Jambayla you’re a Tory party wet dream. I genuinely hope your part of the top table or your blinkedly being dicked over like the rest of us, but fighting their corner for them… 😀

Can I just congratulate jamabalayayal;a on so concisely summing up the kind of ignorance and stupidity that leads people to voting for such a bunch of useless divs. if only more people read the Daily mail they’d realise that it’s all their default and the more tax you can dodge, the more you deserve to keep the money. Libraries? Who needs them? poor people who can’t afford books and if they can’t afford books why do they need to read? And they can’ read, they’ll never find out how much they’re being shafted.
And why aren’t the council cutting”back room staff”? After all it’s just “jobs for the boys” and any other number of cliches for dimwits you care to mention – you’d never find that going on in Tory land would you? What’s Osborne’s qualification for the job, other than “went to the same school as Cameron”?

i’ve come to conclusion he’s a moron

There’s an awful lot of evidence that points to that conclusion.

As I’ve said before, there are people who’s political opinionsI disagree with but I can respect their view. The rubbish Jambalaya constantly spouts is just beneath contempt.

jambalaya – Member
…Our welfare budget is huge…

just checking, you’re not including pensions in welfare are you?

pensions aren’t welfare

He says the NHS are lumbered with patients costing £4500 a week in hospital beds, who could and should be discharged to Social Services but they don’t the budget for that.

So instead the NHS overspends its budget.

Yep. This came up when I worked in the NHS, seemed simple to me – just move (enough of) the budget from the NHS to Social Services. And since it cost less for Social Services to do it, money saved.

Political/Management will to do it? Zero.

Political/Management will to do it? Zero.

They can’t go cutting NHS budgets – that makes it too obvious.

Much stealthier to keep stretching it so it fails on its own. That way they can blame it all on those lazy greedy doctors and sell it all off via PFI.

@ Jambalaya, yes the welfare budget is huge, but then so’s the tax evasion being conducted by big business and suchlike: some tax research bloke and some lefty website and finally the Evening Standard from 3 years ago.

Some of this is individual tax “planning” and some corporate, but it seems to be the general consensus across lots of different data that around £35bn is lost in corporate avoidance each year (which despite Toby Young’s opinion, would go a long way to helping to avoid cuts to key public services, regardless of if YOU think they’re valuable)

companies are not and never have been a “of employees” that would be coop’s and some partnerships.

Yep. This came up when I worked in the NHS, seemed simple to me – just move (enough of) the budget from the NHS to Social Services. And since it cost less for Social Services to do it, money saved.

Political/Management will to do it? Zero.

The problem is splitting things up all the way up to the dept of health and the dept for local govt. The NHS doesn’t want to have medically healthy patients sitting in expensive hospital beds, they want patients who NEED to be in hospital to be there. But the councils don’t want to rush to take on responsibility of those patients. Every day they’re in hospital is a day that the council isn’t footing the bill for their care.

I know that some hospitals are running “discharge to assess” schemes where patients who don’t need round the clock medical care but might need supervision/’pop in’ type care due to things like dementia, wound care, medication, not being able to feed/clean themselves etc are discharged into nursing homes. Their beds are cheaper than acute hospital beds so it’s better for the patients to wait there while the local council figures out what it’s doing with them.

But all the way to the top, local government and health are separate, so who can make this stuff happen? As a taxpayer i’d rather the council spent £10 than have the NHS spend £50, for the same outcome. But if I were a council finance boss, I’d rather the NHS spent £1000 than I spend £1. The NHS would want the councils to discharge people into social care/nursing homes really quickly but it has absolutely no way of making the councils spend the money to get that service in place.

Excess spending or not enough tax?

But all the way to the top, local government and health are separate, so who can make this stuff happen? As a taxpayer i’d rather the council spent £10 than have the NHS spend £50, for the same outcome. But if I were a council finance boss, I’d rather the NHS spent £1000 than I spend £1. The NHS would want the councils to discharge people into social care/nursing homes really quickly but it has absolutely no way of making the councils spend the money to get that service in place.

I think that sums up the whole problem in all government/council departments nicely.

around £35bn is lost in corporate avoidance each year (which despite Toby Young’s opinion, would go a long way to helping to avoid cuts to key public services, regardless of if YOU think they’re valuable)

There’s no point though in taking Cameron’s favourite approach and saying “ooh we’ll do nothing about it but it’s immoral”. It’s not immoral, it’s legal. If the government wants the tax to be paid, they should adjust the rules around tax to make avoidance illegal and fund HMRC adequately to pursue, prosecute and fine tax evaders. It’s almost as if they don’t want to do that for some reason.

