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UK politics general discussion

I find more and more nurses are leaving and joining agencies. You get x3-x4 the wage for the same workload. There’s an abundance for shifts available, travel and hotel costs can be covered, you get a private pension and you don’t have to worry about any hospital management breathing down your neck.

I’ve worked on some wards in hospital where the entire nursing team consists of agency staff.

I’m currently training to become a nurse. I have to work for 2 years in the NHS once I qualify. I have no doubt that unless there’s any major changes, I will likely get my 2 years experience and then go down the agency route. If not I’ll go abroad, or to a private hospital.

The government often refer to more and more students enrolling into nursing in universities, unfortunately most of those students/graduates are already planning their get-out plans before they even start in the NHS!

I think particularly with nursing, the culture has changed incredibly, nurses have far more duties than they used to, the workload is incredibly high, and in a role where you trained to treat others with compassion, you often do not get that treatment yourself!

Higher wages may make nursing/health care roles more appealing, but it’s more of a culture change we need to see and the NHS changed with the way it works.

I generally find where I work people who moan about managers are the ones who needed managing and didn’t like it 😂

But then the Trust I work at all clinical managers come from the profession they manage.
 
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I generally find where I work people who moan about managers are the ones who needed managing and didn’t like it 😂

I generally find the ones who “need managing” never moan because they do the bare minimum and go home on time happy.

Meanwhile other hardworking, skilled, conscientious staff moan a bit because they’re so busy picking up the slack and then get told they need to have a more positive attitude. I know which ones I prefer on my team.

May just be a peculiarity of my particular place of work.
 
I'm not sure if anyone was previously aware, but there are apparently local elections in May 2023!

I discovered this because the Forest of Dean District Council (my local council) is apparently up for re-election in 2023, so I'll get my first opportunity to vote very soon!

If you have local elections in 2023, who are you voting for?

Personally, I'm leaning towards Labour. That's who I'd vote for in a general election, so that's probably who I'll vote for in the local elections too.

Interestingly given that the Forest of Dean is a pretty safe Conservative seat (the Conservatives got 60% of the vote at the 2019 election, and the seat has been a Conservative seat for a pretty long time now), the District Council actually has no overall controlling party at the moment, and the current District Councillor for our ward (consisting of our village and the village next to it) actually stands for the Green Party, who I also wouldn't mind voting for. Although with that being said, I've been strongly advised against voting for our current District Councillor, because he is also the Parish Council Chairman in the next village over (where my grandparents and most of my relatives live), and he is a... controversial figure within the village, to say the least. My grandad, who's on the Parish Council, absolutely despises him, and my other set of grandparents also don't particularly like him.

But who are you planning to vote for in the local elections?
 
Make sure you've got suitable ID as that is now required.

I'm a bit unsure who to vote for locally. It looks like Lib Dem got the second highest number of votes at the last council elections so I'll probably vote for them.
 
Make sure you've got suitable ID as that is now required.
I have a provisional driver's license and a passport, so that shouldn't be a problem for me. I already signed up to the Forest of Dean Electoral Register a good few months back, so I should hopefully be fine.
 
I'm not sure if anyone was previously aware, but there are apparently local elections in May 2023!

I discovered this because the Forest of Dean District Council (my local council) is apparently up for re-election in 2023, so I'll get my first opportunity to vote very soon!

If you have local elections in 2023, who are you voting for?

Personally, I'm leaning towards Labour. That's who I'd vote for in a general election, so that's probably who I'll vote for in the local elections too.

Interestingly given that the Forest of Dean is a pretty safe Conservative seat (the Conservatives got 60% of the vote at the 2019 election, and the seat has been a Conservative seat for a pretty long time now), the District Council actually has no overall controlling party at the moment, and the current District Councillor for our ward (consisting of our village and the village next to it) actually stands for the Green Party, who I also wouldn't mind voting for. Although with that being said, I've been strongly advised against voting for our current District Councillor, because he is also the Parish Council Chairman in the next village over (where my grandparents and most of my relatives live), and he is a... controversial figure within the village, to say the least. My grandad, who's on the Parish Council, absolutely despises him, and my other set of grandparents also don't particularly like him.

But who are you planning to vote for in the local elections?

There are local elections every May, though not for every area. Local councillors have 4 year terms and most councils stagger the number that are elected each year.
 
I've been strongly advised against voting for our current District Councillor, because he is also the Parish Council Chairman in the next village over (where my grandparents and most of my relatives live), and he is a... controversial figure within the village, to say the least. My grandad, who's on the Parish Council, absolutely despises him, and my other set of grandparents also don't particularly like him.
Why are they controversial? Don’t let the fact someone doesn’t like them sway you. Look at what they have done or policies that are controversial and make up your own mind.

Also at local level party isn’t always as relevant, a good councillor who listens to residents and works hard to put in place what local people need is often better than blindly following a party.
I would never vote Conservative at a national level but in a previous house we had a good local councillor who really went the extra mile for local people in a facebook group he set up, so happily voted for him.
 
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I'm not sure if anyone was previously aware, but there are apparently local elections in May 2023!

I discovered this because the Forest of Dean District Council (my local council) is apparently up for re-election in 2023, so I'll get my first opportunity to vote very soon!

If you have local elections in 2023, who are you voting for?

Personally, I'm leaning towards Labour. That's who I'd vote for in a general election, so that's probably who I'll vote for in the local elections too.

