Reeves and Starmer have made decisions and set out their stall.
Anyone is free to disagree with it - but at least they've presented some policies and ideas, finally.
I think it's a good budget and one that will stand the test of the next few weeks which few budgets do. It'll make me a bit worse off but if public services improve and rough sleepers get housed and the country becomes a liitle more egalitarian then it will be a cost I and I'm sure most people who are net losers will consider fair.
PS. I don't believe this site with it's huge Telegraph readership is representative
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
How many Labour voting farmers are there roughly? There are about 110k farmers, would be surprised if more than 10k voted and voted Labour?
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
Who to believe on tax... A tax expert or someone who makes TV shows?
Who to believe a farmer or a town dweller ?
If the farmer knows about farming and the townie knows about tax, then the townie.
Expertise beats location.
Nonsense, the question on raising tax is how people will behave. You change the tax regime and people will act differently and often in ways that cant be predicted.
My SME manufacturing co estimates the NI raid will cost us £200k next year. As a result we wont be raising salaries as much and will probably look at a couple of layoffs.
Growrth ? Not on Labours agenda,
I don’t know if you’ve heard but we have a massive budget deficit and a dire need for infrastructure investment.
Yes, which is why we should cut current spending and divert funds to infrastructure. Reform taxes alone and we'll not kill off growth.
The magical “cut spending” and “growth” which means fuck all without detailing what you’d cut and who and what the effects would be - exactly what you’re complaining about now in fact.
You talk about magical NHS and public sector efficiency gains but why can’t your SME make similar gains?
Our SME does it every year. It' why our VAPE is on the up. It will probably take us a couple of years to claw this back. The NHS will simply swallow the money as it productivity falls over the next 5 years.
Or NHS outcomes might improve, GP service might be better, new hospitals and facilities might be built, including in rural areas. Who knows?
The triumph of hope over experience. Good luck with hat,
The demands on the NHS have grown massively.
To suggest outcomes haven't improved seems particularly peverse.
In the early 1990's women with early breast cancer had a 15% chance of dying within 5 years.
Now ? Its about 5%
Cataract operations were once an in patient operation with a couple of nights stay. Its now done in about 12 minutes and you are back home straight away. Quality is better, its safer and there are less complications. The age of people having the operations has dropped, and there are at least 5 times the number of operations per year.
Life expectancy of men has increased by about 7 years since 40 years ago. Many cancers are a function of age. Prostate being a prime example.
We have worse outcomes than many comparable countries, but then we spend less.
Good morning
My wife needs a double cataract operation and has just been put on Wales NHS 18 month waiting list
Seriously go private for that if you can. It makes a massive difference to quality of life, my mother-in-law did the same and she was overjoyed that she had better vision in her last years.
The irony is that her optician said she will need it but best to go on the 18 month waiting list now so that she will have it before it becomes a necessity
He also added in England it takes 6 weeks waiting but not sure how true that is
It is true. ISTCs do the majority of NHS cataract surgery in England now, with waits typically of a few weeks.
What's an ISTC?
Independent Sector Treatment Centre
They do things where it makes sense to do them on mass (Cataracts / Hip operations) or manage MRI systems.
NHS needs to do loads more of this for routine operations.
Expensive capital equipment such as MRI scanners should be working 24/7, with people offered the option of turning up in the middle of the night tomorrow rather than waiting weeks or months.
Streeting plans further expansion, but it is pretty much limited to quick turnaround surgery in fit patients.
Getting a quick MRI is no benefit if it's a 6 month wait to see a rheumatologist to discuss the findings. There are bottlenecks in the system to address, but it does tend to just shift the queue elsewhere.
I disagree. Last summer my mother went into Kings Mill for pancreatitis. They worked out pretty quickly that it wasn't any of the really bad causes but for obvious reasons wanted to know what was causing it. They had to keep her in for a couple of days uintil the blood markers showed the epiosode was over but wanted to have an MRI to check for gall stones as the Ultrasound had not been clear. They would not send her home because it would have taken weeks to get her the MRi if she was out of hospital.
So she waited in hospital, taking up a bed that others could have been using (and which was certainly needed) for an additional 4 days until they could get her the MRI. And she was not the only one. All because they had only one team capable of running the MRI who were already working a 14 hour days and a 7 day week.
That’s nuts, what do a couple of MRI operators cost, compared to the cost of keeping beds occupied for days because people are waiting for scans?
Yep. And there is another MRI scanner at Newark which doesn't get used that often as they don't have the staff for it.
Nearly every time I've had an MRI scan it's been private.
They are always in throughput mode - they run from early morning (before work) till 8-9pm.
Other testing is also an issue - when my father was in hospital, they seemed to have a backlog on basic bloodwork. I'm not talking cultures etc. I'm talking about "What is his potassium level?". Doctors would come round and go "We need to see that before we can make a decision" then leave again.....
At one point, my brother and I were discussing finding a private laboratory and hiring someone to take blood samples and test them...
This is where we need Theranos and there has been some progress in finding non-fraudulent versions. The trouble with blood tests is the doctor orders half a dozen or so, the phlebotomist draws blood and the lab carries out those tests. Then the doctor looks at the results and decides it would be nice to know a couple more levels, so rinse and repeat. What we need is a machine that runs every conceivable blood test against a single sample to save hours and often days or weeks of toing and froing.
It will also be good when hospitals and GPs exchange data so each can see the results of the tests done by the other, rather than just that tests were done…
I have online access to all blood, pathology and radiology investigations done both in hospital or GP in Leicester. It is occasionally an issue if I am referred a patient from Kettering or Peterborough. This has been possible for well over a decade.
Round here will be the same as all the testing is centralised at the hospital - so the hospital definitely has the results of any GP tests.
We overtax the productive section of the economy for the unproductive. Everyone has a sob story to tell, and pension entitlements and sickness benefits they think they deserve to have, but until we grasp the nettle and stop this the economy will be chained to the floor.
People need to take more responsibility and make more provision for themselves, I'm afraid.
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
I must have forgotten the line in the manifesto that said they won't raise tax on farmers?
Where would you raise the money from instead?
Steve Reed stood in front of farmers and said 'we have no intention of changing APR'.
Starmer stood in conference and said he'd '“looked farmers in the eye and he knew what losing a farm meant”.
“Every day seems to bring a new existential risk to British farming. Losing a farm is not like losing any other business, you can’t come back."
People aren't going to put up with mealy mouthed s**t that the manifesto didn't say it won't raise tax on farmers, when it clearly didn't say it would either.
This won't be forgotten. They lied and have broken trust within months of coming into power. You might be happy with that, but others won't.
Brad Bo 🇺🇸 @BradBeauregardJ · 16h The CIA Director on Homeland, Mandy Patikin just released this video where he talks to the real national security leaders who he played on the shows.
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
I genuinly don't understand what Dan Neidle is saying.
The average farm in the UK is 85 hectares - 210 acres. Agricultural land averages around £10K an acre. That is £2.1 million in lland value alone. Before you take into account a few hundred thousand on equipment, buildings, livestock etc.
Most family farms wuld be caught by a £1 million cap. They are asset rich and cash poor because that is the nature of the business. It is a fecking ridiculous idea.
Yes, they will be forced to sell up and pocket their million+ quid. My heart bleeds.
What a stupid fucking response. The whole point being we want farms to continue as viable businesses. We need farms and farmers. Unless of course you are one of those fuckwits who think the food in supermarkets is miraculously created out of thin air.
Of course it isn't created out of thin air, there's a whole global supply chain.
We should get our food from whomever is best placed to supply it. If British farmers, then great. If French, Spanish, Argentinian, American, Australian or anywhere else then great too.
Would it be a wise strategy for Ukraine to have depended for its supplies of food and other essentials on Russia?
No it would be wise to rely on the entire planet and not rely upon a single point of failure.
Hence if you get localised flooding in Spain, or in the UK one year, having a diversified supply chain makes you more secure even locally not less.
On a security perspective it is far more concerning where we get our silicon chips from than our potato chips.
That completely contradicts your earlier point. You said we should get food from whoever is best placed to supply it, implying that if large, cheap supplies can be secured from elsewhere, it's fine if our own farmers can't compete. That supplier could very easily be one country or bloc in many cases.
Now you say that countries should ensure a diversity of suppliers and not become too reliant upon one. That's a completely different strategy, and one that would probably include ensuring coninued domestic supply along with global producers.
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
Who to believe on tax... A tax expert or someone who makes TV shows?
Who to believe a farmer or a town dweller ?
If the farmer knows about farming and the townie knows about tax, then the townie.
Expertise beats location.
Nonsense, the question on raising tax is how people will behave. You change the tax regime and people will act differently and often in ways that cant be predicted.
My SME manufacturing co estimates the NI raid will cost us £200k next year. As a result we wont be raising salaries as much and will probably look at a couple of layoffs.
Growrth ? Not on Labours agenda,
I don’t know if you’ve heard but we have a massive budget deficit and a dire need for infrastructure investment.
Yes, which is why we should cut current spending and divert funds to infrastructure. Reform taxes alone and we'll not kill off growth.
The magical “cut spending” and “growth” which means fuck all without detailing what you’d cut and who and what the effects would be - exactly what you’re complaining about now in fact.
You talk about magical NHS and public sector efficiency gains but why can’t your SME make similar gains?
Our SME does it every year. It' why our VAPE is on the up. It will probably take us a couple of years to claw this back. The NHS will simply swallow the money as it productivity falls over the next 5 years.
Or NHS outcomes might improve, GP service might be better, new hospitals and facilities might be built, including in rural areas. Who knows?
The triumph of hope over experience. Good luck with hat,
The demands on the NHS have grown massively.
To suggest outcomes haven't improved seems particularly peverse.
In the early 1990's women with early breast cancer had a 15% chance of dying within 5 years.
Now ? Its about 5%
Cataract operations were once an in patient operation with a couple of nights stay. Its now done in about 12 minutes and you are back home straight away. Quality is better, its safer and there are less complications. The age of people having the operations has dropped, and there are at least 5 times the number of operations per year.
Life expectancy of men has increased by about 7 years since 40 years ago. Many cancers are a function of age. Prostate being a prime example.
We have worse outcomes than many comparable countries, but then we spend less.
Good morning
My wife needs a double cataract operation and has just been put on Wales NHS 18 month waiting list
Seriously go private for that if you can. It makes a massive difference to quality of life, my mother-in-law did the same and she was overjoyed that she had better vision in her last years.
The irony is that her optician said she will need it but best to go on the 18 month waiting list now so that she will have it before it becomes a necessity
He also added in England it takes 6 weeks waiting but not sure how true that is
It is true. ISTCs do the majority of NHS cataract surgery in England now, with waits typically of a few weeks.
What's an ISTC?
Independent Sector Treatment Centre
They do things where it makes sense to do them on mass (Cataracts / Hip operations) or manage MRI systems.
NHS needs to do loads more of this for routine operations.
Expensive capital equipment such as MRI scanners should be working 24/7, with people offered the option of turning up in the middle of the night tomorrow rather than waiting weeks or months.
Streeting plans further expansion, but it is pretty much limited to quick turnaround surgery in fit patients.
Getting a quick MRI is no benefit if it's a 6 month wait to see a rheumatologist to discuss the findings. There are bottlenecks in the system to address, but it does tend to just shift the queue elsewhere.
I disagree. Last summer my mother went into Kings Mill for pancreatitis. They worked out pretty quickly that it wasn't any of the really bad causes but for obvious reasons wanted to know what was causing it. They had to keep her in for a couple of days uintil the blood markers showed the epiosode was over but wanted to have an MRI to check for gall stones as the Ultrasound had not been clear. They would not send her home because it would have taken weeks to get her the MRi if she was out of hospital.
So she waited in hospital, taking up a bed that others could have been using (and which was certainly needed) for an additional 4 days until they could get her the MRI. And she was not the only one. All because they had only one team capable of running the MRI who were already working a 14 hour days and a 7 day week.
That’s nuts, what do a couple of MRI operators cost, compared to the cost of keeping beds occupied for days because people are waiting for scans?
Yep. And there is another MRI scanner at Newark which doesn't get used that often as they don't have the staff for it.
Nearly every time I've had an MRI scan it's been private.
They are always in throughput mode - they run from early morning (before work) till 8-9pm.
Other testing is also an issue - when my father was in hospital, they seemed to have a backlog on basic bloodwork. I'm not talking cultures etc. I'm talking about "What is his potassium level?". Doctors would come round and go "We need to see that before we can make a decision" then leave again.....
At one point, my brother and I were discussing finding a private laboratory and hiring someone to take blood samples and test them...
