Perhaps this will be the last election where politicians will think they can get away with just saying things that obviously happened didn't happen. We all have the history of what they said at our finger tips.
The papers are now largely more about rich owners trying to disguise their personal desires as public outrage, but most people know that, and this is the first to get elected without their broad support.
There are also more sources than ever out there, more ways to filter and more fact checking, it's also never been easy to learn new skills online.
Maybe it's not all bad. People aren't necessarily more ignorant it's just easier for the ignorant to berate you anonymously. But however horrible people are online most of it is just noise.
The Sun is an absolute rag, but it is still better than the vast majority of social media "news". If they outright lie they *should* be made to print corrections and can be fined as they are supposedly regulated.
The ability for online pseudo news to simply make things up for clickbait has pushed the worst of the tabloids even further towards that to keep up, especially when something completely false gets online traction with their target audience (which would be a big overlap in a venn diagram of people who can't tell a fake story/ spam bot story and newspaper choice).
Only in the election run up, and only because they want to be seen to have picked "the winner".
Personally, a "what's your main source of news" question on the top of the ballot with a huge trap door opening if you answer The Sun, the Daily Heil or Gbeebies would help society.
Yes, Labour under Corbyn got 40% in 2017 (262 seats), compared with 33.7% in 2024 (412 seats).
However, many potential Labour voters voted tactically for the Lib Dems, in seats where the LibDems were best placed to beat the Tories. Also 4.1 million people voted for Reform, and not all of those were previous Conservative voters.
So it's not really a valid comparison. But in any event, Starmer has a 171 majority, and will easily get all his legislation through Parliament, even with some rebellions by the left. I cannot see how he will fail to secure another term in 2028/29, given the fragmented support for right-leaning parties, and the lack of any credible candidate to take over as Leader of the Opposition.
I cannot see how he will fail to secure another term in 2028/29, given the fragmented support for right-leaning parties, and the lack of any credible candidate to take over as Leader of the Opposition.
That’s what plenty of people will have said in 2019.
It’ll be Johnson or Farage as leader of the Tories at the next election, won’t it?
Disagree, when the S*n, the fail and others deliberately lied about and hounded opponents for decades people believed them and that had serious consequences for individuals and policy.
When some twonk on "X" says the moon is made of cheese people nod along but not much happens.
A bit towards the end as above, hardly comparable to years ago or the constant scare stories of the express and similar. Throughout the B word vote and bargaining particularly every minor win or possible point got a headline and several pages however ridiculous and they suddenly remembered the oceans or charity when anything happened against them.
Biden's dementia is a good example of when social media is way ahead of the mainstream media in reporting things. In that specific case there were plenty of videos showing the extent of the problem before the mainstream media had no choice but to report it.
The latest thing to pop up on social media, that Keir Starmer is having an affair with somebody, doesn't have any videos and should be treated with caution.
Some of the social media twonks who are similarly hounding opponents, with even less rules, already have a larger reach among younger generations than those papers though and could overtake generally in the next decade or two.
‘If I were president I wouldn’t care about party lines, I’d just always truly make the American people my #1 priority. For problems I’m ignorant in I’d have experts from the left and right advise me on them and try to find the middle ground that’s best for America. Wouldn’t be buyable, don’t care about doing things just because my party says I should, and I would focus on uniting the country instead of dividing it. Anyways, we can pick this up in 15 years when I’m old enough to run haha’
Yeah but people used to buy newspapers to read them throughout the day, take them home, share with the family etc, a 10 second clip on the internet to a load of people who are following hundreds of others doesn't have that impact often.
When people are following multiple people all parroting the same rubbish it could even be worse than one paper. At least with the paper it's obviously an enterprise to publish certain stories/ trends, with multiple seemingly disparate accounts with large followings it can look like it's a story with weight.
I doubt even 5% of under 30s read a newspaper weekly.
So Gasroomers, why is it that all these stupid people out there, so less intelligent and gifted than us, won’t listen to us when we tell them how dumb and deluded they are?
