[Sironimoll]

freedom if for anything this was a good reason to have labour out, however

AV :whatever:

Nick Clegg

NHS reforms with a dose of ??? before we see it roll out in reality, but I am very sceptical

cuts - too much too soon

raising the cap on tuition fees - that is worse than all the rest put together, under the umbrella of the cuts... still even with Labour it would have been the same (even worse??? - no cap at all potentially), but UK students had it coming, I wander how will it work if you can get "free" education in Europe as a member of the EU - will we see a student exodus out? Maybe not, but only because they have no clue on what they are missing out... educated and debt free to start off... imagine that sooo 20th century

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12610268

[Bromymbollile]

well I guess AV is better than nothing, at least it gets some movement on that topic, but Lib Dems are a laugh, they should have left Cameron run a minority government, which than they could prop (which they would never have done on quite a few issues)... rather than selling out and destroying the third option (again?!? )...

I wander what will be the next third option - who will pick up the "real" liberals which are left without a vote at the moment.

[EliteFranceska]

AV is better than FPTP at forcing more coalitions...so yeah, time to **** up the Tories and Labour again

[Kneedycrype]

but most importantly liberals in the government are in charge of stamping over any or all liberal principles that they supported during the election when Tories say so, which Nick Clegg relishes in particular.

[DzjwMKo5]

Can a british person explain to me what exactly Nick Clegg does? If I were the minority member of a coalition I would at least demand some sort of important policy position but it looks like his job ranks just above doorman in terms of prestige.

Yeah, kind of true. Basically like Vice President.

[SQiTmhuY]

mike, as a committed lib dem (IIRC), how do you feel about nick clegg?

[incizarry]

But I'm really disappointed about a few key things. Tuition fees, the balance of cuts falling so heavily on the poorest.

[Prealiitellg]

Yeah, kind of true. Basically like Vice President.

That depends on the vice president though. Dick Cheney was powerful because Bush gave him that much authority. Joe Biden does more than you think because he acts as a laison to the Senate. But if the President didn't particularly care for his VP then the VP would be almost totally powerless. So what I'm wondering is how much power Cameron actually allows Clegg to have.

[Zwnkkvle]

How much influence he really has is the subject of a lot of debate internally in the UK!

Pretty much true, and we won't ever know exactly what the Tories would have done without the Lib Dems holding them back. I agree with Mike that we would likely have had it even worse if a coalition hadn't existed. As Clegg said, they didn't win the election.

[Vulkanevsel]

People seem to think that hospitals can run without an infrastructure. It's a nice sound-bite to talk about reducing non-medical staff but in the same way as an army needs a lot of people supporting the front-line troops, so does a hospital.

Hospitals have CEO's whose job it is to minimise costs. They don't employ non-medical staff for the fun of it. This is not to say that there isn't dead wood in the NHS, as there is, but if they wanted to get rid of waste they might consider ways of being able to get rid of crap people more easily.

I can give a direct example of gratuitous axe-waving. In a hospital near me a 'new broom' has come in at the head of an IT section who thought he could re-structure and cut jobs. He didn't know what he was doing, made some good people redundant and pissed off a lot of others, who are now all leaving, and many clinical staff who are dependant on good support, and appreciate it, are now worried about how its all going downhill.

[herbalviagra]

I do not know enough about the NHS changes proposed, so I need to read more, but from my experience the "philosophy" of care should be changing in UK and not the system itself.

UK comparing to central Europe is very reactive, ie they ignore you as long as they can and once you have a problem "big enough" they take you in but that takes an order of magnitude more effort to sort out than teh preventive care which is regularly ignored.

What is happening however is more "market oriented" or an attempt to create such a service with focus on rewarding rationing of the service + localization of it... rationing is a terrible idea, but as I said I do not know enough about this bit, to be able to comment... I just hope this is more of a media soundbite than the reality on the ground... while localization is I think a fact, and a bad idea, it will not make service better overall, but just be another segmentation in the society between rich and poor areas, leaving the majority with even worse service than they currently have.

In any case I need to learn more about it to be able to really comment...

