joey_macmo
Player Valuation: £35m
Not liking a politician because of his policies, whatever next.
Not sure that will compute with some.
Current Affairs The Labour Party
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Not liking a politician because of his policies, whatever next.
Not sure that will compute with some.
Dave. I don't know how they are going to be able to deal with this mega problem. What I do know is that the principle of free at the point of care to all is what the NHS means to me. It has always been a public/private partnership. The NHS relies on the private sector to develop the equipment, systems and drugs that are used every day. In addition, if there is private capacity that can be used for routine operations at a reasonable price to the state, then use it and make people better more quickly. It is the practical problem of dealing with today.
Having said that, there are major areas where functions have been privatised that have been wholly developed and paid for by the state like diagnostic functions that have been sold, FM functions that are outsourced, the NHS should not be treated as a free-for all profit centre. But this is not a question of health in isolation. It is a question of wealth distribution and taxation. BlackRock invest money held by individuals and institutions who have been able to gather funds way beyond what any individual could reasonably earn. The state is skint and ordinary people are skint. The state should not need to rely upon private investment but until big structural issues are corrected it will. This is the result of the neo-liberal economic destruction of the state (internationally) that began in the late 70's. Despite the financial crash showing the ultimate result of this economic movement, it still continues. The state is operating in a framework designed not to let it hold much economic power, but only the state can correct this. Unfortunately most voters do not take 2 mins to understand why their lives are so tough. This is why it is easy for Farage/Rees-Mogg/Braverman to blame immigration. The beneficiaries of the current economic system use immigration to divert the public from the facts. Did anybody stop to think why man of the people Farage has a Coutts bank account? Did anybody ever question why Rees-Moggs investment business was based in a country he was not governing?
NilSatisOptimum
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Just you watch the meltdown the anointed left have on Labour has when Reeves goes after inheritance tax and pension relief. Not what they say its what they ignore. Similar to Farage and his push for another referendum on our membership to EHCR, all the anointed left wanted to talk about was child benefit. Coming out of the EHCR will have profound negative effects on all our hard won working rights we take for granted.
Spadge Vernacular
Player Valuation: £70m
Voting record - Wes Streeting MP, Ilford North
See how Wes Streeting voted on topics like Employment, Social Issues, Foreign Policy, and more.
www.theyworkforyou.com
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
The state is not skint. We are the 5th richest nation in the world. It doesn't matter what the government debt we can afford better public sectors than we have right now. It's a choice. And the infiltration of the private sector into the NHS this far has handed us the worst NHS performances ever.
And free at the point of care is something that can change. Once the whole shooting match is owned lock stock and barrel by the private sector we'll then see an insurance based system come into play. Ask the Irish 80 miles away what that looks like.
Because the public didn't know, so it's informing them, and likely a precursor to some form of policy release/action. Or... the cabinet figures weren't entirely accurate.
While I'm not disagreeing with the dangers of private infiltration of the NHS and how the Conservatives have, to some extent, allowed and facilitated this...
... the real issue with the NHS is gross mismanagement, an ad-hoc and disorganised leadership structure, and a lack of any coherent national strategy.
To some extent, the NHS is better funded now than it's ever been, but inherent inefficiencies (won't post again but search up some of my posts) cripple it.
If we want the NHS to retain free at the point of entry and be a world leading medical provider, it needs a root and branch reform that'll likely cost decades*.
*and lots of money (and sizable yet necessary redundancies) in the here and now.
Gonna have to track & trace this...
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
People need to read stuff like this and give their heads a wobble about Streeting, Starmer and the rest of the gangsters in No.10 now.
Labour is putting its plans for Britain in the hands of private finance. It could end badly | Daniela Gabor
Handing vital infrastructure to big finance will generate windfalls for investors and leave the rest of us worse off. We need a better plan, says Daniela Gabor, a professor of economics and macrofinance at UWE Bristol
This isn't some form of defence of the Conservatives (far, far from it!), however it was Labour who brought in some of the horrendous PFI contracts we now have.
