Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

It'd be nice to see the unionist parties show some kind of progressive vision for Scotland rather than see how Union Flaggy they can be to appeal to Rangers fans/Orange Order and telling them the SNP threaten their 17th century way of life.

It'll only ever appeal to a population dying out.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Maybe the L D will take some seats from the SNP, !

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

You do realise that Pope Alexander VIII supported William of Orange.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Yes he did.

However, three centuries later it is an absolute irrelevance to the point I made about unionist party strategies in Scotland post 2014.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

You were the one that brought the 17th century into it.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Again ... something of a misreading of how things are around here right now. The one thing unionist politicians try very hard at in Scotland is not associating themselves with the Orange Order (or Rangers FC).

The key selling point is, primarily, an end to the divisive negative rhetoric of the nationalists, but also the slowly growing sense that the Nats have never had their eye on the ball as the Scottish government and that a lot of things have been going slowly wrong over an extended period.

The claim that kids are all Nats and it’s pensioners that are keeping Scotland in the union is nonsense that was cooked up while the Yes campaign was getting its excuses ready in the dying days of the campaign in 2014. Polling has never borne this out. Scottish nationalism is driven largely by angry men aged between 30 and 50, a worrying number of whom also believe in chemtrails and black helicopters.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

I didn’t say the 17th century was invalid just your narrow point that only sought to deflect mine rather than address it.

---------- Post added at 22:11 ---------- Previous post was at 22:03 ----------

I think the polling data shows there’s an age gap, although by dying out I did mean the Orange Order and those that see Scottish nationalism (and Celtic’s utter dominance of Scottish football to a lesser degree) as an attack on their way of life. Those driven by the sinister notion that decision making is being led by the unseen fenian hand.

While none overtly associate with the Orange Order the union flag waving nationalism goes (red?) hand in hand.

The independence question will never be truly settled while unionists fail to offer a compelling alternative to the SNP, or demonstrate that Westminster decision making is anything other than London/south east centric. They aren’t even trying to win over “soft” SNP votes among the 45% who did vote for independence. It’s all a battle for the 50-55% who don’t, and that doesn’t win Scottish elections.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

The Orange Order is alive and well in Scotland at the present time - it’s no throwback to the 17th century to mention them in today’s context.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Electoral Calculus has new seat predictions accounting for the Brexit Party’s decision not to field candidates in seats where Tories won in 2017. Surprisingly the prediction is that a number of seats the SNP might have won in Scotland will now stay blue. Obviously it’s just a statistical exercise but it does show what a complex game this is.

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Labour Party digital systems subject to attempted cyber attack.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/poli...-a4284776.html

This could get interesting !

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Mrs and I went over to Belfast for a city break last summer ... right after the glorious 12th. We rocked up at Cairnryan ferry terminal just as all the coaches were coming off the ferry to take the pilgrims back to Glasgow.

There were .... flags. Lots of flags.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Yup, hence attempted.

If it was DDoS then one would assume the party had invested in something such as Akamai (or the AWS/GCP equivalent.) which would explain the non effectiveness.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

There a lot of very rich powerful people/ countries both here and abroad who will do anything to maintain the current Govt. Same interference during Brexit, but the Tories have suppressed the report on it.

Give these guys a majority and it's goodbye NHS, sold to Trump, the break up of the UK increasing regional divisions, more dead end no contract jobs, and the wealth gap will continue to spiral, and the climate crisis ignored.

People need to sit back and think about that, whatever their views on Brexit. A hung parliament would be a result, you don't want to give anybody carte blanche at the moment, none up them are up to the job.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

So if there is something incriminating on the Labour systems, we shouldn't know about it? After all they think it's ok(it was admitted) to warn a Labour mate that the Police are about to do a raid on their computer, looking for dodgy pictures.


Occasionally I, along with the rest of us get phishing, etc,attempts.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

WTAF?

It was a DDOS attack, not a Pen Test - you need to take off the foil hat, buddy... :dozey:

You seem to be stating that it's OK to commit a criminal act to check if someone has a suspicion something dodgy might be going on?

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Interesting front page of the Sun this morning ;)

Attachment 28131

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Absolute nonsense - Tories have already stated the NHS is not up for sale, the US is not interested either, stop spinning Labour/Momentum and Illiberal Undemocrat propaganda rubbish. :rolleyes:

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

And of course, politicians never lie do they.... In fact I'm sure you stated a while ago that lying was part of a politicians remit and that they all did it. (or words to that effect)

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

And I do not have any issue with saying that at all.

That said - Repeat after me, the NHS is not up for sale, will never be in the hands of the U.S, ever, period. If you believe the crap coming out from Labour and Lib Dems, who certainly cannot be trusted on the truth then more fool you!:rolleyes:

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Since US companies already have access into the NHS (on the provision that they have a location in the EU, at which point they are as free to bid for contracts as anyone else)

I don't think it's unreasonable to be on guard against access to the NHS being used as leverage in future trade deals.

It's certainly not unreasonable to be aware of the lies that ALL the political parties are prepared to tell. or the U turns they're prepared to make.

I'm going to bookmark your response above, and if you're right send you a bottle of whatever you wish :) If you're wrong however.... then... well... we're in a whole different world.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Latest opinion poll in from Survation.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Seems like universities are catching heat for fulfilling their legal obligation to encourage students to register to vote - https://www.theguardian.com/educatio...-students-vote

What a toxic campaign this is...

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Did one expect any different as once the genie is out of the bottle its pretty well impossible to put it back in there..

