Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

goldfinger

What do you think about the artical in the Oct SB Maq on page 92, about stop's for beginners. I liked the Alpesh Patel advice.

Good post Fred, thank you for your thoughts. I agree with some of the points you make.

I think this country contributes more money per head of population in foreign aid than any other G8 country. Some African countries are still very sceptical about Western medical practices so sending medical aid is a waste of time and money. If our NHS wasn't in such a mess then perhaps I wouldn't object so much.

Yes, I do think all visitors/immigrants should be asked to justify their reasons for coming to the UK. Australia & and America have very strict controls in place. I think the administration costs would be miniscule in comparison to the option of leaving the floodgates open.

I must say that I like the US green card system. We could do with something similar. It is not the actual immigration that is the problem. We know that most of the EU immigrants do work and contribute to tax.

Immigration to the UK, whether is from EU or not, causes other consequential problems. It causes an overloading of our services and infrastructure such as no school places in some boroughs, very long waiting lists at doctors and hospitals, shortages of housing, increased demand for benefits. It has also been responsible for major changes in our demographics which erode our traditional culture and in some cases our laws.

Schools are frightened to carry on UK traditions. Christmas is hardly celebrated in state schools so as to avoid upsetting children from specific ethnic groups. Councils are obsessed with political correctness to the extent that they have looked the other way when children were abused by men from foreign ethnic groups.

It is not the immigrants we should fear and worry about. It is the unwelcome changes and damage that is done to our society.

DB4.

Yet again and just as superficial my reply.

The problems of the NHS are minuscule compare with what the World Health Authority is contending with. The UK is nor insulated from the spread of disease and the effects due to the speed and amount of travel and also the economic effects of travel, export and import restrictions. Also, another "problem" is due to the Internet and Media (SOME) issues are hyped.

It is a minority in those "foreign" countries who attend the "witch doctors" rather than the medically trained doctors. A bit like some in the country who buy the latest fad food, vitamin pill, or attend somebody for a seance, or Homeopathy.

The major problem with the NHS is to many senseless re-organisations (especially the last one, the resulting apathy and disconnect of Medical staff, (nurses and doctors) and other areas of the "caring" services. (Including resentment of privatisation of many areas, such as Ambulance service and reliance on various agency staff.)

There has been a disconnect by many in the health service between their own goals and the intended goals of the health service.

How is it repaired.

Slowly.

PS.

Without immigrants working at all levels within the NHS it would collapse.

But you can't import a lorry full of migrants when you need them and dispose of them after use.

Also, remember The English and other nationalities in Europe (World) are crossbreeds or hybrids of one form or another.

When there are problems to resolve then it is in general better address the real cause of problems rather than the symptoms.

Unfortunately, the cause/s and causation are often complex.

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I will now shut up and get drunk.

thank goodness for that!

Haystack,I agree the US green card system is fair and works well.

It is worrying what is going on in our schools and I think the British tradition of wearing school uniforms and respecting British relegious culture should be strictly applied. How parents decide to educate their children in the privacy of their own homes is up to them, but when they are in a public environment they should be made to abide by the laws of the country they choose to live in.

I think political correctness started to become really silly in this country when Robertsons were made to remove the gollywog labels from their jam jars.

Changed my mind.

Haze.

Disgraced Tory Brooks Newmark to quit as an MP

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/disgraced-tory-brooks-newmark-quit-4421549#ixzz3FrJo8EAA
Follow us: @DailyMirror on Twitter | DailyMirror on Facebook


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The tory party is imploding.

Good scheme Fred, I'll join you.


I will now shut up and get drunk.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/11156102/Now-Ed-Miliband-has-the-women-problem-as-a-PM.html

Interesting article.

This the bit I like

Some Labour MPs want Mr Miliband to be replaced by Alan Johnson, a former home secretary, as a “caretaker” leader because they believe the party has no chance of winning the election next May.

The tory party would love that and I can imagine the sneering and denigration from Hays and kin.

But remember from his background to a Ministerial office is well beyond themselves.

But don't worry, come the next election there will be a lot of room for them to stand for election in the seats of those who have defected from the party of conners to the party of kippers!

Ps.

Johnson has no aspirations in that direction.

Perhaps, he doesn't overvalue himself, unlike Cameron and Osborne!

Here come big trouble for the complacent three ... you know who they are!



Douglas Carswell truly grasps the root of our malaise

Ukip's first MP now has a broader opportunity to use his Ukip Westminster perch to highlight — and keep highlighting — just what a state we’re in.



By Liam Halligan

4:48PM BST 11 Oct 2014




In the small hours of Friday morning, when most of my fellow economics scribes were in Washington at the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, I was eating cheese on toast on my sofa. With Labour having just held on in the Heywood and Middleton by-election, there was I, like the rest of the UK’s political obsessives, staring at the television bug-eyed, awaiting Clacton’s verdict.


