The Politics Thread

[thebish]

I have no idea what the pru army of youth is - and i don't speak for them!

still - you are not worried about the in/out referendum - so why not just chill and polish your chrome until the summer comes?

Is that sci-fi innuendo, polish your chrome? Chrome knobs!

No innuendo - I occasionally tease hoboh for being a fair-weather summer biker cos he is worried about his chrome!

Still - if we leave the EU it will never rain on the UK again - result!

[thebish]

Freedom of information requests by Inside Housing show that of the £1bn raised since 2012 to replace right to buy, £27.3m of it has been used to buy back homes sold under right to buy.

The government encourages the sale of council houses by offering attractive discounts to tenants, who understandably choose to buy. The council is then faced with dwindling stocks while waiting lists lengthen and homelessness spikes. So it uses its cash to buy back the homes it could not afford to lose in the first place.

[Hoboh]

Freedom of information requests by Inside Housing show that of the £1bn raised since 2012 to replace right to buy, £27.3m of it has been used to buy back homes sold under right to buy.

The government encourages the sale of council houses by offering attractive discounts to tenants, who understandably choose to buy. The council is then faced with dwindling stocks while waiting lists lengthen and homelessness spikes. So it uses its cash to buy back the homes it could not afford to lose in the first place.

So what have they spent the rest on?

[thebish]

Freedom of information requests by Inside Housing show that of the £1bn raised since 2012 to replace right to buy, £27.3m of it has been used to buy back homes sold under right to buy.

The government encourages the sale of council houses by offering attractive discounts to tenants, who understandably choose to buy. The council is then faced with dwindling stocks while waiting lists lengthen and homelessness spikes. So it uses its cash to buy back the homes it could not afford to lose in the first place.

So what have they spent the rest on?

different councils will have spent it on different things!

the issue here is that they were forced by the govt to sell off council houses at a significant discount - now they are having to buy them back at full market value...

40% of houses bought under right-to-buy are now being let out by private landlords...

madness.

[bobo the clown]

^^ not necessarily. You'd condemn council renters to lifetimes of paying rent with nowt to show for it.

In my mother's case she & dad bought it. I'm now the owner and am renting it out. Which now pays for her care home costs over & above the barest minimum that she'd otherwise be in.

Question .... do I feel in any sense bad about this ?
Answer .... not for one hundredth of a second.

[thebish]

^^ not necessarily. You'd condemn council renters to lifetimes of paying rent with nowt to show for it.

well - apart from an affordable house to live in all their lives...

[thebish]

sleepwalking into a private health-service... well - the bits that can feasible generate profit...

NHS staff working in child health services in one West county have been told they have a new boss – Richard Branson – after health chiefs unilaterally privatised their entire department in a £64 million deal.
All community child health services in Wiltshire will be privatised, with council and NHS bosses defending their decision saying it was the best way to ensure a 'consistent' service across the county.
But leaders representing the staff being transferred said they had real fears the move would mean a worse service for more money, which they said was what happened when taxes were paid for 'profits and shareholders'.

[Lord Kangana]

I can't for the life of me understand how people constantly claim (with a truckload of contrary evidence) that private companies that need generate profit (ie a surplus, a surfeit - more f*cking money than is required to just run the thing in plain speak) can provide the same service for less money versus an institution that doesn't need to generate a profit. The only way that is possible is to make it shitter.

[bobo the clown]

I can't for the life of me understand how people constantly claim (with a truckload of contrary evidence) that private companies that need generate profit (ie a surplus, a surfeit - more f*cking money than is required to just run the thing in plain speak) can provide the same service for less money versus an institution that doesn't need to generate a profit. The only way that is possible is to make it shitter.

Or better run.

Let me give just ONE example of how the publicly funded NHS wastes money. It's only a small one, but would never happen in real life.

I recently went to a seminar on new & upcoming employment law. I paid for it myself. It was presented by the Welsh NHS & in all honesty wasn't especially good. But that's another matter.
I had the option of one in Bangor, on a Tuesday or Wrexham on the Thursday. I elected for the second.

It was presented by a couple of ladies from Cardiff. They'd been up in North Wales for 3 days, the middle day I guess they were able to do other matters. When I went into the room I knew a couple of people & sat with them. They were both NHS at the Wrexham Hospital. As time passed I realised there were no less than 6 HR people from HR at the hospital and 2 quite senior executives also. That struck me as unnecessary numbers. However, it then became clear that at least 3 of them had attended the Bangor course 2 days earlier. Quite why wasn't easily obvious.

