Off Topic The Politics Thread

Dodgy bloke

 

Theresa May fearlessly backs down on her hugely popular campaign promise to hold a free vote on foxhunting. Meanwhile Michael Gove has told the hard-pressed farmers that they can keep their £3bn subsidies for another 5 years after Brexit, whilst the NHS still waits for its £350m per week.

I was with some friends in a pub in Marylebone over Christmas when Gove entered and headed straight for the toilets downstairs. He emerged after what seemed a very long time and buggered off again without buying a drink. I was impressed with how seriously he seems to be taking his responsibilities as Environment Secretary, but disappointed to later find that he'd forgotten to sign the card on the toilet wall.

 

May (or Fox or someone) is taking a Trade bill to Parliament this week which includes measures which enable to U.K. to enter into customs arrangements with trading partners which are identical to a Customs Union. As the EU will be (it is hoped) our first post Brexit trading partner, expect Jake Rees Mogg to have an aneurysm.

 

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Classic!

 

it must be true
its written on the side of a bus

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oh ok then stroller

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the last two sum them all up

 

That worked out well then.

 

About right.

 

This'll go down well......

 

The NHS hospital in Oxford is now having to ration access to chemotherapy due to lack of qualified oncology nurses. Those patients on ‘palliative chemotherapy’, where the treatment is to control symptoms and perhaps extend life a little, rather than cure, will have fewer cycles of the drugs and may start the treatment later. So these patients might suffer more and die a little earlier. This is not an isolated issue, the NHS is 45,000 nurses short, and record numbers are leaving.

Although government is to blame, it’s not necessarily this government’s fault. Even if they pay and conditions were better, sufficient numbers of qualified staff don’t exist. Workforce planning has been a disaster in the NHS for decades. It takes years to train skilled clinicians and politicians cantbreally be arsed because they know they will be long gone before the consequences bite.

 

It’s fine. We’ll train the unemployed.

 

Surely his time is better spent advising Middle Eastern dictators and buying more properties for his children's housing portfolios

 

The irony is this was the position in the early Blair years. And the middle classes were opting out of the NHS and going private, which, if it had continued, would have been the death knell for the state system. As we know, Blair's solution was to try to get a health service that everyone would choose to use over any other - and he did this by pushing work into the private sector.

I've found the NHS pretty good on the whole, and the - free at the point of delivery - philosophy is admirable. But long term, it may not be achievable. A top down reorganisation and inflush of funds is needed. I think the wealthy should pay more, perhaps for earlier non-urgent ops or fancy private rooms. But before voters will pour more money in, they want to know the holes in the bucket (health tourism, missed appointments etc) are fixed. If the middle classes start to leave the NHS, the crisis will worsen.

Staff training has to be expedited now.

 

Branson’s health service avoids UK corporation tax while racking up millions in NHS profit
Published time: 9 Jan, 2018 13:24 Edited time: 10 Jan, 2018 08:40
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Billionaire Branson branded ‘a grasping capitalist’ for suing cash-strapped NHS


According to the I News journalist Paul Gallagher, the service recorded an £8.16 million profit from a turnover of £204 million in 2017, up from the £7.28m profit, on a turnover of £134 million, it had recorded in 2016.
According to analysis by Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant at Tax Research UK, Virgin Care has been able to avoid tax payments as it has some 13 holding companies, some of which are registered offshore, between itself and its parent company Virgin Group Holdings, based in the British Virgin Islands and citing Branson as sole shareholder.
George Turner, director of Tax Justice UK, hit out at authorities for handing out contracts to companies actively seeking to avoid tax.
“Virgin Care is part of the Virgin group, which is based in the British Virgin Islands. It is our view that government should not be contracting services to companies based in tax havens,” Turner said.
The profit is largely due to the service earning three new contracts in 2017, which include: a five-year contract with NHS and local authority in Wiltshire worth £64m, a seven-year contract with NHS East Staffordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) worth £270m, and another seven-year contract with NHS Dartford, Gravesham and Swanley CCG and NHS Swale CCG, worth £126m.
It follows recent news of plutocrat tycoon Branson seeing his health service win a record £1 billion of NHS contracts last year.
They were part of the £3.1 billion-worth in contracts being privatized by the government, despite its pledge to reduce private firms’ involvement in the national health provision.
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‘Would you prefer pet or love?’ Virgin Trains apologizes for ‘sexist’ reply to customer complaint
Overall, private firms scooped 267 -almost 70 percent- of the 368 clinical contracts up for grabs between 2016-17, according to a report by the NHS Support Federation, a campaign group monitoring the NHS privatization.
The staggering number of contracts being handed to private firms undoubtedly casts doubt on Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s repeated claims that such contracts merely account for a marginal part of health provision.
“These figures clearly show that privatisation has a strong momentum within the NHS,” Paul Evans, the director of the NHS Support Federation, told the Guardian.
“The doors to private sector involvement in the NHS remain open despite promises to move away from market-based approaches by NHS leaders and politicians. Privateers continue to win huge new NHS contracts.”
Branson has previously been criticized over his decision to sue the NHS after losing out on an £82m contract to provide children’s health services in Surrey.
The NHS settled the legal dispute for an undisclosed amount. But as reports later claimed that the lawsuit had left the NHS with liabilities of hundreds of thousands of pounds, critics branded Branson’s legal action as “scandalous”.
Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth told the Independent: “It’s scandalous that NHS money is being wasted on fighting off legal bids from private companies.

 

Wiesenthal Center's 2017 Top Ten List Of Worst Global Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Incidents

and coming in at number 10

 

UK manufacturing output at its highest for 10 years
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42633502
and
Sainsbury's boss says food price rise should ease this year
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42632020

Is it me or has the 'doom and gloom' starting to subside?

 

No it you cherry picking as usual plus you are quoting the BBC ... oh dear
No doubt things have never so good in the shops. It’s by far the cheapest place to buy anything in Europe apart from houses
It’s designed like that for a reason and we have got used to it . Can only see rises everywhere post Brexit but also hoping for a massive house price realignment especially in the South.

 

I am surprised you have internet access because when I was in France it was like a Third World country.
I think after we get out of the failing union the UK will prosper.