Interestingly given that the Forest of Dean is a pretty safe Conservative seat (the Conservatives got 60% of the vote at the 2019 election, and the seat has been a Conservative seat for a pretty long time now), the District Council actually has no overall controlling party at the moment, and the current District Councillor for our ward (consisting of our village and the village next to it) actually stands for the Green Party, who I also wouldn't mind voting for. Although with that being said, I've been strongly advised against voting for our current District Councillor, because he is also the Parish Council Chairman in the next village over (where my grandparents and most of my relatives live), and he is a... controversial figure within the village, to say the least. My grandad, who's on the Parish Council, absolutely despises him, and my other set of grandparents also don't particularly like him.

But who are you planning to vote for in the local elections?
As has been said, there's local elections in May every year in some part of the country. But may I say, it's so refreshing to hear someone so young genuinely interested in the democratic process. My first vote was in the 2001 GE and I've maintained the view ever since that younger voters really hold the key to change in this country. There's a reason why your generation and the generation before has been shafted by successive governments and that's because not enough vote so they're not really that worried about what people like you think and adopt their policy positions accordingly.

I agree with @jon81uk (apart from the voting Tory bit which I could never stomach personally) that you should vote for who you think is right for the job and weigh that up with your personal belief system. By all means have debates and listen to family members but don't let that dictate what you do. Your vote is equal to theirs and wields the same power. Similarly with all of us including me, listen, learn, debate and question but ultimately make your own personal decision at the end of the day.

But the important thing is that, no matter how hopeless a picture a miserable and pessimistic person like me would view the world and the state of this country - you should always remember that people like you have a voice in deciding what happens next.
 
There have been local elections every year since 1974 Matt!
So because my driving license is old, and I choose to no longer hold a passport...I have been disenfranchised unless I pay for ID?
Seems a bit naughty to me.
In answer to the original question...Green or Labour, as always.
 
There have been local elections every year since 1974 Matt!
So because my driving license is old, and I choose to no longer hold a passport...I have been disenfranchised unless I pay for ID?
Seems a bit naughty to me.
In answer to the original question...Green or Labour, as always.

It is possible to get a voter ID certificate if you don’t have anything else. Or to use out of date passport or license if you still oook like the photo.

But yes theirs is the tories trying to get rid of voters they don’t think will vote for them.
 
Do you think they will take my usual accepted photo id...paper license and recent BPB season pass...
Has worked many times in the past!
Edit...and voter fraud has been a major problem in my are for a number of years...but that is postal voting...no id there I presume?
 
I'm not sure if anyone was previously aware, but there are apparently local elections in May 2023!

I discovered this because the Forest of Dean District Council (my local council) is apparently up for re-election in 2023, so I'll get my first opportunity to vote very soon!

If you have local elections in 2023, who are you voting for?

Personally, I'm leaning towards Labour. That's who I'd vote for in a general election, so that's probably who I'll vote for in the local elections too.

Interestingly given that the Forest of Dean is a pretty safe Conservative seat (the Conservatives got 60% of the vote at the 2019 election, and the seat has been a Conservative seat for a pretty long time now), the District Council actually has no overall controlling party at the moment, and the current District Councillor for our ward (consisting of our village and the village next to it) actually stands for the Green Party, who I also wouldn't mind voting for. Although with that being said, I've been strongly advised against voting for our current District Councillor, because he is also the Parish Council Chairman in the next village over (where my grandparents and most of my relatives live), and he is a... controversial figure within the village, to say the least. My grandad, who's on the Parish Council, absolutely despises him, and my other set of grandparents also don't particularly like him.

But who are you planning to vote for in the local elections?

I don't think there is any such thing as a safe Tory seat at the moment!
 
I don't think there is any such thing as a safe Tory seat at the moment!
Case in point is my constituency of Congleton. It's been one of the safest Tory seats in the North West, but a lot of opinion polls are predicting that it'll go to Labour at the next election. It's NEVER been held by Labour in its current guise.
 
I live in a safe Tory seat and it's quite a good feeling to know at the next election that my one single vote may actually count this time! Normally it's like pushing water up hill. All me and like-minded people get around here is to decide how severe the Labour candidate gets pummeled. Although it was in Lib Dem hands between 1997 and 2005 so finally getting Labour into second place at least was kind of cool.

It's entertainment just to see how Tories locally are managing to distance themselves from their national party. I've met both the local council leader and MP before (both Tory). Every quarter, the council leader sends every resident a newsletter and has done nothing but slag off national governments quite severely for many years now. The local MP office sends me emails with an update and he too seems to be grovelling and acknowledging how bad his government is and was really quite scathing about Liz Truss a few months ago even before she resigned.

They're like worms on a hook. I find it all quite comical.
 
The past 10 years has been the worst, no doubt. The country has been getting worse since I can remember as a teen in the 90s though, to be fair.
 
This country is in decline. Since 2010, worse and worse and worse.
I was born in 1982 and the country has been in decline my whole lifetime to varying degrees. I can't think of a single argument right now as to how this can possibly be reversed. The decline has accelerated in the past decade significantly. Jeremy Hunt's comments today are almost comical. Although I've always known he was a prat, at least he had some sort of credibility. Now he has none.
 
So the lying racist Johnson has been given £220,000 out of our taxes to defend his buckets of lies in the Partygate scandal.
He has also been paid £2,000,000 from the after dinner speaking circuit in the last few weeks, which goes straight into his back pocket...to pay for his many child support payments to nameless, faceless children spread around the globe.
He also gets his salary as an MP, even though he hasn't been doing his job very well, if at all, because he isn't capable of tucking in his shirt and tying his own shoelaces without assistance.

Then there is the Chairman of his party, a dodgy tax fiddler who pays a fat tax penalty but claims he has done nothing wrong...
More dodgy dealings with Gibraltar banks, and a payoff to his dad for no particular reason, other than rinsing the cash away from the taxman.
Our great open democracy leads the world in honest, fair politics.
 
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