Are we sleep-walking out of Europe ?

hungryhalibut posted:

Don Atkinson posted:

hungryhalibut posted:

I believe that increase is in cash terms. So with inflation running at over 2% the real increase is much smaller. 

Oops !

The figures I saw quoted on the BBC website were percentage increases averaging 3.4% pa,above inflation. I had presumed that the £20b pa by 2023 was a cash estimate.

But what do I know !

I copy and paste the figures from the BBC below, and genuinely accept that my understanding of these figures is about as reliable as my understanding of "golden" pensions

Year-by-year funding increases

• 2019-20 - 3.6%
• 2020 - 21 - 3.6%
• 2021-22 - 3.1%
• 2022-23 - 3.1%
• 2023-24 - 3.4%

All figures are above inflation

You’ll find that ‘above’ in this context means ‘higher than’ rather than ‘additional to’. The increases are below the average annual growth from 1955 to 2015. 

Oh dear, hoodwinked yet again by "political speak"

I had, indeed, mistakenly presumed that "above" in the context of the Gov statement meant "in addition to".

I wonder if anybody else made this mistake ? (and is willing to admit to it ?)

On further reflection, I’m now unclear what 3.4% above inflation really means.

Let me try to illustrate three possibilities, one of which might be right, but not necessarily so !!

• Current allocation £100
• Inflation 2.5%
• Proposed increase 3.4% above inflation

Future allocation:-

Option 1 = £100 + £3.40 = £103.40     (which is what I think  HH is suggesting ? ie it’s more than the inflation amount would have been)

Option 2 = £100 + £2.50 + £3.40 = £ 105.90    (which is what I had thought)

Option 3 = £100 x 2.5% x 3.4% = £105.98      (well, I suppose it’s possible !!)

I’m starting to think the “Brain Teaser” thread might be a more appropriate place to take this one !!

It’s simply the cash increase. See below. I wouldn’t say you’d been hoodwinked by political speak, rather that the section you quoted above was sloppily worded by the BBC. When I was writing reports for local authority members I was always explicitly clear, but that clarity often evades both politicians and civil servants, often deliberately I suspect. Rather like the non existent Brexit dividend, which will be more than offset by lower growth.

Yes, I can see that the increase over the 5 years would be £4bn; £8bn; £12bn; £16bn and £20bn respectively if the NHS is allocated 3.6; 3.6; 3.1; 3.1 and 3.4%.

But these seem to be based on current values and would only materialise if inflation was Zero. If inflation turned out to be 3.4% pa, these increases would only keep the NHS funded to the same capability as at present. The Gov seems to be suggesting that the 3.4 % will enable the NHS to do a lot better than simply keep pace with inflation.

I'm obviously alone in mis-understanding something here..............

I see you've added a few more words to your above post whilst I was drafting my response above. But i'm not sure whether they help. I'll try to read them more carefully !!

IMHO...........Politicians, Media reports, and Money never seem to be straight forward when combined

hungryhalibut posted:

It’s simply the cash increase. See below. I wouldn’t say you’d been hoodwinked by political speak, rather that the section you quoted above was sloppily worded by the BBC. When I was writing reports for local authority members I was always explicitly clear, but that clarity often evades both politicians and civil servants, often deliberately I suspect. Rather like the non existent Brexit dividend, which will be more than offset by lower growth.

HH

The figure you quoted above are bogus/misleading/meaningless on there own.

We need to know the average inflation figure from 1948 to now and the expected average inflation from now to 2023.

Don Atkinson posted:

Yes, I can see that the increase over the 5 years would be £4bn; £8bn; £12bn; £16bn and £20bn respectively if the NHS is allocated 3.6; 3.6; 3.1; 3.1 and 3.4%.

But these seem to be based on current values and would only materialise if inflation was Zero. If inflation turned out to be 3.4% pa, these increases would only keep the NHS funded to the same capability as at present. The Gov seems to be suggesting that the 3.4 % will enable the NHS to do a lot better than simply keep pace with inflation.

I'm obviously alone in mis-understanding something here..............

Looking at all the figures quoted, it seems hard to believe the approx 3% increase isn’t over and above inflation.

Is it actually possible the 3.7% increase isn’t based on above inflation? I doubt it. Inflation was pretty high in the 70s and 80s.

You may be right. It may we’ll be above inflation.  Whatever, you can virtually guarantee it will be insufficient to meet an ever rising demand. Without Brexit GDP growth would be £350m a week higher, according to the IFS. Now where have we heard that figure before? All May is doing is trying to distract us from her ineptitude in dealing with Brexit and her own party, by waving a few sticking plasters. 

hungryhalibut posted:

You may be right. It may we’ll be above inflation.  Whatever, you can virtually guarantee it will be insufficient to meet an ever rising demand. Without Brexit GDP growth would be £350m a week higher, according to the IFS. Now where have we heard that figure before? All May is doing is trying to distract us from her ineptitude in dealing with Brexit and her own party, by waving a few sticking plasters. 

