The government announces today there is simply no money for a pay increase for NHS workers. Yet we have 320 billion spare for new Trident missile systems. Highly skilled NHS workers need to investigate just how deep it is possible to insert a nuclear warhead into Danny Alexander’s colon.
Allowed HTML - you can use:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
I find somewhat offensive the suggestion that Danny Alexander has anything in the way of guts.
And the award for Headline Least Likely To Get You To Read Any Further goes to….
“I find somewhat offensive the suggestion that Danny Alexander has anything in the way of guts”
For one to talk out of one’s arse, one needs a supply of wind. If you think about it.
Whoa! Don’t go there. He sees himself as the next leader of the partei.
‘As his party’s otherwise successful Spring conference drew to a close, speculation over the leadership rattled around the media as treasury secretary Danny Alexander appeared to be emerging as the strongest contender for the succession.
Clegg’s office issued a statement saying: “It’s up to the British people to decide but if Liberal Democrats are in government again after 2015 he would like to serve a full term.” That was immediately read to mean, if there was no coalition he would quit.’
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nick-clegg-sparks-leadership-chatter-liberal-democrats-conference-ends-1439632
Mrs Cable says it’s a no no for Vince as far as she’s concerned.
Come off it, nurses are luxuries we can do without but we need Trident to protect us against…er…North Korea.
Mr Murray,
If one looks at NHS one finds a huge gap in pay difference between qualified doctors and everyone else under NHS umbrella. Whereas I support pay increase for other (non doctors) within NHS, I think that doctors are paid simply too much. It might actually be one of the problems of NHS budget drain. Another being highly paid managers (most of whom ex doctors anyway).
None of it is of course not an excuse to spend many billions on nuclear warheads, but I simply disagree that doctors need to be paid more than they are.
Secret recording from the Ministry for Truth and Justice:
Minister: How much money do we have available for renewing Trident?
Official: About 300 billion, Minister.
M: Why so much money?
O: It used to be for fighting Communism, Minister
M: But the Cold War’s over. What do we need it for now?
O: For fighting terrorism, Minister.
M: But terrorists don’t have the power of states. All the state resources we use for fighting them don’t take a fraction of that.
O: We also need it for maintaining our international prestige as a permanent member of the Security Council, Minister. Without it, what would happen to our Special Relationship with the United States? English-speaking civilisation must be maintained, without which the world would degenerate completely.
M: You’re right. It’s up to us, I remember Barack Obama’s speech in Westminster Hall well.
O: That’s the spirit, Minister!
M: (Nods approvingly)
Anatomy aside, isn’t the figure for Trident replacement nearer £20Bn? And wasn’t Alexander making electorate-friendly noises about this last year?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2352082/Lib-Dems-defy-Tories-replace-Trident-cheap-Danny-Alexander-says-Britain-Cold-War-postures-past.html
Also in the news, nonentity smokes cigarette –
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2579839/Rosie-Fortescue-takes-smoke-break-shoots-scenes-seventh-series-Made-In-Chelsea.html
Anger As Thousands Of Nurses Denied 1% Rise
Unions threaten to ballot members after the Government announces a 1% public sector pay rise but say 70% of nurses will miss out.
http://news.sky.com/story/1225231/anger-as-thousands-of-nurses-denied-1-percent-rise
As the privatisation of the NHS continues apace (but nobody seems concerned, it is obvious that the plan to ‘destabilize, demoralize and destroy the NHS’ is working out for the ConDems. Burnham says the legislation will be repealed if Labour is elected but by then it will be too late to save it.
Ba’al Zevul,
I am perfectly confident that, ten years from now, you will find that Trident cost the figure I have given. Am willing to bet a pint on it, if you like!
Mary
Anger As Thousands Of Nurses Denied 1% Rise
Something similar as I have heard is happening with staff involved in education.
It seems that sick and uneducated people are what the government is pushing for. It is worthy trusting such (sick and uneducated) Trident nuclear missiles?
‘Am willing to bet a pint on it, if you like!’
No takers! History is on your side!
Uzbek in the UK
I understand what you are saying, though I would rather tackle it through them doing more for the money than reducing their pay. But doctors get paid very much less than investment bankers, for example.
Talking about history.
It is very controversial but, if we follow Nuclear deterrence theory, and analyse issue from this perspective; it would be interesting to know how many lives and money seemingly costly nuclear arsenals within major powers have saved us since their inception? This is of course if we assume that nuclear deterrence theory is right and that nuclear arsenal prevented major wars between great powers.
