Politics Thread!

[pogo]

That does seem to be a bit of a cock-up. Not used to the Huff-Po's reporting so found it on the Gruniad:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... n-billions

The discovery follows what has been HMRC's best year for collecting tax revenues, bringing in £506m, or 6%, more than the year before – and almost £24bn in additional tax through its investigations into avoidance.

So despite the error, which dates from 2011, HMRC is getting better and better at going after non-payers.

However, the watchdog credited HMRC with improvements to the "accuracy, compliance and transparency" of the way it was reporting its additional revenue collection.

"I am satisfied from the evidence we have seen that HMRC's compliance performance has improved throughout the spending review period and that its effectiveness continues to increase as HMRC develops new ways to deter, detect and prevent abuse of the tax system," Morse said.

[Dio]

That's not quite what it says. The correct facts appear to me to be:
- tax revenues are up
- The rise is mostly due to tax rises and a strengthening economy
- Those features were supposed to be taken account of in a raised collection target
- The target was set £2bn too low
- HMRC did still slightly beat the revised target.

[VNVObit]

hmm and no mention of

"The way HMRC has measured compliance yield during this spending review period is substantially different to the way it reported its yield in 2010-11 and before, preventing a like-for-like comparison. Until it identified the error in its baseline, HMRC was not aware that such comparison was significantly flawed," the NAO report said.

so while it has improved it cannot say how much accurately given the different methodologies

[(o)(o)]

Cameron lied again. He says A&E departments are doing fine, the truth is waiting times are significantly higher in the last four years and most departments are struggling with lower staffing and reduced budgets.

It's the 66th anniversary of the NHS tomorrow. We need to vote the Tories out to make sure it exists in the future.

It's pretty much toast in a few days as TTIP is on the verge of going through.

The trade agreement allows corporates to sue governments for loss of profits (which indebted governments are unable/unwilling to contest) through secret dispute settlement courts. Essentially it puts corporations above the legal framework. If it goes through the NHS cannot defend itself from being taken over by slimey American operations.

At the very least the NHS should be excluded from such trade agreements - I believe Canada achieved that sort of arrangement - although it has far reaching affects beyond that.

Here's one of a plethora of sources of information on the subject with suggestions on what.
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/

Those who care about the NHS need to act fast. This is an extremely serious and effectively irreversible - yet rarely gets a mention in the mainstream press.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -democracy

[(o)(o)]

Nah he only employs the finest minds available..

Andy Coulson
Philip Green
Emma Harrison
etc...

BTW when is that PIG going to face justice? A4E were embroiled knee deep in fraud and she snaffled over £4m in a year they produced worse-than-doing-nothing results.

Well apparently not fraud.. however.. as sincere as she believes herself to be.... this totally stinks!

Very awkward indeed :

[pogo]

Um, so what? Coulson's newsworthy, but not for anything he did while employed by the Tories. No-one cares about other random minor functionaries the government has employed. The last government employed far more of them, but no-one knows or cares who they were (except there were far more them: public sector employment is down by almost a million since its peak in 2009):

Spoiler: show

We vote for politicians. Judge them on their record. Vote for them based on what they've done or not done, what they promise to do, which of them you think is best equipped to deliver on their promises.

[merman]

Um, so what? Coulson's newsworthy, but not for anything he did while employed by the Tories. No-one cares about other random minor functionaries the government has employed. The last government employed far more of them, but no-one knows or cares who they were (except there were far more them: public sector employment is down by almost a million since its peak in 2009):

Spoiler: show

We vote for politicians. Judge them on their record. Vote for them based on what they've done or not done, what they promise to do, which of them you think is best equipped to deliver on their promises.

Politicians take decisions on our behalf. So how can we trust Cameron who makes so many bad decisions, not least when it comes to taking advice and employing people?

[pogo]

Um, so what? Coulson's newsworthy, but not for anything he did while employed by the Tories. No-one cares about other random minor functionaries the government has employed. The last government employed far more of them, but no-one knows or cares who they were (except there were far more them: public sector employment is down by almost a million since its peak in 2009):

Spoiler: show

We vote for politicians. Judge them on their record. Vote for them based on what they've done or not done, what they promise to do, which of them you think is best equipped to deliver on their promises.

Politicians take decisions on our behalf. So how can we trust Cameron who makes so many bad decisions, not least when it comes to taking advice and employing people?

The government employs millions of people. If only a handful turn out bad then it would be a miracle. As the image I posted shows this government has managed to reduce the number of people it employs by almost a million. Some of that is down to reclassification but the bulk, so several hundred thousand, is actual losses. But it hasn't led to governance getting worse, much as the massive hiring that took place under Labour didn't lead to great improvements in governance.