I think this nicely illustrates how the cuts to council funding are impacting the NHS

On almost every measure, the NHS in England is in a worse position than this time last year.
And as we enter winter, that spells bad news: last year’s was the worst for a generation with A&E waits hitting their highest levels since targets were introduced in 2004

“… who really goes to the Library these days ? Libraries occupy expensive and valuable property in town centres and sadly are yesterdays news, the world including publishing is increasingly online these days. “

Ah a “Cameron style” deeply ignorant statement if ever I read one. The glorious assumption everyone has money to spare and a comfortable home to sit in.

I regularly go to 6 different libraries in my county/city. I have also been to Libraries in several other towns not nearby. Often tourist info and other local info can be found in them as part of the service. I can only think of 1 library I have been in that was not well used each time I was there, and that was a local branch in Cardiff which was in appauling physical condition – seems they had run down the local assessible branches to fund the newer library in the middle of the city.

If you bother to go into a library that has been supported by its council you will find reading groups, play groups, local information and loads and loads of PCs as well as bookstock and audio/video titles.

You will find somewhere for the elderly and unemployed to go, to find entertainment and heat and to apply for jobs via the computers.

Everyone can get internet access, as much as it would surprise you and Cameron, some people cannot afford computing equipment and line rentals at home. I wonder how many unemployed people looking for jobs can afford a replacement PC etc when thier entire budget for food, electricity, clothing, bus fares to interviews, materials for job applications etc is £60 per week. Not many job centres have lots of pcs to use.

I cant go into any of our local libraries without seeing people of all ages using up at least 95% of the available computers. Often there are queues to get on them.

I can only assume people who think Libraries are a waste of space never go in them and are self absorbed enough not to realise they are hugely important to much of the community. Libraries will become more and more important as more people are priced out of education, computing equipment, social activities and even basic life requirements such as heat in the winter.

If you bother to go into a library that has been supported by its council you will find reading groups, play groups, local information and loads and loads of PCs as well as bookstock and audio/video titles.

You mean its like an asset for everyone in the community to use? Its almost like there was such a thing as society after all

But all the way to the top, local government and health are separate, so who can make this stuff happen?

The Govt? At the end of the day it’s all paid from our taxes, so someone SHOULD take responsibility.

But if I were a council finance boss, I’d rather the NHS spent £1000 than I spend £1.

I use to have a Dilbert cartoon on my desk; gist of it was

“while the project may save a $1m for a $10k outlay, it will never happen as it’s my $10k outlay for someone else to save a $1m…”

Jambalaya – care to comment on that graph ^^^^^, you know the one that shows the opposite of post?

Jambalaya – care to comment on that graph ^^^^^, you know the one that shows the opposite of post?

Seriously don’t waste your energy. Facts/evidence are entirely unimportant to him.

The longer Cameron and Osborne are in government, the more left wing I’m becoming. This made me chuckle though from the BBC website:

For Labour, shadow chancellor John McDonnell told the BBC: “I’m backing David Cameron on this one, he is absolutely right that his chancellor’s cuts to local government are seriously damaging our communities and have to be opposed.

“I welcome the prime minister as another Tory MP joining our campaign against George Osborne’s cuts.”

😆

Clear, simple message and a good sound bite. Exactly what Milliband and Balls failed to do.

“Libraries. So cut something else then but the tough choice is what”

I nominate the £1,460,000,000 that the British government spent on R&D for the subsidy junkie arms industry.

https://www.caat.org.uk/issues/jobs-economy

Seriously don’t waste your energy. Facts/evidence are entirely unimportant to him.

I think it’s quite clever actually, instead of discussing the fact that the PM is either ignorant of the effects of his own policies or willing to lie about them when it suits him this thread has, as they always do, descended into discussing the ramblings of an ignorant prat on the internet.

When I’m an evil dictator I shall have an army of Jambalayas posting on forums 24/7 to deflect all discussions away from me.

I live in Oxfordshire. I don’t have a car and cycle everywhere. On the odd occasion I take the infrequent bus into Didcot.
The County Council has voted to end subsidies for all buses in Oxfordshire. Well that’s me stuffed then. Time to buy a small trailer for the bike.

I live in Oxfordshire. I don’t have a car and cycle everywhere. On the odd occasion I take the infrequent bus into Didcot.
The County Council has voted to end subsidies for all buses in Oxfordshire. Well that’s me stuffed then. Time to buy a small trailer for the bike.

Or with the money you save from not having a car, get a taxi.

Why should everyone subsidise buses that not enough folk use?

IN a rural community a bus service can be a lifeline for many people, without cars or the fitness to get to the nearest town for shopping and the doctors and various other things townies take for granted.

Some things are unprofitable [ we have no idea how many fok use them we just know they dont make money] but essential and we do it for the greater good of society and because we care for our fellow human beings more than we care for our bank balances

If you’re going to stop subsidising public transport, surely the packed commuter train services into London should be the first to go? Why are we subsidising transport for people in relatively high paying jobs in the city. Infrequently used services are exactly the ones that should be subsidised.

