UK General Election 2015

Tafdolphin wrote:So, literally no one's going to answer my question? Eight countered my tax assertion, or tried (see Skarjo's reply at the top of this page) but it seems not a single Tory voter here can, or will, tell me why they voted for the right except "Labour are gooseberry fool."

Also, happy Monday everyone!

http://huffpost.com/uk/entry/5925540

Daily Express And Mail Celebrate The End Of Human Rights, A Horrified Twitter Despairs

Two of Britain's tabloids have enthusiastically responded to Tory plans to scrap the Human Rights Act and renegotiate the terms of our human rights agreement with Strasbourg.

The party has announced a manifesto commitment to scrap the Human Rights Act introduced by Labour in 1998 to enshrine the European Convention on Human Rights in domestic law, laws first set up in the 1950s in the wake of the Second World War to ensure such atrocities never reoccured in Europe.

The move would bleakly leave us standing alone with Belarus and Kazakhstan - the only other countries in Europe that have chosen to forsake similar laws. Belarus "suppresses virtually all forms of dissent and uses restrictive legislation and abusive practices to impede freedoms of association and assembly", while in Kazakhstan freedom of assembly is strictly controlled and a restrictive law on religious freedoms remains in force, according to Human Rights Watch.

Whereas it is often recognised that human rights are intrinsic in the preservation of equal rights and are the very foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, The Daily Mail and The Express have dismissed them as a "farce" and "madness" - focusing instead on cases where "criminals have made a mockery of justice." Amnesty International’s UK Legal Adviser Rachel Logan told the Huffington Post UK that such media coverage "needs to stop." “There is indeed a lot of madness and hysteria surrounding the discussion of human rights and that needs to stop. "It’s a shame that scaremongering and untruths surrounding the Human Rights Act have tarnished what is an essential piece of law for protecting and defending all of our rights.”

Tomous wrote:The fox hunting thing is shocking, it really is.

Tafdolphin wrote:So, literally no one's going to answer my question? Eight countered my tax assertion, or tried (see Skarjo's reply at the top of this page) but it seems not a single Tory voter here can, or will, tell me why they voted for the right except "Labour are gooseberry fool."

Also, happy Monday everyone!

http://m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/5925540

Daily Express And Mail Celebrate The End Of Human Rights, A Horrified Twitter Despairs

Two of Britain's tabloids have enthusiastically responded to Tory plans to scrap the Human Rights Act and renegotiate the terms of our human rights agreement with Strasbourg.

The party has announced a manifesto commitment to scrap the Human Rights Act introduced by Labour in 1998 to enshrine the European Convention on Human Rights in domestic law, laws first set up in the 1950s in the wake of the Second World War to ensure such atrocities never reoccured in Europe.

The move would bleakly leave us standing alone with Belarus and Kazakhstan - the only other countries in Europe that have chosen to forsake similar laws. Belarus "suppresses virtually all forms of dissent and uses restrictive legislation and abusive practices to impede freedoms of association and assembly", while in Kazakhstan freedom of assembly is strictly controlled and a restrictive law on religious freedoms remains in force, according to Human Rights Watch.

Whereas it is often recognised that human rights are intrinsic in the preservation of equal rights and are the very foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, The Daily Mail and The Express have dismissed them as a "farce" and "madness" - focusing instead on cases where "criminals have made a mockery of justice." Amnesty International’s UK Legal Adviser Rachel Logan told the Huffington Post UK that such media coverage "needs to stop." “There is indeed a lot of madness and hysteria surrounding the discussion of human rights and that needs to stop. "It’s a shame that scaremongering and untruths surrounding the Human Rights Act have tarnished what is an essential piece of law for protecting and defending all of our rights.”

Hime wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:So, literally no one's going to answer my question? Eight countered my tax assertion, or tried (see Skarjo's reply at the top of this page) but it seems not a single Tory voter here can, or will, tell me why they voted for the right except "Labour are gooseberry fool.

Why do you not consider that a good enough answer? I've seen how Labour ran the country and how the Conservatives ran the country and picked the one I preferred.

Frank wrote:

Tomous wrote:The fox hunting thing is shocking, it really is.

Well, now's the time to start writing letters to your MPs to try and convince them that reintroducing foxhunting is a ridiculous thing to do.

It's still a democracy, so tell them what you think and how, if they do vote to reintroduce it, they can kiss any chance of being voted for in the future goodbye. If enough people do it they'll realise how backwards it is.

