to loathe Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories more than UKIP?

[rootypig]

They have let this country down so badly. And now we all have to reap what they've sown.

Nonsense. I haven't called you any names. There is plenty of room for disagreement here, but you haven't come to the discussion in good faith.

I don't understand your last post. It's a pool of un- and under-employed that disciplines wages; to that I would add the various 'soft' factors that describe the precariousness of employment.

Where have I said I'm warming to Ed bloody Miliband?!

That immigration is a problem is far from the 'bleeding obvious'.

Though this thread WAS about understanding why UKIP exists.

Seems I'm falling between two stools

rooty so if an american drug company discovered a cancer cure, you would not buy it for NHS patients as it was not owned by the british taxpayer?

also, I am not talking about ownership. The NHS owns all its ambulances, but does not own the comany that makes them, so uses private provision.

Also the Labour government in 1951 introduced prescription charges, optician charges and dentist charges

Wet August It's me who admits to warming to Ed, not rootypig who definitely hasn't thawed!
She's been consistent and so, I think, have I.

Labour didn't invent PFIs. The first one I can remember was the Channel Tunnel so blame Mrs T.

Well I think I'm blaming all of them but point taken! I'll read up.

I care so much more about Labour though. I voted for those governments. I was a member of the party.

Well you're right to spread the blame for PFIs but maybe it's local councils you should be having a pop at rather than national parties.

As I understand it many local councils of all stripes have entered into a PFI in order to fund a school building programme or the like. It seems like a brilliant idea but maybe there's a small print clause that ties them into a 50 year maintenance contract with the private consortium and this maintenance clause will actually cost millions.
The Councillors blame council officers. The officers in question maybe see the shit about to hit the fan and apply for jobs in other authorities or take retirement with a very nice enhanced package at council tax payers' expense.
DeLoites or some other accountancy firm is then paid millions to investigate what went wrong and the council then pays a private recruiting agency another huge fee to replace the officers who have been sacked.

I don't know how it works in the NHS but I guess individual HCTs have done the same.
These maintenance contracts of course then mean that cleaners and caterers are no longer responsible to a headteacher or a matron resulting in poor performance and very little monitoring.

The above scenario is good reason to not plunge blindly into devolving more powers to local bodies - but that's another debate.

I should not have used the word 'sacked'. They are not sacked. They find other outlets for their talents.

chiliplant, I have just read this.

UKIP are against including the NHS in TTIP.

Let's see if the Labour progressives have the courage to go against their corporate masters.

"A simple examination of the issues surrounding the protection of the NHS lays bare the dangers to Labour from UKIP. At its conference in late September, UKIP made it quite clear – the party is to work with the trade union Unite in opposing the inclusion of the NHS in TTIP (the secretive proposed transatlantic trade agreement). This was not some weasel worded statement which you expect from the main parties about ‘working with partners and stakeholders to ensure the best outcome for the NHS’ etc. It was a noisy and passionate defence of the NHS, by a party whose membership and voters are among the NHS’ strongest supporters. And an unusual commitment to support the campaign of another organisation, with all that that implies and carries by way of dangers.

This has wrong-footed the political class and the partisan commentators to such a degree that they have responded yet again with a patronising and inept failure to understand the nature of UKIP and the degree to which the party membership genuinely believes in such a stance, and how it has always been inevitable that a big part of its programme would encompass support for measures which might be described as left wing. They have all had plenty of warning."

www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/damian-hockney/labour-mp-defecting-to-ukip

"You see no thought given to the shades of grey and intriguing possibilities of UKIP in the partisan press commentary, in the few places where it was even mentioned. The personalised attack on the UKIP spokesperson Louise Bours in this piece sounds like the comment of a metropolitan elitist who really wanted to say “there was this ghastly LOUD regional woman who had the temerity to get up and talk about this. I mean, the cheek. She’s not even a member of the club”.
...
Interestingly, it is in the US media where the matter has really been reported in any way, and one line has appeared over and over again in much of the TV commentary I have seen while in the US – speaking of Vince Cable who has defended TTIP, UKIP’s Bours said:

"Personally I am inclined to believe health professionals on this issue more than the former Chief Economist of a huge multi-national corporation, who is used to putting profit before health."
...
David Cameron made the same strategic error when he casually defamed anyone who voted UKIP in a not-too-bright claim that they were ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’, and then again when commentator Matthew Parris suggested, during the by-election campaign in a now notorious article in the Times, that “The Tories should turn their backs on Clacton’.

By now, almost everyone in the UK knows a friend who votes, or has voted, UKIP. Almost without fail, they know them not to be what the Westminster smear machines claim them to be. It is counterproductive, therefore, to carry on smearing."

www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/damian-hockney/labour-mp-defecting-to-ukip

"So today Louise Bours, Ukip’s health spokeswoman, adopted the demeanour of a Pentecostal preacher, addressing her party conference at such a high volume that MPs gathered in the House of Commons chamber could probably hear her as she pledged to work with Unite to oppose the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. She said she had received a letter from Len McCluskey outlining his concerns about the agreement, and replied:

‘UKIP WILL FIGHT ALONGSIDE YOU TO ENSURE THE NHS IS EXCLUDED FROM TTIP.’

This was an explicit attempt to quash Labour attacks on Ukip as a party that wants to restrict access to the health service. Bours also told the conference that ‘UKIP WILL ENSURE THAT THE NHS REMAINS FREE AT THE POINT OF ACCESS’ and attacked Labour and Tory ministers alike for failing on the NHS as she unveiled a raft of policies designed to address the ‘too posh to wash’ culture."

blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/09/louise-bours-shouty-sermon-on-the-nhs-at-ukips-conference/

I doubt that Labour will exclude the NHS from TTIP because everyone knows that Labour are puppets, everyone knows that Labour are not on the side of the people. That is why Labour voters are starting to abandon Labour, just as lots of Tories have abandoned the Tory puppets too.