the size and scale of the top down reorganisation and cuts forced on the NHS this is hardly surprising

Equally you could say that the failure of the NHS to reform itself over many decades is precisely the reason that a “top down” change is now being prescribed – it’s finally reached a demographic tipping point where it must now change, or fail ..and at scale. And surely that’s not what anyone wants.

If we take a system view, Primary Care has been broken for a decade or more because the bulk of the funding still goes on maintaining a footprint of hospitals that was designed on a reasonably arbitrary basis back in the 1940s / 50s.

The view of what Primary Care should / shouldn’t also hasn’t really evolved in 3 decades despite the many advances in diagnostics and treatment – so we still have many thousands of single handed GP practices running even though we know they are significantly more likely to lead to poor care / outcomes.

The country has changed immeasurably since the NHS was originally conceived but the system has barely changed and continues to operate the pointless delineations between primary and secondary care that many other health systems have long since moved on from.

We now have one of the most obese and unhealthy societies in the western world and yet the NHS operating model is still focused on treating sickness not maintaining wellness. We’re on track to spend 10% of the entire NHS budget on type 2 diabetes / comorbidities but we’re still debating whether it’s ok for GPs to tell obese patients they must lose weight.

There’s an interesting quote in the FT piece from a UK trained medics now working in Australia which points to one of the core problems in the NHS – that of a culture which is resistant at nearly every level to any form of change or taking what works from abroad and implementing it here… the “not invented here” syndrome that also exists between individual trusts, let alone between the NHS and other health systems.

“I spent a decade working at a hospital in Adelaide and then went back to work in the NHS in Wales. I thought I could bring back some of the positives and techniques I’d learnt in Australia to the UK. But there was resistance from administrators, and the focus was on merely keeping our heads above water, rather than introducing newfangled systems and processes from the colonies.”

new headline “time rich dad feeds kids ready-meals”

to earn the £1668 total monthly benefit cap you’d need a job paying £25K.

Which I’ll wager is more than most working people in Birkenhead earn on average.

Good to see Andy Burnham giving interviews suggesting some kind of cover up.

If only we’d had a Labour government in power since the events originally happened – they could establish a public enquiry.

We could do better at providing secure and well paid employment, if we had power over all economic and industrial policy

What’s happened to outcomes for Education and Health in the 10+ years since the Scottish Parliament has been running these?

Do Nissan make all their models in the UK? If not… have another think.

No but they do have rather a clever plant in Sunderland which has been designed to build 5 different platforms of vehicle on the same production line at the same time. It’s one of a very small number of plants in the world that can do this – possibly the only one. I’m not sure how many platforms Nissan has at present but it’s probably not much more than 5.

Of course the other point you’re missing is that most of the Nissan production is exported – the Uk market isn’t going to pick most of that up, whatever the tariffs are on imported cars.

And with respect, you’re missing the point that when a comparable VW / Renault / BMW car costs 30% more than a UK produced car very few people will choose to spend 30% more. So Nissan’s market share will almost certainly increase. It’s just a rational consumer response to a change in retail price – the very same one that is already causing a headache for VW UK.

There are some other benefits as well though – if we take Nissan as the example:

– many of the cars currently exported by ocean routes are transported by ships that produce more Co2 and sulphur on the export leg than the the actual cars will in the whole service life. So more cars manufactured and used in the same country not only has a significant environmental benefit but also saves Nissan somewhere in the region of £1500 per vehicle in transport costs.

– selling more cars here means the overhead recoveries on manufacturing remain constant but with distribution costs avoided (like transport) going up. These may well completely offset any drop in profit caused by currency movements or tariffs on imported components

igm – I agree but that still doesn’t mean we should have an industrial strategy to make this happen.

Singapore have done this very successfully by balancing the flow of skilled migrants with an increase in training in key skills in their universities / technical colleges. The net result is that when Rolls Royce and many of the world leaders in Chemical industries expanded, they went to Singapore.

But they would also be more expensive due to overseas parts, no?

Why would they be anymore expensive than the Qashqai’s produced now?

