Reform UK neck and neck with Labour?

[NeatDog]

Absolutely shocked to read that in a poll Reform UK are neck and neck with Labour...

About 25% polling share for Reform and Labour.

I thought Blair was the worst PM ever, but Starmer seems to be giving him a run for his money.

What specific, hard evidence do you have for your opinion on a cover-up of abuse @NeatDog by the two main political parties and the BBC? Please do share.

Of course it doesn’t make it acceptable. The article also explains why the police (or cops as it inexplicably terms them) didn’t publicise the investigation. The timeline matters because you presented it as current evidence.

The BBC really did cover it up, didn't it? To the extent that it made an award winning series about the issue in 2017. I guess @NeatDog wasn't in the UK at the time.

Actually it's even based on a canard. Labour and Reform are not level in the polls. When you take the average you get

Labour - 28
Reform - 22
Conservatives- 24

That was the polling at the start of the year. What's interesting is that we now have three main parties in polling terms. Whether this translates to actual power for Reform is the interesting question

No one can can condone people falsely claiming benefits or using them as a life style choice.

You say the Left is contemptable etc ...

But what could be worse than wrecking the UKs economy by taking debt to GDP from 65% to 98%, turning the NHS into a basket case, presiding over 2.8m people on long term sick, 25% on disability benefits, approx 350 dying needlessly, each week, due to poor AE care and not content with that, turning our roads which were once some of the best surfaced in Europe into pot holed creators...
people have died hitting potholes, cars wrecked...

It also costs our economy in the form of lost productivity due to damage and roadworks.

I've followed your posts and you rarely if ever criticise the Tories, perhaps on Truss you have but very little else.
TBF it must be v difficult being a Tory, they ve done nothing for the UK, over the last 14 years, nothing at all.

They did indeed - I don’t think the ethnic backgrounds of the perpetrators quite fit with the OP’s main line of argument though.

The BBC employed well known paedophile Jimmy Saville for decades without doing anything. The BBC are hardly going to go against their religious doctrine of "diversity is strength".

The "far right" have been warning about these grooming gangs for decades. They were ignored.

Your insurance point isn’t a good one! Men’s premiums didn’t come down, woman’s just matched men’s.

I can’t offer a solution to be honest- what about gay couples / they’re not getting anyone pregnant so perhaps under your system they get a reduction?

Yes, there was a massive cover up re: Savile by the BBC, the police and politicians. There was a national inquiry in 2014. The government failed to implement its recommendations. Sound familiar, huh?

But I am not sure how making a highly acclaimed series about grooming and sexual abuse in Rotherham is "covering up".

Totally agree on insurance. I spent some time in A&E and heard about people saying they wanted an insurance based system. This individual was diabetic and morbidly obese. She thought the government would pay her insurance so it wouldn't cost her.

If that's the standard of understanding of someone who has a huge amount to lose via a medical insurance system then you can be sure that they will vote out the NHS to stuff themselves in huge numbers.

No they haven't, sexual abuse has been reported on for many years but when children are involved, especially when publicity will lead to them being identified, the authorities will keep these things secret.

The last thing a family want whose child has been abused, is to have the press camping outside their house.

the criminals should have been deported of course but if their originating country wont take them back, what them?

We wont take Shemina Begum, why should the Syrians/Kurds have to look after her?
Or do you believe she should come back here?

And there is is - linking Jimmy Saville’s crimes and the BBC cover-up that followed to ‘diversity’…

I know that! Men should be paying their fair share for the medical bills of women bearing their children. The financial burden should not only be on women to pay for childbirth and pregnancy. What I'm saying is they should not be charging women more. Many women also don't have children. Are they getting reductions?

Oh my god it is totally standard for a victim of child abuse to be protected by anonymity so that they can get on with their lives and avoid being harassed or stigmatized or indeed further targetted by abusers.

If an adult, years later, chooses to waive this then that is up to them.

Children deserve the right to recover without their details being in public.

How exactly do they “not take them”?

we fly them there. Then we take off. Without them.

Have they? Do you have any evidence for that? They clearly don’t care much if Tommy Robinson’s attempt to collapse a trial is any indication.

The problem is that years ago people didn't get the level of benefits that are available today.

Depends which time period you pick - I spent six months on incapacity benefits around the millennium and received not far off what I would get in 2025.

The Blair/Brown government improved things greatly for long term sick and disabled folk but even they were cracking down on eligibility at the end of their government. The tories came in in 2010, froze benefits for years to devalue them and made it harder and harder to claim.

Here is a quote from GK Chesterton.

“If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.”

The problem is that years ago people didn't get the level of benefits that are available today.

That’s odd. When I was a student I was able to claim unemployment and housing benefit during vacations. When my dad retired at 62 in 1978 he could legitimately claim unemployment benefit until he was 65 and got his state pension.

The difficult truth is that these migrant workers will be supporting the payment of pensions and other benefits. Yes I know people think "I paid in" but what actually happens is that the money goes to that generation of pensioners. It isn't kept for you.

I agree that the benefits system needs reform - and we cannot sustain so many people being on them and not have migration unless we want an even lower standard of living.

There are good answers to some of that criticism, but I accept that the Tories’ performance was hardly stellar and was sometimes embarrassingly bad.

As to my posts, you haven’t been following closely enough.

One of the luxuries of supporting a party in opposition is that the government of the day is generally an easy target - since all politicians fuck up. You had that luxury for many years. Now it’s Labour’s turn to suffer the brickbats.

TBH, the thing I care most about in British politics is opposing the nonsense that left-wing politics and its proselytisers are somehow more ethical, honest, humanitarian and incorruptible than others. That’s a massive and unpleasant self-delusion of the left and I’ll go on opposing it.

You’re not refuting me. Tell me exactly why we can’t just do that? We have planes?

Nick Griffen from the BNP was warning people of grooming gangs 20 years ago.

TBH, the thing I care most about in British politics is opposing the nonsense that left-wing politics and its proselytisers are somehow more ethical, honest, humanitarian and incorruptible than others. That’s a massive and unpleasant self-delusion of the left and I’ll go on opposing it

I don't think any reasonable person would say that parties on the left are incorruptible, whilst Blair wasn't from the traditional left, i don't think anyone would say he was a paragon virtue.
He did nothing about housing, dentistry and lied or at the very least misled over Iraq.

However, if you look at the things we now take for granted, a health service, education, welfare state, employment rights, womens rights, maternity rights, health and safety at work... all came from the left of politics.

Why were unions and the Labour party set up?

Even the Open University was a Labour thing.

He was a violent thug & IF he did warn about grooming gangs, he did it. not because he cared about children but because he was a racist.

Still no answer on what Reforms policy is on X channel migration?