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Questions Of The Day (Politics)
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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That's all very well but surely heterosexuals in liberal metropolitan cities like to have lots of sex too. I know I do. Can you catch monkey pox from yourself?
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Mick Harper wrote:
That's all very well but surely heterosexuals in liberal metropolitan cities like to have lots of sex too. I know I do. Can you catch monkey pox from yourself?


There is the rub. We all need a helping hand, don't we? The city lights shine brightly but it can be a dull lonely place without the odd exciting visit to the sauna.

Look, you clearly haven't the capacity to undertake a risk assessment, so you have two options:

1: You read Owen Jones' column in the Guardian, he knows more about this than anybody else.

2: You trust your maker, he is after all there to help you, and if you can't help youself, he is there to forgive you.

Just try to keep the advice separate, Owen Jones is not God.

Hope this helps.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Why is Liz Truss trying to impersonate Thatcher. She is way worse at it than even Mike Yarwood was, and he gave up. Rishi Sunak's Tony Blair, on the other hand is rather good, it is just his wife is really struggling with her drab miserable Cherie. I am now afraid Rishi's wife has blown it for him. Keep it real, luvvies. That is my advice. Keep it real.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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A good start, in the school of political acting, is to remember which party you are supposed to be portraying. Take Keir...now Keir made an excellent start with his choice of character name, and adding the "Sir" was a nice touch, that hints at an interesting back story. Personally I would have also gone for a beard, but that does not in itself destroy the credibility of the character he is creating.

Where Keir has gone wrong is forgetting he is supposed to be acting as leader of the Labour party, ie: the party of those toiling hard. This means he needs to visit mining galas and working men's clubs, he needs to traipse around Scottish council estates, drink bitter, visits need to be made to factories, hospitals and army barracks. He simply doesn't need to waste time slinging out left wingers (nobody cares), he doesn't need to sound responsible (nobody cares), he doesn't need to focus on anti semitism, or any other culture war, (only twitter cares)....he just needs to stop pontificating like a posh barrister, and put in the hard slogging work that ordinary folks like in their Labour leaders. But for some reason he can't. Keir has totally miscast himself as an authoritarian Social Liberal, not a serious hard working leader of the Labour Party.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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I'm obliged for the sauna tip. Trouble is I live in a crummy provincial town and my nearest one is

The Porchester Spa- London’s oldest Spa, offers access to: two Steam Rooms, Turkish Baths (Tepidarium, Caldarium and Laconium), a sauna, a Plunge Pool and Relaxation Lounge. After an £800,000 refurbishment, this iconic Grade 2* listed building has returned to its 1920s splendour.

But can I afford it?
Please remember to bring 20p coins to use the lockers.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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I remain bemused at the Tory leadership race continuing. Truss remains in the lead by thirty or forty points, she's had her big ricket and survived unscathed, it doesn't matter about future ones because most of the electorate have already cast their votes. Everybody agrees (though not necessarily me) that further argy-bargy is doing harm to the brand.

Now we've got the nation's chief elder statesman, Gordon Brown (with John Major, Tony Blair, David Cameron and Theresa May being the others he counts as a very big chief indeed) urging them all to unite and come up with an emergency budget, why doesn't Rishi say to Liz, "I'll withdraw if I can be your Gordon Brown." You only have to ask the question...
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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We are in an era where "liberal", bed-wetting conspiracy theorists are the new normal. Every little thing has now become "political" and seen as part of a wide, far reaching reactionary fascist plot. I have given up counting Trump's alleged crimes, but these now include something like "inciting insurrection", "conspiracy to defraud the US", "conspiracy to obstruct an investigation" "seditious conspiracy", and that is after he had already escaped an earlier "impeachment". Anyway you can now add in "witholding emails from the national archive" to his crimes, which had led to the former President's residence/golf course ("bunker"?) being raided by the FBI, and his safe opened.

Whilst the rest of the Americas is slowly democratising, The United States has now become its own Banana Republic. The only hope is that a popular strong man will seize the reins of power, and end this awful decline into anarchy.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Aren't you being a bit excitable yourself, Wiley?

1. Isn't all this anti-Trump rhetoric the ordinary chump change of democratic politics? He's the likely candidate in 2024 after all.
2. Wasn't it Trump himself who introduced all this 'Let's call the Feds in' business. All the way back to "Lock her (Hillary) up."
3. If it wasn't, he certainly brought all the attention on himself with his hocus pocus capitalism and government-by-texting.
4. And what's all this about the rest of the Americas slowly democratising? Name one country. Ah double-dog dare ya.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Let's get this 'waiting-times for cancer referrals are now so long everyone's dying of cancer' straight. Yes, most of it is because of post-Covid dislocations; yes, the rest can be dealt with by throwing more money at it, and yes, everyone will then go back to 'isn't our NHS smashing'. But the real reason is because our NHS is shite.

Yes, the principle of health care being free at the point of delivery is smashing but the NHS is an overmanned, overblown, over-large, over the hill organisation for delivering it. As soon as just one person (apart from the normal me) points out that the NHS is not the only way of delivering health care free at the point of delivery, we shall all be delivered from it.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Let's get this 'energy prices are going so far through the roof soon nobody will have a roof' straight. The prices we are being forced to pay are based on the world gas price. This is bollocks because most of our energy is not derived from gas, and much of our gas is not, or need not, be imported. If we nationalised our entire energy supply industry we would be able to (a) ring fence ourselves from world prices and (b) control the price the consumer is paying by administrative interventions further up the supply chain and get all this (as well as the green stuff) paid for out of general taxation..

My well known objection to nationalisation -- it's bleedin' inefficient -- is irrelevant because even government ministers and civil servants can turn taps on and off. [Check that, would you, Griselda?]
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Mick Harper wrote:

Yes, the principle of health care being free at the point of delivery is smashing but the NHS is an overmanned, overblown, over-large, over the hill organisation for delivering it. As soon as just one person (apart from the normal me) points out that the NHS is not the only way of delivering health care free at the point of delivery, we shall all be delivered from it.


It is not really a single organisation, it's a series of stand-alone trusts and commisioning units that everybody thinks of as "National".
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Wiley, that is mesmerisingly pitiful. It is organised (frequently re-organised) in administrative units in bewildering ways -- part historical, part political, part functional, mostly 'let's have a reform of the NHS because I'm the minister and I want to make a splash and/or deflect criticism'.

Even the NHS has managed to work out that one man in Whitehall cannot administer to the health needs of seventy million people without some compartmentalisation.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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It is pitiful but I can't help repeating it. In fact I will do it again now. Until the government figures out whether it now wants a National Health and Care Service, or whether it wants Local Health and Care Services, it has zero chance of meaningful reform.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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This also requires a tad of honesty about patient numbers. London has had an 18% rise in population since EU accession, in the UK as a whole it's less, at about 10%. Say this and you will get a response along the lines that "the NHS will collapse without migrant labour. BTW Please shut up, you bigot". Fine, correct, well said, but that doesn't alter the fact that an additional 5 to 7 million folks have a lot of additional health and care needs, so we really need to now get employers to pay for the health care of all their migrant employees, not just give their top executives private care packages. Yes, BBC, I mean you.

Why should the NHS subsidise businesses and corporations ?

Free NHS care should only be given to UK citizens. Yep, we need to decide who these citizens are and how it is earnt.
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Mick Harper
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Keep moving them beds round, Wiley. I see no icebergs.
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