gdp's Comments

Conservative Home : MPs will betray Britain's future if they force May to show her negotiating hand. Now her supporters

Fri, 4 Nov 2016 16:18:18 +0000

Revealing lines in the sand is only a disadvantage in a negotiation if you have no intention of honouring them. The danger is May will do just that on the grounds there has to be compromise. Don't forget she is a remainer , as are Rudd and Hammond. May should make it clear that her red lines are: 1. No EU power over UK borders 2. No EU power over any aspect of work conditions. 3. No EU power over our waters including fisheries. 4. No EU power over our legal system.. 5. No EU power over any aspect of life within the UK The only effect the EU should have is on the export of goods from the UK to the EU whereby the specifications of products would have to meet EU standards,

Conservative Home : Iain Dale: A foreign nurse tells me that Brits don't want his NHS job. He has a point.

Sat, 21 Mar 2015 08:07:22 +0000

Now let me see, the Farage book has 1. Slated the NHS 2. Advised those who can afford it to go private when the need medical assistance. 3. Painted Farage as just the sort of shamefully reckless trader who put the banks into Queer Street. The fact that Farage was a metals trader will be irrelevant to the general public who will simply see him as part of the City Bankster class. 4. Outed himself as an admirer of a truly Looney Tunes laissez faire worshipping libertarian in Rand Paul for whom any state intervention is the work of Satan. The British public will not swap the mess of the EU for worship of globalism. The public are with Farage and Ukip for two reasons: leaving the EU and cutting down on immigration. Anything else is a distraction.

Conservative Home : Iain Dale: A foreign nurse tells me that Brits don't want his NHS job. He has a point.

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:01:47 +0000

There is no contradiction: Farage shouldn't have allowed the book to be published before the election and Dale was acting cynically for party political advantage by publishing. You might care to ask yourself why Farage did not find a mainstream publisher. I suspect the answer is he could not find one.

Conservative Home : Iain Dale: A foreign nurse tells me that Brits don't want his NHS job. He has a point.

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 17:39:26 +0000

Everything Farage is doing and saying suggests that all he is concerned with is the promotion of his autobiography. If he really cared about getting Ukip in a position to force a referendum he would not have allowed his autobiography to be published now because it distracts utterly from Ukip's message, he should not be slagging off the NHS because that will alienate many of Ukip's supporters and he should not be whining about his health because people seeking power need to be seen as fit and healthy. His sole objective at present should be to get Ukip into a position to force a referendum.

Conservative Home : Iain Dale: A foreign nurse tells me that Brits don't want his NHS job. He has a point.

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 15:59:32 +0000

Re Farage's Purple Revolution You must have realised that to publish the book now would be would damage both Farage and Ukip and benefit the Tories. Re medical staff There are no shortage of Britons wishing to train as doctors and nurses but there is a shortage of places for them in medical school and nursing college. No only that but those we do train are finding themselves excluded from employment in the UK where hospitals are quite incredibly getting rid of British medical staff and recruiting foreign staff through foreign agencies. You have a contempt for your own people, Mr Dale. The quality of foreign NHS staff is also poor, not least because so often their English is utterly inadequate: Two years ago I spent ten days in the hospital. During that time I encountered few nurses or doctors who had English as a first language. Some spoke English adequately but most did not. Those who were inadequate fell into three classes: 1. Those whose comprehension and understanding of the language was simply inadequate. 2. Those who had accents so thick it was very difficult to understand them. 3. Those who could speak English competently but who could not readily understand English if it was either colloquial or deviated far from “BBC English” (received pronunciation) . These deficiencies were amplified by the fact that sick people are frequently not at their most coherent and if someone is not absolutely fluent in the language they speak , understanding on both sides, that of the patient and the medical staff, will be very difficult. The most bizarre conversations I heard between foreign medical staff and patients were those where both the nurse or doctor and the patient did not have a firm grasp of English. It was quite clear from their responses to one another that neither side had a clue about what the other was saying. It would be interesting to know how many suits for damages for malpractice are started against the NHS by patients without good English. The problem of language stretches beyond the nurses and doctors to technicians such as radiographers , the clinic administrators, the pharmacists , the porters, the ward orderlies and the cleaners. There is ample opportunity for these people to make serious mistakes simply because they do not understood what is said to them. The problem is exacerbated where the work has been contracted out to private operators not under the control of the hospital. During my stay in hospital I discovered that these services had placed in the hands of three separate private operators: patients’ meals, ward cleaning and the maintenance of multi-media installations (TV, radio, Internet, phone). This produced a constant flow of people into wards over whom the ward sister had no control. Read more at https://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/n...