Any takers on this analysis?
Craig, I’ll accept your bet; how much do you think the pint will cost me in ten years time? I’ll buy it this August; a sort of investment.
Mr Murray,
I agree. Doctors are paid much less than bankers, who are paid much less than some celebrity football players (for failure to deliver).
But looking at Germany or France UK doctors are paid much more for much worse service (if we look at complication or death rate within NHS). I am not even comparing NHS to healthcare in Scandinavia. Somehow on TV whenever discussion about doctors pay is discussed UK doctors are compared to US. Why not look somewhere closer to home? Germany, France?
In fact recent governments have already saved vast amounts of money by off-loading large areas of work that used to be NHS or local authority responsibilities, onto the private sector. Since the first priority of the private companies employing “support workers” and running care homes is to their shareholders, they make the necessary profits by employing workers on minimum wage, well below the going rate for equivalent jobs in NHS, and at minimum staffing levels. If they can get away with it, some of them will even employ staff as “apprentices” on £2.60 per hour, less than half the minimum wage, working unsupervised and recieving no meaningful training.
The clients whom these untrained, underpaid, badly-treated staff are looking after are not just nice old ladies needing help to get out of the bath. They include clients with “challenging behaviour” which is the modern PC euphemism for violent and severely disturbed.
Needless to say, almost none of these workers are in trade unions. The very idea of a trade union hardly enters the heads of most younger minimum waged workers nowadays. Millions of people have been taught to conceive “the Unions” as some overbearing force quite seperate from themselves, from whom the country was “liberated” by the Thatcher government. The “Labour” party has entirely given up on trying to change this perception, focusing only on distancing themselves even further from the unions to whom they owed their very existence.
The cost of nuclear weapons depends on what you include in the cost. It’s costing 70 billion just to ‘decommission’ Sellafield. I know there’s been debate over whether the government is being overcharged for this, but it can’t be cheap:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_thirty_%28Sellafield%29#B30
MAGNOX was supposed to make a profit for Britain! The technology was “dual-purpose”; power stations and nuclear weapons cores.
@Uzbek in the UK, the problem with making your suggested analysis is that we cannot really know whether, in the absence of nukes, the USA and USSR would have gone to war head-on with each other at the various flashpoints eg Suez, Yom Kippur, etc. The conventional assumption is that fear of M.A.D. inhibited them, therefore they fought each other indirectly through numerous smaller wars, which still killed millions (mostly in the Third World).
However, they could have still fought a conventional war between themselves, without using nukes. Just as both sides in WW2 refrained from using poison gas. Since they didn’t directly fight each other at all, even with conventional weapons, I’m not convinced that it was fear of nukes that kept the “peace”.
Furthermore, you have to factor in the huge risk of accidental nuclear war- there were several near misses such as the “Able Archer” incident.
You might also factor in the lives that could have been saved, and greatly improved as well, if even a fraction of the money spent on nukes had been spent on eradicating malaria and hookworm, teaching women to read and to use effective contraception, etc etc etc.
It would appear that the purpose of the state is to siphon money from the public purse into the private pockets of the rich. We seem, or example, to be able to find massive amounts of cash to quite literally fill bankers’ pockets by way of quantitative easing, to waste vast sums with the totally useless work programmes that don’t work, to pour ever increasing amounts of public money into the numerous and totally wasteful PPI projects and to underwrite super rich employers who pay poverty wages to their staff through working tax credits and Housing Benefit. The paltry 1 per cent offer to vital public sector workers like nurses is a drop in the ocean by comparison. This government would put their hearts out to tender if they indeed had one.
Pete,
Thank you for your thoughts. Very useful to read (without sarcasm).
It is of course all based on speculation on whether or not US and USSR would have gone into war with each other in the absence of nuclear warheads.
I somehow base my analysis of this probability based on centuries of balance of power politics in Europe. Major powers have always fought each other (directly), to either obtain or keep hegemony or to prevent other from obtaining it.
One interesting factor (which is often overlooked) is that nuclear arsenal has not only (possibly) prevented major war between great powers, but also prevented them using nuclear powers against others (who do not have them). For instance 1950th war in Korea is clear example. Or Kissinger’s (speculated) suggestion to use nucs against Vietcong (which was ignored for obvious reasons).
