Westministenders: Theresa's Common People

[RedToothBrush]

She came from Oxfordshire she had a thirst for knowledge
She studied geography at Saint Hugh's College
That's where politics
Caught her eye

She told them that her husband was loaded
The press barons said "In that case have a rum and coca-cola"
She said "Fine"
And in thirty seconds time she said

I want to look like common people
I want to do whatever common people do
I want to eat like common people
I want to sleep like common people
Like you

Well what else could Fiona and Nick do
They said "We'll see what we can do"

They took her to a supermarket
I don't know why
But they had to start it somewhere
So it started there
They said pretend you've got no money
She just laughed and said
"Oh you're so funny"
They smiled "Yeah”
Well we can't see anyone else smiling in here

Are you sure you want to live like common people
You want to see whatever common people see
You want to eat like common people
You want to sleep like common people
Like me

But she didn't understand
She just smiled and held Trump’s hand

Order that benefits get the chop
Tell them all to get a job
Promise to bring back the grammar school
Pretend you don’t think them a fool
But still you'll never get it right
'Cause when you're laid in bed at night
Watching the news talking about building the wall
All have to do is call your mates to fake it all

You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
Whilst you blame it all on the EU
Because that’s all you can do

Sing along with the common people
Sing along and it might just get Brexit through
Laugh along with the common people
Laugh about leaving the EU

It’s the most stupid thing that you will do
Because you think that it is cool
You’ll call them a ‘lying foreigner’
But don’t say we didn’t warn you
You’ll regret saying we are better off out
'Cause everybody hates a benefits tourist

It doesn’t matter if you can’t do the math
With all those pockets that you grease
You’ll win the vote in Bath

You will never understand
How it feels to live your life
With no meaning or control
And with nowhere left to go
You are amazed that they exist
And wish they were all white
So you tell ‘The Big Lie’

Get THE flat above THE shop
Cut your hair and get THE job
Trick some mugs and hire some fool
Pretend you are not really cruel
But still you'll never get it right
Instead you're plotting late at night
About which ‘cockroach’ will take the fall
All have to do is call your mates to fake it all
Yeah

You'll never live like common people
You'll never do what common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
As we plan to leave the EU
Because there's nothing else left to do

But ‘moan’ about how we don’t want to leave the EU.

😱 I wouldn't have thought I was that extreme. Interesting though.

Interesting discussion on matters Scotland has drawn me back in. My own personal theory is that the moment the SNP won the Labour seats in the Central Belt it was inevitable that the rest of Scotland would swap from voting SNP / LibDem (Tartan Tory / Anyone but Labour) to voting Tory / LibDem.

I do not believe that Scottish people in general think that differently about politics but our demographics mean the result is different. There is, however, a very clear divide between the half of the population living and working in the Greater Glasgow conurbation and the rest of the country - if you please that half you will almost inevitably displease the rest.

Bigchoc I do not accept your characterisation any more than I do the SNPs. To the extent that the Scots are or ever were oppressed by the Tories, it tends to be our own home grown Tories doing the oppressing. The fact that we export them to England, America and beyond may be us sharing our wealth or our pain depending on your pov.

FWIW I have the F*ing Orange March going past the window and I need to be somewhere - I am not best pleased - I can give you pretty good odds that none of them will be voting Tory.

The political compass thing has to be off. Im economically Conservative and socially liberal. It doesn't show up.

Orange March going past the window:

They paid for brexit, though, they can do what they want now. Except in NI where they are about to get decimated, electorally.

Ugh. Marching Season . You have my sympathies.

As an alternate point of view to "SNP=Tartan Tories" (which I can't agree with as I've not come across any right wing SNP voters; might have been the case 40 years ago but I wouldn't know as I wasn't interested in them then but not today), I present you my result from the political compass questionnaire

I do agree with the Central Belt hypothesis though. lt depends on how many people believe that they can vote for the SNP until independence is achieved and then they can vote for who the hell they like (Left wing, right wing, Monster Raving Loony party ). Although I am seeing a few people saying that they'll not ever be able to vote Labour again in local authority areas where Labour has gone into coalition with the Conservatives (although Kezia has shown leadership in suspending/expelling those councillors).

I do however wonder if part of the reason for my "more extreme" result is because growing age (or wisdom or experience, depending on your viewpoint ) is that you will "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree" with more statements.