All this decision does it encourage Nissan’s supply chain partners to produce more of the OE parts in the UK.

Per the Delphi example earlier in the thread there’s no good reason for some of the current supply chain movements other than tax optimisation / avoidance and choices on where to commit Capex.

Capability can be built anywhere almost with the right capital investment and training of workforce. This is something that’s not been right in the UK for a long time so it’s about time we encouraged manufacturers to do more of their business here.

if a hard brexit (no single market & customs union + import duties,) makes a car 10,20,50?% more expensive to produce here, how much does the taxpayer have to subsidise per car?

On balance very little.

Since those same tariffs would apply to imported cars, the net position would be that VAG / BMW / PeugeotCitroen / Renault group cars would immediately become significantly more expensive – likely resulting in UK consumers spending their money on UK produced cars instead.

So although exports from the UK would go down Nissan would likely gain significant market share in the UK with the result they would be capacity constrained at the Sunderland Plant.

Given much of the R&D for the Qasqhai is also done here they would benefit from a double “win” in the form of the Patent Box provisions that encourage domestic manufacturing of goods researched / developed here – something the EU specifically want to stop the UK offering.

Nissan have confirmed the new Qashqai will be built in Sunderland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37787890

Great news for the North East.

It still underperformed though didn’t it…

Not necessarily – we won’t really know for sure what the economy did in the last quarter for 2-3 years.

If we cast our minds back a few years National Statistics landed up revising their previous reports of a double dip recession to there being only one dip. The data aren’t all available yet and therefore any current conclusions may / may not be accurate.

Sky News – double dip recession never happened

I think you’re screwed, TBH. At nearly a year old the fault’s burden of proof is on you,

Not quite so sure. Under EU Consumer law manufaturers of consumer electronics must provide a warranty / support for their goods for a minimum of 2 years – UK Consumer Rights potentially extends a good deal beyond 2 years as well.

I would write to Curry’s HQ / Customer Service (using recorded delivery) and reassert your claim that it stopped working whilst charging. Given this can only take place when the right cable is inserted the right way it’s up to them to provide proof to support their claim.

I’d give them 10 working days to write back with more detail and would file small claims after that. Tell them that’s your intended course of action as well. They are unlikely to bother even turning up for £100 so will either settle or have the case found against them at which point they will have to pay up at that point.

I would imagine it would only matter for a limited number of products but you need to list all of the suppliers locations and end users.

Care to name some?

Hence her not wanting any parliamentary debate on Brexit, and certainly no vote

.

Apart from the fact the Government has not only confirmed the former will happen and then made good on it with 7 hours of time in the Commons spent debating Brexit the week before last and no doubt many hundreds of hours still to come.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2016-10-10/debates/6CE5F6BB-3AA4-4332-BF7A-577DB35BDB77/NextStepsInLeavingTheEuropeanUnion

I certainly found it difficult to communicate with the niqab wearing car driver who nearly knocked me off my bike this week.

Having reflected on it, I assumed she had seen me but if I’d been able to see her face it would have been more obvious whether she was looking at me or something else – generally you seem some other facial movement when eye contact is made.

Only being able to see the eyes actually gives away very little. I’d hate to be partially sighted -it’s bad enough trying to use roads when drivers are looking at their phones but when you can’t even tell if a driver is looking at you / and or has their peripheral vision completely obscured by fabric the risks to vulnerable road users can only be higher.

@oldman – £/$ moves 18% Microsoft raise prices 22% – opportunistic try on. Why aren’t their servers in UK (I bet they are) and what costs have changed so much ? Are the servers demanding a pay rise ?

Microsoft along with many other US Tech companies are complete snakes – they book software and service sales through Ireland in order to avoid tax. A lot of their UK based consultants are also “employed” by Microsoft in Switzerland again to reduce and avoid tax. At the last estimate they avoid around £120m a year in tax on UK sales which would be enough to train another couple of thousand doctors a year.

If Philip Hammond has any scruples he’ll announce a revenue tax on UK Software / Cloud Service sales – this would have the double benefit of putting downward price pressure on Microsoft and generating more tax.

