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This morning I said Rachel Reeves was safe in the forthcoming reshuffle – politicalbetting.com
This morning I said Rachel Reeves was safe in the forthcoming reshuffle – politicalbetting.com
With my usual impeccable timing this morning I wrote a piece based on The I newspaper’s article that Rachel Reeves was safe in the forthcoming reshuffle, a few hours later as we can see with the screenshot above from the BBC News website that may be a dubious prediction.
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It was just about bio on a Social Media networking site.
It's not as if banking experience has ever been a requirement to be CoE. Many great Chancellors had no prior experience of finance, other than their own domestic ones.
But I though Haigh unlucky too. Her offence went back over a decade and was a matter of public record.
Former archbishop could be hit with hefty sum for living in Church accommodation for up to six months
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/justin-welby-25k-tax-bill-lambeth-palace-resignation/
Former defence secretary warns there could be repeat of Neville Chamberlain’s ‘peace for our time’ moment
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/13/trump-ukraine-peace-talks-echoes-nazi-appeasement-wallace/
But is ++Cantuar (retd.) the angel or the devil in this parable?
However, there's not much point Starmer replacing Reeves unless he plans on changing policy too - and presumably he's signed off the broad concept of her plan. Indeed, if anything, the national security issues piling up mean there's probably even less money for everything else.
Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!
Meanwhile, over in Tameside, the Labour councillor who whistleblowed on the 'Trigger me Timbers' whatsapp group, has been suspended by Labour. Mmmm.
I’ve always known I would not do well in prison so I have always engaged in the highest standards of probity.
“Stretching the truth” is saying “paragon of virtue, universally respected by all colleagues”
BREAKING:
@SecDef walks back his statement yesterday that a negotiated settlement is not likely to end with Ukraine in @NATO: "These negotiations are led by @realDonaldTrump. Everything is on the table. In his conversations with Vladimir Putin and Zelensky, what he decides to allow or not allow, is at the purview of the leader of the free world--President Trump. So I'm not going to stand at this podium and declare what President Trump will do or won't do, what will be in or what will be out, what concessions will be made or what concessions are not made."
In its central forecast, the OBR projected UK public healthcare spending will rise by around 3% every year, after adjusting for inflation. This would be broadly in line with average growth over recent decades, although the rate has fluctuated under different governments.
The OBR estimates this trend would add up to roughly an extra 1% of GDP going on public health spending every decade going forward.
That would take public health spending from around 8% of GDP in 2024-25, up to 14.5% of GDP by 2073-74, equivalent to around £180bn in today's money.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy7zvp5xrqo
I'm curious as to how much the NHS has increased health and life expectancy as opposed to those caused by reductions in smoking, better housing, milder winters, changing work types and other improvements in public health.
Because this looks like a ponzi scheme:
Shortly after the NHS was founded, in 1949-50, total UK health spending was around £17bn in today's money.
By 2023–24 it had grown to £226bn.
Which is why I think this story is less damaging than the other one. The other one suggests she was misusing an expenses account.
Now German outlet Spiegel reports that he came to Germany at the end of 2016 and his asylum application was later rejected. He was then granted what has been translated as a "tolerance" permit, which means his deportation decision was suspended. Officials earlier said he was known to the police for theft and drug offences.
Failed asylum, still not deported, is a known criminal, still not deported,...
RFM: 29% (=)
LAB: 23% (-2)
CON: 21% (+3)
LDM: 12% (-1)
GRN: 9% (-1)
SNP: 3% (=)
Via @FindoutnowUK, 12 Feb.
Changes w/ 5 Feb.
It will be very funny when one of them will break down in a very public place, or traps someone inside (government capture!) or does something similarly embarrassing.
This is incredibly expensive. It would better for those men not to get heart disease in the first place.
Hello! Were you not paying attention for the last few years? If they'd pulled their fingers out of their arses and acted, then Europe wouldn't be in the position of being abandoned to Russian mercies.