I've been thinking about healthcare a lot recently and the narrative that the NHS is unsustainable. I dug out some stats from here data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.PCAP and compared with median incomes. In the UK the healthcare spending per capita is about 30% of the median income, and countries with a comparable income (Belgium and New Zealand) spend somewhat more (around 40%).

Despite this the official narrative contends that we can't afford to pay more and in any case throwing more money at the NHS is a waste of time as it can swallow an infinite amount of money without delivering better outcomes. How about we actually put that theory to the test before assuming privatisation is the answer?

This leaves open the question of how to raise the funding. The main options seem to be taxation and insurance. Taxation has the benefit (or drawback, depending on your point of view) that you pay according to your means. I am to be convinced that insurance is anything other than a scam (I self-insure wherever possible). The only way to make money as an insurer is to insure against eventualities that will never occur and decline insurance for anything that will. It's sold to the punters as collectivising risk, but the huge number of questions you have to answer demonstrates that the risk is spread across a relatively small pool to the point that you wonder whether it's worthwhile in the end (hence why self-insurance always works out better when you can afford it, which you might be able to for a smartphone or something but probably not for healthcare).

What really doesn't work is a dual system where the private sector can dump on the public sector when things get complicated/expensive. This is the system we currently have is just like this, and makes private insurance seem like good value for money. I read that the average cost of a health insurance policy in the U.K. is around £1000 annually, whereas the NHS budget per capita is somewhat more than that. The difference is that the NHS coverage is comprehensive whereas the private schemes seem not to be. In fact as far as I could tell private schemes seem to cover broken legs and not much else.

Interesting article on Pence.
benjaminstudebaker.com/2017/05/19/mike-pence-really-could-be-worse-than-trump/

Pence's decimation of public education in his home state, seems to be uncannily similar to Gove/Tory policy for the last 7 years.

Instead he began lowering the teaching standards. Now you don’t even need an education degree to teach in Indiana–a bachelor’s degree in anything with a 3.0 GPA is good enough

True here, no degree needed to teach.

In the meantime, Indiana initiated a suite of reforms enabling teachers and schools to be judged based on standardized test scores. Schools that underperform would be sanctioned by the state, and the funds they were denied were to be funnelled into private voucher programs.

True here, 'failing' schools are closed and gifted to private academy chains.

I am looking forward to many more women's marches.
( He's also anti choice, anti LGBT rights and you know he calls his wife 'mother' )

Just because Govey boy has had a few lucrative deals with that lot, and Leave funding came from so many crackers, doesn't mean that they are deliberately shutting down state education here, does it?

I quite like the french system which is a mix of both national and private.
The state covers a minus amount (e.g. GP fees are set to certain level and you will be reimbursed up to that. same with medicines, some are considered more like comfort stuff so you need to pay all or some of the cost for them whereas others are necessary, such as antibiotics, and are reimbursed fully).
On the rope of that you can take what is basically an insurrance that will cover all or some of the cost not covered by the state.

What I am not convinced about is a system like the US which is fully private because we know that it
1- pushes prices up re cost of treatments and consultations
2- pushes doctors to order tests and treatments that aren't always necessary
3- and therefore pushes the prices up (and also the benefits of said insurrance companies but is that fair??)

I've done the test too.
I would imagine that TM will onnthe top right hand corner (authoritarian and right, i think more authoritarian and right than Tatcher was).
I am at about the opposite of that (left and libertarian)

No wonder her politics are sending me over the edge!

'Because of the success of the £350m Big Lie, Tory politicians now feel free to make any promise without feeling a matching pressure to keep it.'

Interesting article/editorial. Alastair Campbell also comments on the near invisibility of many of the Tory big guns. TM trying to 'exterminate... internal contrary forces...'

But I wonder how long can she quell internal dissent? It will boil over sometime. Probably when Brexit starts going wrong and they all want to claim it wasn't their idea.

www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/theresa-may-s-brexit-at-any-cost-means-sending-the-nhs-over-a-cliff-1-5026113

woman I agree about education.
Which then leaves parents like myself wondering about how much tutoring/other education channels they should use to support their dcs.
We already know that the dcs will NOT go to Uni here. Both because of the costs but also because I really believe they would do very well with experiencing something different education wise than what we have here.
I also have being woneing a lot about private education. Butvthat wouod be possible if my parents were laying for it and I'm relunctant to ask them.

