It needs it, it is way too top heavy. A local PCT was talking about shedding some workforce, worked out they were on over 80k per 15 months, now that ain't nurses and porters it'll be managers.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
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It needs it, it is way too top heavy. A local PCT was talking about shedding some workforce, worked out they were on over 80k per 15 months, now that ain't nurses and porters it'll be managers.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
You won't find many who would disagree. It's how the reorganisation is shaped, and how far it goes, that is the issue and there is widespread concern about the potential impact of the current proposals.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight
You really are a dingleberry of epic proportions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight
The scrappage scheme was a success. Numerous dealerships were having to take people on and newer cars tend to get serviced more than older ones which the owners are happy to take risks with......
I certainly agree that the environmental impact (at least in the short term) wasn't good. A lot of perfectly good cars got scrapped although my 406 wasn't a particularly good example of its kind with a blown head gasket.....
How is scrappage a bad idea? By and large the amount of VAT gained outweighed the outlay from the government as has been shown plenty of times (though you seem wilfully ignorant of this fact!) and even though most components in our 500 were probably made outside of the UK, it still helped to give employment to sales people, transport companies and many other sectors....... Some of those jobs may have been temporary but some have been permanent. If there is a benefit (temporary or permanent, big or small) gained for little or no money then what is your problem other than the fact that it was Labour that came up with the idea?
Hit the nail on the head.Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
Excuse me, but where did I say that the NHS strike that my mum took part in in any way wage related? That said, try living on strike pay from the union of about £15 per day. It doesn't go very far.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight
Indeed. I don't think the government could have been expected to force everyone to buy Morgans, Ginettas or other British-built cars, could it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
The cuts to the PCTs are the one part of the Tory proposals that aren't going to work. Its aimed at the Daily Mail crowd who demand a cut in the number of managers, but these guys are doing essential work given the free-market principles the NHS is run on. They are the ones assessing the different treatment options on offer from different hospitals and working out which one offers the best deal. They are the ones negotiating with hospitals to see how new methods of treatment can be introduced and what price to pay for them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight
The GPs are supposed to take over commissioning but they won't have time to do the additional negotiating and admin. They'll simply hire the managers the PCTs sacked (I know several GPs who are already negotiating with managers about this) to carry on their jobs for the GPs instead. Instead of eliminating bureaucracy the reforms will merely move it.
And this is the fundamental problem. Despite all this talk about being top heavy the vast bulk of the management increase in the NHS works on quality control and improvement and on implementing the free-market system within the NHS. Get rid of these managers and quality will drop and overall costs will rise. This is what politicians are too afraid to tell the electorate.
I'd expect those receiving big money for doing feck all to kick up a storm about their gravy train being dis-railed, if they didn't I'd be more concerned.
To coin a phrase 'there's no money left'.
This is true.Quote:
Originally Posted by henners88
There are efficiency savings to be made, but you cannot fall into the trap of thinking that everybody in a management position or on decent money is a waste of space. The NHS, along with any large institution, would collapse without administrators and managers.
Right, let's sit back and wait for an ignorant diatrabe about outreach workers, equality legislation, and how you have to be a black disabled lesbian to get a job with the NHS.... :p
My apologises, were they striking for more work less pay / perks then? Be a bloody first if they were.Quote:
Originally Posted by GridGirl
Strikers should be sacked esp those within the public sector, Maggie had the right idea of how to treat these blackmailing scum.
De-railed. Is English your second language?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight
Utter pish, these people are mostly a waste of good air. I have to deal with quite a few of them and they are unfit for purpose. They'd not get work any where else other than the public sector. They think sick days are part and parcel of their job contract, feckless parasites.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dylan H
If they were oh so essential how did the NHS manage pre 1997 without them?
My problem with the radical changes being introduced are that before the election we were explicitely promised that there would be no such re-organisation of the NHS, and yet the plans were unveiled within weeks of the coalition being formed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dylan H
This means that either (a) the plans were cobbled together without much thought or care, or (b) the Conservatives told a blatent lie.
Worse, the bill has only just been published but the changes are being pushed though before it's been properly debated - let alone voted on. In my local PCT the changeover is so far advanced that even if the bill were to be defeated the process is pretty much irreversable. This stinks of idealogical change rather than being driven by the needs of the patient.
GPs have two choices. Either manage their own commissioning, thereby spending less time with patients; or pay a private management company to do the same job as the PCT they replaced but at a profit.
Expect to hear the tabloids' staple phrase "postcode lottery" replace the other staple of "government interference" over the next few years.