Even now, at this late hour, decisive action could shape reality in Europe and Ukraine's favour. But instead, the whining. If Europe wants a different future it will have to make a different future, not plead with others to make it for them.
I thought the high-minded statements from Irish politicians were particularly egregious. If you want a say then put aside the neutrality nonsense and pay for a proper defence. Otherwise you would do well to stay silent.
The other major issue is that most of the population is sedentary and fat. Abused lardy bodies with worn joints and clapped out cardiovascular systems = enormous expense.
If you have an old and knackered population then you end up with an expensive and overburdened healthcare system. It's no more complex than that.
On the question, I'm not sure whether you mean how much has improving healthcare (at greater cost - more drugs, more operable conditions etc) helped compared to more societal/public health things or specifically how much has the NHS helped compared to a continuation of the pre-NHS scenario. If the former, I'd say mostly public health efforts, since the widespread use of antibiotics.
On the costs comparison with 1949/50 you have to consider that there were not only far fewer expensive drugs, but also that is before heart transplants or hip replacements etc.
Trump was very clear; trying to spin it now is pitiful stuff. It might have worked for his Fox News viewers, but this is the real world.
Trump is also predictable in the round, and everyone knows that (1) he likes to appear in control, and (2) Ukraine will not be admitted to Nato under Trump. Also (3) Nato means fuck all to Trump as an obligation.
However, a lot of those increases in life expectancy are because of direct improvements in healthcare. We've seen huge improvements in cancer treatment (and screening), for example. https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2012/06/03/celebrating-60-years-of-progress/ says, "Although the UK didn’t start collecting detailed cancer statistics until the 1970s, the figures that we do have tell us that survival for some of the most common cancers – including breast and bowel cancers – has more than doubled since the early 50s, when the Registrar General stated that cancer killed nearly as many people in a single year as all the men who were killed during the six years of the Second World War." https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2023/01/cancer-survival-rates-are-improving has US data: "The overall cancer survival rate was 49 percent in the mid-1970s. It currently sits at 68 percent."
Healthcare inflation has long been higher than regular inflation. That's partly about an ageing population. But it's also about how we constantly invent new ways to improve health. We can do more, there are way more tools in the medical toolbox, but that expansion costs money.
We could re-focus our research efforts more on preventing ill health and tackling the costliest diseases, although we would still see new, expensive drugs being invented in other countries (notably the US). Pharmaceutical companies focus on drugs that will make them money and they're the ones who do most research on new drugs. You need something like Corbyn's plan to nationalise drug research to change that. Charity funding focuses on what the public wants, which is drugs to extend life, not low cost measures to keep people healthier in the long term.
Reform 333
Labour. 88
Lib Dens 78
Conservative 68
Now that would be hilarious !!!!
Reform 276 (+271)
Lab 139 (-273)
Con 108 (-13)
LD 59 (-13)
SNP 40 (+31)
Green 4 (=)
PC 2 (-2)
Others 4 (-1)
Either way it’s a Reform government with an outright majority or assistance from the humiliated Tories
A friend used to work in charitable fundraising. She always joked that the most successful charity would be Kittens for Kids with Cancer. No-one wants to give money to Encouraging Regular People to Do More Exercise.
Can the Tories or Labour do it? lol no
Reform it is
Do you actually know that?
The expenses story sounds bad at the start then, towards the end of the story, they quote a few people who dispute that anything untoward was happening, including someone senior who claims they would have been informed if the investigation had found any wrongdoing.
It's not a good look, but by the end of the story it all looked quite unsubstantiated. If it does turn out she was found to have done something wrong/dishonest then it's a big story.
(The apparently permissible expenses things are a bit of an eye-opener for those of us in public sector or university, I think!)
Reform would only make things worse, more quickly.
Your boss just trashed it, you arse.
And Reform UK toy with anti-vaxx.
That's why I think the model is unsustainable. Why should my taxes go to look after someone who doesn't look after themselves? Classic moral hazard problem.