This is where we need Theranos and there has been some progress in finding non-fraudulent versions. The trouble with blood tests is the doctor orders half a dozen or so, the phlebotomist draws blood and the lab carries out those tests. Then the doctor looks at the results and decides it would be nice to know a couple more levels, so rinse and repeat. What we need is a machine that runs every conceivable blood test against a single sample to save hours and often days or weeks of toing and froing.
It will also be good when hospitals and GPs exchange data so each can see the results of the tests done by the other, rather than just that tests were done…
I have online access to all blood, pathology and radiology investigations done both in hospital or GP in Leicester. It is occasionally an issue if I am referred a patient from Kettering or Peterborough. This has been possible for well over a decade.
IME the issue is more at the GP end, but not as bad as some are claiming.
I have occasionally been in with a clinician at my GP surgery who may not have full access to test results.
What has happened to intelligent people to generate this perception filter where they disown the evidence of their eyes and ears and their own sanity and logic and experience? Its very 1984.
JD Vance's defining political trait is quickly becoming his ability to listen carefully as someone describes an objectively disturbing thing and then say "I don't see the problem you're talking about"
"Gaslighting" is overused but there's just no other word for what he's doing
Its not even that. It's the emperor's new clothes brought to life. We can all see Trump's mushroom cock* (and cocks are acceptable things to talk about in this campaign after the golf cock comments by, er, Trump). But the political groupthink demands that not only people deny they can see his cock, but that anyone saying "I can see his cock" is unAmerican / illegal / the enemy within etc.
Either Trump wins or Harris wins. If Trump wins America turns into Gilead. If Harris wins the people who genuinely think we can't see the mushroom are not going to just accept that they lost. They have been taken too far into wonderland to accept that its not real. And so many of them have guns...
*if you don't like this analogy then try Picard being asked to say that he can see 5 lights when there were only 4. At the end he says that - despite his defiance of THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS - he genuinely couldn't say for sure if that was true, such was his mental state after prolonged torture
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
I must have forgotten the line in the manifesto that said they won't raise tax on farmers?
Where would you raise the money from instead?
Steve Reed stood in front of farmers and said 'we have no intention of changing APR'.
Starmer stood in conference and said he'd '“looked farmers in the eye and he knew what losing a farm meant”.
“Every day seems to bring a new existential risk to British farming. Losing a farm is not like losing any other business, you can’t come back."
People aren't going to put up with mealy mouthed s**t that the manifesto didn't say it won't raise tax on farmers, when it clearly didn't say it would either.
This won't be forgotten. They lied and have broken trust within months of coming into power. You might be happy with that, but others won't.
Wes Streeting also told Laura K that he would keep the planned Oct 2025 introduction of a cap on lifetime social care costs.
That was scrapped within days of them getting into office.
The public sector is not all roses. For example, young doctors have to pay for their own exams to progress and are not exactly offered much support to progress. That would be unheard of in the professional private sector. Other examples are teachers buying food and stationary for their classes and being unable to expense.
You ever in your life seen a poor doctor, among the highest paid and safest job in the country with very generous pensions. My heart bleeds for them.
FY1/2 pay is hardly eye-watering. Plenty of better paid graduate jobs for people with similar qualifications.
When I had my first post-doc job I was earning more than a FY1 doctor, for an easier job with shorter and more sociable hours. But an FY1 who started when I did my first post-doc will be some way above my pay by now. There certainly is jam-tomorrow in doctoring, it's true.
I'm glad I don't have to write an endorsement piece, because I really wouldn't know how to go about it. Ever since 2015, when Trump descended the escalator, I have had the same feeling, which I've never quite seen articulated, so I will briefly try:
It's basically this: Trump is so obviously, manifestly repugnant -- his words, his gestures, his behavior, his history -- that it strikes me like a tsunami. It's a kind of total, perfect, seamless repugnance that I've never witnessed before in my life. Which means ...
... pointing out some particular piece of the repugnance & arguing against it feels ... surreal, I guess. "He has regularly sexually assaulted women, almost certainly raped a few, and ... I think that's bad."
Yeah. I mean, I think rape is bad. But here's the thing ...
... if you think rape is bad, you will already oppose Trump. If you don't, what could I possibly say to reach you? I don't understand your moral universe, your basic precepts. We are different in a way so fundamental that I literally don't know how to speak to you.
It's the same with all of it. I could point to some obvious bit of repugnance -- "I think it's bad to cheat every small business you interact with." -- but ... it's obvious. You've surely see it yourself. And it doesn't matter to you. So how is me pointing it out going to help?
You see what I'm getting at? I feel like there's nothing I can say about Trump that isn't obvious, that isn't well-understood public knowledge. If you still support him at this point, you clearly don't *care* about tall that stuff. And if you don't care about all that stuff ...
... then ... what do you care about? How does your brain operate? What does morality mean to you? What language could possibly reach you? What could cause you to care? I genuinely don't know. It's like when you're trying to speak w/ someone who doesn't speak your language ...
... and you respond by just repeating yourself, louder. "HE'S A CAREER CRIMINAL WITH 34 FELONY CONVICTIONS." It's pointless. They *heard* you. They just don't understand, don't care. You're assuming they share the premise "criminal rapists are bad," but they don't.
And so, if you're that far apart -- if you do not share basic, fundamental moral precepts, if you live in different moral universes -- how can you communicate? Literally, what do you say?
...
Anyway. I just wanted to get that feeling down. Maybe some of you feel it too.
In the meantime, my grand manifesto against electing Trump amounts to this:
Difficult to see how America remains one country going forward to be honest. The gulf between red and blue is gigantic.
It is increasingly difficut to view it as a viable or reliable democracy.
I'm not sure about that. Many democracies go through crises which they recover from - a recent example is the Polish election turning the tide on state authoritarianism; a more dramatic one, Ukraine's Euromaidan.
The US has a considerable number of checks built into the system. The election of Trump would likely do huge damage (and I'm toying with the idea for a header on that), but not necessarily terminal.
Reeves and Starmer have made decisions and set out their stall.
Anyone is free to disagree with it - but at least they've presented some policies and ideas, finally.
I think it's a good budget and one that will stand the test of the next few weeks which few budgets do. It'll make me a bit worse off but if public services improve and rough sleepers get housed and the country becomes a liitle more egalitarian then it will be a cost I and I'm sure most people who are net losers will consider fair.
PS. I don't believe this site with it's huge Telegraph readership is representative
There are problems with the budget but so far it looks more like Osborne's omnishambles than the Truss/Kwarteng catastrophe, which is to say problems arise from blithely accepting Treasury recommendations without thinking through political or practical consequences.
A simple way to define the election: Harris's DNC want to protect people's rights. The right to choose, the right to privacy, the right to exist Trump's RNC want to remove people's rights. What they think is what all Americans should think, and if they don't they must be commie or psychotic.
The Trump offer truly is the Leopards' Eating Faces Party. They want to impose restrictions on what you do in your own home with your own body, but no no, they're actually only going to do that to the Bad People.
We will see how this plays out. I still think a Harris win, sadly followed by increasing protests, with a serious risk of those becoming violent & armed.
Trump: "I will protect women, whether they like it or not."
I have made the comparison to the fictional Gilead for ages. Trump and the GOP seem determined to create parts of it for real.
And not just women. The long list of enemies and illegals he will lock up / deport. The Puerto Rico “joke” in itself isn’t a big deal, but seems to have woken up voters of that heritage - and the wider Latino voter block - that Trump wants them out of the country. And not just the illegals. He will make you illegal.
What? A comedian made a joke at a rally. It’s a massive leap from that to Trump wants to deport anyone who’s in the county legally.
Meanwhile, Biden called Trump supporters garbage and they all turned up to hallowe’en parties dressed in bin bags.
Exactly. The joke wasn't the start of "I'm going to deport 10m people", it was a joke built on that.
I do worry about Sandpit and others. Who sit there watching Trump say x and immediately say "Trump did not say x"
We had that bit on CNN with Tapper and Vance. Tapper says "Trump said x". Vance gets outraged. "Trump didn't say that how dare you say it, fake news, where's the quote". Tapper then reads the quote verbatim. "Nope" says Vance, he didn't say that.
What has happened to intelligent people to generate this perception filter where they disown the evidence of their eyes and ears and their own sanity and logic and experience? Its very 1984.
'We had that bit on CNN with Tapper and Vance. Tapper says "Trump said x". Vance gets outraged. "Trump didn't say that how dare you say it, fake news, where's the quote". Tapper then reads the quote verbatim. "Nope" says Vance, he didn't say that.' This is a trait that young teenagers have not being able to admit defeat even when presented with the evidence.
Most teenagers learn to overcome this instinct to always be right sometime around 16.
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
How many Labour voting farmers are there roughly? There are about 110k farmers, would be surprised if more than 10k voted and voted Labour?
Quite a few switched to Labour after Brexit turned out to be different to the one they were promised.
Remember it just won’t be farmers who switched but the people who also work on the farms who might be annoyed.
What has happened to intelligent people to generate this perception filter where they disown the evidence of their eyes and ears and their own sanity and logic and experience? Its very 1984.
JD Vance's defining political trait is quickly becoming his ability to listen carefully as someone describes an objectively disturbing thing and then say "I don't see the problem you're talking about"
"Gaslighting" is overused but there's just no other word for what he's doing
The US has a considerable number of checks built into the system. The election of Trump would likely do huge damage (and I'm toying with the idea for a header on that), but not necessarily terminal.
Unreliable, sure; unviable, I doubt.
Trump is doing his best to ignore them, invalidate them, override them or otherwise defeat them.
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
I must have forgotten the line in the manifesto that said they won't raise tax on farmers?
Where would you raise the money from instead?
Steve Reed stood in front of farmers and said 'we have no intention of changing APR'.
Starmer stood in conference and said he'd '“looked farmers in the eye and he knew what losing a farm meant”.
“Every day seems to bring a new existential risk to British farming. Losing a farm is not like losing any other business, you can’t come back."
People aren't going to put up with mealy mouthed s**t that the manifesto didn't say it won't raise tax on farmers, when it clearly didn't say it would either.
This won't be forgotten. They lied and have broken trust within months of coming into power. You might be happy with that, but others won't.
Wes Streeting also told Laura K that he would keep the planned Oct 2025 introduction of a cap on lifetime social care costs.
That was scrapped within days of them getting into office.
Good.
We keep saying Government should cut expenditure and that's an entirely appropriate cut to make.
There is fat that can be cut still, it's just the fat that was a shibboleth to the prior Government.
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
How many Labour voting farmers are there roughly? There are about 110k farmers, would be surprised if more than 10k voted and voted Labour?
467,400 people employed in agricultural sector in 2021. Millions live and interact amongst them. Millions shop with them. Millions watch farming programmes. Their reach is still wide and imbedded in this country. These lies and their impact will spread.
We see big protest votes for unsuited-to-goverment candidates quite often. Corbyn in 2017 for example. He came within a handful of votes of being able to form a coalition.
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
How many Labour voting farmers are there roughly? There are about 110k farmers, would be surprised if more than 10k voted and voted Labour?
Quite a few switched to Labour after Brexit turned out to be different to the one they were promised.
Remember it just won’t be farmers who switched but the people who also work on the farms who might be annoyed.
Its not an environment I understand but alternatively if I was a fruit picker working hard paying my taxes I might be quite pleased about a tax dodge for the landowners being removed.
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
In five years time I'm pretty sure farmers like other people will have other things to balance. But as a matter of interest what was the BIG LIE told to farmers?
Reeves and Starmer have made decisions and set out their stall.
Anyone is free to disagree with it - but at least they've presented some policies and ideas, finally.
I think it's a good budget and one that will stand the test of the next few weeks which few budgets do. It'll make me a bit worse off but if public services improve and rough sleepers get housed and the country becomes a liitle more egalitarian then it will be a cost I and I'm sure most people who are net losers will consider fair.
PS. I don't believe this site with it's huge Telegraph readership is representative
There are problems with the budget but so far it looks more like Osborne's omnishambles than the Truss/Kwarteng catastrophe, which is to say problems arise from blithely accepting Treasury recommendations without thinking through political or practical consequences.
It's all very small beer. Rachel will be pretty happy I think. Lots of people are absolutely desperate for it to blow up. Just look at the minute-by-minute commentary on gilts yields on PB these past 48 hours. (FWIW, which is not much, they are currently lower than when the markets opened this morning).
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
I genuinly don't understand what Dan Neidle is saying.
The average farm in the UK is 85 hectares - 210 acres. Agricultural land averages around £10K an acre. That is £2.1 million in lland value alone. Before you take into account a few hundred thousand on equipment, buildings, livestock etc.
Most family farms wuld be caught by a £1 million cap. They are asset rich and cash poor because that is the nature of the business. It is a fecking ridiculous idea.
That average is the mean average distorted by very large holdings.
The median average is much lower.
According to DEFRA 59% of English farms have less than 50 hectares.