Conservative Home : Immigration 1) Cameron's speech - a struggle in a trap of his own devising

Sat, 29 Nov 2014 20:22:21 +0000

The think tank British Future recently published a report entitled How shall we talk abut immigration? One of its findings is truly startling. Faced with the question “The government should insist that all immigrants should return to the countries they came from, whether they’re here legally or illegally” the result was Agree 25%, disagree 52% and neither 23%. (P17 of the report). In addition, many of those who said no to forced repatriation were also firm supporters of strong border controls and restrictive immigration policies. The fact that 25% of the population have overcome their fear of falling foul of the pc police and say that they do not merely want immigration stopped but sent into reverse is stunning. Moreover, because political correctness has taken such an intimidating place in British society it is reasonable to assume that a substantial number of those who said they disagreed did so simply out of fear of being accused of racism. The obverse of the immigration coin was shown by the question “In an increasingly borderless world, we should welcome anyone who wants to come to Britain and not deter them with border controls” (P16 of the report). The results were 14% agree, 67% disagree and 19% don’t know. That only 14% support such a policy compared to the 25% who wished for forced repatriation is striking in itself, but it is even better for the opponents of immigration than it looks for two reasons. First, the 14% of those who agreed with the question will be the honest figure because to say that you want open borders carries with it no penalties from the pc police and will gain the person brownie points amongst the politically correct elite and their axillaries. Second, as already mentioned, the 25% of those wanting forced repatriation of all immigrants will understate the true position because a significant proportion of those questioned with be lying out of fear. The report also shows that older voters are more likely to be those who are most strongly opposed to immigration (P11 of the report). That is important because older voters are the most likely to vote. Taking all that into account it is reasonable to assume that a referendum with the question “Do you wish to end mass immigration?” would result in a solid, probably overwhelming YES vote. Read more at http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2014/11/23...

Information Clearing House - News you won't find on CNN : What Happened to the Malaysian Airliner?

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 08:58:48 +0000

One of the constant refrains we hear when it is suggested that the Ukrainians brought down the plane is what would they gain? There is a plausible answer to that, namely, that it was a black ops operation whereby the Ukrainians wished to discredit the rebels - a sure thing with the poodle like Western media so in love with the illegal regime masquerading as the democratic government of Ukraine - and provide a disincentive for the rebels to use ground to air missiles against Ukrainian military airpower in the future for fear of accidentally hitting a commercial passenger aircraft. An alternative explanation is this, the fact that two Air Malaysia planes have either disappeared (almost certainly lost with all aboard) or definitely been catastrophically destroyed in flight in a matter of months is a pretty big coincidence in itself. But to that coincidence can be added another one: both planes significantly changed their course from their filed flight plan. In the case of this latest plane, they shifted from a route outside the danger zone to one flying straight into the heart of the danger zone. I don't think it safe to rule out deliberate sabotage by the pilot or another member of staff or some other terrorist act unrelated the Ukrainian situation. Want your politics with the cant taken out? Then try my blogs: http://www.livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/ http://www.englandcalling.wordpress.com/ http://www.ukcmri.wordpress.com/

Conservative Home : Conservatives need to learn once more to speak the language of patriotism