Yes, great powers fought each other in many proxy wars killings millions in Africa, Latin America and Asia, but the deaths and destructions could have been much greater if they fought each other in WWI or WWII style.
Just to add here that Hiroshima and Naggasaki have happened while US had nuclear preponderance. Which is yet another argument in favour of nuclear deterrence theory.
I don’t understand the shortage of money argument, isn’t there a peace dividend or something from the draw down of involvement in Afghanistan…or is that money already earmarked for some other military adventure?
The healthcare in the US is satisfyingly capitalistic so healthcare providers don’t have pay gripes.
But a parallel is apparent.
We have school teachers who can’t get a raise, and then there’s the layoffs.
Administrators, School Boards and School Superintendents are fully employed with rich salaries
and pensions with no end in sight for their security.
The destruction of Unions is well underway.
O/T
Worth a read;
How the NSA Plans to Infect ‘Millions’ of Computers with Malware
“In fact recent governments have already saved vast amounts of money by off-loading large areas of work that used to be NHS or local authority responsibilities, onto the private sector.”
Have they saved money? A good proportion of the care work, to say nothing of the insane PFI deals on hospitals, is still funded by the taxpayer, as is a good proportion of the private companies’ profits. I think there’s still a case to be made for the proposal that a nationalised NHS would be no more costly to the taxpayer than a private one. And it would be subject to much better scrutiny.
” I think there’s still a case to be made for the proposal that a nationalised NHS would be no more costly to the taxpayer than a private one. And it would be subject to much better scrutiny.”
B: That’s where we are now.
The complexities of ACA wrt private hospitals and PHARMA and inefficiencies may lead to the simpler model of Single payer, but I have a question;
There is provision for what I call ‘Concierge’ healthcare, wherein wealthy types may pay a sort of entry fee to immediate access to the best practitioners.
Is that the covert undermining of the NHS leading to a lack of service? Has there been a kind of ‘brain drain’ where similar coverage for the public has been denuded. leaving the chaff for the multitudes; wheat for the wealthy?
We will have to accustom ourselves to using ‘Successor’ rather than ‘Vanguard’. What’s in a name? All evil. Deterring what exactly?
Loads of money swilling around it would appear.
Successor submarine shipyard gets £300m investment
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26559534
‘Is that the covert undermining of the NHS leading to a lack of service? Has there been a kind of ‘brain drain’ where similar coverage for the public has been denuded. leaving the chaff for the multitudes; wheat for the wealthy?’
I don’t think our countries are very similar in this. Your assumption has – correct me if I am wrong – always been that health is primarily a matter for market forces, and the poor access to funded care for the less wealthy- whether as a cash payment or via insurance – has been accepted to some extent as a necessary result of this. We started, post war, from somewhere else. The NHS was wholly funded from taxation (read National Insurance originally, but this mutated into just yet another tax whose disposal was obscure); the presumption being, if you like, that health was an inalienable right, (or maybe that poor peoples’ epidemics didn’t help their productivity) There has always been a parallel, privately funded health market for those who can afford it, and until the last couple of decades the NHS could often point to providing equally good service. So not chaff, then. The main attraction of going private may well have been the probability of getting a private room…
Now we are adopting your model, with the added bonus for the healthcare companies, many of whom have MP’s and peers on their boards, that they will be paid by the taxpayer to make it look as if the taxpayer is not paying for healthcare. Another route for taxpayer money has been the PFI hospital – a private concern builds it, and then charges an exorbitant rent to the taxpayer – who will still have to stump up if something hasn’t been included in the original contract -for the use of the place by the NHS. For a very long period. This fits in nicely with the Blair-onwards model of kicking financial shortfalls into the long grass of the distant future.
The process is also driven by the rising costs of equipment and drugs to treat conditions which were deemed incurable in Beveridge’s day, and an aging population requiring more treatment.
I’m not saying it’s an easy problem to solve, but giving cream to corporate fatcats doesn’t seem to me to be the best solution.
Sorry to ramble on.
“I’m not saying it’s an easy problem to solve, but giving cream to corporate fatcats doesn’t seem to me to be the best solution.”
That’s quite an understatement, and I fully agree. The cost of drugs, and patient care on folks living longer is also a big ticket on long-term rising costs, but on those Boards and administrators;
Is anyone discussing the inefficiencies of redundant layers of management sopping up the gravy?
As I mentioned above, the American public school system is top heavy with mouth-breathers who protect their payroll turf by cutting ground-level teachers to feather their own nests.