Monday 4 March 2013

Fun Online Polls: Inappropriate advances & Cameron's lurch to the right

The total sixty-six responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Were you ever the victim of an "inappropriate advance" by any of the following (multiple selections allowed)?

It's never happened to me, thankfully - 50 votes
Other adult not on this list - 14 votes
Jimmy Savile - 4 votes
Dominique Strauss-Kahn - 3 votes
Chris Rennard - 2 votes
Kevin Webster - 2 votes
Keith O'Brien - 1 vote


It's a bit perturbing that a quarter of people have been molested, pestered etc. I'll have to assume that people answered honestly and take this figure as being ball park correct.
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So, David Cameron says he will not "lurch to the right", that's not how it sounds to me or anybody else.

And he's not even lurching to the good intelligent 'right' (face up to the EU, reduce the size of government, cut the deficit by cutting corporate subsidies, simplify taxes etc) he's lurching to the bad populist 'right' (blame everything on the welfare claimants, immigrants and the Human Rights Act, which he can repeal any time he likes anyway, and if not, why not? EU?). Has he promised a "crackdown on crime" yet? That usually gets the crowd going. Of course he can roll all of these into One Big Idea by promising to crack down on Romanian and Bulgarian migrants who come over here to claim welfare payments and NHS treatment under the Human Rights Act. They're not even here yet!

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll. Which of his three Big Ideas would you consider to be typical populist right wing crap?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

7 comments:

Ian Hills said...

Not that "Renegotiation" Cameron CAN "crack down on Romanian and Bulgarian migrants who come over here to claim welfare payments and NHS treatment", because the EU won't let him.

john b said...

Sigh at Ian.

They can't claim welfare payments unless they've been established in the UK for 12 months.

The UK can also (I hope it doesn't start to do so, but imagine it probably will) apply the same 12 month restriction to NHS treatment.

In general, the EU doesn't make anyone do anything; it does almost exactly what governments want to do anyway, whilst providing a convenient scapegoat for anything that's unpopular.

Mark Wadsworth said...

IH, JB, none of us are experts in EU rules or rules on who can what benefits and why and when.

My point was that the R & B immigrants aren't even here yet, and Cameron is already blaming them for the recession - not the banker and landowner parasites who actually caused it.

Kj said...

John B is right. According to http://www.dwp.gov.uk/international/social-security-agreements/list-of-countries/, there is no social security agreement between GB and any of the former eastern block countries, except the former Yugoslavia, meaning you can't transfer benefit qualifications. I believe the EU agreement, separate from each social security agreement, is that you are supposed to be treated equally *when* you have earned in x time, if you are from any EEA country.
With regards to the NHS, AFAIK, you can receive emergency treatment in any EEA country, but it's up to the individual countries to devise rules to toss you out if you start getting expensive.

Bayard said...

"whilst providing a convenient scapegoat for anything that's unpopular."

which is why we will never leave. Blaming immigrants only gets you so far.

Lola said...

Er, my nomme-de-blog' maybe ladylike, but I am a bloke. And I was very pleased indeed when a yoof to be 'molested' by an 'older' woman...

We all need our Mrs Robinson's don't we?

Mark Wadsworth said...

Kj, yes of course, the British NHS spends a load of money treating foreigners. And British people abroad get loads of treatment abroad for free. They have bilateral deals where the health service in each country invoices the other and then they net it off.

As per usual, the British get the shit end of the deal because we are far too soft at negotiating these deals.

B, that's another conspiracy theory which is probably true. When the Powers That Be want to introduce a measure which they know will be unpopular, they get the EU to impose it instead.

L, yes we do.