50 hectares is still 125ish acres. So still well over £1 million in land value alone without everything else.
There is a huge variety in farms and associated land value, from your massive arable farm in East Anglia to your small hill farm in Wales. It needs a deep analysis rather than broadbrush averages to determine if the policy is a mistake.
Indeed.
And no mention that of the Total farmable area in England almost 1/2 of it is farmed on a whole or part tenant basis.
And no mention that a lot of the increase in farm values is as a result of inheritance tax dodges by wealthy people with no prior experience of farming at all.
I do a huge amount of walking - I'm always amazed by how infrequently you bump into a farmer or worker.
It's also noticable you many fewer cows you see out in pasture these days. I assume they are all in massive sheds for most of the year - which saddens me.
Here in Arden you're more likely to find ponies or alpacas than cattle. If they contribute to our food security I'd rather not know.
If you go to Bodmin Moor you can get to know an Alpaca, take it for a walk, then have it for Alpaca steak a few weeks later. Nearly.
We see big protest votes for unsuited-to-goverment candidates quite often. Corbyn in 2017 for example. He came within a handful of votes of being able to form a coalition.
As things have turned out, might well have been better for all of us if he had!
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
We see big protest votes for unsuited-to-goverment candidates quite often. Corbyn in 2017 for example. He came within a handful of votes of being able to form a coalition.
As things have turned out, might well have been better for all of us if he had!
Really? You'd have had Corbyn in charge during Covid? During the Ukraine war?
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
I genuinly don't understand what Dan Neidle is saying.
The average farm in the UK is 85 hectares - 210 acres. Agricultural land averages around £10K an acre. That is £2.1 million in lland value alone. Before you take into account a few hundred thousand on equipment, buildings, livestock etc.
Most family farms wuld be caught by a £1 million cap. They are asset rich and cash poor because that is the nature of the business. It is a fecking ridiculous idea.
Yes, they will be forced to sell up and pocket their million+ quid. My heart bleeds.
What a stupid fucking response. The whole point being we want farms to continue as viable businesses. We need farms and farmers. Unless of course you are one of those fuckwits who think the food in supermarkets is miraculously created out of thin air.
Of course it isn't created out of thin air, there's a whole global supply chain.
We should get our food from whomever is best placed to supply it. If British farmers, then great. If French, Spanish, Argentinian, American, Australian or anywhere else then great too.
Would it be a wise strategy for Ukraine to have depended for its supplies of food and other essentials on Russia?
No it would be wise to rely on the entire planet and not rely upon a single point of failure.
Hence if you get localised flooding in Spain, or in the UK one year, having a diversified supply chain makes you more secure even locally not less.
On a security perspective it is far more concerning where we get our silicon chips from than our potato chips.
That completely contradicts your earlier point. You said we should get food from whoever is best placed to supply it, implying that if large, cheap supplies can be secured from elsewhere, it's fine if our own farmers can't compete. That supplier could very easily be one country or bloc in many cases.
Now you say that countries should ensure a diversity of suppliers and not become too reliant upon one. That's a completely different strategy, and one that would probably include ensuring coninued domestic supply along with global producers.
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
I genuinly don't understand what Dan Neidle is saying.
The average farm in the UK is 85 hectares - 210 acres. Agricultural land averages around £10K an acre. That is £2.1 million in lland value alone. Before you take into account a few hundred thousand on equipment, buildings, livestock etc.
Most family farms wuld be caught by a £1 million cap. They are asset rich and cash poor because that is the nature of the business. It is a fecking ridiculous idea.
Yes, they will be forced to sell up and pocket their million+ quid. My heart bleeds.
What a stupid fucking response. The whole point being we want farms to continue as viable businesses. We need farms and farmers. Unless of course you are one of those fuckwits who think the food in supermarkets is miraculously created out of thin air.
Of course it isn't created out of thin air, there's a whole global supply chain.
We should get our food from whomever is best placed to supply it. If British farmers, then great. If French, Spanish, Argentinian, American, Australian or anywhere else then great too.
Would it be a wise strategy for Ukraine to have depended for its supplies of food and other essentials on Russia?
No it would be wise to rely on the entire planet and not rely upon a single point of failure.
Hence if you get localised flooding in Spain, or in the UK one year, having a diversified supply chain makes you more secure even locally not less.
On a security perspective it is far more concerning where we get our silicon chips from than our potato chips.
That completely contradicts your earlier point. You said we should get food from whoever is best placed to supply it, implying that if large, cheap supplies can be secured from elsewhere, it's fine if our own farmers can't compete. That supplier could very easily be one country or bloc in many cases.
Now you say that countries should ensure a diversity of suppliers and not become too reliant upon one. That's a completely different strategy, and one that would probably include ensuring coninued domestic supply along with global producers.
No it doesn't as food is fungible and there is no individual nation which controls agriculture.
Getting it from the entire planet is the polar opposite of being "reliant" upon a single nation as you suggested.
Where we are reliant too much on single nations isn't food/agriculture, it's manufacturing. Hence silicon chips rather than potato chips being a more serious security concern.
Want to improve our security? Let's get more domestic manufacturing onto land currently set aside for agriculture.
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
Who to believe on tax... A tax expert or someone who makes TV shows?
Who to believe a farmer or a town dweller ?
If the farmer knows about farming and the townie knows about tax, then the townie.
Expertise beats location.
Nonsense, the question on raising tax is how people will behave. You change the tax regime and people will act differently and often in ways that cant be predicted.
My SME manufacturing co estimates the NI raid will cost us £200k next year. As a result we wont be raising salaries as much and will probably look at a couple of layoffs.
Growrth ? Not on Labours agenda,
I don’t know if you’ve heard but we have a massive budget deficit and a dire need for infrastructure investment. Growth in this context just means you don’t want to pay more tax.
That might be a fair argument, if the budget contained genuine growth measures. And I'd fully support that.
It doesn't, unfortunately.
That’s your opinion. In my view investment in education healthcare and infrastructure is a driver for growth.
I have lived long enough now to know that tax cuts don’t drive jobs and “growth” but rather the windfall just gets pocketed as profits.
If you re-read what I said, I didn't mention tax cuts. I said I'd be fine with the increase in taxes if was likely to lead to an increase in productive investment.
The biggest infrastructure commitment is the CCS scheme - which will add precisely nothing to growth.
And I'm fine with an increase in spending on public services, if it's financially sustainable. But in this case, Reeves has imposed the biggest single tax increase of any budget in history and planned to borrow more. And on the OBR's forecast, growth actually gets worse, not better - with the exception of the next couple of years with the massive upfront cash spend.
Absent some big increases in growth coming from elsewhere, it doesn't add up.
We overtax the productive section of the economy for the unproductive. Everyone has a sob story to tell, and pension entitlements and sickness benefits they think they deserve to have, but until we grasp the nettle and stop this the economy will be chained to the floor.
People need to take more responsibility and make more provision for themselves, I'm afraid.
This is sound personal advice but it creates the same problem when multiplied by ten million or so. Private pension funds may be created from deferred income from people like me, which may be a good idea at the time, but they end up as a drain on the productive economy when we can afford to stop working. Regardless of the institutional mechanism the tail gets relentlessly bigger as the dog gets smaller.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
Reeves and Starmer have made decisions and set out their stall.
Anyone is free to disagree with it - but at least they've presented some policies and ideas, finally.
I think it's a good budget and one that will stand the test of the next few weeks which few budgets do. It'll make me a bit worse off but if public services improve and rough sleepers get housed and the country becomes a liitle more egalitarian then it will be a cost I and I'm sure most people who are net losers will consider fair.
PS. I don't believe this site with it's huge Telegraph readership is representative
There are problems with the budget but so far it looks more like Osborne's omnishambles than the Truss/Kwarteng catastrophe, which is to say problems arise from blithely accepting Treasury recommendations without thinking through political or practical consequences.
But also something dear departed Leon said about the Trusstershambles Budget.
The UK's fiscal situation isn't great. We can trade partisan barbs about whose fault that is and when it went sour, but it isn't great. Leon likened it to a coach crash on a cliff edge motorway, and trying to run across the carriageway to escape. (Give him his due, he can do words.)
Now that didn't work, and the resulting injuries left us even worse off. So we're left with the difficult, painful, slow inching away from the wreckage to safety. Reeves's budget is a messy combination of as little spending as stops the state collapsing, as much tax raising as the electorate will accept and as much borrowing as the financial markets will only tut at and no worse than that.
None of it's pretty, and it may not add up to enough. There is one growth lever (planning) that the government are going to pull as hard as they can, another (Europe) that is still politically toxic, and some others ("deregulation" in general) that probably fail when you try the Chesterton's Fence test on them.
But unless the boffins at ARIA develop a British Time Machine, we are where we are.
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
I must have forgotten the line in the manifesto that said they won't raise tax on farmers?
Where would you raise the money from instead?
Are farmers not working people? The ones I know seem to work harder than most.
And I would raise the money by not spending it - public sector needs the fat trimming, not plumping up further.
And I would engage in massive deregulation, that's the only thing which will fix the real underlying problem of no growth - because we're strangling growth at birth with regulatory costs, and that's why the economy has stopped growing.
Anyone inheriting farmland didn't work for it, no. If they did, they should have paid income tax when they earned it.
As a farmer’s son who decided farming was far too much like hard work to carry on the family tradition, I’ll have to disagree about working for it. Most farmers I know who inherited the farms will have worked on the farm, largely unpaid, from a young age to learn how to farm and because it was the family’s way of life. Farming, particularly livestock and especially dairy, is an all day every day occupation.
I'm sure everyone is like me waiting breathlessly for the latest update on kinabalu's state of mind. I'd be disappointed if the word 'confident' doesn't now feature ...
Why is nobody in media even mentioning that £1m IHT agriculture relief is in addition to the £1m IHT relief any (married) person gets when leaving property to children.
ie If you live on a farm and want to leave it to your son you pay no IHT on the first £2m (assuming you are / were married and spouse not using their exemption for anything else).
Was listening to lengthy debate hosted by Chorley on R5L yesterday with farmers complaining - going on about almost all farms are worth over £1m - at no point did anyone say farmers can leave £2m tax free.
Why not? Hopeless media reporting - nobody appears to have even the most basic understanding of how tax system works.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
I know it's a bit hypocritical, but there's something off about most British politicians/pundits who pose as experts on US elections. I can't take them seriously.
Yes. It will be bought by larger farms, in many cases massive agribusinesses that will not care for the land; only what the land produces. Worse, many of these are far more adept at avoiding tax than those small farmers.
Exactly. Anyone who blithely says "someone will farm the land" isn't thinking about who will buy it.
This is one of those policy changes where the long term consequences could prove to be disastrous if it drives smaller farms out of business and allows bigger companies to snap up the land.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
Does Rory have form on correctly predicting election results?
No, but I am hearing increasing numbers of commentators doing a dive into micro-level polls and stats and coming to the same conclusion.
Or, we can look at the alternate camp which has Trump winning big. Where the evidence is "everyone I know is voting Trump", "all the news I read agrees that Harris is a [ban hammer]", "look at the markets Trump is winning 70%" etc etc
Inside the Trump bullshit bubble, His reelection is nailed to the floor. Outside? The metrics are showing the opposite.
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
I must have forgotten the line in the manifesto that said they won't raise tax on farmers?
Where would you raise the money from instead?
Are farmers not working people? The ones I know seem to work harder than most.
And I would raise the money by not spending it - public sector needs the fat trimming, not plumping up further.
And I would engage in massive deregulation, that's the only thing which will fix the real underlying problem of no growth - because we're strangling growth at birth with regulatory costs, and that's why the economy has stopped growing.
Anyone inheriting farmland didn't work for it, no. If they did, they should have paid income tax when they earned it.
Most farmers and their sons get up before 6am and work until dusk for average pay at best. They may have a lot of assets but those form their business, they certainly aren't lazy.
You have written some ridiculous posts in your time but that one takes the biscuit!!
We see big protest votes for unsuited-to-goverment candidates quite often. Corbyn in 2017 for example. He came within a handful of votes of being able to form a coalition.
As things have turned out, might well have been better for all of us if he had!
Really? You'd have had Corbyn in charge during Covid? During the Ukraine war?
The Ukraine War's rather dodgy I grant you but do you really, really think Boris Johnson did a good job during Covid.
Reeves and Starmer have made decisions and set out their stall.
Anyone is free to disagree with it - but at least they've presented some policies and ideas, finally.
I think it's a good budget and one that will stand the test of the next few weeks which few budgets do. It'll make me a bit worse off but if public services improve and rough sleepers get housed and the country becomes a liitle more egalitarian then it will be a cost I and I'm sure most people who are net losers will consider fair.
