"If MPs propose more pay rises for themselves, we will soon see David Beckham looking for a parliamentary seat" - Former Tory MP Harry Greenway.
"He has played a blinder" - Lord Heseltine, former Tory deputy Prime Minister, on David Cameron's first year as Conservative leader.
"I once won a poll of People You'd Most Like to Live Next Door To. The Queen Mother came second to me. I should imagine she was very annoyed about that" - Victoria Wood.
"If you work a nine-to-five job, and do it well from Monday to Thursday, the company will still go bankrupt if you screw up on Friday. The same goes for a cricket team" - Geoffrey Boycott on England's "rubbish" performance in the second test match against Australia.
""He has played a blinder" - Lord Heseltine, "
ReplyDeleteI trust the blond-bewigged one is not suggesting that Chameleon is as thick and reactionary as Blunkett?
Sadly I'm not 'Wisdened' enough to know my cricket. It would be very interesting if someone who is as much of an expert on cricket as Mr Dale is on politics would answer a question.
ReplyDeleteWere things better for England in Geoffrey Boycott's day ? Was he the greatest cricketer of his generation?
Were the England team winning all the matches in sight when he played ?
I have to say that somehow I am suspecting that he has rose tinted rear view mirrors.
Normally I think Yorkshiremen are great [think William Hague] but he is the exception. Didn't he duff up a lady of his acquaintance once ? Or am I confusing him with someone else.
'blond-bewigged one' - different Michael surely ?
ReplyDeleteAnon 6:38
ReplyDeleteNope, Hestletine does indeed wear a syrup.
He has them made by a chinese wigmaker on Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong.
The hair is harvested from orangutangs poached from the Indonesian rainforest and then bleached blonde using the urine of the Romney marsh Weasel.
"My fellow Americans. I'm pleased to announce that I've signed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five minutes." Ronald Reagan
ReplyDeletehitch - well I never ! but then I only recently realised why she was called Tina 'frightwig' Turner.
ReplyDeleteI really ought to get out more..
“Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.” Tony Blair
ReplyDeleteIain, Couldn't you ask your wife or kids to 'mod' these posts while you are indisposed, to speed things up?
ReplyDeleteJust a thought..
Last but not Least, A message for DC
ReplyDelete“Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.” Margaret Thatcher.
Iain, I see a certain Chris Bryant has managed to trouser £ 10k from the Grauniad over an article which was a 'cruel parody' !
ReplyDeleteI wonder who he'll try next..
Beckham, Cameron, and the England cricket team? What a strange coincidence. All three talk a good game, but deliver SFA. Modern Britain in a nutshell. Nuf said.
ReplyDeleteThis is the payoff to Cameron of allowing Hague to cock up the EPP withdrawal. You still get the likes of europhile Heseltine schmoozing for you.
ReplyDeleteIf Cameron allowed the sceptics to 'win', he'd have a ton of bricks coming down on his head from Heseltine, Clarke and their friends in the media like Murdoch.
Personally I'd love to see Heseltine squirming in discomfort, and Ken Clarke - but Cameron's decided to 'play a blinder' and not yet challenge the power of the europhiles.
The word 'blinder' might be more appropriate than Heseltine thinks.
Surely the Rodney Marsh weasel, Peter? (...I don't know what's got into me today).
ReplyDeleteAnonymous. Boycott was the ultimate technician as a batsman, which would have been great if he hadn't also been the most boring batsman ever to have accosted leather with willow. If you wanted someone to stand around all day and not get out and not get any runs either, then he was your man. Give me modern day cricket - at least something interesting happens occasionally.
ReplyDeleteI still have nightmares of Boycott and Brian Close (another dour Yorkshireman whose party piece was just standing there letting the ball hit him) opening together - it was something like an outtake from Last of the Summer Wine.
Geoff Boycott's quote reworked for the public sector:
ReplyDelete"If you work a nine-to-five job and do it well on Monday, you will get your productivity bonus. The taxpayer will still go bankrupt because you will then probably throw a sickie for the rest of the week and temporary staff will have to be employed to do your work badly for you. The English cricket team is the same - all sickies and no results."