Might it be that after many years of the rich, powerful and privileged having behaved scandalously, they just don’t trust us not to be lying still? The Post Office affair, contaminated blood products, big tobacco and big pharma and the suppression of data, partygate. The list of despicable behaviour by people wielding power in liberal democracies is a long one and I can see why a large number of people no longer trust or believe what they read or hear from the media that has been at the centre of said democracies. I get why people might think that a strong man or woman in power might be a better way to go even if people might not like them personally. Many Trump supporters don’t like his behaviours but they do see him as someone who will protect the life they have. (An aside. I find it hilarious when the liberal lefty Gasroomers who bemoan the failure of people to move with the times, let go of their prejudices, get all het up about the misuse of English. Somehow it’s always their version of English that is the right one, not the one spoken more widely in the US, not the one spoken in 1824 or 1624. Might is suggest that they may hold wider beliefs that their word view is the right one? Bit like those awful thick MAGA types and Sun readers)
Of course the likes of Bannon, GB news, Farage, Trump et al have no interest in seeking or speaking truth and seek only power, of one kind or another but I can see why, when presented with a lie from them, some people choose to believe it over a rebuttal from CNN, the BBC and other media outlets that are seen as the voices of the state. The same state that preached tbe superiority of liberal democracy and then failed to live up to it. Many more people may not believe any media outlets any more. It doesn’t mean they are thick or cannot think. It means they are human. Humans like certainty and when under stress think in ways that give it. Our biases and cognitive shortcuts come to the fore. For all of us in case you think you are somehow immune to that. That often takes people to the seemingly protective arms of those who offer the compelling illusion of certainty.
When the likes of us here on the Gasroom condemn, demonise and patronise people who don’t think as we do, we become the recruiting sergeants for the peddlers of misinformation. By choosing to damm from our Ivory Towers large groups of people rather than try to engage, we are not so different from the racists, misogynists, hate speakers we claim we are nothing like.
Finally, I have worked with a few people who were so called conspiracy theorists. They weren’t lazy thinkers. To a person they all spent a lot of time researching, reading, listening. They were scared for themselves and their loved ones and wanted to find something that would make them feel safer. Bit like me really, the difference not being some superior intellect I have, it simply being the filters we used for what we saw as true.
I’ll change it to what should we do if I may as I don’t know what you do outside of here.
Spend more time with people less like yourself. Listen to views you don’t agree with and offer your perspective without mockery. Try to avoid the I am right, you are wrong (because I am clever, you are not) form of dialogue. Know your own biases and prejudices as best you can and how they may get in the way of achieving mutual understanding. Be willing to own the mistakes made by yourself and others who hold your world view and encourage others to do the same.
Not dissimilar are some of the ideas from cultural competency in healthcare.
I’m not arguing for moral relativism here. I am trying to argue that most people with views we don’t like may be amenable to changing or softening them and by ignoring and demonising them we move closer to point where views become behaviours. And then we are all lost.
I already do the second paragraph as much as I am able with the possible exception of the first eight words (I'll come back to that). In my experience outside of online forums, so do most other people. Its often quite hard though to spend time with people less like yourself. If you arguing for treat others with respect, I agree with you. I am not convinced that in general people of any views are that amenable to changing them by discussion with others. I fear the algorithms online pushing people into their silos make that a bit of a fantasy.
Here’s some food for thought for me I just came across. On today’s Newscast podcast one of the contributors noted that whilst the assumption is that Reform voters just don’t like immigration, the focus groups with them suggested a key issue is the NHS. The assumption made by many is that all Reform supporters are thick racists. An alternative might be that they may be people who live in deprived social circumstances and may suffer ill higher levels of ill health themselves or have family and friends who do. Getting help is hard, seeing a GP is hard. Reform offered a simple solution. Get rid of immigrants and boom - money for the NHS. Me and my family might have our suffering eased.
I recall a bus with a similar simplistic message
I don’t think Reform insiders have any coherent policy to fix the NHS. I also think many of them are morally bankrupt in some/many ways. That said, I do think the more thoughtful Tories and Labour have failed to articulate the problems with the NHS in an understandable way and similarly failed to come up with solutions that are comprehensible. A vacuum for Reform to exploit.
Briefly, the idea of spending time with people who don't necessarily think as we do is good, stepping out of our comfort zone is another way of putting it.
Then, it is sad that during the election no party owned up to what are the problems the NHS has, so it will be difficult to get a good debate and understanding on the solutions. This could also be said about many issues, such as Defence, climate change and so on.
Without trusting the electorate with honest analysis of the problems it is going to be difficult to implement the necessary remedial actions.
Long waiting lists, staff who feel devalued and burnt out. Inefficient mechanisms of procurement. Inadequate training for clinicians who also manage and lead. As it happens I don’t buy the “less managers, more nurses” argument as a panacea. I’d call for better management training and a blend of clinician and non clinical managers.
Overall a population with increasing health care needs, both mental and physical.
