AIBU to be shit scared of BJ winning the next election?

[thentherewerefour]

Not sure how everyone else is doing, but I am just increasingly terrified about the idea that BJ and the likes of Jacob Rees-Morgan, Ian Duncan Smith (god they are just so disgusting ) are going to win this election. Got family in Australia and this morning it was raining ash and people literally can't breathe. The Tories are going to do nothing, zero, nada about climate change. And when I look at my kids I just don't know how we are going to survive another five years. and don't get my started about the state of the kid's school - the teachers are doing their best, but the reality is it's a shit show bc of how many cuts they have had. Friends are going canvassing for Labour and me and DH are doing our bit too - but it all just feels surreal - BJ talks shit, tells lies, and has reinvented himself as "new" when the fucker has been IN GOVT for years. Any got any ideas on how we can turn this around?

He has also kept quiet about the pattern of anti-semitism coming from Jacob Rees-Mogg ...
He has done the “Soros jibe”(this is an anti-semitic trope about the financier George Soros being deemed to be an international wheeler-dealer).

JRM referred to George Soros as “Remoaner funder-in-chief” -
"critics said the decision to single him out was a perpetuation of a common antisemitic trope."

In fact, Hungarian-US financier, George Soros was named by the BBC as the biggest individual donor of anti-Brexit campaign group 'Best for Britain' - having donated £800,000 as at June 2018. £800,000 is probably enough money to 'single you out.'

There is an update in the link;
"UPDATE 9 October 2019: Lord Dubs has now retracted his comments and apologised to Mr Rees-Mogg."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44331013
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jacob-rees-mogg-antisemitism-george-soros-lord-dubs-boris-johnson-a9142756.html

He retweeted Alternative fur Deutschland—the far-right party in Germany

He retweeted the same video clip as the Daily Express - showing Alice Weidel criticising Angela Merkel and the EU for being too hard on the UK during the Brexit negotions;

www.express.co.uk/news/world/1048855/Brexit-news-EU-UK-Germany-European-Union-Angela-Merkel

You think Diane Abbott should discuss her adult son's medical record with the media - you must be joking, surely this is not appropriate, he is entitled to privacy.

I don’t think DA should discuss her sons possible MH issues (and I do think she is singled out at times though gaff prone)

Neither should assumptions be made

having a MH issue rarely is the reason behind violent outbursts - this excuse or assumption leads to a believe that all people with certain MH diagnoses are dangerous they are not

I shouldn’t have mentioned his mental health- I thought it was common knowledge. Could we let it slide down the thread, please?

Jeez. Do any of you do any research!? Or do you just trust in every bit of propaganda you see on Facebook? The NHS is not going to be sold. The NHS is no more privatised than it was under Labour. fullfact.org/health/how-much-more-nhs-spending-private-providers/
Read the conservative manifesto, they have plenty of plans for helping the environment including steps to become carbon neutral by 2050 and investing in renewable energy.

ColourMagic Sat 07-Dec-19 13:42:26
"163 internationally renowned economists endorse Labour’s spending plans....including: David G. Blanchflower, Victoria Chick Emeritus Professor of Economics, University College London, Lord Meghnad Desai Emeritus Professor, Stephany Griffith-Jones Emeritus Professorial Fellow, Simon Wren-Lewis Emeritus Professor, Carolina Alves..."

An Emeritus professor is a retired professor of course - you have a 72 year old, a 79 year old and an 83 year old in your list.

"So it was great that I had been invited to present the case for the contribution of Marxist economics, along with Carolina Alves, the Joan Robinson fellow at Girton College, Cambridge".

And a Marxist - fab!

Jenpop234: "...The NHS is not going to be sold. The NHS is no more privatised than it was under Labour."

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'American companies and NHS Mental Health Services.'

'...in recent years a small cluster of fatcats have got their claws into Britain’s psychiatric services, exploiting the struggles of the health service to cope with surging demand.

These operators have grabbed nearly £2bn of business, providing almost one quarter of NHS mental health beds and soaking up close to half the total spend on child and adolescent mental health services.

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This means they own many NHS-funded units holding people such as teenage girls who self-harm and adults with suicidal thoughts, along with hundreds of people with autism and learning disabilities scandalously locked up due to lack of support in their local communities.' ....

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'It is a lucrative business when it costs up to £730,000 per patient a year. Bosses can pocket millions – but many frontline workers earn little more than minimum wage and the use of agency staff is routine, despite the need to develop patient relationships.'

