UK Politics: Step Right Up, Step Right Up. Come Marvel At Our Amazing North Sea Snake Oil. Will Cure All Your Electoral Woes. Get It While It's Hot ;-)

[SeanF]

10 minutes ago, mormont said:

It's not an either/or. 

Dr. Mos- Shogbamimu treats it as such.

"They believed her tears/denials even though evidence said otherwise for no other reason than she’s White."

Edited August 24, 2023 by SeanF

[mormont]

I can see how one might read it that way, but the issue is this:

If we assume that the hospital board were worried about reputational damage, something so obvious as to barely need stating, then that inclines them to not want to believe that they have a killer nurse on the ward, of course. But they still need to decide whether to believe the nurse's denials. That second decision is the one that is undoubtedly influenced by Letby's presentation, and as I noted earlier, that presentation includes her race. 

I'm not going to defend the exact wording of the Tweet for the obvious reason that I didn't write it. But equally, I wouldn't expect anyone to throw out race as a factor because there was another motivating factor for the Board not to want to admit the problem. Most of us understand that there can be more than one influence acting at a time. if the author of the tweet words things such as to suggest she thinks there was only one, well, again, I'm not going to answer for her. But saying that doesn't mean that it is, in fact, an either/or, does it? 

[Heartofice]

42 minutes ago, mormont said:

But saying that doesn't mean that it is, in fact, an either/or, does it? 

It's a matter of equivalence and weighting. Dr Shola has heavily weighted race as a factor for why Letby's actions were ignored, in fact she's pretty much pointed to it being the main, if only reason. 

While we can't say race doesn't factor into it at all, it just seems far less likely that it created any sort of meaningful impact in the decisions of anyone involved, given the wealth of other, much more relevant factors and evidence.

The only real purpose of her tweet was race baiting and self promotion, taking advantage of a grim situation for her own ends. Not sure why anyone would be keen to defend that.

[Spockydog]

Except when they're trying to tell you about Jimmy Savile or Andrew Malkinson, eh, Sir Keir?

 

[Spockydog]

 

[Spockydog]

Everything is fine. Nothing to see here. Keir Starmer is doing a fine job. Despite the ongoing, dramatic loss of party members, the corporate cocksuckers are doing a fine job boosting the party finances. Hooray for all those private health firms and oil lobbyists. 

Contrast:

During and after Corbyn's leadership election, there was a large increase in the number of Labour Party members; from 201,293 on 6 May 2015 (the day before the 2015 general election) to 388,407 on 10 January 2016. Local Labour constituency offices have attributed this rise mainly to the "Corbyn effect. 

Despite how terrible he was, he somehow managed to almost double the Labour Party membership in less than a year. 

Funny that. 

Edited August 24, 2023 by Spockydog

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

During and after Corbyn's leadership election, there was a large increase in the number of Labour Party members; from 201,293 on 6 May 2015 (the day before the 2015 general election) to 388,407 on 10 January 2016. Local Labour constituency offices have attributed this rise mainly to the "Corbyn effect. 

Worth remembering this didn't translate into winning elections, and 'The Corbyn Effect' is mainly about giving the Tories 4 more years.

[Spockydog]

Yeah, he was so shit that, despite enormous media hostility, he came 2227 votes from Downing Street. 

Then The Establishment collectively shit itself, and the lies and smears went off the scale. 

[Heartofice]

 

There is no doubt the inability of this country to actually build stuff is mindblowing. Almost certainly heavy contributions to this is NIMBYism and the spiralling costs of any project. HS2 obvious example but just looking at the Lower Thames Crossing, which hasn't even started but is already enormously expensive, it's not surprising nothing gets built. 

So we can't build housing, we can't build roads, or rail or trams.. or basically anything. No country can upgrade itself if you can't do those things. It's no wonder the north south divide is still so shit.

 

[SeanF]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

 

There is no doubt the inability of this country to actually build stuff is mindblowing. Almost certainly heavy contributions to this is NIMBYism and the spiralling costs of any project. HS2 obvious example but just looking at the Lower Thames Crossing, which hasn't even started but is already enormously expensive, it's not surprising nothing gets built. 

