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Questions Of The Day (Politics)
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Grant



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But Putin doesn’t want to capture Ukraine. Why would he want to take over that shit-show of a country?
He invaded Ukraine to defend those Russians living in the East of Ukraine from attack by Zelensky’s boys. And it took him eight years to do it. Even then he did it only because he was coming under more and more pressure from other Russian politicians.
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Mick Harper
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The problem with Grant is that he has occupied the same extreme position for so long he's run out of people that agree with him. That is the opposite of the correct AE policy which is to seek a unique position and defend it against all-comers. Or, if you do not have a unique position, to keep quiet because loads of other people will be saying it so there's no point in you adding to the caterwauling.

Wiley has done something more interesting. Returning to a solution that everybody had abandoned but, because circumstances have changed, may be viable once more. I will point up a previous Cold War situation which has some parallels...
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Grant



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No my position is not extreme. Putin put off attacking Ukraine for eight years since the US promoted coup. He’s actually a great peace lover
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Mick Harper
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Wiley's scheme depends on trust. The omens are not good. To bring the Cuban Missile Crisis to an end the Russians proposed that they would remove their missiles from Cuba in return for the Americans withdrawing theirs from Turkey. A neat quid pro quo. The Americans agreed but explained, as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, that announcing the deal in this way would outrage sentiment about aggressors never prospering etc etc. They would do it quietly the following year (which they did). The dumbo Russians agreed to the deal.

Not knowing about the Turkey end, the world went into raptures about a clear Yanqui victory and Kruschev was quietly removed a little later on. A somewhat similar scenario was followed in the 1990's when Russia acquiesced in the reconstruction of central and eastern Europe in return for an American promise not to expand NATO. Oh dear...

The moral of the tale? You can do this sort of thing to Russia when Russia can't see any other way out but it's not a recipe for long-term stability. Or the long-term survival of Russian leaders.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Grant wrote:
But Putin doesn’t want to capture Ukraine. Why would he want to take over that shit-show of a country?
He invaded Ukraine to defend those Russians living in the East of Ukraine from attack by Zelensky’s boys. And it took him eight years to do it. Even then he did it only because he was coming under more and more pressure from other Russian politicians.


My starting point was also that Putin would not invade. Why would he want to do this?

So the rationale goes something like this:

1) Putin did not want to invade, that is why he launched a SMO not a war.
2)Putin did not want to invade, that is why he ordered that many units had the peace Z symbol. They were in effect friendly peace keepers whilst the forces in the East took on the Fascists.
3) Putin did not want to invade, he merely wanted a more amenable pro-russian regime in Kiev.
4) Putin did not want to invade, he ordered a feint towards Kiev, to draw away the Ukrainians from defending the East.

The problem is, this might be the case, but having openly said he wanted regime change in Kiev, he then dropped elite paratroopers to secure the Antonov airport (6 miles outside of Kiev). The airport was then taken by force, over a couple of days fighting.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defence,[32] the capture came following an operation that involved some 200 helicopters. The figure of about 200 Ukrainian casualties and no casualties on the Russian side was announced.


This airbase was also by then in the process of also being supported by a 40 mile long Russian logistics convoy, so the Ukrainians and the world were totally convinced that this was actually a war, in effect a full on attempt to take the Ukrainian capital. The Ukrainians actually destroyed the landing strip, whilst being driven out, so it could not be used as a base to airlift in troops and supplies to take Kiev.

After being driven out, or retreating as part of their feint, the Russians left behind equipment, arguably consistent with a military attempt on the capital.

