General Election - 4th July 2024

Junior doctors have had a real terms pay cut in recent years, and restoring it to its former level would require a rise of 35% Framing the request for pay restoration as simply a 35% pay increase is not fair, and misses the point IMO. Apart from anything else, the 35% request is a starting point of negotiations, and just shows the difference between what is being offered to what is reasonable. Many of our junior doctors are leaving the UK to work in Australia and elsewhere. It's getting worse with each passing year, and while it's already causing problems, there's a ticking time-bomb to us having a shortage of skilled consultants. Consultants have had enough too, but are usually that bit older so more settled here and the pull of better pay and conditions abroad comes with more personal consequences. 

As I said above, staff retention is about more than pay, but when your salary, as well as your conditions are insulting, it's no surprise we're short-staffed. And a reminder that paying public sector workers a liveable wage is good for the economy and the arts, because they, more than bankers, are the ones spending money in the high street and in theatres.

It's all very well saying that NHS spending has increased above inflation, and even if you account for the increase in the population - have you accounted for the aging population? The NHS is arguably a victim of its success. If you save someone from a heart attack in their 50s or cure their cancer in their 60s, they live long enough to come back again in their 70s and 80s in need of a hip replacement or a second round of cancer treatment. This is a good problem to have, but it means it will be more expensive. We spend less per head of population on the NHS than equivalent European countries - and way less than America (who have worse health outcomes). So if we decide as a nation that we don't want to spend as much as our neighbouring countries - how do we do that?

It's not just an aging population. Younger people are less healthy than their parents, and we're only in the foothills of that additional pressure on the NHS. This is an area where we're not as bad as the Americans, but worse than our European neighbours. The reasons are many and complex, but bad food and not enough exercise are big factors. We need long-term thinking with more investment in public health, which includes anti-poverty measures. More investment in active travel, ensure that newer developments are less car-centric, and allowing access to nature, alongside some kind of regulation of Ultra-Processed Foods and restricting the powers of the multi-national 'edible chemicals' industry.

And fix dentistry. You can't eat well if you can only eat soft foods.

Politics is not for everyone, you can't force people to go into it.

I wasn't suggesting anyone be forced into anything!

And now Nige has entered the race. I suspect he wasnt getting enough attention.

Good to see the Tories will now sweat a bit more

On Twitter, @britainelects is predicting, without factoring in personalities:

CON: 32% (-40)
REF: 24% (+24)
LAB: 24% (+8)

However, their analyst, Ben Walker, wrote an article back in January citing a poll that found with Farage standing:

REF: 37%
CON: 27%
LAB: 23%

www.newstatesman.com/politics/polling/2024/01/nigel-farage-finally-become-mp-clacton

There's another 10% or so between the Greens and Lib Dems.  Given the media focus this seat will now inevitably get and how that can influence voters, were they to throw their weight behind a resurgent Labour as the only viable chance of unseating the right here, who knows how this will pan out.  My money is on Farage taking it though.

I think Farage could be trouble for Labour too, in the red wall / blue wall areas as well as Sun reader territory down south.

Fwiw (nothing) I've sent the BBC plenty of complaints over the years about the people they seem to have on speed dial, the same handful of obnoxious sh*t stirrers the BBC gets on time after time because UK programme makers are following the tawdry Fox News model, more interested in generating heat than light. Farage did have a massive impact though - Brexit. He's not just a footnote in UK politics. Ironically, if we were more 'European' with that kind of continental voting system, he'd have even more political power. 

Nigel Farage will win in Clacton, he will become an mp for the first time, congratulations- in a seat that Labour/Liberals have no chance of winning, it is also one less Tory seat, Nigel will boost Reform votes in the South of England at the expense of the Tories, which also will mean that Reform will not benefit by winning any seats, but the Liberals will. There are 25 seats that are marginal Tory/Liberal, if current opinion polls are anything to go by and a swing in these seat to Liberal, also it is a small number of seats for the Liberals to run a decent campaign in - Then that swing would be enough to make the Liberals His Majesty’s opposition.

We could have a Canadian style meltdown.

Recon coalition anybody?

Reform look like at most winning 1 seat. Can't really make a coalition from that.