Politics

[Jerry]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... -companies

[Colorado Gull]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... -companies

Only have to read the first line before the actual article to understand.

"Farage’s September 2012 remarks contrast with Ukip’s new claims that it is opposed to privatisation of health service."

Don't try and use the British media to criticise UKIP.

[Scott Brehaut]

Better not vote in UKIP then, completing the privatisation of the NHS is one of Farage's priorities.

From http://www.ukip.org/policies_for_people

The National Health Service

– UKIP will ensure the NHS is free at the point of delivery and time of need for all UK residents.

– We will stop further use of PFI in the NHS and encourage local authorities to buy out their PFI contracts early where this is affordable.

– We will ensure that GPs’ surgeries are open at least one evening per week, where there is demand for it.

– UKIP opposes plans to charge patients for visiting their GP.

–We will ensure that visitors to the UK, and migrants until they have paid NI for five years, have NHS-approved private health insurance as a condition of entry to the UK, saving the NHS £2bn pa. UKIP will commit to spending £200m of the £2bn saving to end hospital car parking charges in England.

– We will replace Monitor and the Care Quality Commission with elected county health boards to be more responsive scrutineers of local health services. These will be able to inspect health services and take evidence from whistle-blowers.

– UKIP opposes the sale of NHS data to third parties.

– We will ensure foreign health service professionals coming to work in the NHS are properly qualified and can speak English to a standard acceptable to the profession.

– UKIP will amend working time rules to give trainee doctors, surgeons and medics the proper environment to train and practise.

– There will be a duty on all health service staff to report low standards of care.

[Gullscorer]

If you have what the Government decides are extreme views on anything, you might soon require a licence before you can publish or speak in public. It's the brainchild of Theresa May, the Home Secretary. May wants to introduce "extremism disruption orders". Whether you're an extremist, or just someone who says things which betray, in May's words, a lack of "respect for the rule of law" and "respect for minorities", then you could be served with an extremism disruption order (EDO).

EDOs will target even individuals who do not espouse or promote violence, which is already a crime in the U.K. As May says, "The problem that we have had is this distinction of saying we will only go after you if you are an extremist that directly supports violence. [This] has left the field open for extremists who know how not to step over the line." How telling that a leading British politician should be snotty about "this distinction" between speech and violence, between words and actions, which isn't actually some glitch in the legal system, as she seems to think, but rather is the foundation stone on which every free, democratic society ought to be built.

Served with an EDO, you will be banned from publishing on the Internet, speaking in a public forum, or appearing on TV. To say something online, including just tweeting or posting on Facebook, you will need the permission of the police. There will be a "requirement to submit to the police in advance any proposed publication on the web, social media or print." That is, you will effectively need a licence from the state to speak, to publish, even to tweet, just as writers and poets did in the 1600s.

What sort of people might find themselves branded "extremists" and thus forbidden from speaking in public? Anyone, really. The definition of extremist being bandied about by May and her colleagues is so sweeping that pretty much all individuals with outré or edgy views could potentially find themselves served with an EDO and no longer allowed to make any public utterance without government approval. So you won't have to incite violence to be labelled an extremist —in May's words, these extremism-disrupting orders will go "beyond terrorism." Never mind violence, you won't even have to incite hatred in order to be judged an extremist. It could cover any form of impassioned, angry political or moral speech, much of which might cause "alarm or distress" to some of the people who hear it.

What the government is proposing is the punishment of thought crimes, plain and simple. Its insistence that officialdom must now move beyond policing violence, and incitements to violence, and start clamping down on hotheaded, "harmful" speech that simply distresses people is about colonising the world of thought, of speech, of mere intellectual interaction between individuals — spheres officialdom has no business in policing. A climate of intolerance towards political incorrectness and testy and vulgar speech has already been created in Britain, and the government is milking it.

Let's remember the words of the 17th-century poet John Milton in his impassioned argument against those authorities that last tried to license public expression: "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties." Guess what was said about Milton after he said those words? Yep, he was called an extremist.

