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.

67776 - a facile comment ..... i was talking to real people who are involved at the sharp end and not some would-be politico smartartse who trots out some stupid semi-party line .... ditto 67778

I regard the BMA as no better than any trade union. The doctor's union has always been difficult to deal with as every government has found. The current GP contract is absudedly generous due to a Labour government giving into demands. The current dispute is politically driven. There is also a number of junior doctors who earn very high rates for long hours cover and they are upset at losing their cash. I also know several doctors who are opposed to the strikes and agree with Hunt. The real cause of this dispute is the BMA supporting the doctors in opposing a government determined to break the stranglehold that the BMA has on the NHS and their reluctance to accept change. I have zero sympathy with the doctors.

Don't worry about Brexit:

you really do talk a load of bollocks, at least some of the time

that BMA is a trades union is no secret, and they also haven't done a very good job in putting across to the public the nuts and bolts of the case for doctors

you might like to consider how long it takes to become a qualified GP - at least 7 years in fact - and how many hours they work both while and after qualifying ... perhaps you'ld like to spend a friday/saturday night or two at a busy A&E and see how you would deal with the drunks, addicts, and generally abusive and other unpleasant riff-raff on top of the usual traffic accident, heart attack and other run-of-the-mill stuff

perhaps then you would like to tell us all how much someone with a doctor's skills and qualifications should be paid - or not as the case may be

================

from another angle, perhaps you'ld like to question the logic of alienating actual and would-be medics, when they are patently in short supply
common sense surely should be to encourage (induce) the newly qualified to stay within the service when so many £000s have been spent in training them

The new contract is quite reasonable. The BMA have been encouraging the doctors to be militant. The government have done a bad job at putting across their side of the deal. What a doctor is worth is not the point. The pay is what it is. Nurses are worth more and footballers less. The government decides the pay and not the doctors or the BMA. The BMA sees it all as a trial of strength. It is behaving as a militant trade union.

The doctors' militancy is due to the amount of resentment which has been engendered by the government over the last 5years.

The constant changes of working conditions and expectancies..

The present government and Hunt, in particular, have been arrogant and dismissive of the "medics" as a group.

-=-=-=-==

An interesting article by Will Hutton.

Read before the market opens on Monday.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/17/china-economic-crisis-world-economy-global-capitalism

Here is another interesting article (for some) :

Britain’s future in Europe lies in the hands of the Labour party
Andrew Rawnsley

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/14/eu-referendum-labour-tories


David Cameron faces the most severe challenge of his career and only Labour can solve it for him. The campaign to keep Britain in the EU can be won only if enough Labour supporters cast a ballot to stay in.

This under-appreciated twist in the referendum plot puts the prime minister in the deliciously ironic position of looking to Labour to save him from the wishes of much of his own party. It also places a momentous burden of responsibility on Labour. In normal times, what the opposition says usually makes a marginal contribution to the destiny of the nation. In the extraordinary circumstances of the referendum, the future of the United Kingdom and its place in the world is in the hands of Labour and its supporters to a degree few have fully appreciated.

Here is another interesting article (for some) :

Britain’s future in Europe lies in the hands of the Labour party
Andrew Rawnsley

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/14/eu-referendum-labour-tories


David Cameron faces the most severe challenge of his career and only Labour can solve it for him. The campaign to keep Britain in the EU can be won only if enough Labour supporters cast a ballot to stay in.

This under-appreciated twist in the referendum plot puts the prime minister in the deliciously ironic position of looking to Labour to save him from the wishes of much of his own party. It also places a momentous burden of responsibility on Labour. In normal times, what the opposition says usually makes a marginal contribution to the destiny of the nation. In the extraordinary circumstances of the referendum, the future of the United Kingdom and its place in the world is in the hands of Labour and its supporters to a degree few have fully appreciated.

Britain can enjoy the good life after Brexit

The case for leaving the EU is getting stronger every day, and now we must show what Brexit looks like




By David Campbell Bannerman

10:48AM GMT 10 Feb 2016



Now that the draft EU "deal" has been revealed the choice for the British people is crystallising. Remain will mean an unreformed EU free to steamroller forward its plans for an EU Army, common welfare and pensions, harmonised taxes and all the other trappings of a superstate. We will have a single European country.



The supposed triumphant "deal" will not make the slightest practical difference, nor is it legally enforceable or irreversible. So the deal is no more than an IOU, and addresses none of the key issues.


The other option is Leave - meaning the UK secures a trade deal with the EU which allows it to escape the political chains of the fast approaching EU Superstate and to take back control of our country. Leave means leaving the EU, not Europe, and staying in the international community – we would not exit the Council of Europe, UN, G8, NATO, IMF, Commonwealth or many other international bodies.


The Remain campaign is entirely negative. Yes, such "Project Fear" worked in Scotland - I was there from Inverness to Glasgow - because it was real.


The Remain campaign is entirely negative. Yes, such "Project Fear" worked in Scotland - I was there from Inverness to Glasgow - because it was real.


But the scaremongering wont work for Brexit and the UK, because the reality is that up to five million EU jobs depend on access to the UK market, with an annual UK deficit in goods with the EU larger than some economies - a staggering £56billion. The UK is the EU's single largest trading partner and fifth largest world economy.



More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12148307/Britain-can-enjoy-the-good-life-after-Brexit.html

You have to realise that the stay in campaign has not started and won't until Cameron's discussions have finished. That makes the polls likely to be wrong at the moment. It may appear that the exit side are ahead, but that is a temporary thing.

Another belter from poor boy H/S. "Like all unions, they dislike change."

.. it's laugh a minute on here with some of you "Con" artist voters these days it really is.

The stay in campaign has never stopped.

As for dave's negotiations, they never started in reality, just a series of play acting sketches with the goon squad.

You must think people cant see what a prat he is making of himself, and by extension, the rest of us.

Unions have always been failed luddites.

It looks like June 23 for the referendum.

I will probably vote out, but think we will stay in. My reasons are different from the mainstream arguments.

The "Con" artists are the failures among other things.. but there again we know that.

It is instructive to see how socialism has failed everywhere. Capitalism survives because it is Infinitely modifiable. In this country every Labour government has ended in a crisis. Take France and Venezuela. Socialism has failed there dismally and Hollande is the most disliked leader there ever. Venezuela is a more extreme version at the catastrophic end of the scale with astronomic inflation and shortages of everything.

"The "Con" artists are the failures among other things.. but there again we know that."

Thank you for agreeing with me H/S

Typical tactics, not big enough to admit to being wrong again.. just tries to change the subject.

The Conservatives have been very successful. Just look at Thatcher. She was brilliant. Crushing Scargill and his ilk was just one of her triumphs.

Nighty night then.

Now there is a failure in the making.