Ever get the feeling that your country is run by idiots?

[Talshere]

snip

My argument moves but its all port of the part problem. Paying benefits to people who don't need or deserve it. Be it through laziness or supposed illness or even just a crappy flawed and easily manipulated system.

I'm not guna say anything, part of the "household income" I told you my mum delayed her promotion to get kept me and my bro in the £30 EMA bracket at college for an extra year, rather than dropping to £10.

I'm not saying we should pay people who genuinely fall on hard times shouldn't be helped. If it wasn't for benefits, I would have been on the bread line when my dad walked out refusing to pay a penny, till the CSA decided it would make him.

But its just too easy to "become ill" and unable to work, to easy to turn down jobs for stupid reasons. To easy to stay getting money from the government than, rather than working for it, and you get too much. Like I said, I've manipulated the system, and by staying on a lower income for longer we got more money overall. Its a bloody stupid system. This should NEVER be the case, and Im saying this as someone who BENEFITED from it.

The whole think about industry, nothing to do with government. They are all privately owned and so will be moved where the private sector believes they can make most profit. With the solo exception of HQ's for convenience and prestige, which is paper pushers and managers anyway. All white collar jobs.

People need to accept the UK has become the first country EVER, again, to enter a new stage of development. The post industrial stage. The US is moving towards this, as are several other 1st world nations. Stop blaming the inevitable collapse of the industry on one specific government. The only way we could have possibly kept those industry's going would have been to pump government money into them, a great idea, I mean Labor has been doing that for the last 12 years and we are now 130 BILLION in debt and have lost our AAA debtors rating for the first time in history.

 

[Will the Great]

@ TC

Yes, I do often get the feeling that your country is run by idiots. I get the same feeling about the Americans, too.

 

[Dfskelleton]

Yes. I can't shrug the feeling that some people voted for Obama BECAUSE he is black. I'm all in for a black president, and when I first hear about Mr. Obama's racial ethnicity, I was excited. However, he's just not a good president. I don't think John McCain or Sarah Palin would've been too good either. Oh well. I'm pretty sure he's going to make a big mistake sometime and get impeached. Or assassinated, but I hope that doesn't happen. He shouldn't be in control of my country, but I don't think he deserves to die. He seems like a relatively nice guy who seemingly WANTS to do the right thing, but I don't think he's smart enough to do so.

 

[teebeeohh]

Germany
the parties that make up our government spend the last 12 years telling us how they love each other and will usher in a golden age but in the last year(being the first year in office) all they did was a tax cut for hotels(that turned out to increase costs for the hotels) and reduce unemployment numbers by changing the system used to calculate the numbers.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

"It is a shame that the people who know how to run a country are all cab drivers and waiters." (I don't remember the exact words of the quote but its something along those lines).

Seriously though governments always have flaws. I doubt you could do better if you were in charge. The only way that a government wouldn't make mistakes like this is if everyone was perfect. And if everyone was perfect we wouldn't need governments in the first place.

 

[Bretty]

Hello fellow Escapists, prepare for a rant. I was watching the local news yesterday and there is a man with cancer that has been refused treatment on the NHS for his cancer because the government says it is too expensive. He will die without those drugs. Also, both of my parents are disabled but have to pay £300+ for prescriptions a year. Meanwhile, the NHS is funding surf lessons (£250 per person) for people with ADHD.

So, does anyone have similar problems with their government?

Oh wow $300+ a year!! THAT IS DEVASTATING!!! My GF's father had to pay $500 a MONTH for his diabetes and other medications.....

The NHS isn't perfect. That's why there is private health care. If you cant afford private health care you will always have coverage up to a certain level.

If that guy was in the states they would give him the drugs he needs, sure. But as he is obviously broke and poor he would have to sell his house for them.

No health care system is perfect. But there are MANY different factors in determining the state of health care services. In the US I paid $70k when my appendicitis went septic, all covered by insurance. In the UK the same service would have cost A LOT less and I still would have ended up as healthy. In the UK we allow immigrants to enter this country while being really ill and offer to keep them and administer them aid, read up on third stage renal failures of immigrants who arrive and then claim status because of it.

No system is perfect, but get over it and move on. There is a perfect answer to all of this, GET PRIVATE HEALTH CARE AND STOP BITCHING ABOUT IT!!!

If you are that worried about it $50-$100/month isn't actually anything at all...

Erm... for a start, it is £300, not dollars and they pay that each out of benifits. I wasn't saying that it is bad, all I was saying is that the NHS need to sort out their priorities.

If 300pounds is all they have to worry about then they are doing pretty well. The NHS's priorities are in the right place, you just aren't spending the time, like most of my countrymen, in actually seeing how good you got it.

 

[RelexCryo]

The whole US government likes to spend all their time and resources funding a war started by a president to get revenge on a man who tried to kill his dad in the 90's during Operation Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf.

To be fair, the man in question was an evil dictator who oppressed his people. I find it amusing that the act of deposing an evil dictator and instituting a republic where people can actually vote is seen as evil simply because the United States is the country doing it.