That's as most of the million or so civil servants hired by Labour were not needed. Which is what happens when you prioritise budget over actual outcomes:

Prime Minister Tony Blair has insisted the government is committed to increasing UK health spending to match the European Union average by 2005.

And it happened. But the money went into the pockets of doctors with their very generous pay settlement, other staff with ahead of inflation pay rises, and increased numbers as managers used it to boost payrolls. Because the NHS knew they'd get the money (the government had promised it !) there was no pressure on them to match it with improvements in services.

[merman]

So explain why patient satisfaction with the NHS was at an all-time high in 2009, and has declined dramatically since the Coalition has CUT SPENDING IN REAL TERMS, causing lower staffing levels, 23,000 fewer beds and lower spending on GPs (causing them to spend less time per patient and damaging recruitment)?

The most damaging problems the NHS has are the PFI repayments (a scheme both Labour and the Tories liked) and the utter nonsense of treating public healthcare as a market. More than £23 million was spent on LAWYERS dealing with competition law and how it affected hospital trusts last year, money that would have been better spent on staff and services.

[pogo]

A link for that would be good, most of the things I can find contradict it. E.g. Patients highly satisfied with GP care. But patient satisfaction is only one metric of healthcare, and not the best. I refer to this again:

The thing we're worst at is 'Healthy Lives', i.e. too much smoking, drinking, overeating and not enough exercise. Fixing that will probably mean more public information, more advice from GPs how to live your life, maybe even rationing healthcare based on how healthy people are: lose weight/stop smoking first, that sort of thing. This will mostly make satisfaction worse, but is probably needed to tackle people's health.

And £23m? That's nothing; it would pay for a a couple of hundred GPs. The NHS budget is £97bn.

[gravy]

So given this, and I think this is a fair summary of your perspective

* The conservatives are doing brilliantly with the economy
* What Labour is promising is economic suicide
* Labour fucked the economy during their tenure
* The Labour leader is a ridiculous figure
* People are only interested in work done and the credibility / attractiveness of what's being promised

Why are the cons behind in the polls or at best roughly equal to labour?

Because all of the above can't be true can it?

[VNVObit]

*snip*

And £23m? That's nothing; it would pay for a a couple of hundred GPs. The NHS budget is £97bn.

So you have £23m to spare? if you do pay it over to the NHS to cover the cost of the lawyers (after all you said it was nothing and don't bother to compare to the budget that's actually irrelevant to whether or not money has been unwisely spent)

[pogo]

Why are the cons behind in the polls or at best roughly equal to labour?

Whichever party took charge in 2010 they would have struggled, facing a series of hard and unpopular choices. The Tories in particular as voters can easily contrast how much better off they were under Labour. If you'd asked me four years ago I might have predicted a Labour win. But it is very finely balanced.

I think this is mostly down to Labour. The Tories have done OK but not spectacularly so. But in Milliband Labour have chosen a flawed leader who seems unable to distance himself from the previous Labour government. If Labour don't win it won't be the Tories who've won it but Labour who've lost it. The collapse of Lib-Dem support also helped – they seem to have gotten an unfair share of the blame for the coalition's policies.

UKIP are undoubtably a factor, at least in the polls. I'm not sure how much difference they'll make in the election though, as much of their support should evaporate in our FPTP system. So the Tories might do better than their polls suggest. The Scottish referendum might boost them too, if as seems likely they vote to stay in the UK. Its looking like a very interesting election, very difficult to call.

[Darkflame]

The thing we're worst at is 'Healthy Lives', i.e. too much smoking, drinking, overeating and not enough exercise. Fixing that will probably mean more public information, more advice from GPs how to live your life, maybe even rationing healthcare based on how healthy people are: lose weight/stop smoking first, that sort of thing. This will mostly make satisfaction worse, but is probably needed to tackle people's health..

Indeed. Normally we require quite a shove to do stuff we should and nagging is never popular.

The thing with that stat overall though is the NHS is apparently very good despite being given relatively shit people with shit bodies coming in

I dont think that graph helps support or deign and recent politicy changes mind you, healthcares benchmarkings going to have a fair lag isnt it?
All the graph says is the UK is doing comparatively great compared to everyone elses methods - not that its got better/worse then itself on any recent timescale.

[merman]

Former UKIP leader Craig Mackinlay standing as a Tory candidate in Kent at the next election.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-28183544

So, David Cameron, would you describe him as a looney or a fruitcake?