Dawson Park Boy

Lots of interesting posts about the NHS - hospitals, GPS and dentistry and what I can see coming out of this is an explosion of private health care. Eventually, maybe not till after a good few years, people will decide that the service they are getting is crap and the market will kick in. Simple economic rules of supply and demand. A shortage, poor service will bring more private entrants into the market and bingo, off we go. It will be unfortunate, especially for the less well off but that’s what the market is saying. The NHS should be there for the people not the other way round and, if it isn’t doing it’s job for whatever reason, it’s finished. The market will solve the problem.

I don’t see how you can drop Hall. He has been excellent. McKay will just need to bide his time.

Excellent from Frankie. Funny thing is, I represent a generation above Frankie and most of my peers feel exactly the same. As soon as the elderly and vulnerable had been double jabbed, that should have been it. It breaks my heart to see the disruption to their lives that my grandchildren have put up with. How the heck our Antipodean friends can put up with all the zero Covid nonsense from the likes of Saint Jacinda, I just don’t know?

That’s a fair point. Don't like harking back to the past but I recall most towns had specific ‘infectious disease hospitals’ specifically for things like this including scarlet fever. Seems eminently sensible.

Hope QP come and make an open, entertaining game of it as it would seem that both managers have the same philosophy. Very much looking forward to this game.

You’ve made the point exactly. Wife and I reckon we’ve done all we can do and just want to get back to normality. We've no objections to people wearing masks and doing what they feel is necessary for themselves but likewise, neither of us has worn a mask now for a good few weeks and have received absolutely no rebuke anywhere we’ve gone - restaurants, shops, football (me), gym, trains, crematorium to name a few. This is now an endemic disease and should be treated accordingly like any other. The game’s up!!

Yes

Would be interesting to know how many of the people on here who were previously refusing to renew their ST’s because of all the ‘behind the scenes stuff’ have now purchased or are at least attending on a patg basis. Surely, this current brand of football must be attractive to all the former malcontents, and, as such the club is now deserving of support. I think they should invite kids from all the local schools to attend a forthcoming game just to show how good football can be. I’m sure we’ve done this before and now would be a great time to do it again. We need to be publicising the club and the new colt teams and getting the old spirit back.

Yes, I’d agree. Lots of usual faces missing. Was at a funeral on Friday and met a couple who refused to go inside the crematorium as, to use their words, they ‘were scared’. I think there are probably quite a few people like that.

Great to hear Holt getting some praise.

You do realise that INEOS at Grangemouth contributes 4% of GDP and 8% of Scotland’s manufacturing base. If you work in oil and gas, be very afraid.

Well, when is it going to happen? i think you are the ones who are being taken for idiots.

Never understood how all the separatists expected indyref2 quite so imminently. From my opposing unionist position, I always perceived Sturgeon and her gang as being perfectly happy with the current devolved status raking in all the benefits which it brings without the hassle of fighting a referendum campaign.

What!! Government spending in 2020 as a proportion of GDP was 50% as against 39 to 40 % a few years ago.

Yep, gone on far too long.

At least an honest man. Absolutely no doubt that Scotland could go it alone. Just don’t keep promising that everything will be ‘peaches and cream’. As the man says, higher taxes and lower public spending!

I get what you’re saying but what the SG needs to do is put out a detailed scenario of just how different their policies will be vis a vis the UK. On those current figures, which are obviously dreadful because of Covid, our deficit as a percentage of GDP is about double of that of the UK. Enormous!! Obviously, you can chop out some defence spending, foreign affairs, you name it, but to change policy so much to attain massive savings is stretching things. Bear in mind we have a small number of high earners which will limit the tax take and the current SG has always espoused high public spending which it gets via largesse from London and the South East as do the other regions of the UK. I don’t disagree with what you are saying but what are the massive policy changes which will bring about such a great improvement in our fortunes? You and your adherents need to spell this out to the Scottish public.

I’m sure you’ll be correct about the status of the civil servants but why are the SG politicians not shouting from the rafters about it being nonsense? Seem to recall in the good old days of oil surpluses they were quite happy to trumpet the numbers.

Seem to recall it’s either or. If you aren’t going in person I think you can ask them to unblock your access to tv. This maybe crap but it does ring a bell.

Not directed to me but there was an economic case, albeit a medium term to longer term one. Once free from the single market we would be able to do trade deals with the rest of the world on more favourable terms. The eurozone, albeit important, has an ever declining share of world trade and it was more important for the UK to align itself with the expanding countries of the world. Now, you can agree or disagree with the merits of the above but there certainly was ‘a shred of a fragment of a plan’ as you put it.

Certainly hope that’s true.

Prepared by SG statisticians.

Hearing a rumour that Dixon was dropped on Saturday for turning up late. Absolutely no verification but, there you go for what it’s worth.

Time the remainiacs got over it and put their energies into making it work which, in the main is happening. Carping on the sidelines is pathetic.

It was.