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[quote quote=166471]Existential questions are good as long as you try not to overthink them.
My guess is we discuss topics on here (fairly open ended) as a committee of Wrexhamites who have an above average interest in things that happen around the town away from the Riff Raff of Facebook & Rampant Tribalism of Twitter. Who these people are? I ain’t got a bloody clue – but I’m guessing the anonymity the forum offers is quite a strong draw.
Qualifier on my position Bubble. Parent of 2 girls – still way off Secondary School. However, there is the option for them to be bussed out of County to Dinas Bran if needed (which is currently scoring Adequate/Good). Pretty much to avoid any special measures or recently out of special measures schools.
Good primary school at the moment. Haven’t had to police internet yet, too small to have bullies – it’s just petty squabbling at the moment, hardly ever see the teachers (you take that to assume everything is well). Vaccinations – just seemed like a no brainer to follow what the health visitor said. Why would you want to risk your child catching measles, meningitis etc… – My opinion anyway.
Biggest challenge of children is the children themselves. You give them a set of guidelines and a rule set depending on what age they are and what danger/mischief/levels of cheek they might dabble in.
You will find they quickly learn the rules then use them to their advantage. Things like trying to point out parental double standards, publicly shaming behaviour of other adults – including grandparents, aunties and uncles, family friends and complete strangers (why is that man saying naughty words?). Also using them to try & rule their siblings with an iron fist or get them into trouble, finding loopholes, using them as bargaining chips/emotional blackmail.
You basically have to stay 1 step ahead at all times.
There will be others with far more experience than me with more to add.[/quote]
Thanks Matt and Margaret. You come across to me as a very reasonable, fair-minded person, Matt. I’m firmly in favour of vaccination and resent those who don’t get their kids vaccinated but instead rely on the herd immunity provided by the children whose parents got them vaccinated. Always seems to me to be very unfair, mean-spirited and selfish that some parents are unwilling to vaccinate their own children but happy for others to do so for the benefit of their own children.
I’m sure your girls are lucky to have you for a father, Matt. When I was a child, my own father used to sometimes tell me I should marry an airline pilot or a doctor – I was in my twenties before I gave this any particular thought and only then started to wonder why he hadn’t suggested that I aspire to be a pilot or a doctor myself. I never thought of my father as sexist actually, but I think of it now as an example of the subtle, ever present and often unconscious bias when it comes to conditioning women & girls into knowing their place. As Lennon sang, “woman is the nigger of the world” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5lMxWWK218.
I do hope your girls grow up in a fairer, more equal world, Matt.I currently have too much time on my hands; I’m grieving, weary yet restless, and have all sorts of existential questions. However, perhaps the term that best describes my specific current state is “drunk”. Maybe I’m getting a bit deep, but why do we discuss issues on here? Who are we discussing them with and to what end? In short, what’s the point? Looking at the two posts on this thread I am reminded about how relieved I am that I’ve never wanted or had children. I like children well enough but they need and deserve a great deal of attention, guidance and support. It must be such hard work policing their internet & social media interactions, fighting their corner in parents’ meetings with teachers, defending them against bullies without making them look like wusses to their bullies etc, whether to vaccinate, and – pertinent to this thread – getting your children into a good school. Parenting (good parenting, that is) must be exhausting.
Get real? I’m well aware of the druggies and lifelong dolies thank you, having had more than my fair share of them as neighbours making my life a misery. I have very little sympathy for them. Personally, I think properly funded co-ordinated EFFECTIVE treatment programmes to get people off drugs or alcohol would be public money well spent in the long run (benefiting not only the druggy but the rest of us who have to put up with them). Of other people on the dole, not everyone is a skiver, some people do actually lose their jobs through no fault of their own and it could happen to any of us – I wouldn’t begrudge them free prescriptions while I paid for my own as someone who works. The DWP should be tackling the issue of professional dolies, and the fact that such people play the system surely shouldn’t be a reason to punish the unemployed who genuinely want employment.
[quote quote=166412]My completely tongue in cheek comment got removed!
Surely the Councillors aren’t that sensitive? & would completely agree with me that some of the accusations levelled at them are ridiculous.
I’m a bit disappointed to be honest with you. Sorry X no jokes for you tonight.[/quote]
I do wish I’d seen your tongue in cheek comment, Matt. I also like spudulike’s point that those on the higher salaries have been those to get the free parking. It’s crazy. 39 pence per day – not even a tenner a month. For that reason alone I certainly don’t think they should get the carpark resurfaced. If they want a better standard of carpark then they should find a better carpark and pay whatever rate it charges – but they won’t do that because when it comes down to it they’d sooner have a cheap carpark with potholes than a better quality but more expensive one.
I don’t know the details of the dispute between Wales & the Countess of Chester hospital over funding, but my first reaction is that Wales/ Betsi Cadwaladr should pay their fair share.
I do think an awful lot of money is ‘wasted’ on free prescriptions in Wales (and on free bus travel for pensioners, but that’s a different issue). It’s a lovely idea/ gesture to give everyone free prescriptions, but in a time of austerity it seems profligate to me. I don’t approve of free prescriptions for everyone. I think certain groups should get them for free (e.g. unemployed, children, pregnant women, students, those with chronic ailments that necessitate many different medications and /or wound dressings, etc.). I work and I could afford to pay the same charge as in England. When I lived in England there was a card you could buy for a year that cost the equivalent of one prescription per month. I got mine following an operation when I discovered in my local pharmacy to my complete surprise and horror that dressings, bandages, saline etc were charged for as prescriptions. My district nurse told me about the card and I was able to buy it and even backdate it so that I could claim back the then £60+ I’d just spent on dressings – I took the form and the receipts for dressings into the post office and was reimbursed then and there. I thought it was a fantastic deal and I think a system something like that still exists in England.