My local MP seems to just be a Cameron lapdog, but I'm still going to be telling her what I think about the whole thing.

Tafdolphin wrote:

Hime wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:So, literally no one's going to answer my question? Eight countered my tax assertion, or tried (see Skarjo's reply at the top of this page) but it seems not a single Tory voter here can, or will, tell me why they voted for the right except "Labour are gooseberry fool.

Why do you not consider that a good enough answer? I've seen how Labour ran the country and how the Conservatives ran the country and picked the one I preferred.

Because it's not an answer to the question I'm asking. I'm not asking why you didn't vote Labour, I'm asking what made you decide to vote Tory as opposed to UKIP, or the Lib Dems or the Greens...

Frank wrote:

Tomous wrote:The fox hunting thing is shocking, it really is.

Well, now's the time to start writing letters to your MPs to try and convince them that reintroducing foxhunting is a ridiculous thing to do.

It's still a democracy, so tell them what you think and how, if they do vote to reintroduce it, they can kiss any chance of being voted for in the future goodbye. If enough people do it they'll realise how backwards it is.

My local MP seems to just be a Cameron lapdog, but I'm still going to be telling her what I think about the whole thing.

lex-man wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:

Hime wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:So, literally no one's going to answer my question? Eight countered my tax assertion, or tried (see Skarjo's reply at the top of this page) but it seems not a single Tory voter here can, or will, tell me why they voted for the right except "Labour are gooseberry fool.

Why do you not consider that a good enough answer? I've seen how Labour ran the country and how the Conservatives ran the country and picked the one I preferred.

Because it's not an answer to the question I'm asking. I'm not asking why you didn't vote Labour, I'm asking what made you decide to vote Tory as opposed to UKIP, or the Lib Dems or the Greens...

To be fair all parties had there fair share of shitty policies. Doesn't Labour support the snoopers charter and TTIP.

KKLEIN wrote:Personally I happen to think the tax rate for the richest in this country is/was high enough already at 45/50%. Of far more importance are big companies & various individuals using loopholes to get out of paying tax. And then there are companies like Apple sitting on mind boggling sums of money who could easily start doing more. Not because they have to, they don't, but Christ they could certainly be putting more back in to communities.

KKLEIN wrote:While it is rather disgusting seeing the likes of Wayne Rooney earning more in a week than a lot of people will see in 10 years, a whopping £160,000 of that is still going to the tax man. And you can't say that isn't anything but fair.

Tafdolphin wrote:[quote="Hime"][quote="Tafdolphin"]So, literally no one's going to answer my question? Eight countered my tax assertion, or tried (see Skarjo's reply at the top of this page) but it seems not a single Tory voter here can, or will, tell me why they voted for the right except "Labour are gooseberry fool.

Cal wrote:

KKLEIN wrote:Personally I happen to think the tax rate for the richest in this country is/was high enough already at 45/50%. Of far more importance are big companies & various individuals using loopholes to get out of paying tax. And then there are companies like Apple sitting on mind boggling sums of money who could easily start doing more. Not because they have to, they don't, but Christ they could certainly be putting more back in to communities.

Why do Apple get such an easy pass from their left-liberal friends? I don't think there's a more aggressive profit-driven, greedy, exploitative, tax-avoiding, profiteering Corporation in business today. It's absolutely shocking, yet somehow this sly, disingenuous organisation has captured willing cohorts of liberal left progressives to proselytise it as something above and beyond it's murky business and commercial practices (just don't mention the Chinese factory worker suicides). That useful idiot Stephen Fry is always waxing lyrical about Apple products, to give just one example. I find the launch of each new iPhone to be an excruciatingly embarrassing phenomenon: but for lefty liberals it's like a religious holiday. The irony of their shameless cavorting about is entirely lost on them.

It's creepy. And it's too hypocritical for words. I'm sure Apple products are objects of great beauty and design. I somehow don't think the aesthetic characteristics of, say, an iPad are entirely appreciated by underpaid, over worked Asian Apple factory workers.

KKLEIN wrote:While it is rather disgusting seeing the likes of Wayne Rooney earning more in a week than a lot of people will see in 10 years, a whopping £160,000 of that is still going to the tax man. And you can't say that isn't anything but fair.

I have raised this issue before, too. I have never understood the reserves of cynical hypocrisy and simple delusion required for an ordinary working class lefty to, on the one hand, condemn a Tory Prime Minister (salary: £142,500pa) yet have nothing to say about someone like Wayne Rooney (Salary: up to £300,000 per week). Absolutely gobsmacking. But not a word.

