Has the NHS ceased to be a political issue?
January 5th, 2009
But is this good news for Labour?
Almost every month for getting on for three decades MORI has asked its “most important issues facing the country” questions in exactly the same format. Two points are put, both completely unprompted. Firstly they are asked which is the “most important issue” then they are asked to name, without a limit on numbers “other important issues”
A striking feature of the latest poll is that the NHS, a long-time political football and an issue on which Labour has very much claimed to be its own, scored it’s lowest rating for more than a decade. Just 2% of the interviewees put it as the most important issue with a further 10% naming it amongst other issues.
Just look at the trend in the Ipsos-MORI chart to see what it has been in recent years.
Clearly the health service has seen a step change in government spending and this appears to be showing through in the polls in that the public are less concerned about it. The question is whether as we get closer to a general election this is good for Labour or not?
Will, come the day of the general election, a grateful electorate thank Brown for what has gone on - or will they say “well we’ve put the extra money in through higher taxes and we expect a better service?”
For is one of the consequences of the post-2001 election tax hike specifically for the NHS that the relationship between tax-payer and government is different? You pay the extra tax but you get a better NHS - it’s almost like a consumer transaction.
It’s here that the almost knee-jerk reaction of politicians to try to take the credit for everything might not be the smartest move. For a lot of that tax hike has gone on things that have been controversial - particularly the enhanced terms and conditions for GPs who have seen rapid advances in their earnings.
And, also, claiming credit for what the tax-payer is doing could produce negative responses. There are lots of questions about how Labour has mortgaged the future through PFI schemes - something that’s likely to become a bigger issue as the economy takes even more a centre stage.
For me what the MORI data suggests is that the NHS might not be the political football that it was.
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Good morning.
It depends how polyclinics play out. If they make life easier for the worried well at the expense of the chronically ill, there may be a price to pay though it seems unlikely much will happen before the next election.
I’m not sure the average voter in the street cares about GP earnings, though some politicians and columnists are much vexed. Perhaps the BMA should have kept its collective mouth shut about how clever were its negotiators.
It may also depend on whether any Conservatives who might like to see an end to the NHS — and there are some — are emboldened by this poll into announcing policies along those lines.
To whom would you prefer your taxes to be paid - your GP or your MP?
The NHS remains a hugely important issue politically, but what the chart reflects is the fact that that the Government has thrown, aka wasted, tens of billions on the Health Service, not least in the form of huge salary increases paid to doctors, consultants and dentists, yet in a number of areas the quality of service has actually deteriorated, for example in terms of Doctors’ Surgery opening times, home visits, not to mention the limited availability of NHS dental service in many areas.
The public aren’t fools, they can see what has happened and are perhaps more prepared than previously to allow the Tories to bring some value for money aspect to the equation.
5 Yes, your last para is especially perceptive, PfP. If the Tories can avoid appearing Anti-NHS whilst suggesting some real value for money policies, this could actually turn out to be a vote-winner for them.
Btw, shouldn’t you be getting a bit more sleep? You are worrying me.
6 Thanks for your concern, PtP. My sleep pattern has been somewhat out of kilter these past couple of weeks, but overall I’m getting enough shut-eye. Perhaps it’s been the sheer excitement of being “First” on two or three times occasions recently - I mean it beats sex any time - well almost!
7 LOL!
Be careful what you say and where you say it, PfP. Mick Fitzgerald once said something similar and has never lived it down.
5 - You seem to me to be guilty of trying to make the poll fit your views.
If people genuinely believed the service was worse (or no better) despite all the additional money, the number of people citing it as a major issue would surely be higher rather than lower. People cite things as a major issue when they believe they are going badly (Iraq in 2005, the economy now, the NHS earlier in Blair’s leadership).
I happen to agree with you that money has not been best spent. But to argue this polling data supports your argument is frankly perverse.
re 7. “Perhaps it’s been the sheer excitement of being “First” on two or three times occasions recently - I mean it beats sex any time - well almost!”
You need help.
10 Or better sex….
Now Waterford Wedgwood gone into administration. Sheesh…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7811048.stm
Value for money is certainly going to be back on the front burner as the recession hits. As people tighten their belts, realise their house value is falling off a cliff and their credit restricted so they are not as rich as they used to believe they were, they are going to expect public services to show the same restraint, the same determination to get better value.
This will be a shock for those services after the profligate years of irresponsibility. No more Indian head massage and Lamboghinis for the police, no more glitzy launches for the latest municipal money splurge ( no more money splurges either) , no more kudos, perhaps, for the Olympics.
Either the government will fit in with the mood and work at it seriously or they will cease to be the government. Empathy is not spin, spin is not hard graft, value for money is not gained without pain.
Apologies for going off topic, but this is the first chance I’ve had since the Prediction Competition results went up to bask in the glory of my 5th place finish. Woo. If only I’d stuck to my gut feeling and backed BoJo for London I would have been 2nd. Bah.
Thanks to Double Carpet for running this, and I hope we see another one for this year shortly!
The graph suggests the collapse in interest in the NHS as an issue has occurred in line with the deteriorating economic situation, and the consequent rise in the economy as a point of concern. I doubt these polling results have much to do with spending on the NHS, or with NHS reform. They should be created with great caution.
12 et al But hopefully the public aren’t fools (as PfP says) and they won’t be misled by any empty promises from the Tory Party! Public services must be looked at differently from a simple comparison between Harrods and Primark! VfM has far too often been viewed as a euphemism for Expensive vs Cheap.
In 2006 when I started my “Save bedford Hospital” campaign,the NHS was the number one issue. In October 2007, when we nearly had an election, I am certain that we would have won in Bedford (the sitting Labour MP certainly thought so, and I couldn’t walk down the street or go into a shop without being mobbed by well-wishers)
Clearly the economic maelstrom is closer to people’s thoughts. I suspect that if I stood now I would get 3-4,000 votes (in 22 years as a consultant you build up an awful lot of grateful patients and families), but 3-4,000 is almost exactly the majority of the sitting Labour MP, and I would hate to divide the opposition and let him back in, which is why I have withdrawn. I was in to win or not at all (there is no reward for being a gracious loser).
I hope that my standing aside gives Richard Fuller, the excellent Conservative candidate a free run (and no, I am not a closet Conservative…have never voted Tory in my life, but will do so this time)
The Fabian Society survey suggests that the “public” are unhappy because some people are earning “too much”. Perhaps the NHS is starting to suffer because of this? (E.g. stories in the Daily Mail about nurses on £250k.)
It would explain why the graphs showing the importance of the two issues go in opposite directions.
Or is just a coincidence?
17.”The Fabian Society survey suggests that the “public” are unhappy because some people are earning “too much”.”
Really?
I had to go to my doctor just before Christmas and was surprised to easily get a same day appointment with my own GP (and I didn’t have to phone as soon as the surgery opened). I also see they now open 8-6.30 with a surgery to 8pm on Monday, plus every fourth Saturday morning - which is great (pity they didn’t do that when I was commuting to London though).
So the immediate access bit seems to have been sorted, at least where I live. Not sure all the expense has been 100% worth it, but it’s the GP that is most people’s point of contact with the NHS and if that has improved, that could easily improve most people’s view of the whole service.
Improving GP pay will also attract some of the best doctors to general practice, whereas in the past they became hospital consultants - again this has to be good. That’s not to say they now don’t earn too much, but maybe in the future this means we can make them take on more risk, thus expanding surgeries and giving people more of a choice.
I’ve never seen the problem with polyclinics though - I have always preferred large multi-GP practices, it is much easier to get to see a doctor and they are much more likely to offer long hours and other on-site services rather than having to go to the local hospital. Surely the lone GP practice is an outmoded model, except perhaps in rural areas.
So I suppose I would have to give the Government credit, although I am not sure that the cost has been VfM, or that it has filtered through to non-Primary healthcare (and I’ve noticed the Government has been as powerless as the last one to sort out NHS dentistry). And it does seem to have taken several attempts.
BUT, maybe if people stop seeing the NHS as a problem, it will stop being a political football - and Labour will be less able to make political capital from it?
Re 14. Rubbish. The point of this polling, if you had read what I had written, is that it is not an either or situation. You can name as many issues as you want.
This is all unprompted so to caution in the way you have is not right.
19.”Improving GP pay will also attract some of the best doctors to general practice, whereas in the past they became hospital consultants”
That is simple wrong Phil C.
17. I am sure they have some socialist solutions that will collectively reduce our wealth.
20. I did read what you wrote Mike. And I am not suggesting it is an either/or situation. But the correlation between the collapse of the NHS as an issue and the deterioration of the economic situation is quite striking, and in my view certainly not a coincidence.
What I am suggesting is that economic issues have loomed so large so quickly that they have caused some other issues to drop off the voters’ radar screen, even to the extent that they are not named as much in the second part of the question where voters are asked to name ‘other issues’ of note.
It’s notable in this respect that education has declined somewhat as a salient issue as well - this is another ‘good times’ issue which I think loses resonance in periods of serious economic stress.
21 Is it? Surely people will follow the money. And in some areas it had become almost impossible to recruiit GPs.
20 Surely it depends how people respond. If someone asked me the question, I would probably name the two or three issues I felt were most important. So if the economy suddenly becomes important, it would probably crowd another one out. Somebody else might list all the issues they felt were important and, if another one becomes important, add it to the list. I’m not sure how you would tell which way they respond.
We could get the first poll of 2009 tonight (Populus/Times) I think?
LOL
Can you imagine Nicolas Soames the binman or Harriet Harman in McDonalds:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/letters/display.var.2479169.0.How_to_instil_in_MPs_the_realities_of_life.php
27. Or Gordon Brown as Prime Minister? Oh f*ck, hang on…
16 Hi, Barry
I am sorry to learn you are giving up your quest but your reasoning appears sound, so I can only wish you well.
You imply that the Labour Candidate is a bad one and presumably the Conservative is OK. I am in no position to dispute, but perhaps you can briefly explain why you think that.
Fwiw, I am more inclined than ever these days to award my vote to the best candidate, irrespective of Party, so I am interested in what sways your voting intention locally.
Atb.
24.Phil, being a consultant is very different from being a GP, and the former has never automatically attracted the best doctors at the expense of general practice.
The GP salary increase for less work was typical incompetence from this government, and a knee jerk move of panic after the problems with Dentists.
Jackie Ashley Brown must admit mistakes: hearing otherwise just jars.
The NHS will be back at some point, possibly in election manifesto where platitudes and vacuous commitments on all sides of the political debate are the order of the day.
There is no doubt, (q for the usual suspects) that there have been improvements in the NHS, which has taken some of the heat out of the subject.
Unfortunately for the government,(all governments) voters do not ever feel gratitude for improvements in anything, but switch their attention to their latest gripe.
‘What did the Romans ever do for us?’
“You pay the extra tax but you get a better NHS - it’s almost like a consumer transaction.”
You pay the extra tax, the consultants and GPs get a good pay rise, and some better holidays. It’s NOTHING LIKE a consumer transaction.
29
You can look upPatrickHallMP yourself. In 12 years in the HoC he has simply been invisible. I bumped in to him in the street about a year ago. It was at a time when I had been having blanket coverage in the local media, and we had met at at least half a dozen meetings but he had no idea who I was: enough said
A very interesting poll, though there seem to have about 25% of respondents who couldn’t name anything! (Or have I completely misread the table?)
Sean T, among others, will be delighted to hear that just one of the nearly 1000 people sampled mentioned the EU - and the Greens will be even more pleased to hear that no one at all mentioned global warming. “Housing” scored the same as the NHS, but I suspect that includes a ragbag of disgruntlement from lack of access to social housing or mortgages through to falling prices.
I have to say that anyone who didn’t say “the economy” probably needs a wake-up call, though…
33, it depends. Is the aforementioned consumer an idiot?
The GP salary negotiations were not a stellar example of hard-nosed diplomatic skill. Didn’t the GP rep say it was a ‘bit of a laugh’?
30 Yes I know being a hospital doctor is very different to being a GP, and for a lot of people it is very much one or the other. A “principal in general practice” was always supposed to have parity of esteem with a specialist consultant - but I am not sure if this is case in reality. But for someone who chooses doctoring as a profession, I am sure that issues such as salary, terms & conditions, contract, working conditions etc count for at least something. They do for everyone else. You still have to provide for your family.
Having said that, the Government should have been able to get the same effect for less money. And I would have liked to have seen an element of risk: ie doctors have to compete for patients to keep their income levels up.
On dentists, I always wondered why the Government didn’t just set up clinics and employ dentists; not everyone wants to be in business for themselves.
36.IIRC MD, they couldn’t believe their luck when they got that deal.
30. That is partially true although not completely. Consultant jobs have in the past, rightly or wrongly, been seen as at a higher level than GP jobs, and have been better paid (especially with private practice potential) There was difficulty recruiting GPs in many areas (generally the less pleasant ones I suspect) With the new GP contract GP has suddenly become much more attractive option - well paid (though not to the extent the Mail would have you believe) and no nights or weekends. There is now heavy competition to get in. There are certainly people I know who were high flyers at med school, and aiming for hospital based careers, who chaged their minds post new GP contract. I doubt they are the only ones.
