Angela Raynor still doesnt get it.

So much misinformation on antisocial media that then gets shared and amplified like a dismal, damaging game of chinese whispers.

@Philgooglemail the article quoted is exactly how Brexit happened and it is always about sowing division, othering and blame.
People are woefully unaware of how this stuff happens and history often goes round in circles.
Trusting the lies of billionaires that want to take rights away and demote women to support humans is never going to help you - unless you too are a billionaire

And as a host of tax and legal experts, including Dan Neidle, have said today: it's a very surprising outcome. Any one else would have been fined for carelessness, in addition to having to find the additional SDLT and the interest.

She was HOUSING Minister! She had access to the best minds but chose to use a very small firm of conveyancers in Kent which makes no sense. Why did she choose someone like that knowing she had a complex family situation?

Funny how what she paid was £40k light and funny how suddenly today its suddenly paid.

Yes, I expanded on my previous post. I was meaning the whole spending on anything related to health care including the build of new hospitals, wages etc.

To expand further, think about every hospital built, and whether it goes over budget by the amount HS2 did. That is money that needs to be found from elsewhere in an unplanned manner. Unplanned expense is always more expensive. Taxes, increased borrowing, or reductions in budgets from other areas. Then think about the layers of inefficient management and the associated pay bill. The amount of waste is staggering. Streeting has done well in the time that he has had, but there is so much more that is possible.

Then expand that into every other area, including the cost of government itself. No current cabinet member has, to my knowledge, ever really run a business, or worked in commercial industry. Mind you, the previous government did have cabinet members who had and they didn't resolve it well either.

I don't believe any of it is simple, including immigration. I think that reducing processing time is the best that can be achieved at the moment, and they're doing that. The preference appears to be reductions in waiting times for operations, and similar, which is much more where I would prefer to see effort expended.

Immigration has been a stir up that has tapped into a visceral feeling amongst the electorate, but it really isn't the problem is is purported or perceived to be, unless you include the fact that we need immigration for economic reasons and the fact that it is reducing is detrimental.

It will be interesting to see how the next few days unravel. Changing PM is not a good thing, but then again Starmer is not exactly covering himself in glory. He's done well on the international stage, but not so much on the domestic one.

So now anyone can go to court and say they didn't know the rules if a potential prime minister can can't they

If she couldn't understand tax rules should she really want to be prime minister If Borris had. said I didn't understand it was birthday cake would that have worked for him

Do you know the nuance of the case? Or just the media headlines?

She paid it at basic rate from the off. I didn’t know that being a trustee on her son’s property meant that this counted as a second property for her either, and I work with (although am not) conveyancers.

I also spend time with families with disabled young people and the conflicting financial advice even from professionals is on a level you would not believe, so this hasn’t surprised me at all.

Can't believe if you are labour and don't pay tax you can be found not guilty of doing that She has paid it now.hasnt she so clearly she hadn't paid ?? the thought of Angela being prime minister makes no sense

They're never appear to do proper due diligence or have penalties for missing deadlines, going over budget etc. It's truly shocking.

I agree with that but what is going to change in order to fix that? Successive governments have tried and failed and are met with increasing resistance.

The immigration problem looks relatively simple by comparison and by as I say, the social and political cost is growing. If this government proved that they could sort it properly, Reform would be left with nothing.

I think that inefficient contracts such as HS2 amount to >200bn.

What makes you think that? It’s being going for years and they’ve ‘only’ spent £43bn. What time period are you anticipating for this? It’s more helpful to use an annual fibre for comparisons.

NHS wastage similar (I don't believe for a moment it is as little as 10bn)

So you’re saying NHS wastage is also £200bn. The entire NHS budget is £200bn pa so that doesn’t make any sense.
I agree that the £10bn figure seems fairly low but I think doesn’t include what we might normally deem as wastage and excess, like £360mn per year lost through non payment for treatment by foreign visitors, or the increasing sums spent on treating and providing for the far higher rate of severe congenital disability in children born to repeated first cousin marriages (into the £millions per birth) and allegations of increasing amounts of prescription fraud involving families with overseas relatives.

Benefits / winter fuel etc to people who don't need them (they got the cut off wrong, but the principal was correct) etc.

We only spend £311 million in total per year on winter fuel payments so payments to the tiny proportion on higher incomes is not even a drop in this large ocean.

Benefits at £333bn definitely needs cutting back hard but no government will dare because the hard left has a fit of the vapours and screams blue murder every time it is suggested so that’s not going to happen.

So, really, none of the ‘big items’ you suggested should be prioritised will deliver significantly more savings than sorting our immigration problems.

The social and political cost of not dealing with immigration is rapidly growing and threat to take down our Prime Minister. Which is enormously costly in itself.

Oh, and I know the quoted expenditure on health care is 345bn, what I mean is the total expenditure including building new hospitals, wages etc.

I believe that every contract the government has for anything new goes over budget in the same way HS2 did. They're never appear to do proper due diligence or have penalties for missing deadlines, going over budget etc. It's truly shocking.

I think that inefficient contracts such as HS2 amount to >200bn.

NHS wastage similar (I don't believe for a moment it is as little as 10bn)

Benefits / winter fuel etc to people who don't need them (they got the cut off wrong, but the principal was correct) etc.

