Thursday 20th November 2025
Re: Thursday 20th November 2025
Morning !
Cure for a cool kitchen --- go outside in --3°, come back in
We had a really cold winter in the mid 80's , 20 at night and still 15 in the mornings. I went to see my oldest neighbours . Marcelle had the end of a six foot long branch in the hearth, which wasn't doing much heating, and the kitchen door wide open . I sneaked a look at the thermometer on the wall .
4° !
It was still not uncommon for country folk to have neither an inside loo nor an outside one ... First daughter told me the other day how she found that out, when she was there with the old people's granddaughters ---
" Behind the house ! "
You don't have to go back very far to find a very different world in Western Europe .
Cure for a cool kitchen --- go outside in --3°, come back in
We had a really cold winter in the mid 80's , 20 at night and still 15 in the mornings. I went to see my oldest neighbours . Marcelle had the end of a six foot long branch in the hearth, which wasn't doing much heating, and the kitchen door wide open . I sneaked a look at the thermometer on the wall .
4° !
It was still not uncommon for country folk to have neither an inside loo nor an outside one ... First daughter told me the other day how she found that out, when she was there with the old people's granddaughters ---
" Behind the house ! "
You don't have to go back very far to find a very different world in Western Europe .
Re: Thursday 20th November 2025
Guardian letter --
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If ever there was a need for journalist's doing rigorous fact-checking and more bloody analysis !
Spoxx spouting propagandist half-truths to journos are such a waste of time.
Margaret GreenwoodThe privatisation of the NHS is happening in plain sight. Last month, the government proudly announced that “A total of 6.15 million appointments, tests and operations were delivered by independent providers for NHS patients this year”, an almost 500,000 increase on last year, which it says is “helping to cut waiting times [and] free up NHS capacity”.
How can this be so? There’s a finite number of doctors, nurses and surgeons in the country. If medical staff increase their work in the private sector, they decrease their availability for NHS work.
Moreover, overwhelmingly it’s the NHS, not the private sector, that trains future NHS staff. In 2002-03, only 0.1% of NHS hip replacements were done by the private sector; by 2017-18, that figure was 30%.
Newcastle University researchers have found that the private sector is now substituting for, not adding to, NHS capacity, and that this is leading to “reduced in-house provision” and “longer waits for all”. The government should be urgently seeking to put an end to the use of the private sector, not promoting it. If it fails to do so, who will train the surgeons of the future?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
If ever there was a need for journalist's doing rigorous fact-checking and more bloody analysis !
Spoxx spouting propagandist half-truths to journos are such a waste of time.
Re: Thursday 20th November 2025
More good useful info here, another Gdn Letter --
"
There's nothing wrong, per se, with the private sector if it operates within certain close parameters decided by government, but the current UK government has a completely one-eyed view !
To what extent they are motivated by personal gain, ideological conviction or plain stupidity is rather ... interesting !
"
Margaret Greenwood Former MP for Wirral WestYour editorial states that the government will be judged on the state of the NHS (The Guardian view on Labour’s NHS reforms: where is the plan to deliver them?, 22 September). It is a pity that it doesn’t also consider the risks to the future of the NHS posed by the 10-year health plan, which shifts outpatients from publicly owned hospitals to public-private-funded neighbourhood health centres and commits to contracting out NHS services, embedding privatisation.
Those who feel relaxed about the use of the private sector to deliver NHS care should note the devastating impact it is having on NHS eye care and the research by the Centre for Health and the Public Interest showing that on average £1 in every £3 that the NHS pays for a cataract operations leaks out in the form of profit. They should also heed the warnings implicit in Sam Freedman’s book Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It: in 1979, 64% of social care beds were provided by the state, but by 2012, it was 6%. Clearly, contracting out leads to a loss of state capacity to deliver.
There are real fears that the NHS will be hollowed out and share the same fate as social care: something that everyone wants to be there should they need it, but which the state no longer has the means – or will – to deliver. "
There's nothing wrong, per se, with the private sector if it operates within certain close parameters decided by government, but the current UK government has a completely one-eyed view !
To what extent they are motivated by personal gain, ideological conviction or plain stupidity is rather ... interesting !
Re: Thursday 20th November 2025
Mmmm , I'm jealous, love a decent bit of snow !gilsey wrote: Thu Nov 20, 2025 11:52 am Good morning.
Weather report. -5c overnight, snowing when I got up this morning but then stopped for a couple of hours so only about 10cm, but likely more to come.
