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Labour Candidate for Bristol East
Trolls have decamped to Twitter...
Kerry McCarthy
Labour Candidate for Bristol East
A Future Fair for All
My blog = my rules!
As Monica says in Friends, "rules are good, rules help control the fun!"
First: if you're after a detailed response, please email or write to me. If you're a constituent (or perhaps a very special case), I'll respond; if you're not, you'll have to contact your own MP. Ditto if you want to introduce a subject which bears no relevance to my original post.
Second: I don't have a problem with trenchant criticism of me or the Government, or vociferously expressed opinions, but if I regard your comments as offensive I won't allow them to appear. (I don't like having to moderate comments, but have reluctantly come to the conclusion that people cannot be relied upon not to abuse my good nature!)
First: if you're after a detailed response, please email or write to me. If you're a constituent (or perhaps a very special case), I'll respond; if you're not, you'll have to contact your own MP. Ditto if you want to introduce a subject which bears no relevance to my original post.
Second: I don't have a problem with trenchant criticism of me or the Government, or vociferously expressed opinions, but if I regard your comments as offensive I won't allow them to appear. (I don't like having to moderate comments, but have reluctantly come to the conclusion that people cannot be relied upon not to abuse my good nature!)
Thirdly: I might just randomly delete comments from certain people because I'm getting thoroughly fed up with them and want them to go away and annoy someone else for a while. You know who you are.
That's all - although I reserve the right to create new rules as and when I feel like it. My blog = my rules!From under the floorboards
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80 comments:
Goodness me.
Subsidised bars, smoking rooms, restuarants and Gyms.
No wonder you lot are so well connected to the voting public
as opposed to the Bullingdon club lot? please.
lol i love this comment on his post
"Tom, I hate the politics of your party, but I love your sense of humour! Such self-deprecation is to be admired."
now how would you say this out loud?
Someone on Tom's site has bid £5 for the photo... any advances on that? If we raise enough we might be able to buy Old Holborn a one way ticket to Somalia.
What did Somalia ever do to deserve that?!
At least he'd be free from Government there
Yes, Somalia - a libertarian's dream.
true... no nasty interference with our individual liberty like healthcare, justice, welfare, security...and certainly no subsidised bars or smoking rooms to worry about. You might be on to a point...
Why bother sending me to Somalia?
Just invite me to Bristol
bevanite
I can buy my own education, healthcare and welfare. Why do you insist on charging me for yours?
good for you, god forbid we pay a little so the majority of this country can benefit from healthcare. what mugs we are...a healthy nation as a priority - how illogical.
"I can buy my own education, healthcare and welfare. Why do you insist on charging me for yours?"
We don't. You are free to go to Somalia, where they won't.
indeed, I wonder why you insist on staying in this repressive, country where you are controlled by those so detached from you and where the state imposes it's values on all that you do?
Hang on was Old Holborn privately educated or home-schooled?
Either way its paid dividends because he now writes a blog for a living!
I think of a succesful education somewhat differently.
How come he never answers when he is losing an argument?
Come on OH here is your platform!
Im expecting his response to include a link to an article from the telegraph about how a black person broke the law in Bristol
silence is golden.
Huh, what argument?
I am English, born in England, educated in England. Why would I want to live in Somalia?
I don't get a penny for my blog, I earn my money consulting to German and Danish Energy companies (in their own language), being paid in Euros and then paying taxes to HMG and the EU
Now tell me a bit about yourselves
Sorry just to clear up a misunderstanding
I am not a Tory or BNP, I'm not even right wing. I'm a libertarian
That means I want to be left alone by the State. I don't want or need them to organise anything for me other than keep the borders secure and the streets safe. Everything else I can organise for myself. And get better value.
"I am English, born in England, educated in England. Why would I want to live in Somalia?"
You're not a libertarian, or at least not consistently. Evidence above. What does a libertarian care for the state or nation?
Or immigration, indeed. What is it that libertarians think about immigration, again...? http://www.lp.org/issues/immigration
On the face of it, you seem to dislike the state intervening to make society more equal, but are happy for it to intervene to prevent social change. That's not libertarianism - that's just conservatism, and it's nothing new.