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... 'Acadia, a Tennessee-based health giant, spent £1.3bn buying the Priory Group and now boasts of earning than £188m in just three months from British public services.

“Demand for independent sector beds has grown significantly as a result of the NHS reducing its bed capacity and increasing hospitalisation rates,” said its last annual report.

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Operating profits at Cygnet, owned by another huge US firm, have surged to £45.2m due to deals with 228 NHS purchasing bodies after it bought a rival group last year.

Another outfit called Elysium, backed by private equity through a Luxembourg firm, only launched three years ago, but is already earning revenues of £61.2m from at least 55 units.'

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But a study by the Rightful Lives campaign group has found these three firms alone own 13 of the 16 mental health settings judged “inadequate” by the Care Quality Commission watchdog, since it found some teeth after the furore over abusive detention of people with autism and learning disabilities exploded a year ago.

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Cygnet runs eight of these “inadequate” units, although its US boss is reportedly the richest chief executive in the hospital industry, who collected more than £39m in one year from pay, bonuses and stock. Priory and Cygnet also owned hospitals exposed by disturbing undercover television documentaries over the past year....'

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inews.co.uk/opinion/swathes-of-our-nhss-psychiatric-facilities-have-been-sold-to-us-firms-1329232?fbclid=IwAR0N60dkpNseRJZT9tD3tYLSZ64HUMNvoXaH_PayJ4euL0h-9x1Z7TVxY7o

"An Emeritus professor is a retired professor of course - you have a 72 year old, a 79 year old and an 83 year old in your list."

What on earth are you talking about? Are you saying they are not capable of economic analysis, after a lifetimes experience?

What on earth are you talking about? Are you saying they are not capable of economic analysis, after a lifetimes experience?

Someone up-thread mentioned Labour's policies going back to the 1970s!

The vast majority of people who work and have families and normal lives really don’t have the time to sit down after a hard day’s grind and read their way through an 80 page manifesto. We all rely on a number of different sources, including the press, gut instinct and conversations with family and friends, to make up our mind. To dismiss all everyone who does this as “not knowing what they are talking about” effectively means that you’re levelling this accusation the vast majority of the British electorate.

But that is a huge problem.

Democracy needs information. It needs an informed populace to be voting. When you don't have that, when what you have from your own words is an electorate relying on 'word of mouth' (from people as ill-informed as themselves) and press sources controlled by a very few people - can you not see how very very vulnerable that makes us all?

We know that there are lies abounding in elections generally, but I have never seen such manipulation and cynical use of lies as I have seen coming from Johnson and his allies, for the referendum onwards. He knows damned well that once a lie is printed, it spreads through word of mouth and many accept it as fact. For that reason alone I would not vote Tory. A vote for Johnson is a vote for the destruction of any chance of an informed populace, in favour of propaganda.

ColourMagic

You missed a few bits from the article...

"no party–even one led by Boris Johnson–is going to sell off the NHS when it is seen as sacred by most voters."

"Yet these two false claims came together last week when Jeremy Corbyn, desperate to regain momentum after his mauling by the BBC’s Andrew Neil, brandished 451 pages of documents from trade talks with the United States."

The 'selling off' is rampant. It's private companies taking over NHS Services, increasingly, as illustrated in the article I posted about NHS Mental Health services.

The public lose out several times over, in reduced services, lack of accountability, the employment of less qualified low wage staff. And the bidding processes are lengthy and very costly for the NHS.

'Virgin has been awarded almost £2bn worth of NHS contracts over the past five years as Richard Branson’s company has quietly become one of the UK’s leading healthcare providers, Guardian analysis has found.

In one year alone, the company’s health arm, Virgin Care, won deals potentially worth £1bn to provide services around England, making it the biggest winner among private companies bidding for NHS work over the period.

The company and its subsidiaries now hold at least 400 contracts across the public sector – ranging from healthcare in prisons to school immunisation programmes and dementia care for the elderly.

This aggressive expansion into the public sector means that around a third of the turnover for Virgin’s UK companies now appear to be from government contracts.'

'Though there is nothing untoward about the arrangements, the growth of the company, the lack of transparency over the contracts is beginning to raise concerns among campaigners.

Last year, it won a cash settlement from several NHS trusts when it took court action over a children’s services contract in Surrey, with details of the £2m payout only revealed recently in their accounts.

Sara Gorton, the head of health at the trade union Unison, said: “The company has been so keen to get a foothold in healthcare, it’s even been prepared to go to court to win contracts, moves that have cost the NHS dearly.