Read more:
http://reason.com/archives/2014/11/08/b ... emist-spee
http://reason.com/archives/2014/07/03/h ... free-speec

[Gullscorer]

UKIP polled 31% in a by-election in Wigan last Thursday with a 25% swing from Labour, according to UKIP. Swing from Conservatives not known. Don't quite see how they arrive at that figure, if you look at the percentages below. Perhaps they mean 25% swing from Conservative to UKIP. Anyway, presumably progress of sorts, for UKIP in a traditional Labour area. Poor turnout though, 14.5%, so you can't read too much into one such individual result. Better to see if it's part of a nationwide trend.

Wigan MB, Douglas- 13 November 2014:
Labour 874 [59.4%; -0.7%]
UKIP 452 [30.7%; -0.9%]
Conservative 80 [5.4%; -3.0%]
Green 37 [2.5%; +2.5%]
Community Action Party 29 [2.0%; +2.0%]

[+/- percentage change since previous election]

Rochester parliamentary by-election takes place on Thursday 20 November. UKIP win predicted.

[Gullscorer]

Yes, this is political: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/chris-g ... 69296.html

[PhilGull]

Yes, this is political: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/chris-g ... 69296.html

I don't understand why this guy is blaming feminism for peoples reaction to female on male violence. It's not feminism that is making people automatically take the woman's side, it is old fashion chauvinism - the thought that men are stronger than women, that women are weak and feeble. This is why male victims of domestic violence aren't taken seriously. Feminism wants an equal footing for men and women, feminism is fighting against this view of women being weak and feeble, the view that any violence between a man and a women must have been instigated by the man.
You want to know who to blame in this case? Old fashioned bigots, people who see women as these weak beings whose place is in the kitchen, they are the ones not believing that a man could be the victim of domestic abuse from a female perpetrator.

[Southampton Gull]

You mean people like............................























Brucie

[Gullscorer]

I don't understand why this guy is blaming feminism for peoples reaction to female on male violence. It's not feminism that is making people automatically take the woman's side, it is old fashion chauvinism - the thought that men are stronger than women, that women are weak and feeble. This is why male victims of domestic violence aren't taken seriously. Feminism wants an equal footing for men and women, feminism is fighting against this view of women being weak and feeble, the view that any violence between a man and a women must have been instigated by the man.

You want to know who to blame in this case? Old fashioned bigots, people who see women as these weak beings whose place is in the kitchen, they are the ones not believing that a man could be the victim of domestic abuse from a female perpetrator.

I disagree. If there's any chauvinism around these days, it's mainly feminist female chauvinism! Agreed, there's an element in the usual attitude to female-on-male violence which derives from the historical and instinctive desire among men to be protective of women, this from the time when such protection was a matter of survival for the human race. But you're absolutely mistaken about the part feminism has played in all this. Feminism is the real culprit here. And you'll find plenty of bigots among ideological feminists.

As for equality, in no way is modern feminism an equal rights movement, it's all for female (read feminist) privilege and power. Do you ever see feminists campaigning for boys in education, homeless men, male suicides, male workplace deaths, alienated fathers, etc..?

Why, for example, did Women's Aid campaign against shelters for abused men? Why is there a page on their website devoted to belittling male victims of domestic violence, claiming that many men who claim to be abused are actually perpetrators while denying that the same is true of many women? http://www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic-vi ... temid=1273 Women's groups claim that Domestic Violence is primarily a crime against women, whilst hiding the research and statistics which indicate near-equal rates of DV between the sexes. Bigotry, much? See this on statistics: http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights ... s-of-rape/

Read this from a feminist: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking ... t-men.html
Read what Erin Pizzey, founder of the first-ever women's refuge, has to say about domestic violence: http://whiteribbon.org/domestic-violenc ... -violence/
And this Telegraph article also helps restore some balance: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking ... -date.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... o-far.html

[Gullscorer]

As I recall, Cameron - with surprising frankness for him - made a speech a few months ago saying that he would strive, heart and soul, to keep Britain in the EU.