I’m not a Ukip supporter and Douglas Carswell isn’t a personal friend. Yet, as I wrote three days after he defected from the Tories, I really wanted the member for Clacton to hold his Commons seat. That because, over many years of talking to MPs and ministers of all parties, he’s one of the few politicians I’ve encountered who has truly grasped the realities of the Western world’s current economic predicament.


Carswell is not only prepared to think through our unpalatable challenges — on-going large deficits, vast public and private debts, weak productivity and potentially disastrous demography. He’ll also openly discuss tough proposals, speaking truth to power and saying what needs to be said.


Almost anyone with Carswell’s considerable ability and media skills, having entered the Commons as a Tory, would have kept their nose clean, climbed the greasy pole and made an early bid for the Cabinet. The trappings of power were there for the taking, maybe even one of the great offices of state.


Carswell, though, is among just a handful of credible politicians who’s refused to let his ambition outweigh his intellect. Sticking to his principles, he hasn’t shied away from the pressing problems mainstream politicians don’t want to face.


That’s why, to my mind, his staying in Parliament was far more important than which party he represents.

Now he’s won, though, having polled a massive 60pc of the vote, the returning Clacton MP’s party affiliation is deeply significant. As Ukip’s first elected member, Carswell can table Ukip parliamentary motions and lay Ukip amendments to legislation. He can question the Prime Minister on television and hold ministers to account. Above all, he can play a leading role in determining his new party’s economic platform ahead of the May 2015 general election and beyond.



Full story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/11156084/Douglas-Carswell-truly-grasps-the-root-of-our-malaise.html

Cameron and Miliband should have learnt from Clegg’s tuition fee vow: don’t make promises you can’t keep. They’ve both committed that fatal error over the last few weeks, promising to save primary healthcare with thousands more GPs.
But they didn’t fool anyone: they have no idea how they’re going to achieve their aims, and with GP shortages already threatening to close 600 practices, their negligence will be bad for our health.
Jeremy Hunt underlined that negligence in a speech to the Royal College of General Practitioners last week: he announced that he would commission an independent review of how many additional GPs are required across the country.
You would have thought that’s the kind of thing he should have done before he made sweeping policy announcements, but no: lofty promises come first, and the detail of how it will work comes much later. His party’s promise to deliver 5,000 more GPs was based on guesswork: they have no idea how many more doctors we need, where the bulk of the shortages are, or how the government can encourage more medical students into the sector.
To make it worse, Tory plans to extend GP opening hours and keep practices open on weekends won’t help the recruitment crisis. Nearly 40 per cent of GP training places were unfilled in some areas of the UK this year, and applications for postgraduate GP speciality training have dropped 15 per cent.
It used to be that the regular hours and comfortable lifestyle that came with being a GP had doctors fighting over places. But now GPs have more commissioning responsibility, and have seen their workloads gradually increase. Doctors that were once so eager to enter practices are wavering on the threshold.
Telling them they may have to work longer hours, giving up their Sunday evenings to be stuck in the surgery, turn them away for good. Practices are already at “breaking point” according to the GP representative body the BMA, and without a boost in GP numbers – which won’t materialise – they may be stretched beyond repair.
Health news: in pictures
 
Ed Miliband’s plan to deliver 8,000 more GPs is equally ludicrous. Just 2,564 doctors took GP training jobs this year, 200 less than last year: the BMA branded the figures the “worst ever”.
However, Labour has turned it around before; the number of GPs rose by more than 8,000 between 1996 and 2010.  But we’re facing a harsher climb than ever: in 600 British practices, more than 90 per cent of the GPs are 60 or older, according to the RCGP.
The average retirement age is 59. Mr Miliband doesn’t have 14 years to fix our health service – it’s already “creaking”, as he said in his conference speech, and if the next government doesn’t take urgent action it will collapse. He can’t deliver, and if we let him get away with it until he’s in number 10, the problems are only going to get worse.
Even if he and Cameron can find a few thousand GPs down the back of a Whitehall sofa, it’s not clear that throwing bodies at the problem is the way to go. More GPs means more appointments and more hospital referrals, and inevitably more crowded wards. The announcements – designed to show that politicians really care about our health service – are an insult to us all.
Instead of the reasoned, balanced plan the NHS needed, we got politicians puffing up their chests, seeing who could pluck the highest number out of the air. And while the inflated figures made good headlines, they shouldn’t satisfy anyone who cares about our health service.

Independent

Who watched "The Gatekeepers" , debate to follow now

I watched it and now watching the debate. Nothing in the film surprised me. If anything it was too tame, much worse has happened and is happening.

The guy talking now - Ari Shavit writes for the fairly left wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz which I read online every day. He wrote a book called My Promised Land, which I am reading. It was recommended to me by cynic.

The clown has found his role!

He's on the Andrew Marr show shortly MaxK!

Caught the tail end of that db.

Good ol chuckling Boris, everyones pal.


Asked about the housing situation, he replied that they are building everywhere.

Asked about the cost of living in London...more chuckles, but no answers.


He wasnt being pressed, even by Trevor.