Comments by "Helen Trope" (@heliotropezzz333) on "The Independent" channel.

  1. The Labour MP did not say what was in the title. The title is shockingly ungrammatical for a journalist.
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  2. You need to check out recent voter surveys. It doesn't say much for you if you are prepared to support a lying, useless and criminal politician as P.M.
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  3.  Samara Aldeen  No I don't mean that. I mean there is racism and anti-foreign sentiment in white working class areas in some parts of the country and they see Boris's party as one that is anti-foreigner and anti-immigrant so it fits more with their beliefs. Labour would have done far more for the north of England and the working class than the Tories, if you read their respective election manifestos from the last election, but I think Brexit played its part too. Those who voted for Brexit (and Hartlepool was one of the most Brexit voting areas) switched their vote to the Tories. The Tories are seen as the most Brexit supporting party now that UKIP and the Brexit party have dropped out of the picture. Also people are under pressure and just want someone to blame and bash. As Hartlepool was a Labour voting area previously, any rebellion could only be away from Labour. There is also reverse snobbery with people assuming that anyone from the South or more educated is not like them and can't understand or resonate with them. Although they don't take that attitude with Boris. Seems he can charm the pants off them.
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  4.  Samara Aldeen  You're full of prejudiced assumptions aren't you? I grew up in a working class family. I've lived in very poor areas of the country in the North, Midlands and the South. We were talking about why Hartlepool voters largely defected to the Tories. It is well known that people from African and Asian ethnicities largely vote Labour so they did not fit into the discussion about why people largely defected. There is a lot of racism around judging by the comments sections in social media, and the country is becoming more and more divided it seems. I made a comment to someone else about voting in 1945 and they mistakenly assumed I was referring to women voters because I'm a woman. I don't go down narrow channels of self interest like that but that's what people seem to expect now.
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  5.  Samara Aldeen  Can you explain why the white working class largely voted for Brexit when there was never going to be any economic benefit from it? If you think there's an economic benefit, give me an example of any working class community that has benefited? It seems that many just voted in the hope of stopping immigration. I'm not saying that's necessarily racist in itself. There are complex issues behind it, but quite a bit of it did come out of racist sentiment. You could see that from comments made at the time. If you look at any video on this site featuring a black politician, it won't take you long to find racist comments in the comments section, and if it's a black woman there'll be plenty of unfavourable comments about their appearance also. Is Labour supposed to endorse that sort of thing to please people with views like that?
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  6. @Stalin The things you mention are downsides but there are many more downsides to Brexit. Name any economic benefits to Brexit for the working class? There are lists of economic downsides that could be mentioned. The EU was often blamed by the UK government when it messed up itself and it was often invoked as a block on doing something which the government actually didn't want to do itself, but would have been able to. It was a convenient scapegoat. The EU didn't control us that much. 99% of UK spending was under UK control and over 95% of EU directives were either initiated or voted for by UK governments including Conservative governments. I'm not an uncritical fan of the EU and have no great enthusiasm for it, but it's not possible now to go back to the way we were before we joined the EU. The world global trade scene has changed and we have not negotiated a single contract with any country that has better terms than those we had with them as part of the EU, though the government likes to pretend that we have. It's just spin. The people at the bottom of society have seen their living conditions worsen not because of the EU but because of years of austerity and cuts by the Conservative government after the worldwide banking crisis of 2008. They've also used that period to privatise and cut public services they don't agree with on an ideological basis. I don't see it getting better because Boris has legislated to enable him to remove some of the minimal workers protections that the EU did impose.
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  7. @Stalin P.S. It's not 'wokeness' or the Labour Party that are damaging people's standards of living and ever worsening working conditions and job prospects.
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  8. @Stalin No I didn't ignore those things. I said there were downsides to the EU and it made a mess of its vaccine programme. Do you expect me to defend it on that? Migration has its upsides and downsides and a government could prepare for that and protect wage levels if it had the will to do so but it prefers to see wages drop as that's what it's business supporters what.
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  9. @Stalin I don't ignore them. I weigh up the pros and cons of leaving and find the cons are much greater. You realise the Tory plan is to use the 'escape' from EU rules to screw down workers pay and conditions don't you? We'll become a less protected workforce like in Asia or the USA which is the model they admire. It's about making ever more money and allowing ever more tax evasion but not for workers. The screwing down of pay and conditions will be what provides greater profit for Boris and his chums. The greater profit will not be shared fairly with workers. In the US workers have not had a real terms pay increase since the 1970s. Don't be deceived. Boris is not the workers' friend.