Neither side are guilt free here, and unless public finances are put in order with some difficult decisions, private finance will always be the easy, go-to option.
Lol
Have you seen the state we are in? We arent even in the top 30 GDP per capita - there is no money !
toffee83
Player Valuation: £225k
Was that the interview where the right wing tit said that voting to scrap the two child benefit is "performance art"?
I find it very difficult to accept that the United Kingdom is the fifth richest nation in the world when you look at the state of the place. The only way I can rationalise this is that the wealth is in the hands of the few and the wrong few at that. Money has become political power, money should not be seen as a status symbol or the right of the few, it should be seen as a tool to get things done. We need a paradigm shift in how we use money and how we allow money to be accumulated. This does not have to be communism, it does not mean that we don’t reward enterprise but it does mean we have to curb the excesses of today’s free enterprise culture. I can’t see this happening in the UK as it is a right wing nation. The only way a Labour Party can get elected is to put on the clothes of Conservatism.
The new chancellor is set to use an audit of public spending to make claims of a "black hole" in the government finances worth tens of billions of pounds.
Rachel Reeves said she would give a statement to Parliament on Monday showing “honesty” about the scale of the challenge faced by the new Labour government.
She vowed to "fix the mess we inherited" but would not confirm speculation that the gap in the public finances stood at more than £20bn per year.
BBC News has contacted the Conservative Party for a response.
Labour will suggest the Conservatives left various crucial public services unfunded in areas from public pay to prisons.
"On Monday, the British public are finally going to see the true scale of the damage the Conservatives have done to the public finances," a Labour source said.
"They spent taxpayers’ money like no tomorrow because they knew someone else would have to pick up the bill. It now falls to Labour to fix the foundations of our economy and that work has already begun."
On Monday, Ms Reeves will also set out the government’s response to the public sector pay recommendations, which are about 3% higher than in current spending plans.
The chancellor is likely to accept some above-inflation pay settlements for public sector workers after being warned by independent pay bodies about recruitment and retention challenges, and calculating that the public is keen to draw a line under months of rolling strikes.
Cabinet ministers have spent the week saying a thorough look at their departmental books has revealed more "severe" problems than previously anticipated.
The opposition says this is an elaborate effort to butter up the public for some tax rises at the Budget in the autumn.
The "black hole" arises because the government says it must spend extra money to keep public services functioning.
However, governments draw up their own rules on how much they should borrow to fund public services like the NHS and how the country’s debt is managed.
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank, said there was "no single answer” to how big the gap in the public finances was.
"It really is: how long is a piece of string?," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Labour has pledged not to raise taxes "on working people" including most aspects of National Insurance, income tax and VAT.
Mr Johnson said the government could make changes to capital gains tax and inheritance tax to bring in more money to the Exchequer.
Reducing the rate of tax relief on pension contributions could "raise significant amounts of money" he said, but could put people off saving for their pensions.
"Big tax increases, given the constraints they've put on themselves, aren't impossible, but they'd be pretty difficult," he said.
The extra money the government needs to find to meet self-imposed targets around debt in the future has been labelled the "black hole".
The former chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, may have instead suggested not spending these sums.
Mr Hunt acknowledged to the BBC this week that he would not have been able to fund immediate tax cuts, had the Conservatives won the election.
Some economists suggested during the election that many of these spending pressures, and the possibility taxes would need to be raised to fund them, were obvious and should have been made clear to the voting public.
While the BBC understands there will be no tax policy announcements on Monday, the implication of the audit is that the Treasury will spend the summer trying to find extra savings, or extra taxation revenue, to fill this “black hole”.
A more optimistic economic outlook from the independent forecaster the Office for Budget Responsibility would also help improve some tricky trade-offs.
The colossal scale of the harm done and spelling it out clearly is what some of us asked for. We need to know how deep in the crap we are to then try to work our way up and out of it. It is also very important to apportion the blame for this situation square and true as a touchstone in history for us all to remember.
Lest we forget.
Lest we forget.
Thomasc
Formerly known as By God I'm Blue
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