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Quoted from Chrisblor

I'm more interested in ensuring vulnerable and sick people avoid suffering under another 5 years of tory government than decorum m8.

On the BBC, with regards to its current affairs coverage, yes clearly. Peter Oborne agrees with me:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/03/election-coverage-bbc-tories

Do you genuinely think the champagne socialist Labour party, with some on its hypocritical front bench sending their kids to private school whilst not wishing others to have the privilege, is a good antidote to the Conservative party?

The labour party which is about as far removed as it is possible to get from the average working man, with its obsession with every lost cause? A party which is controlled by Momentum via Seamus Milne and has a wish list which it will never be able to implement, and is led by a man who has spent a lifetime backing every anti British campaign going, and was only nominated for the leadership by Margaret Beckett for a bit of diversity who immediately regretted her decision?

The party whose leader who is despised by large sections of his own MP's, has alienated huge swathes of it's once core vote with its obsession with "isms" and refusal to accept the result of the referendum in any meaningful sense - you think Labour is the answer?  *

I know you do, and respect where it is due. Perhaps you might try, just a weeny bit, to understand why I don't.

As regards Peter Oborne, then his comments are drowned out by any number of columnists and voters who think otherwise.

*Yes, I have got all this info from a biased right wing media and yes I am lying/hypocritical/stupid/pathetic/a specimen/tory boot licker/about to kick the bucket (delete as appropriate or leave them all in)  

I will call it a day now on this thread as it is pointless continuing to go round in circles, and as I have said many times I will leave it to the voters good sense to decide the country's future.

Good luck.

Tin foil hat dribble all that.

Regarding the NHS, I've made a few posts about how the Tories have quite consciously underfunded it and massively so, since 2010. Please do take the time to read them.

Also, check the following link for facts about the current status of NHS:

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/12/03/the-nhs-some-facts/

Given this indisputable information, please let us know quite why you are quite so happy with the Tory stewardship of the service. If you're 65, I'm afraid you'll most likely be needing to use it a lot more in future years so I find your lack of interest in what has (not) been done quite remarkable.

The NHS really isn't safe under the Tories. Look what will happen locally:



Source / Methodology here: https://nhscuts.org.uk/about

It’s only Labour that are ‘riddled’ with anti-semitism and it isn’t a problem for the party that unveiled a statue celebrating a Nazi sympathiser; https://amp.theguardian.com/po.....tter_impression=true

I'll attempt to avoid anything too partisan here (and probably fail).  I've taken a very active interest in politics over the years, and I can't remember a time when there has been such a dearth of decent politicians on all sides.  I can't see a single party that looks to have sufficient competence to govern the country.

There are a few gems lurking in there but for every Starmer there at least 3 Raabs or McDonnells.  Even the SNP have proved to be pretty useless with the NHS in Scotland.  I fear we'll have 5 more years of the Tories, Brexit, more cuts and a tanking economy.  That said, I think they'll be a bit of a dead cat bounce when we actually leave as there is a tiny modicum of certainty.  

So what's the solution?  God knows, but I'd like to see actual experts more involved in the decision making process (and not Richard Murphy, sorry Maringer much as I enjoy your posts generally).  I also think we need serious electoral reform, but again what that looks like is anybody's guess.   It certainly doesn't look like AV in my view but would PR work?  I've never been a fan but it might be dare I say it more democratic.  Plus we might end up in a Belgian situation where they had no Government for 2 years and everything just worked.      

I'd be happy with a Single Transferable Vote system of electoral reform. You get most of the benefits of a PR system but with the constituency link retained, which is vital in my opinion.  

Quoted from Town Monkey

Even the SNP have proved to be pretty useless with the NHS in Scotland.

Erm, NHS Scotland outperforms the NHS in the rest of the UK:

https://www.businessforscotland.com/scotlands-nhs-outperforms-the-rest-of-the-uk-heres-why/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45790051

I wish we had those hopeless SNPers running NHS England as poorly.

Murphy, for all his ego, is spot on with most things about the economy (hopelessly wrong about Nuclear energy, however) and my view is that MMT as a description of how money actually works in a modern economy is correct, as QE has shown.

We do have 'experts' involved in the decision-making processes in government. Unfortunately, they are the 'experts' who rotate in and out of the various right-wing/libertarian think tanks who refuse to reveal which particular billionaire fund them and whose research always seems to show that the government can do no right and business can do no wrong. Despite the vast amount of evidence to the contrary. HMRC is staffed with people rotating in and out of the big four accountancy firms so any tax legislation has more holes than Swiss cheese - some would say, by design. Not that the government cares about collecting tax as their defunding of HMRC shows (and this was true in the Blair era, though to a lesser degree).

Electoral reform would be a good start so I do hope that we end up with a hung parliament and a Labour/SNP/FibDem coalition which agrees to a move from FPTP. The polls aren't showing good signs for the Labour Party, but there is certainly something fishy going on with some of them. Not sure if it is the bias of those with landlines and not, but YouGov in particular has had some very unusual results - the two leadership debates between Corbyn and Johnson, for example. Every other poll indicates Corbyn was considered the 'winner' of both but YouGov seem to think Johnson did better and this is the only one reported in the media.

That's just opinions, however and it's not just YouGov. For voter intention, Survation seems to think that there is a swing of 13.5% from Labour to Conservative in London! Really? Labour battered the Tories in London in 2017. Something doesn't add up here.

You'd also have to be blind to not notice how the vox pops selected by the BBC, ITV and Sky in the northern towns always find people who would normally vote for Labour but are moving to the Tories, yet never seem to speak to anyone who is sticking with Labour. Even in areas with high leave votes, the chances of them not speaking to hardly anybody who voted remain or plans to vote Labour seems unlikely. I suppose it could just be that the editors have told the reporters to go out and get a certain sort of responses, but very strange all the same.

Ahhh I must say that this thread has restored my faith somewhat. Please get out there and try and persuade your fellow Grimbarians that turkeys don't have to vote for Christmas, inspite of what the Bernard Matthews media keep feeding them!