Independence - how would you vote?

[Mr.Bojangles]

I'm not whinging. I'm belittling the inferior entities on the thread.

You waffle an awful lot. You could easily express what you want to say in a third the amount it takes you but your training as a lawyer makes you predisposed to obfuscation. If the plebs don't understand what you're talking about they feel like they're getting value for money.

In anything political you have to make your posts easily understood for all, or what's the point?

[Reynard]

You waffle an awful lot. You could easily express what you want to say in a third the amount it takes you but your training as a lawyer makes you predisposed to obfuscation. If the plebs don't understand what you're talking about they feel like they're getting value for money.

In anything political you have to make your posts easily understood for all, or what's the point?

It's leggy and waffly. Cut the crap down and condense it into a handful of punchy soundbites. Nobody wants to read a dull as f**k piece of legalstic style bollocks. I pay those fuckers to read that shit for me so I don't have to.

[Ad Lib]

You waffle an awful lot. You could easily express what you want to say in a third the amount it takes you but your training as a lawyer makes you predisposed to obfuscation. If the plebs don't understand what you're talking about they feel like they're getting value for money.

In anything political you have to make your posts easily understood for all, or what's the point?

My points are easily understood by anyone who actually reads the words contained within them and anyone who can't understand them doesn't deserve my respect and should probably be subjected to an IQ test to confirm they're still suitable to vote.

[xbl]

My points are easily understood by anyone who actually reads the words contained within them and anyone who can't understand them doesn't deserve my respect and should probably be subjected to an IQ test to confirm they're still suitable to vote.

Using this forum is supposed to be entertaining and fun. Reading your posts is no longer fun. Its not an intelligence thing, its just that your posts remove the will to live. I've been telling you this for months now, write to your audience! If you aren't willing to do that, then you have no right to whinge (and that is what you're doing) about people not reading subsection 49 of clause 7 of your post, where you respond to Swampy based on a review of Smith Smith and Smith versus Smith in 1749.

[speckled tangerine]

Ad lib mate. You're a clever guy and you do have some interesting things to say. But this is a politics page on a fitba forum- not Kirkcaldy sheriff court.

Some of your recent output makes you sound like Mr Logic from the viz and belittling other posters is a bit patronising.

[Ad Lib]

Using this forum is supposed to be entertaining and fun. Reading your posts is no longer fun. Its not an intelligence thing, its just that your posts remove the will to live. I've been telling you this for months now, write to your audience! If you aren't willing to do that, then you have no right to whinge (and that is what you're doing) about people not reading subsection 49 of clause 7 of your post, where you respond to Swampy based on a review of Smith Smith and Smith versus Smith in 1749.

I don't want reading my posts to be fun. I want people to give up after reading my posts. I want them to morally bleed with irritation.That is my purpose on this forum.

If people don't want to read my posts in their entirety and carefully, I have no objection. What I object to is responses which clearly haven't even attempted to read my argument in full, such that they accuse me of saying things that are fundamentally the opposite of what I've said on several occasions.

Ad lib mate. You're a clever guy and you do have some interesting things to say. But this is a politics page on a fitba forum- not Kirkcaldy sheriff court.

Some of your recent output makes you sound like Mr Logic from the viz and belittling other posters is a bit patronising.

This forum would be a lot better if everyone treated it like Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court. Jeremy Black would most certainly like this.

[Davi3j]

I don't want reading my posts to be fun. I want people to lose the will to live after reading my posts. .

^^^^^^ fixed

[Ad Lib]

For an example of this evidence of just not bothering to read my posts and deciding that I've said the opposite of what I've said, take a look below:

There will be cases, of course, where the money saved by means testing a service is (more than) wiped out by the costs of administering it, or where there is evidence that those who need it will, for whatever social or economic reasons, not apply for the means-tested support to which they're entitled. In these cases, there is a strong utilitarian case for a "universal benefit". But there is no inherent moral virtue in universalism, nor does it encapsulate through so-called universal policies, the broad political aims and values people espouse through them.

Or put more simply, we should only offer free prescriptions to everyone if we are confident it is a) cheaper than means testing them like we do with eye tests and dental care and b) has no detrimental effect on the overall breadth of medical provision we can provide for under the same budget.

And these prompt:

Yes, precisely. And the point I was getting at was that the 'harrumph, moar efficiency' brigade overlaps significantly with the means-testing brigade. How, precisely, is means-testing to be conducted without a vast and invasive bureaucracy?

It is jaw-dropping to see the number of people in the UK who want to imitate failed systems from elsewhere in the world solely in the name of ideological purity.

To be clear, if means testing actually, y'know, worked to save money and increase availability of niche drugs and create a more equitable healthcare environment, I'd be all for it, but it simply does not achieve these things. At all. The only reason to favor means testing is an ideological attachment to it, because it doesn't work.

Viewers in Scotland can opt out of the insanity above by voting Yes next year. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy more expensive and less efficient healthcare.

But someone, somewhere, might Get Something For Nothing that They Don't Deserve.

The so-called 'centrist liberal' mindset is really one of punitive inefficiency if you look at its actual outcomes. It is more important to be ideologically pure than it is to actually formulate working policy that meets its goals effectively and cheaply. A more expensive policy is more desirable if it prevents people from benefitting when a 'centrist liberal' declares that they aren't worthy of benefit.

