The Politics Thread 2019

[Angry Ram]

6 minutes ago, 1of4 said:

The Labour Party as announced that there as been a cyber attack on it's digital platforms. I wonder who could have done this?

Maybe if 10 Downing Street and this tory government had released the report on Russian interference in our elections. The public might have a better understanding of how fake news and lies are spread through social media platforms.

There again the intelligence report may not even mention anything about the hacking of websites and the spreading of false information by the Russians. It could just contain evidence on the alleged donations given to the conservative party by foreign companies.

What the report does actually contain, we by never know, as it will probably never see the light of day outside of Downing Street.

Pesky Chinese ? That's my take away from all this anyway.

[cannable]

9 minutes ago, cstand said:

https://nurseslabs.com/high-nursing-student-dropout-rates-are-a-globe-concern/

Nursing drop out rates are nearly  25% so funding is wasted, solution lets employ people from abroad attitude which may seem an easy option but not when there is a global shortage of nurses and a shortage of accommodation in this country as well for them to live.

Its about time we trained people in this country first in all professions not just nurses.

 

Half the problem with nursing degrees are that the majority of it is just placement work. So the outcome is that student nurses are paying to go to work. 

Probably explains the high percentage of drop outs. 

[cstand]

42 minutes ago, cannable said:

Half the problem with nursing degrees are that the majority of it is just placement work. So the outcome is that student nurses are paying to go to work. 

Probably explains the high percentage of drop outs. 

As with any problem you cannot throw money at it neither can you not spend any money a balance approach is needed but only after a proper investigation as to why so many drop out.

My niece dropped out of training to be nurse a couple of years ago for work/life balance after of the birth of her first child nothing to do with training, money.

[SSD]

48 minutes ago, cstand said:

As with any problem you cannot throw money at it neither can you not spend any money a balance approach is needed but only after a proper investigation as to why so many drop out.

My niece dropped out of training to be nurse a couple of years ago for work/life balance after of the birth of her first child nothing to do with training, money.

It's like the folks in government assume mummy and daddy will pay for their kids education, which isn't the real world. Thankfully I earn enough to cover some of the day to day living costs but we definitely have had to make cut backs. If I wasn't earning a decent wage, there is no chance we'd have been able to afford the course. The university state she has to study 4/5 days a week. How are you supposed to earning a living whilst studying full time without grants or a higher maintenance loan?  £6k a year maintenance loan is peanuts!

[1of4]

39 minutes ago, cstand said:

As with any problem you cannot throw money at it neither can you not spend any money a balance approach is needed but only after a proper investigation as to why so many drop out.

My niece dropped out of training to be nurse a couple of years ago for work/life balance after of the birth of her first child nothing to do with training, money.

Lets pretend that lack of funding isn't the main problem when it comes to training more nurses.

Lets hire a private consultancy company, pay them tens of thousands of pounds a day. So they can take a year to write a report that come up with the same answer to the problem, as what people already knew.

The goverment can then sit on the report for another year before doing sod all about it. While claiming that they have spent more money, in real terms, then the previous government.

[sonofmidnight]

Retention of trained staff who have been educated in the UK is also a problem. I know of several people in both the medical and education workforce who have moved to Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UAE because the pay is better, work/ home life balance is better and in the case of Education schools are better equipped and behaviour is good.  We then have to plug the gaps by them leaving by recruiting people from other countries,eg India, and I sometimes wonder who then goes to work in those countries. It is a difficult situation to resolve because if we raise taxes too much for the higher earners then we get the resulting brain drain.  However more money is needed to improve working conditions and poor working conditions are also a factor in people leaving.  A huge amount of money has been wasted on the Brexit fiasco  and more controversially I believe more money to be wasted on HS2. This money should have been spent on health care and education! Rant over.

