That Other Argument Innit !!!

There's nothing wrong with our health service that a small measure of competence wouldn't cure.

Sweden's health service was in a similar state of disarray and inefficiency in the 80s but has been significantly improved in many areas by what is known as the 'Stockholm Transition'.

To take an example of a centre running an expensive scanner, rather than treat each usage of the scanner as a 'cost' to be borne by the centre, in Stockholm the centres now receive their funding by being paid each time the scanner is used. Instead of costs, scans have become sources of income.

The result is that the use of expensive, sophisticated equipment like scanners has gone from 5 or 6 hours per day to 24/7, with corresponding improvements in efficiency.

Regards
Steve M

As an aside - the availability of scanners in the UK is worse than in some third world countries

7 Up me old Mucker, My argument is how these services are funded and not the services themselves, Police, Schools, Prisons, & the Military etc, etc,can all look after themselves fairly well 'In-house' (non Privatised) with a bit of Govt overview (ie, checking where their/your money goes) to-boot, the incentive to improve that service, higher moral % job satisfaction rather than creaming off profit to faceless bankers. Many local authorities are already only paying back interest, and strangely enough this 'Iron Heel' Neo Conservative Finacial philiosphy is starting to be exported worldwide, and you can guess what that'll eventually mean, ? Fair play, free. markets, MY ARSE, innit.

quote:

There's nothing wrong with our health service that a small measure of competence wouldn't cure

Crikey. On what do you base this? It needs completely throwing away and starting again.
Martin

quote:

Originally posted by Martin D:

quote:

There's nothing wrong with our health service that a small measure of competence wouldn't cure

Crikey. On what do you base this? It needs completely throwing away and starting again.
Martin

This could very well be true ?

This article was written just a few days before Rover officially went under and gives in my view to those (including myself) who don't usually have a Scooby Doo regarding complicated fiscal affairs and how the greed mongers take advantage of them, especially at high level, and subsequently costing the British Taxpayer £Millions in unjustified subsidies, innit.

In The City

"What about the workers?" was never a sentiment that echoed around the boardroom of MG Rover after supposed saviour John Towers and his partners rode into Longbridge five years ago. That the company has now collapsed leaving 6,000 employees probably jobless and with a large potential hole in their pensions, while Towers & Co count up to £40m for an initial investment of £10, should come as no suprise - especially to Eye readers. The Rover 'rescuers' never hid what they were taking out of the hugely loss-making group. All of which may make talk by chancellor Gordon Brown of an investigation little more than a face-saving device to help nervous West Midlands Labour MP's. Phoenix Venture Holdings, which owned MG Rover, was a private company and as such the director/owners were able to treat the company as a personal piggy bank so long as they broke no company laws and made full disclosure. Little better illustrates the essential for MG read "My Greed" selfishness of the Phoenix directors than the vexed issue of pensions which may have been the deal breaker for the Chinese government and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation who did not want to be left holding that bag. The new MG Rover pensions fund had a £68m deficit on its liabilities of £401m at the end of 2003. Both figures could be larger now.

But since Towers and four friends took over in 2000 they have paid at least almost £17m into their own personal pension scheme or more than £3m each. During that same period the company paid only £49M into the employees pension fund, or some £8,000 for each current employee. This disparity was most starkly illustrated in 2002 when the directors provided £13m to kick off their new nest egg compared with the £11m paid into the company pension fund for the entire workforce. And that in a year when the new accounting regulations and the fall of the stock market saw the deficit in the MG Rover pension fund balloon from £1m to £73m !

But that was all there for Brown and thwe hapless trade secretary Patricia Hewitt to see if they bothered to look. But they always took a hands-off approach until it was too late. After all, the Towers rescue had been blessed by Hewitt's predecessor Stephen Byers as a good deal in preference to the rival Alchemy bid with its gauranteed job losses. So it was somewhat difficult to denounce the men who had been lauded as saviours only a short time earlier. Also highly visible for those who wanted to see was the "Me First" eagerness with which the Towers consortium started extracting money from MG Rover even before they set up their pot pension gold which started MP's and trade unions questioning their motivation in 2003. In its first 20 months of operations to December 2001 the consortium members paid themselves some £7m, as well as engaging in a series of beneficial transactions between themselves and the company they had supposedly rescued - details first disclosed in Eye 1070. That pattern was repeated in every successive year and by 2003 £31m had been paid out under the guise of salaries, pensions, interest and loan note repayments. At the last minute Towers & Co generously offered to put back £10m in return for £100m from the taxpayer. Wether that was a real offer and on what terms it was never tested because the Chinese by then had walked away. Even the hopeless Hewitt realised that there could be no taxpayer bailout without the directors putting their hands in their own full pockets. But desperate to avoid a Midlands meltdown among already disillusioned local Labour voters, the trade secretary has now pumped in £6m to pay wages while the directors sit on the sidelines counting their money.