That speech was removed from the Tory party web site only recently - for obvious reasons, as people would realize that anything Cameron or other two EU stooge leaders in the liblabcon cartel say about any possibility of leaving the EU is totally ridiculous: they all work for the EU..!!

[Gullscorer]

Our politicians, in their infinite lack of wisdom, trashed social democracy in the 80's, traded it for professionalised self-seeking opportunism and left the bulk of the population in the lurch as they rushed off to build their fortunes. The politicians of the three main parties are all out of the same mould. There isn't a statesman or woman among the lot of them who has the courage necessary to even think about fixing the mess we're in:

State overspending, increasing national debt, crisis in the NHS, housing shortages, zero contracts, personal debt, rocketing rents, a crippling attack on the ill and the vulnerable, the list of where to start would make a true politician weep, yet all this bunch can do is strut to the media and kow-tow to the corporates.

It's amazing that so much goes on that the media don't report:

- The possibility of making 2.5 billion pounds profit on one hedge fund deal, change the lives of all those working for the companies taken over for the worse and pay no tax;
- Being an MP who commands £2 million per year from the EU in land subsidies, £650,000 in housing benefit rents from one local authority and pushes rents up on newly purchased properties from £645 per month to an intended £2,400 by 2016 for 93 tenants (£9 billion per year now going in rents to affluent property owners, many of whom are MPs);
- Being a double amputee and thinking that an interview with those who fund your care is going to improve your life - and being informed that your benefit is going to be reduced by two thirds (this person committed suicide 48 hours after being given the news).
- Over £90 billion per year paid by the state in corporate incentives;
- Two more million people expected to fall into the systemic debt trap by 2016 - interest on personal debt now running at £161 million per day;
- Top 1% of the population now owning 23% of wealth outright - £519 billion, rising by £40 billion per year;
- The bottom 50% owning only 6% and much of that is credit.

The way in which the elite have organised economic life to suit the absolute minority Is a monumental disgrace. Why are we not inundated by news and information about the sheer naked greed of those who have triumphed in their trashing of social democracy? It's no wonder that UKIP are on the rise. The British people want to regain control of their own destiny.

[Gullscorer]

Suggested reading (article and comments): http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/dec ... llegations

The UK very, very rarely prosecutes women for lying about rape, but the few women who are prosecuted shouldn't be, say rape victims' advocates. They have launched a new campaign to urge the government to stop pursuing false rape claims so "aggressively." In fact, they seem to want the government to stop pursuing any false rape claim. The most prominent advocate associated with the group called such prosecutions "a concerted witchhunt."

The advocates' concerns are without merit. Over a recent 17 month period in the UK, only 159 women were charged with perverting the course of justice or wasting police time, and of that number, only 44 were prosecuted. The Crown Prosecution Service says that cases of perverting the course of justice for false rape allegations are "rare" since they are only brought where the prosecution can prove that the original rape allegation was false, and the decision to charge is "extremely carefully considered and not taken lightly."

In other words, it's not an issue. But that's not good enough for some people. A law professor thinks that holding women responsible for false rape claims the way the UK does "violates human rights."

We think that allowing the lives of men and boys to be destroyed over rape lies that aren't punished violates human rights.
http://www.cotwa.info/

[Gullscorer]

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
From the book "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays.

[Gullscorer]

85 people own half the world's wealth: http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2 ... n-poorest/

If money is power, then we live in a dictatorship working to make that small elite even richer and more powerful, democracy is a sham, and unbridled capitalism is as evil an ideology as the worst aspects of fascism and communism.

And the propaganda of that powerful elite, promulgated by those working for them in a controlled media, ensures that the mass of the population meekly accepts the status quo. They believe they are free, when the reality is that we all live on a prison planet.

In politics, as in life, it is not a question of Left versus Right. It is, as Nigel Farage has stated, a question of Right versus Wrong.

[Gullscorer]

Forgot to mention The Times Briton of the Year 2014 (guess who): http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/l ... 307559.ece
http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/ ... -The-Times
The next Prime Minister? Odds 50:1 (Ladbrokes)