PS. I don't believe this site with it's huge Telegraph readership is representative
Why is nobody in media even mentioning that £1m IHT agriculture relief is in addition to the £1m IHT relief any (married) person gets when leaving property to children.
ie If you live on a farm and want to leave it to your son you pay no IHT on the first £2m (assuming you are / were married and spouse not using their exemption for anything else).
Was listening to lengthy debate hosted by Chorley on R5L yesterday with farmers complaining - going on about almost all farms are worth over £1m - at no point did anyone say farmers can leave £2m tax free.
Why not? Hopeless media reporting - nobody appears to have even the most basic understanding of how tax system works.
The media are as enshittified as everything else, whether in the public or private sectors. Too many hours/pages to fill, not enough money to pay people to fill them with anything good.
(What's happening at the serious end of the BBC is bad, what's happening in the press, especially the local press, is far worse.)
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
Who to believe on tax... A tax expert or someone who makes TV shows?
Who to believe a farmer or a town dweller ?
If the farmer knows about farming and the townie knows about tax, then the townie.
Expertise beats location.
Nonsense, the question on raising tax is how people will behave. You change the tax regime and people will act differently and often in ways that cant be predicted.
My SME manufacturing co estimates the NI raid will cost us £200k next year. As a result we wont be raising salaries as much and will probably look at a couple of layoffs.
Growrth ? Not on Labours agenda,
I don’t know if you’ve heard but we have a massive budget deficit and a dire need for infrastructure investment.
Yes, which is why we should cut current spending and divert funds to infrastructure. Reform taxes alone and we'll not kill off growth.
The magical “cut spending” and “growth” which means fuck all without detailing what you’d cut and who and what the effects would be - exactly what you’re complaining about now in fact.
You talk about magical NHS and public sector efficiency gains but why can’t your SME make similar gains?
Our SME does it every year. It' why our VAPE is on the up. It will probably take us a couple of years to claw this back. The NHS will simply swallow the money as it productivity falls over the next 5 years.
Or NHS outcomes might improve, GP service might be better, new hospitals and facilities might be built, including in rural areas. Who knows?
The triumph of hope over experience. Good luck with hat,
The demands on the NHS have grown massively.
To suggest outcomes haven't improved seems particularly peverse.
In the early 1990's women with early breast cancer had a 15% chance of dying within 5 years.
Now ? Its about 5%
Cataract operations were once an in patient operation with a couple of nights stay. Its now done in about 12 minutes and you are back home straight away. Quality is better, its safer and there are less complications. The age of people having the operations has dropped, and there are at least 5 times the number of operations per year.
Life expectancy of men has increased by about 7 years since 40 years ago. Many cancers are a function of age. Prostate being a prime example.
We have worse outcomes than many comparable countries, but then we spend less.
Good morning
My wife needs a double cataract operation and has just been put on Wales NHS 18 month waiting list
Seriously go private for that if you can. It makes a massive difference to quality of life, my mother-in-law did the same and she was overjoyed that she had better vision in her last years.
The irony is that her optician said she will need it but best to go on the 18 month waiting list now so that she will have it before it becomes a necessity
He also added in England it takes 6 weeks waiting but not sure how true that is
It is true. ISTCs do the majority of NHS cataract surgery in England now, with waits typically of a few weeks.
What's an ISTC?
Independent Sector Treatment Centre
They do things where it makes sense to do them on mass (Cataracts / Hip operations) or manage MRI systems.
NHS needs to do loads more of this for routine operations.
Expensive capital equipment such as MRI scanners should be working 24/7, with people offered the option of turning up in the middle of the night tomorrow rather than waiting weeks or months.
Streeting plans further expansion, but it is pretty much limited to quick turnaround surgery in fit patients.
Getting a quick MRI is no benefit if it's a 6 month wait to see a rheumatologist to discuss the findings. There are bottlenecks in the system to address, but it does tend to just shift the queue elsewhere.
I disagree. Last summer my mother went into Kings Mill for pancreatitis. They worked out pretty quickly that it wasn't any of the really bad causes but for obvious reasons wanted to know what was causing it. They had to keep her in for a couple of days uintil the blood markers showed the epiosode was over but wanted to have an MRI to check for gall stones as the Ultrasound had not been clear. They would not send her home because it would have taken weeks to get her the MRi if she was out of hospital.
So she waited in hospital, taking up a bed that others could have been using (and which was certainly needed) for an additional 4 days until they could get her the MRI. And she was not the only one. All because they had only one team capable of running the MRI who were already working a 14 hour days and a 7 day week.
That’s nuts, what do a couple of MRI operators cost, compared to the cost of keeping beds occupied for days because people are waiting for scans?
Yep. And there is another MRI scanner at Newark which doesn't get used that often as they don't have the staff for it.
Nearly every time I've had an MRI scan it's been private.
They are always in throughput mode - they run from early morning (before work) till 8-9pm.
Other testing is also an issue - when my father was in hospital, they seemed to have a backlog on basic bloodwork. I'm not talking cultures etc. I'm talking about "What is his potassium level?". Doctors would come round and go "We need to see that before we can make a decision" then leave again.....
At one point, my brother and I were discussing finding a private laboratory and hiring someone to take blood samples and test them...
This is where we need Theranos and there has been some progress in finding non-fraudulent versions. The trouble with blood tests is the doctor orders half a dozen or so, the phlebotomist draws blood and the lab carries out those tests. Then the doctor looks at the results and decides it would be nice to know a couple more levels, so rinse and repeat. What we need is a machine that runs every conceivable blood test against a single sample to save hours and often days or weeks of toing and froing.
It will also be good when hospitals and GPs exchange data so each can see the results of the tests done by the other, rather than just that tests were done…
I have online access to all blood, pathology and radiology investigations done both in hospital or GP in Leicester. It is occasionally an issue if I am referred a patient from Kettering or Peterborough. This has been possible for well over a decade.
So it can be done. Hopefully it will happen I’m my neck of the woods too at some point.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
I know it's a bit hypocritical, but there's something off about most British politicians/pundits who pose as experts on US elections. I can't take them seriously.
Rory teaches politics at Yale, so he's perhaps more qualified than most of his British counterparts.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
I know it's a bit hypocritical, but there's something off about most British politicians/pundits who pose as experts on US elections. I can't take them seriously.
One thing on which we're in agreement. Though Justin Webb is my personal aversion.
Why is nobody in media even mentioning that £1m IHT agriculture relief is in addition to the £1m IHT relief any (married) person gets when leaving property to children.
ie If you live on a farm and want to leave it to your son you pay no IHT on the first £2m (assuming you are / were married and spouse not using their exemption for anything else).
Was listening to lengthy debate hosted by Chorley on R5L yesterday with farmers complaining - going on about almost all farms are worth over £1m - at no point did anyone say farmers can leave £2m tax free.
Why not? Hopeless media reporting - nobody appears to have even the most basic understanding of how tax system works.
The public sector is not all roses. For example, young doctors have to pay for their own exams to progress and are not exactly offered much support to progress. That would be unheard of in the professional private sector. Other examples are teachers buying food and stationary for their classes and being unable to expense.
You ever in your life seen a poor doctor, among the highest paid and safest job in the country with very generous pensions. My heart bleeds for them.
FY1/2 pay is hardly eye-watering. Plenty of better paid graduate jobs for people with similar qualifications.
When I had my first post-doc job I was earning more than a FY1 doctor, for an easier job with shorter and more sociable hours. But an FY1 who started when I did my first post-doc will be some way above my pay by now. There certainly is jam-tomorrow in doctoring, it's true.
You prove my point , 1 or 2 years and you are then set for life with guaranteed job , big salary and pension unless you are a harald Shipman.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
I know it's a bit hypocritical, but there's something off about most British politicians/pundits who pose as experts on US elections. I can't take them seriously.
Rory teaches politics at Yale, so he's perhaps more qualified than most of his British counterparts.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
Does Rory have form on correctly predicting election results?
No, but I am hearing increasing numbers of commentators doing a dive into micro-level polls and stats and coming to the same conclusion.
Or, we can look at the alternate camp which has Trump winning big. Where the evidence is "everyone I know is voting Trump", "all the news I read agrees that Harris is a [ban hammer]", "look at the markets Trump is winning 70%" etc etc
Inside the Trump bullshit bubble, His reelection is nailed to the floor. Outside? The metrics are showing the opposite.
Should Harris win, even if 'clearly' I would hope that Biden or she has arrangements with the relevant authorities to take Trump into 'protective custody' PDQ. If only restricted to Mar a Lago with no internet access.
Why is nobody in media even mentioning that £1m IHT agriculture relief is in addition to the £1m IHT relief any (married) person gets when leaving property to children.
ie If you live on a farm and want to leave it to your son you pay no IHT on the first £2m (assuming you are / were married and spouse not using their exemption for anything else).
Was listening to lengthy debate hosted by Chorley on R5L yesterday with farmers complaining - going on about almost all farms are worth over £1m - at no point did anyone say farmers can leave £2m tax free.
Why not? Hopeless media reporting - nobody appears to have even the most basic understanding of how tax system works.
Doesn’t the £1m for property only apply to the residence? That would constitute only a small portion of the value of the farm
Reeves and Starmer have made decisions and set out their stall.
Anyone is free to disagree with it - but at least they've presented some policies and ideas, finally.
I think it's a good budget and one that will stand the test of the next few weeks which few budgets do. It'll make me a bit worse off but if public services improve and rough sleepers get housed and the country becomes a liitle more egalitarian then it will be a cost I and I'm sure most people who are net losers will consider fair.
PS. I don't believe this site with it's huge Telegraph readership is representative
I doubt even a quarter on here regularly read the Telegraph most on here did not vote Tory or Reform in July
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
I know it's a bit hypocritical, but there's something off about most British politicians/pundits who pose as experts on US elections. I can't take them seriously.
Something most people will have noticed about your posting is that you only post polls that are favouable to Trump. I suppose a few people do it but you're the most prolific. I'm curious why you do it? You must realise that the only effect is that posters looking for accurate polling information will ignore yours. I wouldn't describe it as 'hypocritical' but certainly poinless.
Why is nobody in media even mentioning that £1m IHT agriculture relief is in addition to the £1m IHT relief any (married) person gets when leaving property to children.
ie If you live on a farm and want to leave it to your son you pay no IHT on the first £2m (assuming you are / were married and spouse not using their exemption for anything else).
Was listening to lengthy debate hosted by Chorley on R5L yesterday with farmers complaining - going on about almost all farms are worth over £1m - at no point did anyone say farmers can leave £2m tax free.
Why not? Hopeless media reporting - nobody appears to have even the most basic understanding of how tax system works.
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
Who to believe on tax... A tax expert or someone who makes TV shows?
Who to believe a farmer or a town dweller ?
If the farmer knows about farming and the townie knows about tax, then the townie.
Expertise beats location.
Nonsense, the question on raising tax is how people will behave. You change the tax regime and people will act differently and often in ways that cant be predicted.
My SME manufacturing co estimates the NI raid will cost us £200k next year. As a result we wont be raising salaries as much and will probably look at a couple of layoffs.
Growrth ? Not on Labours agenda,
I don’t know if you’ve heard but we have a massive budget deficit and a dire need for infrastructure investment.
Yes, which is why we should cut current spending and divert funds to infrastructure. Reform taxes alone and we'll not kill off growth.
The magical “cut spending” and “growth” which means fuck all without detailing what you’d cut and who and what the effects would be - exactly what you’re complaining about now in fact.
You talk about magical NHS and public sector efficiency gains but why can’t your SME make similar gains?
Our SME does it every year. It' why our VAPE is on the up. It will probably take us a couple of years to claw this back. The NHS will simply swallow the money as it productivity falls over the next 5 years.
Or NHS outcomes might improve, GP service might be better, new hospitals and facilities might be built, including in rural areas. Who knows?
The triumph of hope over experience. Good luck with hat,
The demands on the NHS have grown massively.
To suggest outcomes haven't improved seems particularly peverse.
In the early 1990's women with early breast cancer had a 15% chance of dying within 5 years.
Now ? Its about 5%
Cataract operations were once an in patient operation with a couple of nights stay. Its now done in about 12 minutes and you are back home straight away. Quality is better, its safer and there are less complications. The age of people having the operations has dropped, and there are at least 5 times the number of operations per year.
Life expectancy of men has increased by about 7 years since 40 years ago. Many cancers are a function of age. Prostate being a prime example.
We have worse outcomes than many comparable countries, but then we spend less.
Good morning
My wife needs a double cataract operation and has just been put on Wales NHS 18 month waiting list
Seriously go private for that if you can. It makes a massive difference to quality of life, my mother-in-law did the same and she was overjoyed that she had better vision in her last years.
The irony is that her optician said she will need it but best to go on the 18 month waiting list now so that she will have it before it becomes a necessity
He also added in England it takes 6 weeks waiting but not sure how true that is
It is true. ISTCs do the majority of NHS cataract surgery in England now, with waits typically of a few weeks.
