There’s been much talk of an NHS crisis in recent months, and you can understand why. Waiting times are up across the board – as the charts below indicate.
There are more than seven million people waiting for hospital treatment. The proportion of cancer patients waiting less than 62 days for treatment after a GP referral is less than 55%. The ambulance response time for category 2 calls exceeded 1 hour 30 minutes last December. And the number of patients waiting more than 12 hours in A&E is over 30,000 – compared to zero just a few years ago.
This is despite the fact that staff numbers have been rising consistently for the past decade. Compared to 2010, there are now 17% more nurses and almost 40% more doctors working in the NHS.
Interestingly, mortality itself has not risen. We can see this by plotting the monthly age-standardised mortality rate in England as a percentage of the pre-pandemic average – that is, the average from 2015–2019.
Since the summer of 2021, the line has been pretty much flat. Mortality in England is neither worsening nor improving. The ASMR in the first five months of the year was about the same as in 2017 – which is higher than in 2014 but lower than in 2015. (If mortality were improving, the line would be trending downwards.)
This is both good news and bad. It’s good news because it means that rising waiting times and declining patient satisfaction aren’t yet translating into higher death rates. It’s bad news because it means we’ve made essentially no progress in lowering death rates for the last decade.
British living standards tell a similar story. Real GDP per capita in 2021 was barely higher than in 2007 – just before the Great Recession. So Britons are living no longer than they were in 2014 and are no richer than they were in 2007.
In the grand sweep of history, 10–15 years of stagnation isn’t particularly remarkable. But it is the longest period of stagnation since the Second World War. And one political party has been in power for most of it. While I doubt that Labour would have done a better job, the Conservatives have little to be proud of.
With death rates and living standards stagnating, the NHS in crisis and net migration running at over 600,000, you could almost say they’re doing a lousy job in Government. So as little faith as I have in Labour, I’m not surprised they’re ahead in the polls. “You’ve never had it so good”, Harold MacMillan told voters in 1957. “You’ve never had it so mediocre,” Rishi Sunak might tell them today.
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/04/bbc-employee-called-jews-nazis-no-longer-works-corporation/
It is an odds-on bet that this piece of effluent will turn up at either the WEF or the EU.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/04/bbc-journalist-was-paid-to-help-somali-criminals-stay-in-uk/
Deport the Next Tuesday.
Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Israel, Nigeria. Any one will do. Problem solved.
Did you mean Iran not Israel, by any chance?
https://flvoicenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/SC2022-1710-First-Interim-Report.pdf
Rocket science comes to mind.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/03/enemies-prepared-for-fight-time-to-rearm-avoid-world-war/
Another Next Tuesday stoking the WAR propoganda. F O. Hannan or get your bloody boots on.
I hate these Tossers.
Who exactly have we fallen out with? Wan#er!
‘You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.’
Leon Trotsky 1936
Article 5 provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked.
A document leaked from the Presidential Directorate for cross border cooperation outlines Russia’s intended (now completed) military expansion in Belarus with a joint command system and Russian weapons depots.
The two-part document lists Russia’s short-, mid- and long-term goals in the first section and identifies potential risks in the second…..
The strategy was reportedly compiled by Presidential Directorate for Cross-Border Cooperation head Alexei Filatov and presented to his superior, the presidential administration’s deputy chief Dmitry Kozak, in the fall of 2021.
The Presidential Directorate for Cross-Border Cooperation is a subdivision of Putin’s Presidential Administration, which was established five years ago. The rather innocuously named directorate’s actual task is to exert control over neighbouring countries that Russia sees as in its sphere of influence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova.
The best guess is that it will take Russia ten years to recover from its invasion of Ukraine….next stop Moldova and the Suwalki corridor.
That is why Poland has bought 1250 tanks, Sweden and Finland have joined NATO.
Maybe they perceive something that you, a thousand miles away, do not?
What gets me is the “re-arm to prevent World War III” line Re-armament in the 1930s happened with the growing understanding that war was going to happen, and that cutting our forces meant we were likely to lose. It was never done to prevent a war, but to win it.