Cal wrote:Why do Apple get such an easy pass from their left-liberal friends? I don't think there's a more aggressive profit-driven, greedy, exploitative, tax-avoiding, profiteering Corporation in business today. It's absolutely shocking, yet somehow this sly, disingenuous organisation has captured willing cohorts of liberal left progressives to proselytise it as something above and beyond it's murky business and commercial practices (just don't mention the Chinese factory worker suicides). That useful idiot Stephen Fry is always waxing lyrical about Apple products, to give just one example. I find the launch of each new iPhone to be an excruciatingly embarrassing phenomenon: but for lefty liberals it's like a religious holiday. The irony of their shameless cavorting about is entirely lost on them.

It's creepy. And it's too hypocritical for words. I'm sure Apple products are objects of great beauty and design. I somehow don't think the aesthetic characteristics of, say, an iPad are entirely appreciated by underpaid, over worked Asian Apple factory workers.

Cal wrote:

KKLEIN wrote:While it is rather disgusting seeing the likes of Wayne Rooney earning more in a week than a lot of people will see in 10 years, a whopping £160,000 of that is still going to the tax man. And you can't say that isn't anything but fair.

I have raised this issue before, too. I have never understood the reserves of cynical hypocrisy and simple delusion required for an ordinary working class lefty to, on the one hand, condemn a Tory Prime Minister (salary: £142,500pa) yet have nothing to say about someone like Wayne Rooney (Salary: up to £300,000 per week). Absolutely gobsmacking. But not a word.

ProPoser wrote:football generates its own finances. Through sponsorship, shirt & ticket sales and, mainly, broadcast rights, football is self-sufficient. Complaining about a footballer's salary is a total non-starter because they are not publicly-funded.

Dowbocop wrote:

KKLEIN wrote:There are schemes in the NHS that I would like to start seeing implemented - billing people that book appointments that then don't show up for a start. My Mum works as a receptionist for the NHS and the amount of people recently that don't cancel & then just don't show up is a bit ridiculous. Fine them for goodness sakes.

This sounds like a very logical and fair policy.

However, for me it very quickly starts to fall apart once you look a bit deeper. For one, it would be very difficult to implement fairly. I'm sure you would quite happily charge a feckless stoner who missed an appointment, but an A&E nurse who had a car crash come in ten minutes before their shift ended should be cut some slack, yeah? But who decides where the line is? Bus late - leave earlier, or blame Arriva? Get arrested - tough luck crim, or innocent until proven guilty? Who has an important enough job to miss an appointment?

The obvious answer to this is to have some form of appeals process, where someone can collect all the bus tickets and other excusing paraphernalia and decide who has a good enough excuse to be let off. But can you imagine the cost of checking up all these (potentially) shaggy dog stories? Would you want to be the member of the admin team who had to tell a patient they weren't depressed enough to miss their appointment, or that they could have rung before the panic attack happened? There would also have to be an appeals process for the appeals process (or it could go to PALS). My GP surgery has a 95%+ attendance rate, and a fair penalty charge is generally thought to be about a tenner from most things I've read about the idea. How much money would you actually get, once you deducted the cost of actually extracting it from patients? Taking Squinty's 160 DNAs a quarter message - if you extrapolate that up to 640 DNAs a year and divide it by 250 (for a rounded approximation of working days in the year), you work out with, on average, around 2.5 missed appointments a day. That's £25 a day in £10 fines (assuming they're all eligible to be fined, less the administration of collecting it). Would that even keep the lights on in the surgery?

It could also lead to further disenfranchisement of society's most vulnerable. If you're living on JSA (or whatever it's called now...), where are you going to find the money for a fine from? Is the best way to promote healthy lifestyles to further demonise (and to all intents and purposes criminalise) people who are most on the edge of society? The people who are most engaged and most able will either pay their fine or kick up enough of a stink to get off (that includes all the naughty Jeremy Kyle Benefits Street dolescum lot that everyone hates). The patients who are less able to pay, cannot work the system as well, or have long term health conditions (reducing ability to attend whilst also increasing their need to do so), will either need to pay money they cannot afford to access the NHS, or they will not bother going until they have a much more serious complaint which costs much more to treat in A&E, and could cost them their livelihood (probably putting them into the welfare system) or even their life.