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  10. @Stalin The Labour party is providing opposition but voters have previously voted Boris an 80 seat majority which means the other combined parties can do nothing to prevent him doing what he wants, and today people have given him even more power. You won't hear about the Labour Party's challenges to Boris by reading Tory supporting papers, but the fact is you have a P.M who is not ashamed to lie or break the law and unless he has a conscience and chooses to resign, or his party kick him out , he will do what he likes. I don't understand your point about the EU and your non EU exports. Are you talking about when the UK was in the EU or since we've come out? There wasn't actually a UK 2000 years ago. There were just different local tribes and there was not the global capitalist market there is now, so it's not relevant to compare the situation now to the situation 2000 years ago or even 100 years ago. We no longer have an empire to exploit. We are a relatively small player in an international market of large trading blocs. As I've said, freedom of movement only brings problems if the government allows those problems to happen. With the extra tax it gets from immigrant workers, it could spend that to ensure there are no shortages of facilities for people. There are ways they could protect workers living standards if they have the will to do so by legislating to protect them. There was a demand from workers from abroad because there weren't enough to fill all the jobs here as the economy expanded. If there were no jobs they would not have come and they are not necessarily competing with the national traditional workforce. The heavy industry jobs that used to provide lots of work in the north have gone and nothing much has replaced them.
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  11. @Stalin You don't seem to understand the difference between a representative and a delegate. A delegate has to convey the views of those who elected them. A representative does not, though they are expected to take those views into account, but ultimately do what they think is best for you. A representative does not just represent business but all voters in their constituency and the reason Labour was not opposed to lockdowns was because that's what the science said we needed to control the virus, and it has worked along with the vaccine programme. Would you rather we'd ended up like India, Brazil or the USA where their leaders didn't bother too much? If you had to pay tax for non EU exports while you were in the EU, was that to countries that don't have trade agreements with the EU? If so you would have been trading with them on WTO terms (as would any EU country) where tariffs apply but it would not be the EU imposing them, but the country you are exporting to, though maybe the EU collects them on that country's behalf. Without more detail it's hard to say. I'm not whining about the decision to leave the EU. It doesn't particularly affect me. I'm just explaining my viewpoint. The fishing thing was a disaster because of the government's ignorance about how the fishing industry operated and the rules applying to third countries but my comment would be too long if I went into that here.
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  12. Because they can't even cope with processing those they have in custody. There's not enough staff on the job.
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  13.  @stevej4328  Because we are not barbarians. Well, most of us aren't.
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  14.  @stevej4328  Through my taxes I'm sure I have and through donations to food banks also t years ago we housed a Chilean refugee.
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  15. @michael dent I never said they did. Don't attribute that falsehood to me.
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  16.  @AthelstanEngland  I'm not arguing with your point. Younger people are encouraged to get vaccinated purely because it's now known that vaccination makes the virus less transmissable, but other than that there's less of a case for it. I guess Hancock is just trying to encourage uptake and at the same time addressing the criticism that if it's advisable for people in his age group, he should be having it also.
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  17. I wonder if this woman knows the media is filming her backside for public display.
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  18. In WW2 you would have had the compulsory blackout and been issued with gas masks and they didn't whinge then. In times of crisis we need to pull together not whinge about inconvenience. Without some controls it would be like Mexico which has dead bodies stacked in lorries on the streets because the morgues were full, and people queueing to get their deceased loved ones into cemeteries. In India loads of people couldn't get into hospital for treatment because the hospitals were full. Want to go down that road do you?
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  19.  @banananut9443  Jail is big enough for Trump and his corrupt cohorts.
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  20.  @annbaker2219  Apparently they can't retrospectively do that. It's not possible within the law, as the police were acting in accordance with the law at the time.
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  21.  @ZuvioxArts  Unlike this government who think public money is theirs to waste, or share with their friends and supporters, Corbyn's manifesto showed how he would have invested it for growth.
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  22. Nervous in front of cameras, probably more relaxed in private.
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  23.  @robertmckinnon6564  He is isn't he?
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  24. Possibly, possibly not.
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  25.  @superguyx5468  Why am I a hypocrite?
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  26. Maybe the lockdown has affected his income and he has rental arrears. The notes say he us an actor. All theatres and public performance spaces are closed and not likely to open soon. The government did bring in some rule that tenants can't be evicted for a few months. I wonder if he knows.