That isn’t to say that the contract wasn’t a huge foul up by the governement, largely driven by their desire to control everything. They wanted lots of pointless data collection, so they had to pay for it. They wanted to control the previously independent out of hours services, so they said that GPs could opt out, but massively underestimated how much it would cost to replace, becasue they forgot they hadn’t really been paying the GPs for it before.
37.”A “principal in general practice” was always supposed to have parity of esteem with a specialist consultant - but I am not sure if this is case in reality.”
I think that has always been the case though, for patients in particular. And to be honest, any hospital consultant or GP can, and have been able to top up their salaries if they wanted to through the private sector for years. Some chose to do so, others didn’t.
36, 38 The BMA are not reknowned for having good negotiators. If they get a good deal it’s generally because the government has messed up, as with the GP contract.
A repeated feature in Doctor and Dentist contract renewals by the government has been the government assumption that the Dr and dentists are lazy and doing very little work. They demand to pay for hours worked or work done, and then discover that actually there had previously been a lot of unpaid work being done that must now be paid.
40 Generally I think much easier in the hospital sector than GP. GPs in nice areas can top up with private earnings, but to a much lesser extent that Consultants in the same areas. In poor areas there will be a littel Private work for the consultants, but next to none for GPs (obviously if you could charge £25 for a sick note….)
40 Yes, but to top up your salary via private work, you have to work more. It’s a bit like suggesting to most people that they shouldn’t change jobs to get a pay rise, they should moonlight… the bargain is for pay-per-work-done.
The answer to this one is know. Labour knows to its cost the local political ramifications of shutting hospitals. Their whole consumerist approach to the NHS will mean increasingly more of the same. Patient choice means not an increase in standards but some hospitals becoming more popular than others, perhaps not for clinical reason, but because they’ve got a nicer tea bar or cheaper car parking [notice to Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish readers: car parking charges are a Brown stealth tax on English NHS patients] This will mean that the unpopular hospitals will lose pateints, and hence income and will ultimately shut. Result there will be more Richard Taylors in future parliaments.
39.They are two completely different career paths though, and I know doctors who very early on preferred the idea of being a GP to a hospital doctor. You tend to end up being a big fish in your particular chosen pond in either area.
37
I’ve often wondered why there isn’t a dental facility at hospitals. A facility where, dental students and newly qualified dentists, (salaried) could work.
I seem to remember, that when I worked in London, being told that you could get free dental treatment, (done by students under supervision) at the London Dental Hospital (?) never went my self.
42 Although thinking out of the box can help… my last employer’s occupational health service was… a local GP surgery which contracted to offer OH services to local employers. Both partners had done their OH physician exams, and I am sure it was a nice little earner.
Cameron expected to announce today that the Tories will abolish basic rate tax on savings - Radio 4 news
46 I think you still can, but you have to go to a hospital with a dental teaching faculty.
I can only speak from personal experience of the NHS in recent years.
I currently have 8 complaints lodged with an NHS trust about the care of my mother. These relate to a 48 hour stay she had back in November. When they can’t provide enough oxygen tubing to allow a patient to get from the bed to the commode, things are in a sorry state of affairs. Not providing food for a terminally ill patient for more than 24 hours is crimimal. And there are many more examples of this sort of thing from that one period.
Even the following week when she was admitted for the last time, she was left stranded in a corridor after an x-ray for 20 minutes - alone and frightened - because no-one had thought about returning her to the ward.
When looking at my own care - there is a waiting list of over 18 months for the one therapy that might actually help me. My GP nearly refused to prescribe the drugs recommended by my specialist - on the grounds of their cost (even though all other alternative medication had failed)
The money that has been pumped into the NHS has been wasted - big style.
WHen patient care is such a low priority and vulnerable people are not given the respect necessary for the last weeks of their lives, the NHS is clearly failing.
We need to expose these failures and ask ‘WHERE HAS THE MONEY GONE?’
I agree that money should be spent on providing the best possible health care - but that is where it should be spent. - TREATMENT and CARE.
48 I have to say I’m not impressed. I’m all for lower taxes, but in general I think that taxing investment income lower than earned income is a distortion in the tax system. In principal, to pay for this tax cut, everyone has to pay a little bit more income tax on their salary.
48, kapow!
Hmm. Just trying to work out how this will affect me… and the answer is marginally. Would tax be paid on savings over £100k (or whatever the 40% threshold is) in one account then?
45 That is definitely true, but before the new contract didn’t provide enough GPs, whereas now the pay is better and the hours are better there are lots of people wanting to be GPs
Two points.
1.Peoples personal experiences of the NHS tend to be good, even if their general view of the NHS (gleaned from the Media) is poorer.
2.There seems to be certain fields that have a “London problem” where transient populations and high staff turnover cripple stability.Unfortunately, as with the education system, if it goes wrong in London it gets more coverage.
51, unless it’s paid for by reduced public spending. If only there were some way we could save £20bn on useless, authoritarian, unnecessary and unwanted scheme…
re 11 anecdotally I was in the new Wood Lane shopping centre on Saturday morning about noon and I was expecting it to be jam packed. It was very quiet and some shops had no customers in them at all.
51 No… if we reduced public spending and didn’t cut tax on savings, you could reduce some other sort of tax.
48. Leaving aside the political support that this looks like it might generate from pensioners and others with low incomes but decent amount of savings, what is the Tory rationale for making “not spending money” more finacially attractive at a moment of demand crisis? Is what the economy needs at the moment a massive redistribution of money from the high street to bank deposits?
In other words, do Tories here see this as an economic kickstart, something that is economically beneficial in the long term but not that significant in short term, or simply as a smart piece of political strategy?
54 part 2: It’s a South East and London problem. National pay scales mean that people in the same job on the same pay will be able to afford a house and live quite well up north, but be unable to afford to live in London or the South. Becasue of this hospitals down south can’t recruit staff and end up paying lots of money for agency staff, leading to worse health outcomes in rich areas.
58 Well if people put money into bank deposits the banks might be able to lend some more money!
58 Obviously the problem with this would be that the banks would much rather pay back the money Gordon is lending that costs 12% rather than lend to us at 4%, but Gordon is the saviour of the world, so he must have a plan
23. Largely agree with that. Even though people can list more than one issue, I’d guess that two things are happening to reduce the NHS’s share as an issue at that time: firstly, voters are still consciously or unconsciously limiting the number of answers they give so relative importance to them matters; secondly, ‘improving the NHS’ can easily translate as ’spending more money on the NHS’. With the credit crunch, people are well aware that they money is tight - especially so for the gevernment though I’m not sure that’s getting through yet - and that spending yet more on the NHS when it’s already had very large budget increases is much less of a priority when the immediate problems look to have been largely solved.
As for whether it will be political football, I’m almost certain it will - although ‘football’ is perhaps the wrong term in that only one side will play with it. I expect Labour to run hard with ‘Tory cuts’ as a theme and the NHS will be a big part of that. The Tories will counter with ‘the economy, stupid’.
57, but you aren’t paying more tax on the ‘other’ things if the tax stays the same.
58, I suspect the rationale is:
1) more savers than borrowers and savers have been hammered lately by lower interest rates so will be especially pleased
2) better longterm for the country to shift the balance from endless borrowing to saving somewhat
3) politically sound both in that savers will welcome the idea and look to see if Brown copies it and in that it chimes with recently (apparently) popular support for the state spending less and generally lowering taxes
Anyway, I hope this is a simple tax cut, rather than the reasonable but over-complicated bonus paid to businesses who employ people who have been out of work for 6 months or so.
54 - read post 50
There are plenty of people who have seen the failings of various NHS trusts round the country.
People still have this blind faith in doctors. They are afraid to challenge and to question.
I no longer have faith in a medical profession that is willing to kowtow to the diktats from Whitehall rather than responding to the needs of the patients.
Look at the millions wasted on Statins. The medical evidence shows that very very few people will actually benefit from their use - yet doctors are being told to prescribe them. And they get a bonus every time they do. That isn’t about proper healthcare - that is a perversion of medical treatment.
I have a friend who has not slept for over a fortnight due to a cough that is ruining his life. He cannot get to see his GP - the surgery keep booking him in to see a nurse. He won’t put up a fight because the nurse is trained in triage - so must know what to do. What he needs is to be seen by a doctor and for his care to be taken seriously - which is clearly isn’t. The system relies on vulnerable people not having the strength to demand the care to which they are entitled.
If we don’t stand up for ourselves, the NHS will not become what we need it to be.
64 The Government pays for the to provide what it wants (lots of statistics and box ticking) Perhaps if patients paid for their own care more directly (and had a choice in who they pay it to) things might improve
58 UK banks had to go to wholesale markets because of a £700bn deficit in savings in UK which developed over the last few years (or as Gordon would say “in the last period of time”) - if we want to restore a heathly banking sector it needs to be funded in larger part from UK savings and be less dependent on foreign borrowing.
Action needs to be taken now to get the right foundations in place for the recovery - Brown, as Jackie Ashley points out today, still doesn’t accept that there were mistakes, and seems to think that getting back to 2007 is the panacea for al the ills.
So beneficial in medium to long term, helps some hardest hit by the measures being taken to kick start the economy in the shortest.
[56] That place is cr*p. Be full of “pound shops” by Xmas!
64 - I did read it.
And of course there are some poor experiences, but even in polls showing high levels of general dissatisfaction, there is a disconnect btwn peoples personal experience and general view.
Heres an example from 2002
Headline - NHS Worse than Ever Say Public
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1381398/NHS-is-worse-than-ever,-says-public.html
“Yet use of the NHS remains exceptionally high. Since last summer, 88 per cent of people have had personal or family contact with a GP or a hospital, emphasising the universal nature of the service.
Levels of satisfaction also appear high, with 86 per cent happy with their family practitioner services and 77 per cent with the treatment received in hospital for themselves or their family. Patients retain high levels of respect for family doctors.”
timmy, good morning.
1.[citation needed] I don’t see how you can say that. In fact, there’s two anecdotal posts on here today - mine, saying a lot of the superficial stuff has been sorted out, and Simon, saying it’s still utter cr@p where it really matters. (and see below)
2. All London employers suffer from high staff turnover (unless they’re blue chip companies or and/or pay top dollar). Deal with it. However, I have always wondered why the NHS has always had such a fetish for local treatment. Yes, some people need/want local treatment, they want to be near their family if in hospital, and if they need to make frequent trips to outpatients it needs to be local. But does everyone? I spent several months waiting for an MRI scan on my knee, and in the end it was at West Middlesex which was not exactly convenient. However, if there had been a National Scanning Centre in Birmingham, for example, I would have happily gone there. If I am diagnosed tomorrow with a type of cancer that is treatable, but only if treated immediately, believe me, you can check me into any hospital in the country. It is surely very inefficient to run very specialist services locally, and must be more efficient to do it on a national basis. So, somewhere like London, why not send more people out of town for treatment if it really is as difficult as you say to provide specialist services?
Back to the first point… a lot of people will have recent experience of their GP service, and if throwing money at it has generally improved their experience (if superficially) this might actually swamp those people like Simon who have had extremely poor experience of acute services. So it might work out to be extremely effective (if expensive) marketing on Labour’s part.
48. Cameron’s language is quite extraordinary in that interview. saying he “terrified” and wants to “shake” the PM etc etc. A “criminal” waste of money etc etc. The Sunny Optimist is long gone.
Also, he starts off saying we’re spending too much and in too much debt then dashes off a £50bn loan guarantee scheme? Eh? That wouldn’t have any impact on the balance sheet at all?
Final point. He talks about seventies style activism. How does this relate to Alan Duncan calling on the Government to help firms in the Auto Sector?
re 59 the NHS pay scales have an allowance for outer London and inner London working.
re 64 actually the evidence for statins is very good. They will certainly save more lives (from heart problems) than the average new cancer drug which gets all the publicity at the moment. The question is though is the extra life gained quality. I would much rather go in reasonably robust good health in my late sixties/early seventies than linger on like my parents and fall foul to a very long drawn out dementia or angonising cancer.
69 Part 2: Have you ever heard of “fundholding”? Prior to 97 this meant that your GP could refer you to any NHS hospital in the country for your treatment/investigations. In 97 this waas abruptly stopped, and your GP could only refer you to one hospital. Choose and Book has moved a little way back towards fundholding, but there’s only a limited choice of destination, and a bizarrely complex, confusing and expensive system for organising it.
O/T. Guido reports more astroturfing in Redditch
http://www.order-order.com/2009/01/another-jacqui-supporter-is-labour.html
70 as extraordinary as our bouncing, beaming PM saying the Conservatives were “revelling” in economic bad news?
74, I read that letter. Think it was in the Daily Mail. Quite amusing. I wonder if Guido will end up being arrested. If so, I recommend he takes David Davis to be his legal representative
63 But it’s a zero sum game. If you cut spending, you can cut taxes. If you cut taxes on savings, you can’t cut them on incomes. So you are paying more tax on your salary than you need to.
I suspect it’s mostly because it will go down well on tomorrow’s front pages. I don’t believe in incentives to do this that and the other through the tax system, but it could be a good short term move to help lots of people who rely on their savings and will be hammered by low interest rates - so I hope it is going to be temporary, and until interest rates rise to more normal levels.