An admission that we have lacked effective public health strategies to lessen the flow into the NHS and need far better funded and accessible social care for the same reason and to support people in making lasting recovery and living more meaningful lives with long term health conditions.
Admit that past policies have created perverse incentives or led to increased costs. PFI and Any Qualified Provder are examples of possible good ideas badly implemented.
Going forward better sharing of best practice across Trusts, faster mechanisms for conducting research and implementing findings. Not so many years ago, a group of services in the area I work in came together to improve clinical outcomes with the guidance of the University of Oxford. It took some time for services to be willing to share data in non defensive ways as we were afraid that to look worse in some way opened the door for commissioners to look to other Trusts or providers. It also meant that if we were performing better there was a disincentive to share our practice. Thankfully this seems to be much less of an issue.
How do we fix this? Be honest about the problems without simply blaming the other lot, the immigrants, the unions or any other easy target. Don’t go for short-term headline grabbers and work really hard to get the public behind what is a huge project. I’d start with social care (pretty much ignored by Labour and Conservatives this election) and be honest about the scale of the problem and the likely costs. This needs people to see that it is their mum/dad/nan/son/daughter/froend/neighbour/themselves who benefits, not someone far away they don’t care so much about.
Realistically it won’t come cheap. I’m not sure Labour’s argument that growth means money to fix it all stacks up. I’d say we will all have to pay more tax in some way. The benefits of doing so have to be shown to be tangible and valuable to everyone.
Good man. I admit my algorithm fear waxes and wanes. That said, history shows us we have massacred eachother and committed genocides for millenia. Has social media really increased this risk? I’m not sure we have enough evidence to know. Perhaps they just give us another way to demonise eachother. Is the elitist contempt for the undeserving poor is now the elitist contempt for those who use TikToc as a news source?
Labour have promised that they will deliver 2 millon more operations, scans etc, plus 40,000 more appointments per week. It seems they propose to principally achieve this by getting staff to work extra hours. All this is going to do is lead to burn out of key personnel and a significant increase in NHS expenditure on overtime rates. Patients health could be put at risk due to being treated by exhausted practitioners.
The increase in the waiting lists has obviously been exacerbated by the junior doctors strikes. Starmer has at no time identified how he is going to resolve the dispute. Surely this must be the first task to address? How would you seek to resolve this, bearing in mind if you significantly increase their salary this will no doubt encourage other NHS staff to seek rises comparative to those given to the junior doctors?
The three prime causes of the NHS crisis for me are
1) the ageing population and hence increased health needs
2) new drugs and treatments often very expensive keeping people alive longer but only at great cost
3) the chronic inefficiency in the organisation.
The problems are well known by NHS managers, staff and others. Ask them for solutions beyond yet more money and it gets much harder.
So at election time, the Tories take the easy path of blaming it all on the immigrants. Labour has a choice. It could be honest - and blame it on granny and all the drugs she needs to keep her alive for a bit longer and Auntie Bettie and her fantastically expensive cancer drugs and tell us we are all going to have to pay an extra 3% income tax in a cost of living crisis - but if they do that guess who’s going to win - or they can fudge it with more blandishments about unidentified efficiency gains. And the cycle spins again one more time. Democracy really is the worst form of government (apart from all the others)
This is going to sound piss weak but here goes, the first step for the new govt is to get people back on side, stop slagging off workers in public and posing for photo opportunities that ignore the issues, as much as NHS staff want better pay and conditions they regularly work above and beyond and won't expect the earth on day one.
All the old stuff about working together, looking for efficiencies etc will still hold and it's right that other people do that work after the last lot failed miserably. There's an argument for everyone to chip in more or for certain parts to be chargeable but by doing that on day one or possibly even in the first term they are going to feel they'll get everyone's backs up so much it's bound to fail before it's even started.
I have little time for Streeting but he has at least consistently said there is no easy fix for the NHS (or words to that effect).
There are some things he could do quickly that would help especially in primary care, such as allow GP surgeries to use their budgets to employ more GPs rather than, as now, less qualified more expensive options (PAs for example); there are currently almost 6.500 qualified GPs looking for work in primary care.
He is right that we need to have a grown up conversation about the NHS, including what people want/expect from it, how it is managed/organised & how we fund/pay for it. This must feature the public & healthcare professionals front & centre rather than "experts" from private care or with tarnished backgrounds.
Comments
Perhaps this will be the last election where politicians will think they can get away with just saying things that obviously happened didn't happen. We all have the history of what they said at our finger tips.
The papers are now largely more about rich owners trying to disguise their personal desires as public outrage, but most people know that, and this is the first to get elected without their broad support.
