The NHS was designed to be free care from cradle to the grave, and so it should be.
I might be in the minority here, but I’d pay more taxes to keep the NHS free at the point of delivery. That’s in spite of the fact that I have private medical insurance.
The NHS under Blair and Brown have been dropped into such a financial mess due to hyperinflated PFI bills.
The NHS was actually put forward by a Liberal LLoyd George in 1917/18, but the real mover was Churchill who instructed Beveridge (Liberal) and Willink (Conservative Peer) to produce the 1943 NHS White paper, Beven nearly screwed up its introduction so the 1944 Education Act was implemented first. The NHS started in 1948 and Labour was thrown out of offive in 1950.
I totally agree with free at the point of need, but paying more taxes into a hole that will never be filled is an idea of madness to my mind, the NHS is poorly managed as we have seen over the years of care scandals with the lessons will be learnt mantra, but actually nobody held to account. Having dealt with NHS managers many would never survive in a commercial environment, like the MoD usually move around ever two to three years before their level of incompetence is discovered and in some cases rampant criminality such as fraud.
Kevlar on!
We all see in the defence world that capability costs and increases exponentially
If it took 100 aircraft dropping 500tons of munitions to hit one target but we can do it with one aircraft and one missile then thats a win - but that one aircraft costs x times the cost of the old ones and the munitions cost y times more then we have an accountants answer.
But the new aircraft is more complex and needs more servicing time per hour flown so therefore the number required now has to reflect the amount of activity expected. We managed during our ‘conflict’ with ISIS(sic) but how long would we cope if we were Ukraine before all our frames were in the sheds.
Once we bought in 100s now we buy in double digits and sometimes single. (see arguments for Tutor return to service and the effort to get cabs for Birthday flypast and muster).
Same in NHS - when it was conceived the NHS was a GP to give asprin/TLC and refer to hospital and hospital to get a broken bone fixed/appendix out/give birth (slightly tongue in cheek but you know what I mean)
Now the amount of ‘services’ provided and the cost of the technology to deliver them has exploded exponentially again.
Accountants answer is yes but see how many extra lives saved/improved against the cost - ratio is better (maybe I don’t know) and then the benefits to society
But as a % of Govt spend how much is it increasing year on year (I do not have the figures so happy to be corrected)
Surely we are at the point where we have to define what the NHS is and what it covers - as science/technology/medicine improve over years and inevitably costs increase we cannot afford to fund it all - at some point it must stop
Awaits incoming to unstructured rant that probably needs several hours work to make it a fully formed argument 
Totally correct but no politician will ever grab that nettle and tell how it is.
I actually have the solution…
Provide the citizens of the UK decent social housing and green, cheap energy and most of what they need pay rises for disappears.
That’s why these monolithic and essential public services cost so much — the people that breath life into them.
If houses didn’t cost years and years of your life to pay off, or landlords weren’t charging through the roof for fear of not making money on an essential human right, there’d be more money for public services.
This obsession with house prices is both insane and counter-productive.
By the time your kids stand to gain any intergenerational wealth from the sale of your property, they’ve spent way more than that in mortgage and rental fees.
And I don’t care what a landlord might claim about the service they provide. If you own more than one house, you’re part of the problem, not the solution.
It’s all a trap, and it only works because we believe that if we work hard, we can become millionaires too.
MS DISASTER FOR PM! Ominous catchphrase, but how could it be worse!?
Houses cost so much because we have inflated the population by about 10,000,000 since 2000, finite resource, infinite demand. Then there is interest rates being at an all-time low since 2008 when the financial crash happened, until last year when due to Covid and war they rose. Listen to Martin Lewis who stated that interest rates are returning to their historic average.
How would you fund social housing and cheap green energy?
They tried rent controls in Berlin and Dublin which failed miserably, either the tenants pay a supplement agreed privately with the landlord or no property. Many landlords have a rental property as their retirement payments, plus if they sell all the rental properties on to the local market prices will fall initially but will rise higher again.
House prices are a function of a local economy, a three bedroomed house in London with offroad parking circa £1,000.000+ come to Liverpool same for £3-400K in a good area.
The other point with regard to mortgages is that the mortgage industry in the past 15 years has offered two and three year deals, fine when rates are low but as soon as they are volatile then repayments shoot up. I had a 25-year mortgage which was at the time an endowment mortgage, fortunately managed to get rid of that due to inheriting a property and ‘flipping’ my main residence and selling my old house. That is perfectly legal under HMRC rules to avoid capital gains tax. .