...........and that was the gist of my post above.....

I suspect the £20bn is simply a cash increase about the current NHS baseline i.e. it's not a real £20bn increase once inflation it accounted for. The forthcoming spending review (SR19), yet to be formally announced by the Chancellor, will reveal the truth about the NHS funding. Spending reviews normally cover a five-year period (the life of a parliament) which squares with the 2023 year mentioned by the PM. What I find interesting is that prior to this point Hunt has been saying that the NHS needs a 10-year settlement, citing the time it takes to train a doctor.  Hitherto the PM seems to have been supportive of that, so this new announcement suggests that the Treasury has had a significant influence.

Anyway back on the Brexit point, I'm struggling to see how lower payments to the EU can contribute materially to the extra money for the EU to 2023 because it looks like the UK will be in a transition period during which contributions will almost certainly still be made.  Extra taxes, or borrowing, look a far more likely source.   

Hunt has very recently said that any Brexit savings weren’t enough to cover the additional NHS funding, and that there will be an extra burden on taxation. At least Labour have been honest about that, and last year’s manifesto explained that it would come from extra taxes on the richest 5% and increased corporation tax. Yet May clearly thinks that the magic money tree will provide. Last year she said there wasn’t one, but it seems she has now found it. What a fiasco. Every 1% fall in GDP as a result of Brexit reduces tax income by £8bn. So where do we find the extra £20bn without increasing taxes? Errrrrrrr........

Fancy The Maybot trotting out the stupid idea that these funs will come from "The £350 million...bla.bla....saved....bla bla...". She must think our heads button up the back. It just shows what contempt the Tories hold for the majority of the population.

The Brexit dividend proposition is rubbish that May couldn’t cling to for even days, yet alone long enough for it to be empirically disproved. It’s now official that the NHS spending increase will require tax increases.

It’s not even really much of an increase - it’s mostly just restoring near-parity with historical NHS funding trends in the past. Trends which, far from being profligacy, simply make sense in the context of an increasing, and increasingly long-lived population.

As Robert Peston said recently (backed up by the head of the IFS), if you hear Brexit dividend, think unicorn.

NHS spending will have to increase further if fewer foreign workers are prepared to come for the low wages on offer to care and ancillary staff, leading to an increase in wages to attract more people.

Dave***t posted:

The Brexit dividend proposition is rubbish that May couldn’t cling to for even days, yet alone long enough for it to be empirically disproved. It’s now official that the NHS spending increase will require tax increases.

It’s not even really much of an increase - it’s mostly just restoring near-parity with historical NHS funding trends in the past. Trends which, far from being profligacy, simply make sense in the context of an increasing, and increasingly long-lived population.

As Robert Peston said recently (backed up by the head of the IFS), if you hear Brexit dividend, think unicorn.

The endless discussion about the ‘Brexit dividend’ or the NHS bonus are truly useful constructs by Remainers. Despite and including Cameron’s £9 million taxpayer funded package of lies, no sensible BRexiterr was influenced in the slightest by anything on the side of a bus, nor were we moved to vote Brexit in order to waste even more money on the NHS, an unaffordable obsession for politicians and the unworking left. 

We voted to regain sovereignty, end mass immigration, cut our payments to the EU and retain all  judicial processes within the U.K. Still, if it keeps you all happy patting one another on the back at the antics of the likes of Soubry or Grieve then crack on. I can assure you there are now more than 17.4 million who are unimpressed at the obfuscation and delay by them, Soubry, Grieve, Clarke,  as well as the House of Lords, and it is only the fact that there is no nascent Populist Party for Brexiterrs to turn to that is keeping Labour and Conservatives delusional about their popular support. 

As for those that ridicule the self made multimillionaire, Jacob Rees Mogg, you have to be having a gigantic laugh at expecting us to give credulity to that weirdo Peston.

The Tories cannot be brave enough to tell people they will have to pay more tax to get the NHS they want. Why? Because time after time this sort of choice has shown to be electoral suicide. The Daily Mail has already started the backlash.

The population hails the NHS, everyone says they want to save it but when people go to the ballot box they rarely show that they want to pay for it. Politicians can be forgiven for some of their squeamishness perhaps. Labour know this too.

