Hacker News Reader

Comment by rob_c | Hacker News Reader

But let's ignore the blairite solution to sell the land and get further into debt and refuse to take more money from the populace or detach NHS funding from state pensions...

View on HN

Two wrongs do not make a right. I’d wager the people upset about the Tories are not by and large enamoured with Tony Blair’s New Labour either.

You would think that but a lot of people can't see beyond its the Tories in power. We'd be better off with proportional representation but the beeb did an excellent job at mis-selling that to the masses

It is frustrating to see the country getting polarised this way. A 2-party system is not helpful to a functioning democracy. I am not a fan of fully proportional representation as it leads to government instability and ineffectiveness, but a party getting an absolute majority in Parliament whilst getting 40% of the vote is a travesty. Also, after having lived through Brexit and the successive government, the BBC is not fit for purpose. It is fine as a public media group, but it’s sanctity in the mind of a lot of British people is not really well founded.

Yeah have to agree with pretty much all of that. My worry is that we are defecto the 52nd state these days and we've adopted the 2 party system from across the pond since the coalition was little more than a sitting government against fox hunting, their arguably biggest achievement was placing Cameron in a position where he bailed after throwing national policy under the bus to appease his own party.

I won't pretend that Brexit hasn't been mishandled as a lot of the opposition predicted (also in news water wet), but the EU/EC has unfortunately for them shown a lot of its attitude toward Britain is as promoters had been saying.

Sorry not maeaning to derail too much.

I'd argue that the UK has always had a 2-party system, and if anything the US adopted it from us. The Lab/Con split goes back to ~1910, prior to which we had the Tory/Liberal split going back to ~1850, prior to which we had a Tory/Whig split going back to ~1780, prior to which the political system was very different.

I mean blaming the PM that was last in power over 15 years ago seems a stretch?

Yes citing counter example of how the problem is not on one side of the political divide is clearly wrong...

I'm not sure this is a very strong defence of how the Government has managed the NHS since then, though is it?

Or should I read this as a veiled appeal for Corbyn to return as the leader of the Opposition for another try? (In which case I'll take my leave.)

I'm not citing evidence for that I'm showing how both sides of the political divide won't dare touch the holy cow that is the NHS.

It's interesting how every time you show there's a problem with a political party everyone assumes instead of damning the system your trying to politically point score. I think the real change needs to be made in the civil service and certain powers striped from Whitehall but it'll never happen.

The fact that Blair helped privatise the NHS doesn't show anything about "both sides of the political divide". It just shows how right-wing Blair was.

Please stop viewing everything as a nail for your leftwing political hammer, it's not healthy in the long-term.

I'm not even making a moral judgement here. One of the key traits of right-wing politics is advocating the free market and private ownership. Privatising the NHS is not a left-wing policy.

Then I apologise

Reply on news.ycombinator.com