Towers & Co claimed they deserved to be rewarded for taking on the 'risk' of buying Rover nad investing a claimed £60,000 of their own money. But this ignores the huge dowry provided by BMW for taking Rover off their hands which essentially removed any risk. And proof that there was no risk is shown by the money extracted before the collapse of the substantial Rover assets, such as property and the MGR Capital car leasing operation, which have been ring-fenced from the LOngbridge losses. The structure of those transactions and much of the inter-company transactions within the Phoenix Venture Holdings group is likely to be put under the microscope by administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers. If, as seems likely, MG Rover goes under, all payments and asset transfers made since 2000 are likely to be closely examined by the administrators on behalf of creditors to see wether the directors obtained any illegal or preferential benefit.

Sadly, the fate of MG Rover is very much a death foretold. From the beginning there were those in the motor industry and the City who queried that it could be saved - and in particular that it could be saved by John Towers. They pointed to his far from impressive record at diesel engine component makers Concentric which he took private in a 1999 management buy-out after three years in charge (eye 1002). Since 2000 the story at Concentric, where Towers remained as deputy chairman after a further reorganisation, has been more of the same, much to the presumed irritation of the venture capitalists at Bridgepoint Capital who backed the buy-out. For 1999 sales were £59m and profits almost £3m. The next year sales rose to £64m and profits were still £2.4m even after interest payments of almost £2m. By 2002 sales were down to £60m and the group lost £1.3m. Towers resigned from most of the underlying Concentric subsidiaries in 2003 when there was a further loss of £420,000. Last year the group was in the black again making £2.2m - less than it had been making five years earlier. It has emerged that the chinese rescue deal for MG Rover started to fall apart as soon as its advisors were given full access to the books after months of negotiations. But then Towers and his team have never been quick about revealing the MG Rover numbers. The accounts were filed at or after the 10-month deadline laid down in company law. But then bad figures and information always takes longer to provide than good.

BMW, which went to great lengths to protect its former Rover employees through providing funding and preferential deals for the Labour government preferred new owners, saw what Phoenix did at Longbridge as the 'unacceptable face of capitalism'. However, unless PwC can do anything about it, MG Rover will turn out to have been a sweet ride for the "My Greed" directors uinlike for the employees, suppliers and owners.AS the Eye predicted in December 2002: "Even if it all ends in tears John Towers and friends have already made a remarkable return on that £10."

Private Eye (issue 1130 April 2005)

Fritz Von Sorry it's rather long, but important reading I feel for those that care a toss ? innit

It's just been announced that Iran might be considering baling out MG Rover, though reading between the lines one can see the British back scratchy argument I suppose, as they've got pots of money ? I'm suprised though that Israel hasn't yet made noises about the 'Actual DElivery' recently of Russian Nuclear fuel to run their new plants, maybe Condi's visits were much tougher than we thought, innit ?

Fritz Von Bam Bam I'ts easy when you're number one, **** Livin on an Island ***

Those of you that are aware of the horrific knife attack a few days ago in a wealthy Surrey village, will now probably know that two people have been arrested (after voluntarily turning up at the police station) Obviously we can only know what we see in the media, but reading between the lines, I truly hope thge police know what they are doing on this one, as something seems to me to be very odd indeed, with this particular piece of helping police with their enquiries, innit ?

Fritz Von Time will tell as per usual

I suppose if the Hammers don't get through the play-offs Our Mat will have saved a fortune for next season with his Norfbank 'Chicken Run' tickets, innit.

Fritz Von Daan der Boleyn U Wot John

I suppose North Korea could always save Rover ?