[jfman]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

It's pretty arrogant of you to suggest that people don't understand the issues. You are assuming that most of the electorate are a bunch of retards who can't make sensible decisions on what they want.

I didn’t call anyone retards so there’s no need for such emotive terminology to be deployed.

I think it’s rather arrogant of anyone to claim they do understand all of the various issues in an election and I find it inherently improbable that the vast majority of people look beyond 2 or 3 issues. These could be local issues, constitutional issues, social issues.

What is very clear is that most people do want tax cuts. They also want good quality services, and they expect the government to provide these efficiently. It is the latter that is causing the problems - too much bureaucracy and outdated, inefficient systems.

People do indeed want tax cuts. People do indeed want public services. Nobody has been honest for the last 40 years that you can’t have both.

Bureaucracy, outdated inefficient systems, is straightforward terminology deployed by those who want to privatise everything in the absence of any evidence that such inefficiency exists. If you compare, for example, administrative costs in the NHS as a proportion of all costs to the privatised US healthcare sector you will find the NHS spends a far lower proportion on administration.

The NHS can also use it’s purchasing power to drive down the price of drugs in a manner that smaller private companies cannot. As can be seen from the “concerns” the USA plan on bringing to the table in any future trade discussions.

The fact that this seems to come as a surprise to you is telling.

Telling of what exactly?

I think it is perfectly reasonable for our electorate to demand efficiency before pushing ever increased shedloads of money into an expanding black hole.

A statement in the absence of any evidence at all.

We are paying an absolute fortune into the NHS but service levels keep going down. Strange, that.

Probably the profits being creamed out of it from PFI initiatives, etc. People living longer. There’s no magic wand to that.

Pity the last Labour government didn't note that, jfman.

Neither did their predecessors. 40 years of failure has led to £2 trillion of debt. Every year we have to shell out £40bn a year in interest payments on this debt. That strikes me as a fairly inefficient use of funds for the fifth richest country in the world.

£40bn of course that could go into the NHS, for example.