Universal benefit - £0.425bn to be written off.

Generali

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Your put down is interesting, as politics is not something that can be "understood" on a single level. It's not something that's either right or wrong.

It's viewed differently by every single one of us. What you "understand" to be right is different to what I might "understand" to be right.

The point, before you found some way of disagreeing and coming up with a put down is that Farage was the only one on that panel to answer a question DIRECTLY. For doing so, he got some flack from a member of the audience. He then argued back his point.

All other politicians on the panel simply ignored the question and answered their own, pre-defined question which allowed them to put their point forward.

While Farage will gain votes from his focus on the point at hand, he will also lose them.

This, IMO, is the difference. He has principal whether you agree or disagree with him and he will stick to and argue out that principal, gaining and losing votes for doing so.

The majority of other politicians are too worried about losing votes, therefore take on board a question and answer a completely different one. Often the answer is so far away from answering the actual question, but put across in a way which attempts to pacify the majority.

Now, if this is me simply "not understanding", fine. However, I was listening to QT on the radio. They continue with a phone in after. From what you say, the majority of the callers didn't "understand" politics either. So maybe, just maybe, we all take different stuff from politics and it's not there to be understood on whatever level you deem to be the correct one.

I think some politicians gain respect for dealing with difficult questions head on. Boris does to some degree at least for example. Prescott did too, when in opposition at least. I heard Farrage on the radio when in the UK and he did impress in that way, especially as he was being interviewed by Victoria Derbyshire(sp?) who seems to be very left wing, even by the standards of BBC interviewers.

I still don't agree with him but he did earn a modicum of respect from me. Then I remembered his policies and went back to hating him.

michaels

Turns out to have been a good day to bury bad news:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25230158

Loughton_Monkey

michaels wrote: »

Turns out to have been a good day to bury bad news:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25230158

This is an extremely cynical, sarcastic, and barbed criticism of our current coalition government. It attempts to expose them as deliberately spinning and trying to mislead the voting public....

Well done!

tomterm8

michaels wrote: »

How come Tesco, Google and Amazon can run web front-end databases but the public sector can not - do they spend more or is it all down to the project managment?

Uh...

Well, it was obvious that this thing wasn't going to work. I don't mean politically, but technically. They took 6 huge databases that had been developed over a period of decades, which are largely held together with string and sticky-back-plastic and decided to replace them with 1 database written by consultants who'd never tackled the problem before.

SO, yeah, fail guaranteed.

Knew it would happen like that right from the start... Part of the problem is that Politicians have no understanding of how difficult what they are planning is to implement.

If I were running welfare reform from a tory perspective I'd have worked from within the system.

M.Johnson_2

I hear UC is to be delayed yet again, they will not have it rolled out everywhere by 2017

CLAPTON

I've worked for private sector companies where IT systems have failed and been scrapped.
I've not read about it in the newspapers.

Generali

CLAPTON wrote: »

I've worked for private sector companies where IT systems have failed and been scrapped.
I've not read about it in the newspapers.

Probably because people weren't forced to pay for them under threat of imprisonment.

The financing of Government and companies is completely different for that simple reason.

M.Johnson_2

Any idea how much of the country has been moced on to UC already, I know some areas have been.

CLAPTON

Generali wrote: »

Probably because people weren't forced to pay for them under threat of imprisonment.

The financing of Government and companies is completely different for that simple reason.

Yes indeed we are more entitled to know about mistakes in government that private industry although we pay for both;
however to make an informed view it is necessary to put those mistakes in the context of what is achieved elsewhere.

grizzly1911

CLAPTON wrote: »

Yes indeed we are more entitled to know about mistakes in government that private industry although we pay for both;
however to make an informed view it is necessary to put those mistakes in the context of what is achieved elsewhere.

I have experienced large scale transformation IT programmes that have vastly overspent due to a lack of understanding of the requirements.

In many cases in addition to the overspend full benefits haven't been realised and operational costs have not been reduced as expected.

I guess it used to be called evolution.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out.