There are also more sources than ever out there, more ways to filter and more fact checking, it's also never been easy to learn new skills online.
Maybe it's not all bad. People aren't necessarily more ignorant it's just easier for the ignorant to berate you anonymously. But however horrible people are online most of it is just noise.
The Sun is an absolute rag, but it is still better than the vast majority of social media "news". If they outright lie they *should* be made to print corrections and can be fined as they are supposedly regulated.
The ability for online pseudo news to simply make things up for clickbait has pushed the worst of the tabloids even further towards that to keep up, especially when something completely false gets online traction with their target audience (which would be a big overlap in a venn diagram of people who can't tell a fake story/ spam bot story and newspaper choice).
this is the first to get elected without their broad support.
The S*n was pretty much campaigning for Starmer.
And he still got fewer votes than Corbyn.
Only in the election run up, and only because they want to be seen to have picked "the winner".
Personally, a "what's your main source of news" question on the top of the ballot with a huge trap door opening if you answer The Sun, the Daily Heil or Gbeebies would help society.
Yes, Labour under Corbyn got 40% in 2017 (262 seats), compared with 33.7% in 2024 (412 seats).
However, many potential Labour voters voted tactically for the Lib Dems, in seats where the LibDems were best placed to beat the Tories. Also 4.1 million people voted for Reform, and not all of those were previous Conservative voters.
So it's not really a valid comparison. But in any event, Starmer has a 171 majority, and will easily get all his legislation through Parliament, even with some rebellions by the left. I cannot see how he will fail to secure another term in 2028/29, given the fragmented support for right-leaning parties, and the lack of any credible candidate to take over as Leader of the Opposition.
I cannot see how he will fail to secure another term in 2028/29, given the fragmented support for right-leaning parties, and the lack of any credible candidate to take over as Leader of the Opposition.
That’s what plenty of people will have said in 2019.
It’ll be Johnson or Farage as leader of the Tories at the next election, won’t it?
Disagree, when the S*n, the fail and others deliberately lied about and hounded opponents for decades people believed them and that had serious consequences for individuals and policy.
When some twonk on "X" says the moon is made of cheese people nod along but not much happens.
A bit towards the end as above, hardly comparable to years ago or the constant scare stories of the express and similar. Throughout the B word vote and bargaining particularly every minor win or possible point got a headline and several pages however ridiculous and they suddenly remembered the oceans or charity when anything happened against them.
Biden's dementia is a good example of when social media is way ahead of the mainstream media in reporting things. In that specific case there were plenty of videos showing the extent of the problem before the mainstream media had no choice but to report it.
The latest thing to pop up on social media, that Keir Starmer is having an affair with somebody, doesn't have any videos and should be treated with caution.
Some of the social media twonks who are similarly hounding opponents, with even less rules, already have a larger reach among younger generations than those papers though and could overtake generally in the next decade or two.
https://x.com/MrBeast/status/1811014883317530846
‘If I were president I wouldn’t care about party lines, I’d just always truly make the American people my #1 priority. For problems I’m ignorant in I’d have experts from the left and right advise me on them and try to find the middle ground that’s best for America. Wouldn’t be buyable, don’t care about doing things just because my party says I should, and I would focus on uniting the country instead of dividing it. Anyways, we can pick this up in 15 years when I’m old enough to run haha’
Yeah but people used to buy newspapers to read them throughout the day, take them home, share with the family etc, a 10 second clip on the internet to a load of people who are following hundreds of others doesn't have that impact often.
When people are following multiple people all parroting the same rubbish it could even be worse than one paper. At least with the paper it's obviously an enterprise to publish certain stories/ trends, with multiple seemingly disparate accounts with large followings it can look like it's a story with weight.
I doubt even 5% of under 30s read a newspaper weekly.
Obviously a lie, no way he's interesting enough to do that
Fair point, was referring more to one off eejits before but no doubt the tech can be and is misused by all sorts
So Gasroomers, why is it that all these stupid people out there, so less intelligent and gifted than us, won’t listen to us when we tell them how dumb and deluded they are?