Green energy and social housing is an investment.
I don’t understand the objection to the state investing.
Oh, unless of course Tory donors would be deprived the opportunity to make more money…
How do you pay to pump prime such “investment’.?
You mean other parties haven’t got rich investors and those seeking to influence them?
Why is it that pro-business conservatives suddenly lose all their business acumen the moment it comes to the state?
Perhaps that’s why they shouldn’t be in charge of it.
You do as businesses do, but you cut out the middle man.
You borrow, then invest that money in new accommodation (lots and lots and lots of it, by this point), then you never sell it off. You retain the asset, or all that old social housing stock just ends up being rented out by landlords who’ve done nothing to create that service.
Because the other side of this equation is the cost of inaction.
The health and economic cost of having a population living with the stresses of poverty.
The social disruption that comes of it, requiring greater spending on policing and prison services.
I’m asking you to think like a savvy business operator.
There are so many other expenses in this equation of statecraft.
You might think it doesn’t affect you, but it does.
Slight tangent: The gap between rich and poor is growing the fastest between those with millions and those with billions. If we fail to address the pooling of massive amounts of capital at the top, we all lose.
The only things left to buy are the assets (housing) of the diminishing middle classes. The system helps those who don’t need access to their money to avoid paying taxes on it. The rest of us who can’t lock it up in trust, pay the taxes.
If I remember correctly (and I might not be), something like an additional 2% tax on billionaires only would raise enough capital to eliminate relative poverty in the UK.
The billionaires would barely feel that, yet we would finally see Adam Smith’s rising tide lifting all boats.
In my opinion, the only reason it doesn’t happen is because of some shady dealings.
You haven’t said how to generate the money or where do you borrow from, sounds just like the Corbynite solution, it never works, tried that in the 70s and see where it got us, the iMF bailing the country out.
Printing money or to use the present day tern quantative easing just brings inflation and increasing interest rates. I remember Harold Wilson and his pound in you pocket broadcast, rubbish then and rubbish now.
That really is unfortunately nieve, billionaires can move their money at the touch of a button. Try that and watch the ‘capital flight’, same as would happen in Scotland with a run up to any independence.
If you say so.
You think Musk or Zuckerberg would sign or even Branson. The discredited Oxfam being quoted, formally known as sex abusers are us, and probably still are.
Last chance, remember the rules. Dog whistle debate and random accusations tarring entire swathes of unrelated people are not on. If you can’t debate civilly and like an adult that write for the mail, we’ll just lock it.
Incorrect, Bobby, ol’ pal.
Look at the absolute storm caused for Abramovich (spelling?) with his toy football club.
Billionaires (and millionaires) have assets.
Billionaires and millionaires can indeed move (not very patriotic, is it?), but their assets remain in place for us to tax.
It’s a massive lie that they can up and leave and we suddenly can’t tax them. They’re not like the rest of us. They don’t earn their money through their labour, they earn it through their wealth.
Edit: wealth which, incidentally, we tax at a lower rate than someone who works hard all day.
I forget that Tory politician’s name, the one hiding money offshore. The real scandal was that he was paying a lower rate of tax on millions that he didn’t graft for, yet we lose a higher proportion of the wages we earn with our limited time on this planet.
Edit to the edit: Nadeem Zahawi (Spelling again?)
Any money not needed for day to day expenses can be squirrelled away in tax efficient ways. While those of us on PAYE have limited options (increasing pension payments, salary sacrifice schemes, etc.) business owners can choose to reduce their salary and re-invest into the business, take share options in lieu of pay, etc, etc.
If income was being taxed at 50% plus over a certain threshold, why wouldn’t people choose to re-invest that money in the business instead or beef up their pension or shareholding? It would be insane not to.
Socialism is just the politics of envy and corruption and in the words of MHT it fails when you run out if other peoples money.
Billionaires will just live in the most tax efficient places and without them and their investments Ukraine would nowhere be able to defend themselves without Musk”s Starlink or being able to develop a Malaria vaccine without Gates money into developing the Malaria research at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
No billionaire’s no investment to develop industry to develop products. The state sector produces little in the way of tax raising but consumes usually in vast amounts and with poor results taxpayers money.