“While the NHS remains dangerously short of funds, taxpayers’ money shouldn’t be wasted on these dangerous experiments in privatisation.”

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www.theguardian.com/society/2018/aug/05/virgin-awarded-almost-2bn-of-nhs-contracts-in-the-past-five-years

Are we meant to take this article seriously? I think even someone not very smart could work out that it’s a propaganda piece.

That is the trouble when people get their info on Facebook

The Guardian! No surprise there then

Not only is the privatisation of the NHS rampant, it’s government policy. The 2012 National Health and Social Care Act decreed that every single contract be put out to tender. Since then 70% of contracts have gone to private providers. They operate under the NHS brand so the whole thing’s been done by stealth.

Maybe you prefer the BMA @Confusedbeetle.

www.bma.org.uk/-/media/files/pdfs/collective%20voice/influence/key%20negotiations/nhs%20funding/hidden-figures-private-care-in-the-nhs-mar17.pdf?la=en

I am getting increasingly concerned about the amout of people who are "scared" "terrified" etc. Please get a grip. We are a developed country we are not at war. Before feeling so terrified for the future please just look around you and see what goes on in other countries. You are sounding like Megan and Harry just back from Africa and winging about their lot. Can you feed your children, have access to health care and education? Yes we have loads of stuff that could and should be better, but little to be scared stiff of. Vote for labour for a little burst of over spending and see what the countries borrowing ends up doing to your lifestyle

Confusedbeetle, I'm getting sick of people like you telling me not to be worried or terrified at the thought of an even more right wing government than we have the now. Some of us do live a decent life, have a job and a house to go home to and education for our kids. Doesn't mean we are blind to the effect austerity has had on our country and we want another government in power, instead of the continuation of food banks, zero hours contracts, people sleeping on our streets... And the rest.
So keep your faux concern for us to yourself.

Lets hope your lifestyle doesn't include anything which could ever result in injuries.

Nursing Times November 2019

'Record-breaking increases in accident and emergency waiting times in England are a concerning but inevitable consequence of rising nurse shortages, leaders in the profession have warned.

New data released today by NHS England suggested more people than ever before are facing longer than recommended delays in A&E amid soaring demand.
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'In October 2019, 83.6% of people who attended A&E were admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours – the worst performance since records began in 2004. The target is 95%.

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Meanwhile, there was a 60% increase in the number of patients waiting more than 12 hours for a bed following decision to admit to hospital, from 455 in September 2019 to 726 in October 2019.

Over the same period, a 24% rise in patients waiting more than four hours for an emergency admission was recorded, from 64,921 to 80,092.

Before a bed is found, nurses and other health professionals are often forced to care for these patients on trolleys in hospital corridors.

Patricia Marquis, director of the Royal College of Nursing in England, said it was “no surprise” that patients were facing escalating delays when considering the rate of registered nurse vacancies.

The number of empty nurse posts in England’s NHS surpassed 43,000 for the first time last month.'

www.nursingtimes.net/news/hospital/worst-ever-ae-waits-no-surprise-with-nurse-vacancy-rate-14-11-2019/

We all rely on a number of different sources, including the press, gut instinct and conversations with family and friends, to make up our mind

I wouldn't quite say "all", if we're talking about folk getting their info from the press and friends, and since I'm not a big fan of fiction I confess I don't take much notice of manifestos

But that still leaves Hansard, intentions stated elsewhere, voting records, known affiliations and much more, all of which are useful pointers when making minds up

I do agree that "once a lie is printed, it spreads through word of mouth and many accept it as fact", though ... indeed it's perhaps why some of us keep linking such as FullFact to counter things like the endlessly repeated "120,000 austerity deaths"

@Jenpop234 - the Tories are going to nothing for the NHS.

ssad god yes I'm scared. I also live a decent life now and my family will probably 'be okay'.

It's the thought of living in a society which further disparages, blames and punishes the poor and vulnerable that scares the shit out of me.

We are a developed country we are not at war.

This is not a developed country for those who live at the bottom of the hierarchy. Go and live in one of the sink estates for a while, with drug dealers and dangerous men or gangs of feral teenagers on all sides, while struggling to make ends meet in a country with no employment rights, little secure employment or welfare nets and poor housing. Then come back and tell me about how wonderful it all is. For most of us the oft repeated tale about this being a rich country is simply not true.

I don't know how many deaths have been caused directly by austerity puzzled. It's going to be a very hard thing to pull out. Homelessness stats and food poverty are slightly easier to see, although all stats are manipulation and lies.