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  27.  @themightydash1714  Isn't the landlord breaking government rules though about evictions? https://www.martintolhurst.co.uk/site/blog/mt-news/can-a-landlord-evict-a-tenant-during-the-coronavirus-lockdown The way that these issues should have been dealt with is as follows. The tenant should always check the inventory for the property when moving in, to check what damage already exists and notify the landlord of any. When leaving it should then be easy for the landlord to check whether any new damage has occurred during the tenancy. The landlord can usually recover the cost of this from the tenant's deposit.
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  28. Isn't 80% and 67% the difference between the furlough scheme which ends at the end of October and the new scheme that takes over after that?
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  29. I don't know. I hear Yaxley-Lennon owns an nice big house.
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  30. He fought but the law is against him. The government imposed the lockdown. The thing is not to vote clowns into government the first place.
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  31.  @mattevans4377  Then people who are not clowns should join political parties to make them more representative and competent. However they are not all clowns.
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  32.  @mattevans4377  They do enter to some extent, but people like to vote for 'handsome' toffs it seems. Snake oil salesmen.
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  33. It's probably going to be much the same, in which case it's a loss saved rather than any gain.
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  34.  Ruth Collins  It's hardly more democratic when Boris is planning to break the law, make changes to the constitution to remove opposition to what he does, regularly lies to the electorate, and attempts to censor and damage media outlets that don't kiss his arse. When we were in the EU we were one of the most influential members and 99% of EU legislation was initiated or voted for by the UK.
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  35. @Rimadim dim *dim?
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  36. @Rimadim dim Sorry, I couldn't resist. Your name on this site just sets you up for that joke.
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  37. @Rimadim dim Eh?
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  38. @Rimadim dim So you are not only dim but sleazy too.
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  39. I don't know. Some could be Scottish, Welsh or Irish.
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  40.  @taniayager3361  * Rashford tried to help but the government voted down his proposal yesterday.
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  41. He's laughing because he thinks his career is safe now.
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  42. * Many people not multiple people.
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  43. Never count chickens before they hatch. It's bad luck.
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  44.  @honeybadger9425  How will 'overhauling the NHS' provide the extra beds and staffing that the government allowed to reduce so much over its years in government and provide the equipment for handling Covid that was of the right quality, when the government was prepared to waste so much money on ineffective equipment and useless measures such as tack and trace? It's the government that needs to go.
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  45.  @honeybadger9425  I know what the word 'overhaul' means and I knew before I posted my comment.
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  46.  @honeybadger9425  Overhaul also means 'to completely change a system so that it works more effectively. The Tories have several times changed the NHS system in major reorganisations but it they have hindered rather than helped the NHS and cost them a lot of money.
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  47.  @honeybadger9425  Look up some facts. When Labour left power in 2010 the NHS had the shortest waiting lists ever and the highest patient satisfaction survey results. The damage to the NHS is always caused under the Tories. Also it's not been going backwards for decades. In the 2000s I had cancer treatment but no cancer patients got scan checks for cancer spread in those times. Now I have had multiples scans for cancer spread. All patients with cancer are checked like that now. I can see why costs have gone up. Partly it's because there is an ageing population and partly because more treatments and tests are now offered to patients. Privatisation of some services has had an impact too as money is siphoned off in profits.
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  48.  @honeybadger9425  To say that without looking at the evidence is just prejudice. I'm focussed on important evidence which you don't seem to have checked. I also worked in the Department of Health when Labour was in power and when the Conservatives were in power. I saw what went on and the difference in motivation, investment and outcomes.
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  49.  @honeybadger9425  You have no logic. Losing beds would logically make waiting times longer not shorter Their view was that the development of technology such as laparsocopy would allow more people to be treated as day cases rather than as inpatients and they organised more care in the community rather than in hospitals. They also arranged some short term contracts with private hospitals to reduce waiting lists for specific operations such as knee and hip replacements and cataract surgery. Probably no party really prepared enough for an ageing population (the Tories not at all), but I've had enough now of discussing things with an ignorant and prejudiced person who just wants to stay ignorant and prejudiced.
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  50.  @honeybadger9425  I do agree that too many beds were cut and there were not enough to cope with Covid. Both parties are responsible for bed cuts but at least one was trying to provide alternative ways of treating people as far as they could foresee. In 2010 an epidemic such as Covid was not foreseen but the Tories were warned to prepare for one by about 2014 by creating a plan and stocking up on PPE. They did neither.
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