Reform aren't a proper political party - why are we pretending they are?

[Slightyamusedandsilly]

Farage isn't a real political leader. He's a hype 'em up, sound bite merchant. When he was an MEP he rarely bothered to attend. He just wants the kudos without any desire or ability to do the actual work.

The councils run by them are chaos, having increased council tax massively despite promises to the contrary.

Reform is just the next iteration of the National Front, BNP, English Defence League. Farage is no better than Nick Griffin.

Why do people keep talking about selling the NHS? Who on earth would be able to buy such an expensive and complex service? It must cost many billions a day.

I don’t believe all this rhetoric about Reform. Farage didn’t say he’d get rid of the NHS, he said he’d have some sort of health insurance. Going alongside the NHS.

Nobody will need to get a cheque book out to pay for treatment.

NHS patients are sometimessent to private hospitals for operations, they don’t pay the private health provider for their care.

Admittedly I did think Farage is a good speaker and talked sense. I find some of what he says hard to argue with.

BUT- I’ve read some of the comments on here and agree with many. Alot of Reforms answers to our problems are fantasy.

Immigration- yes this can be controlled with the will of a government that’s willing to do it. Reform would be able to reasonably control legal migration. But the boats?

When migrants turn up on the shores of Kent how can you physically send them all
back? Send them where ? They deny their nationality.

France ? Maybe, but how ? Would France even take everyone back ? Where would France put them? What if France refused?

Farage has said army camps. Ok there are a few empty military bases. But not many and how many would they take? A few hundred?

Immigration centres? We have a few already but they would take years to build, let alone get planning permission for.

public services. They’ve already said they’d make huge cuts to public services. We’ve just seen what 18 years of austerity has done. And more to come ?

We need sensible centre party politicians back.

The thing is, Reform will have a large voting base of people over 60. Many of these people will be retired, or financially set up. They won’t care about the effects of Refoms policies because it won’t affect them too
much.

There are millions of older people. And many will vote Reform.

Rather have a boring , stable PM.

John Major wasn’t entertaining but we were quite stable with his as PM. Different times though

Hmmm....

There's a huge amount of money in the NHS if you turn it from a service that's free at the point of charge to a paid for, profit making service.
The problem with privatising it or even moving away from a free at point of use service is that there is no way you could do that without it costing a lot more. Like you said it is expensive and complex to run from the public purse so if you privatise it you have that expense plus the need to make a profit on top.
The US health service is immensely profitable at many levels. For drug companies, insurance providers, lawyers. There's lots and lots of money to be made. It's just it would cost the end user more (in terms of insurance fees or out of pocket pay) than the average person pays in taxes to the NHS. The drugs companies alone would love to be able to negotiate better "deals" on medicines. Currently the NHS has huge collective bargaining power so keeps costs down.
Plus the fact it's such a large centralised system means there's a lot of valuable data that's worth a lot to insurance companies.

I agree "selling it" isn't quite the right word. But it's more emotive than privatising it. Really it would be giving it away for free.

I’m not a Reform supporter and I think Farage is a spiv, but your comment is palpable nonsense. They are a registered political party with MPs, councillors, a party structure etc. Not liking them doesn’t change that. In a democracy you get a choice over who you vote for, so don’t vote for them.

The Greens would equally be a disaster. They literally have no policies other than tax the rich people.
Thats it. Tax rich people. And what else ? Nothing!

The Greens would probably last a few months before a financial disaster would happen , ultimately leading for a new government having to come in.

I think the NHS is actually more efficient than a partially privatised system would be or one that required health insurance. As then in addition to the current admin costs, you have all the admin costs associated with charging insurance companies and insurance companies admin costs assessing claims and processing customers and advertising for customers. It's several extra layers which not only need to be coated for but which need to make a profit.

The people saying "the NHS isn't sustainable as it is" never articulate exactly how moving to an insurance system would make it more sustainable. Either it's because those that can't pay don't get treatment. Or you subsidise those that can't pay and so it all costs everyone more on average than now. Especially as most of the costs are for older people/pensioners and they would need some kind of exemption on paying OR be expected to sell their houses to pay for medical costs the way they are expected to pay for care homes now. Which would not go down well...

Technically aren't they a company?

They have or until recently they had the same company structure as the Lib Dems. Completely legal. I read they were changing it but no idea if they have yet. Charities are companies too.

I’m no expert but most European countries seem to have less of a problem with shortages and rationing of treatment. You start cancer treatment as soon as you are diagnosed. You don’t have to wait a week for your case to be reviewed, then a fortnight for a consent appointment, then two weeks to start treatment.