Time for an honest and non-politicised debate about what people want, want we can actually afford now and in the future and what we cannot. Not passing the buck to the professions and the 'system' to take the rap for falling performance and local rationing decisions. We need a fixed 10yr funding plan that is believable, and will persist whatever political party is in office. We need money for system innovation, not just poured into more of the same. We need to make sure social care is funded as part of the package of health funding, not slashed whilst the NHS gets a bigger cut. We need a workforce plan across clinical professions that is coherent and achievable. Hunts' 'extra 5,000 GP's is just a joke, and even he is beginning to tire of repeating it.

I could continue.

Bruce

Quite so, Bruce. And it’s not just the NHS: local government seems to be falling apart around our ears. Social care is the key to unlocking bed blocking, and while local authorities are struggling to maintain these statutory services everything else is suffering, including public health, which is vital to relieve pressure on the NHS. The roads are falling to bits, libraries and fire stations are closing, trading standards are being cut and - certainly where I live - it’s starting to look like a jungle with weeds and long grass everywhere. Yet people want great services but don’t want to pay for them. And the Government is simply shifting the blame to other bodies. 

One benefit of Brexit - and I can think of no other - is that they will no longer be able to blame Brussels for their own almighty **** up. 

Resurrection posted:

The endless discussion about the ‘Brexit dividend’ or the NHS bonus are truly useful constructs by Remainers. Despite and including Cameron’s £9 million taxpayer funded package of lies, no sensible BRexiterr was influenced in the slightest by anything on the side of a bus, nor were we moved to vote Brexit in order to waste even more money on the NHS, an unaffordable obsession for politicians and the unworking left. 

That’s a lie... politicians at least are still relying on the Brexit Dividend as a statement to influence voters.  May and Johnson both used it today.  Hunt used it (in denying that there needed to be a Brexit Dividend to get the £20bn).

Eloise posted:

Resurrection posted:

The endless discussion about the ‘Brexit dividend’ or the NHS bonus are truly useful constructs by Remainers. Despite and including Cameron’s £9 million taxpayer funded package of lies, no sensible BRexiterr was influenced in the slightest by anything on the side of a bus, nor were we moved to vote Brexit in order to waste even more money on the NHS, an unaffordable obsession for politicians and the unworking left. 

That’s a lie... politicians at least are still relying on the Brexit Dividend as a statement to influence voters.  May and Johnson both used it today.  Hunt used it (in denying that there needed to be a Brexit Dividend to get the £20bn).

Ouch! Eloise knows how to pack a punch, eh! This so called Brexit Dividend is and always has been a fabricated plaything of politicians who find it so very hard to understand why the swivel eyed Leave voting electorate could be so deluded.  Obviously, border closing or migration cutting are nowhere in the lexicon of politicians so they could not be, or remotely allowed to be the reason, could they? No, the poor, deluded fools were duped by a red bus that had a number on it. As far as I know, Hunt, May et al are all Remainers to a gender neutral personage, so how they rationalise the Brexit imposed on them by the electorate is also one of life’s mysteries. Their tortured logic on implementing and understanding it seems to validate this. 

That isn’t to say that I believe that there is no Brexit dividend, there are loads of them though not necessarily all financial, all of these are based around self determination, and no, I have no intention of providing you with the shopping list Eloise. ????

Resurrection posted:

Dave***t posted:

The Brexit dividend proposition is rubbish that May couldn’t cling to for even days, yet alone long enough for it to be empirically disproved. It’s now official that the NHS spending increase will require tax increases.

It’s not even really much of an increase - it’s mostly just restoring near-parity with historical NHS funding trends in the past. Trends which, far from being profligacy, simply make sense in the context of an increasing, and increasingly long-lived population.

As Robert Peston said recently (backed up by the head of the IFS), if you hear Brexit dividend, think unicorn.

The endless discussion about the ‘Brexit dividend’ or the NHS bonus are truly useful constructs by Remainers. Despite and including Cameron’s £9 million taxpayer funded package of lies, no sensible BRexiterr was influenced in the slightest by anything on the side of a bus, nor were we moved to vote Brexit in order to waste even more money on the NHS, an unaffordable obsession for politicians and the unworking left. 

We voted to regain sovereignty, end mass immigration, cut our payments to the EU and retain all  judicial processes within the U.K. Still, if it keeps you all happy patting one another on the back at the antics of the likes of Soubry or Grieve then crack on. I can assure you there are now more than 17.4 million who are unimpressed at the obfuscation and delay by them, Soubry, Grieve, Clarke,  as well as the House of Lords, and it is only the fact that there is no nascent Populist Party for Brexiterrs to turn to that is keeping Labour and Conservatives delusional about their popular support. 

