RolloTreadway

Autistic Welsh NHS emergency care quality improvement person. Absolute believer in universal human rights being actually universal to all humans.
(they/them or he/him)

Tends to post about music, sandwiches, bit of cricket, a little politics (not too much). May sometimes be a bit miserable because things haven't been great, apologies in advance.

And really doesn't get on with Tories.

(Profile pic: Buster Keaton sits unhappily in a steamship funnel; header is a glass teapot full of leaves.)

Location: Tynedale, sunny Northumberland, in the northeast of England
having: a nice cup of tea and a sit down
and listening to: all sorts of music that I shall wang on about with great enthusiasm, once, then never mention again
follow requests turned on because: there's been too many spammy accounts about, but if you look vaguely human (or animal, or plant) then I'll accept the request as soon as I notice it

Last Notes

2025-12-12 18:19:16 UTC

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I've just started a new party, and we've already got 269k members. So the Rollo Treadway party is the biggest in the country!
I mean, you'll believe Reform's evidence-free claim, why wouldn't you believe me?

2025-02-09 17:05:14 UTC

Insect enthusiasts: do you know what this fellow is? #insects #entomology
https://media.beige.party/media_attachments/files/113/975/010/416/954/978/original/a321206af8aabc2d.jpg

2025-01-25 13:38:55 UTC

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There are huge staffing issues. Staffing is at the heart of everything. But I don't think it's possible to go from 'the DoH are trying to solve NHS problems without solving the staffing problem first' (which is probably true) to 'the DoH is planning to end the NHS as a free-at-the-point-of-use public service, even though doing so would likely guarantee defeat at the next election'.
I'm just so tired of imaginary privatisation being talked up instead of actual problems. There's probably nothing, save for another major inflation crisis, that will have more impact on whether or not Labour retain power in 2029 than whether the NHS is improving. And they absolutely know this. So I just don't buy this idea that there's a sneaky plan to lose the next election.

2025-01-18 08:42:32 UTC

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But there is an enormous amount of fantastic new music being made, all the time. It's never been easier to make and distribute music.
None of which takes away from the huge financial problems. Musicians should of course be able to make a fair income from their music, whether recorded or live, and that's not happening (and it's worth remembering that, contrary to what is often stated, streaming produces *enormous* profits; it's just that those profits are sucked up by the labels).
I don't know how to solve this problem, because the solution is to convince a tremendous number of people to buy the music they enjoy, and how do you do that? How do you change consumer behaviour when it involves spending more money? I have no clue. Although even then, if there was a radical increase in spending on music, we'd also inevitably see an increase in how much is taken by labels. As was ever the case.
However, I do get confused by the dichotomy here: on the one hand, I hear all the time about what a terrible crisis music is facing; on the other hand, I hear so much amazing new music. I posted something a few weeks ago about all the new releases I'd loved, and there were 150 albums (well, albums and a handful of EPs) released in 2024 that thrilled me.
That's not to say there is no trouble, because of course there is, the financial issues are not going away. And yet, it's not impacting on how much wonderful music is being released. Great art will always endure; it's up to the rest of us to ensure great artists can do so too.

2025-01-16 07:48:24 UTC

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No, that would be very silly (I mean Reeves resigning, have no objection to Bailey going). The last thing we need is to go back to the Tory ways, with constant changes and no stability. In any Government role it's immensely harmful.

2024-12-29 09:06:33 UTC

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Some parts of the country perhaps. Not in Runcorn. Tories have occasionally done well there in the past, thanks largely to some more well-to-do voters in the surrounding villages (and thanks also to how the boundaries sometimes were in the past).
But now, there's only two realistic possibilities: either Labour win, or Reform attract enough disenchanted red wall-esque Labour voters. Nobody else is getting a look in.

2024-10-23 09:08:35 UTC

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A problem here - as well as the one you mention - is that the law does not insist that individuals must die at the natural (or divinely ordained, if that's your belief) moment.
If someone wishes to decline lifesaving treatment against medical advice, there is no criminal liability. If someone wishes to travel to Switzerland to end their life medically, there is no criminal liability. If someone attempts to physically end their own life, there is no criminal liability.
It has been an accepted position in law, for a long time now, that an adult with full capacity has the right to freely decide what happens to their body, up to and including the point of death (so long as doing so does not result in criminal liability in another area).
The current legal situation only serves to remove that right from an arbitrary subset of the population. A religious view that 'God decides' is not in any way supported in law.

