I/O

@Steve I agree they put extra cash in, but they started the PFI stuff I believe? (Not sure about that)
But main main objection is that they put extra cash in that was to pay for unecessary management.
During that period I’ve seen the worst form of care in the NHS I’ve ever seen, from what was effectively manslaughter through incompetance three times to terrible nursing care and insane management layers that caused nothing other than suffering.

But yes is was and really still is underfunded.

PFI was the Tories. New Labour didn’t get rid of it a the combination of redressing the financial leeching that ahd occurred and financing the build of new premises was a bit more than could be afforded. They did can a few later on and helped with buy outs in a few instances.

Management increase mainly occurred pre-Labour although the main problem with management is that left alone in a dimly lit area they grow.

WRT current funding – the mantra is CIP¹ which roughly translates as see how much more you can do by spending less and then next year we will give you less and ask you to do even more for less.

¹ Cost Improvement

from what was effectively manslaughter through incompetence

Didn’t they call that The Liverpool Care Pathway?

I’ve long wondered about Gove’s mental stability,

Well, there must be something wrong with a person who is so desperate for power that he’d stab his friend in the back (to remove him from opposition) and willingly inherit the gigantic pile of poo that Parliament has become.

I’m conflicted. I’d rather like him to dish the dirt on May too (as I really don’t like May), but out of the two of them I can’t think which one would be worse.
This choice, it’s like asking a man about to die where he’d like the bullet. There’s no good response.

for no good reason instead of just trusting the market to come up with the solutions people really need.

Wow, that’s naive. That is like trusting the banks to self regulate.

Seriously – the market came up with lots of solutions and arcane pricing structures and surcharges to ensure that everybody got fleeced at least some of the time.

A few years back, before the EU cap on roaming charges, I had a friend visit. He had a British phone that roamed to the same network as me. We called each other. The call was low latency and sounded very clear. We both guessed it probably went about as far as the local call routing centre…and back again.
While I got charged for an international call to the UK, and he got charged for roaming for a call from the UK.
Meanwhile, at the same time, on the house phone, if I found my Japanese soulmate, I could phone her every single day for hours at a time¹ for free. Plus I phone mom for a chat every day from my mobile to the house phone, for something like half an hour at a time (while I’m on break at work). For free. Yet it still costs me something like €0,69 for a single SMS to the UK.
Mobile pricing doesn’t make sense. And the EU gave the operators something like a decade to get their mess in order. The directive against excessive roaming charges was pretty much the last chance option, not the EU deciding to meddle for the sake of it.

it is obviously bad because people who do not need roaming at all now pay for those who need it,

Probably. Because mobile operators on the whole are greedy bastards who have never gotten over the “special exclusiveness” that they had in the mid ‘90s. There was a time when using a mobile was horrendously expensive. If the operators had their way, it still would be. Don’t think the operators care even slightly about what is “good for the market”. Their shareholders are the only people of concern. We’re just the revenue source.

You talk of people too dumb/lazy/whatever to disable their data roaming?

It is more complicated than that. Data roaming is fairly simple to turn off on later models of Android phones. Indeed, your carrier might have it switched off by default.
However, it is possible for a phone to roam onto another country’s network if the signal is stronger than a local signal for ALL purposes. Just as my friend’s British phone locked into ORANGE F because that was the roaming provider in France. Now if a person receives, or makes, a call via a roaming connection – kerching!
It is quite a bit harder to lock a phone down to what network it will connect to, especially when a different network claims compatibility. As far as I can see in Android 5, there is no “don’t roam at ALL” option.
I have looked, as it seems recently (last 2-3 months) my phone loses its data connectivity. I look, and I see it is apparently connected to ORANGE F but there’s that little ‘R’ symbol next to the signal strength indicating that I am roaming. This means one of two things:
1. Orange has struck a deal with one of the other networks to enhance coverage (though the data drops out as the phone recognises it is roaming)
or:
2. Orange has ballsed things up so from time to time a valid subscriber’s SIM only partially connects to the network, and the phone mistakes this as being roaming.
Given it is Orange, either option is possible. ;-)

Didn’t they call that The Liverpool Care Pathway?

Actually the The Liverpool Care Pathway when applied appropriately worked well. My mother was put on it at the request of the whole family. With hindsight none of us have any regrets.

However, it is possible for a ’phone to roam onto another country’s network if the signal is stronger than a local signal for ALL purposes.

I have often noticed the message “Welcome to Iceland” whilst crossing the channel.

There is evidently a Sargasso Sea-like region there where the unwary might think they had a valid connection and incur multiple charges.

Be aware!