On a seperate note, it appears that the coalition's policies are depressing the economy and - as my bolding illustrates - it cannot entirely be blamed on the weather:
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...-five-per-centQuote:
The UK economy shrunk by a shock 0.5% in the last quarter of 2010 as Britain's recovery from recession faltered.
Most of the unexpected contraction was caused by the wintry weather that gripped Britain last month, the Office for National Statistics said. Without it, GDP would probably have been flat – suggesting that the UK economy had already run out of steam before the snow hit the country.
Or, as some people have a distrust of The Guardian :
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/e...nks-0.5pc.htmlQuote:
George Osborne insisted that the Government will press ahead with planned cuts to public spending, despite warnings from forecasters that the economy may be too weak to withstand the package.
...
"This is a horrendous figure. An absolute disaster for the economy," said Hetal Mehta, an economist at Daiwa Capital Markets Europe.
"We knew that retail sales were heavily affected and that services output would be weak, but the collapse in construction was a major contributor the downside surprise."
And this was all before the effects of the VAT increase bite. In fact, the looming increase may actually have helped last quarter as consumers and businesses brought forward purchases.
It's not working, is it?
No, but that doesn't matter. The important thing is that it's all Labour and the public sector's fault.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave B
No no, the important thing is we're all in it together.
Unless you're a banker who isn't having his bonus taxed at a higher rate despite a promise to do so; or a foreign media tycoon looking to have a buyout rubber-stamped despite OFCOM recommending it be referred to the Competition Commission.
or public sector as they seem to think they are above cutsQuote:
Originally Posted by Dave B
What did Labour do re bank bonuses? Yep sweet f a and during the bail out was the ideal time to put in some kind of ceiling, so the coalition's hands are tied re penalising banker's bonuses, so yet again that is Labour's fault not the coalition's.
The only way to get folk spending is tax cuts and we can't have them until Labour's debts have been reduced, so massive cuts to public spending have to come first.
Can you follow this?
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standa...-government.do
yes or no?
Overall, a terrible headline reading, probably exacerbated by the weather. Nonetheless, weak even without the weather and likely to reinforce our below-consensus growth forecast for this year.
Alan Clarke, UK economist at BNP Paribas
Sadly there seems to be little in the way of confidence that there will be a turnaround in the industry's prospects in 2011, and with the full effect of public sector cuts yet to feed through, there may very well be further bad news to come in future quarters.
Alasdair Reisner, Civil Engineering Contractors Association
While bad weather has had some impact, the sharp fall in activity should serve as a stark warning that growth and the recovery cannot be taken for granted. Manufacturing remains the one bright spot on the landscape clouded with uncertainty but there are widespread challenges at home and abroad that could still dent growth this year.
Jeegar Kakkad, EEF senior economist
Although heavily affected by the weather, the UK's shockingly bad Q4 GDP figures revealing a 0.5% quarterly drop will nonetheless raise serious concerns over whether the economy is in a strong enough position to withstand the coming fiscal tightening. The ONS estimates that weather effects knocked about 0.5% off GDP in Q4 so, even without the impact, the underlying growth picture is significantly weaker than expected.
Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist, Capital Economics
Strong demand from overseas markets such as Germany, China and the Middle East raises our hopes that UK exporters will have continued to help offset domestic weakness and revive the recovery, but the chances of a double-dip recession have surely increased.
Chris Williamson, chief economist, Markit
This is a horrendous figure. An absolute disaster for the economy.
Hetal Mehta, UK economist, Daiwa Capital Markets Europe
It is reasonable to expect that there will be a bounce back in growth in the first quarter of 2011 as some of December's lost activity to the weather is made up. However, this is likely to prove temporary as growth is likely to be increasingly pressurised by fiscal tightening increasingly kicking in, starting with the already enacted VAT hike from 17.5% to 20%
Howard Archer, chief European & UK economist, IHS Global Insight
Alongside weak growth, we now have the very real prospect that more money will be printed, which will further dilute Sterling. Stagflation is now a real and imminent threat.
Although the extreme weather conditions would certainly have contributed to the shock performance of the economy in Q4, the real reasons for its continued stagnation are far more fundamental.
Consumer spending and demand have been decimated by rising unemployment, rising living costs and the prospect that rates could rise sooner rather than later as inflation runs out of control.
Christina Weisz, a director of foreign exchange specialists, Currency Solutions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...e-analysts-say
:mad:
Yes. It's overly simplistic and deeply flawed. It fails to take into account, just for starters, the revenue brought to the exchequer by those notional employees when they spend their wages - the 20% VAT for example. The economy is a bit more complicated than I think you understand.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight
DanielQuote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
You are avoiding the facts and posting the same nonsense time and time again. It doesn't change anything apart from making you look blinkered and ignorant to rational debate.