Overall, Russia lost at least seven armoured fighting vehicles, 23 infantry fighting vehicles, three armoured personnel carriers, one anti-aircraft gun, two field artillery pieces, three helicopters, as well as 67 trucks, vehicles and jeeps at Antonov Airport.[17]

Whatever the analysis, feint or not, the Ukrainians are seeing this as a war, a fight for their nation's existence. Wiley can see why this would be the case particularly as since that time Putin has launched Cruise missiles at the Ukrainian capital and other cities, not just the East.....
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Mick Harper
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We had various people with funny accents on Newsnight bleating about the shocking state of the railways in 'the north of England'. This is rubbish. I looked up where they all live and there are regular services to all these places from either Euston or Kings Cross.
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Mick Harper
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The latest NHS scandals are so scandalous it is time for AE to intervene. I think everybody here (save for the fascisti) would agree that health provision being 'free at the point of delivery' is a principle worth fighting for (and paying for). Who needs to spend their lives worrying about whether they can afford to fall ill and then fall ill? So we have to keep the NHS while abandoning the NHS.

How to do this? The common thread among all the debacles is that a large NHS trust has gone out of control, ostensibly but not necessarily because of lack of resources. There seems to be no common factor save the fact that the administration has spent so long robbing Peter to pay Paul that some poor Peter eventually gets it in the neck. Nor do the Peters seem to be the obvious poor relations: maternity, heart surgery, casualty have all been in the firing line. It can be doctors, nurses, ancillaries, equipment, it's all grist for the ever-grinding mill. So why?

First, is it money?
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Mick Harper
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Definitely not. Money has been shovelled into the NHS at a rate never seen before (before Gordon Brown did one of his rare good deeds and brought the UK's health spend up to the Euro-average). The money always disappears into the bottomless pit of a system that offers everything to everyone. This is sometimes seen as the price that has to be paid for 'free at the point of delivery' but this is not so. The USA, for instance, spends more for (on average) worse outcomes. General insurance schemes just mean nearly everyone gets nearly everything they need but they have to pay even more in premiums (or their employers do) than they would if it was all paid for out of general taxation. But plus they have to worry about it all the time.

The key is to have a system of allocation that ensures everybody gets treated for the important stuff (and you can go private if you want the less important stuff or you want it quicker or you want cordon bleu hospital food while you're having it). So why can't the NHS deliver this? It's because of Sacred Cow Syndrome...
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Mick Harper
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People always blame the administrators but the root cause is that the doctors are in charge. This happened at the birth of the NHS in the 1940's when Aneurin Bevan, in his words, had to stuff the consultants' mouths with gold to persuade them to take part in this new health-for-the-oiks scheme. Actually it wasn't the money, it was the power. You can see the result today every time you 'visit the doctor'.

The human body is a remarkably robust and regenerative piece of work [Thanks, Mick, love God. PS Hope the new book goes well.] Those of you who remember the twentieth century, will know that (a) you didn't much visit the doctor because (b) he said there was a lot of it about. Now you won't get out without being signed up to a battery of tests which will say, "There's a lot of it about" and sign you up to a battery of cures because there's such a lot of it about. Mostly. Occasionally it saved your life and if they didn't do all those things you died and your doctor would be had up on a charge at the GMC. The GMC is the doctor's trade union.

Imagine what life would be like if the trade unions ran everything. No jokes! I mean actually ran the railways not just held them up to ransom occasionally. You may be sure there would be a driver, a driver's mate, a guard, some passengers' assistants and not much of a service after eight in the evening and nothing beyond Swindon after ten 'cos that's where all the railwaymen live. And you paying for it all. Or rather the state paying for it all.

That's what the NHS is like now. Now the purse strings are open and the notion of allowing people to die occasionally to save everyone else oodles of money will get you hauled up on Newsnight. But really death hardly comes into it...
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Mick Harper
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Doctors are in business to treat people. So that's what they do. If they are in charge as well, they'll treat people until the cows come home. Pun intended. A properly functioning national health service is not designed to treat people, it is designed not to treat people because treating people is hellishly expensive.

Treatment is contra-indicated.
Treatment is a last resort.

So the last people making these decisions should be
(a) doctors and (b) their patients.