Nothing to do with immigrants or the EU – just a blip in network coverage!

But beware! Iceland isn’t even in the EU! Just like us, apparently!

Are there any controls?

Actually the The Liverpool Care Pathway when applied appropriately worked well.

The incoming item is CASTLE – Care And Support Towards Lifes End. Associated computer system of course.

Are there any controls?

Not once you are “outside the EU”.

And when considering the poor mobile companies and how they must struggle to survive, so need to extract cash from their victims… erm users, also bear in mind the sheer extent of their tax dodging and the cosy ‘special’ deals they’ve made in the past with the UK IR. See back issues of PE for the shocking a details of how they did this. Buying the right persons a lunch or two can reap rewards…

@Steve why oh why it has been left to get worse for the last 20 years is beyond me.
It just seemed to me that the PFI seemed to go mad during 2000-2010.
It was terrible in the 1990’s, but the “fix” was to add a massive management layer.
My main gripe is again that the care that I’ve seen in the NHS was chronically bad and was brushed under the carpet, yes bad to the extent that people died.
It’s only very recently that things are started to get investigated, but from what I saw what is being exposed is just the tip of the iceberg.
The management during 2000-2010 was insane, it appeared – from an outsider – that doctors, nurses etc. were not allowed to do anything, I mean anything without management approval.
When anyone mentions KPI’s I really start to feel a psychotic wave come over me ;-)

It just seemed to me that the PFI seemed to go mad during 2000-2010.

To people outside the effect isn’t visible immediately. You were seeing the stuff rumbling down the line from the Tory changes and hacks.

It was terrible in the 1990’s, but the “fix” was to add a massive management layer.

As I said earlier, breeding in dimly lit corners :) Getting rid of unnecessary paper shufflers is always difficult. There is a review, the review concludes there should be fewer, the most useless are the ones with free time to participate in the review and decision on who should go, and turkeys never vote for christmas.
First saw it years ago when working for the local council with a massively top heavy social services setup. They reduced manpower and kept all the top managers and their secretaries.

You need to realise that:

A) The ‘established’ belief system of economics is that ‘private’ debt essentially doesn’t matter. Before the crash most mainstream economists didn’t even try to collect info on the levels of private debt.

B) The point of PFI and its clones is – for politicians – to shove government debt ‘off the books’. To do that they’ll use every trick they can. Claim that ‘private enterprise is better’ when it demonstarably isn’t, etc. The ‘comparisions’ that work out if PFI is cheaper than state funding are all rigged with assumptions biassed against the state funded approach.

C) It also means more money for the people who pay the politicians and give them jobs once they leave Westminster. The big companies ‘lend’ researchers to the MPs to tell them what to think. Then the MPs get jobs with the companies in their after life. And/or get donations from them when in office.

This is why we end up with so many MPs across parties being ‘clones’ with the same dumn views of economics that clash with mere reality.

Some economists warned for years that a crash would come. Even I kept saying that letting people borrow seven times their annual income for a 120 percent mortgage was dangerously crazy. Alas I – like most people – had no idea just how ‘private’ debt had ballooned in the USA and UK because the figures were hard to find. I expected problems in the UK for a decade before the crash. But didn’t realise just how much bigger the problems were in the USA because of lack of data.

Some people – e.g. Steve Keen – did find info and kept trying to flag this up. But it was (and probably still is) almost impossible for an academic economist to buck this. The main journals won’t publish their work and they don’t get promoted because they don’t fit in with the dominating faith system which earns the faithful money from the companies that get the money from the debt and PFIs, etc.

In recent years we’ve had the same old behaviour with a new hat. Its called ‘QE’ (Qantative Easing). i.e. print money and give it to the banks to fill the hole they’ve created.

This would be Keynesian except that they give it to the same Banks that drive the problems, and let them carry on as before. Keynes would have used it to employ people to work at things like building the houses we need. Thus using it to give work, create infrastrusture we need to become more capable, etc. As it is, the QE just inflates the balloon again while people who can’t find paid work or a home are left to blame “immigrants”.

Note that the only time in the last hundred years that we’ve built enough new homes was after WWII when the state did it via councils and corporations. The private sector won’t because they need a tight supply to keep up the profits.

print money and give it to the banks to fill the hole they’ve created.

never really understood that. Why not give it to the tax payers, on a per head basis, instead and tell them they must spend it but only on UK goods.
More money circulating in the economy, more happy people and less opportunity for the obscenely rich to cream things off.

Note that the only time in the last hundred years that we’ve built enough new homes was after WWII when the state did it via councils and corporations. The private sector won’t because they need a tight supply to keep up the profits.

and the other half of the story, the “wicked witch”¹ and pals with a “right to buy” where the councils were forbidden to re-invest in housing. That’s plain evil.

