Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

[Baleforce]

My take on Labours start to their time in office is that they are probably about a 6 out of 10.

They have made some naive mistakes. I suspect they will take us back into the EU by the back door.

But as I want to see more public owned utilities I am prepared to over look it, it's only Labour who will start getting our services to where we need to be. So I am looking at the bigger picture and backing them.

Would like to see more research grants for our science industry which is actually world class and something I follow very closely.

How?

You know who puts a lot of money into scientific research…

 

[Gutter Boy]

How?

You know who puts a lot of money into scientific research…

Israel, Korea and the US?

Research & development spending as a share of GDP

Includes basic research, applied research, and experimental development.

ourworldindata.org

 

[SkipRat]

Do we get bullied into it? I don't think we do. I don't think the global.elite and large multi-national corps are phoning up Kier Starmer and going "give me a preferential deal or I'm gone". At that level it's a market. That's what people need to understand with this ideological "tax the rich and big business" stuff. When you're dealing with people and businesses at that level, your taxation regime and actually you're entire economic policy framework is actually more of a sales pitch rather than a "how can we get money out of them". You've got to stop seeing taxation as a "method of funding the NHS". The bank of England can literally fart sterling out of its behind if it wants to. The responsibility of government in respect of economic policy is to create an environment amidst the current global landscape where British people and businesses can thrive. That will ultimately generate the most tax revenue - if everyone is doing well, earning money and spending it, everything's good. And the biggest sources of stimulation are wealthy people and large corporates. You get a large corporate to set up in the UK that's going to be hundreds of new jobs. Maybe thousands. But getting them to come here rather than, say, France, means selling to them, not clobbering them. Likewise, a wealthy person choosing the UK as his western European Base will mean high end property deals for British law firms and estate agents, it will mean staff employment, it will mean UK bank deposits and so on and so forth.

I agree and disagree with many parts of this.

I agree that the NHS needs a complete overhaul and whether people like it or not, allowing hundreds of thousands of people in to the country is never going to help. Yes, immigration is a good thing, just like having a social drink or two, but as always, too much of good thing, never turns out good. And it is not just numbers of people either, the types of medicines and treatments has also grown exponentially, many being very expensive indeed, many of which where never dreamed of when the NHS was first started has also had a huge impact on the cost of running the NHS.

But it is laughable you think that biggest source of stimulation are large corporate. This is the biggest load of waffle I have ever read. For starters when big corporate companies set up in the UK, nearly all of the jobs created are minimum wage, with people barely earning enough to feed their families, and pay their rent. The profits they make are then siphoned out of the country into offshore bank accounts for them and their investors. It is an undeniable fact that the best form economic growth is through family run local businesses, as the money they make gets spent and stays in the local economy. Corporations providing minimum wage does nothing to the local economy as no one can afford to do anything, especially if they have families. The biggest lie that ever gets told is that we need corporations, we don't. What we don't we need actual mechanisms that allow local companies to thrive, and remove big chains and corporations from they high street, as they are the single biggest cause of money being taken out of local economies.

I don't want no investment from any person or company who's intention are suck as much as they can from us, as cheaply as possible, then claim they are doing us a favor.

 

[Kompakted]

There is a difference between people getting a living wage and a CEO wanting better margins to feather his own nest.

Not really. This idea that nurses and doctors are on the breadline and going to food banks to scrape by is total tosh. In fact, Labour are expected to u-turn on changes to pension tax relief for high earners as analysis showed it would disproportionately affect public sector workers and particularly NHS staff. The group cited that would be supplying among the largest uplift in government revenue based on these changes were nurses. Obviously the disproportionate impact is partly down to how gold-plated their pension schemes are, but it also highlights that many nurses are, in fact, in the high earner tax bracket.

Again in both cases it's about market. You don't pay NHS nurses enough- they leave and you have a huge backlog of vacancies. BUPA and other private practitioners pay a qualified nurse over £70K a year.

With a CEO of a large corporate, they are merely pointing out that they can easily relocate to France or Germany if conditions in the UK become uncompetitive.

 

[SpiderSpurs]

On the GB News thing earlier, Kemi Badenoch claimed that the Tory's have put almost £700m a week, yes a week into the NHS since Brexit????

She even mentioned the £350m on the side of the bus.

I'm pretty sure that's bollox!!

 

[Gutter Boy]

On the GB News thing earlier, Kemi Badenoch claimed that the Tory's have put almost £700m a week, yes a week into the NHS since Brexit????

She even mentioned the £350m on the side of the bus.

I'm pretty sure that's bollox!!

I think that might actually be true (for once). Im pretty sure NHS funding has gone up by more than £350m a week since Brexit.

Its all leaked out to their big pharma mates through our destructive tendering regulations, but it has gone in.

 

[Kompakted]

On the GB News thing earlier, Kemi Badenoch claimed that the Tory's have put almost £700m a week, yes a week into the NHS since Brexit????

She even mentioned the £350m on the side of the bus.

I'm pretty sure that's bollox!!

It's not gonads actually. It's partly more accident than design on the tories part but yes, due to the uplift in funding for Covid that hadn't ever fully been stripped away (and has likely actually simply become a permanent funding benchmark), the NHS now has way more than £350 million a week extra than when that Brexit claim was made:
- Health & social care budget for 2016/2017 (when the bus claim was made) was £143.1 billion.
- Current budget is £179 billion so an uplift of circa £36 billion year or circa £692 million a week.

 

[SkipRat]

On the GB News thing earlier, Kemi Badenoch claimed that the Tory's have put almost £700m a week, yes a week into the NHS since Brexit????

She even mentioned the £350m on the side of the bus.

I'm pretty sure that's bollox!!

Nope it is not, Theresa May upped the NHS budget by that amount, but did it over several years, the last addition being in 2022 or something. People still moaned about, something about trying to avoid yearly % increases or something. It was a slimy way to do it, but it was done.