The only weaponry that has prevented war is the nuclear M.A.D. of the Cold War with rough parity of conventional weaponry between east and west.
If Russia (or Iran, or Yemen!) did decide to invade Europe, our undoubted military inferiority would mean our estimable political class would be likely to have their fingers hovering over the nuclear button, awaiting orders from a safely distant USA.
But there is no evidence or motive that I’ve been able to see for such an invasion. Putin is a pragmatist seeking to make his own country prosperous and secure (his advanced age is both a testimony to that, and to the unrealistic nature of any desire to rule the world) and balancing the competing interests at home. Trying to emulate Alexander the Great and administer a hostile empire at the age of 72 seems far more Amercia’s style than his.
Russia has already invaded Europe by invading Ukraine.
The ‘Union State’ has already absorbed Belarus.
Putin has a whole department dedicated to restoring Russian control of Ukraine, Moldova and the Baltic States.
The strategic intention is clear: a new iron curtain from Kaliningrad to Odesa. That means war.
That doesn’t mean war is going to happen.
Nevertheless, just as Stalin asked ‘How many divisions does the Pope have?’ Putin will have asked himself how many armoured divisions does NATO have in Europe? The answer is: pretty much none.
That is why Poland has signed contracts for 1250 tanks etc etc
Of course Russia is not going to invade Western Europe, but Putin’s adventurism understandably makes his neighbours nervous…..and they are our NATO allies. If they are attacked, we will be at war.
To ensure peace, we must, as the Swiss and others have done before them, make the prospect of war sufficiently unattractive to a totalitarian despot that he will not risk it.
We all want peace on this site.
We won the cold war by maintaining a credible conventional deterrence.
So we know what works.
Net Zero Is Killing British Industry – latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.
Saturday 3rd February 2024 Putney Bridge
With Karin’s marvellous London Yellow Boards People of Freedom
‘Forty Bibby Stockholm migrants converting to Christianity’ after Clapham chemical attack suspect did the same”
Does that mean we don’t have to provide Halal food for them anymore.?
Very good piece about the state of democracy in Europe;
”Here the battle over democracy in Europe becomes part of a far wider struggle across the world. In 2024, some four billion people across more than 60 countries are due to vote in national elections, and the ones for the European Parliament. We might imagine that the world’s biggest-ever carnival of democracy is something to celebrate. But not, apparently, for the political and media elites atop our alleged Western democracies.
These elitists are terrified of the prospect of billions of people refusing to do as they are told and instead voting as they see fit. ‘Democracy’ is all very well so long as it suits the interests of those with the kratos; but if the demos take democracy too literally seeks to assert their will, that’s an entirely different matter. As one former member of President Barack Obama’s administration put it, they believe that you can have “too much of a good thing” and that Western society “might be a healthier democracy if it were a slightly less democratic one.” For some liberals in high places these days it seems that, where popular democracy is concerned, less really could be more.
It should now be clear that, yes, democracy is indeed under threat in 2024. But the danger to European democracy comes from above, not below. The Brussels elites are determined to hold back the democratic tide.
That’s why they have spent years politically threatening and financially blackmailing democratically-elected conservative governments in Hungary and Poland, hiding behind talk of the ‘rule of law’ to disguise the attempt to enforce the rule of unelected judges and bureaucrats. Having played their part in installing EU lackey Donald Tusk as Poland’s prime minister, and turned a blind eye to the new regime’s purge of its political opponents, Brussels officials are now making plans to wreak havoc on the Hungarian economy in order to bring its prime minister Viktor Orbán to heel; and if that fails, to strip Hungary (and any other dissident nation) of its democratic right to vote ‘no’ in European Council meetings. In the eyes of the high priests of EU conformism, Mr. Orban has committed the cardinal sin of repeatedly winning elections on a platform of ‘illiberal democracy’ that refuses to accept mass migration at Hungary’s borders or LGBTQ ideology in its schools.”