Kieron: The difference between socialists and conservatives, small "c" deliberate is that socialists believe in equal povety, apart from the ruling classes and conservatives believe in self improvement.
Let me illustrate it with Oxbridge and the number of privately schooled people going there. In the 1950s and 60s the majority of students came from state schools, ie Grammar Schools where all you had to do was pass your 11+.
When Shirley Williams and the socialists scrapped them, many bright working class people were consigned to the Comprehensive lottery. How many would have bettered themselves if they had gone to a Grammar school? It may go towards explaining why wealth inequalities have risen in the UK.
I speak as an 11+ failure who went to a Comprehensive. Maggie Thatcher was the first person who actively encouraged all of us to improve our lot in life, and wanted everybody to have access to wealth and opportunity.
And didn't she do a splendid job of that! How many million unemployed under her watch?
Old Holborn said:
'I want to be left alone by the State. I don't want or need them to organise anything for me other than keep the borders secure and the streets safe. Everything else I can organise for myself. And get better value.'
So Old Holborn can perform complicated medical procedures on himself then? Or will he get better value training his own doctor/surgeon?
Or perhaps Old Holborn can build his own roads? Or put out his own fires?
In modern societies we have something called a division of labour. We can't perform all the necessities of life without it. Who is going to train doctors/police if not the state?
Think about it sunshine.
Kerry: "How many million unemployed under her watch?"
Not as many as there will be under Labour next year and in 2010 ... remember the message .. "Labour isn't working" .. it was ever thus and will be again. Of course you'll be ok Kerry with your 8k majority of state dependent f**kwits .. sorry, consituents voting for you.
I don't think OH needs any help but here goes .. he's just saying he'll PAY for those services himself, though his own hard graft - its called having self-respect. He doesn't need welfare to help him out.
So Bevonite, Kieron and Northern Lights, you righteous socialist fools, stop trying to twist his message, this ain't your pravda/bbc you know
'he's just saying he'll PAY for those services himself, though his own hard graft - its called having self-respect. He doesn't need welfare to help him out.'
Ok - so who pays for the cost of training these people?
Well these days, under our wonderful new labour stasi, students have to pay for it themselves. Student loans didn't exist under the conservatives. My word you've a short memory.
I can buy better healthcare with BUPA. I can buy insurance better than National Insurance. I can pay tolls on private roads.
Why is the State ordering me to pay more to them than I could pay elsewhere?
Who supplies training for IT? Who supplies training in driving? The State?
No. The State does not. It tries and fails miserably but nevertheless charges us all for supplying a crap service nobody wants or indeed needs.
Who trains airline pilots? Who trains vets?
Kerry.
How many economically inactive are there in the UK?
How many "public servants" are there in the UK.
Seriously, no one was unemployed in East Germany either.
The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is just a matter of time.
Ask China, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, etc., etc.,
"Ok - so who pays for the cost of training these people?"
It's a choice. The state can pay for training on the other hand private training companies can do the training or groups of people can get together and pay a trainer to do the training or a mix.
What seems to be happening today is that there seems to be less and less choice for individuals and more left to the state.
Fine if that is what you want, not so fine if it isn't.
For example, since training Doctors was mentioned, the problem with state paid for health care, training and provision is that it enables the state to set conditions.
Live a healthy lifestyle or you will not get treatment. The state can set the rules, no-smoking, no-drinking, no-unhealthy things for 'your own good' (the states?)
If the physician was provided without state involvement then that physician would only be able to advise.
This is what physicians pretend to do in the state system. In reality they are given 'guidelines' and 'encouraged' to 'help' people lead 'healthy' lives.
There is a balance and alternatives, though sometimes they are not obvious.
...and Atlas Shrugged
DaveA: I'm truly astounded that you are trying to argue that the grammar schools system could reduce income inequality. Truly amazed.
Most conservatives at least admit that the reason they want to continue the grammar-school system is total self-interest. That's what drives conservatives, after all.
There are some basic basic problems with the 11+ system - without being exhaustive I could say, what is it about age 11 that means that you can categorise someone's academic achievement for the rest of their life? Why is it not a different age for boys and girls, now that we know that they have different speeds of development? Why are they very rarely allowed to re-sit it and move between the two classes of school, despite the fact that children all develop at different times? Given that every child has different strengths, why isn't it decided individually for each subject whether they go to grammar school or not? In fact, why don't they all just go to one kind of school and be put in ability groups within each subject, where this is necessary, and be taught together where it's not? In fact, don't we already have those? Aren't they called 'comprehensive schools'?