¹ I bet it’s warm down where she is now.

By giving it to the Banks, they let the banks charge interest on the loans they then give to those chosen as being able to (just) afford them. Thus emphasising the power of the bankers and creaming back the results.

The reality is that we now have a large number of ‘off the books’ unemployed. Zero hours and self-employed who actually get little or no work. So are functionally unemployed and end up needing benefits anyway. Good for governments who want to fiddle the unemploying figures. But as even what those people make ends up being sucked back in interest and housing costs, not really that good for the rest of us.

In essence, the banks tell the government what to do and get what suits them. Under the threat that otherwise they’ll crash and dump it on us anyway.

It does more good spent on employing people directly than simply giving it to them. If they then build houses, etc, people can all see they’re working and producing something we actually need. In effect you are ‘giving’ to those people and they can then spend it, but also produce something themselves. That means that what is produced can be chosen to be of wider benefit – e.g. the homes we lack at present.

This worked OK in the past, but is rejected by the current ‘free market’ dogmas because it undermines the ability of the wealthy to exploit their positions to gather more wealth to themselves.

Much the same is true of actually taxing the wealth of the very wealthy, and thus why they spend money and effort telling us what a terrible idea that would be. 8-]

The point is to use money to help build and drive things rather than as tool where those with it can use it to suck up more.

There was nothing wrong in principle with letting people buy their council homes cheap. What was wrong was not ensuring that they were replaced. In effect they got one section of the poor to exploit the next cohort of poor who grew up. But in way that let them blame ‘immigrants’ or the ‘undeserving poor’.

Yet we don’t seem to focus so much on the ‘undeserving rich’… Strange, that. :-)

There was nothing wrong in principle with letting people buy their council homes cheap. What was wrong was not ensuring that they were replaced. In effect they got one section of the poor to exploit the next cohort of poor who grew up.

Exactly my point, or rather the point frequently made by my late father (I just sort of borrowed it)

But in way that let them blame ‘immigrants’ or the ‘undeserving poor’.

Thatcherite forward planning.

I bet it’s warm down where she is now.

If the world were a meritocracy, that’s the position she would have earned.

There was nothing wrong in principle with letting people buy their council homes cheap. What was wrong was not ensuring that they were replaced. In effect they got one section of the poor to exploit the next cohort of poor who grew up.

Nicely put.

Much the same is true of actually taxing the wealth of the very wealthy, and thus why they spend money and effort telling us what a terrible idea that would be. 8-]

I agree entirely with much of your analysis, Jim, but high marginal tax rates have been tried before in several places including here – remember Dennis Healey and squeezing the rich ‘..until the pips squeak’? – and they never work, because the rich simply move themselves or their assets out of reach of the tax system. There is abundant evidence that high-taxing countries’ economies simply stagnate (the UK in the seventies, Sweden and France now), which is probably why many Labour MPs are convinced that Corbyn’s programme will be political suicide at the next election. Having lived and worked through the seventies I would personally do anything to avoid returning to that or a similar era. Thatcher came to power in a country that had for too long assumed that the world owed it a living, and would tolerate workers who wouldn’t work and industries that didn’t make anything that the world actually wanted to buy, and she certainly put a stop to all that. On the other hand, the sale of council houses and the failure to properly invest the North Sea oil boom were huge errors, the consequences of which are still with us. We need a new approach, sure, but not one that revisits the blind alleys of the past.

they never work, because the rich simply move themselves or their assets out of reach of the tax system.

One of the gifts of the EU tax regulations that really ought to remain is that tax is collected by / must be rendered to the country in which the transaction was made. Hiding your business in an upstairs office in Luxemboug won’t wash.
If they are making their money here they pay tax here. Now if they want to move their non-tax paying operations and butts elsewhere I’ll hold the door open for them as they leave.
The thing being that mostly their customers are here so throwing the teddy and moving would somewhat dent their business.

because the rich simply move themselves or their assets out of reach of the tax system.

Classic argument: if you tax rich people, they’ll leave. And?
If you don’t tax them, rich people do not make your country richer.

I agree entirely with much of your analysis, Jim, but high marginal tax rates have been tried before in several places

I didn’t advocate “high marginal tax rates”.

What I do advocate is having the wealthy declare their wealth and income honestly and pay tax on it like the rest of us.

At the moment we have a raft of neat cut-outs that prevent even HMRC from knowing who is being paid what, and who owns what. The result is that the wealthy ‘offshore’ their income and wealth. This is particularly crazy when ther assets are often land, factories, and other real property here in the UK.

