[jem]

"Voters want high levels of healthcare, benefits, adult social care but don't want to pay the high taxes that these need. Hence populist politicians who talk of purging excessive spending but can't deliver.”

Sometimes referred to as ‘we want Scandinavian levels of service while paying American levels of tax’ - simply won’t; indeed can’t happen.

Purging excessive spending, ie, eliminating waste is a general go-to for populists, and yes, I’m absolutely sure that you could find ‘waste’ in every public body. The question though is how much would you save by eliminating said waste, and how much will it cost?

Which does sound odd, but hypothetically, you identify a group of people that you think could be let go, because they, apparently deal with some ‘woke’ initiative - say ‘black, one legged, lesbians, in theatre’. Fine - you now need to pay them off; but is that only what they did, or did they do other tasks which now aren't being done?

I used to frequent a similar forum where a particular poster was outraged by the cost of Parliament’s subsidised bar - and used to post that if this and ‘MP’s parties’ were stopped, then it would solve the NHS funding issues! It was absolutely impossible to convince him otherwise. Presumably the difference between a thousand and a million and a billion completely eluded him. Shame really.