Jeremy Corbyn: A trainwreck that isn't waiting to repeat itself

If someone were to ask you, what qualities make a good political party leader, I'm pretty sure that faking a "ram packed train" to make a point, or saying that you'd never step down in the event of your party losing a general election wouldn't be among them.

The reasons why Jeremy Corbyn is the worst Labour leader in a long line of bad Labour leaders which - seeing as how we've had war criminal Tony Blair, unsmiling Gordon Brown, and weirdo Ed Miliband and his political tombstone - is seriously terrible and just... very, very sad.
First off, he just doesn't understand how the first rule of politics works: dress to impress. If you dress like you're about to be bumming around on the street, people assume you'll be doing that. If you dress like you're about to go on holiday, then go ahead, have fun - people will assume you're off to Barbados or Spain.
Jeremy Corbyn has never entirely dressed like he's the head of a political party. He's always tried to go with the smart-casual vibes, which means it's highly unlikely that, even if he got into power in the first place, which is itself a tall order, he'd be laughed out of office in no time.

Secondly, when the hell has this man EVER held public office? He's been a lifelong back-bench politician; even former leaders his own parliamentary party have never given him any form of responsibility, like making him a member of their actual or shadow cabinet. He's just been left to sit on the back benches, simply because he caused them too much trouble by voting against the party Whip at every possible vote.
On top of that, the one quality we're always going on about wanting to see in a politician, is honesty. If 'Train-gate' is anything to go by, Jeremy Corbyn's a first-class liar (pun absolutely intended). Any man who thinks it is smart to get caught on CCTV filming himself, on a half empty train, and pretending that it's 'ram-packed' to try and outline your policies, does not deserve to be a political leader.

Corbyn's other problem, is exactly what got him into first place in the labour leadership contest after Miliband left: his supporters. Momentum are a dangerously aggressive, and dangerously loyal band of supporters, absolutely determined to turn the leadership of the Labour party into a dictatorship.
By all reports, they have cut Corbyn off from his shadow ministers short of Diane Abbott (but then, they've got history), which means that the Labour party has essentially regressed into a protest group with no understandable or clear policies whatsoever, except for the nationalisation of just about everything known to man.

Top of this very brief list of his problems is his complete failure at communication. Granted, Ed Miliband was probably just as bad, with his speech at trying to communicate by saying, "sorry, I'm really bad at this", but Corbyn can't even manage something like that! Watching any one of his PMQs, against either Cameron or May is just cringily painful, all because of two things:

A) he reads out emails from his constituents, his groupies, his fans, whatever you want to call them, and he reads them out like they're the most boring thing imaginable. Take a hint from your fellow parliamentary colleagues, Jerry - if they ain't doin' it, then it ain't a good idea.

B) Corbyn has no concept, even after decades in Parliament, of what PMQs really means - which is to really interrogate the current government on what the hell it's doing. Corbyn seems perfectly happy to just ask the question in his hand from Joe or Jane Bloggs, and get the answer and sit down without trying to push any advantage that he might have.


To any Momentum or other Corbyn followers, I'd only put it to you like this: If you were in the middle of a war, and had to elect a leader, who would you choose, a pacifist with no experience of commanding troops, supplies, or using weaponry of any sort, like Corbyn, or someone with some experience of leading, no matter how small their role may have been, like May?

I think that Corbyn, and many other MPs could learn from this quote, by Oscar Wilde. He said:

"Experience is one thing, you can't get for nothing."

Great Britain, Great Shame

I've never been so sorry to be British as I am on learning that we're leaving the EU. Even with the vote as close as it is, with a 4% margin, it's a small margin with massive consequences.

Too late, people have realised that we're losing a certainty, if a deteriorating one, for a future of uncertainty, instability and certainly of extended austerity. Nothing could have made that clearer than the bottom falling out of the FTSE and the pound. And we're only asking for decades of the same once we've invoked Article 50.

Written down in the Treaty of Lisbon, Article 50 is only ever invoked when a member of the EU wants to call it quits. And it has never, EVER been invoked before. If I've learned anything, nothing good ever comes from this kind of a first time.

Once it's been invoked, Article 50 starts a 2 year count down for trade negotiations to be completed and ratified with national governments, while membership treaties between the UK and the EU will stop having any meaning, but even this is being debated now, with EU leaders demanding that we hit the button now, and the Leave Campaign saying "eh, let's leave it a little while".

What makes me so ashamed is that both Brexit and Bremain have operated under the illusion that 'Fear makes it Clear' - scare the voters into voting how we want them to, hence the whole idea that, whatever we do, the world will end.