What's an ISTC?
Independent Sector Treatment Centre
They do things where it makes sense to do them on mass (Cataracts / Hip operations) or manage MRI systems.
NHS needs to do loads more of this for routine operations.
Expensive capital equipment such as MRI scanners should be working 24/7, with people offered the option of turning up in the middle of the night tomorrow rather than waiting weeks or months.
Streeting plans further expansion, but it is pretty much limited to quick turnaround surgery in fit patients.
Getting a quick MRI is no benefit if it's a 6 month wait to see a rheumatologist to discuss the findings. There are bottlenecks in the system to address, but it does tend to just shift the queue elsewhere.
I disagree. Last summer my mother went into Kings Mill for pancreatitis. They worked out pretty quickly that it wasn't any of the really bad causes but for obvious reasons wanted to know what was causing it. They had to keep her in for a couple of days uintil the blood markers showed the epiosode was over but wanted to have an MRI to check for gall stones as the Ultrasound had not been clear. They would not send her home because it would have taken weeks to get her the MRi if she was out of hospital.
So she waited in hospital, taking up a bed that others could have been using (and which was certainly needed) for an additional 4 days until they could get her the MRI. And she was not the only one. All because they had only one team capable of running the MRI who were already working a 14 hour days and a 7 day week.
That’s nuts, what do a couple of MRI operators cost, compared to the cost of keeping beds occupied for days because people are waiting for scans?
Yep. And there is another MRI scanner at Newark which doesn't get used that often as they don't have the staff for it.
Nearly every time I've had an MRI scan it's been private.
They are always in throughput mode - they run from early morning (before work) till 8-9pm.
Other testing is also an issue - when my father was in hospital, they seemed to have a backlog on basic bloodwork. I'm not talking cultures etc. I'm talking about "What is his potassium level?". Doctors would come round and go "We need to see that before we can make a decision" then leave again.....
At one point, my brother and I were discussing finding a private laboratory and hiring someone to take blood samples and test them...
This is where we need Theranos and there has been some progress in finding non-fraudulent versions. The trouble with blood tests is the doctor orders half a dozen or so, the phlebotomist draws blood and the lab carries out those tests. Then the doctor looks at the results and decides it would be nice to know a couple more levels, so rinse and repeat. What we need is a machine that runs every conceivable blood test against a single sample to save hours and often days or weeks of toing and froing.
It will also be good when hospitals and GPs exchange data so each can see the results of the tests done by the other, rather than just that tests were done…
I have online access to all blood, pathology and radiology investigations done both in hospital or GP in Leicester. It is occasionally an issue if I am referred a patient from Kettering or Peterborough. This has been possible for well over a decade.
So it can be done. Hopefully it will happen I’m my neck of the woods too at some point.
Here we're on the border between two Health Authorities. We're actually in Mid Essex. but a lot of 'action' takes place in NE Essex. The cross-border systems don't work too well.
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
I must have forgotten the line in the manifesto that said they won't raise tax on farmers?
Where would you raise the money from instead?
Are farmers not working people? The ones I know seem to work harder than most.
And I would raise the money by not spending it - public sector needs the fat trimming, not plumping up further.
And I would engage in massive deregulation, that's the only thing which will fix the real underlying problem of no growth - because we're strangling growth at birth with regulatory costs, and that's why the economy has stopped growing.
Anyone inheriting farmland didn't work for it, no. If they did, they should have paid income tax when they earned it.
Most farmers and their sons get up before 6am and work until dusk for average pay at best. They may have a lot of assets but those form their business, they certainly aren't lazy.
You have written some ridiculous posts in your time but that one takes the biscuit!!
He is famous for them and usually it is the full box
Why is nobody in media even mentioning that £1m IHT agriculture relief is in addition to the £1m IHT relief any (married) person gets when leaving property to children.
ie If you live on a farm and want to leave it to your son you pay no IHT on the first £2m (assuming you are / were married and spouse not using their exemption for anything else).
Was listening to lengthy debate hosted by Chorley on R5L yesterday with farmers complaining - going on about almost all farms are worth over £1m - at no point did anyone say farmers can leave £2m tax free.
Why not? Hopeless media reporting - nobody appears to have even the most basic understanding of how tax system works.
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
I genuinly don't understand what Dan Neidle is saying.
The average farm in the UK is 85 hectares - 210 acres. Agricultural land averages around £10K an acre. That is £2.1 million in lland value alone. Before you take into account a few hundred thousand on equipment, buildings, livestock etc.
Most family farms wuld be caught by a £1 million cap. They are asset rich and cash poor because that is the nature of the business. It is a fecking ridiculous idea.
That average is the mean average distorted by very large holdings.
The median average is much lower.
According to DEFRA 59% of English farms have less than 50 hectares.
50 hectares is still 125ish acres. So still well over £1 million in land value alone without everything else.
There is a huge variety in farms and associated land value, from your massive arable farm in East Anglia to your small hill farm in Wales. It needs a deep analysis rather than broadbrush averages to determine if the policy is a mistake.
Indeed.
And no mention that of the Total farmable area in England almost 1/2 of it is farmed on a whole or part tenant basis.
And no mention that a lot of the increase in farm values is as a result of inheritance tax dodges by wealthy people with no prior experience of farming at all.
I do a huge amount of walking - I'm always amazed by how infrequently you bump into a farmer or worker.
It's also noticable you many fewer cows you see out in pasture these days. I assume they are all in massive sheds for most of the year - which saddens me.
Here in Arden you're more likely to find ponies or alpacas than cattle. If they contribute to our food security I'd rather not know.
Well, I would have faced a bill of about £300k to have inherited my farm when my parents died.
Also the DEFRA officials tried to steal the payment rights from me because my father did not tell them of his change of status, he had died. Liz Truss as DEFRA Secretary did not do the incoming paper work at all and made a lifelong enemy of me.
Why no succession planning ? For the exemption if you pass over your property you have to hand everything over and have no interest or benefit in any way. Turning sheep at a gate or calving a cow would be enough to potentially invalidate the handover.
I have already discussed this with my intended successor, who is currently my tenant, I have no children.
I have to live long enough to see the back of this government. My fellow farmers who are ten years older than me are understandably worried. I had a hell of an argument within the local Conservative Party before the election - it was obvious what they were going to do and it should have been in every leaflet. If the Reform voters here had voted Conservative there would have been one fewer Labour moron in parliament.
Re farming what happens if those inheriting land can’t raise the IHT liability ?
It’s not like property which would generally be easier to sell .
Farmland is easy enough to sell. Phone the local auctioneers, cash lands in the bank about a month later.
There are lots of reasons why this policy is bad, but this isn't one.
Scenario: Farm is valued at 10k/acre for inheritance tax purposes. Farm is lets say 300 acres, so the bill is £200k (We'll assume the lad owns all the equipment and/or it's all depreciated for the sake of argument). The old Farmer's son sticks 20 acres up for sale, and only gets 5k/acre. A bit extreme, but just putting it out there for the sake of argument... Does the farm now get revalued to 1.5 million so the 200k isn't due ?
The public sector is not all roses. For example, young doctors have to pay for their own exams to progress and are not exactly offered much support to progress. That would be unheard of in the professional private sector. Other examples are teachers buying food and stationary for their classes and being unable to expense.
You ever in your life seen a poor doctor, among the highest paid and safest job in the country with very generous pensions. My heart bleeds for them.
FY1/2 pay is hardly eye-watering. Plenty of better paid graduate jobs for people with similar qualifications.
When I had my first post-doc job I was earning more than a FY1 doctor, for an easier job with shorter and more sociable hours. But an FY1 who started when I did my first post-doc will be some way above my pay by now. There certainly is jam-tomorrow in doctoring, it's true.
Is post doc a direct read across? Isn't FY1/2 more akin to PhD?
Why is nobody in media even mentioning that £1m IHT agriculture relief is in addition to the £1m IHT relief any (married) person gets when leaving property to children.
ie If you live on a farm and want to leave it to your son you pay no IHT on the first £2m (assuming you are / were married and spouse not using their exemption for anything else).
Was listening to lengthy debate hosted by Chorley on R5L yesterday with farmers complaining - going on about almost all farms are worth over £1m - at no point did anyone say farmers can leave £2m tax free.
Why not? Hopeless media reporting - nobody appears to have even the most basic understanding of how tax system works.
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
I must have forgotten the line in the manifesto that said they won't raise tax on farmers?
Where would you raise the money from instead?
Are farmers not working people? The ones I know seem to work harder than most.
And I would raise the money by not spending it - public sector needs the fat trimming, not plumping up further.
And I would engage in massive deregulation, that's the only thing which will fix the real underlying problem of no growth - because we're strangling growth at birth with regulatory costs, and that's why the economy has stopped growing.
Where is the fat in the public sector?
I ask this because it's 95% of the time the fat people see is services they don't need themselves...
Random example - a large chunk of my route to work is currently getting "safety upgrades" at a cost of around £3 million quid. This comprises reduced speed limits (NSL to 50mph/40mph) and accompanying signage, loads of white lines and snazzy markings (including white rumbling centre white lines on all the corners which people tend to cut - I'm sure the locals will be loving the extra road noise), traffic lights on a junction with good visibility and virtually no traffic, and average speed cameras.
This on a road with sufficiently low KSI numbers it doesn't even justify the yellow backgrounds to the speed limit signs.
Having driven it exactly at the new limits (speed limiter set to them all the way) the lower limits are adding 2-3 minutes each way a day, which adds up to around 20 hours a year. And I'm just one driver.
So there is £3 million quid getting blown right now, on making people's lives worse, with literally no benefits for anybody (there weren't many accidents on the route in the first place to be reduced, which is the supposed benefit - there was a rash of motorcyclists killed about 10 years ago, which is what prompted all this, but it doesn't seem to be a problem any more).
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
Does Rory have form on correctly predicting election results?
No, but I am hearing increasing numbers of commentators doing a dive into micro-level polls and stats and coming to the same conclusion.
Or, we can look at the alternate camp which has Trump winning big. Where the evidence is "everyone I know is voting Trump", "all the news I read agrees that Harris is a [ban hammer]", "look at the markets Trump is winning 70%" etc etc
Inside the Trump bullshit bubble, His reelection is nailed to the floor. Outside? The metrics are showing the opposite.
Should Harris win, even if 'clearly' I would hope that Biden or she has arrangements with the relevant authorities to take Trump into 'protective custody' PDQ. If only restricted to Mar a Lago with no internet access.
Isn’t the sentencing for his 34 felonies in New York just after the election? That might take care of it nicely…
Why is nobody in media even mentioning that £1m IHT agriculture relief is in addition to the £1m IHT relief any (married) person gets when leaving property to children.
ie If you live on a farm and want to leave it to your son you pay no IHT on the first £2m (assuming you are / were married and spouse not using their exemption for anything else).
Was listening to lengthy debate hosted by Chorley on R5L yesterday with farmers complaining - going on about almost all farms are worth over £1m - at no point did anyone say farmers can leave £2m tax free.
Why not? Hopeless media reporting - nobody appears to have even the most basic understanding of how tax system works.
Let's get real. It appears no political journalist has the faintest idea.
How many people even on this website (one of the most informed places for political debate) were aware of this?
I'm sure I read it can go up to £3m if there's a home on the farm.
The likes of Clarkson, pretending he cares about other people, when it's actually his inheritance plans that have been affected, will moan. But if the policy doesn't effect many in practice, the outrage from the kind of family farmers people actually care about, will disappear over time.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
I know it's a bit hypocritical, but there's something off about most British politicians/pundits who pose as experts on US elections. I can't take them seriously.
I know, there are a few pundits on here who talk absolute nonsense.
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
Who to believe on tax... A tax expert or someone who makes TV shows?
Who to believe a farmer or a town dweller ?
If the farmer knows about farming and the townie knows about tax, then the townie.
Expertise beats location.
Nonsense, the question on raising tax is how people will behave. You change the tax regime and people will act differently and often in ways that cant be predicted.
My SME manufacturing co estimates the NI raid will cost us £200k next year. As a result we wont be raising salaries as much and will probably look at a couple of layoffs.
Growrth ? Not on Labours agenda,
I don’t know if you’ve heard but we have a massive budget deficit and a dire need for infrastructure investment.
Yes, which is why we should cut current spending and divert funds to infrastructure. Reform taxes alone and we'll not kill off growth.
The magical “cut spending” and “growth” which means fuck all without detailing what you’d cut and who and what the effects would be - exactly what you’re complaining about now in fact.
You talk about magical NHS and public sector efficiency gains but why can’t your SME make similar gains?
Our SME does it every year. It' why our VAPE is on the up. It will probably take us a couple of years to claw this back. The NHS will simply swallow the money as it productivity falls over the next 5 years.