The whole world's played a blinder in relation to Tarzan...
ReplyDeleteO/T and I'm sorry, because I don't think we should disturb the flow of threads, but that awful woman on No 18 last night, with that inarticulate, jumpy woman with glasses who thought the NHS was just wonderful was a spine chiller.
ReplyDeleteShe arrogantly thought she understood American politics, mis-applying her little British leftie prejudices, that she described Donald Rumsfeld, in bossy, schoolmarmish tones, as a Neocon.
Duh. Donald Rumsfeld has been a conservative politican all his life. It is CONVERTS to conservatism who are termed 'neo-cons'. Is that so hard to understand? The clue is in the prefix.
Also, she said checking into an American hospital in an emergency was "a nightmare!".
You do not have to show any identification or insurance papers - or, as she termed it, "documentation" - in an emergency, by law, even in private hospitals in the US. They cannot turn any emergency patient away. They have to stabilise you without asking for any personal information.
Once you're stabilised - even if this process takes two or three days - then they are allowed to ask you. If you don't have insurance, you will be transferred to a county hospital, which will offer service roughly on the level of the NHS.
So her saying that checking into an American hospital in an emergency "was a nightmare" was simply not true.
Perhaps she went to a hospital for treatment for a non-emergency condition, in which case, she would indeed have been asked for evidence of her ability to pay, as she is when she checks into a hotel.
Why is that so difficult to understand? In our language, we call it "capitalism".
There is always a nearby county hospital well-equipped for emergencies, as that is where most shooting and stabbing victims and drug overdose committers go anyway. That this lady had been asked for "documentation" tells me that her visit wasn't an emergency and therefore, it wasn't "a nightmare".
So she thinks Donald Rumsfeld is a Neocon and she - assuming, I suppose, that your viewership was ignorant on the matter - said that American hospitals can quiz someone in an emergency situation on their ability to pay. Two large errors.
Not only can hospitals not do this, but if they did, after you were released, you could sue them for squillions of dollars.
They know this.
Just another quote of the day:
ReplyDelete"We need to create a terrifying uncertainty about what we would or would not do in extremis."
General Sir Mike Jackson, on tonight's Dimbleby lecture,on the replacement for Trident.
Verity, your information about US emergency wards may be technically correct, but it is not enforced. I've been turned away, and so has a friend of mine. On another occasion he was forced to show his passport before they would allow him in to the emergency waiting room, and he was also searched and run through a metal detector, as was the woman he was with, who was choking.
ReplyDeleteRaincoaster - So?
ReplyDeleteYou say: "I've been turned away, and so has a friend of mine." Turned away from a county hospital? Forgive me, but this is not a fact. County hospitals treat anyone.
You've been turned away from a private hosptal? Sue.
Raincoaster, if you were turned away from a county hospital, you can sue the county.
ReplyDeleteGiven the nature of many of the users of county hospitals, I would certainly hope they would be run through metal detectors. Was your friend refused treatment?
Verity, I don't know the ownership of the hospital I went to, but I was indeed turned away. Whether or not I have recourse to suing people, my point was that people are indeed turned away from hospitals, law or no law.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was undergoing treatment in Canada for Hodgkin's Disease a man in the US was turned away from a hospital suffering from acute leukemia, and he died before leaving the property. Not more than three weeks ago a story broke that in LA the ambulances were dumping patients who'd outstayed their medical insurance; they were simply driving them to Skid Row and literally dumping them, even if the patients had homes with families that were expecting them. That made the national news. And last week a man in the US was discharged from emergency because they couldn't pin down a diagnosis, and when he still complained of excruciating head pain he was told he'd have to leave and come back in again to be re-processed. Instead, he dropped dead of an aneurysm. This, too, was widely reported at the time.
My friend was indeed refused treatment, because he didn't have his passport with him. On the second occasion, when he helped his girlfriend to the emergency ward, they were both searched and both had to present ID before being allowed to line up for the admissions procedures, which took several hours. He was a tax refugee from Canada, and a very passionate one, but that incident almost changed his mind about his life choices.
