OT. The futures Bright, the Futures Brexit!!!

[mistaram]

Does anybody know where these cabinet ministers are hiding I've heard it said they are being deliberately kept of our screens ,but I don't believe it so where are Leadsom, Truss, Coffey , Villiers, Wallace, Hancock, Shapps , Patel. Surely Cummings doesn't believe they wouldn't lie for him

[Geoff Parkstone]

no, But I did notice Patel hiding behind the Bisto packet in my kitchen cupboard this morning

[MadAmster]

Truss. Isn't she the delightful Minister who, when asked about the 50K more nurses in the next 10 years, fell apart when challenged with "yes, but, that 50K isn't 50K MORE is it? You are only saying you are going to get 31K MORE NEW nurses and the other 19K are already NHS nurses and you HOPE to persuade them not to leave........ so that isn't 50K MORE, now is it?

She tied herself in absolute knots claiming it WAS 50K MORE........ and they say Abbott aint very good with numbers

[ramAnag]

Because history has shown that public services do not improve as taxes go up. If they did, I would not begrudge a bit more tax. But they don't. I'm not sure where the money goes, pissed up a wall or vanity projects I guess

In which case it’s the practice, not the principle, that needs changing Geoff.
I’m not sure you’re entirely right that ‘public services do not improve as taxes go up’, but I take your point that such money is sometimes wrongly and wastefully directed and that then is what needs to change.

We need, imo, to ‘plug the loopholes’ MA refers to and use such money wisely to improve v1tal public services in a manner which benefits those it is aimed at rather than just creating another level of bureaucracy with more office staff but fewer teachers, nurses at the Royal Derby having an exposed fifteen minute walk from their cars to the actual hospital and some towns in Derbyshire having virtually no police presence from nearer than 15-20 miles away.

Maybe we should have a Referendum on how the spending of public money should be best prioritised.
At least Joe Public might be better informed on that subject.

[Geoff Parkstone]

Tend to agree with that, but people having to walk 15 minutes to work is no big deal, I spent years doing that.

What should we therefore spend the money on, or perhaps what should we not?

IMHO

NOT SPEND ANY MONEY ON:
Foreign Aid
Defence and military
Long term unemployment benefits et al (except disability payments)

SPEND MORE MONEY ON:
Health care, but not just giving big pay increases to staff to buy them off
Policing, particularly in rural areas
Public transport infrastructure - moving towards a ban on use of cars (long term), again mainly in rural areas
Sorting out a proper agricultural and fisheries policy post CAP
Environmental "encouragements"
Primary education and up to 16 (not university)
Apprenticeship schemes - career focussed education and skills training
Introduce "compulsory voluntary" community work schemes for the unemployed - eg litter picking etc to justify/maintain payments and get an enhanced weekly amount if volunteer does longer hours

NOT SURE ABOUT
Pensions by and large pensioners are some of the best off on average, but at bottom end the basic rate needs lifting. Maybe taper off the state pension based on size of private / employment pensions

Social care, but also try to put this back on the family members and return to a more family based responsibility, not just shunt granny into a state home when she gets too old to be of use to you as a free childminder



So come on then, lets have ideas for what you want?

Personally I think we need to throw away the rule book on how we deal with the "weak" in society and make the families more responsible. Obviously those without any living family would have to be state responsibility, but giving family members a small financial incentive to "do the decent thing" might be better than having billions of social and care workers.

I could ramble at length about how contemporary society is not meeting its obligations to one another either in a family unit or across the board. Double working families creating a huge need for child care and also elderly care: its a vicious circle as you need two working incomes to pay for the child/elderly care which increases the need for that care. Many of the care workers are migrants and on minimum wage (or less), work long anti social hours etc, yet these are the people who society entrusts the care of our most vulnerable family members. The answer is not to throw more money at them, it is for the families to act with more responsibility and respect to their own kin

[ramAnag]

Fascinating GP...some real food for thought there and a couple of cans of worms too.

