[Politics] The Labour Government

dsr-burnley said:

Your private medical cover is paid for by your employer, and the reason he pays it is that it's part of your remuneration. In exchange, your employer gets the benefit of your labour.

It's a different matter when it's a private individual doing the paying. If someone not related to your work was giving your wife thousands of pounds of goodies and you in exchange game that person work-related benefits such as access to your office, your employer would be asking some very searching questions.

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jcdenton08 said:

The Tories were horrible in government. But this one isn’t about the Tories. Even using the £22bn black hole as reasoning for the WFA cut, the estimated £1.7bn saving isn’t going to touch the sides. It’s a very poor policy.

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Zeberdi said:

I don’t disagree - You’ve quoted me out of context though.

I said that cold causes high blood pressure, strokes and worsens flu and Covid symptoms - and as I said, there are excess deaths every winter (ie cold weather) in the elderly because of that.

However - The only point I was questioning was the proposition that there will be a thousand deaths this year directly because people are not using their heating specifically because of the WFA withdrawal.

Without knowing how many people will not use their heating because of the withdrawal of the WFA nor how many excess deaths this winter will be caused by Covid or Flu related illnesses or other morbidities, how can one forecast with certainty or quantify that the policy WILL result in this number of deaths as a direct cause ?

I am not saying it won’t have an impact but it seems a little hyperbolic to start accusing Starmer of directly killing 1000s of pensioners before the facts.

For all you know, we could have an unusually mild winter!

As I have said, I don’t support the withdrawal but do want to be clear of the facts - Its just a question

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Thunder Bolt said:

Where’s the lack of trust? It was all declared and as I pointed out, most Prime Ministers get perks.

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Guinness Boy said:

And this whole 'passes for glasses' thing is absolute desperate nonsense. People associated to the government have always had access to them, whether SPADs or lobbyists. At least this one isn't racist.

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Bry Nylon said:

And now you've started trying to deflect again by inserting random nouns that you've plucked out of the air and were never part of post you've got issue with.

If there is nothing wrong with it I expect we shall be seeing him making multiple future claims for suits, dresses, gig tickets, glasses etc and you will have been proved right.

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Bozza said:

Let's re-visit that, briefly, because it's interesting given what business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said yesterday.

The Guardian reports that, when pressed on Sue Gray's salary, Reynolds said:

"I think it’s important people understand that the pay bands for any official, any adviser, are not set by politicians. There’s an official process that does that. I don’t, for instance, get to set the pay for my own advisers who work directly for me. So, there’s a process, we don’t have political input into that.​

​

There’s a process that sets these things. It is widely recognised. It’s long-standing. It hasn’t changed and that is how pay bands are set for any adviser."​

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So, any criticism of Keir Starmer for Sue Gray's salary is mis-directed.

But, then, errrm.....



If there's a long-standing, unchanged, non-political process for adviser pay, why was the now Prime Minister seeking to make political capital out of Cummings' salary?

Did he simply not know how adviser pay worked? That seems highly unlikely doesn't it?

Or was he seeking to score cheap political points based on something he knew not to be true? Also unlikely for a man of such high integrity.

What a conundrum!

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Bry Nylon said:

Would those be the SPADS who have passes because that's where they happen to work?

The pass Lord Alli had is the pass reserved for civil servants and advisors. He was neither. He was a party donor. Lobbyists don't get passes - although accredited members of the press lobby do, although that only gets them onto the street outside the door and not inside, unless by appointment.

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Thunder Bolt said:

Nope. I mentioned the word perks yesterday in post 2238.

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chip said:

I didn't quote you out of context at all. I merely took issue with your argument. For avoidance of any doubt on cold and death, NICE publish evidence and economic analysis on this very topic:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng6/documents/excess-winter-deaths-and-illnesses-concept-review2

You don't need certainty to make reasonable and robust predictions, but I don't think you are a scientist. It certainly isn't hyperbole to say reducing peoples ability to heat and eat will result in more deaths and, in this case, you can make robust predictions in the 1000s (action against fueld poverty, eg, do this). It's fairly simple maths and biology.

We could indeed have a mild winter or drink drivers may be lucky and not kill people. Not really bets we should be making with the lives of others when we should know better. This is why impact analysis is important, there are very large financial implications of getting this wrong at individual and societal levels. You'd have to be especially ignorant or arrogant to ignore this which seems to be the case (I mean MPs, not neccessarily you).

