Wednesday 6th September 2023

[refitman]

Morning all.

[frog222]

Morning refit

I hadn't listened to this short clip before ... ...

[frog222]

This is from Melbourne ...

but am planning to stick my ffp2'd head into the medical centre on the way to the beach ...

[frog222]

They are now demolishing 3yo skools

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... fety-fears

" Asked about the health department’s interaction with other arms of government, Lord Bethell, who was a whip before becoming a junior health minister, said it could be “pretty turbulent”.

He said: “No 10 didn’t want to prioritise the pandemic in early 2020, even though the evidence was mounting – there was a post-election, ostrich, head-in-the-sand mentality, which I saw again around the invasion of Ukraine.

“Its priority, and what we were told many times, was Brexit and levelling up. ‘We have to deliver Brexit, so could your pandemic quietly go and mind your own business, please,’ we were told. So we had several weeks of this brushing off, and then they switched into it eventually. After that we got a lot of erratic dipping in. In Yiddish, it’s called ‘kibitzing’: erratic and ill-informed interference.” "

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... x-minister

[frog222]

off to beach,

will stick masked nose into med centre to see if any other masks about, any signs too !

[AnatolyKasparov]

"We have to deliver Brexit" - and you've made such a great success of that too.

[frog222]

[AnatolyKasparov]

Morning refit

I hadn't listened to this short clip before ... ...

Jenrick really is the worst of the worst.

[frog222]

Comment from Today's Crace
"" MaryDoll
46 minutes ago
21

Let me tell you a story.

A baby born in Scotland can have a baby box if the parents wish. They currently get 30 hours a week of free childcare provision, at school free school meals for all to P5. There are free bus passes for young people to help with social mobility. There’s a £25 child payment to mitigate the horror of the rape clause and mitigation of the bedroom tax means granny and grandad can have the grandchildren to stay and help with childcare. Resource has been put in place to end period poverty. Any youngster heading to university doesn’t have fees to pay and if they choose nursing the bursary still exists up here. Once in working life and paying tax their prescriptions are free post income tax. The vast amount of people pay less income tax than their counterparts down south while those who can afford it pay a bit more. In old age the free bus pass is there once again to aid social mobility and there’s help with social care.

Is this some kind of Utopia? No, it’s just a government that has made different political choices. Does everyone think they’re 100% the right choices? Probably not. Do we think things could still be better? Undoubtedly. But here’s the thing, we’re starting from a better place and at least we can honestly say that the government north of the border has some kind of idea about how to look after its citizens.

PMQs in Westminster is abysmal and part of the reason for that is that the current government seems to be blissfully unaware that they are supposed to govern for the people. It’s actually their job to make life better for the citizens of the country not make it worse. If only they had kept that in mind when making choices on behalf of us they might have some good news to share, some defence of their position and the ability to actually answer some very legitimate questions.

The really worrying thing is not just that some MPs are still clinging to the belief that the government is fit for purpose but that there are members of the public out there who feel the same way and who will one day wander into a polling booth at some point and put a cross in the Conservative box.

I despair. ""

The SNP has many faults but it's got some things right .

I don't have much confidence that Nu-Blair Labour will do half as well ...