If we fixed this there would be little need for ‘high marginal tax rates’.

The stark reality that the current setup tries to hide from our awareness is that billions in tax is routinely dodged, and has been for decades. We long ago reached the point where the wealthy and their paid advisors tell politicians how to get new loopholes into legislation to further this. The large businesses also have a track recording of taking politicians and even civil servants out for dinners, etc, to get them ‘on side’… and then give them well paid jobs as soon as they cease being a politician or civil servant. They also inject people into the system.

Tony Blair even introduced a form of ‘company’ which could trade and hold assets with no requirements to make statements, declare the owners, etc. This was gift to tax dodgers, money launderer, and big companies who pretend they are ‘offshore’.

Pages and pages of details of this have been appearing in PE for decades. In general the newspapers and politicians ignore it as if nothing was said. The only break in the silence is when large amounts of data emerge – e.g. the Panama Papers. Which is just one tip of a submerged range of mountains.

The EU has been trying to clamp down on this. That’s one of the reasons the newspapers were eager to see the UK out of the EU.

The Law should require all company assets, property ownership, etc, to be fully declared. And if trading/selling occurs in the UK, it is UK taxable by default. No more ‘patent boxes’ or other fancy ways to hide from the taxman.

Fixing this would make a massive difference to the Government’s tax take without changing any tax rates at all.

One of the root problems here is the way companies are allowed to act like they are ‘incorporated’ (i.e. as a person) or not, as and when they fancy. So they cherry-pick as well as dodge. Another is all the tricks like the ones some chain shops pull of being ‘franchises’ which have to pay large ‘license fees’ to outside the UK. Such costs should not be treaded as tax deductions as they are a form of ‘transfer pricing’ to suck the wealth abroad.

This could all be dealt with if were weren’t bamboozled into wasting our time and sweat on a futile ‘leave’ effort.

Think about this: Recently PE put up the details they’d got of who owns what property in the UK. You can find it via their website. Masses of it (including the HMRC estate for heaven’s sake!) is owned abroad. The current government is ‘fixing’ this problem where a lot of the UK is owned abroad and treated as a valuable asset (putting up prices here) by privatising the land registry! That will make it harder and more expensive to find out who owns what.

Contrast that with the Scots Government who now are working on making all land registration public so anyone can then see who owns what. And also ensuring they have powers to take decisions over land being left functionally idle when they is a good need for it being used. For those puzzled by why Scotland thinks differently to England, this may give a glimpse of how different thinking actually is.

FWIW I’ve never been a fan of the SNP and voted against independence last time around. But the way things are going I’ll vote for it next time, even though I wish I didn’t feel I’d have to. But the UK has for decades been led by the nose by a wealthy few. Changing governments just changed who was complicit.

Classic argument: if you tax rich people, they’ll leave. And?
If you don’t tax them, rich people do not make your country richer.

At the moment a lot of the hidden assets are actually huge chunks of London and high-priced property around the UK. Which they can’t actually move abroad. So they hide their ownership via a chain of ‘cut out’ companies, etc.

That said, given the delemma, my vote is for honesty. i.e. they declare honestly and get treated as the rest of us, or go.

…after Johnson now Farage also steps back, first driving everyboy nuts, now not having the courage to bring something to an end what they started ? Selfish cowards…or should I say they haven’t had any clue how to bringt it to an end !?

Johnson probably never expected ‘leave’ to get more votes than ‘remain’. His aim was to become a bigger darling of the Tory party. There were no plans at all what to do next if they ‘won’. Which pretty much sums them up. He now ducks out in the hope he can blame someone else later when people don’t get what they were deceived into thinking they were voting for.

I didn’t advocate “high marginal tax rates”.

I beg your pardon – my mistake.

What I do advocate is having the wealthy declare their wealth and income honestly and pay tax on it like the rest of us.

Amen to that. The other huge problem is how to extract a reasonable amount of tax from the likes of Amazon, Facebook and Apple for the business they transact here. I’ve always felt that being a member of the EU with its half a billion of the world’s richest consumers gave a damn sight more leverage in that discussion than being good old UK with its 65 (or possibly 58*) million.

…or should I say they haven’t had any clue how to bringt it to an end !?

Absolutely correct IMHO.

[*the lower figure applies if Scotland leaves and NI joins the Republic…]

@ Jim – I wish you all the best, but how many Sporrans will there be to the Pound? (that isn’t even slightly serious)

If Scotland does split off (and also England ends up outside the EEA), I wonder how many companies will choose to relocate there in preference to Dublin or Frankfurt.