I’m not flush with cash but I could afford to pay for, say, a monthly prescription and the odd extra one – and there must be plenty of people who are wealthy and for whom paying would be next to nothing. If a person finds themselves in need of lots of prescriptions (like I did when I was living in England after my operation) then the card scheme (as it was then) seems to me to be a very fair way to reduce the financial burden considerably.
Incidentally, I know someone who was treated in the Walton Centre in Liverpool. I was incredibly touched to see that it had bilingual (Welsh & English) signs in the unit, which I thought was a lovely consideration for patients whose first language is Welsh. After some time in the Walton Centre my friend was moved to the orthopaedic hospital in Gobowen for several months – i.e. despite being from Denbighshire he didn’t spend any time in a hospital in Wales. He received excellent care. It would be an incredible disappointment to me if I discovered that Wales/ Betsi Cadwaladr was being irresponsible by taking advantage of the particular areas of expertise these hospitals in England provide and failing to adequately reimburse those hospitals.
[quote quote=166257]
shitshow from the getgo.
Isn’t that the title of the latest LP by Theresa May & The Grand Wizards?
I’ve found the album cover here:
[/quote]Hahaha. It would make a good album title!
Maybe for one of the tracks she could produce a cover of Nick Clegg’s song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUDjRZ30SNo
MP1953 – Obviously we both know that the referendum was not based on the first-past-the-post parliamentary constituency basis that general elections use, but I thought your point earlier was interesting about whether MPs should vote the way their constituencies voted.
So I tried to find out how the referendum results were distributed across parliamentary constituencies. To my surprise, it’s not actually possible. According to the House of Commons Library, results were published by “counting area” (this seems to have been NUTS 1 level) and “local authorities weren’t ever required to publish the results by Parliamentary constituency or by ward”. Results that have been published by parlcon (e.g. on Wikipedia) are generally based on ESTIMATES produced by an academic (Dr Chris Hanretty). The BBC later wrote to all local authorities asking for specific counts by ward where available and the result is that of the 650 parlcons in the UK, we only KNOW the referendum results for 169 of these (26% of the parlcons). The largest difference between Dr Hanretty’s estimates and the known result for a parlcon is Hall Green in Birmingham – he estimated that 43.3% there voted leave, when in fact 33.6% actually did. Other discrepancies were much smaller – and he got the leave/remain result the wrong way around in 6 constituencies – but we still only know the discrepancies for those 169 parlcons the BBC obtained the actual results for.
Given that there are no actual referendum results by parlcon for 74% of parlcons (and this includes Wrexham), it would be difficult for an MP to vote according to the referendum wishes of their own constituents. To be fair to MPs, another difficulty for them in knowing how best to interpret the wishes of their constituents is that since the referendum we’ve had a general election. Despite his stance on Brexit being at odds with the result of the “counting area” of “Wales”, Ian Lucas was voted in again, with 49% of the vote. This is a marked improvement for him on the 2015 general election result where he got 37% – but perhaps this is at least in part due to the fact that UKIP, which got 16% of Wrexham’s vote in 2015, managed to make a pig’s ear of their registration in the 2017 election and so did not field a candidate.
Wikipedia gives various distributions including “major cities” – in Wales, Cardiff voted remain and Swansea voted leave. The ward level data obtained by the BBC is available to download and does not appear to include any ward level results for Wales.
I think it’s easy to pick an approach that an MP could adopt to base their decision on. Ian Lucas could use the results from the counting area of Wales, or the fact that he was elected after the referendum despite his views being contrary to the referendum result. My own opinion is that Wrexham voted leave – but it is only my opinion based on anecdotal evidence and I could well be wrong. There is a wealth of information out there; but nothing is clear cut or directly comparable and everything is open to interpretation. How Ian Lucas interprets things may be different to you and I. I do find it astounding actually that disaggregated data on referendum results was not collated as standard. But I think that whether a person is pro-leave or pro-remain, the one thing we can surely all agree on is that this process has been a shitshow from the getgo.
I agree mainly with BenjaminM. I’m no particular fan of Ian Lucas and generally take a dim view of most politicians, but our MPs are elected to make decisions on our behalf, not to do as we say. No MP can carry out the will of all of his/her constituents since their constituents have so many different opinions to each other. Even amongst people who voted for Brexit, opinions differ. Ian Lucas cannot please everybody so perhaps he’s doing what he thinks is in the best interests of his constituency and the UK.
Maybe something could be done similar to the A525 and A5104 roads around Llandegla and Bryneglwys. Efforts have been made to force drivers to drive more slowly. Those roads now have reduced speed limits, average speed cameras, and big sobering road signs that say things like “5 fatalities in 2 years” or “40 serious accidents in 5 years” (I don’t remember the specific numbers quoted). I don’t know whether it’s helped – it may be a few years before a proper comparison can be made of number of accidents before and after the changes were made. I’m quite surprised at how much effort has been put into trying to make those roads safer. Maybe this is done on lots of roads now, though these are the only ones I’ve seen it on.
[quote quote=165349]You just don’t get it Matt, We can both trot out statistics that support our psoitions but as someone who genuinely loves this country for all of its faults, I’m always left with a few questions.
If it’s so awful here, why do people cross seas and mountains, travel through civilised countries and live rough in Northern France ot get here?
Why do people who have grown up and clearly despise the country and particulaly living here never leave?
I’ve travelled, lived and worked in other countries and this remains one of the very best in the world.[/quote]
Being critical of right wing views or groups in the UK does not mean that people despise the UK. The UK has all sorts of positive qualities but that doesn’t mean that unpleasant things don’t exist here too. I don’t understand why the existence of such groups and views in the UK should not be pointed out and why anyone would want to deny that they exist here.
