Section 8 said:
Weasel "I can only assume you have never studied Economics or tried to run a business.
A vote for that man would be economic suicide. To say his sums don't add up is like saying the Titanic had a small problem en route to the States all those years ago."
What i do know is that we are one of the richest countries and have one of the biggest economies in the world. Yet still have rising homelessness, an underfunded NHS, under funded police service, under funded schools and working people using food banks.
Those are the figures that don't add up.
Ok, I don't want to get into a long argument about politics or economics on here but I'll answer your question.
Firstly, I'm not sure if we actually are one of the richest countries in the world. Yes, we have a very big/strong economy but we have a national debt that is fast approaching two TRILLION Pounds, and rising by £5k a SECOND. To me that's not a rich country that's someone spending money they haven't got to 'keep up with the Jones's"
Homelessness. Sadly this rises every time there is a recession and we are just coming out of the worst one we have had for decades. Yes, it is still a horrible situation and no self respecting person should be anything other than ashamed that we have fellow human beings sleeping rough. I can't find any stats on the levels to see when they started to rise and how much they are above historic levels (sadly, there will always be some who end up sleeping rough) so I'm going to leave this point. The food banks issue is similar, in that I don't know enough to comment accurately, but I agree it is a national shame.
The NHS is a mess. I worked on a project with Social Services about 10 years ago and I can honestly say the arrogance, stupidity and self centeredness that I encountered from them was staggering. They were cutting care hours for vulnerable people while at the same time taking a job that one very competent woman had done and splitting it between four people, all on the same salary as she was. When the PCT's thing happened the same jobs were split again. Four ways, and the new staff were on the same salary the initial person was on. So over 4 years we went from dealing with 1 person on circa £40k to dealing with 16 on a circa £640k all whilst we were told that the residents we looked after were having their care hours cut due to budget constraints. When we pointed out that these were people with severe mental illness and learning disabilities and cutting their care packages further was dangerous the response we were given was, and this is a hand on heart verbatim quote "I don't care if they relapse, hurt themselves or someone else because then they will be sectioned and that is the NHS's problem."
Just read that quote again, it came from the head of Social Services in a region I won't name.
I have digressed slightly there, but it was to prove a point on the complete and utter lack of any joined up thinking in the NHS. Yes, that is partly the Government's (this one and previous ones, of both colours) fault, but the amount of money wasted on middle managers, pen pushers and people who don't actually contribute to caring for our sick and needy is ridiculous. Nurses are criminally under paid and Doctors are leaving for better pay and working hours abroad and I don't blame them.
The NHS's real problem is also Britain's real problem, we have an ageing population, the baby boomers, who are now approaching retirement age and will start to need more and more medical care. We also have a shrinking working age population, who are already facing some of the highest rates of tax as a % of income that we as a nation have had. Our ability to continue to throw money at the NHS is limited. Especially as a lot of those same baby boomers are now claiming their nice gold plated pensions that you and I have no chance of getting. As life expectancy rises this exacerbates both problems.
I think it is unfair to continue to ask the young (I include us in that so most of us are probably a tad old for it) to pay more and more in taxes to support the elderly when we youngsters won't be able to expect the same level of support when we get to retirement age. I would actually put money on the fact that the state pension will be all but non existent by the time most of us come to retire.
I'm not saying we should cut funding to the NHS or privatise it. Far from it. I think we as a country missed a tricked when the crash of 07/08 hit, we should have sat down and had an honest discussion about what we as country wanted from our Government and what we were prepared to pay for it. As it stands we want our cake and we want to eat it. I have no objection to keeping the status quo as far as spending goes, or even increasing it, but both will require large increases in taxes FOR EVERYONE. Any party that says that will be booted out of office as people believe the fairy stories that people feed them about this or that wonderful solution they have. "Tax the rich", "Close the tax loop holes", "Efficiency savings" etc etc are all fine and dandy but in reality they won't work, they may cover a small part of the bill but what we need is a complete over haul of what we get from Gov and what we are taxed on. The rich will leave. If tax rates go up substantially on the top earners (the top 4% of income tax payers already contribute 40% of the TOTAL amount we get in Income tax) they will move, or become non Doms and then we lose their entire tax contribution. There is a point beyond which tax increased actually bring in LESS. In Economics it's called the Laffer Curve. It makes sense if you think about it, if you are being taxed at 99% would you go and work or would you claim benefits!? I know what I'd do. Obviously 99% is an extreme example, but there is a point beyond which tax revenue drop. I think the recent cut in Corporation tax has actually resulted in an increase in revenues from it. I believe a similar thing happened when the Tories scrapped Gordon's 45p rate of income tax too. Though I can't be arsed to check those figures so I may be wrong.
As I said, I'm not a Tory fan, but I can see that Corbyn's policies of spend spend spend are just throwing petrol on the fire that is our national debt. Put it this way, every single person is this country owes something like £44k as their share of the national debt. How long will it take you or me to pay that off in taxes? Then add interest to that. And don't forget that in the years we are paying that off we also have to fund Social Security the NHS etc etc.
This has turned into a rant, but my basic point is we are ****ed, as a country. But a vote for Corbyn is a vote for going down the pub and getting **** faced while your house burns down with your family in it.