Lot’s of good posts above – here’s what we do to save money on food:

1. Bulk out existing meals with veg and or Quorn. So spag bol has loads of celery. mushroom and carrot in and gets cooked a bit longer for the meat flavour to work through (Italians would be horrified at this bastardised version of their dish though).

2. Switch meat where possible. Swapping lean beef mince for British Rose Veal saves around 1/3 and despite being Veal is actually doing our farmers a favour – british veal isn’t crated and creates a market for animals that would otherwise be killed at birth. Farmers hate doing this, the animal gets to live in humane conditions (albeit only for 6-12 months) and it’s cheaper overall. Win Win. Note – it’s still only British Veal that doesn’t get crated – Europeans seem to enjoy completely avoidable Animal Cruelty.

3. Use pulses and beans where possible – throwing a few cans of Flageolet beans or chick peas into a Chilli can triple the quantity of food for very little incremental cost. It also reduces meat intake per meal and saves money. Again – Win win.

4. Get a small fridge and use the freezer. Our food waste reduced significantly when we moved house to a smaller kitchen – the fact we can store less means we buy less and have less food waste. Fridge surprise is a good way of emptying the fridge before the next shop arrives and the freezer is great for storing the “bulked up” portions of dishes for us to eat later.

Interesting that Conrad Black fella actually believes the EU will come back with a revised offer and there will be a 2nd referendum.

This would of course be the most pragmatic, damage limiting course of action. And that’s precisely why Brussels won’t even consider it.

The whole Brexit thing is a political powerplay. It’s pretty obvious to just about everyone in Europe that there are some deep seated issues that need to be addressed:

– Falling share of world GDP
– High unemployment / lack of growth in many member states
– Ongoing loss of high value industries to China
– Difficulties planning for / accommodating immigration at scale when the associated provisioning needs in Health, Education, Housing etc. cannot be predicted early enough to enable member states to plan for it.
– Complete lack of thinking on what to do with a resurgent and expansionist Russian state

Despite all this Brussels is like an Ostrich strutting round a private sandpit wondering why everyone is so busy asking for change when itself it has no difficulty in finding somewhere to bury its head.

The “negotiations” between UK / EU at the start of the year were conducted with no genuine intention to find middle ground or solutions – instead it was a game of marginal compromise underpinned by a requirement to give up the right to ever negotiate on those points in the future. I can’t think of any negotiation where those “rules” would result in an agreed outcome – the whole set up was stupid from the outset and the army of 8,000+ EU Civil Servants all paid more than our Prime Minister have a lot to answer for.

As the Referendum was already a known fact, it’s surprising that the EU chose to effectively give David Cameron a poke in the eye and then tell him to ask go home and ask everyone here what they thought about that in a referendum.

The Political class that dominates Brussels seems to have very little understanding of the concerns of the people of Europe, and the straws in the wind this week fro Hollande, Tusk and others don’t suggest a change of heart is likely any time soon.

With different leadership and a new found desire to work constructively to solve the problems member states have today the outcome could still be different. It doesn’t make sense to trash the economies of many member states via a “hard” Brexit in order to pursue solely political goals. The people of the 28 member states have the right to expect that Europe’s leaders work together rather than playing silly political games.

Gosh, another ex footballer / celebrity calling for compassion and more help for refugees whilst reportedly engaging in aggressive tax avoidance schemes that ultimately enable them to paying anything towards this.

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/gary-lineker-ordered-to-pay-%C2%A313m-to-government-after-crackdown-on-tax-avoidance-schemes/ar-AA8NVba

I’m probably being a bit slow here but one of things I think I’ve read many times are statements to the effect of “the UK can’t possibly have free trade without free movement of people”..

In light of the map below, can anyone explain why the EU appears to not only be negotiating towards this with a number of countries, but it’s already formalised agreements to this effect with Vietnam and Singapore?

Why would the EU want a free trade partnership with Australia, 10,000 miles away but not entertain one with a country 26 miles away?

source for map: http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/

because maybe the heat-treatment of fuel-injectors is a specialised business?