We both agree that the scrappage scheme paid for itself by the amount of VAT raised on the sale of new cars, yes?
51,000 were sold of which 46,000 were foreign imports, yes?
So, answer me the following points please.
1. How many new cars would have been sold to those people if the scrappage scheme wasn't in place? 10%? 20%? 30%?
2. Where is the VAT Tax revenue that these sales would have generated?
3. If we take the average amount of contribution to be a grand a car, how much of the £50M remained in the UK?
The car scrappage scheme was good for the people that bought new cars but as far as being this great job generator, it's all smoke and mirrorw. At best it artificially bolstered some existing jobs which will have gone now and as for all these new car salesman, what's happened to them?
No, my old Dingleberry, it was a smoke and mirrors stunt that on the surface hasn't cost anything, when you scratch the surface, it explains the mentality of a Government that spent, spent, spent until the country was basically bankrupt.
Oh yes, we can bang the Global Financial Crisis gong all we like but the sad fact is that apart from a few heavily subsidised European countries, the UK is at the top of the pile for debt.
At the moment, we owe a slither less than one Trillion pounds and if you take into account things like the pension liability bombshell (oh yes, we haven't even really considered that yet), then the figure is eye wateringly large. But even without this, for the first time since the early severnties, debt has passed 50% of our GDP and even with all the cuts so far, it's increasing.
So, in conclusion, we know you like the scrappage scheme but it wasn't a success but a distraction and although it propped up the car trade for a bit, it did so by shipping millions of pounds offland to foreign car makers.
No they're not. They're the government. They are fully able to act regarding bankers bonuses, and they already have just this month, although as this article points out Osborne claimed credit for the very policies his government tried to squash.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight
I know that John Prescott has said Labour needs to tackle its debt, but that's not really any concern of anyone but the Labour Party.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight
Of much greater concern is that the CBI's departing director general has said that the current government has “taken a series of policy initiatives for political reasons, apparently careless of the damage that they might do to business and to job creation. It's not enough just to slam on the spending brakes. Measures that cut spending but killed demand would actually make matters worse."
Not at all. The biggest barrier to consumer spending is lack of confidence: people are worrying about their own job security, and whether they'll see their pay shrink in real terms if they're still employed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight
It's a vicious circle, the fear of a double-dip recession is real (as I write this, 68% of respondents to a poll in your trusted Daily Mailforecast one) and will supress spending - supressed spending makes a double-dip recession more likely.
Few people are saying that cuts are unnecessary, but it's the scale and the speed of them which is going to destroy the economy.
Of course you are right Dave and cuts for cuts sake is a destructive policy.
The government is in a no win situation. Whatever cuts they make witll be unpopular with that part of the population and they have to make cuts across all the population. They will be universally dammed because we will all feel hard done by and any condemnation against what hurts us personally will be grabbed with both hands, arms, legs feet and teeth as possible.
Every action they take will be analysed in hindsight and a myriad of different conclusions produced to suit opinion.
However, spending has to be curtailed and cuts must be made. All these experts were living it up when Labour spent us into this mess and nobody remembered that these things go in cycles. What was it? The end of Boom and Bust. No more recessions, just stable economic growth? Remember those words?
So I suggest we tighten our belts and appreciate it's going to be rough but in a couple of years, we will have rode out the worst and hopefully, those experts will have learned the lesson this time.... although somehow I doubt it.
Who was it that posted the link that showed that public debt when Labour left govt was better than when they'd come in? :laugh:Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight
I think most people recognise cuts have to be made but:Quote:
Originally Posted by skc
1. The idea that Labour were and are the cause of the UK's economic problems is a tabloid headline of an explanation.
2. "We're all in this together" doesn't stand up when some clearly are not as yet and may never be.
3. Government promises over a number of issues have to date proved to be empty which makes trust an issue.
4. Short term pain, long term gain is as meaningful as no more boom or bust.
Personally I believe that everyday people share some of the blame too. People thought they were getting rich when the prices of their houses were just going up and up and up and thought they couldn't lose when buying property so kept on buying at ever increasing prices and were happy borrowing silly at sily LTV's (loan to value). Sure the banks were bad for lending stupid money but what about the morons who borrowed it who should have known better?Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
But don't forget that, when it suited them, the Conservatives backed Labour's policies. In 2007 - when it appeared there might be a General Election in the wake of Brown becoming PM - George Osborne pledged to match Labour's spending for at least two years.Quote:
Originally Posted by skc
He's Chancellor now, so let's remember his words back then:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6975536.stmQuote:
The result of adopting these spending totals is that under a Conservative government there will be real increases in spending on public services, year after year.