Now. The NHS won't go bust due to this. No-one will have died. But why so many, why off site if that was necessary ? Why did some attend a very ordinary seminar twice ?

Just a small point but I guess it was not unique. It wouldn't happen in a commercial organisation, which would be none the worse for it.

[BWFC_Insane]

I can't for the life of me understand how people constantly claim (with a truckload of contrary evidence) that private companies that need generate profit (ie a surplus, a surfeit - more f*cking money than is required to just run the thing in plain speak) can provide the same service for less money versus an institution that doesn't need to generate a profit. The only way that is possible is to make it shitter.

Or better run.

Let me give just ONE example of how the publicly funded NHS wastes money. It's only a small one, but would never happen in real life.

I recently went to a seminar on new & upcoming employment law. I paid for it myself. It was presented by the Welsh NHS & in all honesty wasn't especially good. But that's another matter.
I had the option of one in Bangor, on a Tuesday or Wrexham on the Thursday. I elected for the second.

It was presented by a couple of ladies from Cardiff. They'd been up in North Wales for 3 days, the middle day I guess they were able to do other matters. When I went into the room I knew a couple of people & sat with them. They were both NHS at the Wrexham Hospital. As time passed I realised there were no less than 6 HR people from HR at the hospital and 2 quite senior executives also. That struck me as unnecessary numbers. However, it then became clear that at least 3 of them had attended the Bangor course 2 days earlier. Quite why wasn't easily obvious.

Now. The NHS won't go bust due to this. No-one will have died. But why so many, why off site if that was necessary ? Why did some attend a very ordinary seminar twice ?

Just a small point but I guess it was not unique. It wouldn't happen in a commercial organisation, which would be none the worse for it.

Whereas the NHS doesn't pay out half the expenses to execs and management that many commercial organisations do.

Goes back to LK's point. Many, many private organisations have tried to run NHS services more efficiently and either failed totally or ended up making patient care worse.

See hospital cleaning contracts for a start.

The NHS is a superb organisation that is being systematically taken apart by a political ideology that knows the cost of everything and the value of absolutely nowt.

[Lord Kangana]

https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/ca ... to-mention" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.buzzfeed.com/solomonhughes/n ... jnr75qBoRr" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015 ... cqc-report" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The privatisation of many of our public services is being shown up for the fraud that it is. Very slowly. Very, very slowly.

[bobo the clown]

I think you'll find that NHS Execs are paid exceptionally well.

Really, truly, staggeringly well.

[thebish]

I can't for the life of me understand how people constantly claim (with a truckload of contrary evidence) that private companies that need generate profit (ie a surplus, a surfeit - more f*cking money than is required to just run the thing in plain speak) can provide the same service for less money versus an institution that doesn't need to generate a profit. The only way that is possible is to make it shitter.

Or better run.

Let me give just ONE example of how the publicly funded NHS wastes money. It's only a small one, but would never happen in real life.

by "real life" - you presumably mean the private sector?

hmmm... the mostly private american healthcare system spends about twice as much on healthcare per head for broadly-speaking the same (possibly slightly worse) outcomes than the NHS...

I don't think wastage in the NHS is as much to do with what sector it is in - but in its sheer scale and the nature of its work - where it almost demands overcapacity...

the railways - when they entered the "real world" and became privately run did not become more efficient - in fact, they demanded year-on-year more and more govt support than they had when they were publically owned. The East Coast main line was doing very well when recently publically run - now it is back in private hands the service has already suffered from a huge drop in passenger satisfaction levels - and it is no cheaper...

similar unclear benefits of privatisation and efficiency/standard of the service for the cost provided might be aimed at Prisons and care homes and certainly the private sector's answer to financing public infrastructure - PFI initiatives - massively expensive and wasteful...

the public sector = badly run and inefficient vs private sector = well run, lean and efficient caricature is just that - a caricature - and a poorly drawn one. "Real life" is MUCH more complicated...

[Hoboh]

I can't for the life of me understand how people constantly claim (with a truckload of contrary evidence) that private companies that need generate profit (ie a surplus, a surfeit - more f*cking money than is required to just run the thing in plain speak) can provide the same service for less money versus an institution that doesn't need to generate a profit. The only way that is possible is to make it shitter.

Or better run.

Let me give just ONE example of how the publicly funded NHS wastes money. It's only a small one, but would never happen in real life.