74. I did like this paragraph
‘It is all getting a bit like the dying days of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Romania; only the party faithful, the nomenklatura, senior police officers, those on the welfare payroll, the state bureaucracy and state broadcaster support a government led by a leader increasingly out of touch with reality. The ruling party is forced again and again to fake support in the media.’
63/66 - So your take on in is that it a beneficial medium/long term move (in terms of increasing savings rate) with helpful political consequences, but not that significant as a short term stimulus?
The counter arguments are, I think -
1. As a short term measure it encourages people not to spend money now, which we’d like them to do. (It’s an effective increase in interest rates for consumers)
2. When Interest rates rise again this could become much more expensive in the medium/long term, and have the distorting effect that savings are taxed less than earned income. Trustafarians redux!
3. (More contentious) We already treat those with assets much better in the UK tax system than those struggling to acquire them. No tax on basic rate savings, combined with virtually no inheritence tax for those with estate under a 1.2million/2.4million (depending on party) would exacerbate this further and hurt, rather than help social mobility.
71 “The Sunny Optimist is long gone”
You think this is a time for sunny optimism?
A £50 billion loan-guarantee scheme - which is a contingent liability and likely to have a modest default rate - is more likely to preserve 100,000 existing jobs than the 100,000 the PM says he is going to create for his £10 billion of actual spending. Or more to the point, spending from actual borrowing - which is going to hoover up credit which therefore won’t go to those industries which desperately need it.
71 True, but even with that the differential between North and South is much greater for living costs that for wages. The weighting doesn’t apply to anywhere outside London either, and the South East is not exactly a cheap place to live in
73 Yes I have heard of it
and I still think it should be possible.
For example, at one point I thought I might need surgery on my knee, and would be reasonably immobile afterwards. So it would help if I could have someone to stay with after the operation, but still near the hospital. So it would have been much better for me to be treated near my parents, or near friends who worked from home, rather than in my “home” hospital. And I am sure there are people with conditions for which this would be much more important.
Although I was more talking about services being planned nationally, and I’m not sure fundholding allowed that to happen.
I think this is mostly what’s called positive apathy; “I don’t care because I’m not annoyed about anything.” Rather than anything else.
By the way I hate the way the word taxpayer is used by right-of-centre writers. I’m not a taxpayer, I’m a citizen. Every time they say it I want to quote JFK; “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
34 Thanks Barry.
Good one to get rid of then!
71 The only people who could still be termed “sunny optimists” are Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling - building a strategy on growth returning to the economy in Q3 of this year.
70 ‘Also, he starts off saying we’re spending too much and in too much debt then dashes off a £50bn loan guarantee scheme? ‘
A guarantee scheme which the Treasury are now actively considering. Maybe some of your fire should be directed at HMG as well Hopi?
The country is heading towards record levelsof debt, whoever is elected next time around. If elected, the Tories are promising tax cuts. They are going to have to find significant savings should they come to power. The NHS is a prime target. At that stage, the NHS will again become a prime electoral issue. My guess is that the same will also happen with education.
80. I’m saying that a year ago, Cameron was telling us he was a sunny optimist at his core. Now he’s terrified! Come on man, Buck up! Contrast it to the way obama talked in opposition.
It’s more a rhetorical point- I think that even if you’re harshly critical of the government, which Cameron which is of course within his rights to be, the vicious attack is more effective when it is covered in a warm bath of faith in country, future and people.
More seriously, Faith and belief in Britain are qualities I think all politicians should be showing right now. (I don’t think either side have done particularly well on this, btw, so It’s not a straign partisan point - we’re just not as adept at that kind of spoonful of sugar as the Americans)
81 - Its not all related to living costs, some is related to the location of teaching hospitals.
For example in the North someone may train at a Central Manchester hospital in their 20s, by the time they get to thheir thirties they may hac=ve kids and have moved to Bolton say, and prefer to get a job in Bolton, thus reducing their travel to work but increasing staff turnover in Central Manchester.
The same happens in the SE where certain hospitals in expensive areas may be able to hold on to their staff.
72 - Actually the statins evidence is not quite so clear cut (as a Radio 4 investigation proved last year).
All the independent testing show a less than 0.1% success rate. All the testing funded by the drug companies behind statins shows a much more positive outcome.
83 I bet you’re one of the people who complains about the train companies referring to passengers as “customers”.
We right-of-centre people like to use different words for the citizen depending on what relationship with the State is being talked about.
“Taxpayer” is used to remind Statists that the State is a service paid for by the people, to be used for the benefit of the people, and that people should be treated as customers when using State services. And that every penny spent by the State has to be taken from a Taxpayer’s pocket, it doesn’t have any money of its own.
“Voter” is used to remind politicians that they have no rights: they simply have the duty to govern the country on behalf of the Voter. When the Voter says “frog”, you jump, right?
“Citizen” is used when we refer to civic rights, and to the fact that Citizens are equal partners in society who require the state to order that society to their benefit, and to protect their Civic rights against other Citizens (including State employees) who might want to infringe them.
Capeesh?
Morning all,
Every single political issue pales into insignificance when compared to the economy now. The NHS will become an issue again when the painful decisions have to be made with regard to public service cuts. But the Government will not grasp that nettle this side of a general election and neither will the Tories.
In fact, I don’t foresee Labour EVER grasping the service cut nettle and using the cuts that the Tories make in their first term as a means of trying to keep the Tories to one very painful term.
This is one very good argument for GB leading Labour to a narrow defeat in 2009 rather than a heavy one in 2010. He can leave his party in a position from which it is possible to beat DC after the inevitably horrible first term he faces, from a rump of about 160/200 seats Labour will be in no position to win in 2014.
Luckily, Courage is only the name of a book for the PM.
91 - Capice?
91. “I bet you’re one of the people who complains about the train companies referring to passengers as “customers”.”
I hadn’t even noticed that they did. Personally I think our relationship to the state and civil society is one of complexity with many duties and obligations as well as rights. I don’t think you can set them out in such a fractured and atomised manner, they’re organic.
93. The supermodel - blonde hair, american accent.
86. Alongside a Fiscal stimulus I’d be happy to support state action to get the capital markets moving again, in whatever form is most effective.
Personally, my gut suspicion is that we’ve largely moved on from the “Credit Crunch” moment. We’re don’t talk about LIBOR too much any more. The reason banks aren’t lending _now_ is not that they can’t find funds at any price but that they are all of a sudden very risk averse and think many loans won’t pay back because the economy is in recession.
If I’m right about that, it seems to me that the most important thing to do is fiscal stimulus so the economy grows, with Loan supports being important to keep companies going and investing in future product development in the short term, but a second order of support to the economy.
If you make it your centerpiece _without the accompanying stimulus_, you’re in danger of having a triple combo of continuing recession, deeper unemployment lower demand and your guaranteed loans going bad at the worst possible moment.
I certainly wouldn’t be under the illusion David Cameron seems to share that it is not a significant exposure to the Tax payer to guarantee £50 billion of commercial lending in a recession.
It seems pretty obvious to me that people only register an issue as a priority when they feel it needs to be addressed. Unemployment fell off the radar during the boom years. Labour have neutralised health, and will lose any electoral gain for doing so. Way of politics.
O/T- 2 wonderful political films doing the rounds. Frost/Nixon and Che Part One which I have now seen twice, and which gets better. One of the 20th centuries most remarkable figures only to be murdered by some slimey CIA toe rag. And for those who see Che as on par with the corrupt right wing thugs he fought against, read his bio, or his memoirs.
91. I suspect Labour would prefer ’serfs’ or ‘villeins’ as a term to describe our relationship with the state.
94 But using the word “tax-payer” may as PhilC says help to remind people that the state doesn’t magic money out of thin air, and we all have to pay for whatever it does
94- finally.Capisce.
I thought Camerons plan was that companies would pay most of the risk?
96, the fiscal stimulus has been a fiscal flop. Oooh, 2.5% off VAT! Unless you’re drinking, driving or smoking, when the tax is actually going up once the temporary VAT cut is phased out. It was costly to the taxpayer and didn’t deliver much for the average man on the street. Nice if you’re buying an expensive car though.
I hope you’re right about he SIVs and CDOs being all done and dusted. Sadly I suspect there’s more of that toxic gunk floating about just waiting to explode.
93 http://tinyurl.com/9hwom8
In italian it would be “capisce” or “capisci” depending on how polite I was being.
96. Nice summary but you are missing the elephant in the room.
The “Brown Boom” years were built on consumers using their homes as a cash machine - at about £10-18Bn a quarter - this money has gone away and is not coming back in a hurry.
See latest figures from BoE.
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/hew/2008/sep/hew.gif
99. Why don’t you just say that*? I feel annoyed and insulted when I’m called a taxpayer and assumptions are made about my attitudes and beliefs.
(*Although I have some problems with that statement as well.)
91 Phil
How many people are actually non-taxpayers?
Since tax includes VAT and many other types in addition to income tax, I should think the number of non-taxpayers in this country is very small indeed, probably a few thousand, if that.
My impression is that when the term ‘taxpayer’ is used loosely (i.e. most of the time), the user is implying that he or she is a jolly hard-working person who pays too much tax because the State insists on supporting lazy and unworthy sods (i.e. just about everybody else).
The viewpoint is legitimate but the linguistic trick deserves to be exposed for what it is.
98. “I suspect Labour would prefer ’serfs’ or ‘villeins’ as a term to describe our relationship with the state.”
Or mushrooms.
94 But being right wing, we would like to make the relationship between the citizen and the state a lot less complex.
@106:
or ‘bitches’.
104 Because “Tax-payer” is a lot quicker to say, and gets the message across (to most people!) What is your problem with it though - I can’t see it makes any assumptions, other than that you pay tax!
“Contrast it to the way obama talked in opposition. ”
Maybe you missed every single one of the hundreds of speeched he gave about the broken economy?
Giving people hope is important in making them understand the power they have over their own lives, lying to them about how things are not that bad and that the recession will be over soon is a different matter.
101. Well, if it turns out that there lots more Maddoffs there may be more problems - but tbh, I think the most important thing is what Obama does. If he can stimulate US demand, then things could begin to look a lot better, but the recent employment figures have been nasty.
Basically we need to US taxpayer to agree to get the world economy moving again.
speeched = speeches
92 - Absolutely right. The Tories are not going to talk about the bad news until they get into power and that could end up costing them very dearly indeed.
Like Labour pre-97 the Tories have the opportunity at the next election to change the rules of the game in the UK for a generation. But like Labour in 1997 they are giving every indication that they are going to blow the chance.
Now is the time for the Tories to be completely honest with us all, to spell out the choices and the sacrifices and to explaiun why they are necessary. That way, when they come into power and start making the huge spending cuts in key areas such as health and educaiton that will have to be made nobody can say they were not warned. And that way lies the political capital that the Tories will need.
If they do not have the courage to trust the British people then they will end up paying a very heavy political price in the following election, in whic the cries of “Same old Tories” and “Tory betrayal” from Labour will be unanswerable.
Labour got away with not trusting the British people for so ong because the economic times were good. After 2010, the Tories will not have that luxury.
109. I think PtP explains it well above. Everyone pays tax, everyone gets some sort of benefit from the state (even if it’s just not being killed by marauding barbarians).
re 113. Labour did not tell us pre 1997 that their big idea was to invade other countries which were not posing a threat without UN sanction. That blight will stay with the party for a long time.
110 - Saying ow bad things are is only one part of thr equation though. The other, and far more important, part is explaining how you are going to make things better. This is where the Tories remain woefully silent. And thereis no need to be. Tis government is so unpopular there is not a hope in hell it can win the next election. So why not take advantage of that and spell out the real choices the UK faces?
114 No, not everyone pays tax, and some who do are net recipients of benefits. Similarly not everyone is a Citizen, and not everyone is (entitled to be) a Voter, so actually although there is a large group of peopel for whome all three terms apply, they are not actually completely contiguous groups.
116 Well, that’s what election campaigns are for.
Meanwhile that stupid woman in charge at the Home Office has allowed police powers, which the Stasi and KGB could only have dreamt about, under the RIPA to hack into your personal computer without a warrant.
As the article says what’s the difference between the police having to apply for a warrant to rifle through your belongings and interfering with your computer?
110. No, I just heard the parts about his faith in “the people’s” ability to turn it around.
“If we fail to overcome our divisions and continue to let special interests set the agenda, then America will fall behind, short-term gains will continue to yield long-term costs, opportunity will slip away on Main Street, and prosperity will suffer here on Wall Street.
But if we unite this country around a common purpose, if we act on the responsibilities that we have to each other and to our country, then we can launch a new era of opportunity and prosperity.
I know we can do this because Americans have done this before. Time and again we’ve recognized that common stake that we have in each other’s success. “
113 - I agree. But that has very little to do with the Tories not being honest about what will have to happen in this country whoever wins power in 2010.
115 - I think its clear Milosevic was a threat, and the Lib Dems agreed.
M’thinks DC should have a word with Boris, he’s ‘Off message’ these days.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23611355-details/Mayor:+London+can+benefit+from+recession/article.do
Perhaps its time for GB to offer Boris a job.
re 90 what do you mean “less than 0.1%” success rate?