You’re a real contradiction aren’t you? Of compassion and cruelty...naivety and ruthlessness. Interesting.

I accept the fifteen minute walk thing is a bit of a red herring. I’m not talking a fifteen minute stroll through leafy streets here though...I’m referring to a trek through a poorly lit and slightly intimidating semi derelict landscape that I’m told our largely female nursing staff have to do twice daily between vehicle and place of work. Not the best beginning and end to a day for those with such an important job imo.

I’m never sure why targeting ‘Foreign Aid’ seems so popular. Just seems like the equivalent of giving to charity to me. A tiny amount, relatively speaking, which is an example of the rich giving to the poor although I do accept it could often be targeted better.
Understand your take on cars and public transport but it isn’t going to happen any time soon. That particular genie is well and truly out of the bottle and the future is electric/hydrogen rather than fully ‘public’ in my, uninformed, opinion.

Your take on pensions I have some sympathy with...the family winter fuel credit - regardless of income level/need - being a classic example of unnecessary wastefulness built on greed, but I think your take on family responsibility is amazingly naive.
Seems to be something they’re much better at elsewhere in the world but if you’d worked with some of the families I have I think you’d have a different opinion.

[MadAmster]

Foreign aid is OK where needed but I can't for the life of me can't think why we should give to the likes of India and Pakistan who have their own nuclear and space programmes.........

[ramAnag]

Foreign aid is OK where needed but I can't for the life of me can't think why we should give to the likes of India and Pakistan who have their own nuclear and space programmes.........

Agreed MA, there are anomalies like that...but again it’s about practice rather than principle imo.

As a nation I think we like to think how generous we are but I’m not entirely sure it’s true.

[MadAmster]

Agreed MA, there are anomalies like that...but again it’s about practice rather than principle imo.

As a nation I think we like to think how generous we are but I’m not entirely sure it’s true.

All nations agreed at the UN to pay out 0.7% of GDP on foreign aid. I may be wrong but I think that the UK and the Netherlands are the only 2 western countries that consistently hit that figure.

[Geoff Parkstone]

Amazingly naive, rA? Tell me more....

I look at Indian and other Asian immigrant groups, West African groups etc and I see an exceptional degree of family loyalty and commitment to look after one another, generation by generation. Its good to see. The basic white English populace seem to have somewhat cynically divorced themselves from any responsibility for their family or extended family, preferring instead to maximise earnings and leave their "duty" to children or the elderly in the hands of others.

Now I fully accept that in a minority of cases, the child or the elderly may well be better off in a care system, but to me (maybe naively?) a lot of those dumped into care (private or public) are so dumped due to your much vilified greed: mostly where couples prefer to both work rather than looking after their own.

Put bluntly, why should I, via the public purse, pay to look after someone else's parent or child while they go off maximising their personal wealth rather than doing it?

[AdiSalisbury]

Not easy is it? Gonna use Geoff's suggestions as a starter for 10:

NOT SPEND ANY MONEY ON:
Foreign Aid
Defence and military
Long term unemployment benefits et al (except disability payments)

Don't see any issue with foreign aid, if we can do the right thing, we should do. We'll get back a combination of good feeling for being compassionate, if not economic favours, eg priority treatment on produce.

Defence, purely selfishly, my job depends on it. Otherwise, it keeps us safe, we are under constant attack in forms other than infantry, and we need to protect our territory and industry. It is also a leading driver for technological innovation.

Can't argue with the long term unemployment benefits.

SPEND MORE MONEY ON:
Health care, but not just giving big pay increases to staff to buy them off
Policing, particularly in rural areas
Public transport infrastructure - moving towards a ban on use of cars (long term), again mainly in rural areas
Sorting out a proper agricultural and fisheries policy post CAP
Environmental "encouragements"
Primary education and up to 16 (not university)
Apprenticeship schemes - career focussed education and skills training
Introduce "compulsory voluntary" community work schemes for the unemployed - eg litter picking etc to justify/maintain payments and get an enhanced weekly amount if volunteer does longer hours

Can't disagree, the last point especially.