I recently went to a seminar on new & upcoming employment law. I paid for it myself. It was presented by the Welsh NHS & in all honesty wasn't especially good. But that's another matter.
I had the option of one in Bangor, on a Tuesday or Wrexham on the Thursday. I elected for the second.

It was presented by a couple of ladies from Cardiff. They'd been up in North Wales for 3 days, the middle day I guess they were able to do other matters. When I went into the room I knew a couple of people & sat with them. They were both NHS at the Wrexham Hospital. As time passed I realised there were no less than 6 HR people from HR at the hospital and 2 quite senior executives also. That struck me as unnecessary numbers. However, it then became clear that at least 3 of them had attended the Bangor course 2 days earlier. Quite why wasn't easily obvious.

Now. The NHS won't go bust due to this. No-one will have died. But why so many, why off site if that was necessary ? Why did some attend a very ordinary seminar twice ?

Just a small point but I guess it was not unique. It wouldn't happen in a commercial organisation, which would be none the worse for it.

Whereas the NHS doesn't pay out half the expenses to execs and management that many commercial organisations do.

Goes back to LK's point. Many, many private organisations have tried to run NHS services more efficiently and either failed totally or ended up making patient care worse.

See hospital cleaning contracts for a start.

The NHS is a superb organisation that is being systematically taken apart by a political ideology that knows the cost of everything and the value of absolutely nowt.

why can I walk into a chemist shop and have a prescription ready in ten mins yet have to wait up to five feckin hours in hospital whilst waiting discharge?

[BWFC_Insane]

I can't for the life of me understand how people constantly claim (with a truckload of contrary evidence) that private companies that need generate profit (ie a surplus, a surfeit - more f*cking money than is required to just run the thing in plain speak) can provide the same service for less money versus an institution that doesn't need to generate a profit. The only way that is possible is to make it shitter.

Or better run.

Let me give just ONE example of how the publicly funded NHS wastes money. It's only a small one, but would never happen in real life.

by "real life" - you presumably mean the private sector?

hmmm... the mostly private american healthcare system spends about twice as much on healthcare per head for broadly-speaking the same (possibly slightly worse) outcomes than the NHS...

I don't think wastage in the NHS is as much to do with what sector it is in - but in its sheer scale and the nature of its work - where it almost demands overcapacity...

the railways - when they entered the "real world" and became privately run did not become more efficient - in fact, they demanded year-on-year more and more govt support than they had when they were publically owned. The East Coast main line was doing very well when recently publically run - now it is back in private hands the service has already suffered from a huge drop in passenger satisfaction levels - and it is no cheaper...

similar unclear benefits of privatisation and efficiency/standard of the service for the cost provided might be aimed at Prisons and care homes and certainly the private sector's answer to financing public infrastructure - PFI initiatives - massively expensive and wasteful...

the public sector = badly run and inefficient vs private sector = well run, lean and efficient caricature is just that - a caricature - and a poorly drawn one. "Real life" is MUCH more complicated...

What bish said.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

Publicly or privately run, the reason why industries such as the rail industry don't work is the level of gravy train participation at upper management level and above. We all shake our heads at the corruption in places like Katanga, but honestly the feeding frenzy of dosh handed out to the top ten percent of our 'workforce' is scandalous...

[thebish]

Publicly or privately run, the reason why industries such as the rail industry don't work is the level of gravy train participation at upper management level and above. We all shake our heads at the corruption in places like Katanga, but honestly the feeding frenzy of dosh handed out to the top ten percent of our 'workforce' is scandalous...

nicely done!

[Enoch]

We're all pretty ordinary at work; those that slight other folk's effort whilst thinking they're a shining example to the Protestant Work Ethic are generally deluded.

One marked difference between the US healthcare industry and the NHS and a massive impact upon its overall balance sheet, would be the wages paid to its low ranking healthcare professionals, something the Great British public habitually bitch about.

[Bijou Bob]

^^ Your waiting g time fir a prescription in hospital is longer Hoboh, because er, it's a hospital with several hundred patients all needing a prescription. As opposed to the half dozen stood waiting for hemarroid cream and a quiet moment to ask about water based lubricant in your high street chemist.

[Hoboh]

^^ Your waiting g time fir a prescription in hospital is longer Hoboh, because er, it's a hospital with several hundred patients all needing a prescription. As opposed to the half dozen stood waiting for hemarroid cream and a quiet moment to ask about water based lubricant in your high street chemist.

Err average chemist 2-3 people behind the scenes, once saw 20 plus through the door at the Royal Bolton, lord knows how many work in the RMI.