117. Everyone pays tax. Unless you never buy any VAT-rated goods, or drive a car, or drink, or smoke, or fly, or are liable for council tax. Most non-earners pay quite a lot of tax in one or other of these ways.
116 - Hmmm, we will see. My guess is that during the election the Tories will do just as they are doing now: say as little as possible about the plans (beyond hinting at certain tax cuts) and rely on the unpopularity of the government to see them through. It will work, but it will cause them problems once they are in power.
There is a chance right now for the Tories to treat the British people like grown ups. But like the Labour Party, it seems they do not trust us to be able to engage with a serious discussion about this country’s future.
“110. No, I just heard the parts about his faith in “the people’s” ability to turn it around.”
Then you weren’t really listening were you?
The key phrase “How can John McCain fix our economy if he doesn’t understand it’s broken?”
Obama didn’t lie, McCain did and Brown is still doing so, there’s the difference.
114 And can you not see the difference between “The state is paying for X” and “Taxpayers are paying for X” I would suggest that the second much more accurately reflects where the money is coming from.
96. 101. Actually the ‘real’ credit crunch is only just starting. What we had in the first phase was a wholesale credit crunch resulting from banks taking huge losses on various classes of securities and an accompanying collapse of the securitisation, interbank, and commercial paper markets.
Now, we are seeing the beginning of a ‘retail/consumer/industrial’ credit crunch, with banks sharply curtailing lending to the household and corporate sectors (e.g. the Deloitte survey today shows 99% of CFOs saying credit is hard to obtain). This reflects both the need to shore up balance sheets damaged by the earlier losses, and the sharply rising rate of debt defaults in the real economy.
This phase of the crunch has the potential to be far nastier as it will affect a broad swathe of individuals and businesses…
117. I don’t really care how much my fellow Briton’s receive in benefits or pay in tax. It doesn’t matter, they have an inalienable worth. The sad thing is that those who use the word ‘taxpayer’ in the way they do, are demonstrating that it is what they care about.
As PtP says “My impression is that when the term ‘taxpayer’ is used loosely (i.e. most of the time), the user is implying that he or she is a jolly hard-working person who pays too much tax because the State insists on supporting lazy and unworthy sods (i.e. just about everybody else).”
re 115. Unlike you Tim I don’t slavishly follow what my party says. The LDs got Kosovo wrong but got Iraq right. Labour got both wrong and now seem to want to stop any inquiry into the Iraq debacle.
Oh I forgot - Labour doesn’t do detail. Those weapons of mass destruction or the consequences of the abolition of the 10pm tax rate. All the same. What a shabby shower.
113 - I really am not sure that the Tories have the political courage to set out their programme of cuts and I have no confidence that the electorate is intelligent enough to give them credit if they do.
115 - No it won’t, Mike. Swing voters give absolutely no indication of obsession with Iraq.
They won a majority in 2005, you keep forgettig that when on your high horse about Iraq.
re 132. So what.
117 Phil
Can you name some significant categories of people who do not pay tax? Maybe some prisoners, inmates of mental institutions and nursing homes, inhabitants of boxes under Waterloo Bridge? The numbers are so small to be of no consequence. That is the point which you appear to have missed.
Did you do so deliberately?
The NHS should be a big issue at the next election,an NHS budget tripled but productivity down and only minor improvements in the service.
The huge pay increases for GP’s and Surgeons just for doing their jobs.
The massive waste of resouces on computer programs that don’t work and an army of assorted equality,performance,diversity bureacrats that contribute nothing.
“One of the 20th centuries most remarkable figures only to be murdered by some slimey CIA toe rag. And for those who see Che as on par with the corrupt right wing thugs he fought against, read his bio, or his memoirs.”
Sorry to go off topic, but this quite appalling comment cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. Che was Castro’s Beria who personally oversaw the judicial murder of hundreds of people for any reason or none. Looking good in a beret does not change the fact that he was a squalid little killer. This sort of sordid double standard is sadly typical of the left - at least I rather doubt Tyson would praise a film that idealised the likes of Reinhard Heydrich, who apparently was also a charismatic figure who looked good in the right sort of uniform.
(And yes, I have read Che - “On Guerilla War” should be essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the subject. It doesn’t change the fact that the author is a disgusting human being.)
128. unfortunately “taxpayer” is nearly always misused to imply that the speaker is being unfairly overtaxed to subsidise the luxuries for the feckless idle poor.
119. Ah yes but you obviously missed this bit
‘Computer hacking has to be approved by a chief constable, who must be satisfied the action is proportionate to the crime being investigated.’
What a relief - with a safeguard like that there is clearly no danger at all of these powers being misused.
I don’t understand what you mean. You say people won’t forget Iraq but it is important to remember the 2005 general election came well after the Iraq invasion.
The next two general elections will be fought on the economy. Do you really think Iraq is a major factor? If so, why are the Lib Dems making no progress?
131. What about the details of the things they got right?
126. I disagree, I don’t think relying on the unpopularity of the governement WILL see them through. I think it will lead to a hung parliament and Brown clinging to power.
You can only get so far by replying on people to vote AGAINST a Party. To be sure of success, Cameron has to come up with some policies that will make people want to vote FOR the Conservatives.
This is particularly true in times of economic crisis, with the opposition having a young and inexperienced Shadow Chancellor. If the Tories do not come up with something that strikes a positive chord with the voters and gives them some confidence in their ability to deal with the economic disaster that Brown has presided over, then I think enough voters will be guided by voting for the devil they know, to allow Brown to cling to power in some shape or form.
128 Perhaps Gasman, but it would also be accurate to say that it generally indicates where the user is coming from.
132, 133, it might have a lasting effect on the Lib Dem-Labour relationship though.
119, bloody Jackboots. I must confess I thought she might actually exceed expectations when she behaved reasonably well during the failed terror attacks of her first few days in office. Since then she seems to have gradually become a female Himmler.
83 “very time they say it I want to quote JFK; “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.””
Taxpayers already are.
It is time those on benefits did something for their country.
144 ooopsie. i forgot the smiley!
144 What do you do for your country?
Morning all.
I’d be interested to see how the average number of responses to the “other issues” varies with time (it’s about 2.5 in this survey if I interpret the tables correctly). I suspect it’s fairly constant - that people can only think of a certain number of things (or don’t like to list more for fear of being thought of as complaining too much). If that is the case then I’d expect that when one issue starts to dominate, everything else will get pushed down - and in the charts, just about everything other than defence/foreign affairs/international terrorism plummeted in September 2001 and July 2005, which would seem to give some backing to that concept.
I’ve always been very dubious about this kind of survey as it seems to be highly related to “what’s been in the news lately”.
130 - It is always easier to spend other people’s money than your own. It is curious that those who are happy airily to spend other people’s money are generally so rude about those who contribute most and give no thought to where the money comes from. Killing the goose that laid the golden eggs is not a concept that appears to be understood nowadays. “Taxpayer” is a fairly useful shorthand for that concept in this context.
144 Hi Daryl.
Wouldn’t a lot of our Para-Olympians be on benefit? Just a guess, but I think they would.
141. P4T: You can only get so far by replying on people to vote AGAINST a Party.
The best yet is a Commons majority of 177.
148. I don’t think I’ve been rude about anyone or said anything like you’ve just pretended I’ve said.
Human worth is not conditional on paying tax does not mean that tax payers do not have human worth.
146 What do you do for your country?
152
149 Oh dear! If the benefits cheat spies find out they will follow them around with cameras secretly following them.
re 138 runnymede I presume that you’re being ironic here.
141 - In normal times I would agree with you Penny4, but these are not normal times. This government is as despised as any that I can remember, certainly in the parts of the UK - the south and the midlands - where the next election will be decided. I think the Tories can and will get away with spelling out very little about their plans. But I think this will cost them hugely in the longer term when it becomes apparent that for the forseeable future the overall tax burden in the UK will not fall and cuts in public services will be huge. If they spell this out now and explain why, the Tories will give themselves a chance to run the UK for a generation, if they do not they run the very real risk of losing power at the election after next.
However, 132 is correct - the Tories do not have the poliical courage to do this, basically because they do not trust the people they wish to govern. This is the fundamentalproblem with Labour as well and explains why the party blew its chance after the 97 landslide.
While our politicians do not treat as adults, this country will never have the fundamental debates about its future it needs. Instead, spin will rule the day as it has done for decades now.
155. Well, yes, possibly…
125, 134 I forgot indirect taxes… oops!
Although many children pay very little or no tax.
130 “I don’t really care how much my fellow Briton’s receive in benefits or pay in tax.”
This struck me as a strange statement to make for someone interested in politics.
“It doesn’t matter, they have an inalienable worth.”
Who is saying that people don’t? The point of using the word taxpayer is to point out who’s paying for the Government, to imply that they should be treated as a customer, and to suggest that as the money is taken involuntarily rather than being a voluntary payment, it should be restricted to things that are actually necessary and that there is a duty of care to spend it wisely and carefully.
152 What an impressive response! If you think people should help their country, get off your own backside rather than whinging about others.
97-May look out for those films.
I don’t see Che as the equivalent of the Bolivian government. I see him as far far worse, a dirty red who deserved to get shot. Still, I guess it has a happy ending.
148 - My remark wasn’t about you (since it’s the New Year and one of my resolutions is to be nicer, I shall say as an aside that I find you one of the most interesting posters on here, even though I disagree with much of what you say).
However, you are raising a red herring in your statement: “I don’t really care how much my fellow Briton’s receive in benefits or pay in tax. It doesn’t matter, they have an inalienable worth.”
I agree with this statement of yours. But those who pay the bulk of the tax have, from the state’s view, a much higher worth than the overwhelming majority of those who are net benefit recipients, precisely because they come up with the readies to fund Government programmes. They should be respected accordingly and their concerns over value for money listened to attentively.
Just the usual anecdotal evidence from me.
Over the last twenty five years I have watched four of my elderly relatives die and one get well.All of this unfolded in the SAME hospital.
In 1984 I had to watch my father die.When first admitted there were residual hopes he could be returned home but those hopes were unfounded.The ward to which he was at first admitted was not too bad but once all hope had been abandoned he spent the last weeks of his life in a hell world which in Thatcher’s Britain called itself a geriatric ward.
The experience of watching a proud old man die in such circumstances still haunts me today.
A couple of years later his sister died in a Female ward where the conditions were better and old ladies are not so pitiful as old gentlemen.
Roll on to the mid-late ’90s and my mother’s younger brother was in a surgical ward in a modern state of the art environment.The ward was hideously overcrowded and mixed but there was hustle and bustle. He recovered !
I went to visit my mother’s older brother and my father’s youngest sister.Uncle was installed in what looked like Victorian surroundings but everything was clean and cool. He didn’t die but did so shortly after my visit.
Finally a few years ago I had to witness my aunt’s last few weeks.The ward itself was modern,clean and bustling.It was mixed but segregation was in place.There was evidence of good morale amongst the nursing staff and there were a lot of them about,in contrast to the invisibility of nurses and doctors at the time of my father’s death.
If the NHS were the only issue I would vote Labour over and over !
159 What an impressive response from you too! If you think people should help their country, get off your own backside too rather than whinging about others (too).
105 I missed your post, sorry. Actually I wasn’t trying to use the term taxpayer in opposition to horrible benefit-claiming oik, and for the way I use it (see 158) it’s actually not important how many people actually pay tax.
In short, it one way of pointing out that the state is subservient to the citizen.
156. Well, we have some common ground Southam Observer, because I feel that presenting yourselves as a Party who is honest enough to spell out the cost that has to be paid after the next election is both giving the electorate something to vote FOR (honesty and being prepared to grasp the nettle) and some confidence in, what is generally viewed as, an inexperienced Shadow Chancellor.
re 156. My sense, supported by quite a lot of polling, is that the mood is for change and that much Tory support is based on the fact that they are not Labour.
This is how Tory governments usually come to power. Remember 1951, 1970 and 1979 - it was mostly in reaction to perceptions about the failure of Labour rather than a big mass move to the party.
156. SO: the Tories do not have the poliical courage to do this, basically because they do not trust the people they wish to govern.
They have a very good reason not to doom-monger: it’ll put people off voting for them.
158. As you probably know, I meant that how much an individual pays in tax does not effect my opinion of that individual.
I do not share your view of how the individual should relate to society. A country is a community, not a selection of atomic individuals. Shall we leave it there?
This talk of Kosovo reminds me of a time during the 2005 election when I was talking to a guy whose family were from Sierra Leone.
He said he was very angry about Iraq, and was very tempted not to vote labour, but said if he didn’t his family would be so angry with him because of how good Labour had been to Sierria leone.
Which is one of the reasons I dion’t disdain interventions in the way Mike does. I never again want to hear a British Foriegn Secretary talk about trying to stop a genocidal war as “just creating a level killing field.
166 I think your spot on here Mike. I thankfully don’t have much experience of such nasty turns of events, but there has to be different tone for Tory coming to power compared to Labour.
The only question is however is post Blair, to what extent would a Tory victory represent the establishment regaining the reigns of power, which surely characterised all Tory victories pre 1997.
156
As usual a naive and one sided view.