Or NHS outcomes might improve, GP service might be better, new hospitals and facilities might be built, including in rural areas. Who knows?
The triumph of hope over experience. Good luck with hat,
The demands on the NHS have grown massively.
To suggest outcomes haven't improved seems particularly peverse.
In the early 1990's women with early breast cancer had a 15% chance of dying within 5 years.
Now ? Its about 5%
Cataract operations were once an in patient operation with a couple of nights stay. Its now done in about 12 minutes and you are back home straight away. Quality is better, its safer and there are less complications. The age of people having the operations has dropped, and there are at least 5 times the number of operations per year.
Life expectancy of men has increased by about 7 years since 40 years ago. Many cancers are a function of age. Prostate being a prime example.
We have worse outcomes than many comparable countries, but then we spend less.
Good morning
My wife needs a double cataract operation and has just been put on Wales NHS 18 month waiting list
Seriously go private for that if you can. It makes a massive difference to quality of life, my mother-in-law did the same and she was overjoyed that she had better vision in her last years.
The irony is that her optician said she will need it but best to go on the 18 month waiting list now so that she will have it before it becomes a necessity
He also added in England it takes 6 weeks waiting but not sure how true that is
It is true. ISTCs do the majority of NHS cataract surgery in England now, with waits typically of a few weeks.
What's an ISTC?
Independent Sector Treatment Centre
They do things where it makes sense to do them on mass (Cataracts / Hip operations) or manage MRI systems.
NHS needs to do loads more of this for routine operations.
Expensive capital equipment such as MRI scanners should be working 24/7, with people offered the option of turning up in the middle of the night tomorrow rather than waiting weeks or months.
Streeting plans further expansion, but it is pretty much limited to quick turnaround surgery in fit patients.
Getting a quick MRI is no benefit if it's a 6 month wait to see a rheumatologist to discuss the findings. There are bottlenecks in the system to address, but it does tend to just shift the queue elsewhere.
I disagree. Last summer my mother went into Kings Mill for pancreatitis. They worked out pretty quickly that it wasn't any of the really bad causes but for obvious reasons wanted to know what was causing it. They had to keep her in for a couple of days uintil the blood markers showed the epiosode was over but wanted to have an MRI to check for gall stones as the Ultrasound had not been clear. They would not send her home because it would have taken weeks to get her the MRi if she was out of hospital.
So she waited in hospital, taking up a bed that others could have been using (and which was certainly needed) for an additional 4 days until they could get her the MRI. And she was not the only one. All because they had only one team capable of running the MRI who were already working a 14 hour days and a 7 day week.
That’s nuts, what do a couple of MRI operators cost, compared to the cost of keeping beds occupied for days because people are waiting for scans?
Yep. And there is another MRI scanner at Newark which doesn't get used that often as they don't have the staff for it.
Nearly every time I've had an MRI scan it's been private.
They are always in throughput mode - they run from early morning (before work) till 8-9pm.
Other testing is also an issue - when my father was in hospital, they seemed to have a backlog on basic bloodwork. I'm not talking cultures etc. I'm talking about "What is his potassium level?". Doctors would come round and go "We need to see that before we can make a decision" then leave again.....
At one point, my brother and I were discussing finding a private laboratory and hiring someone to take blood samples and test them...
This is where we need Theranos and there has been some progress in finding non-fraudulent versions. The trouble with blood tests is the doctor orders half a dozen or so, the phlebotomist draws blood and the lab carries out those tests. Then the doctor looks at the results and decides it would be nice to know a couple more levels, so rinse and repeat. What we need is a machine that runs every conceivable blood test against a single sample to save hours and often days or weeks of toing and froing.
It will also be good when hospitals and GPs exchange data so each can see the results of the tests done by the other, rather than just that tests were done…
I have online access to all blood, pathology and radiology investigations done both in hospital or GP in Leicester. It is occasionally an issue if I am referred a patient from Kettering or Peterborough. This has been possible for well over a decade.
Round here will be the same as all the testing is centralised at the hospital - so the hospital definitely has the results of any GP tests.
Don't worry - someone will find a way of hoarding the information and protecting it from being found by the people who need it.
On a couple of occasions, I've had
Bod - "I can't give you data on your family member, confidentiality" Family member - "I'm right here. Give it to him." Bod - "Er.... Wibble?"
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
I genuinly don't understand what Dan Neidle is saying.
The average farm in the UK is 85 hectares - 210 acres. Agricultural land averages around £10K an acre. That is £2.1 million in lland value alone. Before you take into account a few hundred thousand on equipment, buildings, livestock etc.
Most family farms wuld be caught by a £1 million cap. They are asset rich and cash poor because that is the nature of the business. It is a fecking ridiculous idea.
Yes, they will be forced to sell up and pocket their million+ quid. My heart bleeds.
What a stupid fucking response. The whole point being we want farms to continue as viable businesses. We need farms and farmers. Unless of course you are one of those fuckwits who think the food in supermarkets is miraculously created out of thin air.
Of course it isn't created out of thin air, there's a whole global supply chain.
We should get our food from whomever is best placed to supply it. If British farmers, then great. If French, Spanish, Argentinian, American, Australian or anywhere else then great too.
Would it be a wise strategy for Ukraine to have depended for its supplies of food and other essentials on Russia?
No it would be wise to rely on the entire planet and not rely upon a single point of failure.
Hence if you get localised flooding in Spain, or in the UK one year, having a diversified supply chain makes you more secure even locally not less.
On a security perspective it is far more concerning where we get our silicon chips from than our potato chips.
That completely contradicts your earlier point. You said we should get food from whoever is best placed to supply it, implying that if large, cheap supplies can be secured from elsewhere, it's fine if our own farmers can't compete. That supplier could very easily be one country or bloc in many cases.
Now you say that countries should ensure a diversity of suppliers and not become too reliant upon one. That's a completely different strategy, and one that would probably include ensuring coninued domestic supply along with global producers.
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
I genuinly don't understand what Dan Neidle is saying.
The average farm in the UK is 85 hectares - 210 acres. Agricultural land averages around £10K an acre. That is £2.1 million in lland value alone. Before you take into account a few hundred thousand on equipment, buildings, livestock etc.
Most family farms wuld be caught by a £1 million cap. They are asset rich and cash poor because that is the nature of the business. It is a fecking ridiculous idea.
Yes, they will be forced to sell up and pocket their million+ quid. My heart bleeds.
What a stupid fucking response. The whole point being we want farms to continue as viable businesses. We need farms and farmers. Unless of course you are one of those fuckwits who think the food in supermarkets is miraculously created out of thin air.
Of course it isn't created out of thin air, there's a whole global supply chain.
We should get our food from whomever is best placed to supply it. If British farmers, then great. If French, Spanish, Argentinian, American, Australian or anywhere else then great too.
Would it be a wise strategy for Ukraine to have depended for its supplies of food and other essentials on Russia?
No it would be wise to rely on the entire planet and not rely upon a single point of failure.
Hence if you get localised flooding in Spain, or in the UK one year, having a diversified supply chain makes you more secure even locally not less.
On a security perspective it is far more concerning where we get our silicon chips from than our potato chips.
That completely contradicts your earlier point. You said we should get food from whoever is best placed to supply it, implying that if large, cheap supplies can be secured from elsewhere, it's fine if our own farmers can't compete. That supplier could very easily be one country or bloc in many cases.
Now you say that countries should ensure a diversity of suppliers and not become too reliant upon one. That's a completely different strategy, and one that would probably include ensuring coninued domestic supply along with global producers.
No it doesn't as food is fungible and there is no individual nation which controls agriculture.
Getting it from the entire planet is the polar opposite of being "reliant" upon a single nation as you suggested.
Where we are reliant too much on single nations isn't food/agriculture, it's manufacturing. Hence silicon chips rather than potato chips being a more serious security concern.
Want to improve our security? Let's get more domestic manufacturing onto land currently set aside for agriculture.
I'm not expecting you to admit it, but your thinking on this issue is very confused and needs some pondering. I'll let you do that in private.
I totally agree we need more domestic manufacturing, especially of goods needed for national security, but it takes up very little ground, so is not in direct competition with growing food.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
I know it's a bit hypocritical, but there's something off about most British politicians/pundits who pose as experts on US elections. I can't take them seriously.
I know, there are a few pundits on here who talk absolute nonsense.
Any advice from me is worth exactly what I'm paid for it.
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
I must have forgotten the line in the manifesto that said they won't raise tax on farmers?
Where would you raise the money from instead?
Are farmers not working people? The ones I know seem to work harder than most.
And I would raise the money by not spending it - public sector needs the fat trimming, not plumping up further.
And I would engage in massive deregulation, that's the only thing which will fix the real underlying problem of no growth - because we're strangling growth at birth with regulatory costs, and that's why the economy has stopped growing.
Anyone inheriting farmland didn't work for it, no. If they did, they should have paid income tax when they earned it.
Most farmers and their sons get up before 6am and work until dusk for average pay at best. They may have a lot of assets but those form their business, they certainly aren't lazy.
You have written some ridiculous posts in your time but that one takes the biscuit!!
Luxury! We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
Why is nobody in media even mentioning that £1m IHT agriculture relief is in addition to the £1m IHT relief any (married) person gets when leaving property to children.
ie If you live on a farm and want to leave it to your son you pay no IHT on the first £2m (assuming you are / were married and spouse not using their exemption for anything else).
Was listening to lengthy debate hosted by Chorley on R5L yesterday with farmers complaining - going on about almost all farms are worth over £1m - at no point did anyone say farmers can leave £2m tax free.
Why not? Hopeless media reporting - nobody appears to have even the most basic understanding of how tax system works.
Let's get real. It appears no political journalist has the faintest idea.
How many people even on this website (one of the most informed places for political debate) were aware of this?
I'm sure I read it can go up to £3m if there's a home on the farm.
The likes of Clarkson, pretending he cares about other people, when it's actually his inheritance plans that have been affected, will moan. But if the policy doesn't effect many in practice, the outrage from the kind of family farmers people actually care about, will disappear over time.
"How many people even on this website (one of the most informed places for political debate) were aware of this?"
I posted on here Dan Neidle's view on the IHT on farms yesterday. Same points on the house and £1m with spouse etc etc.
Quick question: where do PBers get their US polls from? 538 is woefully slow at updating these days – it's really gone downhill. I just want a Twitter feed or the like that posts new polls as they are released (I'm not bothered about aggregators or predictors).
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
I must have forgotten the line in the manifesto that said they won't raise tax on farmers?
Where would you raise the money from instead?
Are farmers not working people? The ones I know seem to work harder than most.
And I would raise the money by not spending it - public sector needs the fat trimming, not plumping up further.
And I would engage in massive deregulation, that's the only thing which will fix the real underlying problem of no growth - because we're strangling growth at birth with regulatory costs, and that's why the economy has stopped growing.
Where is the fat in the public sector?
I ask this because it's 95% of the time the fat people see is services they don't need themselves...
Random example - a large chunk of my route to work is currently getting "safety upgrades" at a cost of around £3 million quid. This comprises reduced speed limits (NSL to 50mph/40mph) and accompanying signage, loads of white lines and snazzy markings (including white rumbling centre white lines on all the corners which people tend to cut - I'm sure the locals will be loving the extra road noise), traffic lights on a junction with good visibility and virtually no traffic, and average speed cameras.
This on a road with sufficiently low KSI numbers it doesn't even justify the yellow backgrounds to the speed limit signs.
Having driven it exactly at the new limits (speed limiter set to them all the way) the lower limits are adding 2-3 minutes each way a day, which adds up to around 20 hours a year. And I'm just one driver.
So there is £3 million quid getting blown right now, on making people's lives worse, with literally no benefits for anybody (there weren't many accidents on the route in the first place to be reduced, which is the supposed benefit - there was a rash of motorcyclists killed about 10 years ago, which is what prompted all this, but it doesn't seem to be a problem any more).
And if the same money was spent on a gradual, long term rebuild of the fundamental road structure to decent standards, the long term costs of maintenance might actually drop.
See the picture that was posted, the other day, of a road which was just tarmac on top of ancient cobble stones...
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
I must have forgotten the line in the manifesto that said they won't raise tax on farmers?
Where would you raise the money from instead?
Are farmers not working people? The ones I know seem to work harder than most.
And I would raise the money by not spending it - public sector needs the fat trimming, not plumping up further.
And I would engage in massive deregulation, that's the only thing which will fix the real underlying problem of no growth - because we're strangling growth at birth with regulatory costs, and that's why the economy has stopped growing.
Anyone inheriting farmland didn't work for it, no. If they did, they should have paid income tax when they earned it.
Most farmers and their sons get up before 6am and work until dusk for average pay at best. They may have a lot of assets but those form their business, they certainly aren't lazy.