 

[DannibalG36]

You know what's great about democratic governments? They're elected.

My two cents, which maybe are not very helpful.

TRUE.

Don't blame them. Blame yourself for not getting out and doing something instead of sitting back and bitching about ridiculous governmental behavior.

 

[ThePantomimeThief]

reduce unemployment numbers by changing the system used to calculate the numbers.

Wow that's pretty smart! I'm both disgusted and impressed with that, an odd feeling.

I just remembered something about the government that suggests they might not be idiots. Various MPs from every party stole money from the country in the expenses scandal. But - none of them are in jail. If it had been a businessman nicking money off his ailing company to buy a second house they'd be put away for a fair few years. So that does suggest a little bit of intelligence that they've all got off so lightly.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

Well obama runs my country so yes!

 

[RatRace123]

Every country everywhere is run by idiots. It's all a matter of who is less of an idiot.

This is truth.

 

[Danny Ocean]

Government jobs should make significantly closer to minimum wage.

There should be SOME tradeoff for the kind of power they wield.

Look at history. Volunteer or negligible pay just propagates the rise of the elites within government circles, as they are the only ones who can afford the expense and time to run a country.

Don't be mistaken by the news- it's a very difficult job, and only gets harder the better you do it.

 

[Broady Brio]

Two words.

Gordon. Brown.

Thank you for spending our money and putting us in the recession.

True words from my Economics teacher.

"People with money become stupid."

That includes celebrities too.

 

[TPiddy]

The whole US government likes to spend all their time and resources funding a war started by a president to get revenge on a man who tried to kill his dad in the 90's during Operation Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf.

Actually, the war was started to steal, and subsequently control major oil reserves. The war in Afghanistan was started to build and protect a pipeline with which to transmit Iraqi oil through Turkey instead of Russia. And the current president is doing what he can to get the troops out...

OT: As a Canadian, I wonder where the hell all of my tax dollars go when we don't have good public transit, bullet trains, free education or many of the other perks that similar European countries enjoy.

 

[Boba Frag]

Hello fellow Escapists, prepare for a rant. I was watching the local news yesterday and there is a man with cancer that has been refused treatment on the NHS for his cancer because the government says it is too expensive. He will die without those drugs. Also, both of my parents are disabled but have to pay £300+ for prescriptions a year. Meanwhile, the NHS is funding surf lessons (£250 per person) for people with ADHD.

So, does anyone have similar problems with their government?

I'm really sorry to hear that about the poor man with cancer and about your folks; that's just insanely unfair.

I'm from the Republic of Ireland so as you might have guessed, we have quite a few problems with our government... Our health service is hamstrung by poor decision making and cruel accountants making decisions that doctors should be making.

Our "leader" was in the news recently for sounding possibly hungover/drunk on national radio...

Feel free to laugh at him, though! I know I am.


To paraphrase Alan Moore, "governments should be afraid of their people".

 

[instantbenz]

So, does anyone have similar problems with their government?

North Dakota has a good surplus and Hoeven has been doing well, but that doesn't mean the retarded flowing federal law shit doesn't seep down to us from time to time.

 

[subject_87]

Given that I like in america, all the goddamn time.

 

[Hgame]

Hello fellow Escapists, prepare for a rant. I was watching the local news yesterday and there is a man with cancer that has been refused treatment on the NHS for his cancer because the government says it is too expensive. He will die without those drugs. Also, both of my parents are disabled but have to pay £300+ for prescriptions a year. Meanwhile, the NHS is funding surf lessons (£250 per person) for people with ADHD.

So, does anyone have similar problems with their government?

For the cancer drugs, usually they have another reason, such as the drug only being proven to extend lifespan by an average of say 6 weeks - 3 months, while costing about £20000 per person. In these cases, the money can be much more effectivey used elsewhere, such as funding transplants and other cancer prevention techniques. As for the other points I'm guessing that either the surf lessons dont actually happen, or that the government thinks your parents incapacity benefit is sufficient to cover the cost of the prescriptions.

Its going to get a lot worse now wth those mindless cuts the Conservatives are bringing in.

 

[Klarinette]

I'm planning on packing up and getting out before shit gets much worse. Within three years, I'll be over in Europe somewhere.

 

[Wayneguard]

Anti intellectualism is rampant in the US. If you appear intelligent, "FUCK YOU!" Says everyone. Then they elect the dumbass and then cry about that. The Tea Party is the loudest most full of shit movement I've ever seen. They pull in everyone who just need to make noise and have no validity. Their only strategy is to scare ignorant morons into voting for them.

Just because one is educated, a so called "intellectual", does not qualify one to make decisions that affect the well being of others. The "intellectuals" of the early 20th century gave us such great concepts including eugenics, fascism, substance prohibition, etc. By that same token, the lack of a college degree (or whatever you rate intellectualism by) does not disqualify one from understanding what is and what is not in his or her best interest.