I work in a screening programme. This means we see patients who are in an at risk group for a certain illness, but have not developed any symptoms that would make them seek help off their own back. The earlier you catch these problems, the better (and cheaper) it is for everyone. Our DNA rate is probably a little bit higher than a GP (obviously we'd like as many people to show as possible!) - as you may expect, people with no symptoms are less likely to turn up than those receiving effective treatment for a problem impinging on their life. We're all guilty of it - I was a bit lax booking my dental check up this year until my tooth started hurting! If we started charging patients who did not turn up, it would be the oldest, the frailest, the least engaged with their treatment - and therefore the most likely to need early detection and care - that would suffer.

That doesn't sound logical and fair to me.

Rex Kramer wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:So, literally no one's going to answer my question? Eight countered my tax assertion, or tried (see Skarjo's reply at the top of this page) but it seems not a single Tory voter here can, or will, tell me why they voted for the right except "Labour are gooseberry fool."

Also, happy Monday everyone!

http://m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/5925540

Daily Express And Mail Celebrate The End Of Human Rights, A Horrified Twitter Despairs

Two of Britain's tabloids have enthusiastically responded to Tory plans to scrap the Human Rights Act and renegotiate the terms of our human rights agreement with Strasbourg.

The party has announced a manifesto commitment to scrap the Human Rights Act introduced by Labour in 1998 to enshrine the European Convention on Human Rights in domestic law, laws first set up in the 1950s in the wake of the Second World War to ensure such atrocities never reoccured in Europe.

The move would bleakly leave us standing alone with Belarus and Kazakhstan - the only other countries in Europe that have chosen to forsake similar laws. Belarus "suppresses virtually all forms of dissent and uses restrictive legislation and abusive practices to impede freedoms of association and assembly", while in Kazakhstan freedom of assembly is strictly controlled and a restrictive law on religious freedoms remains in force, according to Human Rights Watch.

Whereas it is often recognised that human rights are intrinsic in the preservation of equal rights and are the very foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, The Daily Mail and The Express have dismissed them as a "farce" and "madness" - focusing instead on cases where "criminals have made a mockery of justice." Amnesty International’s UK Legal Adviser Rachel Logan told the Huffington Post UK that such media coverage "needs to stop." “There is indeed a lot of madness and hysteria surrounding the discussion of human rights and that needs to stop. "It’s a shame that scaremongering and untruths surrounding the Human Rights Act have tarnished what is an essential piece of law for protecting and defending all of our rights.”

Couple that with the fact that Michael Gove is heading up the UK replacement.

Tafdolphin wrote:

lex-man wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:

Hime wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:So, literally no one's going to answer my question? Eight countered my tax assertion, or tried (see Skarjo's reply at the top of this page) but it seems not a single Tory voter here can, or will, tell me why they voted for the right except "Labour are gooseberry fool.

Why do you not consider that a good enough answer? I've seen how Labour ran the country and how the Conservatives ran the country and picked the one I preferred.

Because it's not an answer to the question I'm asking. I'm not asking why you didn't vote Labour, I'm asking what made you decide to vote Tory as opposed to UKIP, or the Lib Dems or the Greens...

To be fair all parties had there fair share of shitty policies. Doesn't Labour support the snoopers charter and TTIP.

Oh absolutely. I'm not trying to be confrontational, I just can't get anyone to explain why they specifically voted Tory.

Cal wrote:
Why do Apple get such an easy pass from their left-liberal friends? I don't think there's a more aggressive profit-driven, greedy, exploitative, tax-avoiding, profiteering Corporation in business today. It's absolutely shocking, yet somehow this sly, disingenuous organisation has captured willing cohorts of liberal left progressives to proselytise it as something above and beyond it's murky business and commercial practices (just don't mention the Chinese factory worker suicides). That useful idiot Stephen Fry is always waxing lyrical about Apple products, to give just one example. I find the launch of each new iPhone to be an excruciatingly embarrassing phenomenon: but for lefty liberals it's like a religious holiday. The irony of their shameless cavorting about is entirely lost on them.

It's creepy. And it's too hypocritical for words. I'm sure Apple products are objects of great beauty and design. I somehow don't think the aesthetic characteristics of, say, an iPad are entirely appreciated by underpaid, over worked Asian Apple factory workers.

Cal wrote:I have raised this issue before, too. I have never understood the reserves of cynical hypocrisy and simple delusion required for an ordinary working class lefty to, on the one hand, condemn a Tory Prime Minister (salary: £142,500pa) yet have nothing to say about someone like Wayne Rooney (Salary: up to £300,000 per week). Absolutely gobsmacking. But not a word.