[cstand]

23 minutes ago, Dappled Ram said:

Retention of trained staff who have been educated in the UK is also a problem. I know of several people in both the medical and education workforce who have moved to Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UAE because the pay is better, work/ home life balance is better and in the case of Education schools are better equipped and behaviour is good.  We then have to plug the gaps by them leaving by recruiting people from other countries,eg India, and I sometimes wonder who then goes to work in those countries. It is a difficult situation to resolve because if we raise taxes too much for the higher earners then we get the resulting brain drain.  However more money is needed to improve working conditions and poor working conditions are also a factor in people leaving.  A huge amount of money has been wasted on the Brexit fiasco  and more controversially I believe more money to be wasted on HS2. This money should have been spent on health care and education! Rant over.

No its not a rant I totally agree with you. HS2 will be a complete money pit it will be a massive overspend, it will improve capacity on the railways to take more freight off the roads but with England being a small country the savings in journey times will be minimal compared to other countries.

[1of4]

20 minutes ago, cstand said:

No its not a rant I totally agree with you. HS2 will be a complete money pit it will be a massive overspend, it will improve capacity on the railways to take more freight off the roads but with England being a small country the savings in journey times will be minimal compared to other countries.

Announced today that the estimated cost of HS2 as gone up again.. The country doesn't need a high speed train service. It needs a service that is clean, reliable, cheap and more frequent. Also updating all our old rolling stock wouldn't go amiss.

[Gee SCREAMER !!]

10 minutes ago, 1of4 said:

Announced today that the estimated cost of HS2 as gone up again.. The country doesn't need a high speed train service. It needs a service that is clean, reliable, cheap and more frequent. Also updating all our old rolling stock wouldn't go amiss.

Have to say I totally agree with this . Last year I had to get to a village near Warrington by train .  Getting there was bad enough having to go to Manchester via Sheffield standing all the way  . The journey back was interminable with driving rain /delays/ a 30 year old train that hadn't been cleaned since its first journey and a breakdown .  Sure I read a while ago that there are Virgin high speed trains in storage but we don't have the tracks to take them.

[Stive Pesley]

22 minutes ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

Have to say I totally agree with this . Last year I had to get to a village near Warrington by train .  Getting there was bad enough having to go to Manchester via Sheffield standing all the way  . The journey back was interminable with driving rain /delays/ a 30 year old train that hadn't been cleaned since its first journey and a breakdown .  Sure I read a while ago that there are Virgin high speed trains in storage but we don't have the tracks to take them.

Yep - until HS2 is done.

I think HS2 gets a bad rap because it's so inordinately expensive and disruptive, but in reality this is because we've barely invested in rail infrastructure since the Victorian era. Beeching cuts actually removed huge amounts of capacity.

So I disagree with anyone who says we don't need HS2 - unless they are saying they are happy to have a failing out of date rail network.

40 minutes ago, 1of4 said:

The country doesn't need a high speed train service. It needs a service that is clean, reliable, cheap and more frequent.

HS2 will be clean and reliable, and should in theory make the rest of the network cheaper and more frequent

Mainland europe rail systems puts us to shame. Then when we try to do something about it, people moan..

I'm not especially looking for arguments as to why HS2 is bad (there are plenty I'm sure) but the bigger picture is that we do need it

https://www.hs2.org.uk/why/

[Comrade 86]

27 minutes ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

Have to say I totally agree with this . Last year I had to get to a village near Warrington by train .  Getting there was bad enough having to go to Manchester via Sheffield standing all the way  . The journey back was interminable with driving rain /delays/ a 30 year old train that hadn't been cleaned since its first journey and a breakdown .  Sure I read a while ago that there are Virgin high speed trains in storage but we don't have the tracks to take them.

I'd go one step further and say if the government feels it necessary to kick quadriplegics off benefits then perhaps HS2 needs scrapping altogether. 

[alexxxxx]

1 hour ago, Dappled Ram said:

Retention of trained staff who have been educated in the UK is also a problem. I know of several people in both the medical and education workforce who have moved to Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UAE because the pay is better, work/ home life balance is better and in the case of Education schools are better equipped and behaviour is good.  We then have to plug the gaps by them leaving by recruiting people from other countries,eg India, and I sometimes wonder who then goes to work in those countries. It is a difficult situation to resolve because if we raise taxes too much for the higher earners then we get the resulting brain drain.  However more money is needed to improve working conditions and poor working conditions are also a factor in people leaving.  A huge amount of money has been wasted on the Brexit fiasco  and more controversially I believe more money to be wasted on HS2. This money should have been spent on health care and education! Rant over.

