Re: This NI increase for Social/Health Care
 

Summed it up perfectly for me Seph, not much use to some poor bugger with a broken leg are they :rolleyes:

Re: This NI increase for Social/Health Care
 

Whenever I see someone's salary being benchmarked to the Prime Minister's in this fashion, there's inevitably a big straw being clutched at. The Telegraph rarely disappoints in this respect these days. Alas it's followed the instant opinion, zero analysis trend.

What would be useful to know is if other roles are being removed and the benchmark salary for comparable roles.

Re: This NI increase for Social/Health Care
 

IF the roles are required , then you need to decide if you're going to pay the money that's needed to attract the level of talent you require for the role.

Competition for candidates in certain fields of work is insanely fierce right now. I've had a couple of bonkers offers without even applying for roles.

Re: This NI increase for Social/Health Care
 

Re: This NI increase for Social/Health Care
 

Debt is forecast to be 233% of GDP by 2060 regardless of Covid.

Structural reform and decisions about what we do pay for through taxation, and ultimately WHO pays, has been absolutely inevitable for some time.

I do find it odd so many arch-capitalists turn socialist in their 60s and 70s so long as they don’t have to sell their house.

Re: This NI increase for Social/Health Care
 

Re: This NI increase for Social/Health Care
 

Labour leading in the latest polls. Not a mark of a coherent Labour policy - I'm certain of that much - but indicative of the challenge I've described. Nobody wants to pay for generations of cans being kicked down the road.

Re: This NI increase for Social/Health Care
 

The cans have to get down the road somehow . . and seeing as there's a shortage of lorry drivers, kicking them seems a decent idea ;)

I'm sure it's something most politicians have experience of anyway

Re: This NI increase for Social/Health Care
 

Hiring bureaucrats is typical. Happens all the time more money is made available because someone has to control how that money is spent and that someone is expensive. It also happen even more with Tory government, the civil service can't let them get away with doing something worthwhile so they will find a way to make it less effective without actually opposing it.


My grandmother used to say that getting rid of matron from the wards was a huge mistake. It moved control to administrators who had very different aims than running a ward well.


It's nigh on impossible to revert though. You'd need someone to monitor that it is all working better and those someones likely want to keep their cushy jobs and their agency in work so may not report favourably.


There is wastage in most parts of public service. But correcting it often creates more wastage in other areas and, for the NHS, patients will be the ones to suffer. You can't ask a sick person to wait until the system is working OK before they get treated.

Re: This NI increase for Social/Health Care
 

Actually, Seph, the government has since given more than that to the NHS.

---------- Post added at 20:56 ---------- Previous post was at 20:54 ----------

That doesn’t change the fact that Covid had not been factored into the manifesto.

---------- Post added at 21:00 ---------- Previous post was at 20:56 ----------

The fact that Labour has, this far into a period of government where tough decisions have had to be made, only just scraped into be more popular in the opinion polls, is only news because it has taken so long.

Opposition parties always tend to be more popular in the first few years of a newly elected government.

The Conservatives certainly aren’t kicking the care home can down the road. They are addressing the problem, which is more than Labour have done in the decades that were available to them.

---------- Post added at 21:05 ---------- Previous post was at 21:00 ----------

The fact that the NHS must hire all these highly paid managers to tell them how to spend the money indicates to me that they didn’t need the money in the first place. Otherwise they would know exactly where the money should go.

I would be more impressed if they hired managers to work out how to be more efficient. Spending millions on private health provision and then not using it is just one little example of the nature of the problem.