You have written some ridiculous posts in your time but that one takes the biscuit!!
Luxury! We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
You 'ad lake t' sleep in? Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuxury......
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
Does Rory have form on correctly predicting election results?
No, but I am hearing increasing numbers of commentators doing a dive into micro-level polls and stats and coming to the same conclusion.
Or, we can look at the alternate camp which has Trump winning big. Where the evidence is "everyone I know is voting Trump", "all the news I read agrees that Harris is a [ban hammer]", "look at the markets Trump is winning 70%" etc etc
Inside the Trump bullshit bubble, His reelection is nailed to the floor. Outside? The metrics are showing the opposite.
Should Harris win, even if 'clearly' I would hope that Biden or she has arrangements with the relevant authorities to take Trump into 'protective custody' PDQ. If only restricted to Mar a Lago with no internet access.
OK, lets play that scenario. Harris is announced the winner. Biden then has Trump arrested (by whom? for what?) and brought to a secure location. Where that is will be discovered quickly and you'll then have an armed militia outside in a shooting battle with the authorities.
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
I must have forgotten the line in the manifesto that said they won't raise tax on farmers?
Where would you raise the money from instead?
Are farmers not working people? The ones I know seem to work harder than most.
And I would raise the money by not spending it - public sector needs the fat trimming, not plumping up further.
And I would engage in massive deregulation, that's the only thing which will fix the real underlying problem of no growth - because we're strangling growth at birth with regulatory costs, and that's why the economy has stopped growing.
Anyone inheriting farmland didn't work for it, no. If they did, they should have paid income tax when they earned it.
Most farmers and their sons get up before 6am and work until dusk for average pay at best. They may have a lot of assets but those form their business, they certainly aren't lazy.
You have written some ridiculous posts in your time but that one takes the biscuit!!
You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that most of those who actually farm the land also own the land.
Re farming what happens if those inheriting land can’t raise the IHT liability ?
It’s not like property which would generally be easier to sell .
Farmland is easy enough to sell. Phone the local auctioneers, cash lands in the bank about a month later.
There are lots of reasons why this policy is bad, but this isn't one.
Scenario: Farm is valued at 10k/acre for inheritance tax purposes. Farm is lets say 300 acres, so the bill is £200k (We'll assume the lad owns all the equipment and/or it's all depreciated for the sake of argument). The old Farmer's son sticks 20 acres up for sale, and only gets 5k/acre. A bit extreme, but just putting it out there for the sake of argument... Does the farm now get revalued to 1.5 million so the 200k isn't due ?
If the land is sold in open auction that is the value. It is really a bad idea but totally expected. It will also trash other businesses where succession is important. My ex MP says the first suicide has happened, not sure if that is true. We really have a vile incompetent government with a vile incompetent Prime Minister. But we knew that.
We overtax the productive section of the economy for the unproductive. Everyone has a sob story to tell, and pension entitlements and sickness benefits they think they deserve to have, but until we grasp the nettle and stop this the economy will be chained to the floor.
People need to take more responsibility and make more provision for themselves, I'm afraid.
That would be easier to implement if (a) the country was more equal, and, (b) the cost of living wasn't so damn high.
We come again to Solution Number 1. Build. More. Houses.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
Does Rory have form on correctly predicting election results?
I would favour 538, Sean Trende, John Ralston, and Nate Silver on US politics, over and above any wishcasting British commentator.
We know Trump is disgusting. That doesn't mean that Harris is destined to win comfortably.
Agreed. But I take issue with the assumption that everyone who both wants Harris to win comfortably and thinks that she will is wish-casting. Some will be, and perhaps Rory is, but others will be basing their view on a bit more than just "oh god I hope so".
Also the opposite of wish-casting is common. This manifests as people of a naturally pessimistic bent overstating the chances of something they fear happening happening. The emotional hedge, doom-casting, whatever you want to call it, you get a lot of this.
Quick question: where do PBers get their US polls from? 538 is woefully slow at updating these days – it's really gone downhill. I just want a Twitter feed or the like that posts new polls as they are released (I'm not bothered about aggregators or predictors).
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
Does Rory have form on correctly predicting election results?
I would favour 538, Sean Trende, John Ralston, and Nate Silver on US politics, over and above any wishcasting British commentator.
We know Trump is disgusting. That doesn't mean that Harris is destined to win comfortably.
That's not the reason Rory is saying she'll win comfortably.
Yes, Rory makes the point that a lot of Trump's support is made of the demographics that tend not to get out and vote. He also says that the Democrats' ground game is traditionally far stronger in the crucial swing states. If the 50/50 polling it correct then those factors could be crucial.
This talk of farmers. The simple point is that Starmer and Steve Reed lied to them, to get elected in various rural seats. An immediate loss of trust like this will not be forgotten and they will pay for it.
I must have forgotten the line in the manifesto that said they won't raise tax on farmers?
Where would you raise the money from instead?
Are farmers not working people? The ones I know seem to work harder than most.
And I would raise the money by not spending it - public sector needs the fat trimming, not plumping up further.
And I would engage in massive deregulation, that's the only thing which will fix the real underlying problem of no growth - because we're strangling growth at birth with regulatory costs, and that's why the economy has stopped growing.
Anyone inheriting farmland didn't work for it, no. If they did, they should have paid income tax when they earned it.
Most farmers and their sons get up before 6am and work until dusk for average pay at best. They may have a lot of assets but those form their business, they certainly aren't lazy.
You have written some ridiculous posts in your time but that one takes the biscuit!!
For clarity, I'm not forecasting armed insurrection in America because I want it or find it entertaining. The opposite. I just struggle to see how they avoid that in any scenario other than a big Trump win. And even in that scenario it just flips the other way - Trump does everything he says he is going to do and you're going to get armed militias imposing Gilead as they round up Jake Tapper and illegals and 'that guy down the street who looks funny'.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
Does Rory have form on correctly predicting election results?
No, but I am hearing increasing numbers of commentators doing a dive into micro-level polls and stats and coming to the same conclusion.
Or, we can look at the alternate camp which has Trump winning big. Where the evidence is "everyone I know is voting Trump", "all the news I read agrees that Harris is a [ban hammer]", "look at the markets Trump is winning 70%" etc etc
Inside the Trump bullshit bubble, His reelection is nailed to the floor. Outside? The metrics are showing the opposite.
Should Harris win, even if 'clearly' I would hope that Biden or she has arrangements with the relevant authorities to take Trump into 'protective custody' PDQ. If only restricted to Mar a Lago with no internet access.
Isn’t the sentencing for his 34 felonies in New York just after the election? That might take care of it nicely…
Regrettably, I don't think he's going to jail. I suspect there'll be a federal pardon for the sake of avoiding civil unrest.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
Does Rory have form on correctly predicting election results?
No, but I am hearing increasing numbers of commentators doing a dive into micro-level polls and stats and coming to the same conclusion.
Or, we can look at the alternate camp which has Trump winning big. Where the evidence is "everyone I know is voting Trump", "all the news I read agrees that Harris is a [ban hammer]", "look at the markets Trump is winning 70%" etc etc
Inside the Trump bullshit bubble, His reelection is nailed to the floor. Outside? The metrics are showing the opposite.
Should Harris win, even if 'clearly' I would hope that Biden or she has arrangements with the relevant authorities to take Trump into 'protective custody' PDQ. If only restricted to Mar a Lago with no internet access.
OK, lets play that scenario. Harris is announced the winner. Biden then has Trump arrested (by whom? for what?) and brought to a secure location. Where that is will be discovered quickly and you'll then have an armed militia outside in a shooting battle with the authorities.
The mess with farmers and IHT is going to be one to watch. On one hand you have tax expert Dan Neidle saying 'what's the fuss?', very few farms will be included if you look at the tax stats, and then the farmers themselves saying it is a friggin' disaster.
Telegraph has as ever gone totally toton on this this morning.
Yet the main example quoted is a farmer who farms the land still owned by his very aging father. They don't seem to have thought through inheritance and now they do.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls seems to have weighed in and warned that the politics of this are looking bad for Reeves.
U turn coming????
Who to believe on tax... A tax expert or someone who makes TV shows?
Who to believe a farmer or a town dweller ?
If the farmer knows about farming and the townie knows about tax, then the townie.
Expertise beats location.
Nonsense, the question on raising tax is how people will behave. You change the tax regime and people will act differently and often in ways that cant be predicted.
My SME manufacturing co estimates the NI raid will cost us £200k next year. As a result we wont be raising salaries as much and will probably look at a couple of layoffs.
Growrth ? Not on Labours agenda,
I don’t know if you’ve heard but we have a massive budget deficit and a dire need for infrastructure investment.
Yes, which is why we should cut current spending and divert funds to infrastructure. Reform taxes alone and we'll not kill off growth.
The magical “cut spending” and “growth” which means fuck all without detailing what you’d cut and who and what the effects would be - exactly what you’re complaining about now in fact.
You talk about magical NHS and public sector efficiency gains but why can’t your SME make similar gains?
Our SME does it every year. It' why our VAPE is on the up. It will probably take us a couple of years to claw this back. The NHS will simply swallow the money as it productivity falls over the next 5 years.
Or NHS outcomes might improve, GP service might be better, new hospitals and facilities might be built, including in rural areas. Who knows?
The triumph of hope over experience. Good luck with hat,
The demands on the NHS have grown massively.
To suggest outcomes haven't improved seems particularly peverse.
In the early 1990's women with early breast cancer had a 15% chance of dying within 5 years.
Now ? Its about 5%
Cataract operations were once an in patient operation with a couple of nights stay. Its now done in about 12 minutes and you are back home straight away. Quality is better, its safer and there are less complications. The age of people having the operations has dropped, and there are at least 5 times the number of operations per year.
Life expectancy of men has increased by about 7 years since 40 years ago. Many cancers are a function of age. Prostate being a prime example.
We have worse outcomes than many comparable countries, but then we spend less.
Good morning
My wife needs a double cataract operation and has just been put on Wales NHS 18 month waiting list
Seriously go private for that if you can. It makes a massive difference to quality of life, my mother-in-law did the same and she was overjoyed that she had better vision in her last years.
The irony is that her optician said she will need it but best to go on the 18 month waiting list now so that she will have it before it becomes a necessity
He also added in England it takes 6 weeks waiting but not sure how true that is
It is true. ISTCs do the majority of NHS cataract surgery in England now, with waits typically of a few weeks.
What's an ISTC?
Independent Sector Treatment Centre
They do things where it makes sense to do them on mass (Cataracts / Hip operations) or manage MRI systems.
NHS needs to do loads more of this for routine operations.
Expensive capital equipment such as MRI scanners should be working 24/7, with people offered the option of turning up in the middle of the night tomorrow rather than waiting weeks or months.
Streeting plans further expansion, but it is pretty much limited to quick turnaround surgery in fit patients.
Getting a quick MRI is no benefit if it's a 6 month wait to see a rheumatologist to discuss the findings. There are bottlenecks in the system to address, but it does tend to just shift the queue elsewhere.
I disagree. Last summer my mother went into Kings Mill for pancreatitis. They worked out pretty quickly that it wasn't any of the really bad causes but for obvious reasons wanted to know what was causing it. They had to keep her in for a couple of days uintil the blood markers showed the epiosode was over but wanted to have an MRI to check for gall stones as the Ultrasound had not been clear. They would not send her home because it would have taken weeks to get her the MRi if she was out of hospital.
So she waited in hospital, taking up a bed that others could have been using (and which was certainly needed) for an additional 4 days until they could get her the MRI. And she was not the only one. All because they had only one team capable of running the MRI who were already working a 14 hour days and a 7 day week.
That’s nuts, what do a couple of MRI operators cost, compared to the cost of keeping beds occupied for days because people are waiting for scans?
Yep. And there is another MRI scanner at Newark which doesn't get used that often as they don't have the staff for it.
Nearly every time I've had an MRI scan it's been private.
They are always in throughput mode - they run from early morning (before work) till 8-9pm.
Other testing is also an issue - when my father was in hospital, they seemed to have a backlog on basic bloodwork. I'm not talking cultures etc. I'm talking about "What is his potassium level?". Doctors would come round and go "We need to see that before we can make a decision" then leave again.....
At one point, my brother and I were discussing finding a private laboratory and hiring someone to take blood samples and test them...
This is where we need Theranos and there has been some progress in finding non-fraudulent versions. The trouble with blood tests is the doctor orders half a dozen or so, the phlebotomist draws blood and the lab carries out those tests. Then the doctor looks at the results and decides it would be nice to know a couple more levels, so rinse and repeat. What we need is a machine that runs every conceivable blood test against a single sample to save hours and often days or weeks of toing and froing.