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/democracy-watch/the-danger-to-democracy-comes-from-above-not-below/
Good post Mogs.
The rule of law – absolutely essential so long as it ensures the elites get the decision they require.
Yes of course the Church of England is complicit in the scammy ”Pray to Stay” fake conversions of illegals and any resulting crimes they commit. I mean, just how ridiculously naive is it possible to be??The CoE are abject traitors;
”Asylum seekers are exploiting loopholes in human rights legislation by “converting” to Christianity to prevent being deported back to their home countries — a move facilitated by the Church of England, prominent U.K. politicians have claimed.
“It is right that these cases are scrutinized and that there is a degree of honesty in establishments, including the Church of England as to what their motivations were,” Dame Priti said.
She claimed that religious leaders within the Church of England are “constantly speaking out against any reforms and work introduced by Conservatives in this area,” accusing the increasingly left-wing institution of “political activism.”
This allegation is evidenced by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s vocal opposition to the U.K. government’s asylum policy to send applicants to the African nation of Rwanda for processing. Welby has teamed up with fellow opponents of the policy in the House of Lords, Britain’s upper parliamentary chamber, to table amendments designed to frustrate its passing through parliament.
The archbishop has claimed the policy is “leading the nation down a damaging path,” sparking a response by Home Secretary James Cleverly who recently warned: “There is nothing honorable, there is nothing righteous, about removing one of the tools to break criminality.”
The Church of England has even published guidance to its clergy on how they can assist asylum seekers with their applications that specifically states that if an applicant “has converted to Christianity after a previous refusal, that may be the basis of a fresh claim.”
https://rmx.news/migration/church-of-england-accused-of-facilitating-bogus-asylum-claims-after-dozens-of-applicants-convert-to-christianity-to-exploit-human-rights-loophole/
I wonder what would happen if their conversion was tested at their baptism by routinely asking them to burn a Quran? If they say that would make them worthy of death under sharia law, then “apostasy” to Christianity is the same, but they’d be putting their money where their mouth is, as real converts like Hatun Tash do daily.
I can’t imagine Islamist terrorists being willing to associate with Quran-desecrators, which would be an incentive to “adopt British values” for lack of a viable alternative. You can’t de-apostasize in Islam – such a crime is beyond repentance.
“The CoE are abject traitors;”
I am in complete agreement and it is a point I have made more than once here on DS.
This point hasn’t been offered for some time, so…
If you uncritically support either Israel or Palestine then you are thinking with your heart and not your head.
By uncritically supporting Palestine you are emboldening Muslims everywhere, many of whom have radical beliefs and want non-believers heads on a plate. Many of these people now live amongst us in the UK and elsewhere in the West. Not only are you dismissing the barbarism displayed by the Hamas animals, you are signing the death warrant of traditional Western values and your own way of life (not that there’s much left of traditional Western values atm, but that’s a separate discussion). You are also supporting the vile plague of antisemitism that is sweeping across the West. Personally, I find these attacks, almost solely based on twisted conjecture, absolutely disgusting.
If you uncritically support Israel (which seems to be the DS party line) then you believe using an arguably greater evil to combat evil is morally justifiable. To murder civilian men, women and children and to destroy homes and vital infrastructure is ok, because, you know, the bad people. The argument that most Palestinians support Hamas objectives, and so are also fair game, doesn’t hold water – to want your own sovereign state is not the same as applauding the appalling murders of Israeli civilians.
Where’s the nuance in people’s thinking? It seems to have gone out of the window as the heart rules the head. Choose your flavour of propaganda is the order of the day.
I have this blind spot when it comes to wars. I never really understand wars.
These days I tend to keep an open mind , the Oct 7th incident was as heinous as us humans can get hand to hand . Israel’s response using modern weapons on urban infrastructure not knowing who is getting maimed or killed will at some point (if that point has not been reached already)be equal to said incident .
Yet the participants don’t have the luxury of even-handed judgments.