Might it be that after many years of the rich, powerful and privileged having behaved scandalously, they just don’t trust us not to be lying still? The Post Office affair, contaminated blood products, big tobacco and big pharma and the suppression of data, partygate. The list of despicable behaviour by people wielding power in liberal democracies is a long one and I can see why a large number of people no longer trust or believe what they read or hear from the media that has been at the centre of said democracies. I get why people might think that a strong man or woman in power might be a better way to go even if people might not like them personally. Many Trump supporters don’t like his behaviours but they do see him as someone who will protect the life they have. (An aside. I find it hilarious when the liberal lefty Gasroomers who bemoan the failure of people to move with the times, let go of their prejudices, get all het up about the misuse of English. Somehow it’s always their version of English that is the right one, not the one spoken more widely in the US, not the one spoken in 1824 or 1624. Might is suggest that they may hold wider beliefs that their word view is the right one? Bit like those awful thick MAGA types and Sun readers)
Of course the likes of Bannon, GB news, Farage, Trump et al have no interest in seeking or speaking truth and seek only power, of one kind or another but I can see why, when presented with a lie from them, some people choose to believe it over a rebuttal from CNN, the BBC and other media outlets that are seen as the voices of the state. The same state that preached tbe superiority of liberal democracy and then failed to live up to it. Many more people may not believe any media outlets any more. It doesn’t mean they are thick or cannot think. It means they are human. Humans like certainty and when under stress think in ways that give it. Our biases and cognitive shortcuts come to the fore. For all of us in case you think you are somehow immune to that. That often takes people to the seemingly protective arms of those who offer the compelling illusion of certainty.
When the likes of us here on the Gasroom condemn, demonise and patronise people who don’t think as we do, we become the recruiting sergeants for the peddlers of misinformation. By choosing to damm from our Ivory Towers large groups of people rather than try to engage, we are not so different from the racists, misogynists, hate speakers we claim we are nothing like.
Finally, I have worked with a few people who were so called conspiracy theorists. They weren’t lazy thinkers. To a person they all spent a lot of time researching, reading, listening. They were scared for themselves and their loved ones and wanted to find something that would make them feel safer. Bit like me really, the difference not being some superior intellect I have, it simply being the filters we used for what we saw as true.
ok so what should I do?
I’ll change it to what should we do if I may as I don’t know what you do outside of here.
Spend more time with people less like yourself. Listen to views you don’t agree with and offer your perspective without mockery. Try to avoid the I am right, you are wrong (because I am clever, you are not) form of dialogue. Know your own biases and prejudices as best you can and how they may get in the way of achieving mutual understanding. Be willing to own the mistakes made by yourself and others who hold your world view and encourage others to do the same.
Not dissimilar are some of the ideas from cultural competency in healthcare.
https://extension.psu.edu/what-is-cultural-competence-and-how-to-develop-it
I’m not arguing for moral relativism here. I am trying to argue that most people with views we don’t like may be amenable to changing or softening them and by ignoring and demonising them we move closer to point where views become behaviours. And then we are all lost.
I already do the second paragraph as much as I am able with the possible exception of the first eight words (I'll come back to that). In my experience outside of online forums, so do most other people. Its often quite hard though to spend time with people less like yourself. If you arguing for treat others with respect, I agree with you. I am not convinced that in general people of any views are that amenable to changing them by discussion with others. I fear the algorithms online pushing people into their silos make that a bit of a fantasy.
Here’s some food for thought for me I just came across. On today’s Newscast podcast one of the contributors noted that whilst the assumption is that Reform voters just don’t like immigration, the focus groups with them suggested a key issue is the NHS. The assumption made by many is that all Reform supporters are thick racists. An alternative might be that they may be people who live in deprived social circumstances and may suffer ill higher levels of ill health themselves or have family and friends who do. Getting help is hard, seeing a GP is hard. Reform offered a simple solution. Get rid of immigrants and boom - money for the NHS. Me and my family might have our suffering eased.
I recall a bus with a similar simplistic message
I don’t think Reform insiders have any coherent policy to fix the NHS. I also think many of them are morally bankrupt in some/many ways. That said, I do think the more thoughtful Tories and Labour have failed to articulate the problems with the NHS in an understandable way and similarly failed to come up with solutions that are comprehensible. A vacuum for Reform to exploit.
Probably right. What do you see as the problems of the NHS that should have been articulated better?
Briefly, the idea of spending time with people who don't necessarily think as we do is good, stepping out of our comfort zone is another way of putting it.
Then, it is sad that during the election no party owned up to what are the problems the NHS has, so it will be difficult to get a good debate and understanding on the solutions. This could also be said about many issues, such as Defence, climate change and so on.
Without trusting the electorate with honest analysis of the problems it is going to be difficult to implement the necessary remedial actions.
Long waiting lists, staff who feel devalued and burnt out. Inefficient mechanisms of procurement. Inadequate training for clinicians who also manage and lead. As it happens I don’t buy the “less managers, more nurses” argument as a panacea. I’d call for better management training and a blend of clinician and non clinical managers.