At least *try* to be fair-minded observers here. How can you deduce from those two paragraphs contained in those previous posts that I was "ideologically attached" to means testing and prefer being "ideologically pure" with "punitive inefficiency" and "a more expensive policy" so long as it "prevents people from benefitting" by "getting something for nothing that they don't deserve"?

[garethbalesstupidface]

cause thats what you're like

[Davi3j]

You've forgotten the personal allowance. The 40p rate of tax kicks in for those earning in the region of £41k if my memory serves. You'll recall of course that such a figure represents approximately twice the median wage for this country.

Which is slightly besides the point as I wasn't advocating those being the thresholds. I said that we could horsetrade on that, to account for whatever specific boundaries we want to draw. I merely suggested that the overwhelming majority of people in those categories can afford to make a contribution towards their own prescription costs, so they should, if it would save the NHS money that could be spent on other more useful things.

my point being that it would take more than "horse trading", you cant have a fare system that gives to some but not to others without a proper means testing system, which is just going to be way to expensive to implement (just look at Ian Duncan Smiths pet project)....oh, and who pays for it? yep the taxpayer, including those who would qualify for 'free' prescriptions,

still waiting for your feedback, as I think people deserve more than horse-trading when it comes to whether they can get required medication or not

[Ad Lib]

still waiting for your feedback, as I think people deserve more than horse-trading when it comes to whether they can get required medication or not

I don't think you need to have that expansive a means testing system. There are different ways you can do it. Provided it saves money, I'm happy to do it based on class-based exemptions (like children, OAPs, those on disability and income related benefits) and if expedient, further income assessments if they would further save money which could go back into widening the base of NHS prescriptions.

[xbl]

I don't want reading my posts to be fun.

Mission accomplished, your posts are about as fun to read as when Barrysnotter's children encountered intellectual honesty, which was armed with a knife with a jagged edge.

Therefore, its much easier for people to skim your posts, and then respond to what you actually said, rather than what you wrote, which in your case, very much isn't the same thing.

[Ad Lib]

Mission accomplished, your posts are about as fun to read as when Barrysnotter's children encountered intellectual honesty, which was armed with a knife with a jagged edge.Therefore, its much easier for people to skim your posts, and then respond to what you actually said, rather than what you wrote, which in your case, very much isn't the same thing.

Please explain how what I said and what I wrote weren't the same things? Provide evidence for this.

[xbl]

Please explain how what I said and what I wrote weren't the same things? Provide evidence for this.

You design your posts to obfuscate, they are chock full of caveats, qualifications, exemptions, and you are a known goalpost shifter. Plus on independence, you're a concern troll.

[Ad Lib]

You design your posts to obfuscate, they are chock full of caveats, qualifications, exemptions

Life is full of caveats, qualifications and exemptions. Life is complicated. I don't cater to lowest common denominator thinking. My caveats, qualifications and exemptions are clearly stated, justified in detail, and not open to ambiguity.

I'll ask you again: how could my posts containing the two paragraphs I quoted possibly have legitimately been interpreted by Swampy as leading to the conclusions he went on to post about my position? Find me a single sentence in those posts that explicitly or implicitly contradicted those paragraphs or could to any extent whatsoever have been said to negate their meaning or emphasis, such that his points would be even remotely approaching plausible, let alone correct.

and you are a known goalpost shifter.

I don't shift goalposts. I object to where you set them.

Plus on independence, you're a concern troll.

Wrong and irrelevant to the question at hand.

[Baxter Parp]

You design your posts to obfuscate, they are chock full of caveats, qualifications, exemptions, and you are a known goalpost shifter. Plus on independence, you're a concern troll.

I can confirm that this a true summary of Libby's posting style and probably his personality. But you left out his mendacity and disingenuousness.

[xbl]

Find me a single sentence in those posts

Wrong and irrelevant to the question at hand.

1. That would involve a detailed reading of your posts. I'd rather shut my fingers in a car door.

2. Actually, it isn't. You write one thing, but say another. This is concern trolling, and it is what you do.

[Ad Lib]

1. That would involve a detailed reading of your posts. I'd rather shut my fingers in a car door.

So we have an admission. You can't possibly be in a position to say that what I say and what I write are different if you don't even know what I write because you don't read it!

2. Actually, it isn't. You write one thing, but say another. This is concern trolling, and it is what you do.

I don't concern troll. I say what I write and I write what I say.

[xbl]

So we have an admission. You can't possibly be in a position to say that what I say and what I write are different if you don't even know what I write because you don't read it!

I don't concern troll. I say what I write and I write what I say.

Yes, you've caught me. You win this argument. Now watch the adulation roll in as the forum at large agrees that you are right and I am wrong.

And yes, you concern troll. The best example is over things like Europe and the currency, where you propose that yes scotland and the SNP should commit political suicide.

[Ad Lib]

Yes, you've caught me. You win this argument. Now watch the adulation roll in as the forum at large agrees that you are right and I am wrong.

I'm not a populist. I don't care what the majority think. I care what smart people who are fair-minded think.

And yes, you concern troll. The best example is over things like Europe and the currency, where you propose that yes scotland and the SNP should commit political suicide.

I don't propose that YesScotland "commit political suicide" over anything. You know this is the case.