Two years into the Ukraine war, those who say “NATO’s expansion was an intolerable provocation, but Russia should not have invaded Ukraine” have failed to say what the correct response to “intolerable provocation” would have been, given it had been ratcheting up since NATO’s 1990s promise NOT to expand eastwards.
Likewise, if the Hamas atrocities do, indeed, signal putting their founding charter’s aim of destroying Israel and all its Jews into immediate effect, then what would Israel’s correct response have been to an enemy using its population, as the Ukrainians did in Mariupol, as human shields?
One could leave the foreigners to fight it out (only our leaders are always ready to make that impossible by bombing someone), but then we still have to choose whether to take “sides” on the anti-semitic mobs in our own country, bearing in mind the violence and intimidation here is not symmetrical.
The idea that there was intolerable provocation by NATO, or any promises regarding any expansion is just plain wrong. Gorbachev himself made it clear that there had been no promises made.
On the contrary, documentary evidence from inside Putin’s administration makes it plain that the invasion of Ukraine, twice, is part of a strategic plan of expansionism in order to create a new iron curtain from Kaliningrad to Odesa.
This means war with NATO.
If we wish to avoid war, we must prepare for it.
We know that works. We won the cold war in that fashion.
Thank you for voicing this point. To add context to the ongoing situation in Gaza, I’ve posted a link to a presentation given yesterday by Peter Koenig to MD4CE, which was wide ranging on the UN, WEF & included context into the history of the current conflict. He made a very salient point about the war being waged by the political Zionist movement, & gave historical context of how that came about, as opposed to war being waged by Jews. Very, very important distinction which is completely lacking in any of the articles posted ATL & is in fact purposely conflated to stoke the division, the anger & the tribal, emotional response to the situation.
A respectful, courteous debate followed in the Q&A part of the meeting. Deepened my knowledge on many areas & I learned a lot of new information.
https://rumble.com/v4bemxu-peter-koenig.html
For context this is Peter’s bio:
Peter Koenig worked for over 30 years with the World Bank, including 10 years in a Cooperative Program with WHO, in Environmental Health. As a macro-economist, specialized in water resources, his work took him to some 70 countries around the globe. It also gave him the rare opportunity to observe as an “insider” how these so-called UN agencies and the UN system at large operates. Who finances them, who influences them and to whose tune they dance.
This insight plus observations in countries where Peter worked, and many conversations he held with high-level government officials, but often more importantly dialogues with “normal” people, like you and me, gave Peter an extraordinary and broad insight into the dystopian world leadership pretending to run humanity. This formed his key incentive to concentrate on geopolitical analysis, not seldom with a hint of socioeconomics, the common denominator of most everything.
He was frequently invited to lecture on specific topics at universities in the US, Europe and South America.
Peter has also written a “docu-novel”, based on facts, about his World Bank experience, called “Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed”, and has contributed to various non-fiction books, notably as co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” Clarity Press – November 1, 2020.
Peter also writes regularly for several online, non-mainstream journals, especially Global Research, for which he is a Research Associate. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
Topics of special interest, include the World Economic Forum (WEF), its Great Reset with the WEF’s / UN dream of an all-digitized “4th Industrial Revolution”, as well as the UN Agenda 2030 – which goes hand-in-hand with the Great Reset. He has covered basically all elements of these destructive agendas, from the covid crime to the energy shortages to the climate hoax.
In fact, the collaboration of the UN with WEF was cemented by a little-known illegal cooperation agreement between the WEF, an NGO registered in Geneva Switzerland, and the UN system, signed in 2019 between WEF’s Chairman Klaus Schwab and UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres. Illegal, because the UN may have cooperation agreements with national governments or other UN agencies, but not with NGOs, no matter by how many billionaires the NGO is supported.
Thanks BB.
“mRNA Covid vaccines caused more deaths than saved lives”
The Epoch Times link is behind a paywall, but here’s another link to the same info in a free article dated Feb 4th, 2024:
https://americafirstreport.com/mrna-covid-19-vaccines-caused-more-deaths-than-saved/