Overall a population with increasing health care needs, both mental and physical.
An admission that we have lacked effective public health strategies to lessen the flow into the NHS and need far better funded and accessible social care for the same reason and to support people in making lasting recovery and living more meaningful lives with long term health conditions.
Admit that past policies have created perverse incentives or led to increased costs. PFI and Any Qualified Provder are examples of possible good ideas badly implemented.
Going forward better sharing of best practice across Trusts, faster mechanisms for conducting research and implementing findings. Not so many years ago, a group of services in the area I work in came together to improve clinical outcomes with the guidance of the University of Oxford. It took some time for services to be willing to share data in non defensive ways as we were afraid that to look worse in some way opened the door for commissioners to look to other Trusts or providers. It also meant that if we were performing better there was a disincentive to share our practice. Thankfully this seems to be much less of an issue.
How do we fix this? Be honest about the problems without simply blaming the other lot, the immigrants, the unions or any other easy target. Don’t go for short-term headline grabbers and work really hard to get the public behind what is a huge project. I’d start with social care (pretty much ignored by Labour and Conservatives this election) and be honest about the scale of the problem and the likely costs. This needs people to see that it is their mum/dad/nan/son/daughter/froend/neighbour/themselves who benefits, not someone far away they don’t care so much about.
Realistically it won’t come cheap. I’m not sure Labour’s argument that growth means money to fix it all stacks up. I’d say we will all have to pay more tax in some way. The benefits of doing so have to be shown to be tangible and valuable to everyone.
Good man. I admit my algorithm fear waxes and wanes. That said, history shows us we have massacred eachother and committed genocides for millenia. Has social media really increased this risk? I’m not sure we have enough evidence to know. Perhaps they just give us another way to demonise eachother. Is the elitist contempt for the undeserving poor is now the elitist contempt for those who use TikToc as a news source?
Labour have promised that they will deliver 2 millon more operations, scans etc, plus 40,000 more appointments per week. It seems they propose to principally achieve this by getting staff to work extra hours. All this is going to do is lead to burn out of key personnel and a significant increase in NHS expenditure on overtime rates. Patients health could be put at risk due to being treated by exhausted practitioners.
The increase in the waiting lists has obviously been exacerbated by the junior doctors strikes. Starmer has at no time identified how he is going to resolve the dispute. Surely this must be the first task to address? How would you seek to resolve this, bearing in mind if you significantly increase their salary this will no doubt encourage other NHS staff to seek rises comparative to those given to the junior doctors?
The three prime causes of the NHS crisis for me are
1) the ageing population and hence increased health needs
2) new drugs and treatments often very expensive keeping people alive longer but only at great cost
3) the chronic inefficiency in the organisation.
The problems are well known by NHS managers, staff and others. Ask them for solutions beyond yet more money and it gets much harder.
So at election time, the Tories take the easy path of blaming it all on the immigrants. Labour has a choice. It could be honest - and blame it on granny and all the drugs she needs to keep her alive for a bit longer and Auntie Bettie and her fantastically expensive cancer drugs and tell us we are all going to have to pay an extra 3% income tax in a cost of living crisis - but if they do that guess who’s going to win - or they can fudge it with more blandishments about unidentified efficiency gains. And the cycle spins again one more time. Democracy really is the worst form of government (apart from all the others)
This is going to sound piss weak but here goes, the first step for the new govt is to get people back on side, stop slagging off workers in public and posing for photo opportunities that ignore the issues, as much as NHS staff want better pay and conditions they regularly work above and beyond and won't expect the earth on day one.
All the old stuff about working together, looking for efficiencies etc will still hold and it's right that other people do that work after the last lot failed miserably. There's an argument for everyone to chip in more or for certain parts to be chargeable but by doing that on day one or possibly even in the first term they are going to feel they'll get everyone's backs up so much it's bound to fail before it's even started.
I have little time for Streeting but he has at least consistently said there is no easy fix for the NHS (or words to that effect).
There are some things he could do quickly that would help especially in primary care, such as allow GP surgeries to use their budgets to employ more GPs rather than, as now, less qualified more expensive options (PAs for example); there are currently almost 6.500 qualified GPs looking for work in primary care.
He is right that we need to have a grown up conversation about the NHS, including what people want/expect from it, how it is managed/organised & how we fund/pay for it. This must feature the public & healthcare professionals front & centre rather than "experts" from private care or with tarnished backgrounds.