Tory Tax Cut Proposals

[simmo]

A part of the problem with the NHS that is often ignored (and every other "state" run organisation) lies with the workers themselves.

I would be interested to know if anyone can come up with long term sickness stats for the NHS and the various councils. Having spoken to a number of nurses, their perception seems to be that it is an endemic problem, exacerbated by the fact that they are never sacked or disciplined for it. I have heard tell of several people who have been off sick for (literally) years, returning to work for a week before going back off on the sick so that the term is not concurrent.

In addition to this theft of medical products should be a huge concern. I have never met any NHS worker who does not help themselves to stuff, including those who would never dream of stealing from anywhere else. A specific example would be a person who falls into the latter category, who steals around £100 worth of products every year (but doesn't really see it as stealing because the problem is so rife). Making the assumption that she represents the average and assuming that all of the 1.5m people employed by the NHS also steal - that is £150,000,000 which has to be found from taxes to supply families with medical products.

 

[clivex]

I would look to “brand” education. By this I mean that I would encourage private industry to tender for the right to assist (influence?) education provision. For example if Microsoft were to win a competitive tender, not only to ensure that their software was installed as standard throughout schools, but to ensure that one of their MCP or MCSE qualifications made it on to the curriculum

That to me is a horrifying thought. Education controlled by corporations...no thanks

 

[krizon]

At first look, I tended to think the same as clivex. But, on the other hand, we still have schools 'branded' by religious doctrine. If they don't dicker around with what can be taught and what can't, then contracting schools out to meet performance indices might not be such a hopeless idea. The snag would be with contract renewal times, which might cause more grief than they're worth if the contractors failed to deliver, and a whole new company was appointed, with all the attendant bedding-in problems affecting the kids - or worse, appointed on the basis of a cheaper tender. Mmm... no, maybe clivex has a point!

 

[Sara]

Originally posted by Grey@Oct 20 2006, 01:43 PM
Codger Curmudgeon,

Do you think that the people who educate the young and equip them with the skills needed to enter the workforce are engaged in productive activity? Or the doctor who gets someone fit and well enough to return to work?

Do they make any less of a contribution to our collective wellbeing than the proprietor of an amusement arcade, a producer of chewing gum or a PR consultant?

Looney Leftie

Imo and that of most of my friends in education [some now retired in frustration], a lot of people in the teaching profession are singularly failing to equip the young for any sort of life in employment. However, that's beside the point...

Whether or not a job is USEFUL has no bearing on whether or not it's economically sustainable to have more people paid from taxes [salaries + benefits] than people in jobs which produce 'wealth', by which I mean goods and services which can be sold and exported, eg making cars, or publishing, or inventing medical widgets. Or even 'financial services', to mention one massive earner for the national purse.

The NHS, which I wholeheartedly believe in -and my grandfather was one of its founding doctors - is a consumer rather than a producer of national wealth; and as such it behoves the political establishment to find a way of delivering it with the minimum wastage of resources, something successive Govts have failed to do - esp ever since it's been run by managers rather than medical people.

My own local hospital recently advertised in the local press for a Parking Manager at a salary of over £30,000, more than some of the doctors [and esp radiographers, nurses etc are paid]. I find this abhorrent, particularly when you realise this person becomes a public employee guaranteed an index-linked pension for life no matter how short his/her tenure.

You only have to look at the weighty Public Appts pages of The Guardian to realise how uselessy unproductive most of these publicly salaried jobs are.

 

[PDJ]

Originally posted by Headstrong@Oct 27 2006, 12:45 AM
Imo and that of most of my friends in education [some now retired in frustration], a lot of people in the teaching profession are singularly failing to equip the young for any sort of life in employment.

Sorry.

 

[Grey]

It is undeniable that the NHS could be better managed, or that improvements could be made to the education system. And it is also undeniable that you can only have as many teachers and doctors as society can afford.

On the other hand, the society which doesn't pay for a proper education and health service, and give its teachers, doctors and nurses a proper salary is a poor one indeed.

I agree that the example you give, Headstrong, of the parking manager being paid more than the doctors is abhorrent. However, this situation is the product of the very thinking that I am challenging and which you are defending. The parking manager will earn more because he/she will be in charge of a revenue earning activity, and is therefore 'productive', unlike the poor doctors and nurses.

 

[BrianH]

Originally posted by PDJ@Oct 27 2006, 09:58 AM
Sorry.

And so you should be.