New Government comes in, reviews finances: tells electorate Labour lied, things much worse, etc, spending must be cut, Labour planned but lost bottle.
And then cuts hard.
5 years to sort out problem.
Of course, if new Government does nothing…
Anyway, all thoughts of fiscal stimulus solving problems are economic muppetry.
We are into a 4-5 year period of negative or no growth. Excesses of 15 years have to be flushed away. The SEC and banks need major reform.
Do it soon or another crisis in 7 years will break the system.
As for consumers, they are stuffed with debt, house prices will fall until they average 5 times average earnings.
So falls of 30-40% from here.
The US consumer? Truly stuffed. Like the US car industry. Decades on undersaving and living beyond their means have no quick fixes.
And those who suggest otherwise are duplicitous and disengenuous. i.e most politicians.
Back to bed: raging flu.
The NHS is unaffordable with an aging popoulation: obvious to all with any degree of thought.
G - I have some sympathy with your point. Tax shouldn’t just be a commercial relationship, it is a moral issue, and paying tax should be more than the price begrudgingly paid for civilisation, but a mark of patriotism.
I think the reason people, including myself, use ‘taxpayers’ is partly because the ‘good faith’ element has gone. A company has to convince you that it is in your best interests to give it your ard-earned (or easily-found) money in return for goods and services. Thus the consumer is always empowered, because they choose which provider to endorse. Companies are, in theory, at the beck and call of consumers.
States compel their revenue stream, offering no choice, limited accountability or reflexivity as to the services rendered. ‘Citizens’ is a general term, but is not empowering - Citizens owe their status to the State, rather than vice versa. ‘Voters’ goes some way to reminding elected politicians who is in power, but not the unelected aspects of the State. Ultimately, it is by terming them ‘taxpayers’ that drives home the point that without the revenue stream, the State would collapse, and that the interests of ‘taxpayers’ needs to be at the heart of its mission if it is to succeed.
We have a state, most western states in fact, that are not good at transparency, value for money, or accountability with public funds, when compared to private sector ventures of a similar size. Getting the state to recognise its taxpayers as being of equal importance to a company’s consumers will be a big part of improving government, and making it wiser at caring for its citizens concerns.
171. Oh hush with your facts and reasoned arguments - the great leader says we are the “best placed” something.
36, “it depends. Is the aforementioned consumer an idiot?”
He’s a taxpayer with the HMRC on his back all the time. Whether he’s an idiot, I can’t say as I don’t know if he expected any better from Blair/Brown/couldn’t-run-a-festivity-in-a-brewery socialism.
161. that isn’t actually the government’s mandate - they are elected by voters. taxpayers have not elected a government since the 19th century.
151 After Gordon Brown’s British Jobs for Whites speech perhaps he can make another speech copying John F Kennedy…
“Don’t ask what your country can do for people on benefits. People on benefits should ask what they can do for you country.
You can believe you can help pick litter up from the streets…
You can unite and help collect peoples rubbish once per week…
You can build a better Britain and get supermarket trolleys out of rivers and canals…
You can deliver hope and hot meals to house old people…
In the face of impossible odds, we can reduce the rat population caused by fortnightly rubbish collections…
”
He can then end by saying “So let us begin. Let us begin this hard work together. Let us transform this nation. There are many things you can do…”
The wave of applause will be incredible!
175. Indeed, and haven’t things gone to pot since? Restricting the franchise to top rate taxpayers seems an excellent idea to me.
Slightly quieter at work today, so I can post once or twice!
Having said that, I don’t know how long I will be able to sustain a debate for before I am required to get back to it
Hmm. Tax cuts only ever seem to equate to “spending cuts” when it’s the Tories doing it, doesn’t it?
This argument is getting tired, stale and is intellectually feeble. Frankly, I’m bored of hearing it.
The proposed abolition of the 20% tax rate on savings will cost ~ £2.4 billion.
For comparison, this is less than one-fifth of the cost of Labours one-year VAT reduction from 17.5% to 15% - which will cost ~£12.4 billion. AFAIA, all of this cost has been added to UK government borrowing. Labour also abolished the 10% tax rate last year and raised the IHT threshold – no spending was cut for this either. Once again, the cost was added to UK government borrowing.
UK government borrowing has risen from £32 billion in 2005-2006 to a Treasury estimated £118 billion for next year 2009-2010 – a whopping 368% increase over 4 years. The total public sector debt now stands at over £500 billion – and that’s excluding PFI liabilities, which are astronomically large. Labour have not made any spending cuts to match their tax cuts. Indeed, by default they are forced to do the exact opposite by virtue of the recession occurring. Tax receipts will automatically fall as businesses fail and spending demands on welfare will rise in parallel. All of this will be accommodated by increased borrowing.
So, tax cuts do not automatically equal spending cuts any more than spending rises automatically equal tax rises. Tax cuts or spending rises can be accommodated by borrowing – theoretically for as long as the government likes. In the long-term, government finances depend upon the performance of the overall economy and, to a lesser extent, how the tax decisions it makes affect the overall economy.
And, it is most certainly not a “zero-sum game” – this is simple economic illiteracy. It is not based on a primary school pocket-money assessment of money in=money out in your piggy bank. It may even shock people to know that no one even knows exactly how much money is in the economy; broad/narrow money… M0, M1, M2… M4 etc.
Economic growth is not limited and not constrained. It is about making an increasingly efficient use of existing resources. It is about efficiently distributing risk. It is about an efficient use of money. The tax regime can – and does - affect all of that and, consequently, economic growth.
Every year the treasury tries to predict the future of the British economy and almost every year it gets it wrong. Rounding errors are in the billions. That’s why we borrow in the first place.
The key is how the tax changes affect the wider economy and, consequently, government revenue.
Moving on to the virtues of this particular tax-cut, I’d argue that given our savings rate has been trending towards 0% for some time now, anything which encourages people to stop binging on credit and save - consequently aiding the private recapitalisation of the banking system - is an extremely good thing. The multiplier effect of a banking deposit is anything in the order of x3-x5 – which means that the deposit can be safely lent out to a number of customers to provide the increased lending we desperately need.
Of any tax-cut I could think of, this is the best one I’ve seen yet which could reinflate the economy fastest and lead to a recovery in government tax revenue. It doesn’t really matter *even if* (and I’m not convinced it is) only the wealthier parts of the population saving. Their savings will allow secure banks future, allow more to lend more and, consequently, allow more businesses to stay afloat at negligible cost to the taxpayer.
It is an extremely sensible tax-cut, which could lead to a culture change in saving in the long-term. Most importantly, it is one which will more than pay for itself, aid economic recovery and goes a considerable way to ameliorating the root cause of the recession which we are in - the credit crunch.
Excellent move.
171 - So it will be business as usual: the Tories will claim Labour lied, Labour will claim the Tories lied and nothing much will change. I am sure that you are right, so maybe we should al stop pretending there is any difference at all between our major political parties. Unfortunaely, until there is, this country is not going to get the fundamental debate about its future that it needs.
Let’s have an electoral franchise which people value. £100 annual fee to keep oneself on the electoral register.
177 Another year or 2 of Brown in charge and that won’t make much difference!
168 No I will not leave it there, because you are erecting a straw man.
I have not once (I think) used the word “society”. You complained about right wingers using the term “taxpayer” and because it is a dogwhistle to make some people seem to be of less moral worth than others. Fair enough, I think sometimes it is used that way. However, I have explained that it is often used simply a way of codifying the relationship of THE STATE to its citizens. Not society. Not country. Or community. These all mean different things and you are loosely, casually, using them as synonyms.
Yes I believe that individuals are the building blocks of humanity, and that although society is built up from those individuals, it is primarily as individuals that we should all be interacted with.
Society is a different matter. We clearly have both rights and obligations to society (or, as I would prefer it, towards our fellow citizens). However, IMO, the relationship between me and the state is different: the state is my servant. It has duties and responsibilities, it does not have rights.
By the way, I disagree with Antifrank (161). Being wealthy allows you to purchase more goods and services. It should give you no additional political power.
Election in 2010? - the odds on this have certainly narrowed on Betfair in the last couple of days.
175 - I didn’t suggest otherwise. But a Government that gets too far divorced in its spending plans from the concerns of its taxpayers will find that it loses its best taxpayers (whether corporate or individual). This isn’t about mandates, it’s about efficient Government.
161. That depends on what your goal is. If you wish to maximise tax revenue then yes, high tax payers are more important than low tax payers. But I don’t think that should be the first concern of the government all the time.
And damn you with your nice words! I was ready to have a sarcastic response about doffing my flat cap to you but you’ve ruined it. Thanks.
172. I think we’re in agreement on this issue. Can we think of a way of balancing the two concerns? I like the term “active citizenship”.
180. by thus discouraging all the pensioners who only vote because they have nothing better to do, turnouts could well be reduced to single digits
@172:
Taxation is forced labour. Hardly a good starting position to be an arguing a moral high ground from, Morus.
187. Yes - 40% taxation in particular is remarkably similar to the heavy labour obligations European landlords once imposed on their serfs - hence my point earlier on…
178 - I am not arguing against tax cuts, I am arguing for honesty. Are you saying that the next government will not have to make significant spending cuts? If so, that is very interesting as it indicates that what the Tories are currently saying about Labour’s irresponsibility is ultimately hog-wash, and that Labour is basically correct, even if their chosen method of stimulating the economy may not be the best one possible.
I am not seeking to make any party politcal points here - what you say is genuinely very interesting and seems to fly in the face of much of the received wisdom on this site and in the right wing press.
178, good post.
I saw a little of the BBC Propaganda Channel and Matthew I’marightwally, with a hilarious frown of diapproval, asked Jo Coburn about the potentially costly policy.
£20bn for ID cards. £12bn on the communications database. How much for Iraq? £500bn for banking guarantees. £37bn directly into bank recapitalisation.
When did the BBC ask about the expense of the pointless VAT cut?
178 I think you think there are three things Governments can do with money - raise it in tax, spend it, and borrow it.
There aren’t. The Government can raise tax now, or in the future. If a tax cut is funded through borrowing, and spending is not cut, then taxes elsewhere will have to rise to pay for it, just next year rather than this year.
184. ok, but that argument is so often over- and mis- used.
the ‘best’ taxpayers are largely the people who have the best jobs, and in most cases if they leave the country, there is a queue of people hoping to step into their shoes.
those who argue for tax cuts all the time like to imagine that all high earners are intrinsic generators of money and of huge value to the country when in fact in many cases neither is true.
136- Random- Che lived in different times. The Batista regime was responsible for thousands of extra judicial disappearances, and Che’s and Castro’s cause was a just and even heroic one. Che’s commitment to health, education, and tackling inequality were certainly noble causes. And his writings were full of humanity.
Violence begets violence begets violence. Che was utterly ruthless though and shot many of his own people who desterted. Poor, often ill educated peasants who lost the stomach for suicide attacks against Batista’s highly equipped guns. And later Castro and Che were responsible for purging counter revolutionaries, many for as you say no good reason other than rumour. Whether the end justifies the means is debateable, but I cannot help but still be charmed by Che’s writings to make the world a fairer, socially just, healthier, well educated place. Why I am a lefty.
Socialism for me is still inspirational and represents a much more noble cause than selfish individualism perpetuated by capitalism. Granted though the application of socialism has been quite disastrous by and large.
It will be interesting if BBC News allow a Labour minster to react to (e.g - completly slate) David Cameron’s speech before anyone else…
There needs to be a period of time, at least an hour, before the government’s reaction to have any kind of credibilty surely?
As I type, BBC have just cut away from Cameron’s speech!…
172 Excellent post, Morus, although I’m afraid you’re not extreme enough for me.
Firstly, surely paying tax is simply an enforced contribution towards goods and services? Not sure where morality or patrotism come in.
Secondly, I can’t agree when you say that as a Citizen you owe your status to the State. Yes the state codifies and regulates citizenship - but on our behalf. A Citizen is the “owner” of a state, a bit like a shareholder in a company limited by guarantee.
182. Well then we disagree about what society should be and is. I think the state is an inseparable component part. Can we leave it here?
@ Tyson
That’s where Socialism does and always has gone wrong. Arguments from nobility have always fallen on deaf ears, because we’re not, by and large, a noble species.
Political philosophies based on what we wish we were rather than what we are will always be doomed to fail.
In many respects, Socialism’s great undoing is that it is an almost perfect system.
187 - The moral imperative is taht of distributive justice to ensure that the poor and needy are not left to die. Taxation, that nasty compulsion element, is the way that states ensure that people meet their minimum moral obligations. Similarly, the police and prisons are the nasty compulsion-based ways that we make sure that people meet their minimum moral obligations. One covers distributive justice, one covers retributive justice. Both forms of justice are born of moral questions, both rely on compulsion and force as secondary means to ensure that the morality is legitimately enforced.
172 - We’re not in disagreement, I suspect. The thing is, dog-whistle aside, using ‘taxpayer’ involves the implicit threat to the State that we will cut off its revenue, just as consumer does to business, whereas Active Citizen implies nothing but collaboration. That’s fine for small societies, but the State is too big (and the relation with its citizens too impersonal) for us to settle for solely benign descriptions of the realtionship. The relationship between the citizen and the modern State is antagonistic. ‘Taxpayer’ captures that, and carries that reminder that the State is accountable to the citien not vice versa. I’m not averse to changing the preferred term, but it should include that threat.