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Sky'sGoneOut
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Re: Thursday 20th November 2025
As others have mentioned IT'S BLOODY FREEZING. No snow here but when I reluctantly got out of bed and opened the curtains there was a forlorn looking blue tit pecking at the ice in my frozen bin lid bird bath.
Curiously there's no announcement of tonight's QT panel on Twitter but it's definitely supposed to be on so mystery guests this week. Let's see who they shoehorn in for Reform.
Curiously there's no announcement of tonight's QT panel on Twitter but it's definitely supposed to be on so mystery guests this week. Let's see who they shoehorn in for Reform.
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refitman
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Re: Thursday 20th November 2025
Zoe Lyons is a standup comic. I think she's going to be the 'woke' one of the episode. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoe_LyonsFrog222 wrote: Thu Nov 20, 2025 5:14 pm Kinnock we all know ?
Apart from him I recognise the name Zoe Lyons from somewhere but the rest are a complete blank !
Surprises always welcome tho
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Sky'sGoneOut
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Re: Thursday 20th November 2025
Question Time came tonight from Loughborough.
For Labour we had Stephen Kinnock (it was meant to be Andy Burnham apparently so who knows what happened there). Last time Stephen was on I praised him for his performance, tonight however he can fuck right off. It would seem the government's line in defence of their immigration plans is there's nothing left wing about refusing to tackle people smuggling gangsters and Stephen repeated it tonight with relish. What? Who on the left is suggesting nothing should be done about criminal scum profiting from the misery and desperation of others? It would have been be nice if Stephen had been asked to provide a single example. It's utter dishonest bollocks but as we saw during the disability benefits cuts fiasco they'll smear just about anyone to try to shut down debate. He seemed to think it was preposterous that anyone would think they were doing it to ape Reform and claimed punitively cracking down on immigration was a moral imperative. Tell me Stephen, what's moral about pulling the rug out from under thousands of people, mostly women, who've come to this country in good faith to care for our elderly in nursing homes who are now going to have their chance of settling in this country torn from them retrospectively? Which of the 'Labour values' you kept harping on about does that fall under?
For the Tories we had Joe Robertson. Joe (whoever he is, never heard of him) was perfectly happy to throw Boris Johnson under the bus for his multitude of failures during the Covid pandemic but any suggestion that the Tories as a political party should offer an apology (he was asked 3 times) was unequivocally rebuffed. In fact he kind of suggested asking for such an apology was 'playing party politics' (despite the requests coming from the audience) and inferred that we should all be grateful that his party spent billions to keep people in jobs during the lockdowns. Despite it being public money, not the Tories' money, a distinction that was lost on them when it came to handing out PPE contracts to their mates and apparently continues to this day.
For the Lib Dems we had Josh Babarinde. First time I've seen Josh after reading about him being an up and comer in his party. Can't say I was particularly impressed but on a 5 person panel he wasn't afforded much time to speak. I agreed with pretty much everything he was able to say from taxing rich corporations to denouncing Reform's language on immigration, but I did have one problem. If your aim is to stop Farage (which he stated) then bringing him up in every discussion regardless of whether it's merited or not is utterly daft, and Josh did just that. I'm not saying we should ignore Farage (if only) but talking about him needlessly doesn't help.
For decent humans we had Zoe Lyons. Again on a 5 person panel Zoe didn't get much time to speak but when she did it was with compassion, humour and empathy. Now that Labour have left the field when it comes to things like working people needing food banks and immigrants being treated like human beings it's left to people like Zoe to keep highlighting such things but as a comedian what can you do? Well I suppose if you're into slapstick farces you could get involved with 'my party'.
For Spiked and the Telegraph we had Ella Whelan. As is always the case with these tedious contrarian bores every single word that came out of Ella's mouth was entirely predictable. On immigration it isn't the dehumanising language from the right that's bad (though she did acknowledge some of it wasn't 'nice') it's the left painting all immigrants as cuddly and virtuous that's the problem. Lockdowns should never have happened. All net zero initiatives need to be scrapped immediately. I mean had she read the report today based on a mass of evidence she'd have been confronted by the fact that had we locked things down earlier while seeing a deadly virus rapidly approaching we'd have saved thousands of lives and the subsequent lockdown which she's moaning about would have been much shorter. I mean these Spiked wankers aren't even real contrarians, do any of them ever offer a contrary view to their libertarian orthodoxy? Do they fuck.