This isn't true. They have an extensive manifesto, which covers everything from infrastructure to justice and international relations.

The problem is that it reads like it was written as a GCSE Politics project.

It’s not his biggest fault though, it was even sold in as a plus. It’s the rest that get the ratings down for him.

You’re joking!

It was a central point in the Supreme Court decision in the For Women Scotland case that the Equality Act has to be applied equally between the specified protected characteristics - and by implication, it hasn’t always been.
In other words the rights of those holding the protected characteristic of gender reassignment ( nb not gender identity) do not take priority over those holding other protected characteristics such as sex. And sex must be the intended protected characteristic not gender because the Act wouldn’t make sense otherwise - not to mention other legislation eg Abortion Act.

Oh, it's all about the trans for you. Silly me, thinking you cared about race, pregnancy, disability and the like.

Fortunately even FWS know it’s for women, as in their name. They did well to speak up for women, not men.

Labour were the very first party to start selling it off. A quick google will confirm this

I know about Germany and the Netherlands.
The system works well, but it costs quite a bit more per head. The NHS is actually better value for money in terms of what you pay V what you get. In about 2014 the NHS was leading on most metrics over EU countries but cost less. Its gone down a bit since but it isn't at the bottom.

In personal experience I've had treatment in the Netherlands for broken bones/one cancer scare and called ambulances for people. It works.... fine. I wouldn't say the hospitals are super swanky/better than the NHS treatment I received which was also... fine. I know the NHS has issues but at the user end I don't notice much difference between it and the Netherlands. There have been scandals there about people waiting for this like cancer treatment or MH care although probably it is faster than the UK on average. But the big thing seems to be getting symptoms taken seriously without initial brush of by GPs "take some paracetamol and drink some water and come back in 2 weeks of you are not better or dead" but that's cultural not a money thing. And GP appointments are very strictly 15 minutes and can be quite brief. I don't think they are better at picking up issues than UK GPs. One thing they are better at is moving elderly people out of hospitals to better accomodation. Thats more to do with how their social care system is structured than health insurance.

And there are exactly the same debates going on there about waiting lists being longer than they used to/GP appointments. And the fact that the aging population means either people will have to pay more in the future or receive less care. (And the same resistance to paying more.)

The insurance system model works well in the EU but it isn't a silver bullet for efficiency savings. I don't want to pretend the NHS is all fine. The waiting list issue for surgeries and cancer treatment is really serious and has lots of knock on effects. It needs solving. But I don't think introducing more layers of beurocracy would help unless you also spent a lot more. In which case why not just spend a lot more.

But, if you got rid of the Equality Act there would be no Supreme Court decision. There would have been no recourse. It took a lot to get to the Supreme Court stage and that decision was significant and really important for women's rights going forwards. What a waste of everyone's time, money, effort to negate that decision and effort by scrapping the whole thing.

People break the law sometimes. People misapply the law. That doesn't mean that laws shouldn't exist.

Recognising that there were flaws in how the Equality Act was interpreted and thinking that it is a good thing that the Supreme Court has clarified that all protected characteristics are on an equal footing doesn’t mean that I think the Act should be repealed!! I was addressing the poster who seemed surprised that someone else had said there were flaws!!

I never said current interpretation of the Equality Act is perfect, but ditching it wholesale for fear of trans rights is ridiculous. Anyone who trusts Reform to uphold the rights of women, workers and disabled people and protect them from discrimination is shockingly naive.

I just cannot see why you are so het up about something that hasn't happened and couldn't happen until 2029 anyway and that Reform haven't even said.

And yet not het up about the authoritarian nature of the current government taking away our democratic rights of all of us which has actually is happening.

Sorry, what democratic rights is our current government taking away?

Fair dos! I was more responding with the overall theme of the thread in mind (which is about Reform doing away with it potentially). I think that you only tend to see the flaws in things or the times when the law is broken because that's the only time it goes to court. Just like murder trials only happen when someone dies. It doesn't mean that the laws against homicide are causing murders. Getting rid of the equality act and employment legislation would solve a lot of problems in the same way making homicide legal would mean murder would stop happening.

I was pleased to see that the Monster Raving Loony Party is fielding a candidate (Sir Oink-a-Lot 🐖) for the Gorton and Denton by-election.

I'm just a bit disappointed that I am not able to vote there. 😒

Trial by jury
Equality under the law
Policing without fear or favour
Cancelling elections (luckily Reform prevented Labour from doing that one)

Currently there is also apparently a case where Labour Together pursued a vendetta against journalists correctly reporting dodgy practices by the Labour Party.

Thats just off the top of my head.