It should be administrators. Yup, those people that are always being hauled over the Kirsty coals on Newsnight for killing so many people. Now we gotta find out why.
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Grant



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One of the big problems we have is the God-like status of GPs and consultants. Here’s my solution to the problem:
- get rid of the Junior doctor title. If you’ve trained for seven years you should be a proper doctor straight away
- there should be five nurse practitioners for each GP. The GPs should be a referral point if the nurse and the software can’t find a solution
- chemists should be able to prescribe more drugs (they are trained for it but the GMC, the doctors’ union, says no)
- half the British Pharmacopoeia should be available over the counter. Let people treat themselves the way they can treat their cars if they want. (Cars are almost as deadly as doctors)
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Mick Harper
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Agreed, agreed, agreed, agreed. On that last point, the internet has been a godsend:

* British pharmacists were not allowed to dish you out with x, y and z without a doctor's prescription
* So you sent off to Indian pharmacies for cheapo versions of x, y and z.
* All of a sudden British pharmacies (under strange names) found they could offer you x, y and z if you filled in a detailed questionnaire and ticked a box that you would be telling your own doctor all about it
* we kept answering the questions wrong
* so they started showing the right answer to the questions (with a little box explaining why if you ticked the wrong answer)
* we managed to get the answers right
* British pharmacies will dish you out with x, y and z (though you can't get them 'on the NHS') and have to pay marginally more than Indian prices.
* No patients have been harmed in the making of this breakthrough (maybe a few, see above).
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Mick Harper
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Mick wrote:
Now we gotta find out why.

Hospital administrators do not administer hospitals, they keep them running for the convenience of whatever group has the most power. Which is neither (a) hospital administrators nor (b) Richmond House. The medical staff make sure that every procedure, however marginal, is carried out while patients are easily available i.e. occupying vastly expensive ward beds. The ancillary unions make sure there are vast legions pushing patients from procedure to procedure, multi-occupying desks at every nodal point, and holding clipboards.

Since there is no-one that can ever say, "No, we won't be doing that, but thanks for the suggestion," or "Could we cope with one person doing that rather than rostering four?", the system keeps breaking down as each spending round is used up. Eventually administrators are forced to make 'hard decisions'. Until Newsnight notices the result, some administrators are given early retirement, and we move on to the next crisis.
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Mick Harper
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Spot The Villain Competition
The Guardian in a full-page exposé wrote:
Hundreds of Indonesian fruit pickers in UK seek diplomatic help

Is it the Indonesian embassy? Nope.

More than 200 Indonesian fruit pickers have sought diplomatic help since July after facing difficulties working in Britain this season, the nation’s embassy has revealed.

Is it Brexit? Nope.

The Guardian has spoken to a pair of workers sent to a farm in Scotland that supplies berries to M&S, Waitrose, Tesco and Lidl. They claim pickers were sent back to the caravan if they could not work fast enough and left with large debts to repay.

Is it a Scottish farmer? Nope.

The embassy says the true number of people experiencing problems is likely to be far higher, as many were seeking help on behalf of several workers at the same farms – and others would not have the confidence to approach the embassy.

Is it British fruit farmers in general? Nope.

It says the most common reported problem is a lack of work at farms, especially for those who arrived very late in the season. Some did not start until the harvest was all but over, giving them little opportunity to repay debts incurred when they signed up.

Is it Indonesians? Maybe...
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Mick Harper
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The seasonal worker visa allows people to come to the UK for up to six months and work but there is no guarantee of employment for that period. One man who started at Castleton farm in Aberdeenshire in July said he was repeatedly sent back to the caravan after just a few hours in the field because he could not meet challenging picking targets, leaving him badly in debt.

Sounds like the harvest was running out and picking what was left was the devil of a job. Natural causes? Nope.

The Indonesian worker said he had borrowed money in April to pay a local agent in Java more than £4,650 to come to Britain. The man said the small amounts of work he was given in Scotland meant he typically took home about £200 a week, which made little impact on his debts. He was eventually dismissed after two months as a result of red warnings for working slowly and moved to a farm in Kent. The work there only lasted until the start of November, leaving him more than £1,700 debt and with no job.

Is it the British Retail Consortium? Nope

The British Retail Consortium said that supermarkets sourcing from Castleton “are concerned by these allegations and are investigating as a matter of urgency”.

You've been told who it was, so I'll finish the story and deliver the dénouement soon.
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