We make 1.6m+ vehicles a year in the UK. Presumably that’s enough volume to warrant heat treating here or building the capability to do so rather than trucking up to 1m+ components to Germany and back? Given the UK’s leading position in high strength / fatigue resistant alloys and steels with the likes of Rolls Royce it’s unlikely to just be a skills issue.

The thing that PA graphic above doesn’t show is whythe component is exported to Germany for heat treatment.

To draw any meaningful conclusion we’d need to know if Delphi export to Germany then re-import because there’s no capability in the UK to get it done here, to help with overhead recoveries at a Delphi plant in Germany, to book profit on the German P&L after most of the value has been added / to avoid doing that in the UK. Etc etc.

The PA analysis also misses that UK sourced steel is now / or shortly will be cheaper than imported steel so the sourcing decision on raw materials and the answers to “why” may significantly change the conclusion we reach. It’s also worth saying there’s a good chance Delphi’s supply chains aren’t optimised if most of the end product is made in the UK but they are mucking about with 1000 mile freight movements on work in progress.

are the time’s any good? I was looking at a pair of Atac’s to replace some ageing egg beaters but the reviews seemed a bit mixed (albeit probably less so than for anything Crank Bros make).

THM keeps on claiming Salmond lied

Shall we start with Salmond’s prediction of a pending oil “boom” and average annual tax receipts of £48B in the face of quite overwhelming evidence to the contrary at that time?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/mar/11/alex-salmond-scotland-oil-boom

Or are we chalking this wee oversight up to Salmond’s “chipper” attitude and positive vision for Scotland?

if you are pointing an SA80 at yourself in full automatic mode the recoil could quite possibly result in the trigger being “pressed” for a second / a good couple of rounds.

Oligarchs, Footballers and Celebrities – RangeRovers
Rich people – Uber, an Audi 4WD or a Mountain Bike hybrid
poor people – Cars
poorer people – BSOs / bikes found in skips
poorest people – have no reason to go anywhere

Why you say this?

Because by setting up as Ltd company guarantees part of the revenue will be taken as dividends not pay – and the main purpose of doing that for most contractors is to reduce the tax to a lower rate than salary payments would normally attract. This applies to sole contractors providing a service but obviously doesn’t apply to other businesses using Ltd status – e.g. those that buy raw materials, employ other staff etc etc.

Apart from money flows from scotland to england and has done for almost all of the last 40 years.

Yes but the difficulty is in those “almost” years isn’t it?

Alex Salmond predicts £57B oil boom for Scotland

Scottish deficit almost double the UK’s spending gap

Scotland voting out is potentially good news. Brexit brings some short term pain for the UK as a whole but now there’s a chance to mitigate that by cutting the purse strings north of the border and letting Scotland get on and pay more for public services just like they are always talking about – but at their cost.

So more money left for the impoverished English regions. Win Win.

If we get to see less Salmond and Sturgeon on the telly that will a positive result as well.

keeping it all straightforward/simple so that I can just focus on delivering good work.

The simple answer is don’t set up a Ltd company – just invoice as an individual, declare the income to HMRC via self assessment and pay the tax due.

“novel deductions” is just a euphemism for “I’d like to avoid having to pay my share share of tax that supports the NHS, Education and all the other things our society needs to function.”

why make this her problem?

It’s the OPs problem s/he lost 52kg weight so do the right thing, get back on the greggs and crisps, get the new “badly dressed” styles and then you’ll both look the same again. Not sure how to even up on the wealth though – maybe ask her for a loan?

Obviously written by someone who doesnt care how much marmite is going to cost him

Probably written by someone who can see that Unilever raising prices to avoid paying tax on stuff produced in the UK, then exported and then reimported back to the UK (likely without any movement of the physical goods) is just part of a bigger picture of jobs and factories and profit all being moved offshore for the benefit of international finance. Unilever make it here and sell it here – the fact they reportedly muck about with transfer pricing to avoid tax on the profit they make here is easily resolved.

