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Reply | Bibby Stockholm.
at 15:27 26 Jul 2024
But I am just pointing to an issue of capacity against a background of growing demand for indoor beds. Witness what is happening in Ireland with tents only provided to some single men. It seems to me the political argument works both ways, so that the non-renewal of the BS contract was a sop to a certain section of progressive opinion, But at a time when there is a real issue of where people will sleep does it make sense to lose 500 places? |
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Reply | Mumbles Pier redevelopment
at 02:28 26 Jul 2024
Re the alcohol (and if you don't insist on Mumbles), Gilligan's in Sketty and Truffle just off Bryn-y-mor Road are very good options that allow you to bring your own wine or beer with no corkage charge. Both charge around £36 for 3 courses, |
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Reply | Bibby Stockholm.
at 02:16 26 Jul 2024
Rwanda was not ideal, but there were some signs of a deterrent effect (see: RoI) and off-shore processing seems to me a solution several EU countries will turn to. One thing that few seem to understand is that the Rwanda deal was partly development aid. Despite all the noise about the drawbacks of that country, it has emerged as a major hub for processing asylum seekers and refugees in Africa. As I mentioned on the forum when I quoted the UNHCR country report a while ago, UNHCR has a major input into refugee support and itself facilitates transfers there of persons needing social protection.
Now we learn that Sir Keir has agreed £84 million in aid for Africa to help stop immigration at source. Well, it could be argued that Rwanda is one of the most effective recipient countries if you want to keep refugees in Africa. It is one of the very few African countries with basic universal healthcare and a well-developed refugee processing infrastructure. Perhaps we paid out more than we should, but it was not all wasted, and the development aid continues in another guise. |
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Reply | Soldier stabbed
at 01:48 26 Jul 2024
ACEs? Adverse childhood experiences? |
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Reply | Soldier stabbed
at 01:36 26 Jul 2024
It does seem to be the case that certain ethnicities are over-represented in the statistics for knife attacks, and indeed over-represented in the stats for some mental health diagnoses. Personally, I wonder whether there is a problem of adjustment affecting a disturbing number of persons from second and third generation immigrant backgrounds. I fear that this is one of the costs of large scale immigration that many are simply not prepared to consider because of concerns about racism. |
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Reply | ⚽️ KÖLN v SWANSEA CITY
at 01:06 25 Jul 2024
I'm with Keith on this, though I'm not a big Fisher fan. No chance with the first goal and can't be blamed for his decision to stand up near the six yard line for the one-on-one (sometimes it works). I did think in retrospect that there was a moment when the on-rushing striker wasn't fully in control, and dashing out and diving at the feet might have brought a better chance of a save. |
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Reply | Treatment in English hospitals
at 12:29 24 Jul 2024
Patients only pay indirectly through tax, but if English hospitals don't get paid by the relevant Welsh NHS body they won't accept elective referrals. Google the Countess of Chester and Wales and you can probably find more on the old story.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-politics-48228587
A&E is different, but even there hospitals will try to negotiate some deal if there is a regular flow of patients from outside their area and they can argue that the activity is not covered by the block contract with their local English purchaser. |
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Reply | Treatment in English hospitals
at 11:55 24 Jul 2024
I am not questioning your main argument that a UK NHS (or at least four variants that link well together) is highly beneficial, but "no charge" is incorrect. The Welsh NHS commissions certain specialist services from England, either through health boards or centrally for certain services via the Welsh Health Specialised Services Committee (WHSSC). You may remember that in 1991 under the Tory government we shifted to a system where the NHS was split into a purchaser half and a provider half, with the England PCTs and Welsh health boards paying the hospitals for the services they provided, generally in a way that reflected the number of cases treated in the specialty concerned. This system was continued by the Blair government with minor tweaks. However, things became complicated after devolution when both Scotland and Wales chose to end the NHS purchaser/provider split and revert to unified health boards. Normally these arrange financial allocations to hospitals internally, but still have to make arrangements to pay for cases treated outside. When it comes to Wales/England cross border treatments, the English hospitals normally expect to be paid according to the market system still operating in the English NHS, based mainly on PBR tariffs (a fixed price for particular procedure based on health resource groups, a system similar to DRGs). This difference between the two systems can result in price disputes such as when the Countess of Chester hospital said it would take no more Welsh cases, or the more recent case reported in the post above where no funding was forthcoming. Last time I checked two Welsh health boards take lead responsibility for coordinating the commissioning of treatments from English hospitals, and manage the transfer of funds, doing this on behalf of the other health boards as well as their own. This is alongside WHSSC. So to recap when a Welsh child patient goes to Alder Hey, a transfer payment should follow. This is often similar to what we used to call an extra-contractual referral, a deal for a single case outside of a bigger contract for a defined volume of cases. The arrangements for commissioning and also procurement more generally are complex and currently undergoing changes so I may not be fully up to date. The commissioning aspect is a slightly different issue from policy on managing patients who live near the border, which is written up in more accessible form. I can't find anything very recent on the commissioning side - only this old Welsh Affairs Committee Report, which does give some background.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmwelaf/404/404.pdf |
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Reply | Bibby Stockholm.