 

[Sara]

Originally posted by BrianH+Oct 20 2006, 01:45 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (BrianH @ Oct 20 2006, 01:45 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Headstrong@Oct 20 2006, 02:14 PM
They don't tally with Brian's but then I'm aware we read different 'organs of the press'... LOL.

I thought that you were supposed to be a professional researcher? I have no idea in what subject you specialise but it's certainly not economics. I see strong Daily Mail influences in your (totally incorrect) assumptions.

As for my reference points, try this:

National Statistics Office - Employment Figures
or this:
Global Economic Data - UK Statistics

You seem to have confused views as well - you are not happy about public sector employment levels but on the other hand you condemn (rightly in my opinion) the level of privatisation undertaken by this and previous governments.

Your point on property prices is certainly a headline led one - and one that is quite commonly held. The fact is that taken over the long term rises in property values reflect rises in incomes and the graph smooths to follow the same line.

Finally, here's an interesting comment:

"The stark fact is that this is NOT a rich country"

.
Opinions differ but the most commonly used number for total nations in the world is 193 - that's 192 members of the UN plus Vatican City. There are two acceptable ways of measuring "the richest". If you measure purely by GNP the UK is fourth richest. If you want to take the measurement of GNP per head of population then the UK is fifteenth (though the fourteen nations ahead include some of the low population "financial services" states such as Luxembourg and San Marino.

And if you want my sources for the above data I'm happy to supply them. "Organs of the press" they're not. [/b][/quote]
No I don't specialise in Economics; but I don't read the Daily Mail either [except at my auntie's and she's over 100 so can be excused her choice of paper** LOL].

The statistics you supply for public sector employment are interesting; but if they come from Govt-supplied figures then I wouldn't be prepared to take them on trust. And as I mentioned before, they in no way take account of the fact that huge numbers of people who ostensibly are employed by private companies [eg Capita, and there are many others] are entirely paid from the public purse. The point I'm making is that many of these jobs are unnecessary anyway, and hjusge sums are wasted.

Two headline just from today:
- MPs pay and perks have risen by £13 million only last year - nb that's not the total, that's just the RISE
- PFI hospitals will cost the tax payer £53 billion over 30 years for buildings worth only £8 billion - money which will go to private contractors. Everyone dreaming up/ implementing this scheme is on a public salary... [and pension]. Good value?

As for statistics, even when accurate, the devil is in the interpretation; and it's becoming increasing difficult to separate or define a 'public employee' given factors such as PPI

I don't see why having an aversion to uselessly employing 1000s of people at inflated salaries in non-jobs from the public purse - esp when most of those people hinder rather than help those doing anything productive - is incompatible with thinking that the privatisation of natural monopolies such as the railways and the Post Office, and essentials of life like water services, was madness. It was especially madness since so little provision was made to prevent such essential services being bought and asset-stripped by foreign companies and their owners, directors, and shareholders.

I don't belong to a political party and I don't subscribe to a 'set' of politically correct opinions from ANY side of the spectrum. It's not an either-or question: there are services which should be publicly funded and run - but run efficiently, which they rarely are. Where competition can serve both the customer and the taxpayer, as in the case of communications [ eg privatising BT] then I'd take that route. Why is that 'confused'?

As for property prices: I know a lot of people [as I'm sure you do]; and they ALL look on their 'real estate' as an investment rather than a home, in a way which was unthinkable when I was young. There wasn't then this mania for 'doing up' and 'selling on' and 'up-grading' to maximise investment; your hoemn was something you lived in, and tied to pass down, and for investment you bought a business, or stocks and shares.

This has nothing whatever to do with headlines. Everyone I know in a positon to do so - and this includes diehard members of the Labour Party - is busy getting as much property together as they can as a hedge for their old age - some of them greatly against their own principles, eg by buying their council flat; but they can see no other way out of impending relative poverty in old age, esp given the collapse of pensions values in the last few years.

The 'buy-to-let' phenomenon is another symptom of this, and was fuelled by encouraging over-borrowing. I left the country for a few years in the 1980s btw, and was never again able to get back on the 'property ladder' since property values in the UK have risen faster than any other form of earnings/investment in recent years. I bought my London flat in 1981 for £24,500, sold in 1983 for £42,000. In 1986 I could have bought it back for c£95,000; now it would be worth about £270,000. In no other European country is there this gross inflation of property values [I made a loss on the French house in fact, over 7 years, given what we spent]; and nor does it apply in N America.