Britain's brain drain is invisible. Had hundreds of thousands of highly skilled people move to Aus/NZ/UAE/Canada/USA for more money and living standards. 

Salaries in Australia for professional engineers, nurses etc are considerably greater than in the UK. Only finance jobs pay highly in the UK. 

[sonofmidnight]

This to me is a major issue. HS2 will have an unprecedented affect on the environment and will also not improve carbon emissions. It will be absolutely no use to people who live in my area as we will still need to drive or take another train to get to Toton.  Who will use it and how often? Any business meetings or interviews can now be done via  skype. Research has shown that many people will still choose to travel by car and plane.

[Angry Ram]

11 minutes ago, alexxxxx said:

Britain's brain drain is invisible. Had hundreds of thousands of highly skilled people move to Aus/NZ/UAE/Canada/USA for more money and living standards. 

Salaries in Australia for professional engineers, nurses etc are considerably greater than in the UK. Only finance jobs pay highly in the UK. 

[Stive Pesley]

49 minutes ago, Dappled Ram said:

This to me is a major issue. HS2 will have an unprecedented affect on the environment and will also not improve carbon emissions. It will be absolutely no use to people who live in my area as we will still need to drive or take another train to get to Toton.  Who will use it and how often? Any business meetings or interviews can now be done via  skype. Research has shown that many people will still choose to travel by car and plane.

I accept that it might not be especially helpful to us in Derby, but then we already have a reasonably quick journey time to London. Even better when they finish the electrification

However people in Manchester for example will suddenly have a 2 hour journey to London halved to 1 hour. Compare that to a 4 hour drive and then tell me people won't use it? Liverpool, Birmingham and Leeds all face similar journey time upgrades.

As for the carbon emissions question - the official information disagrees
https://www.hs2.org.uk/why/hs2-and-carbon-reduction/

I get that they may be over-egging the figures for impact but it's hard to argue with these stats - even if they only actually achieve half that

Quote

When the full HS2 network is running, our trains and the released capacity on other train lines will:

reduce car travel by 1.2 million miles every day.

That’s a reduction in the annual carbon emissions from car travel of over 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. This annual carbon saving is equivalent to around 18 million litres of petrol not used.

 

[sonofmidnight]

For  a differing opinion refer to HS2 action alliance. No doubt both parties have interpreted the facts according to their own agenda. It is up to us decide which we choose to believe. Having done much research I have chosen to believe that there are more negatives to HS2 than positives.  However as per usual I respect your opinion to have a differing view. 

[Rev]

1 hour ago, SchtivePesley said:

I accept that it might not be especially helpful to us in Derby, but then we already have a reasonably quick journey time to London. Even better when they finish the electrification

However people in Manchester for example will suddenly have a 2 hour journey to London halved to 1 hour. Compare that to a 4 hour drive and then tell me people won't use it? Liverpool, Birmingham and Leeds all face similar journey time upgrades.

As for the carbon emissions question - the official information disagrees
https://www.hs2.org.uk/why/hs2-and-carbon-reduction/

I get that they may be over-egging the figures for impact but it's hard to argue with these stats - even if they only actually achieve half that

 

By the time the first train departs, cars will no longer run on petrol.

[bigbadbob]

10 hours ago, Stagtime said:

The passport office is being pro-active, just received my new one and European Union has been taken off the front cover.

I getting myself an Irish one so I can waltz  by everyone on the way to benidorm, wearing my knotted hanky and union Jack shorts

[dog]

Tactical voting

 

It's getting closer to rubbishagedon.

I'm currently up in the North West where Brexit dominates the election surveys

Many people considering putting a peg on their nose to vote for their Brexit beliefs rather than their political ones

Would/could/should you? Or is it a sign that, no matter who wins the election, politics is broken?

[Gritstone Ram]

11 hours ago, Stagtime said:

The passport office is being pro-active, just received my new one and European Union has been taken off the front cover.

Is it blue?