For Labour we had Stephen Kinnock (it was meant to be Andy Burnham apparently so who knows what happened there). Last time Stephen was on I praised him for his performance, tonight however he can fuck right off. It would seem the government's line in defence of their immigration plans is there's nothing left wing about refusing to tackle people smuggling gangsters and Stephen repeated it tonight with relish. What? Who on the left is suggesting nothing should be done about criminal scum profiting from the misery and desperation of others? It would have been be nice if Stephen had been asked to provide a single example. It's utter dishonest bollocks but as we saw during the disability benefits cuts fiasco they'll smear just about anyone to try to shut down debate. He seemed to think it was preposterous that anyone would think they were doing it to ape Reform and claimed punitively cracking down on immigration was a moral imperative. Tell me Stephen, what's moral about pulling the rug out from under thousands of people, mostly women, who've come to this country in good faith to care for our elderly in nursing homes who are now going to have their chance of settling in this country torn from them retrospectively? Which of the 'Labour values' you kept harping on about does that fall under?
For the Tories we had Joe Robertson. Joe (whoever he is, never heard of him) was perfectly happy to throw Boris Johnson under the bus for his multitude of failures during the Covid pandemic but any suggestion that the Tories as a political party should offer an apology (he was asked 3 times) was unequivocally rebuffed. In fact he kind of suggested asking for such an apology was 'playing party politics' (despite the requests coming from the audience) and inferred that we should all be grateful that his party spent billions to keep people in jobs during the lockdowns. Despite it being public money, not the Tories' money, a distinction that was lost on them when it came to handing out PPE contracts to their mates and apparently continues to this day.
For the Lib Dems we had Josh Babarinde. First time I've seen Josh after reading about him being an up and comer in his party. Can't say I was particularly impressed but on a 5 person panel he wasn't afforded much time to speak. I agreed with pretty much everything he was able to say from taxing rich corporations to denouncing Reform's language on immigration, but I did have one problem. If your aim is to stop Farage (which he stated) then bringing him up in every discussion regardless of whether it's merited or not is utterly daft, and Josh did just that. I'm not saying we should ignore Farage (if only) but talking about him needlessly doesn't help.
For decent humans we had Zoe Lyons. Again on a 5 person panel Zoe didn't get much time to speak but when she did it was with compassion, humour and empathy. Now that Labour have left the field when it comes to things like working people needing food banks and immigrants being treated like human beings it's left to people like Zoe to keep highlighting such things but as a comedian what can you do? Well I suppose if you're into slapstick farces you could get involved with 'my party'.
For Spiked and the Telegraph we had Ella Whelan. As is always the case with these tedious contrarian bores every single word that came out of Ella's mouth was entirely predictable. On immigration it isn't the dehumanising language from the right that's bad (though she did acknowledge some of it wasn't 'nice') it's the left painting all immigrants as cuddly and virtuous that's the problem. Lockdowns should never have happened. All net zero initiatives need to be scrapped immediately. I mean had she read the report today based on a mass of evidence she'd have been confronted by the fact that had we locked things down earlier while seeing a deadly virus rapidly approaching we'd have saved thousands of lives and the subsequent lockdown which she's moaning about would have been much shorter. I mean these Spiked wankers aren't even real contrarians, do any of them ever offer a contrary view to their libertarian orthodoxy? Do they fuck.
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Sky'sGoneOut
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Re: Thursday 20th November 2025
Last time I saw Zoe Lyons she was doing this.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002l5f7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_road_D.915_(Turkey)
For someone with a morbid fear of, not so much heights, but something stupid happening leading to a plunge over the edge of a cliff...it was terrifying. I'm not sure if there's a psychological term for it. I'm fine if I feel safe, but put me within a few feet of a precipitous drop without even a basic fence between it and me and my knees and bowels start misbehaving. The worst is climbing medieval church steeples. I don't know why I still do it. Every fucking time I get to the top and it's always the same. A tiny wall/crenellation/whatever round the edge that comes up to my knees at best. It sucks. Medieval folk must have been the size of large cats if they thought that was acceptable.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002l5f7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_road_D.915_(Turkey)
For someone with a morbid fear of, not so much heights, but something stupid happening leading to a plunge over the edge of a cliff...it was terrifying. I'm not sure if there's a psychological term for it. I'm fine if I feel safe, but put me within a few feet of a precipitous drop without even a basic fence between it and me and my knees and bowels start misbehaving. The worst is climbing medieval church steeples. I don't know why I still do it. Every fucking time I get to the top and it's always the same. A tiny wall/crenellation/whatever round the edge that comes up to my knees at best. It sucks. Medieval folk must have been the size of large cats if they thought that was acceptable.