I'm an LBC addict and have had them on almost constantly over the last few days. I'm really struck by the pretty much universally negative reaction to the Tory manifesto (including lots of commentary from people who've voted Tory consistently in the past, or so they say.) Even the presenters have been commenting on it.

That said I am holding out no hope against a Tory landslide because I can't take another long dark Brexit/Trump night of the soul.

This leaves open the question of how to raise the funding

It's not as simple as tax vs insurance though, as a cursory glance at any European social insurance model would tell you.

With regard to social insurance in Europe, I can't speak more widely than France, but for those who are interested, here is how it works:

• everyone pays a % of income for membership of the state health insurance scheme, which is deduced at source for salaried employees (their employers also make a contribution). For the self-employed and company owners, this payment is made quarterly based on annual income declarations. The % on my payslip is 12.9% but I don't pay all of this; for my self-employed husband it is 8%.

• most people have a "top up" insurance, either via their employer (it is obligatory for employers to offer this and to part-fund it) or subscribed privately. For those on low incomes, this top-up insurance is provided by the state.

• the state health insurance scheme typically pays 70% of treatment and drug costs, which some exceptions (100% for longer hospital stays and if you have a serious chronic illness; less for treatments which are considered cosmetic or of unproven benefit)

• the remaining cost of treatment is covered by top-up insurance, which may pay all or part of the "co-pay" depending on the treatment and your insurance contract. So almost everyone has 100% coverage for necessary medication and hospital stays, but things like dental and optical care may or may not be fully reimbursed. My top up insurance via my employer costs about €235 a month of which I pay around €60; this covers all my family and as it is a very generous insurance scheme I pay nothing at all for health care (I am about to have a dental implant which will be fully covered, as are my very short-sighted husband's expensive varifocal glasses and contact lenses).

• the system has a surprising amount of private sector involvement, but this is heavily regulated, and private doctors who are contracted to the state system operate to an agreed scale of charges (which they can exceed in some cases, but the state system will only reimburse based on the official price for that treatment).

• the private top-up insurance is heavily regulated and very integrated with the state system, so that reimbursement is usually automatic.

• the poorest people (who have the state-funded top up insurance) do not have to pay upfront for treatment, which is free at the point of use; the rest of us pay upfront but reimbirsement usually occurs within days

• everyone has a healthcare card with a chip which transmits the data on the treatment to the state healthcare organisation AND to your top-up insurer, so in most cases there is no form filling or claim to be processed, everything is done electronically.

We have excellent healthcare, but at a cost (the French spend significantly more per capita on healthcare, but this is true of all the best European social insurance schemes; it is the UK that is the outlier in terms of health spending per capita). The system is fundamentally inefficient in the sense that insurance = more bureaucracy and more paperwork (or the electronic equivalent) and there is some incentive for unnecessary treatment to be given. I cannot believe that if the NHS were funded properly it would not once again be able to compete with the best European systems, because the NHS model is less bureaucratic and fundamentally much better at ensuring that treatment is only given when medically necessary.

However, this doesn't mean that all health-care has to be supplied by public organisations. It is possible to integrate the private sector into an efficient healthcare model. For example, in France, blood tests etc are usually done by the private sector - a doctor orders a blood test, and the individual takes the prescription to a local lab which takes blood and tests it and is reimbursed by the state for its work. The result is better access for patients (even my small town has a local lab), quicker turnaround and lower costs.

I think the methodology of that test is flawed conflating behaviourist models with political ones.

It worries me that so many young people are using these models to decide on how to vote. Having never seen their parents actually take part in real political actions in real life, and not having done so themselves, they are unable to understand how Real Politik works. Bans on trade union activity, work and school organisation, online monitoring obviously are not accidental, here in Britain.

It takes all sorts to make a successful political movement. Look at the motley crews that were anti apartheid, or pro peace in NI.

Motley crews are what makes them successful.

Yes hilbo, I don't think I can take another early morning news shock, so I'm expecting the worst, and getting mentally ready for a long fight afterwards towards regaining national sanity.

It would be good to have a women's march up and ready to go on June 10th, with strike supports for the nurses' action over the summer.