[jhfsdhf]

I don't understand the opposition to the Alternative Vote. In my opinion it is the best possible option. Better than both first past the post AND proportional voting. You guys should consider yourselves lucky you get to vote on such an option. Don't for a moment that voting for AV will make whatever your favored voting system harder to happen. It'll just make it more likely that nothing will ever change.

So as long as folks are making numbered lists:

1. It'll reduce tactical voting - There are plenty of voters who would love to vote Green or LibDem or whoever but feel they are "throwing their vote away" so make a tactical decision to pick the "least bad' option of the two major parties. These people aren't being fairly represented.
2. It keeps the connection between MP and their district. They aren't picked out of a hat by party leadership based on a national vote total, they actually represent their community, which is how representative democracy is supposed to work.
3. Right now plenty of MPs get elected with less than 50% of the vote (most of them perhaps). That doesn't represent their communities. AV ensures that even if their MP isn't everyone's first choice, he was 2nd or 3rd choice on enough people's ballots to enjoy majority support. This makes them far better representative of their voters.
4. It helps minor parties, but in a more natural way than PR.
5. PR would probably hurt regional parties like SNP, Plaid Cymru, etc.
6. While not AV, equalizing the districts sounds like a good thing too.

I don't see what's not to like about this. You guys should definitely vote for this.

[PrareeLor]

Yes, sorry if that wasn't clear.

I totally agree that there's a balance. The news and political coverage hasn't necessarily made the strong arguments for national centres of excellence though.

The NHS service has also dramatically increased since 1997. Modern treatments, equipment and drugs are much more expensive than older treatments. There might be administrative savings to be made, but:

1. The Tories promised to ring fence the NHS budget so theoretically they aren't cutting it. ( Yeah, right any one who believed they wouldn't cut the NHS was an idiot)
2. Making medical staff into administrators doesn't seem like the best solution to having too many administrators. Means doctors spending less time with patients, and I guess a lot of them aren't great administrators.

[occafeVes]

ah, i must of confused you with mobius (sorry mobius ).

Yeah, that's me!

Nothing's changed my opinion re the Lib Dems. In fact I would say that I am now more committed to them now that they actually have the opportunity to positively affect government policy in a concrete manner.

As for Clegg, I think he has been very effective overall - it's just that everyone has jumped on the bandwagon of bashing him and hiding his accomplishments...

[Vmysobfi]

Sounds like you already understand it pretty well.

People like local services, localisation is always popular as a concept for the NHS, being able to get any treatment down the road from where you live. But from efficiency and effective care perspective it's rubbish. You are better off having a few national centres of excellence, where people with specialist conditions can go and get really excellent care from teams that deal with their condition all the time, and who can afford all the latest equipment etc. than you are having every hospital being generalist and average at everything.

Actually, that's pretty much wrong on almost every level.

[Kiliunjubl]

OK, here we go, two similar but slightly different AV elections:

a) 33 Livingstone > Paddick > Johnson
16 Paddick > Livingstone > Johnson
16 Paddick > Johnson > Livingstone
35 Johnson > Paddick > Livingstone

b) 31 Livingstone > Paddick > Johnson
16 Paddick > Livingstone > Johnson
16 Paddick > Johnson > Livingstone
35 Johnson > Paddick > Livingstone
2 Johnson > Livingstone > Paddick

The difference here is that two voters have moved Johnson up from last to first on their ballots, keeping all the other candidates in the same order. Who wins election (a), and who wins election (b)?

Don't know...what's the weighting?

[Automobill]

Actually, that's pretty much wrong on almost every level.

WTF!!?

Kindly elucidate please.

[lipitrRrxX]

the budget is as expected, nothing particularly bad or good, but the bad was already decided on in the past... the pain is just starting... prediction for the end of this year is recession again vs no recession in the rest of the world

this year will be interesting on how it plays out in UK...likely high inflation, wider "borrowing" gap than expected, house price falls also faster than expected, higher unemployment than expected and less tax receipts... LibCons ... hope I am wrong, but this is the direction set earlier, and being kept up right now...

edit: during the year they will be cutting down NHS to size as they "cannot afford it" ... especially with the "tax & NI" bundling... while there are no indications in that direction yet, I could easily bet on this outcome

[FrassyLap]

from the air

lets check in this time around next year

[NudiJuicervich]

The most anti-environmental budget for over 20 years?