That would save way more than a few billion on immigrants which will already reduce based on the action already taken. The (up to) 40k to leave is to accelerate through the backlog. It is not on offer to new arrivals, just those in the system already. Again an example of trying to clear the backlog.

So estimates are that waste in the NHS costs up to £10bn per year. In such a vast organisation, despite many years of trying and different government approaches, this is an extremely complex challenge.

So complex that if the government could halve the wastage to £5bn per year, they would be shouting it from the rooftops.

So focusing much of their time on dealing with this ‘big item’ as a priority will make about the same financial difference as if they sorted the asylum/immigration system.

The NHS wastes roughly £300 million to over £1 billion annually on specific areas like unused medicines and avoidable errors, with some estimates of broader inefficiencies and procurement waste reaching up to £10 billion a year.

What do you estimate the possible savings on inefficient HS2 contracts would be, seeing as they’ve already spent £43bn? I’m guessing not huge compared with overall government spending. Or £5bn per year.

When you say ‘and a hundred other things’ are you also referring to the large number of things even smaller then NHS waste and HS2 waste but the fact that there are hundreds of them mean they add up? Like I said?

A bit like the cost of failing to make serious reductions in dealing with asylum seekers, the majority of whom (approx 58%) are refused asylum and after costing us vast amounts to house while their applications are assessed, then cost us more vast amounts to house and contest legal appeals while we try to deport them.

They cost so much that it is worth it to offer them £40,000 per family to leave.

The impact on many British people of not dealing with the enormous cost and waste in the immigration and asylum system is more than just money. It is also the social impact of increased crime and anti social behaviour - some people’s lives have either been ruined or ended by this lack of control.

That makes it something the government should absolutely prioritise and not dismiss it as ‘only being a small percentage of government spending’.

There are many options available. Personally, I think the levels are fine where they are in terms of helping people seeking asylum from persecution. It has been proven by economists over and over again that immigration is good for the economy, and that is backed up by the experience since Brexshit, however if the criteria were to be tightened, one could argue that the definition of what constitutes being persecuted / bombed / victimised / etc can be changed.

I get that it is a difficult balance, and the resources of the UK are finite, however I also believe in helping those less fortunate than we are. We just need to make sure they really are less fortunate and not just saying they are. The current government are doing this. And, the cases are reviewed every five years anyway, so it isn't like they suddenly have indefinite leave to remain here, nor are they given tons of money to live on.

As I have said, in the great scheme of expenses, this is not, and should not be, the sole area of focus. There are bigger fish to fry.

What could be done in terms of stringency etc?

I couldn't agree more. As I said, there were things that were possible before we left the EU, but the government of the time didn't do them. And the task just gets bigger. Not just immigration.

So, we end up playing catch up for so many different verticals. There is no perfect solution, and each item is important to a different section of the electorate as has been proved on this thread. To me, immigration is small beer. Not insignificant, but small beer. To others, it is the most important thing despite it being such a small expense in the great scheme of things.

Add to that that everyone wants everything solved immediately, and you can see why we are in a mess.

My question was not about whether the USA was doing better than the U.K. it was whether living standards in the USA have gone down under Trump. And yes, they have.

I agree. This is why I believe they have already dealt with the small item by adding more resource. If they need to revisit they will circle back. Bigger ticket items in my view are waste in the NHS, benefits, payments to people who don't require them, inefficient contracts such as HS2 (this doesn't mean they are not necessary, just that the contracts are inefficiently written), and a hundred other things.

I agree that the smaller items add up, but running a country / business is like a game of whack a mole. You can't do everything all the time, not unless you increase the cost of governing massively, and doing that didn't go so well for Blair.

For the ordinary people living under either extreme ideology there isn't much difference, they have little freedom in their lives.

Then all those little boats are legal in your opinion?

If they don't make some effort to reduce immigration, maybe by making it less attractive with benefits etc, then they will continue, sadly, to be Reform's best recruiting sergeant.

I simply showed all your numbers for the US were better in all cases than the UK equivalents. The numbers do not lie but you and proudcat are doing so by suggesting otherwise.Whether you look at GDP growth, unemployment or all the other numbers I proved you wrong on the USA is doing better than the UK.

You do to stop endless appeals. Sad but true.

If a country simply stopped participating the numbers would stop. No one would have the balls to do it even if it the only real solution. The asylum system was originally designed to cater for a very small amount of people. If it was being set up now it would never benefit set up in a way to facilitate thousands and thousands of claims, regardless of their merit. That is what frustrates me the most about all things government. You can never reset the clock becuase things become untouchable. Bit like with the NHS- it has it immense good bits but it isn’t working 100% in the year 2026. It needs fundamental reform - somethings should be free, some things should require a contribution but as soon as anyone suggests it then they get slated. Everything should be on the table for discussion.

Well quite.

The fact that a BBC journalist managed to identify the kingpin responsible for almost all of the people trafficking in small boats from France with a few phone calls and some good investigation skills shows that Starmer, with all the security resources of the country at his disposal, is either utterly useless or lying about his intentions to ‘smash the gangs’.

My only question is - why doesn’t he want to control immigration? Even today, as he fights for his political career, he is more worried about not upsetting the Muslim community by banning so called ‘far right’ speakers from entering the country. One if them is apparently an MEP which will be awkward come his next EU meetings (if he still has a job by then).

Why does he care so little for the priorities of large swathes of the British public?