@ G:
You cannot have a society without a state? That’s your considered position?
185 Problem with terms like “active citizen”, harmless though they may appear, is that people like you seem to have no concept of the difference between the society and the state. So while the term is primarily used to imply you have a duty towards society and your fellow citizens, actually it ends up meaning you have duties to the state.
Personally I’d like to see billionaires using their money to be “active citizens” by funding public works, endowing universities and hospitals, etc.
193. Yes, that certainly sounds like the definition of a lefty - murder and torture is fine as long as supposedly motivated by some airy-fairy philosophy.
194, had he announced the policy yet? What did they cut to: the Supreme Leader announcing he had created 5m jobs and thereby abolished unemployment?
197. that is a real pessimistic view.
the most obvious examples of socialism in action have usually been the end result of a violent revolution against a failing regime, that is hardly a recipe for success in the first place.
199. No. I just think things like the NHS, the police service, parliament are part of our society. I don’t think we can separate the state and society neatly.
@198:
I think you’re indulging in spurious moral equationism here, Morus. You can’t say “helping the poor is + 13 morality points, forced Labour (taxation) is -8 morality points, grand total +5 morality points, therefore I win” and expect to be taken seriously. Morality is not an additive quantity.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2009/01/plus_cest_la_meme_chose.html
192 - That presupposes that such jobs could not be performed elsewhere, which often is not a safe presumption. In the case of corporate taxpayers, there has already been a steady flow of holding companies offshore with a corresponding loss of tax revenues.
But I do not wish it to be understood that I am looking for tax cuts (I am not), merely that an efficient government will pay close regard to the interests of its funders.
@203:
That, in itself, should tell you something about people’s ordinary desire for Socialism.
“Yes, that certainly sounds like the definition of a lefty - murder and torture is fine as long as supposedly motivated by some airy-fairy philosophy.”
Or, as Susan Sontag brilliantly and devastatingly put it:
“Communism is Fascism’s greatest achievement: Fascism with a human face.”
Vote Blue - Get Porn Quicker:). He’s got my vote:)!
Ron Paul effect lives on? In trying to rebuild the grassroots GOP effort local GOP institutions are finding themselves taken over by Paul-ites:
http://www.therightperspective.org/?p=740
Obviously it won’t be enough to get Paul on the presidential ticket in 2012 but could have a significant impact on the shaping of the grassroots Republican party away from social conservatism and towards libertarianism… in particular, hurting the Palin wing of the party.
@206:
It must be gratifying for Robinson to know that, now nobody respects him any more and is widely held by everyone to be a dimwitted Labour shill, he no longer even needs to pretend any more when shamelessly parroting government spin.
208. well yes, although there are places (n+w europe) where people choose reasonably socialist governments of their own accord, with some success. the key is “reasonably” i suppose.
204 Surely society is a bigger term than state - it includes State institutions - but there’s much much more.
Isms of any kind are bound to fail to some extent, are they not?
@213:
Everything in moderation, I guess. There are certain lines that people are not prepared to cross, except in times of great social upheaval.
212 - In other words, you do not agree with him
189. Southam Observer
Cheers for your reply.
The point I was making it’s only “cuts” when it’s the Tories doing it. And it’s always “Doctors and Nurses” at that. The fact that people believe this as fact, despite evidence right before their eyes to the contrary, frustrates me. Tax cuts do not equal spending cuts.
“Are you saying that the next government will not have to make significant spending cuts?”
Interesting one. Will they “have” to? Not *necessarily*. Any government of any hue should, but I’m not sure they will, or can. I think it’s more likely that spending growth will slow to a fraction below 1% per annum which - discounting inflation, in real terms would be an effective “cut” - but not in absolute terms.
Why?
There are a number of government departments in existence - health & education made up only £182 billion of the total £562 billion spent last year - or approx 1/3rd. Social services make up a further whopping 31% of government spending and expenditure on these is liable to *increase* in a recession and there’s precious little difference the government could do about it. If cuts are to be made, I’d expect them in other departments, in non-critical discretionary spending areas, easy to cut both polticially and contractually. I’d expect Defence, Transport and Culture & Tourism to be vulnerable.
The prodigious levels of debt we now possess and the seriousness of the recession we are in means that whoever the next government is (Tory or Labour) will have to make spending cuts *somewhere* but these will be modest and it’s more likely that government spending growth will simply slow right down.
However, I don’t expect swinging cuts in anything - and I think it would be nigh impossible to achieve anyhow.
207. it is not 100% guaranteed assumption, but it is not as unsafe as eternal proponents of tax cuts would have you believe.
most well paying jobs are people involved in running companies and providing very high level services, remember. the UK will always have lots of big companies to run and demand for services. tax havens will not.
214. That’s my point.
Society = the state + other things.
@217:
It’s not so much about not agreeing with him, as thinking he’s a useless, embarrassing waste of space. Vain, gullible, and far too thick not to realise when he’s being manipulated by Labour.
Martha Kearney must be pissing herself.
205 - You misunderstand me. I’m not equating at all.
You questioned, at post 187, whether I was right to say there was a moral question at play “Taxation is forced labour. Hardly a good starting position to be an arguing a moral high ground from.”
I’m saying that in the first instance, there is a moral question to be answered: how should the proceeds of society be distributed? That is a question of distributive justice - could be socialist (give everyone the same), could be libertarian (each keep their own), but the answer is to a moral question.
Taxation, that nasty compulsion element, is simply the means of enforcing whatever settlement you gave in answer to the moral question. Therefore taxation isn’t a ‘moral evil akin to slavery because it involves compulsion’, but ‘a form of compulsion akin to policing because it is the legitimate use of compulsion to enforce justice’.
It’s not subtracting the moral evil of taxation from the moral good of helping the poor - I agree that would be a stupid way to answer a moral question. I’m saying that once you have the answer to the moral question, taxation is the means of enforcing it.
216. and of course, there are certain lines that people simply cannot cross because they are not offered the choice.
if a majority of the UK decided on socialism as the answer to all their problems tomorrow, it would be a very long time before that was actually reflected in goverment.
@222:
You’re saying the compulsion element is merely a mechanism for enforcing a separate moral judgment, and is a pragmatic consideration, not seen to have a moral component of its own?
198. I’d rather the fact that government is controlled by the people was encapsulated in the word citizen. But I can see why you like taxpayer.
Maybe my criticisms are a bigger stumbling block for me than for you.
191. “178 I think you think there are three things Governments can do with money - raise it in tax, spend it, and borrow it.
There aren’t. ”
Phil C - I’m afraid the facts don’t support this argument. The government is borrowing to spend it. It’s doing it right now and has been doing it since 2002. Furthermore, it has mortgaged some liabilities for up to 30 years through PFI so spending can - and does occur - through borrowing.
You are correct that all borrowings must eventually be repaid. What I’m pointing out, is:
(a) Borrowing can be invested in expenditure which generates a positive economic return - such as transport infrastructure projects
(b) Changing the structure of the tax system can affect future tax receipts by altering incentives to behaviour.
It is also worth noting that tax receipts increase whilst the economy grows automatically *without any government increases whatsoever*.
The key is ensuring the economy grows.
If the government simply borrow (for long enough) until the economy starts growing again and then hold down their spending growth *below* the level at which the economy grows (say 1.5% to 2.1%) - they can progressively reduce the tax burden without any tax cuts at all. The converse is true if they held spending growth at economic growth levels. They could increase spending without any tax rises.
Your point only holds if you assume that the economcy is static and uninfluenced by government action. Which it is not.
I don’t want to be a citizen or a taxpayer. I want to be a “societal stakeholder producer-consumer entity”
@218 (Southam Observer)
It so happens that I don’t agree with him on a lot of what he says - though I’m not sure how you got that from my post.
228 - Knowing your usual love of acronyms, I’m surprised that you didn’t announce that you want to be a SOSTAPROCOEN.
221 I’d say Society = 60 million people, plus all the ways they voluntarily form communities - families, voluntary organisations, clubs, companies etc. Plus State institutions of course.
Although that’s a bit tautological, as it’s surely enough to say Society = 60 million people and the way they all intereact with each other.
But maybe it’s mostly a question of emphasis.
197/203- Ed- in reply to Martin- almost what I was going to say.
Any system of government that emerges out of violence, against violence is doomed to fail, usually violently. Castro’s continued use of state execution is an appalling indictment on Cuba’s flirtation with socialism.
Martin- I think human beings are much more noble and selfless than you give credit for. Neolithic communities have shown long periods of peace and harmony living the same way for many thousands of years. Doubtless without the ice age we would still be living as hunter gatherers/ very basic farmers quite happily.
At this stage in our evolution we are just too immature to accept a system where we live in equality, and where we can move away from silly constructs such as private property and mass consumption.
As soon as we can figure out how to organise the means of production and consumption to meet all human kinds needs and wants without making them want things they do not need then socialism will flourish.
218 - Thanks for responding.
I find myself in a very difficult position. I actually believe that there could be a very strong case to be made for reining in government, but I do not hear anyone in politics making that case. I would love to hear it made, though, as while I may not end up agreeing, I would like the chance to find out whether I do or not. I was always someone who belived that spending money was the solutuon to our ills but as a high rate taxplayer who has seen a lot of money wasted over the last few years I am now not so sure. However, neither am I sure that going the other way would improve things - I suspect it would make them worse, but as I said, I would love a senior politician to explain why I might be wrong.
What you have said interests me greatly because it seems that the arguments currently taking place are nowhere near as black and white as they are being presented; essentially, it seems, what you are saying is that this is all about nuance. Again, I would love someone in politics to think that I am adult enough to get this.
In the end, God knows what I am trying to say! Except, perhaps, that our current political system is clearly not delivering in the way that we need it to. It relies to much on confrntation rather than dlialogue, on clear red lines and on assertion and opposition: none of which lends itself to sensible decision making. Saying tax cuts equals less nurses is a product of that system so until it changes that is the level of debate we are going to get. And that is a huge shame.
232: A system where we live in equality? How on earth would that come about, short of brain damaging everyone at birth to be the equal of the most brain damaged?
232. private property is not a silly construct!
232. Oh spare us the ‘noble savage’ stuff - anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows that is pure rot.
231. I didn’t mean to emphasise the state part of my description of society. Its just that’s what we were talking about.
I think I agree with: “Society = 60 million people and the way they all intereact with each other.” But I’d remind you that the state is definitely one way in which we interact with each other.
232 Not always. The US and the French systems of govt have done quite well, both have a bloody past. The history of our limited constitutional monarchy is not without violence.
“Taxpayers”, but don’t forget the extent to which some of the rich, famous, and influential avoid being taxpayers (which is OK, until they claim to speak for the rest of us).
229 - I should have said 213 in my original post. Sorry!
“And later Castro and Che were responsible for purging counter revolutionaries, many for as you say no good reason other than rumour. Whether the end justifies the means is debateable, but I cannot help but still be charmed by Che’s writings to make the world a fairer, socially just, healthier, well educated place. Why I am a lefty.”
Let me get this straight - you freely acknowledge that he was a cold blooded killer and *still* say that his example is why you are a lefty? Words fail, they really do.
re 163 we have mixed wards still in my Trust. The only segregation is separate bays. Wards are currently full to bursting. There is no capacity to open extra wards. Our brand few shiny hospital due to open in 2015 (built on the never never of course) will have 200 fewer beds than we currently have open. Winter pressure will not then be survived
225. I think “what is moral?” and “how do we enforce morality?” are two entirely separate questions. Thus you can be both pro-life and pro-choice. FWIW I think taxation is entirely justified in this situation as a means of enforcing morality.
242 That’s an example of more government idiocy, the asumption that if there arer fewer beds then fewer will be needed. While fewer beds are needed now than say 20 years ago, as we no longer keep people in hospital for extended lengths of time for no good reason (a week as an inpatient for a hernia repar for eg) the decrease in bed numbers has been faster than this. It means that every hospital is constantly full, with knock on effects on cleaning, patients being on the wrong ward etc
225 - Broadly, yes. There are secondary moral questions (”How can force be *legitimately* used to enforce morality?”, and “What constitutes proportionate use of force to enforce morality?”), but I wasnt addressing these.
The ‘morality’ of taxation is in the form of distributive justice you deem to be the most moral, rather than there being any moral benefit to taxation in and of itself. Arguably, the very fact that force is necessary to enforce morality denotes a moral deficiency - perfectly moral human beings would act in accordance with their moral model of distribution without need for enforcement. There is virtue in this, which is why we hold giving selflessly to charity in such high regard.
‘perfectly moral human beings would act in accordance with their moral model of distribution without need for enforcement’
How do we know what this moral model is? Is it some kind of average of a myriad individual models, or does it come from elsewhere? If it’s the former, how can we observe it?
@245:
Then I agree with you, you’ll be delighted to hear.
236- runnymede- we probably only started killing each other when resources became scarce. For 40-60,000 years Neolithics lived quite happily without the need to build bigger weapons to wipe each other out with.