My other grandad died in his sixties - he was a smoker and fags destroyed his lungs.
Not many former miners around now and far fewer smokers so that leads to a welcome increase in mid life health and overall life expectancy.
And also an increase in late life medical requirements.
But how much do people, let alone the country as a whole, benefit from such a high proportion of spending going on extending their lives by a few low quality months ?
But once they reach their eighties and nineties ?
The law of diminishing returns seems to apply.
People are currently unhappy, unhealty and the nation is economically unproductive. It feels quite mad that we don't talk about fitness as a political objective.
Ireland can get away with offloading its defence in this way and keeping the money because it's in our backyard. The United States, on the other hand, has the Atlantic Ocean for a moat so Trump can feel emboldened to tell Europe to look after itself.
Lewis Goodall @lewisgoodall.com
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6m
Zelensky is being forced to plead with Trump that his own country, which has spent so much blood and endured so much horror, is allowed to be at the negotiating table about its own future. That's where we're at- a return of great power politics.
Putin's best week in years.
https://bsky.app/profile/lewisgoodall.com/post/3li35l6hxac2i
Overall, given all the pressures and politicians' indifference to getting value for public money, it's actually amazing our expenditure on healthcare doesn't take up all our GDP.
Eg my idea of “blind dogs for the guides” barely registered. Even tho I am sure it would succeed - these lonely blind puppies would be given to young girl guides to look after - win win
And as for “Speedos for Pedos”, they basically escorted me out of the door - even though it would enable early detection of tumescence in undesirable types by the swimming pool
'Emergency' care, including hospital admissions when there's nowhere else to go* are not, of course. Inpatient stays are expensive. I don't have figures to hand, but having better alternatives would make financial sense, I think.
*My mum spent ~1/4 of the year before last hospital. Most of the time she didn't really need hospital care, as such, but it took several stays before an adequate home care package was put in place. All admissions were related to falls/blackouts, which didn't cause serious injury, but were judged to need investigating each time and then physio to prepare for going home, but a lack of available physio meant longer in hospital waiting for that to happen before discharge.
https://x.com/eff_hey/status/1889696556703502506
Hard to avoid the sense that this awful bastard is just Enoch Powell-level racist on a personal level
Like so many things from during the COVID times, opportunities missed to do better for the long term.
I hope that's not too misogynistic
Apparently the number of rounds of golf being played though is still up on before COVID....just a lot more during week times.....
Draw up a list of all the things it might be spent on.
How far down the list would sick oldies be ?
Well they seem to be top of the list in government assumptions.
And its not going to be a gift of 6% of GDP, it will have to be earned first.
You then need to back that up with much better access to cheap leisure facilities (which means giving local government the means to build leisure centres and pools all over the place, which in turn means solving the local government funding crisis, an expense that Westminster has zero interest in taking on,) and we also need to set a deadline for outlawing the sale of tobacco products and force the nation's remaining smokers to quit. This, obviously, would cause an immense tantrum amongst the remaining addicts and be manna from heaven for Farage.
Now, on top of all of that you have to fix the NHS (and, by extension, the social care system without which you can't unbung the hospitals) so that people get timely treatment for ailments and don't end up growing increasingly sick and disabled whilst stuck on waiting lists. So you're back again to trying to find massive amounts of money, whilst somehow avoiding the biggest shitstorm ever by raiding assets and pensions to pay for it. And the country simultaneously has to shore up it's education system, its creaking infrastructure and rearm itself at the same time.
Where do we even start?
Don't forget the Trump and twitter effect.
I'm learning phonics (well, my children are; I'm picking some up) and I must admit I'm hard pressed to explain why it's deceives and thieves. Something something I before E except after C, I guess.
That been said the evidence for things like the sugar tax is very thin. It seems the much bigger impact on for instance kids getting less sugar was leaning on the manufacturers just to only make items with less sugar in the first place.