My sister-in-law was taken ill in Florida, the treatment she received, was not of the highest quality. Heseltine that man's political forecasting is of the highest order, 'Sixty and rising' the Tories majority in 1997
ReplyDeleteIf MPs deserve a 1/3 pay increase, don't us staff who actually do most of the work not deserve the same?
ReplyDeleteverity - not sure I get your point about the 'neo-cons'.
ReplyDeleteSurely these is an analogy to 'New Labour'. It describes the new millennium take on conservative policies e.g. PNAC.
It no more describes people who used to be conservative than 'New Labour' refers to people who didn't used to be Labour. Unless you're Tony Blair.
"Tina 'frightwig' Turner."
ReplyDeleteNo, anon, THAT is a Liberal Lord from Lancashire!
"We need to create a terrifying uncertainty about what we would or would not do in extremis."
ReplyDeletePut Hazel Blears in charge then - you will have terrifying uncertainty from breafast till she hangs herself up in the closet at night!
don't us staff who actually do "most of the work not deserve the same? "
ReplyDeleteHa, Ha, Machiavelli. Your MP employer will be one of the generous ones if he buys you a new white garment with the sleeves tied to keep your nimble fingers off the keyboard!
Anonymous 11:20 - You're not sure you get my point about Neocons? Hello? It has nothing to do with New Labour.
ReplyDeleteThe Neocons were a bunch of previous liberals who began to take against the Democratic Party. These included Scoop Jackson. Irving Kristol, who was one of them, described them as "liberals mugged by reality".
In other words, bouncy, preachy bespectacled lady on the Doughty St couch and Anonymous 11:20, they turned away from liberalism and became converted to the conservative cause - albeit it still to the left of most conservatives. Some of them were well-known journalists whose names I cannot recall just now.
To call Donald Rumsfeld a Neocon is the ne plus ultra of ignorance and intellectual pretentiousness. She should only use phrases she understands instead of trying to give the impression she is clued in on American politics.
Raincoaster, I am sure there are failures in the American medical system, as there are in the British system, with every day a new example of someone being sent home from hospital and then dying. But the law says that all hospitals must accept emergency patients regardless of concerns about the ability to pay. Hospitals who are turning people away are breaking the law and should be reported.
I don't believe the Doughty St guest was in an emergency situation at all. It didn't ring true. She was offended that she was going to have to pay for treatment. That was the nub of it, I suspect. She probably told them medical treatment was free in Britain, expecting little startled cries of admiration.
Verity - I think the woman in question had been in for a lobotomy and that coloured her judgment.
ReplyDeleteThe truth is that you either pay up front with paper/plastic/insurance or you pay via tax. There is no "free" health care.
Notwithstanding his botched Iraq adventure I thought Big Don Rumsfeld was OK. Hell we all make the odd mistkae. I'd go tiger shooting with Big Don in preference to anyone in the House of Commons or Lord Turpentine of Henley for that matter. His family were crappy coal merchants down in Swansea. It shows. A faux silver plated aristo that one.
Bit harsh on Boycott, Towcesterian. Personally, I dream of an England top order of Boycott, Atherton and Tavare. Those damn Aussies wouldn't humiliatingly skittled us out in a morning with that line-up!
ReplyDeleteverity - a short reading list for you to enjoy over the Christmas holidays.
ReplyDeleteThe Corporation - Joel Bakan.
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy - Greg Palast.
No Logo - Naomi Klein
Captive State - George Monbiot
Joseph Stiglitz - Globalisation and its discontents
Then come back and tell us how wonderful your 'capitalism' is.
I was going to suggest 'Dude, where's my country' by Michael Moore , but that might be pushing it...
The Druid - Ah! A lobotomy! It all makes sense! And that's also why she thought Donald Rumsfeld is a NeoCon. She probably thinks William Buckley is a NeoCon, too. And Patrick Buchanan.
ReplyDeleteDonald Rumsfeld is a babe.
Nicked from the Bristol Evening Post:-
ReplyDelete'It's my ambition to have my boobs dipped in gold and sold at Sotheby's'
Danny la Rue.
Bizarre !
Yet another reason to hate Heseltine, as if there weren't enough already.
ReplyDelete