-reform-lostprophets-ian-watkins-cameo-b1266812.html

Desperate stuff??

Farage wants to be the PM of the UK.... he has no standards and no team around him to stop being an idiot.

Hopefully at least some Reform voters aren't as blinkered as you.

😂😂😂😂

You may not agree with the man (which is fair enough) but by god is your post desperate stuff.

It isn’t fake news, it happened, and although it may have been a prank, the point is it shows just what he’s willing to say for £98 without checking. He’s also a liar. He said in the video that he and Ian Watkins were in contact with each other, so either he’s lying or he was in contact with a paedophile. Not a great look 😂

Imagine what else he’d say for the right price. The reason that he’s doing so well is people dismiss things as easily as you just have without putting much effort into thinking about what the underlying issues actually are.

I wouldn’t vote reform, but the other parties are hopeless as well. The link is fake news anyway.

Perfectly chilled thanks. Funny how most of us manage to avoid being pranked into supporting paedophilia.

Real terms funding has not been cut. It increased though every year of the coalition government (albeit, sometimes by very little), when pretty much everything else was being cut strongly. The first real-terms cut since 1997 came after Covid when a lot of emergency funding reduced.

The issue here is demographics. Healthcare needs way more than real-terms increase to account for people's longer lives, aging population, and increased expectations.

Our political system has shown itself unwilling to meet that through taxation (under either main party). Why? Because the people won't vote for it.

Transitioning to more of an insurance-based model opens up a whole new funding stream from people who will vote against a party promising to raise taxes significantly, but are happy to pay more for their own healthcare, taking pressure off the public-financed part.

Other Western insurance-based models rank extremely well. The two countries that often rank worst are the UK and US, mainly (I think) because minds are closed in both places about better ways to run their systems.

As for the profit bit: we rely on a profit-driven system to feed us, and would die in weeks if it stopped. Unless you think a nationalised food production and distribution system would be better and cheaper, I think it's worth examining the assumption that a mixed system with significantly more private involvement couldn't improve healthcare. It works well in dozens of countries. The US is the outlier and we don't have to pick them as our model.

Or, some might say that there is no conspiracy and the reality is that as a proportion of state spending, the nhs has hit a terminal tipping point where it’s % of national spending can’t practically get any bigger

I worked in NHS as a staff nurse in the 80s and it worked pretty well back then. Not perfect, but nowhere near the shit show it is now. The NHS is a money pit. There has been billions invested in the NHS over the last few decades with little to no improvement to show for it.

The issue is that NHS funding in real terms hasn't increased. Funding hasn't kept up with inflation and particularly under the Tories real term funding dropped. Some might say this was in preparation for convincing people the NHS doesn't work and needs to be privatised.

How anyone thinks a private set up that covers all the needs of the NHS would work is beyond me. A private set up, by nature of being private, has to make a profit. Money has to go to the owners. They're not doing it for the good of their health!

Obviously the change would happen in stages to allow normal service to continue whilst ongoing. Like when most changes are implemented to services. And when Thatcher was in power, the NHS was good - absolutely no comparison to what it is now. My recent experience of the NHS indicates things aren’t improving at all. BIL - we rang on Monday last week at 5pm for an ambulance. He has COPD and was struggling to breathe. Ambulance showed up at 11pm. He was then in A&E until midday the next day waiting for a bed. Turns out he has pneumonia. No apology. No explanation. Probably because this is now the norm. I worked in NHS as a staff nurse in the 80s and it worked pretty well back then. Not perfect, but nowhere near the shit show it is now. The NHS is a money pit. There has been billions invested in the NHS over the last few decades with little to no improvement to show for it.

So whilst the NHS is being "dismantled" who and how would the millions that need medical treatment daily, get it?

This is why the NHS cannot be dismantled and re built.

The real motive for the 'right, is to get rid of the last but one of what they think is state interference in peoples lives.

Thatcher & Joseph were keen to this in the 80's, over ruled by more moderate cabinet voices.

Once is NHS is privatised, they'd move onto state education.

My DD works in the NHS, additional funding provided since the NI increases, have meant her dept waiting lists have come down from 22 weeks, to 2 weeks... thats for people who have suffered strokes.

NHS doesn't work because of decades of under funding, staff equipment and building - see RAAC in uk hospitals, held up with wood and prop's.

I think you’re talking to the wrong person. I don’t have any bands in Europe. But thank you for your thoughts anyway. I don’t think there’s such a thing as ‘Brexit forms’ either. Hope you feel better soon.

Surprised you have time for mumsnet given all those pesky post Brexit forms you need to fill in as you take forward your vitally (vitally) important work moving bands around Europe.

Yes but do the policies they have actually come into effect? A stronger military "we will spend over 2.5% of gdp on defence" well guess what the royal navy somehow has a 27 billion pound black hole in its budgets. They are full of shit, non of the policies have worked and any that sound nice like more police they cant even do. Its like me saying to everyone ill make you all rich, it only takes one smart person to ask the question of how, and I wouldn't have an answer. This is how politically dumb some people are, they dont ask how.

How? Explain to me why the other options we have are better. At the minute is reform led by a former buisness man or the greens who are led by a communist who used to hypnotise idiots into thinking he could make their tits bigger. 1. When has communism ever worked? 2. What do you think a hypnotist does for a job? They lie 3. Are you going to be the idiot who falls for them lies? You fell for labour and the Conservative lies. The important bit isn't listening to what they will do but how they will do it. Labour, Conservatives and Green have said what they will do, not how they will do it. Reform said how they will do it.

It really isn't. Hth