I'll leave it at for now that as I could end up writing an essay on that :-)
Incidentally I speak as someone who went to Comprehensive school and then went on to Oxbridge. FYI, more state-school students than ever are going to Oxbridge, as a proportion of their total students, though it is still not nearly enough.
Who trains BUPA doctors? The NHS. Or would you prefer medical qualifications to be sold at auction to the highest bidder?
wow so Andy those with self respect dont need the welfare state...that's a very warped sense of respect - those with money can be proud, those without can't...Victorian philosophy to say the least.
The NHS trains BUPA doctors?
Are you absolutely sure?
I'd hate to think of all those smart American Doctors at Medical School learning about their specialist field in Southall A&E
'I can buy better healthcare with BUPA. I can buy insurance better than National Insurance. I can pay tolls on private roads.'
You're going to pay for the training yourself then Old Holborn?
Kieron: You raise some interesting points. I do agree that should be more fluidity between grammar schools and comprehensives and well done in going to Oxbridge. I applaud anyone who makes the most of their talents. I do bore for England in being a working class Tory, but my kids grew up in Hackney and my daughter who is now at university would not of had a cat in hells chance of getting a decent education there. She went to the local primary school and I will of finished paying for her school fees in 2020. She sat an 11+
type exam to get in.
Two of my neighbour's children went to the local comprehensive in Hackney. Political correctness, anti learning culture, teenage pregnancies and most abhorrent culture of bulling and physical menance.
These decent people who despite relative poverty keep their standards and discipline have my undying repect. They deserve more.
By the way, I've asked a whole heap of questions now and not had ONE answer.
Would you like a summary?
Maybe it's time you guys formed a "focus group" to consolidate an answer.
We did answer - number 4.
NL, who pays for training airline pilots?
I do, when I buy a ticket.
Who pays for the training of Vets?
I do, when I pay their bill.
I really can't make it any simpler for you.
I disagree with huge amounts of current Labour policy (and have never voted for them)but this:
'I can buy better healthcare with BUPA.'
is such a nonsense that I cannot tear myself away.
Try rolling up to a BUPA hospital for emergency intensive care after a RTA on your toll-road - they would be on the 'phone for an ambulance before you could get a drop of blood on the carpet.
Oh dear. Someone doesn't understand the distinction between a right and a priviledge.
(not Ben)
Kerry wrote
"Who trains BUPA doctors? The NHS. Or would you prefer medical qualifications to be sold at auction to the highest bidder?"
The state could set policy and monitor standards rather than provide the training couldn't it? It could also accredit training establishments. It sort of does this, so why have the state do everything?
Professionals are regulated by statute anyway.
To address the emergency problem, a Dr could be required to do some hours in an A&E dept as part of their on-going statutary licensing requirements. That maybe a good idea even under the NHS we have now.
indeed Ben, private healthcare does not touch those who are not profitable... dispicable
Ben
How do other nations possibly exist?
They don't have an NHS?
Bevanite
That is an excellent argument. The first I have seen from you.
Just one thing. If I live a healthy life, never fall ill and never claim on my national insurance, can I have my money back?
Or does the NHS have the right to profit from my good health, like any other insurance scheme?
Take your time answering.
one word. America.
Why pick on America?
There are hundreds of countries where if you can't pay, you don't get.
Why not pick on India? Or Iraq? Or Russia?
If I suffer from cancer here, it still means I won't get the drugs I need if I can't afford them, doesn't it?
Whereas, a private insurance company would fund it.
well thank goodness you can afford the care you'd need. I picked on America because they are meant to be a developed country, one of the leaders of the world yet those who cant afford care are left...even ordered a taxi from the hospital.and because I don't have the inherent desire to pick a predominantly black country.
and the NHS does benefit from your contributions, in order to care for your children, nieces, nephews etc. in the future... do you begrudge the next generation such insurance?