So that would suggest that if we can figure out how to satisfy our holistic needs and wants we will resort to peaceful, harmonious ways to co-exist. And in my book private property and the market are counter intuitive turning us moreover into selfish, greedy, narcistic, ambitious, nasty creatures.
233. Southam Observer.
I hear what you’re saying. That’s just politics!
Labour/Conservative must appeal to the centre ground to win, so they feel constrained in what they can say, or do, for fear of frightening the horses. The media are especially prone to sensationalism, so there’s a general nervousness about pushing radical new thinking out there, lest it get distorted. However, rather perversely, they also feel obliged to exagarrate these differences in order to emphasise their differences from the “other lot” and given the voters a greater sense of choice.
That said, I do believe governments of a different political hue do make a difference. I believe a Labour government would spend and tax more and a Tory government spend and tax less. But, any changes in the economy would be a gradual and subtle shift, only noticeable over a number of years.
Governments can also “tack” their successors in their generally favoured direction if they can successfully move the centre ground of politics whilst in power - think Atlee and Thatcher. Nevertheless, I think the range of government spending as a % of the overall economy has been confined to a range between 37% and 44% over the past 30 years?? Indeed, it is interesting to postulate the state of the economy if spending had been kept down and the all the majority of the public sector debt had been repaid over the last 10 years rather than increased. Shame. We will never know
None of this “conservative” attitude to radically changing the structure of the public finances, of course, has any bearing on law-making (such as criminal law and immigration) or aspects of social and foreign policy, which can really be changed at more or less any time and are influenced far more by party ideology. Not that they do necessarily change!
Nothing is black & white. The older you get, the more you ground yourself in reality and realise there are always arguments on both sides. This can make you more cynical and sceptical about ideology in general, but it also makes you more receptive to basing your decisions on facts and when the facts change, you change your opinions!
241.
Some lefties have no shame, and continue to proselytise for soviet and chinese style communism, despite us all knowing the consequences. The suffering and mass deaths under communism, where not because both these places had the ‘wrong’ kind of communism, but it was inherent in the ideology of communism.
I fail to see how the motives of Che and his consequent actions can be any more excused then those who were found guilty at Nuremberg.
@248:
Tyson, you seem to have confused cause and effect. Is that something you do on a regular basis?
All this hippy talk about ‘holistic needs’ is making me antsy.
248. I’m sorry but your vision of some kind of neolithic arcadia is pure nonsense.
232/248. Tyson - did you swallow a communist manifesto for breakfast this morning or something?
@250:
Socialism, not communism. It’s a pedantic point, but certainly the Soviet Union never achieved communism as it was envisaged by Lenin and Trotsky. Certainly by Stalin’s time, there was no longer even a specific desire to attempt to achieve it.
One of the distinguishing features of communism (as a collective anarchist philosophy) is that the state withers away and ceases to exist- as such we can be very sure that Communism has never been achieved.
231. Isnt that what Mrs Thatcher was saying in her famous speech (and probably the most famous misquote of the last thirty years), she tells us there is no such thing as Society in the abstract/ the state, society is not the Government, or the state or something we have no control over, society is you and I, its our local neighbourhood, its the area we live in.
241- Random- I admit it sounds a tad incongruous. Violence, particularly state violence appalls me.
I can sort of understand violence to overthrow a despicable regime, but once in government, with one hands on the levers of power, to use state violence then against your own people is pretty desperate stuff.
256. So why then do you continue to admire people who did precisely that?
254. Martin Coxall: One of the distinguishing features of communism (as a collective anarchist philosophy) is that the state withers away and ceases to exist- as such we can be very sure that Communism has never been achieved.
I think it’s probably fair to say that communism might be the perfect system, if it weren’t for human nature making it impossible.
252- well explain then why neolithics surived for so long without changing their way of life?
258, that’s the point. Any system that requires people to behave perfectly or in an otherwise non-human way is a worthless system.
258. That withering away was supposed to happen because under communism, material goods would exist in such abundance that everyone would have more than enough of everything. An absurdly unrealistic conception, which defies the most basic precepts of economics and is more akin to religion - Marxism in a nutshell.
@258:
Well, quite. I said something very similar some way upthreads.
Lefties fail to understand that, when I describe Communism as “ideal” and “perfect”, I in no way mean it as a compliment.
259, Because they were stupid cavemen?
252. Of course it is rubbish, up until industrialisation life for the vast majority of mankind for the vast majority of time was nasty, brutish and short.
Hunter gatherer societies were always a couple of failed hunts away from starvation, with mass hunger, extremely high infant deaths (and deaths through child birth), little or no medicine was very far from pleasant.
Agrarian societies definitely improved on the situation, the creation of surplus goods allowed specialisation and facilitated trade, but even until quite recently, an agrarian society was only one bad winter away from starvation.
@259:
You answered your own question. And I quote, “we probably only started killing each other when resources became scarce”.
Essentially capitalism and socialism are competing economies of scarcity. In an environment where scarcity is no concern, a fundamentally different set of economic tenets apply, and it’s nonsensical to try to transplant doctrines from disconnected economic frames of reference.
Lefties criticise “reactionary” Conservatism, and yet here we have a lefty extolling the virtues and pleasures of stone-age society!
RAOTFLMAO.
Dave’s proposals sound prudent - will prevent a return to Brown’s boom and bust.
Deja vu anyone ?
264. yes - but at least they were ‘equal’ in their misery and malnutrition; that is all that matters to socialists it seems.
259. neolithics probably did not have the resources to do much more than fend for themselves. world domination and social idealism were probably low on the agenda.
Which stone-age film is your favourite: ‘One Million Years BC’ — gotta admit the sight of Rachel Welch in her fur bikini is rather tempting
— the anthropologically-accurate 80s effort ‘Quest for Fire’, or last year’s ‘10,000 BC’?
250. doesn’t sound like you have much of a clue what communism even is i’m afraid.
257- because people like them (Che) wanted to create something better for the majority which is why Gaz at 250 is wrong.
IMO opinion it is clearly unjust for a minority of human’s to live off the endeavours of a majority of poverty stricken illiterates supported by a corrput, murdurous Govt. This was the Cuba of the 50’s. Che’s cause was a noble one. I do not think you can say this about Hitler.
268. runnymede: at least they were ‘equal’ in their misery and malnutrition; that is all that matters to socialists it seems.
Equality of outcome.
“Che’s cause was a noble one. I do not think you can say this about Hitler.”
I refer you to Susan Sontag’s comment above.
244. every hospital being full is the idea. empty beds = inefficiency.
the challenge that the pursuit of efficiency gives us is to maintain full beds without having long waiting lists, and the answer to that is to consolidate local services into large central specialist units. this isn’t usually popular.
For Rawls, the moral notion of justice (distributive) can only exist in conditions of ‘moderate scarcity’.
If scarcity is severe, it’s every man for himself, and justice goes out the window; if all goods are abundant, and sufficient for each to have his fill, then justice doesn’t pertain.
We’ve never found the point of abundance that justice ceases to be necessary (though some upthread would claim that communism tried). We could, however, pinpoint where scarcity became only ‘moderate’ rather than severe, and it would be there that the notions of justice would appear to have sprung. If you believe Rawls, that is…
The typical violent death rate in hunter gatherer societies that have been studied was orders of magnitude higher than in even the most violent western society. One death every few years doesn’t sound like much, until you remember the total population size is only 40-60.
There is also clear archaeological evidence of neolithic trade routes - rare items turning up hundreds of miles from any possible source. For good or ill (I’d say good) trade and private property seem to have been part of human life for as long as we’ve been human.
Referring back to the earlier line of this thread - it seems to me that we have an ill educated electorate in thios country. It would be lovely to have a system where a politician could stand up and tell it like it is and what we must go through to sort out the mess - and yet not be slaughtered at the election. But we don’t have that. Cameron is tightly bound by what he can say and still win.
The clueless British people will always vote for more spending and less tax. Is it any wonder we go bankrupt every 30 years or so?
Maybe I’m being cynical, but I do believe that the Labour undermining of education and of free hinking is massively in their interest electorally.
Or perhaps we could quote from Tom Stoppard’s play ‘Rock and Roll’ instead:
“Let’s accept that the proletariat being given control of the means of production is a noble aim. But what does this have to do with imprisoning people for listening to Elvis Presley?”
275, not that simple. If you decrease the turn around time (ie the time beds are empty betwixt patients) then you decrease the time that there is for the sheets to be changed and proper cleaning to occur.
Obviously beds empty for too long are inefficient, but they most be empty for long enough for staff to clean them and change the sheets to keep up basic hygiene standards.
…free thinking…
272. Surely people who pretend to have a ‘noble’ cause but in fact behave as murderous tyrants are at least, if not more, reprehensible than those who simply behave as murderous tyrants.
The peaceful Arcadia of the neolithics some on here are lauding is largely imaginary. A very large proportion of the ‘artefacts’ that clutter museums are items that were used for killing - and given the large numbers of skeletal remains, or even not so skeletal come to that (Ossie in the Alps, bog sacrifices, etc) that died of violence, those weapons were not strictly reserved for hunting.
265- but Martin- the market creates scarcity. It thrives off scarcity, it promotes scarcity. It wastes countless resources to make us hanker after things that we do not need.
The point is that as soon we create a system of governance that satisfies ALL our needs and wants then we will achieve socialism. The reference to neolithic communities was only to illustrate that when we are not driven by the need to get more we can live in relative stability for a long time.
@284:
Tyson, you’ve done it again. You’ve confused cause and effect. You’re making a habit of this.
I see betfair have paid up on the date of next GE market for 2008
Can’t wait until Jan 2010 when I pick up the rest of my moolah
With regard to NHS. spending or not. Indeed to any increase in public spending,including tax cuts.
It is not really going to matter who wins the next election or when it is. Neither party is going to do what is required until we have total collapse of the economy.
Market forces are always present, no matter what your political hue. the downward spiral of the pound make for further Govt. debt re. contributions to the EU. The more Govt. borrows the higher the interest repayments, the more it borrows the higher the perceived risk by other economies, the higher the interest rates they demand. To the point where it is no longer sensible to lend us money.
Then the presses start in earnest printing money to pay public sector wages.
Inflation already rampant because we mainly import our commodities becomes a massive problem.
Cue a Zimbabwe scenario.
The question is at what point will people face up to the truth and realise the only way available is IMHO. an 80% cut in public spending, this is political suicide for any party unless the public realise the sense of the move, hence this will only occur at the last second and may be to late.
If at the beginning of this crisis Mr. Brown had realised the danger and had more modestly cutback public expenditure, reducing public debt even slightly. We may have averted this situation but unfortunately, in spite of him being a world class economist, he choose to reflate the economy going into a recession, where most would recommend a slight reflation on the the way out of a recession.
The result the spiral we are in.
280. cleaning time is not relevant here. cutting corners on that has not been suggested.
284 - What would hundreds of millions of people do if they weren’t employed making things we don’t need?
287. maybe you could explain why US government debt is at record levels and yet T-bill yield has been negative recently
259 How do you know that neolithic man didn’t fight wars? There is no evidence of this, in fact I believe there is some (limited) archaeological evidence for human-on-human violence or possibly cannibalism. Neolithic man built megalithic monuments, which implies a fairly advanced form of social organisation, I suspect the infrastructure was there to fight wars, and the fact that people lived closely enough together to build monuments requiring vast amounts of labour means that resource allocation may have been a problem.
(Although technically the neolithic period only started in about 10000 BC)
But, in short, I’d say it was completely unprovable, even for the palaeo- and mesolthic periods which are probably what you meant.
289. Starve. But that’s OK - once we have got the population back to neolithic levels we will be in paradise again.
277/283- I do not think the archaeological evidence is that conclusive. For instance they could have used violent measures to euthanise suffering quickly.
The fact is that these communities stayed as they were for many thousands of years pretty much untouched. No need to develop weaponary, or technology to get the upper hand. Why? probably because there was less competition for resources. It was after the Ice Age when we developed quickly.
290. ed. try this as a link if it works it might go some of the way to answering your question
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/709-Why-What-Theyre-Doing-Cant-Work.html
293, either that or rubbish transport and communications retarded progress severely.
295. Perhaps the education system was at fault.
294. that is just drivel, and doesn’t begin to address the question.
293. tyson, as far as i can tell your example is picked purely because it is hard to argue something archaelogists know almost nothing about.
if that is the best you can come up with, the underlying argument is likely quite weak.
Tories announce a 4.1 bn tax break for basic rate savers/pensioners which even GB y’day said was a group they were ‘looking at’ - Labour say it’s an unfunded tax-cut & numbers don’t add up…
Tories don’t announce something - they are a do nothing party.
It’s amusing isn’t it given the projected debt that GB intends racking up for us.
297. Too many long words for you ed ?
Hmmm, let me see. A miserable, short life or unrelenting hardship and no opportunities for personal fulfilment but with no chance of being killed in a nuclear war and the comfort that my great-grandfather and great-grandson lived/will live exactly the same, or the life I have now? Tough call, Tyson.
287. To get the Uk economy back on track we can probably get by with a real terms cut of 10-15% in public expenditure and employment mainly coming from those areas which have seen the largest rises such as education and healthcare and also housing benefits and subsidies. Although this would have to go in concert with taxing people like non-doms and the very rich who have usd tax havens and other tax breaks loop holes to escape paying tax.
