Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Does it matter who a student is told to vote for? We are all continuously bombarded with information/propaganda (delete as applicable) on who we should vote for. Once in that polling booth, the decision is your own.

On voting twice, seeing as there was one conviction for double voting out of 32,204,184 votes cast, it doesn't sound like the hugest problem

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Not on your planet obviously.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Labour has suffered a second cyber attack.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...ests-live-news

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Everyone will be at them now,i think their spending plans may have upset a few people :shocked:

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Having access is not the same as taking over the NHS. I suppose if it was up to you, we would not be buying any drugs from US companies.

You take your ideology too far, and that attitude does not help NHS patients. I sincerely hope that we will always have at the NHS's disposal the very best drugs from around the world.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

l suspect all political parties will be checking their cyber security in the next few days l would imagine.

---------- Post added at 17:23 ---------- Previous post was at 17:20 ----------

And this is another opinion poll just released from YouGov

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

We all do, however we want the NHS to be able to use it's purchasing power as a massive supplier of healthcare to be able to push down the price of medicines rather than leave it to big pharmaceutical companies to extract supernormal profits from in the absence of competition.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

On that, I am sure we all agree.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

The lack of competition is because the companies own the exclusive patents. Competition is available for provision of services, but that means private companies doing it.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

That's a thoroughly disingenuous piece of reporting, that glosses right over the key fact that the professor actively encouraged students to register to vote both at their home and term-time addresses. Suddenly she's shock-horror-aghast that this has been interpreted as her inciting students to break the law by voting twice (how else would you take it? You don't register in multiple areas so you can vote in person wherever you happen to be staying on polling day, you register at your normal address and apply for a postal or proxy vote if you won't be there in person on the day).

If she really didn't see how her words naturally read, then what is she doing being a professor? Clarity of communication is a basic prerequisite of undergraduate essays which presumably she marks regularly as part of her job.

Obviously it suits the Grauniad which I'm quite sure has been scouring the news wires looking for evidence of intimidation or violence in this campaign, given the fraught few months of politics we have just had. Their sub-heading "Universities have a legal obligation to encourage voter registration. This has prompted an angry reaction in some areas" is an outright lie, as the quoted objections to her Tweet make clear. She was not fulfilling the university's obligation to encourage registration, she was giving, at best, poor advice, and at worst, outright incitement to commit electoral fraud.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

I suppose you should get awarded half a point for at least attempting to apply economic theory. Yes, companies have exclusive patents, and rightly so for innovation, however there’s a balancing act and at present it’s clearly too far biased towards big pharma which is where the collective purchasing power of the NHS is useful to offset this.

The competition you describe isn’t going to meaningfully change this for those at the bottom of the supply chain (service users). Indeed, all that would happen is cherry picking.

For the disastrous consequences on the whole check the partial privatisation of the jobcentre role to the work programme providers. Private sector companies focused on the low hanging fruit, leaving those furthest from employment aside for the public sector to pick up once the two years were up. Absolutely disastrous and the subject of a Panorama and Dispatches in the past.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Where have I claimed that? I haven’t, so pipe down

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Old Boy’s perception of reality is somewhat off, I wouldn’t worry about it. :)

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

You can't be in favour of competition and against what is referred to as "privatisation"

Link

You do realise there was a massive increase in NHS "privatisation" under Labour.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

See this is why you only got the half point for your application of economics earlier.

You want to do more research into natural monopoly or oligopoly. Both occur where market failure takes place for a variety of reasons. These markets should either be in public hands or heavily regulated.

A distraction from my point. I think we can safely say Corbyn and McDonnell shouldn't be tarnished by Blair's introduction of "the market" into the NHS.