I feel like there’s pressure on me to use specific words for things, like the labels are becoming more important than the underlying cause.

I can say I’m not a Zionist, that the Israeli government and IDF is committing a genocide, and I genuinely hold that to be true, but it’s not enough for some.

This might be okay if there’s more than 1 hospital nearby. I am aware of a better A & E in my region, but I’m not going to take an Uber to it and the ambulance crew aren’t likely to drive me to it.

It’s a lottery. I had two lots of life threatening illness last year, and 111 were utterly pointless.

Out of hours GP would have made things worse. I needed blood tests and pain relief quickly. A GP would have just concluded I needed to go to A & E (as did 111). I just needed an ambulance.

Exactly this with Reform’s obvious incompetence. I think at this point, 41 of their councillors have gone, partly because they are generally a bit shit.

This might be why the Tories are rising in the polls again though.

I’m front near Derby, and my home town has a Reform council. However, need to factor in that Labour are failing to the point that traditional Labour areas are split now between Reform and Greens.

Reform are far less likely to appeal to younger voters than the Greens, including in working class.

When I left the hospital, I still have a very high CRP, still in pain.

I left because I had a terrible night where the woman in the next bed nearly died, and I was just left there trying to cope with the mental stress, and I was fit enough to get into a taxi with some pills to take home

Both physical and particularly mental health, with the NHS, works best if the patient is knowledgeable and persistent (it shouldn’t).

I needed a lot of morphine and codeine to be able to think normally, and then my iPad to analyse my condition to work it out.

…most hospital staff, do not appear to know what CRP is, or they aren’t saying (this is an issue, medical staff tend to proactively withhold information, you’re supposed to just trust them).

I don’t think any Doctor told me I had pneumonia, but they gave me antibiotics for it just in case.

Pneumonia.

First getting a blood test, could be relatively quick, but prioritisation is an issue.

Wait for test results.

Now, I was getting my results through PKB before doctors did their rounds, and analysing them myself, so I spotted having a CRP of 250 (should be less than 5).

There’s a thing with budgeting as well, where an organisation or service, makes sure it uses up its budget to ensure if gets the same or more, but it doesn’t necessarily make things more efficient.

Funding requires more thorough justification (the feeling is, it shouldn’t, people are dying, just give us more money etc).

If an organisation can’t properly account for how it is now, it is less likely to get the funding needed.

If an organisation is dysfunctional in terms of systems, processes, and general organisation, the more people you throw at it, the more likely it’ll get worse, not better.

Re-structuring, real re-organisation (not just shuffling deckchairs on the titanic) is needed *first*.

The next issue is convincing someone not to put you in the A & E waiting room for 6-12 hours with a life threatening health condition.

The next is if the A & E has space in the corridor for you.

The next is getting checks, scans.

The next is convincing them to keep you in hospital.

These are important factors.

There is then the part of hospitals being able to treat patients with, for example, pneumonia (which I spent 5 days in hospital for last year).

One of the first hurdles is actually getting an ambulance (dealing with 111 is horrible)

A pandemic was the number 1 identified public risk above terrorist attacks.

Government, NHS, and companies failed to mitigate.

I don’t think this was entirely a funding issue, it was lack of good risk management.

The NHS is terribly disconnected in terms of data management, processes, and just knowledge sharing between services.

Sometimes there are pathways for people, but GPs don’t know about them, particularly in mental health.

An example of where funding is essential (but also better organisation), would be in the severe pressure that is placed on A & E. Much of it as a result of having fewer local, smaller, or perhaps specialist services,

Underfunding is a problem, but what is done with the funding, and the NHS generally being dysfunctional particularly around managing patient data, are also problems.

We could have more funding, with little improvement, if the NHS doesn’t improve in how it is managed.

Bigots are usually bigots because they are incompetent. Or they may be reasonable clever but narcissistic.

Reform are a good example of this, and even if they do get voted in, are likely to bump into the furniture in the cabinet room all the time while trying to figure everything out.

Hmmm.. I mean, even if that were true… The Lib Dems? The party whose MO is basically drifting around the centre ground as a ‘safe place’ to mop up enough votes so as they might form a coalition with whoever might have them?

Yeah, no thanks.

The words “Vote Restore” have been cropping up more in some places.

Which is bad news for Nigel Farage and Reform, and Restore are absolutely fringe bigots, so congratulations to the knuckle draggers on accidentally being the architects of their own demise.

Pretty sure Yorp’s demise is a mixture of incompetence and deliberate disruption by particular factions.

The average Reform type just isn’t clever enough, or can’t be bothered and so they hang around Facebook and Instagram comments going on about “Dave”, “titty whispering”, “teeth”, and some paranoid shit about Muslims taking over the country.

There has definitely been a surge of likely agitators since the Greens started gaining popularity.

Some are pretty obvious, some not some much. Usually they post “What’s the Greens’ policy on…” trying to sound good faith but then quickly show they have a specific angle.

Everyone else is a “liberal” and I think they mean in the Russian revolution way, not bolshevik.

Possibly not. I think it’s a young person, possibly white working class who somehow got into reading revolutionary politics (possibly involved with the SWP etc), and fell into the whole romanticised Soviet Union thing.

The main moderator is someone with the name “komsomol”. That is the name of the “Lenin Youth”.

They are also the moderator of the (unofficial) Your Party sub Reddit.

I’ve seen them post stuff about how Stalin was smeared by the CIA etc.

I think possibly it is a case of being clearer from the outset. That way he had a chance to put his case that the overground route would be the least expensive (and probably disruptive). He may have lost in the first place, but it’s an honest position at least.

The Lib Dems: Not really trying to win here, just stay in third place and be ready for another coalition.

Meanwhile… here’s Ed Davey doing something silly.

That’s there because they are tankies who are completely stuck in early to mid 20th century based revolutionary politics, and anything else is unacceptable.

I don’t think they are actually trying to achieve a revolution, or win anything, they just want to talk Tankie.