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jrperry

Listed below are comments made by jrperry between Wednesday, 2nd December 2009 (11 Hours Ago) and Wednesday, 2nd December 2009 (2 Hours Ago) .

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The Lib Dems and a taxing subject 9:18pm on 02 Dec 2009 423 sagamix

An aspect of the nature of a democracy, and, in particular, a democratic blog, is that you don't actually get to reject people's opinions in that way. Sure, disagree with them, express your own if you prefer, explain just why you disagree in absolutely excruciating detail sometimes, if that's your thing. But reject them, throw them out - no way! All you are advertising here is your enthusiasm for misrepresenting other posters, your unwillingness to acknowledge that there are valid opinions other than your own and, ultimately, your discomfort with the concept of democracy. No news there, of course, but it is very convenient to see all your peculiarities as a blogger expressed so concisely.
The Lib Dems and a taxing subject 8:04pm on 02 Dec 2009 sagamix

404

Yes, a significant amount of the money "invested" (read "deposited without trace") in the NHS by Labour 1997-date has been a waste. If you think it could better have been spent by reducing the top rate of tax, well, that is your opinion and not mine - albeit a rather surprising one to find that you hold. But there you go - the joy of blogging is the unexpected.

406

Thankyou for acknowledging that "Don't Go Fearing A European Superstate!" is a gross misrepresentation of what I wrote in an earlier thread. If you could resist the temptation to misquote in order to try to make a point, perhaps people would not feel the need to be on your back so much of the time. A lesson learned for you, I hope.
The Lib Dems and a taxing subject 4:18pm on 02 Dec 2009 sagamix 390

By the way, I'm unhappy with your apparent quote of me - "Don't Go Fearing A European Superstate!". I didn't write that and you know it too. Do I have to go to the archive and correct you, or are you capable of doing it yourself?
The Lib Dems and a taxing subject 4:14pm on 02 Dec 2009 sagamix 390

Glad to see you moving away from your left wing myth about the NHS having been cut and starved to third world status under the previous Conservative government. The untruth of that, as we all know, is what the graphs were designed to show, and they do it very well. Having established that it is not true, I hope not to see it again.

As far as your question is concerned, I go with

"(d) Labour HAVE spent more but the NHS is nevertheless not better."
The Lib Dems and a taxing subject 2:13pm on 02 Dec 2009 pd65 356
sagamix 362

The graph in your illustration shows a cliff-edge in health spending due to some aspects of care of the elderly having been taken into the social security budget from the health budget. Also you will note that the database separates pensions from welfare at a certain date.

If you plot health+welfare+pensions, rather than health only, you will see that the familiar smooth trend is returned. The "Tories spending little and starving the NHS" theme remains thoroughly inconsistent with the facts.
The Lib Dems and a taxing subject 1:39pm on 02 Dec 2009 369 pdavies65

Like sagamix before you, you are confusing quantity with rate of change of quantity.

Now do you understand?
The Lib Dems and a taxing subject 1:35pm on 02 Dec 2009 367 sagamix

What a delusional post! But if you want to carry on believing that sort of thing (and I suspect it's core to your personal belief structure anyway, so you would rather slice a limb off than challenge it) then that's fine - such is the nature of freedom and democracy.

But I will plant a seed of doubt in your mind: the most important statistics that measure NHS performance (death rates, recovery rates) show (remarkably modest) improvements over the period 1997 to date that can be explained entirely by developments in medical science. Those same statistics showed the same degree of improvement and for the same reason under the Tories, 1979-97.
The Lib Dems and a taxing subject 12:58pm on 02 Dec 2009 361 pd

The main point, the reason why I referenced the chart, is to demonstrate that sagamix's lazy and dishonest stereotype at 327 was not supported by the facts. The graph you refer to does just as well for that purpose as the default one.

See my 359 if you want to try to argue that Labour is delivering better quality services for all that extra money.
The Lib Dems and a taxing subject 12:37pm on 02 Dec 2009 sagamix 354

"Seems to indicate .... that we're running a much tighter ship now."

Laughable, saga, absolutely laughable.

To support your hypothesis, services would have to have been "third-world" during the Tory era and rather better now. Which they are not. Indeed, even my newspaper this very morning has a clear and cogent argument for the NHS being currently, despite the billions lavished on it, "bargain basement". Hospitals, in my observation, at least, were somewhat cleaner during the Tory era, and overall measures of performance were not significantly different then compared to now.

I had an excellent education during the Tory era too - a big contrast with the one my nieces and nephew are getting now, in a town which hasn't a single school classified other than "failing". Again, despite "education, education, education" and all the money that followed from that.

The notion that Labour are running a "tight ship", or indeed that they can take any credit from their stewardship of public services over the last twelve years, flies in the face of all reasonable evidence.
The Lib Dems and a taxing subject 11:54am on 02 Dec 2009 sagamix 345

["We get a long period of (Tory) government when public services are starved of cash and fall into a state verging on Third World"]

"is a lazy left-wing stereotype.

Perhaps just a little bit." [Followed by a lot of distracting waffle.]

Perhaps just a lot! Try having a look at this:

http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/

perhaps specifically at this

http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/charts.html

In which you will discover a nicely presented summary of what really happened in terms of public expenditure during the 79-97 government (and more recently) - expenditure rose every single year of the Tory government, at an overall rate which, if you are bothered to look hard enough at the figures, is, proportionately, more-or-less the same as Labour have managed in the period 97-now.

The notion of Conservatives cutting budgets back to the bone, leading to stone age/third world class public services, is a myth to parallel "the man who waters down the workers' beer" and, indeed, from much the same source - the soft end of the Labour Propaganda Unit. To repeat it is sloppy, lazy and historically inaccurate, if not downright dishonest.

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