As for those that ridicule the self made multimillionaire, Jacob Rees Mogg, you have to be having a gigantic laugh at expecting us to give credulity to that weirdo Peston.

Ah, so that's why support for UKIP has fallen so dramatically!

(N.B. Sarcasm!)

Huge posted:

We voted to regain sovereignty, end mass immigration, cut our payments to the EU and retain all  judicial processes within the U.K. Still, if it keeps you all happy patting one another on the back at the antics of the likes of Soubry or Grieve then crack on. I can assure you there are now more than 17.4 million who are unimpressed at the obfuscation and delay by them, Soubry, Grieve, Clarke,  as well as the House of Lords, and it is only the fact that there is no nascent Populist Party for Brexiterrs to turn to that is keeping Labour and Conservatives delusional about their popular support. 

As for those that ridicule the self made multimillionaire, Jacob Rees Mogg, you have to be having a gigantic laugh at expecting us to give credulity to that weirdo Peston.

Ah, so that's why support for UKIP has fallen so dramatically!

(N.B. Sarcasm!)

No, it was because, like Jeremy Corbyn they had no Momentum, traction or proper identity other than Brexit, which is, of course, Jeremy's position as well.

Resurrection posted:

.... no sensible BRexiterr was influenced in the slightest by anything on the side of a bus

I'll go along with that statement, but it sure leaves an awful lot of Brexiteers who were indeed influenced by something on the side of a bus, and by the other untruths propagated by the 'Exit' campaign. 

However, I see that you are at least no longer claiming to speak for all who voted Brexit.

Ah, but no - the nastiness is never far away, nor your uncanny ability to speak for all those who voted Brexit, and returns with gusto with this statement: 

".... nor were we moved to vote Brexit in order to waste even more money on the NHS, an unaffordable obsession for politicians and the unworking left". 

So what would your policy be then Resurrection? A move away from the NHS to an American style service where those (like that nice self made millionaire, Rees-Mogg), and perhaps yourself can afford to pay for private health insurance, and those who cannot pay be damned. Well, I guess that that would constitute a sort of 'Natural Selection', potentially ending up with the numbers of the great unwashed and unworking left being drastically reduced. That would be convenient, wouldn't it.     

Hmack posted:

Resurrection posted:

.... no sensible BRexiterr was influenced in the slightest by anything on the side of a bus

 

I'll go along with that statement, but it sure leaves an awful lot of Brexiteers who were indeed influenced by something on the side of a bus, and by the other untruths propagated by the 'Exit' campaign. 

However, I see that you are at least no longer claiming to speak for all who voted Brexit.

Ah, but no - the nastiness is never far away, nor your uncanny ability to speak for all those who voted Brexit, and returns with gusto with this statement: 

".... nor were we moved to vote Brexit in order to waste even more money on the NHS, an unaffordable obsession for politicians and the unworking left". 

So what would your policy be then Resurrection? A move away from the NHS to an American style service where those (like that nice self made millionaire, Rees-Mogg), and perhaps yourself can afford to pay for private health insurance, and those who cannot pay be damned. Well, I guess that that would constitute a sort of 'Natural Selection', potentially ending up with the numbers of the great unwashed and unworking left being drastically reduced. That would be convenient, wouldn't it.     

 

Ouch, another one having a bite at me. The models for the NHS  I would use, steangeky, are the European ones, the insurance based schemes that ensures everyone takes some responsibility for their health care but no one is left out due to genuine financial hardship.. I will avoid all your usual presumptions of who I am and what I think or believe, but you are correct, I do have private healthcare which I received for life from a previous employer.

If you had read any of my previous pearls of wisdom you would know that my wife was a midwife, a real one, delivering real babies all her career, so I am aware of all the demands on the frontline staff. 

That’s it.

Strange isn't it, how the Brexit Bunch moaned again and again about the lack of sovereignty of the British Parliament (does that constitute remoaning?); yet now, because Parliament may not wish to sacrifice the good of the country on the altar of their entrenched dogma, they just as vociferously clamour to cede that very sovereignty away from Parliament and to the current government!

Huge posted:

Strange isn't it, how the Brexit Bunch moaned again and again about the lack of sovereignty of the British Parliament (does that constitute remoaning?); yet now, because Parliament may not wish to sacrifice the good of the country on the altar of their entrenched dogma, they just as vociferously clamour to cede that very sovereignty away from Parliament and to the current government!

When all the remaining monkeys in Westminster get out of the way, allow Brexit to be implemented properly instead of the stalling tactics they are playing at the moment then you will have sovereignty back with the U.K. Parliament and should they see fit they might even let you have a crack at rejoining your beloved EU, but that will not happen again in your lifetime if the people are asked through a Referendum.