NOT SURE ABOUT
Pensions by and large pensioners are some of the best off on average, but at bottom end the basic rate needs lifting. Maybe taper off the state pension based on size of private / employment pensions

I'm no pension expert, but isn't there already a lifetime allowance in place?

[Geoff Parkstone]

There is a lifetime allowance of around a million now, above which you pay 55% tax when drawn down.

What I was getting at though was, for example, a 70 year old with a million in his pot doesn't really need the 140 quid a week state pension . Perhaps taper off this entitlement for high net worth pensioners ( as at least 20% if not 40% goes back to HMRC anyway) and boost those depending on that 140 to survive

[Trickytreesreds]

...and why was there no money left? Because of the banking crisis/credit crunch which began in the USA in 2007 and spread over here in 2008.
That of course coincided perfectly with Gordon Brown becoming PM, but unless the ‘one eyed Scottish idiot’ - as you unkindly and irrelevantly described him last week - had huge and unprecedented power over the Global Banking establishments...how was that Labour’s fault?
More to the point...you choose to forget that Blair and Brown oversaw huge improvements in our hospitals and schools which have completely stagnated since 2010 and to ignore that the very article you quote, describes how Reginald Maudling left a note of much the same tone when Callaghan took over, so it isn’t just Labour that leaves a mess is it?

They may be far from perfect but at least Labour, the Scots and the Liberals have the interests of ordinary people at heart. What do Johnson and Rees-Mogg know about them? I agree 100% with the points made by MA, mista and Swale above.

FPI end of argument

[ramAnag]

Amazingly naive, rA? Tell me more....

I look at Indian and other Asian immigrant groups, West African groups etc and I see an exceptional degree of family loyalty and commitment to look after one another, generation by generation. Its good to see. The basic white English populace seem to have somewhat cynically divorced themselves from any responsibility for their family or extended family, preferring instead to maximise earnings and leave their "duty" to children or the elderly in the hands of others.

Now I fully accept that in a minority of cases, the child or the elderly may well be better off in a care system, but to me (maybe naively?) a lot of those dumped into care (private or public) are so dumped due to your much vilified greed: mostly where couples prefer to both work rather than looking after their own.

Put bluntly, why should I, via the public purse, pay to look after someone else's parent or child while they go off maximising their personal wealth rather than doing it?

Totally agree with your first paragraph GP and the same seems to be true of Southern Europeans.

I’m not sure about the rest. Is it wrong for two parents to want to put their children’s welfare and well being above caring for their aged parents? It’s thankfully not a conundrum I’ve had to face but you’ve made me think.

The naivety comment comes from the fact that we all have our areas of comparative expertise. I am naive about things in your world of accountancy and tax etc, but I’d suggest that I know a good deal more - professionally speaking - about family dynamics and the under privileged and it is not, in my experience, an exaggeration to suggest that some people are insufficiently competent to be left in control of either children or the old and infirm and that’s not even including the nasty sods who’d just take advantage.

[mistaram]

Amazingly naive, rA? Tell me more....

I look at Indian and other Asian immigrant groups, West African groups etc and I see an exceptional degree of family loyalty and commitment to look after one another, generation by generation. Its good to see. The basic white English populace seem to have somewhat cynically divorced themselves from any responsibility for their family or extended family, preferring instead to maximise earnings and leave their "duty" to children or the elderly in the hands of others.

Now I fully accept that in a minority of cases, the child or the elderly may well be better off in a care system, but to me (maybe naively?) a lot of those dumped into care (private or public) are so dumped due to your much vilified greed: mostly where couples prefer to both work rather than looking after their own.

Put bluntly, why should I, via the public purse, pay to look after someone else's parent or child while they go off maximising their personal wealth rather than doing it?

Geoff agreed with some of that Asians are very family orientated But we had to put my father into care and not only are 99% owned by Asians they are also full of Asians But you are right they do take care of the elderly far better than we do My father was far to ill to be left without 24hr care