Neither side, has made it clear exactly what will happen, or what we stand to lose or gain, and I think that the Remain Campaign is particularly guilty of this.

Why? Well, they never really explained what kind of deal we have - had - with the EU. I don't think many voters will know that, when we joined, we were allowed to refuse to join both the Schengen Agreement, for essentially free and open travel, and the Euro. And it's hard to gauge just how much of a calming influence we were between France, Germany and Italy. Mostly because, set slightly apart by the Dover Channel, we could see it differently, I guess.

And I don't think that I ever once heard Cameron or any other Bremainer warning us that, if we wanted to leave and then rejoin the EU, we'll have to join both Schengen and the Euro - the EU has made both of these a compulsory requirement for new members. Thanks for the heads up, guys!

And on the other hand, Brexiteers can never say for sure how Brexit will actually go. NOBODY else has left the EU, except for Greenland, and they didn't even invoke Article 50; they just slipped out with no muss, no fuss.

I think that the only safe bet is that it'll be really shitty for us for the next few years after invoking Article 50. The pound and the stock markets will take a beating, and no matter how much we save from paying the EU, you can bet your arse that the austerity will begin to bite a bit more.

One thing's for sure: we'll regret leaving practically from the beginning, and if we ever decide to rejoin, we will NEVER have it as good as we did.

Feel the shame, "Great" Britain - you just fucked up your future.

Doctor, Doctor - NHS needs some medicine

OK, joking aside, the NHS is in serious trouble. Operating across England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales since 1948, it's gone a long way towards its original goal of "let's look after the health of everybody in the country, and then the cost of it will go down".

At least, that was the theory. Now, most surveys of the NHS budget are saying that it's going to or will have a £2.3 billion deficit by the end of March 2016. £1.8 billion deficit would be a fantastic equivalent.

And so, I can't help wondering if there's something the government could do to try and fix this. Granted, my first idea will probably never, EVER get put into effect, if only because the NHS is the favourite political football of the moment, but here are some general ideas.

1) Take the NHS out of Government control

That's damn right. Give control of the procedures, the rules, the pricing of everything, even the targets, over to either the General Medical Council, or a totally new group dedicated to running the NHS with AS LITTLE, IF NO government interference.

In an ideal situation, the Government of the day would simply say "Here's your budget for the next 5, 10, 20 years; it'll go up by X no matter what, get on with it.

2) Get the NHS to help fund itself.

This one I can't really help blaming Tony Blair for, and is kind of connected to the next one. With tons of money lying around, he decided to try for instant solutions, without trying to make those solutions last.

At the moment, the NHS is free at the point of delivery, including GPs and walk in centres. This needs to stop. People walk in with a stubbed toe convinced by Google that it's cancer, and they're doing this free from a nannying healthcare system.

Not to say look at France, but... look at France! They have a good system where Joe Bloggs will go to his GP, pay roughly 23€ to get looked at and then, if he can't afford to let the fee slide, he fills out a form and sends it back to claim his money back.

That should be implemented in the NHS. Regular GP appointments should cost between £15 and £18 (the equivalent of 23€, anyway). If you miss your appointment without having called to explain or reschedule it, a fine of £10 should apply. If you can't afford to lose that kind of money, fill out the form and claim it back.

Any "non-essential" operations like boob reductions, or cosmetic surgeries of any sort should never be "on the NHS" UNLESS it is medically necessary i.e. operate or he dies, and only if the patient can prove he cannot afford the costs.

3) Set REASONABLE targets

Again, Tony Blair went totally wrong here, because while he got waiting times down, he didn't try to keep them down. That wasn't reasonable purely because of financial issues - mostly because of his assumption that the money would be there forever and ever and ever.

That being said, you can't expect instant solutions from the NHS. Part of the reason that it's floundering right now is that the government of the day can't make its mind up on targets, and yet always demands instant results.

We're talking about a business that spans 4 countries! That's the mother of all supertankers, and it ain't changing direction every time a slick politico snaps his fingers.

Look at the Titanic. It only hit the iceberg because of a lack of enough time to manoeuvre, and the inability to change direction quickly. Treat the NHS like the Titanic, and give it a goal to reach 3, 4, 5 years down the line, instead of right now with tea and a biscuit!

But none of this will ever happen, most likely. Because every government needs its political football or two. Here in the UK, they happen to be Trident and the NHS. And the NHS and the people it is trying to serve will be the ones to suffer for it.