It will also be good when hospitals and GPs exchange data so each can see the results of the tests done by the other, rather than just that tests were done…
I have online access to all blood, pathology and radiology investigations done both in hospital or GP in Leicester. It is occasionally an issue if I am referred a patient from Kettering or Peterborough. This has been possible for well over a decade.
Round here will be the same as all the testing is centralised at the hospital - so the hospital definitely has the results of any GP tests.
Don't worry - someone will find a way of hoarding the information and protecting it from being found by the people who need it.
On a couple of occasions, I've had
Bod - "I can't give you data on your family member, confidentiality" Family member - "I'm right here. Give it to him." Bod - "Er.... Wibble?"
If the family member is not the patient of the Bod, then they shouldn't access the data, even if the person gives permission. The data is confidential between the patient and their doctor, not every doctor who cares to take a look.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
Does Rory have form on correctly predicting election results?
No, but I am hearing increasing numbers of commentators doing a dive into micro-level polls and stats and coming to the same conclusion.
Or, we can look at the alternate camp which has Trump winning big. Where the evidence is "everyone I know is voting Trump", "all the news I read agrees that Harris is a [ban hammer]", "look at the markets Trump is winning 70%" etc etc
Inside the Trump bullshit bubble, His reelection is nailed to the floor. Outside? The metrics are showing the opposite.
Should Harris win, even if 'clearly' I would hope that Biden or she has arrangements with the relevant authorities to take Trump into 'protective custody' PDQ. If only restricted to Mar a Lago with no internet access.
Isn’t the sentencing for his 34 felonies in New York just after the election? That might take care of it nicely…
Regrettably, I don't think he's going to jail. I suspect there'll be a federal pardon for the sake of avoiding civil unrest.
Quick question: where do PBers get their US polls from? 538 is woefully slow at updating these days – it's really gone downhill. I just want a Twitter feed or the like that posts new polls as they are released (I'm not bothered about aggregators or predictors).
I find 538 and RCP quick enough.
They really aren't – they are often a day or more behind.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
Does Rory have form on correctly predicting election results?
No, but I am hearing increasing numbers of commentators doing a dive into micro-level polls and stats and coming to the same conclusion.
Or, we can look at the alternate camp which has Trump winning big. Where the evidence is "everyone I know is voting Trump", "all the news I read agrees that Harris is a [ban hammer]", "look at the markets Trump is winning 70%" etc etc
Inside the Trump bullshit bubble, His reelection is nailed to the floor. Outside? The metrics are showing the opposite.
Should Harris win, even if 'clearly' I would hope that Biden or she has arrangements with the relevant authorities to take Trump into 'protective custody' PDQ. If only restricted to Mar a Lago with no internet access.
Isn’t the sentencing for his 34 felonies in New York just after the election? That might take care of it nicely…
Regrettably, I don't think he's going to jail. I suspect there'll be a federal pardon for the sake of avoiding civil unrest.
State crime: no federal pardon possible.
Yes, the Georgia case is the one where he's most exposed. And yet, I think there's still likely to be some behind the scenes deal.
EuroTrack: voters who backed left, centrist, and centre-right parties would prefer Harris to become president rather than Trump
It is generally only those who opt for more right wing parties who favour Trump - but there are still exceptions, like the Sweden Democrats (49% Harris / 31% Trump) and Le Pen voters in France (46% Harris / 31% Trump) https://x.com/YouGov/status/1852296802436820999
Comments
PS. I don't believe this site with it's huge Telegraph readership is representative
People need to take more responsibility and make more provision for themselves, I'm afraid.
Starmer stood in conference and said he'd '“looked farmers in the eye and he knew what losing a farm meant”.
“Every day seems to bring a new existential risk to British farming. Losing a farm is not like losing any other business, you can’t come back."
People aren't going to put up with mealy mouthed s**t that the manifesto didn't say it won't raise tax on farmers, when it clearly didn't say it would either.
This won't be forgotten. They lied and have broken trust within months of coming into power. You might be happy with that, but others won't.
Brad Bo 🇺🇸
@BradBeauregardJ
·
16h
The CIA Director on Homeland, Mandy Patikin just released this video where he talks to the real national security leaders who he played on the shows.
You have to see what they say about Donald Trump.
https://x.com/BradBeauregardJ/status/1852053061411197194
Now you say that countries should ensure a diversity of suppliers and not become too reliant upon one. That's a completely different strategy, and one that would probably include ensuring coninued domestic supply along with global producers.
I have occasionally been in with a clinician at my GP surgery who may not have full access to test results.
Either Trump wins or Harris wins. If Trump wins America turns into Gilead. If Harris wins the people who genuinely think we can't see the mushroom are not going to just accept that they lost. They have been taken too far into wonderland to accept that its not real. And so many of them have guns...
*if you don't like this analogy then try Picard being asked to say that he can see 5 lights when there were only 4. At the end he says that - despite his defiance of THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS - he genuinely couldn't say for sure if that was true, such was his mental state after prolonged torture
That was scrapped within days of them getting into office.
When I had my first post-doc job I was earning more than a FY1 doctor, for an easier job with shorter and more sociable hours. But an FY1 who started when I did my first post-doc will be some way above my pay by now. There certainly is jam-tomorrow in doctoring, it's true.
Many democracies go through crises which they recover from - a recent example is the Polish election turning the tide on state authoritarianism; a more dramatic one, Ukraine's Euromaidan.
The US has a considerable number of checks built into the system.
The election of Trump would likely do huge damage (and I'm toying with the idea for a header on that), but not necessarily terminal.
Unreliable, sure; unviable, I doubt.
This is a trait that young teenagers have not being able to admit defeat even when presented with the evidence.
Most teenagers learn to overcome this instinct to always be right sometime around 16.
Remember it just won’t be farmers who switched but the people who also work on the farms who might be annoyed.
Apart from that...
We keep saying Government should cut expenditure and that's an entirely appropriate cut to make.
There is fat that can be cut still, it's just the fat that was a shibboleth to the prior Government.
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/bodmin-moor-alpaca-farm-you-7136317
I thoroughly approve. Look your dinner in the eye.
I haven’t changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably. And I’m looking forward to the elaborate explanations from the polling companies on why they failed to predict the result.
https://x.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1852200931061899386
Monkeys will never type Shakespeare, study finds"
https://x.com/BBCNews/status/1852265609389572102
Getting it from the entire planet is the polar opposite of being "reliant" upon a single nation as you suggested.
Where we are reliant too much on single nations isn't food/agriculture, it's manufacturing. Hence silicon chips rather than potato chips being a more serious security concern.
Want to improve our security? Let's get more domestic manufacturing onto land currently set aside for agriculture.
Trump, on stage in Arizona, just referred to President Biden as a "stupid bastard" & Vice President Harris as a "sleaze bag."
https://x.com/VaughnHillyard/status/1852218779608191434
I said I'd be fine with the increase in taxes if was likely to lead to an increase in productive investment.
The biggest infrastructure commitment is the CCS scheme - which will add precisely nothing to growth.
And I'm fine with an increase in spending on public services, if it's financially sustainable. But in this case, Reeves has imposed the biggest single tax increase of any budget in history and planned to borrow more.
And on the OBR's forecast, growth actually gets worse, not better - with the exception of the next couple of years with the massive upfront cash spend.
Absent some big increases in growth coming from elsewhere, it doesn't add up.
. As on many issues, I agree with Rory
The UK's fiscal situation isn't great. We can trade partisan barbs about whose fault that is and when it went sour, but it isn't great. Leon likened it to a coach crash on a cliff edge motorway, and trying to run across the carriageway to escape. (Give him his due, he can do words.)
Now that didn't work, and the resulting injuries left us even worse off. So we're left with the difficult, painful, slow inching away from the wreckage to safety. Reeves's budget is a messy combination of as little spending as stops the state collapsing, as much tax raising as the electorate will accept and as much borrowing as the financial markets will only tut at and no worse than that.
None of it's pretty, and it may not add up to enough. There is one growth lever (planning) that the government are going to pull as hard as they can, another (Europe) that is still politically toxic, and some others ("deregulation" in general) that probably fail when you try the Chesterton's Fence test on them.
But unless the boffins at ARIA develop a British Time Machine, we are where we are.
ie If you live on a farm and want to leave it to your son you pay no IHT on the first £2m (assuming you are / were married and spouse not using their exemption for anything else).
Was listening to lengthy debate hosted by Chorley on R5L yesterday with farmers complaining - going on about almost all farms are worth over £1m - at no point did anyone say farmers can leave £2m tax free.
Why not? Hopeless media reporting - nobody appears to have even the most basic understanding of how tax system works.
This is one of those policy changes where the long term consequences could prove to be disastrous if it drives smaller farms out of business and allows bigger companies to snap up the land.
Or, we can look at the alternate camp which has Trump winning big. Where the evidence is "everyone I know is voting Trump", "all the news I read agrees that Harris is a [ban hammer]", "look at the markets Trump is winning 70%" etc etc
Inside the Trump bullshit bubble, His reelection is nailed to the floor. Outside? The metrics are showing the opposite.
You have written some ridiculous posts in your time but that one takes the biscuit!!
(What's happening at the serious end of the BBC is bad, what's happening in the press, especially the local press, is far worse.)
Though Justin Webb is my personal aversion.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/balance-sheet-analysis-and-farming-performance-england/balance-sheet-analysis-and-farming-performance-england-202223-statistics-notice
If only restricted to Mar a Lago with no internet access.
We know Trump is disgusting. That doesn't mean that Harris is destined to win comfortably.
£2m tax free
20% on excess = 20% * 200,000 = £40,000
And that's the average.
Let's get real. It appears no political journalist has the faintest idea.
How many people even on this website (one of the most informed places for political debate) were aware of this?
Also the DEFRA officials tried to steal the payment rights from me because my father did not tell them of his change of status, he had died. Liz Truss as DEFRA Secretary did not do the incoming paper work at all and made a lifelong enemy of me.
Why no succession planning ? For the exemption if you pass over your property you have to hand everything over and have no interest or benefit in any way. Turning sheep at a gate or calving a cow would be enough to potentially invalidate the handover.
I have already discussed this with my intended successor, who is currently my tenant, I have no children.
I have to live long enough to see the back of this government. My fellow farmers who are ten years older than me are understandably worried. I had a hell of an argument within the local Conservative Party before the election - it was obvious what they were going to do and it should have been in every leaflet. If the Reform voters here had voted Conservative there would have been one fewer Labour moron in parliament.
Does the farm now get revalued to 1.5 million so the 200k isn't due ?
Every (married) person has £650k for any asset.
If total farm is £2m then living quarters only need to be worth £350k for result to be no IHT.
This on a road with sufficiently low KSI numbers it doesn't even justify the yellow backgrounds to the speed limit signs.
Having driven it exactly at the new limits (speed limiter set to them all the way) the lower limits are adding 2-3 minutes each way a day, which adds up to around 20 hours a year. And I'm just one driver.
So there is £3 million quid getting blown right now, on making people's lives worse, with literally no benefits for anybody (there weren't many accidents on the route in the first place to be reduced, which is the supposed benefit - there was a rash of motorcyclists killed about 10 years ago, which is what prompted all this, but it doesn't seem to be a problem any more).
The likes of Clarkson, pretending he cares about other people, when it's actually his inheritance plans that have been affected, will moan. But if the policy doesn't effect many in practice, the outrage from the kind of family farmers people actually care about, will disappear over time.
On a couple of occasions, I've had
Bod - "I can't give you data on your family member, confidentiality"
Family member - "I'm right here. Give it to him."
Bod - "Er.... Wibble?"
I totally agree we need more domestic manufacturing, especially of goods needed for national security, but it takes up very little ground, so is not in direct competition with growing food.
I posted on here Dan Neidle's view on the IHT on farms yesterday. Same points on the house and £1m with spouse etc etc.
See the picture that was posted, the other day, of a road which was just tarmac on top of ancient cobble stones...
Yesterday 48:48
We come again to Solution Number 1. Build. More. Houses.
Also the opposite of wish-casting is common. This manifests as people of a naturally pessimistic bent overstating the chances of something they fear happening happening. The emotional hedge, doom-casting, whatever you want to call it, you get a lot of this.
🇩🇰 Harris 81% / Trump 7%
🇸🇪 Harris 73% / Trump 13%
🇩🇪 Harris 71% / Trump 14%
🇪🇸 Harris 65% / Trump 17%
🇫🇷 Harris 62% / Trump 15%
🇬🇧 Harris 61% / Trump 16%
🇮🇹 Harris 46% / Trump 24%
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1852296799207280645
EuroTrack: voters who backed left, centrist, and centre-right parties would prefer Harris to become president rather than Trump
It is generally only those who opt for more right wing parties who favour Trump - but there are still exceptions, like the Sweden Democrats (49% Harris / 31% Trump) and Le Pen voters in France (46% Harris / 31% Trump)
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1852296802436820999