Why should everyone subsidise buses that not enough folk use?

This is the same debunked argument from earlier. ‘I don’t use it so why should I pay for it’. Some of us want to live in a society that works and aren’t just out for ourselves. Mental innit?

That the scary political arguement. “you saved money by not having x so spend that money on y”
Back in the real world its not that I saving money its I cant afford x because I have no money to spend on it so cant afford y either.

If you’re going to stop subsidising public transport,

What we actually need to do is spend money in the right ways.

We live in a very rural area, for example the village I work in is not served by any public transport with the exception of the school bus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliesleaf

Putting a bus service through would cost an awful lot of money and probably be barely used, so better that we look at other ways to help those folk who either can’t afford to own a car, or can’t drive.

What about taxi vouchers, or schemes to help folk pass their driving test? Or maybe a ‘community’ taxi/mini-bus service?

This way not only might we save money but we may end up with a more useful service that actually helps folk.

I am not against spending money on services I don’t use, but I am against wasting money, full stop.

Why should everyone subsidise buses that not enough folk use?

Because it’s better for the environment (which we all breathe) to have less private cars in use and more public transport?

b r – since rural bus services are discussed in just about every community meeting.. can you put a link to the minutes of the village meeting, of where you work, where everyone said they wouldn’t use it…instead of posting wiki references which we all know is invalid as a reference tool…

This way not only might we save money but we may end up with a more useful service that actually helps folk.

You think it will be cheaper for everyone to have a personal taxi than use a bus ? You really think this ?

ALso the suggestion the subsidised bus does not help folk is false. What we know is that it is not profitable not that it is not helping.

why is it, that private car use is heavily subsidised, but public transport has to make a profit?

It’s just struck me that you could add an ‘n’ to the thread title and it would still be just as ironic.

Catching up …

Excess spending or not enough tax?

@aa I’d be happy to see higher taxes across the board, as I said many times recently, lets have VAT on food like Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Belgium etc etc. As Hugh F-W’s War on Waste programme points out we throw away 15% of our food, so why not buy less but pay 10% VAT – we would collectively be better off. We don’t pay nearly enough tax to have the services we would like, sadly people are people and don’t vote for higher taxes. Taxes in Germany, Holland, France etc are much higher across the board, people here want higher taxes on someone else or the mythical tens or hundred of billions available from avoidance/evasion. The EU (especially Ireland and Luxembourg) is a massive legal tax avoidance scam but collectively the EU seems more than happy to let that go and reward Junker with the top job

I did comment on the graph, I pointed out how the deficit had exploded under Labour, to what I and much of the electorate think is an unsustainable level. The national debt is now so high we have to target a budget surplus to try and get it under control. I never posted anywhere that a Tory government should always run a budget surplus as a matter of policy, I don’t believe that. It depends on circumstances. The last Labour government handed over a deficit running out of control, accelerating to unprecedented and unsustainable levels.

It never ceases to amaze me that so many posters here are unable to accept alternative viewpoints to their own without attempting to trivialise the opposing argument. Remember 2.5 years ago when I was posting here immigration would be a major issue at the GE and beyond, no that was just the viewpoint of rabid UKIPers or DM readers ? Now we have a absolute fiasco throughout Europe and Schengen on the verge of being suspended or even collapsing totally. By failing to grasp the difficult issue firmly years ago we now have a much more serious issue with thousands of people dying.

It never ceases to amaze me that so many posters here are unable to accept alternative viewpoints to their own without attempting to trivialise the opposing argument.

because time and again your views have been shown to be wrong by many many people, all of whom you’ve ignored and gone on your way blinded by ideology…

HTH

I did comment on the graph, I pointed out how the deficit had exploded under Labour

I was going to point out how that explosion happened to coincide with the 2008 financial meltdown but aaah, **** it – everyone else knows that, and you won’t listen.

I was going to point out how that explosion happened to coincide with the 2008 financial meltdown but aaah, **** it – everyone else knows that, and you won’t listen.

I suggest its you who won’t listen:

from 2005 onwards Labour was insufficiently vigorous in limiting or eliminating the potential structural deficit. The failure to embrace the Fundamental Savings review of 2005-6 was, in retrospect, a much bigger error than I ever thought at the time. An analysis of the pros and cons of putting so much into tax credits is essential. All of this only has to be stated to seem unconscionably hard. Yet unless we do this, we cannot get the correct analysis of what we did right, what we did wrong, and where we go now.

Tony Blair, A Journey, 2010

It never ceases to amaze me that so many posters here are unable to accept alternative viewpoints to their own without attempting to trivialise the opposing argument.

Saving that for the next Israel thread as c we tire of your even handed condemnation of both sides

Oh the irony.