Soldato
They're socialists, so we'd have had armed police and soldiers patrolling the streets.
And the gravy train rolls on . . .
- Thread starter stockhausen
- Start date
I disagree. A coin-flip on every decision would have resulted in fewer mistakes.
And that's not just hindsight talking. There were enough people saying ahead of each government action (or inaction) that better alternatives were available or, when government plans were announced, that they were a bad idea — all of whom were vindicated at each inevitable U-turn.
Associate
I can't believe I just wasted 5 minutes reading this thread 
Caporegime
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- 21 Jun 2006
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- 38,372
Expenses claims scandal? If you go looking you will find many including what you stated above.
Corruption is the problem. How do you stop it? By incentives that make you stop and think. It's why corruption is rife in politics around the world they hold the power. You need to equalise that power.
Higher quality candidate? Well I would think that someone who is willing to do the job without corruption would be exactly that.
Or are you saying we should let corruption go unpunished and pay them more too? That's just going to make even greedier people become politicians.
It's why you have the likes of Boris who's dad and whole family went into politics. It's not to help the country.
Soldato
Absolutely it is corruption in a moral sense. But I doubt it's lawfully classed as corruption, or it's vanishingly unlikely that you could convict of it.
Essentially, I was just defending my pitch to prevent MPs (or maybe just ministers) from taking employment after leaving politics. Just punishing for convictions isn't going to solve it.
Man of Honour
The problem with this is public compliance. People have ignored what we have had in place si y never has/had a chance.
Soldato
Track and trace isn't fit for purpose. The PM even bemoans how slow it is to notify people.
But compliance is a government issue too. Self-Isolation take-up is significantly higher in wealthier households - because they get sick pay, can work from home, or can simply afford the income loss. Similarly, testing take-up is higher for wealthier households - because if you're poor and told you are positive, then you either don't work and struggle to put food on the table, or work and risk a fine. This isn't a lack of morals - it's a lack of cash!
A competent government, serious about controlling the spread, would have recognised this issue and given financial assistance to low income households to test and isolate.
Associate
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I guess we don't pay them that much for being MPs really considering they run the country, we would have to clamp down on the privately earned super rich too. I would be happier if big business payed tax and there weren't lots of offshore tax havens personally then i wouldn't dislike the super rich as much.
After they have been MPs its kinda fair enough that they do what they want, but what annoys me is then they do the job while being an MP. How is it not classed as a full time job, bonkers.
After they have been MPs its kinda fair enough that they do what they want, but what annoys me is then they do the job while being an MP. How is it not classed as a full time job, bonkers.
You're using hyperbole to make your point as clearly I haven't said things should go unpunished. Corruption is a broad spectrum though, not every single piece of minor corruption should mean lifetime in prison, some obviously should. Maybe for example if you give someone you know a government contract because you've known him for 20 years and he's highly competent and trustworthy, and you're actually using your personal relationship with him in a positive way to serve the interests of the country, someone could view that as corruption even though your intentions were good and you had the best interests of the government at heart - sorry mate lifetime in prison for you.
Caporegime
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At that point you turn around and say I know this person and let 2-3 other people take over who are unconnected to review the proposed deal. They sign off on it not you. But you would also have to have explored at least 2 other viable competitors. Possibly even have an approved list of vendors which also all of which should be approached too for a quote for the exact same deal.
Soldato
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- 7 Aug 2004
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The media has done a good job on you.
I mean, this is the state of the UK, the 1% have us bickering over absolutely crazy statements that deep down you know are absurd.
NZ has a left labour gov and has near zero infections - and no, population density has nothing to do with it - Kiwi's don't spend their entire life walking around 3m apart obviously.
Soldato
I think we could have been in a worse place. Only because if Labour had pushed for half the measures we had - furlough payment, lockdowns etc, I imagine the media and the Conservatives would've pushed against it because evil communism (OK socialism) or something.
I know Starmer challenges Boris all the time over how we're handling things, but at least he does support them when it makes sense. I'd be interested to see if it would work in reverse.
I'm sure whoever was in power would've made a mess of it to be fair
That is for a MP who doesn't have an additional job in parliament. Plus in the private sector or any other public sector position of the same wage I expect the employee to actually be making decisions in a pressured environment rather then blindly agreeing to everything their party put forwards like my MP does. I'd happily argue any minister is worth more then their salary, but a MP on its own is not.
The UK is *highly* urbanised and interconnected compared to New Zealand, we have many more numbers of people entering the UK via ports and airports every day, they then get on mass transit systems. It's laughable and plainly ridiculous to compare the UK to New Zealand. It's like comparing the South East of England to Cumbria, they are vastly different areas.
Soldato
To be fair, you could compare us with just about any country in the world, and we've done a worse job.
Yet the data sets aren't comparable either, countries aren't recording deaths from Covid using the same metrics, so cross country comparisons aren't really fair. The UK government for example might not want to be seen as "fudging the figures" so they include deaths where Covid was simply a factor, but likely not the cause, where as in another country they wouldn't include that death. It seems like a lot of people want to put the UK government as the sole reason for the death toll of the pandemic here, as if we're seriously saying the UK government has done a worse job than all African governments, all South American governments, governments in the Middle East, China, Russia, etc. It's pretty obvious that the UK government simply by virtue of having access to vast amounts of resources wouldn't perform worse than most African countries if the only factor to virus prevalence was the governments response. We probably should've closed the borders sooner, we should've locked down earlier, we shouldn't have sent sick patients back into nursing homes, but is this the reason the UK has supposedly performed worse than Russia? Did they do all those things better?
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Soldato
Taking excess deaths, which paint a much more accurate figure for Russia (they're wildly understating in official figures), we're actually very similar to them. Which is quite the indictment on our performance, really.
Agreed. I'd hope that by any definition it would be classified as corruption. It's a huge conflict of interest.
But oddly it seems to be par for the course, across all parties as you said.
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- 12,129
Indeed.
As it happens I believe that Osborne was criticised for "flipping" his second home . . . and a paddock
I suspect that Senior Politicians rarely get hired for their expertise or for what they know, more for who they know and for past favours.
As to Test and Trace - Dido Harding clearly has a great deal of expertise is testing and tracing, she did a cracking job at TalkTalk.
Man of Honour
Or are useful advertising. Sometimes people are employed for the status they're perceived as adding rather than for any work they might or might not do. And sometimes it's just a round robin of vastly well paid "jobs" for people who already have vastly well paid "jobs". What it isn't is limited to one political party.
That's my position too. When your choice is between dumb and dumber, vote for dumb.