** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

[al_yrpal]

I cant see the NHS handing over much more to the private sector. What they do is to use private provision as a flexible overload facility only paying for what is used. During the last year I saw a privately provided scanner at an NHS hospital, we were referred to a private pain Consultant at a private hospital the rest was NHS at the Royal Berks where my Mrs had worked from 1980 to 2004.

I cant see that anything I said is idealist right wing fantasy, its all based on fact from long experience and recent experiences. Why fling around insults, keep the discussion civil and based on facts?

Al

[kwackers]

Why fling around insults indeed?
Out of interest who moderated the original? You or the mods?

I cant see that anything I said is idealist right wing fantasy, its all based on fact from long experience and recent experiences. Why fling around insults, keep the discussion civil and based on facts?

Al

Who mentioned insurance? I certainly didnt, or copayments. The health service must remain free at the point of delivery. I, like everyone would rail against insurance. Kwackers, like all extreme leftists thinks its a sin to have been a saver and be largely self sufficient. What Britain needs is negative souls and Britain haters like him to remain contained and neutralised, they dont speak for the majority thank goodness as elections and polls demonstrate.

[661-Pete]

Why fling around insults indeed?
Out of interest who moderated the original? You or the mods?

Who mentioned insurance? I certainly didnt, or copayments. The health service must remain free at the point of delivery. I, like everyone would rail against insurance. Kwackers, like all extreme leftists thinks its a sin to have been a saver and be largely self sufficient. What Britain needs is negative souls and Britain haters like him to remain contained and neutralised, they dont speak for the majority thank goodness as elections and polls demonstrate.

I'd be interested to know, too. To my mind, it's questionable whether it's an insult to name a forummer and then add the words ", like all extreme leftists". If it had been addressed at me, I'd have preferred the remark to stand.

I seem to remember being called a "trot", several pages back. I didn't mind. It's easy to attach a label to something or somebody. But beware! You may end up with it sticking to your own fingers...

[mjr]

I cant see the NHS handing over much more to the private sector. [...]

Physical myopia is still treatable on the NHS. Wilful political myopia, not so much.

Why fling around insults, keep the discussion civil and based on facts?

I don't know: why did you start flinging insults in viewtopic.php?p=1361903#p1361903 then?

[bovlomov]

I seem to remember being called a "trot", several pages back.

Well, you will insist on promoting a dictatorship of the proletariat and permanent revolution...

As I often say to myself: "Oh, here we go! Pete-661 is challenging Stalin's theories again. Enough already!"

[windmiller]

When The NHS was run like a branch of the military all was well and ship shape. After the 1970's it was all tears mostly crocodile, corruption and prescribed victimhood. It's been walking the green mile for decades now and should be put out of its' misery - so it's back to the drawing board. Hopefully when reborn it won't forget its' purpose.

[661-Pete]

I seem to remember being called a "trot", several pages back.

Well, you will insist on promoting a dictatorship of the proletariat and permanent revolution...

Would that be the Lumpenproletariat?

[bovlomov]

I seem to remember being called a "trot", several pages back.

Well, you will insist on promoting a dictatorship of the proletariat and permanent revolution...

Would that be the Lumpenproletariat?

You may call them that. These days they are known as 'ordinary hardworking families'.

[kwackers]

I'd be interested to know, too. To my mind, it's questionable whether it's an insult to name a forummer and then add the words ", like all extreme leftists". If it had been addressed at me, I'd have preferred the remark to stand.

I seem to remember being called a "trot", several pages back. I didn't mind. It's easy to attach a label to something or somebody. But beware! You may end up with it sticking to your own fingers...

I don't give a monkeys tbh. Any objection I have is purely down to the apparent dual standards of the poster.

OTOH if actually caring about social injustice or our environment makes me a "trot" then so be it. Although I'm saddened we've reaches the stage where making money trumps everything, but I guess for some people that's the only thing that matters.

[661-Pete]

OTOH if actually caring about social injustice or our environment makes me a "trot" then so be it.

Ditto.

[Cugel]

OTOH if actually caring about social injustice or our environment makes me a "trot" then so be it.

Ditto.

You lads shouldn't accept these names so easily. A Trotskyist remains a certain kind of revolutionary fellow prepared to use violence to overthrow the state or otherwise promote "the revolution". Generally "the revolution" is said to be in support of "communism" even if it isn't really. (It's to promote "the vanguard of the revolution" who seem to remain the vanguard forever, in a Stalinist or Mao fashion).

People like Al, who throw category names about in an indiscriminate fashion are not only showing their ignorance but encouraging others of their viewpoint to be ignorant too. Such naughty little boys should not be let to run riot in the classroom. Rather, they should be made to write out the Forum Rules at least 30 times before being allowed to post again.

Well that's wot they did to us at skool and it definitiely discourages naughtiness as the writing out of the skool rooles is utterly tedious, especially when they check the spelin.

******************

For true revolutionaries prepared to use violence albeit of a slow and grind-'em-down type, see The Tories.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... nservatism

It started with the Thatcher-thing and has got worser and worserer!

Cugel, a prefect.

[Oldjohnw]

You couldn't make it up.