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 11:06:55 +0000

I have been banging the patriotism is a necessity drum for the past 40 years. See my Patriotism is not an optional extra Robert Henderson Contents 1. What is patriotism? 2. The roots of patriotism 3. Nations are tribes writ large 4. The importance of a national territory 5. The democratic value of nations 6. What the individual owes to the nation 7. The liberal internationalist 8. How to move from multiculturalism to patriotism 9 No patriotism, no enduring society 1. What is patriotism? By patriotism I mean the sense of belonging to a people, of owning a land, having a group identity, of feeling at ease with those belonging to the group in a way which meeting those outside the group never engenders, of naturally favouring your people above foreigners, of knowing that the interests of the “tribe” must come before that of any outsider. By this definition patriotism is something which the vast majority of human beings can understand because it is not an ideology but an innate human quality whose origins lie buried deep within the evolution of social animals. Read more at http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/09/20...

Conservative Home : Professor Tim Bale: UKIP shouldn't be an option for any true conservative

Fri, 30 May 2014 17:10:55 +0000

Cameron a true conservative? Shome mishstake her suhurely? (ed) . NuTory Boy is a neocon with added political correctness. A true conservative would be set on taking us out of the EU to regain our country's sovereignty. A true conservative would not subscribe to the totalitarian dictates of political correctness. A true conservative would not run-down our armed forces. A true conservative would have ended Foreign Aid. A true conservative would have ended mass immigration. A true conservative would not crawl to the wants of the USA. NuTory Boy will sell Britain down the river every chance he gets, just as his hero Blair did. http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2014/05/17...

The Tory Diary : The Tories must learn once more how to express patriotism, or the future belongs to UKIP

Thu, 30 May 2013 09:33:16 +0000

Patriotism is not an optional extra Robert Henderson Contents 1. What is patriotism? 2. The value of patriotism 3. Tribes are natural 4. Nations are tribes writ large 5. The importance of a national territory 6. The democratic value of nations 7. What the individual owes to the nation 8. The liberal internationalist 9. How to move from multiculturalism to patriotism 1. What is patriotism? By patriotism I mean the sense of belonging to a people, of owning a land, of instinctively favouring your own country’s men and women, of knowing that the interest of the “tribe” must come before everything else. By this definition patriotism is something which the vast majority of human beings can understand - the only people who may be genuinely immune to such comprehension are those who are severely mentally retarded and those with a personality disorder such as autism which reduces their ability to understand the social context. Even the most rabid liberal understands as is shown by their fastidiousness in avoiding the diversity they extol in their own lives. The ease and near universality of understanding sets patriotism apart from ideologies such as Marxism and liberal internationalism which requires the individual to either master both the tenets of the ideology and complicated arguments to support of the ideology against attack or to accept the creed as a matter of faith. That which is natural generally trumps man-made intellectual constructs as a guide to living. Those who respond to the call of patriotism cannot be hoodwinked and manipulated by the few out of ignorance because almost everyone instinctively understands what patriotism is. Contrast this with the fate of the majority of those who, while professing to be adherents of an intellectually demanding ideology, actually have little understanding of it, either because they are intellectually lazy or because they lack the intellectual wherewithal to master the ideology. Such people are left in the position of the laity in Europe in mediaeval times when the use of Latin in both translations of the Bible and church rites meant that the vast majority of the population were left at the mercy of the a small clerical elite who simply told them what to believe whether or not it was sanctioned by the Scriptures. Read full article at http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/09/20...

Columnists : Bruce Anderson: David Cameron's speech yesterday was the best he has yet delivered. The Unionis

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:10:36 +0000

The crawling pandering to the Scotch of NuTory Boy's speech in Edinburgh was repellent beyond description. The way to deal with the hilariously absurd little man who is leader of the Scotch Numpty Party is not to take him seriously and to tell the Scotch over his head the dire facts of economic life of the basketcase which is the Scotch economy. It is dependent on the taxpayer for around 65% of its GDP and a large slice of that is comprised of the various subsidies England gives Scotland each year by way of the much higher per capita Treasury payment to Scotland than England receives, the English public service jobs exported to Scotland and the disproportionately large defence contracts given to Scotland amongst others. Those wishing to discover the full implications of Scotch independence or DevoMax can do so at http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/th...