Wrong again. Private insurers in America often wriggle out of coughing up for the costlier treatments (I have a lot of friends in NYC/Colorado/Arizona who can attest to this).
And in our libertarian paradise who would prevent this? Not the evil state of course
I can afford the treatment because I HAVE to afford the treatment.
So I educated myself. Got a job. Got skills. Started a business. I make money because I NEED to make money.
I don't want to exploit anyone. I'm not a Tory. I don't want to make a profit at the expense of others. See what I mean about not right wing?
But I do understand that if my children (all six of them) are hungry, then I have to provide for them. Not the State. I can't sit under a tree all day waving an AK47 hoping Bob Geldof is going to turn up with a sack of grain whilst the Guardian photographs my starving children and wins awards for it.
The argument is no longer right versus left.
The argument is now do as we say or do as you see fit.
I'm doing as I see fit and I really don't need the State to tell me I drink too much, smoke too much and eat too much to return a profit for them on the NHS. And then legislate against me doing as I see fit.
I only get one life and you and I will end up in the same place anyway. Dead. Why are you SO keen to make me live my life by YOUR rules? Will you live longer? Get a refund? What?
NL, please stop.
Plenty of New Labour voters are dying because the NHS won't give the drugs they need because they are too expensive.
PRAVDA
OH, by any definition of left/ right I've ever known, you're so far right you're off the scale.
how can you say I'm not a tory, thereby suggesting your ideas and racist ramblings are justified... i detest torys but at least I can contemplate where they're coming from, with you, I'm afraid I can't.
Hold on.
I am an absolute dedicated European. I speak three European languages fluently and my business is based in Europe
I detest corporations. I have ONE employee. ME. Because I can't stand the thought of others working to make me rich whilst they stay poor.
I believe no one should carry ID cards. Especially foreigners. They already have passports.
Exactly HOW does this make me so far right wing?
If you mean I don't like being told what colour underpants I should wear tomorrow by the Ministry of Underpants....
Kerry. You have earned my respect by allowing me, a nobody, to state my views, argue my case and listen on your blog. No one else in your party has. So you deserve your award.
I am not right wing, and I suspect you are not left wing. You just like telling people your way is best and I like telling people to do their own thing.
Bevanite: So anyone who is not socialist, left wing is a racist, bigot, Little Englander and homophobe?
Your self-righteous hypocrisy is nauseating. Since you never debate the facts it just makes me convinced I'm right.
Bevanite
"i detest torys but at least I can contemplate where they're coming from, with you, I'm afraid I can't."
Good.
There are millions of us out here.
No. that's not what I have said. OH has been racist on here to the most sickening degree, he has posted threats to Kerry who has continued to observe freedom of speech in allowing him to continue, contrary to many others advice. If being against racism and extreme right wing views is self righteous to you then sobeit. I debated the principle of a universal, free at the point of delivery, publicly funded NHS with OH and found, suprisingly, we didnt agree.
Bevanite
I have enjoyed our debate and hope you hav too.
I thank you and I thank Kerry for the platform.
enjoyed probably wouldn't me my word of choice.
Love you too sweetie
Quite how we got from Tom Harris in his running shorts to this, I've no idea.
Old Holborn said:
'I detest corporations'
Would those be the same corporations he advocated should train doctors instead of the state?
OH - Your argument is so weak it would fall down in a summer breeze
I'm feeling queasy
Just remember that most people in the world don't think like him.
You would think that this would tell him something about his warped view of the world...but there is no accounting for some people.
Bevanite
HOMOPHOBE!!!
And the corporations?
Or is that huge contradiction in logic just too incomprehensible?
OH, this is sweet revenge, you might be surprised to know I'm in fact, a woman.
He's already called you sweetie; he's ahead of you on that one.
then why homophobe?! im confused by this man's logic
I think I've worked out his logic:
Government: bad
State: bad
Corporations: bad
All things unrelated to Old Holborn: bad
You need to tell Tom Harris that he must NEVER be caught in the Houses of Parliament in his running shorts again. Look at all the trouble he's caused you. And he was worried about his legs!
Sorry folks, but you're just not getting it. OH is expressing a view that is shared by a large and increasing section of the population of this country and it's not a left wing/right wing argument at all.