There are now calls for the new Peterborough MP, elected just on Thursday, to be suspended from the party.

The two major party system has surely had its day. Is this the fault of the poor leadership - May and Corbyn - or is it just something of its time and current political circumstances? Is the hopeless division, incompetence, general lack of respect exclusive to parliament or reflective of the society which put it there?

[Cugel]

You couldn't make it up.

There are now calls for the new Peterborough MP, elected just on Thursday, to be suspended from the party.

The two major party system has surely had its day. Is this the fault of the poor leadership - May and Corbyn - or is it just something of its time and current political circumstances? Is the hopeless division, incompetence, general lack of respect exclusive to parliament of reflective of the society which put it there?

It's an impossible chicken & egger, that question.

Personally I no longer think of we humans as some sort of self-steering chooser, as we have all been taught to believe via the Christian tradition and it's many secular offshoots. To use old-fashioned terms, I believe we're all possesed - by both angels and devils. These entities infest our big brains and drive us to do what are generally referred to as good and bad acts, with associated "rationalisations" after the fact as a a veil to cover the machinations of the infestors.

The modern version is that there's a second evolving entity besides that of the physical gene, which Dawkins suggested might be referred to as the meme. The meme, though, is metaphysical - building memeplexes that are patterns of notions, behaviours and all the other stuff that we humans exhibit as, amongst other things, thought and culture.

Dawkins and those who developed this notion of a second evolving metaphysical entity point out that, as a separate entity, memeplexes will have their own evolutionary drifts and thrusts not necessarily in line with those of their genetic hosts. Although they begin as synaptic patterns in big human brains, their evolution is (as with genes) built on their ability to survive .... but as memes, not genes. They can and do sacrifice their genetic hosts if that is an effective path to their own increased survival and promulgation.

Obvious examples are religions and ideologies generally. These often vast memeplexes are composed of a myriad churning and semi-co-operating smaller memetic parts (rather like us mammals, with all our bugs and bits). They evolve via copy-combination processes within human brains, morphing into various forms some of which seem able to prosper far better than others. In the process, they drive humans to sacrifice themselves or to eliminate others hosting different competing memeplexes. Hence we go to war ("for our country" - the patriotic memeplex); or commit genoicide on millions of "unbelievers" or "reactionaries".

****
The notion of possesing angels & devils is perhaps just an older fashioned way of describing the process of memetic evolution. It does provide an explanation of why humans are often apparently psychotic - a danger to themselves and others. It explains all sorts of other queer phenomena in the human world, from ridiculous fashions to loopy conspiracy theories.

There are lots of implications for human socio-economics if the memes are real and operating as suggested. Are we trying a human traitor for treason or breaking the property laws .... or are we just the jousting ground for a dominant memeplex thrusting against another weaker species of memeplex?

Many of the meme-advocates point out that memeplex are begining to find other substrates, besides the human brain, in which to live and, in some cases, evolve. They first escaped via language and writing. Now they have many other media in which to travel, live and perhaps evolve (telephones, internet, AI). When will they find their genetic hosts redundant? Or will they perish with us humans, when we've gone entirely mad in another 20 years or so? Perhaps the intelligent survivor-ants will find our old books and DVDs and become infected with olde human-grown memeplex?

****
Meanwhile, memeplex-watchers may sit back and choose a whole range of entertaining humans who host some of the more bizarre memeplexes. We may also watch their contentions in politics, TV "shows" and war. Of course, the danger is that we become hosts to a devil-memeplex and ourselves end up on some sort of sacrificial alter to the memeplex' evolutionary thrust. For example, the "antiEU-feeling" memeplex seems about to sacrifice a whole load of us!

Cugel, drivelling the meme meme.

[pete75]

And that 29 % from party going for just two months!
The winner was what 31%.
Labour are very weak as we all know.

So that 29 % are what.........easily led

If Labour are weak what does that say about the other parties they defeated in the by election. Yes their share of the vote went down but their majority increased.

What that by-election does show is how weak Nigel Farage is. He went to the count expecting to see a triumphant anointing of his candidate and much of the triumph focusing on himself. Once he realised that wasn't going to happen he scuttled to a back door and ran away rather than face the press and public.

[pete75]

I would say so yes,and to think the Brexit party are capable of running the country is absurd.

Yes, we've seen what happened when BXP's parent UKIP got any power at councils. Bottom line is that very few kippers got re-elected.

However, if the BXP get a sniff of power at national level, there are two big problems: firstly, the havoc they inflict will be nationwide and much more wide-ranging; and secondly, if we do actually leave the EU and possibly other things like the Council of Europe as BXPers demand, there may be few limits on their powers - it would not be much of a tweak to the Fixed Term Parliaments Act to lengthen the term or other shenanigans because BXP oppose letting people vote again to see if they've changed their minds!

Yep and who would be their next target? Populist right wing parties tend to blame a nation's ills on "others". Currently the other they blame is the EU. Once we get out of the EU and things get worse they'll have to look for a new other to blame. My guess is it'll be the immigrants they appear not to like.
The trouble with the British system is there are no checks and balances, no written constitution. A party with a majority in parliament can do what it likes.