at 10:53 24 Jul 2024
I am confused about where what I will term "progressives" think undocumented migrants could be accommodated. Accommodation barges that were good enough for oil workers and military camps that housed service personnel are deemed unsatisfactory for single men, but where are the houses/flats that will fill the gap and who will pay to rent or buy them? When asylum seekers gain refugee status many will just shift from Home Office funded hotels to accommodation funded by local councils (some LA sources say the same hotels in many cases). Even migrants in work will probably need in-work benefits to pay for accommodation. Given that we already have a housing crisis, and given the likely influx over the summer, house building won't be an immediate solution. Farage claims we are now receiving a migrant a minute and need to build a house every two minutes just to stand still. I don't know if his figures are right but the broad logic seems hard to deny. So getting rid of the barge raises questions about the alternatives. |
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Reply | 18th
at 23:26 22 Jul 2024
Everything depends on signings before the deadline. If we do not strengthen I'd say we are in for the proverbial long hard season. |
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Reply | Leeds disorder
at 14:30 21 Jul 2024
I may have lost the plot. but to me the idea that large-scale criminal damage has no significance if it is covered by insurance does not compute. Over time, and especially if a trend develops where criminal damage becomes more common, the cost is reflected in insurance premiums, and if the cost of premiums is borne by private companies reflected in the prices charged for their services. |
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Reply | George Floyd - The Truth
at 14:47 20 Jul 2024
But do you really think the clips in the documentary have been doctored? They ring true to me. It would be a big job to get a large number of manipulated clips showing multiple angles on events to mesh together as they seem to me to do. As most clips come from business webcams or police body cams any doctoring could be easily identified by comparison with original digital files still retained by the police. My comment is just about film of the arrest and the restraint preceding the death - not the later parts of the film about the impact on policing in the city.
I can't open all your links as some are behind paywalls, but the ones I can see are of much less complex scenes (not multi-person) and have detectable issues that allowed them to be identified as fakes. At the moment, AI fake videos of complex real-world action seem to be a "nearly" technology. [Post edited 20 Jul 14:55]
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Reply | George Floyd - The Truth
at 02:36 20 Jul 2024
We are probably on the edge of a world in which AI will allow video content to be falsified, but I don't think we are quite there yet - at least not in the film we are discussing here. Suffice it to say that, embedded in the overall narrative the film seeks to construct, there are quite long unedited video clips with no commentary that aid understanding of the context of the incident, and how it developed. Much of the body cam material was not released to the public when the events were first reported. It seems perverse not to be prepared even to look at this raw material because of the source of the overall film package. |
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Reply | Mass It outage
at 09:37 19 Jul 2024
My son flew into Heathrow last night - luckily without problems he says. After spending the night in an airport hotel, I think he is enroute to our fair city by coach right now. Hope so anyway, as I am several thousand miles away from home and not in a position to be much help.
This incident brought to mind an episode from the "Out of the Unknown" TV mini-series from 1966, based on E.M. Forster's "The machine stops".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops [Post edited 19 Jul 12:43]
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Reply | George Floyd - The Truth
at 01:28 19 Jul 2024
The other angle on this is that no single source (or portion of the news "spectrum") is sufficient to gain a full picture of controversial events. Just as GB News or the Mail will sometimes omit important bits of an overall picture, there are certain kinds of information that the Guardian and the Indy will never report. What happened with the father in the Aylan Kurdi drowning case is a good example. So not everything coming from right wing sources can be discounted, especially if there is corroboration from video evidence or other sources. I think UJ has a point about the misleading hagiography constructed around GF, and that it may indeed have affected the legal process. |
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Reply | George Floyd - The Truth
at 09:09 18 Jul 2024
Some editing would be possible, but I do not think the body cam footage has been changed in any way other than selecting and pasting segments together. There was enough evidence produced at the time to tell us that Mr Floyd was not a very nice man. The clincher for me was the video of "Big George" I viewed on TheHabibShow.com. I think it has been taken down on the original website but wasn't hard to find when I checked today. The content made me wonder what Mr Floyd's many female supporters would think of his attitude towards women. Another angle not picked up in the video at the opening post is the outstanding felony arrest warrants on Morries Lester Hall, the other man in the car at the time of the incident, and the nature of his offenses (one involved possession of a firearm). He is now in Jail after being sentenced to 15 years for sex trafficking. [Post edited 18 Jul 9:13]
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Reply | 10,000 prisoners to be released
at 01:03 16 Jul 2024
Depressingly, a human rights lawyer from the infamous Matrix Chambers just got rewarded with the top job of Attorney General and a life peerage to allow him to take that role. |
| | AnotherJohn
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