I have no doubt that Kerry and the rest of you truly believe that you have the moral high ground and, as a matter of fact, you have. You mean well. You want to help the poor and the vulnerable. You want to obliterate the manifest inequlities in the world. You want to end poverty and eradicate misery. You want to promote greater equality.
Unfortunately the actions of your Government in trying to do this (by passing laws designed to protect the unprotected) actually make matters worse. Paying people to belong to an underclass is not in THEIR interests and it is a small progression from extrapolating what you believe is good for THEM to believing that you know what is good for EVERYONE. The project then moves inexorably on to a kind of social engineering which entails criminalising the innocent who want nothing more than to get on with their lives in relative freedom.
That is where OH is coming from. Like many others he is not afraid and wants his freedom back.
That's all.
Pagar
The problem with the Libertarian arguement is that while it sounds good on paper and certainly has an appeal, it doesn't work in practice.
Early 19th century Britain was as close to a Libertarian society as possible. Income tax repealed after the Napolionic wars, most revenue from stamps, excise and tariffs. Gov. confined to defence, National Debt and a little for the Post Office and admin. Was it a free and progressive society? In many ways yes, but in others it was a brutal, oppresive one. Poverty for a vast majority of the population. Wretched working conditions. Exploitation of child labour. The Government looked on with an 'It's none of our concern' policy. People might have rarely come into contact with the state but oppression didn't end. It was merely replaced with the repression of the individual, whether they be landlord, industrialist, preacher or criminal. You may chafe at having to fill out forms and pay taxes, but for you to have your freedoms(ie. extra cash in hand)more would be denied their most basic freedoms simply for having the bad form to be born into a poor family or have a disability, or be old, sick or just not as capable as others.
Sorry. We tried Libertarianism. Its one of the reasons the Labour Party came about in the first place. Even many Tories saw the fundamental wrongs in the system.
Poor old Old Holborn he nearly redeemed himself until he said this...
"But I do understand that if my children (all six of them) are hungry, then I have to provide for them. Not the State. I can't sit under a tree all day waving an AK47 hoping Bob Geldof is going to turn up with a sack of grain whilst the Guardian photographs my starving children and wins awards for it."
Bingo! Tell everyone in Burkina Faso to stop lying around, go and buy a computer, learn 3 European languages and start consulting with German and Danish Energy companies.
The answer has been there all along.
By the way how can you detest corporations but love Bupa so much?
Btw, while the parents are at work in their one-man consulting firms, should their children teach themselves the 3 languages or build their own private hospitals and innoculate themselves against Malaria?
Alex - he isn't going to answer (he can't because he's lost the argument).
Old Holborn's libertarian paradise would work rather well on a small island (somewhere in the middle of the ocean perhaps) where he could sit on his own and spill bile all over the internet to his heart's content.
I think we've managed to show that it is quite unworkable here in the real world.
Blogsy
Poverty for a vast majority of the population. Wretched working conditions. Exploitation of child labour. The Government looked on with an 'It's none of our concern' policy.
And it wasn't. Of course there was poverty and exploitation in early 19th century England but a socialist Government would not have prevented it. The wealth had not been created then and Stalin himself could not have improved the conditions for the majority.
Why do you think that the population moved to the cities to work in the sweatshops, mills etc?
They were not coerced to relocate to support a five year plan- they came of their own volition. They came because, despite the exploitation and poor conditions on offer, they were better off than they had been as peasants.
Our current problems have nothing to do with poverty and exploitation- they have everything to do with the attempts by government and others to tether our souls.
I thought the reason most moved to the cities was the enclosure movement in which peasants lost their land and their rights to the commons (sort of a reverse laissez faire version of collectivisation). Even then, they avoided factory labour if they could (brutal discipline and unbearable conditions) forcing the early factories to rely on women and children, especially those from the poorhouses (those who could not say no).
As for the government being unable to do anything - The Factory Acts, regulating hours and conditions? The bans on dumping noxious and harmful effluents? Cheap maize being sold by government during the Hungry Forties? Robert Owen and George Cadbury also showed what entrepreneurs could have done.
I think you're confusing dislike of the policies of the current government with socialism and social welfare in general. It's possible to have low tax, unobtrusive government and provide for the less fortunate, you know.
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