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Zeberdi said:

No it isn’t and I haven’t questioned that. Again, you are responding to my post with a different set of parameters to that I was referring to. (No I am not a scientist but do work with scientists, data and statistical analysis, so yes, very aware of the need for accurate data gathering and sound empirical evidence before any ‘scientific’ claim is valid.)

The sentence I was referring to said “1,000s WILL die as a DIRECT RESULT of this policy’.

In common parlance, there is a big difference between saying something “will” happen and something ‘could’ or is ‘likely’ to happen and a big difference between quantifying something (ie ‘1,000s’ ) and not specifically quantifying something ie “will result in “more” deaths” - how many ‘more’? 100? 500? 1,000? 1,000s?

Please provide an impact analysis that concludes 1,000s of pensioners are going definitely to die (that is what “will” means) as a direct result of this policy - that is all I am asking because in the absence of that, we really don’t know how many people this will effect or what the consequences will be in terms of deaths.

As I said, I am certainly not defending the policy, nor am I questioning that elderly people can die of hyperthermia or strokes or that severe cold can exacerbate other illnesses - I’m just trying to claw through any unnecessary hyperbole in the debate because using this as a stick to score political points and make attacks on NSC Labour Party supporters is unhelpful . I barely used my heating at all last winter to save money (my living areas were consistently around 12 degrees) and I am not even a pensioner - I ended up with dangerously high blood pressure which required emergency hospital treatment as a result (and worsening auto-immune symptoms), so I am certainly not taking the impact of cold weather on vulnerable people, lightly.

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Flounce said:

I am quite enjoying Starmer being widely criticised having listened to him spending most of his time in opposition doing it about the Tories every f***ing day, often getting very personal. The Toolmakers son needs thicker skin now.

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Zeberdi said:

No it isn’t and I haven’t questioned that. Again, you are responding to my post with a different set of parameters to that I was referring to. (No I am not a scientist but do work with scientists, data and statistical analysis, so yes, very aware of the need for accurate data gathering and sound empirical evidence before any ‘scientific’ claim is valid.)

The sentence I was referring to said “1,000s WILL die as a DIRECT RESULT of this policy’.

In common parlance, there is a big difference between saying something “will” happen and something ‘could’ or is ‘likely’ to happen and a big difference between quantifying something (ie ‘1,000s’ ) and not specifically quantifying something ie “will result in “more” deaths” - how many ‘more’? 100? 500? 1,000? 1,000s?

Please provide an impact analysis that concludes 1,000s of pensioners are going definitely to die (that is what “will” means) as a direct result of this policy - that is all I am asking because in the absence of that, we really don’t know how many people this will effect or what the consequences will be in terms of deaths.

As I said, I am certainly not defending the policy, nor am I questioning that elderly people can die of hyperthermia or strokes or that severe cold can exacerbate other illnesses - I’m just trying to claw through any unnecessary hyperbole in the debate because using this as a stick to score political points and make attacks on NSC Labour Party supporters is unhelpful . I barely used my heating at all last winter to save money (my living areas were consistently around 12 degrees) and I am not even a pensioner - I ended up with dangerously high blood pressure which required emergency hospital treatment as a result (and worsening auto-immune symptoms), so I am certainly not taking the impact of cold weather on vulnerable people, lightly.

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Thunder Bolt said:

He’s been criticised, unfairly, for the Jimmy Savile decision for over 12 years, which was stirred up even more by the previous governments. His skin is thick enough.

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Thunder Bolt said:

He’s been criticised, unfairly, for the Jimmy Savile decision for over 12 years, which was stirred up even more by the previous governments. His skin is thick enough.

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Is it PotG? said:

He was also in charge in 2009 when it was decided to bring no charges against Al Fayed.

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chip said:

Cold temperatures are known to cause significant increase in mortality, there is a causal link that is well understood. You don't need an BMBS to know this. While I accept the philosophical premise that we cannot predict the future with certainty, I think @jcdenton is justified to assert that removing WFA will cause deaths. The alternative is to count them afterwards, that would be much better wouldn't it? I also think AgeUK are quite a reliable source, they fund quite a bit of research and some of that is how to keep older people with comorbities alive.

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Guinness Boy said:

I was talking about MY WIFE getting it, who does precisely bugger all for my employer, apart from sometimes complain that I'm away on business too much.

And this whole 'passes for glasses' thing is absolute desperate nonsense. People associated to the government have always had access to them, whether SPADs or lobbyists. At least this one isn't racist.

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