An interesting contribution in today’s Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/10/12/if-europe-insists-on-a-hard-brexit-so-be-it/

Re Unilever – according to my Mrs just now Marmite is made in the UK then exported to the EU and re-imported back again. Hence currency exposure.

No – this is transfer pricing using trade routes that have likely been structured to specifically avoid recognising revenue where one would expect / avoid tax. If that’s the case then the only reason Unilever have raised the price of Marmite (produced in the UK with UK supplied commodities) is because they have structured their operations to avoid tax.

Unilever is Dutch company. If Tesco are paying them in sterling then it seems pretty reasonable that they’ll need to hand over a bit more sterling now that it is worth less against the Euro.

Yes but although it’s a Dutch Company listed on the UK FTSE many of the products it’s raised prices on are only produced in the UK – including Marmite – ( Burton on Trent). Those goods are all sold to UK retailers in £ by Unilever’s UK Sales and Marketing business unit. So there’s still no excuse for a 15% rise not least as not all elements of the cost will have increased by that much – the lag in commodity supply contracts means that Unilever is still producing now using raw material purchases completed in April / May – well before any change in exchange rates.

The most likely outcome is that Unilever will have to pay Tesco to regain the shelf space and adjust the prices for goods sold to retailers in Europe – we know this is possible because for the last 5 years Unilever failed to pass on price cuts on goods imported to the UK when the sterling was stronger i.e. British Consumers subsidised the cost of goods sold on the continent.

Maybe we’ll also Unilever putting back the thousands of jobs they have cut from operations in the UK over the last 5-10 years.

I’d put money on it becoming a one up / one down “bed in shed” for the purposes of accommodating extended family or more likely being rented out on an exploitative basis to vulnerable workers in the black economy. I’d definitely report it to the council’s planning department if only to guarantee it’s not used for the latter purpose.

The Unilever thing isn’t what it appears to be as many of the products they’ve put prices up on are only made in the UK and with commodities that can be sourced here.

That said, Unilever has had a good run of supplying an increasing share of its UK sales from factories in Europe – the weak Euro rate has helped in that regard for many years. On the high volume goods that it exports to the UK it will now have a choice of absorbing some of the extra cost (it did this on Euro sales for years by using higher prices in the UK to offset costs in Europe) or invest more in the UK / making stuff here.

I suspect that another dynamic in the Unilever / Tesco spat is that Drastic Dave / Tesco CEO used to be a regional President in Unilever – so he knows how they negotiate (and vice versa) so is simply changing the rules of negotiation by cutting off their sales altogether. What will likely happen is that Unilever renegotiate pricing to gain access to shelfspace and that Tesco offer more own brand alternatives to Branded products. Just like the discounters have already done.

There’s also an upside from this – as a UK listed company Unilever is likely to see earnings rise 20-30% over the next year – this is reflected by the 60% rise in share price since the brexit vote. That will translate into a £b or so additional corporation tax receipts for the Treasury.

These are red lines for the EU – imagine singing off on exemptions for one country. We might think we are special but we are not that special.

But although this is a red line for the Commission and its officials it’s not necessarily a red line for all of the countries / governments in Europe.

And therein is the nub of the issue – The Commission and the 5 x Presidents are not accountable to the countries / people of Europe and can pretty do as they want with no consequences.

Europe clearly has a number of deep seated social and economic problems that require responses. The Commission is not minded to really look at these or develop solutions / policy changes so we’re just left with an increasingly febrile political discussion in many countries across Europe and a backstop threat of “you’re either in or out – take it or leave it but we’re not changing policy” from the Commission.

This isn’t in anyone’s interests and is the problem that needs solving first.

one way of doing it would be as follows:

1. FIL payes £100K as one of gift under HMRC rules

2. You take out BTL mortgage yourself using the gift as the deposit

3. You then charge FIL rent (needs to be commercial rate) and declare proceeds less costs

If the FIL buys the property direct, assuming he’s resident in the USA for tax purposes there’s almost no way of getting a mortgage, the purchase would attract additional stamp duty and would create a further issue on death.