Not That I was Planning To

May 6, 2017 Longrider General News, misanthropy, Political 15

Vote for the LibDems, but this is an absolute guarantee.

The Liberal Democrats have pledged to increase income tax by a penny for every earner to fund a £6bn-a-year cash injection for the NHS and social care.

As is always the case with these cretins, it never occurs to them to look at spending and see where it can be reduced. As I’ve mentioned many times here before, there are swathes of unnecessary government spending that could – and should – be axed and the money given back to its rightful owners. There are whole government departments that should go. All spending on the third sector parasites should go. Overseas aid should go. When little Timmy Farron can show us that this has happened and he still needs another penny in the pound for social care, I might listen. But probably not, as we are massively over-taxed as it is. We do not need more tax. We need less. A lot less.

In what was described as their “flagship” spending commitment of the general election campaign, the party’s leader, Tim Farron, said voters recognised the need to “chip in a little more” to address the “chronic underfunding” of healthcare.

Really? So on the 8th of June they will be voting en masse for your grubby little party so that you can enact this theft, then? Or not, maybe… I am not prepared to chip in one penny more. Not one farthing, not one grote. I already pay more than enough. You look at what you people piss up the wall on vanity projects, fake charities and overseas aid and then get back to me if you still can’t fund social care.

I’m waiting…

15 Comments

  1. I bought a groat for my gf and it cost £44! That’s inflation for you.
    When examining cuts in Government spending the first £140 billion is the easiest. then it gets progressivley harder.
    Pre EU (ie 1994) the cost of Whitehall was £12 billion pa, now it has more than trebled. Part of the Leave dividend SHOULD be a massive, massive reduction in this budget. All these civil sevants we are paying but who are actually reporting to Brussels can go and the sooner the better.
    Just out of interest do you happen to know if the BBC is still receiving money from the Foreign Power?

  2. But, but, but…

    There’s a problem. Everybody knows the solution to any problem is to throw more money at it. Stands to reason, innit? 🙁

  3. During the reign of Gordo The Great Saviour of the World, who was splashing large quantities of cash about the NHS, there were patients being slaughtered or left uncared for, then it woz the administrators wot dun it.

    Now we are back to the perennial excuse for the perennial failure of the NHS, not ‘enough’ funding.

    It would be helpful if somebody were to indicate what was ‘enough’.

    Funding in private enterprise is indicated by market signals – what price consumers will pay, consumer preferences and competitor activity and what profit is being made.

    Absent these signals it is not possible to know what the NHS needs except a flame-thrower taken to it and healthcare denationalised and opened up to the discipline of free market capitalism.

    • Healthcare denationalised? Thanks for that…you are suggesting murdering my wife amongst many others no doubt. But that’s ok if you are alright eh Jack? And pro capitalists wonder why they are seen as nasty…

      • Having a choice between not being able to afford healthcare and having the state provide healthcare that is so dire that it kills you is hardly ideal though is it? The problems with the NHS appear to be systemic rather than being anything to do with funding. This has been demonstrated by the fact that, however much money successive governments have thrown at it, it never gets any better.

    • The biggest problem is that healthcare is eye-wateringly expensive. An insurance based scheme would be unaffordable for many and insurers will be looking to minimise their risks, so anyone predisposed to expensive illnesses will find themselves excluded though high premiums.

      The French system is better than ours – having experienced it first hand, I’ll take that over the NHS every time. The French use market forces to push up the quality of provision and the system uses a combination of both state provision and private within the same system. I reject, therefore, the argument that private providers cannot be used for a public service. They can and do across the channel and it works.

      However, make no mistake, it’s bloody expensive and French social charges are painful if you are self-employed. For the employed, the employer carries the bulk of the burden. Hence it is costly to hire people, so carries undesirable externalities (if that’s the right word).

      I don’t have an ideological objection to a genuine national insurance scheme that worked as precisely that. What we have, however, is a Ponzi scheme and it has been corroded by the social engineers who use it to modify behaviour.

      Any scheme has to take into account those who simply cannot afford it and never will.

      I certainly would like to see the provision separated from the funding and private providers used more extensively. I do not worship at the altar of the NHS.

      • I think I agree with about 90 % of that ^^^^
        My only doubt is the state (taxpayer) paying private businesses. That only ever seems to work out more expensive as businesses suffer the same delusion as many that the state has an unending pit of money to be tapped and I saw this first hand as I was growing up with two parents that were both councillors and don’t even get me started on the race to the bottom that is “the lowest bidder gets it” crap. It could easily be rectified if companies that bid for state contracts had to actually stick to the proposals in their bid and not have bucket loads of money thrown at them when they find they can’t complete the task with the resources that they said they could. I don’t really have any answers but I see what we have as the least worst system much like our democracy.

        • Your point about the NHS being used to direct our lifestyles I agree with you completely. Is there a special school for prodnoses or something? They seem to infest (and ruin)everything.

        • The reason for that is that the state is serially incompetent. Private companies have to factor in that incompetence in the form of changing specifications and subsequent delays.

      • That is one of the most intelligent and balanced comments I have ever seen about the NHS.

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