2024-09-19 07:23:44 UTC

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You do know what happened with Johnson and subsequently, yes? You have noticed the past three years?

2024-09-19 07:14:30 UTC

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No, I said someone plausible and willing to work hard.
Farage is a clown, he has no interest in anything other than money and attention. His political positions beyond immigration are not remotely popular - his main focuses other than not liking foreigners are opposing the NHS and denying climate change, both of which are extremely far from mainstream politics and likely to become more so. And he has no interest in actually working.
Farage is not going to be leader of the Tories, and if he was, the party would likely cease to exist.

2024-09-19 06:40:12 UTC

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I agree. I've said before, I think the biggest advantage those of us opposed to the hard and far right have in the UK right now is that they have no plausible leader. Just clowns and frauds.
This won't last forever, sooner or later they will find an equivalent of Meloni or Le Pen, not just charismatic and plausible, but willing to do the hard work over many years.
We should look to strengthen our position before that happens.

2024-09-08 09:01:15 UTC

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The notes are there, but no guarantee on how easy they'll be to find!
Plus, being able to use the data is essential. My mum's antenatal notes might exist in decades from now, but if the problems around my birth were part of some pattern, you'll never be able to study that and make improvements from a coffee-stained piece of paper.

2024-08-23 07:49:26 UTC

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That reminds me of my Dad. Left school at the earliest opportunity, no qualifications to speak of, but had an intuitive understanding of how any kind of machine worked that has always been beyond me.
(He was also someone who rarely ever read a book his whole life, but one of the only books he did read was A Brief History Of Time. He is always a reminder to me that how society judges intelligence is completely messed up, and dismisses so many brilliant minds who aren't academic.)

2024-08-13 08:59:52 UTC

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During the election night coverage, when the scale of the Tories' defeat was becoming apparent, a pundit - I'm afraid I can't remember who, it was a long night - some pundit said that no major party in modern times has ever had such a gap between the politics of the Parliamentary party and the membership. I keep thinking of that.
This has been true for a while - look at the elections of Liz Truss and Iain Duncan Smith against the wishes of MPs - but the recent election has exacerbated it enormously. So many prominent hard and far right Tory MPs either lost or stood down voluntarily, and also, most (maybe all?) of the supposed 'rising stars' of the right who tried to enter Parliament were beaten.
For all the attention that the far right rump gets - and I agree that Jenrick is the most likely next leader - those MPs closer to the centre-right are now comfortably the largest wing. But neither the majority of the membership, nor the party's main media allies, nor the frequently extreme major individual donors are anywhere near a moderate position.
I don't think there are many Tories at all - certainly no-one senior - who understand the extent to which their humiliation was pragmatic and practical rather than ideological, that their ineptitude, corruption and self-obsession lost them far more seats than any notion of what constitutes left and right. And I don't see how they can overcome that problem whilst the Parliamentary party remains dominated by MPs who have to dance to the tune of their supporters, to ideas that those MPs know to be - to use a leadership candidate's phrasing - completely batshit.
In other words, when the newly-elected hard right leader is forced out by disgruntled MPs (no later than the end of 2027, I predict, possibly much earlier) they need to find a replacement who can unify the party whilst also appearing attractive to the average centre-right voter. Good luck finding one of those!

2024-08-05 08:03:32 UTC

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I'd think so. Personally, I'd like appointments to be around 50% of the membership; I feel that many crossbench experts have done a sterling job in recent years, and that the only problem with appointments is how the system has been grossly abused. Have an independent panel, similar to the judicial appointments panels, and I think we can have a much better upper house.
I've always liked the idea of picking the other half by lottery (or the kind of demographically balanced sortition as used by the Irish constitutional convention), but I suspect elections would be more popular amongst the general public.
However, I might well be wrong - and that's why I think a major public consultation is indeed the right way to approach this.