So we can't build housing, we can't build roads, or rail or trams.. or basically anything. No country can upgrade itself if you can't do those things. It's no wonder the north south divide is still so shit.

 

We're very good, and very well-organised, at stopping things from happening, through endless campaigning and lawfare.

Getting things done?  Not so much.

[Derfel Cadarn]

We also have an issue where the stuff that does get built is shit. 
New bridges that shut it’s windy.

New housing that despite more stringent building regulations is poorly insulated and/or poorly ventilated, potentially leading to mould problems. Cheap materials, shit ground drainage…

 

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, SeanF said:

We're very good, and very well-organised, at stopping things from happening, through endless campaigning and lawfare.

Getting things done?  Not so much.

As a case study of how NOT to get something built, the Lower Thames Crossing is a work of art
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lower-thames-crossing-planning-cost-800-million-2023-md6j8z6sp

£800 million cost before they even build anything! 

 

Quote

 Its report on national infrastructure policy found that it can regularly take as long to get permission to build a project as it does to complete the work.

Nick Smallwood, chief executive of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, told the committee that multiple consultation periods could be reviewed so people are not given “multiple opportunities to challenge the same thing”.

 

Edited August 25, 2023 by Heartofice

[polishgenius]

Britain might be shit at building stuff but I have to say that claiming its cities are 'worse served by public transport' because they don't have trams, specifically, is pretty misleading. I prefer trams to buses, sure, and think British cities should have way more of them, but claiming that Poland's public transport is better than the UK's because Poznan has trams and Liverpool doesn't is a pretty silly thing for that tweeter to be doing. 

 

 

Also: everyone is shit at building stuff, it seems. In my experience the UK is currently much, much better at building projects than Germany is. Everything from megaprojects like Berlin's airport and the Elbphilieharmonie, to local stuff like seeing blocks of housing take years to go up that would take half the time in England or the local station in Berlin when I first moved 10 years ago having been undergoing a rebuild and now still not even remotely close to being finished with that same rebuild. A short extension to the U-bahn network - about a mile and a half linking two existing lines- taking almost as long as the entire Crossrail project. 

 

It could be worse, is what I'm saying, and while I'm sure some of that red tape could be cut you have to be careful what you wish for because at least some of the issues in the big German projects have come from lack of clarity and oversight. Certainly the catastrophe that was the airport was entirely because of that. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

 

[ljkeane]

6 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

I prefer trams to buses, sure, and think British cities should have way more of them, but claiming that Poland's public transport is better than the UK's because Poznan has trams and Liverpool doesn't is a pretty silly thing for that tweeter to be doing.

Liverpool kind of does have a metro to be fair. It's not a very good one but I suspect it counts as one of the 15% of UK cities with one for the purposes of that chart.

[mormont]

Metros and trams are unsuitable for many UK cities, to be fair. But at the same time, public transport in most UK cities undoubtedly sucks and it is a significant drain on the UK economy.

We built the new Queensferry Bridge on (slightly under) budget and only a few months late because of weather delays. That was a huge infrastructure project. It can be done.

How nice it is to be discussing an actually important political issue in a civil way.

 

[A wilding]

My city (in all but name) has an excellent bus service, in contrast with many others. It is run by a company wholly owned by the local council. The government has been trying on and off to force its privatisation for years.

[Raja]

Think it's quite difficult to live outside London without a car, which is a bit sad really. Especially when you work a job where you are regularly working Sundays & bank holidays, and finishing up at midnight.

[Derfel Cadarn]

3 hours ago, mormont said:

Metros and trams are unsuitable for many UK cities, to be fair. But at the same time, public transport in most UK cities undoubtedly sucks and it is a significant drain on the UK economy.

We built the new Queensferry Bridge on (slightly under) budget and only a few months late because of weather delays. That was a huge infrastructure project. It can be done.

How nice it is to be discussing an actually important political issue in a civil way.

 

Is the Queensferry Bridge still having to shut due to wind?

[Rippounet]

3 hours ago, mormont said:

Metros and trams are unsuitable for many UK cities, to be fair.

Why so? Genuinely curious.