I think there will be mass industrial action in NHS, schools and rail networks from June onwards.

And then the food situation, post EU talks collapse..........................

Hopefully we will be linking up with human rights organisations across the EU27, as has been the case with Barnier's steadfast support for GFI and EU nationals.

I think it's also worth mentioning that in France GP or specialists are not employed by the state. They are all self employed which means that yu canchose who you are seeing. A GP that isn't good will nit have any patients (and I've seen some who are struggling because of that!).
They dohave to still abide by some rules so they do have to work some weekends and nights on a rotation basis (for which they are paid more, covered by the state). That means there is access to a GP at all time.

There are also other very good system for health care, such as the one in Singapore.
It is ranked as the most efficient in the world and also one of the best.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Singapore

Worth noting that
1- care home costs can now be included in the scheme ...
2- patients can chose whonto spend their money. So they might choose to spend money on acupuncture rather than deluges effort pain relief. Or go and see a nutritionist rather than taking tablets to control type 2 diabetes.
3- because there is a pot for each person, there is also a big incentive to actually look after yourself rather than expecting the state to pick up the pieces.

think it's also worth mentioning that in France GP or specialists are not employed by the state.

Neither are GPs in the UK. They contract to the NHS, as French GPs are contracted to the sécu ("conventionné").

They are all self employed which means that yu canchose who you are seeing

This isn't true any more as in France you now have to see your registered GP except under specific circumstances - nowadays everything has to go through your medecin traitant unless you want to pay for it yourself. (And you can also choose your GP in the UK). They also don't do nights any more, the days of night visits by your GP are mostly over, you phone a central number and usually get referred to a hospital or the duty pharmacy. It's not really that different in practice to the UK, except that it's better funded so it is almost always possible to see someone quickly. The last two times we used the emergency line were for a urinary tract infection in a child on a Sunday (we were referred to a GP at the local hospital and were seen very quickly) and a very heavy nosebleed on Xmas day, for which we were sent to the duty pharmacy.

ge2017.gritdigital.co.uk/#2017-opinion-poll

Don't know if this link will work as it's on Facebook

That is indeed the only way Hester. Save energy for what is coming. At the Brexit convention I heard Carole Cadwalldr and others discuss the impact of big data and overseas money on the Brexit result and the perilous state of democracy here which the panel seemed to feel was much more worrying than in the US. I fear the fight back will be a long and hard one.

Bigchoc My extremely expensive treatment for Breast Cancer, two lots of surgery, six months of chemo (£36000 alone) and the ongoing checks and tests over ten years was private under a company scheme, we now pay for that policy ourselves and it includes coverage in the event of a recurrence of Cancer, and my DHs existing conditions. It costs £350 a month.

It is not fair to say that they don't cover more than a broken leg. However I suspect my treatment at a NHS hospital that was above the median for standards of care like the specialist one my Consultant practises in, would have been more or less the same but without the luxury of a nice room and seeing the Consultant himself at each stage. He certainly does not feel that my chances would have been less had I been treated on the NHS. However it is insurance against the failures in standards of care I have heard about in some hospitals, including in Mrs May's own constituency. I am also in London which has specialist private provision for Cancer Care whereas I doubt that most private hospitals are fully rigged up for that provision, especially in terms of the provision of psychological support and complementary therapies.

It was also a struggle at every stage with the clerical processes which are just not rigged up for serious and chronic illness so that I was constantly ignorantly questioned about the need for tests that were related to the greater risks the drugs I was taking and early menopause exposed me to eg for endometrial Cancer and Osteoporosis. At one stage the insurance company decided to have a face off with Consultants over the level of my fees and I was told I had to switch to someone cheaper, perhaps one offering a BOGOF . In all these battles I had the leverage of the company as a major customer to use but it was irritating, especially at times when I had more than enough to deal with already, and I had to deal with a lot of stupidity and resistance to paying out.

Blue The Singapore healthcare system is not free at the point of use. Treatment is subsidised but the costs to the patient for long term conditions can mount up. The subsidies are raised via a workplace scheme, medisave, though the benefits extend to the extended family. Those who can afford it have private insurance and the private sector is much more developed as a full service offering than here. In common with other Asian systems the bulk of the nursing, and the provision of food etc falls to the family.