And you now have the other symptom, of grown-up children still living with their parents esp if eg taking higher degrees, as some of my friends' kids do, because they just can't afford rents and mortgages; this at ages when we were all long independent 30/40 years ago. Please don't tell me I can't draw conclusions from my own experience and that of EVERYONE around me. Admittedly I and my friends tend to work in professions like publishing, museums and academia, photography, or music teaching, where earnings haven't kept pace with general wage inflation, and many of us are self-employed - so both the difficulty of and the need to amass property as a kind of 'pension' are perhaps more acute. But even people like my cousins' kids [in the law, and banking] are doing the same.

Btw, I'm not remotely interested in where we in the UK come in the list of 'how much money is floating around the economy' ie GNP, on an international scale. The only proper measure of the wealth of a country is imo whether the books are balanced, and ours are not.

From the Nat Stats site: "At the end of 2005/6 general government debt was £529.1 billion, equivalent to 42.1 per cent of GDP. " This gives a debt for each active member of the workforce which is getting on for £20.000 - and this isn't even taking into account the massive - and unprecedented - amount of personal debt around.

Yes, there is great wealth in Britain and esp in London; but by any method of measurement, it's incontrovertible that the gap between rich & poor has hugely widened in recent years, which makes life much harder for those at the bottom.

I do actually read the Telegraphs mainly, Independent quite often, and sometimes The Times and Observer, and magazines like the Spectator; and I do read the business pages [ tho none of these as often as the RP ;^) ]. I believe in reading a paper which is a bit opposed to my natural [liberal with a small l] inclinations, and which doesn't share the beliefs of the Govt in power - it's more likely to tell you things you don't want to know!

This link is fairly typical of informed comment in the press I read, which happens to come from the Telegraph but could be from anywhere else:
http://tinyurl.com/y2x37j

And when I read things like this - a random offering - I wonder where on earth we are heading:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtm...01/cndebt01.xml

On the subject of the general obstructiveness of people in public office and employment, there was a good piece in the Telegraph yesterday by Leo McKinstry [a gung-ho journo who was once a Labour Party and Trades Union advisor, and CND activist... the mind boggles]. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that most council-appointed jobsworths just love pushing other people around, and the fewer of them the better - and this goes for 'public servants' of all stripes whether elected or salaried:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...0/26/do2602.xml

As you will have gathered, I'm a libertarian, and a 'small-statist'.
I just want them to LEAVE ME ALONE


{** and btw Brian why do 'lefties' and 'liberals' so often think it's OK to sneer at the mainstream opionions or reading matter of the averagely educated middle classes? And can I remind you it was the D Mail which relentlessly pursued the murderers of Damilola Taylor? - there's good and bad in every newspaper}

 

[Sara]

Originally posted by Grey@Oct 27 2006, 11:07 AM

On the other hand, the society which doesn't pay for a proper education and health service, and give its teachers, doctors and nurses a proper salary is a poor one indeed.

I agree that the example you give, Headstrong, of the parking manager being paid more than the doctors is abhorrent. However, this situation is the product of the very thinking that I am challenging and which you are defending. The parking manager will earn more because he/she will be in charge of a revenue earning activity, and is therefore 'productive', unlike the poor doctors and nurses.

The parking manager's job is a boondoggle - he's paid out of the revenues he raises I suppose.
I call it a useless non-job and would NOT defend it.

Of course doctors and nurses etc should be properly paid.

 

[BrianH]

The statistics you supply for public sector employment are interesting; but if they come from Govt-supplied figures then I wouldn't be prepared to take them on trust.

What an extraordinary statement! I quoted my sources. The National Statistical Office is certainly a quango but the figures that it produces in a variety of subjects are used worldwide. Global Economic Data is produced by a US based private organisation called EconStats.

But that's irrelevant - it's impossible to enter ino a sensible debate with someone who produces opinions off the top of their head and then when these are refuted by scientifically produced data just says "Oh, I don't believe those figures" (the implication being "so my instincts and guesses are more correct").

So have it your way - yes, the UK is not really the fourth richest nation - it is, as you say, a poor country. And no, the UK isn't really the seventeenth most highly taxed out of thirty developed countries, as your gut raction tells you it has one of the highest tax inpositions in the world.

So I'll not waste my time debating with you again, thanks. Though I suggest that you don't have any bets on subjects where you prefer opinion to facts.

And, by the way, how much longer do we have to wait for Godolphin to sack Simon Crisford?

 

[BrianH]

Anyone who needs a perfect example of what is wrong with privatisation could do worse than examine what is going to happen with NHS procurement at the end of this year.