The charge from our opponents that we will cut services becomes transparently false."
So as shadow chancellor he either failed to understand the economy or he was lying. He can't blame Labour for doing what he admits he would have done himself.
So on that basis why not give the unemployed 2k a month, and let them spend it, after all it'll be good for the economy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave B
But it didn't, the cost to administrate it is not be counted.Quote:
Originally Posted by skc
Agreed, anyone in business (so that totally rules out anyone in the public sector as they seem to think money grows on trees) knows you can not spend your way out of debt.
State pensions are a massive time bomb, even the public sector has not a clue how that is going to be funded. It needs to be massively cut - slash and burn only way to sort out the oversized state that Labour created.
Agree that the media have played a significant part in all this, if you tell folk enough times that we're in recession then yep we will be pretty soon.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave B
I'd lay off the wacky backy if I were youQuote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
Poorly. How do you think the Bristol Royal Infirmary scandal, Shipman and Alder Hey happened? There simply was no nationwide quality control system and the free-economy system within the NHS was in its infancy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...labour-deficitQuote:
Britain's debt at the outset of the economic crisis was the second-lowest in the G7 and lower than it was under the Conservatives in 1997 and says neither of the parties in the coalition government called for lower spending at the time.
Perhaps Bolton Midnight will be able to prove that this is incorrect.
That's demonstrably not always true. Sensible investment can stimulate growth, and in times of recession it can sometimes be cheaper to make that investment as labour is usually cheaper.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight
If you "slashing and burning" at this rate you'll spend a fortune in redunancy payments; and at a time when the private sector are not picking up the slack at anything like the rate which Osborne predicted, you'll also end up spending a fortune in benefits to the unemployed you create.Quote:
State pensions are a massive time bomb, even the public sector has not a clue how that is going to be funded. It needs to be massively cut - slash and burn only way to sort out the oversized state that Labour created.
The original Conservative plans centred on natural wastage: not replacing those who retire or leave, and not renewing temporary contracts as they come to a planned end. This would have been sensible. Instead they're swinging the axe and pinning all their hopes on the private sector which, thus far, has not taken up the challenge. It's the politics of desperation.
I think it is odd that the Tories claimed they wouldn't have any large top-down reorganisations but the nature of their reforms are broadly in line with what the Tories proposed back during the time of the junior doctors demonstration back in 2007 or so.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave B
I think its clear that Andrew Lansley had been working on the reforms for a long while without the leadership being fully informed as to its nature and extent given how well thought out it is (in extent at least). It certainly wasn't cobbled together between the election and July last year when it was published.
That in my mind raises questions about the level of communications inside the Tory party but thats a seperate matter entirely.
In terms of postcode lotteries part of the reforms are designed to ensure that treatment pathways across Britain become more uniform although I'm sure some degree of inequality will persist.
Shipman was busiest under Labour government etcQuote:
Originally Posted by Dylan H
Hospitals far worse under Labour than pre 97
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/he...ath-rates.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti....html?ITO=1490
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11696735
Yup, and GDP growth during the last quarter of 2010 before the government cuts are really going to kick in was -0.5%. Even corrected for the poor weather it was -0.1%, and this is despite a weak pound boosting exports.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave B
I think its pretty clear we can expect the private sector NOT to fill the gap left by government cutbacks.
And on top an increasing number of financial institutions are preparing for a hard landing in China when their credit bubble bursts later this year which could worsen the economic climate even more.
A double-dip recession is getting more and more likely.
Shipman was caught in 98. He was probably killing since he graduated from medical school, most of which was under the Tory government, though he would have done the same under any government. He was not caught because the means weren't there to assess and catch him quickly enough. That is no longer the case.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight
Your links really are poor, there is no attempt at comparison with any other time period. Meanwhile waiting lists have been slashed and mortality rates for most major diseases have improved albeit slightly. On just about any quality measure the NHS improved under Labour, and this is coming from someone who absolutely hated the Bliar government.
Back in 1983 a government report "blamed inefficient management and structures within the NHS for the cash problems".
Little changes. Public services get kicked around like a political football. Every new government blames the previous government for its failings, promise to rectify all the faults, and introduce sweeping 'new' changes that take years to implement (if only partially) by which time there's a new government and the whole process starts again.