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

And who are the students being told to vote for?


and will they vote twice.

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.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Ahem
https://www.electoralcommission.org....voter/students

The bit about local elections is interesting. Didn't know that!

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

So would you rather a Corbyn government that likely won't deliver Brexit?

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

:Yikes:

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Labour can't win but the Tories can be stopped from having 5 years to destroy what's left of the NHS and welfare state. A hung parliament would mean none of these Muppets get complete control.

As for Brexit, an irrelevance, the climate should be our no 1 concern if we had our heads screwed on.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

This former Tory cabinet minister certainly does not want a Tory majority..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50398115

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/g...dent-xjz7sj79p (Paywall)


And just for political balance here is someone who in Scotland was the Labour party’s former minister Tom Harris, who was the MP for Glasgow South and has revealed he is voting Tory warning that Jeremy Corbyn is a threat to the UK.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/latest/index.html#news

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

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

It's perfectly legal to register to vote in two locations and decide where to vote closer to the time - https://fullfact.org/online/register-vote-twice/

Carrie Paechter certainly didn't encourage people to vote in two locations in her original tweet on the subject - https://twitter.com/CarriePaechter/s...617034754?s=20 Maybe there's somewhere else where she advocated electoral fraud but I haven't found anything yet

---------- Post added at 09:18 ---------- Previous post was at 09:05 ----------

He's currently my MP though I would guess not for much longer. He was parachuted into the constituency in 2005. The new Conservative candidate is also being parachuted in from Essex County Council much to consternation in our local Facebook groups. He'll win though...

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Boris gets a frosty welcome from some residents in South Yorkshire.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50398877

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a9200796.html

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

So what specifically in detail could he or anybody else have done afterwards? Labour and the Lib Dems make a fuss, but don't seem to have any answers as to what they would've done.



I've seen the flooding described as the worst in living memory. Not something that can be planned for. The primary disaster planning is by county councils. Maybe their frosty welcome should be reserved for those Labour councils that they keep voting for.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

She is being ridiculous, Johnson isn't Moses FFS. :rolleyes:

Now it's Corbyn, the Terrorist Sympathisers turn.

https://twitter.com/RaynerSkyNews/st...72882644480001

Here is another one, where he says "Under Socialism, you will all cooperate."

https://twitter.com/JasonGroves1/sta...59797937475584

Anyone who votes for this horrible prick, would be insane.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Its not surprising as both are not liked or trusted by the vast majority of the populace.

---------- Post added at 14:00 ---------- Previous post was at 13:54 ----------

One of the clear answers to all this flooding whether its now or in the future is for the major parties to have a good future flooding strategy instead of their usual can't organise a piss up in a brewery type strategy which has failed time after time..

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

There ARE plans set out, but locally. After all each area will be different.
Link
Still no details from anybody of what specific actions could have been carried out in the past few days, that would've helped the situation. Just a nonsense "we would've handled it better".

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Well that's the motorists vote lost.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

So what's your solution to increasingly jammed roads and poor air quality?

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

I don't know, shall we go ask them in China? :rolleyes:

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2019/11/5.jpg

*different shirts available ;)

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Nationalise the air,and issue everyone with a trabant comrade carrot muncher.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Could do Mick but our car ownership per head is over double that of China's...

The amount of cars some households have is getting silly, some paving over their front gardens to cram more in. Success governments have failed to deal with it hence the mess we find ourselves in. Poor air quality in cities, and going nowhere slowly.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

An integrated Transport Policy - you know - the one that John Prescott was supposed to deliver and all he could come up with was a bus lane.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Cars to be kept for party apparatchiks. The rest of you proles will be on public transport that will be permanently paralysed by strikes.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

You forgot to mention the re-education camps, rationing, and black helicopters...

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Talking of education, I decided to educate my nephews, on what life would be like under comrade Corbyn. Gave them a tenner for cleaning my car, then took 6 quid back off them and gave it to the kids next door for doing Sweet FA!

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

I didn't want to depress you too much. :D

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Now do life under Boris - promise them a tenner for cleaning your car, then tell the current situation means they can't have it yet because you can't get agreement from everyone else in the house, but you will give it to them on the 15th January, or maybe the 12th March, or the 31st of October, or the 31st of January, and if you can't do it then, blame everyone else... ;)

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

And because of austerity, they're actually only getting £1 and that'll be the rate for the next 5 years until it's cut to 75p and there's no money for a sponge or bucket so they better get licking.

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

You're not very good at analogies are you - that was poor attempt if I ever saw it. Boris is not to blame for any predicament we're in now. I blame that on the Remain Maniacs in the previous Parliament! :dozey:

But no thanks, I only needed to clean the car once. The kids were paid the full tenner, I am not a socialist and never will be.

---------- Post added at 20:29 ---------- Previous post was at 20:27 ----------

And we're only in Austerity because the prior Labour Government spent like crazy, meaning there was no money left. (Admission by Labour itself on leaving office 2010). And we'd be there again if that terrorist loving cretin got in No. 10. :rolleyes:

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

That terrorist loving cretin is not so popular in Glasgow.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/12...kler-video-IRA

Re: Election 2019, Week 1
 

Can we just say he is not popular at all, except by his little fan base who think he will create the land of milk and honey for lazy good for nothings, who can work but refuse to do so?

I believe he has also said to today the terrorist leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, should have been arrested before he died, forgetting of course that this monster was wearing a Suicide vest that he self triggered. :rolleyes:

Re: Election 2019, Week 1