The NHS inhouse, not for profit, award winning logistics team has been a continuing success. Now responsibilty for procuring NHS supplies will be assumed by the USA based firm DHL/Novation. Let's take a look at Novation's track record in the United States.

In 1989 Joe Kiani founded Masimo Corp in order to develop a pulse oximeter. This device measures patients' blood oxygen levels, which is of great importance in neonatal units. Unlike its main market rival's oximeter, produced by Tyco Nellcor Puritan Bennett Inc, Kiani's product retained its accuracy even when patients moved about. This is obviously of great benefit when dealing with young infants, who do not understand the need to remain motionless - and who can do themselves serious damage if their blood becomes over-oxygenated.

Although doctors in California pleaded for several years for the Masimo product, Notivation, the largest Group Purchasing Organisation (GPO) in the USA, stonewalled Kiani as they had already entered into an agreement to purchase an inferior product produced by Tyco.

Recently a Los Angeles judge awarded Masimo $420 million in an antitrust judgement against Novation.

In another case, engineer Tom Shaw set up a company to develop a needle and syringe that reduced injury to hospital staff (the syringe had a spring mechanism that retracted the needle into the bareel once the plunger was depressed, making reuse and accidents impossible).

What Shaw didn't realise is that the $5 billion a year syringe industry in the US is largely controlled by a company called Becton Dickinson, who cornered ninety per cent of the syringe market when they entered into long-term agreements with Novation and other GPOs.

Novation looked at another of Shaw's inventions, a device for taking blood samples safely, and offered Shaw the chance to market his product under their own "Novaplus" label, telling the inventor that they could market the prodct for one dollar a unitrather than the 27 cents Shaw was asking and split the difference with him. Shaw's firm sued Novation, Premier (the US's second largest GPO after Novation, Becton Dickinson and Tyco for conspiring to stifle competition and maintain monopoly power.

Recently Novation, Premier and Tyco settled out of court with Shaw's firm for an undisclosed sum, believed to be in excess of six figures.

Investigations into Novation and other GPOs are currently underway by the US Justice Department. In Dallas, a criminal investigation into medical supply procurement is underway with Novation at the centre of the investigations.

Do you think that things will be any healthier over here when Novation gets to work in January?

 

[krizon]

This week's Private Eye has been vexing itself quite seriously over the NHS' disastrous National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT). Eye has been asking since July how much the Health Dept agency in charge, Connecting for Health (CfH) had paid its various contractors, consultants and lawyers on the scheme and how much it had paid suppliers up front. But still, two months after the statutory deadline for a reply under the Freedom of Information Act and despite more than a dozen reminders, the only answer has been profuse apologies from the CfH Press office while the men in charge refuse to release the figures.

Eye continues to assert that the lack of response demonstrates the CfH's contempt for scrutiny of any kind. The latest refusal to disclose costs - though to be heading towards a COUPLE OF BILLION - might be explained by the continued failure of the project ot deliver anywhere near the number of IT systems that it promised. The most recent assurances by the contractors that there would be 22 more in hospitals by the end of this month will, like previous undertakings, be missed by a mile (fewer than five will be installed). Deployments have all but dried up since April when the cost was last exposed (around £1.5 billion).

In the last fortnight there have been yet more difficulties with the few systems that have been delivered. The Nuffield Hospital blamed a series of failures in its NPfIT appointments system for its care being labelled 'weak' by the Healthcare Commission.

Meanwhile, one of the key men behind the £12.4bn programme is cashing in on his own advice to launch it. From 2000 to 2004 the Prime Minister's 'e-envoy' responsible for pushing IT on all areas of public life was one Andrew Pinder. Previously head of IT at the Inland Revenue where he had computerised PAYE records, in 2002 he produced the strategy that launched the NHS's national IT programme under which 50,000,000 patients' records were to be put online by 2008. Although that's now turned out to be an expensive pipedream (the health service being a slightly different beast to the tax office), his efforts did translate into some very big contracts for IT companies. The biggest winner, with £2bn worth, was BT.

Shortly after standing down as e-envoy, Pinder washed up as a well-paid adviser to a certain large IT contractor: BT, oddly enough.

And from Eye's 'Number Crunching' quotes:

£2bn - the amount the government is urging the NHS to save in 'the biggest ever productivity drive'.

£12bn - the amount the government is spending on the spectacularly unproductive NHS IT programme.

(Source: Health Special, Private Eye 27/10-9/11)