Good for my wallet; sad for Minnesota :
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50405S20090105
Words of wisdom from Professor Juan Cole:
“The Israeli leadership knew that it could not reply to Hamas’s microwar without engaging in total war on the Gaza population, and that this step would be unpopular with the world’s publics. But the Israeli leadership has successfully thumbed its nose at world public opinion so often and so successfully that this sort of consideration does not even enter into their practical calculations (except to the extent that they are careful to do a lot of propaganda for their war effort).
The Israel lobbies are wealthy and powerful, and the US congress depends heavily on them for campaign funding. If the US legislators voted on the Gaza operation, they would support Israel except for the same 10 who objected to the war on Lebanon (the 10 are mostly from congressional districts with a lot of Arab-Americans). European governments have largely ceded the Palestinian-Israeli issue to the US and Israel.
The big long-term problem Israel has is that its assiduous colonization of the West Bank has made a two-state solution almost impossible, turning it into an Apartheid state. And if you go on practicing Apartheid long enough, that begins to attact boycotts and sanctions. And forestalling a Palestinian state means that likely the Palestinians will all end up Israeli citizens.
The Palestinians are Israel’s problem. War on them, circumscribe them, colonize them all you like. They aren’t going anywhere, and you can’t keep them stateless and virtually enslaved forever, occasionally exterminating some of them as though they were vermin when they make too much trouble. That, sooner or later, will lead to boycotts by rising economic powers and by Europe that could be extremely damaging to Israel’s long-term prospects as a state.”
Malcolm
One of the main reasons for neolithic ’stasis’ is the low population. With fewer people, and disproportionately fewer geniuses, as well as poorer communications, new ideas would naturally be much rarer, and propagate more slowly.
I say ’stasis’ in quotes, because that is arguably a matter of perspective. Compared to the manic pace of change today, the neolithic period seems to have been at a standstill, but that’s the wrong yardstick. The simple bow is trivial to us, but at the time of its invention was as big a change as the entire industrial revolution.
179
The 650 or so PFI’s that Brown has committed to adds an additional £ 110 billion to public sector debt
303. Not necessarily, it’s a US election. Still got a couple of months in court at least.
288 Of course it’s not suggested - it’s not an aim, but a side effect! When every bed is always full there will be less time/ability to clean the bed and the area around it. Having every bed full means that patients will end up on the wrong wards (medical patients on surgical wards most commonly). It also means that patients spend a long time on trolleys in the “we’re really not an A+E dept” that every hospital now has, waiting for a bed on the ward. Plus there is the obvious efficiency of the huge amount of effort being put in to magic beds from nowhere, and the cancelled operations because there are no beds.
One week before Xmas on 3 consecutive days I got into work at 8am, and then sat around waiting till about 2pm waiting for beds to be available so we could actually do some operations. Obviously several cases got cancelled each day - is that efficiency?
301 There is nothing to stop tyson living in a mud hut on a remote island and wearing hide clothes, if he wishes.
But, I suspect tyson finds it more comfortable to live in leafy North Oxford.
And rightly, because comfort is not to be despised.
But, comfort implies success in the competition for scarce resources. Others have laboured to maintain tyson (and ourselves) in our comfort. And hence, we have a very different society to Neolithic Britain.
re 288 of course it’s bloody relevant. You cannot clean a bed whilst a patient is in it. Patients also do not fall ill according to your strictly defined timetable. A lot of them fall ill together like in a flu outbreak or a pile-up on the motorway.
302.
a) Time limit benefits (1 year max for housing and unemployment)
b) No more final salary pension schemes for public workers
c) Cut international aid by 50%
d) Cancel the VAT cut.
Ed. T- bills sold by the US govt, are sold at auction for a fixed time limit they are sold below par value and redeeemed at par value. No one is going to bid more for them at auction than their par value. So unless you have bought them through an agent charging you a higher % than the profit on redemption I fail to see how you could have a negative yield
Petition on the .gov site to get rid of Gordon Brown due to gross financial incompetence in running the British economy, as mentioned elsewhere by Thread Killer . Just think of what he’s done to the housing market, economy etc.
Click the link and sign up now.
G0 ON - YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!
298- ed- I am going to fish out my old books. I remember with “bog man” there were a hundred different explanations about how he died. I was fascinated more by the long term stability of the neolithics.
Presumably if we were competing for scarce resources we would have got into an arms race many thousands of years ago.
I thought that you made a good point earlier that a revolution isn’t the best platform to implement socialism, and that socialism would need alot more time to bed in than a couple of years. And folk who tarnish poeple like Che and the Nazi’s with the same brush need to read more.
303
Good for your wallet, even better for my friends in Minneota.
Mlcolm
290 not sure why the question was asked but the reason T-Bill yields are so low/negative is the same reason that Gilt yields are so low - it is a bubble largely being driven by forced purchases. In the UK for example government lends to banks, forces them to buy gilts (to improve liquidity) and can then moan on about the banks not providing enough credit to the private sector.
69 - I can give you a more up to date view than 2002
I ended up in hospital in January last year.
I was told to report to hospital “x” as a matter of urgency (they are expecting me). When I get there (Casualty) have to wait to be seen by triage nurse. Then told I shouldn’t be there I am now expected in another hospital the other side of town. Get over there straight away as they are expecting you.
Get there, find where I’m meant to go… no one there!!!
Find someone, told they all gone to lunch and come back in an hour and a half (this is supposed to be urgent mind you!!!)
Come back, wait, wait some more, wait even longer then FINALLY someone takes a look.
He takes a look and gets his boss in to take a look.
He takes one look and says get him admitted now.
Cue ringing around trying to find a bed………..
Bed found, I present myself BACK at the OTHER hospital and I’m lucky enough to get a side room.
Anyway, I look at the floor and its dirty, I dont mean slightly dusty or there is a sweet wrapper on the floor I mean disgusting.
I dont like to make a fuss but I turn to my wife and say there is no way I’m staying in this room
Luckily the nurse comes in, sees what i’m looking at leaves the room and 10 mins later comes back to ask me to move to another room.
This one is fine and I end up spending a few nights there.
Now, in all fairness I want to say the staff who treated me were mainly brilliant but they were all rushed off their feet (which I feel impacts on some of the following). There were not enough staff either nurses or doctors to cope with the need.
I spoke with some of the staff there and they told me that wards were laying empty due to lack of staff.
I was also overprescribed pain killers due to human error and given the wrong medication to take home with me (luckily I noticed but was told by one nurse they were ok to take!!!!)
In my stay blood was spilt whilst putting a drip in, it was still there on the floor when I left……..
My sister in law and brother in law have also both had poor experiences in the last 3 years.
I was also surprised to hear recently from another relative of the waiting time they face for treatment, I thought that was supposed to have improved?
re 307 is Obama’s/Biden’s declaration tomorrow afternoon going to be on TV anywhere
312. yields did go negative briefly last month, and are certainly hovering in the zero region. completely disproving your original argument, that high debt means higher cost of servicing that debt.
maybe you need to rethink.
305 The neolithic wasn’t a “static period” - Tyson presumably was talking about an earlier era as from beginning of the Neolithic in around 12,500 BC human society underwent massive changes over next 8,000-9,000 years evolving towards a sedentary, agricultural society, the rise of metal working and the civilisations of Egypt, Sumeria and elsewhere. It was a time of massive climate change as the ice sheets disappeared, huge areas of new land appeared to be colonised.
The stasis Tyson means is I assume the middle or the upper Paloelithic where particularly pre 50,000 years or so ago the seem to have been very slow changes. Even then I’m not sure it was an ideal society - evidence of cannabalism, weapons as well as hunting instruments.
IF Martin Day is around, its FORK not FOLK. (see Martin’s LD rant blog)
311. Why only a 50% cut?
302. I agree with where you are going, but taxing non doms and the very rich unfortunately won’t work,they have far to much ‘wiggle’ power to get out of it. Even to the extent of leaving the country,but I do like the sentiment.
305- Robert- I am going to have to re-visit my anthropology books. Were there not some highly dense neolithic populations- and by that I mean ten’s/ possibly hundreds of thousands. I am thinking in North America.
Given a relatively good food supply, and a mild climate human beings are rather good breeders.
For those wishing to follow the PBC Diplomacy game, here’s the map after Autumn 1901
http://www.playdiplomacy.com/game_play_details.php?game_id=6044
308, 310. you are completely missing the point. organising for all the (used) beds in each hospital to be cleaned regularly is one of the simplest organisational tasks in the NHS, and not relevant.
my original comment was that leaving beds empty is grossly inefficient (e.g. overcapacity in order to deal with the winter ’surge’ etc.). long waiting lists are quite efficient, although very unpopular of course.
Ed. Who was buying the bills at an immediate loss. I want to know their names, I have a few good business propositions for them.
320- Ted- the impact of the ice age obviously had a dramatic effect on human development. But, again from memory, most human societies make reference to the garden of Eden or some sort in their prehistorical past, probably a time when the climate was warmer, and food more plentiful.
327. no idea, but they were
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aOGXsWKEI6F4&
321 MD has several different blogs since the New Year strangely they’re all about the same subject. He is also posting everywhere but here under any number of names, the most amusing being Nick Clegg MP.
326 - You would think that cleaning in a hospital was ‘one of the simplest tasks in the NHS’ - but it one where they keep failing.
In June last year, I had to complain about the state of a private room and a ward in an oncology department.
In November, the standards had no improved. The room my mother was in had not been cleaned in some time. There were sharp shards of plastic on the floor, unidentified tablets under the bed, broken mobility aids left with screws exposed, a dead plant on a shelf, dirt on the floor and so on. The air vent in the ceiling of the room was covered by a sheet of christmas paper - thus preventing proper circulation of clean air.
This was at a time when the hospital was in near lockdown because of a contagious bug.
The room had clearly not been cleaned in between patients and probably for some time.
The ward was operating at less than 50% capacity so there should have been no problem with allocating sufficient time to rectify these matters - but it didn’t happen.
The NHS (as an institution) no longer cares for patients. There are many staff who do their very best but the resources do not reach the front line.
328. Haha. And now hymn No.325…
Attn Mike Smithson, I have e mailed you.
Anyway- away from anthropology, and political science the most important questions are presently being answered by astro physics. I am presently taken by the fact that our expanding universe is at some point likely to collapse in a few hundred billions years or so leading to the same conditions that created the big bang and the start of time which probably means that history is circular. This of course means that we could have lived this day an infinite number of times on a 1000 billion year loop or so. Quite depressing really.
331. one of the simplest organisational tasks in the NHS does not mean it gets done by the way, i phrased it deliberately in an (obviously failed) attempt to be clear.
there are far more significant difficulties in an organisation of that size.
New thread and Marf cartoon
326 ed do you not understand? You cannot discharge one patient and then stick the next one in the same bed sheets and all. Patients do not get admitted and discharged at “regular times”. Regular cleaning is all well and good and necessary, but you still have to clean the bed and the bed space between one patient being dicharged and the next one arriving.
328 pre-Neolithic I would venture, possibly also memories of where their ancestors had come from. When I was in Zambia in September I asked a guide who his people were and he replied “we are baTonga, we came to stay here from the Congo”, which they most probably had done but around a millenium ago but it remains part of their identity.
334. i can’t think of many questions less important than those currently being addressed by astrophysics.
there will, pretty much by definition, never be any proof of what happened before the big bang, and conversely what might happen after a big crunch event(which is pure speculation by the way).
339. But how will this affect the GE spread markets?
324 By the actual neolithic, 10 000BC onwards, we definitely weren’t in stasis. Before that, it’s debatable whether we were in the americas at all.
Anatomically modern humans appear somewhere around 50-70,000 BC. What happened before then is of limited relevance to humans, but there appears to have been very slow change, rather than stasis, and pretty low population densities. Language is essentially undatable - we know the Neanderthals would have had a restricted vocal range while the oldest language families are traceable to 6-10 kYr BP - but a reasonable guess is that it originated at the same time as modern humans.
Between 50 kYr BP and 10 kYr BP, there was slow but steady progress, and steadily increasing population densities in favourable areas. Around 5,000 years ago, populations were high enough to cross some threshold, and people switched to agriculture, which then allowed much swifter population increases.
The way it seems to work is that hunter gatherer populations steadily grow - despite constant internal violence - until they exceed the carrying capacity of the land, whereupon some tribes invent farming, though this is a simplification. Among other things, there are several steps to full-blown farming.
Consider too, a small population with zero average growth is likely to random walk its way to oblivion. To survive in the long term, the culture has to be biased towards steady growth, ruling out the possibility of stasis.
A disclaimer - I’m not an anthropologist, just a well informed M.A.
” Labour say it’s an unfunded tax-cut & numbers don’t add up… ”
Agreed, LOL! - and borrowing billions from ‘nowhere’ to be paid back ’sometime never’ adds up fine and dandy does it Mr Brown?
Has anyone worked out how many times Brown has taken PMQs since the HoC rose for the summer recess last July? By my reckoning, it’s only about 8 times over 6 months - astonishing.