To think Rishi is right - the government cannot be everything to everyone?

[Cuppasoupmonster]

Don’t get me wrong, the Tory government hasn’t tried to be anything let alone everything.

But I think he was right when he said there’s too much reliance on the state to provide for each and every issue the public face.

We could free up a lot of funds by taxing big corporations properly, cracking down on non doms etc. But even then, I’m not convinced the socialist utopia of generous benefits, a five star NHS, cheap and available high quality public housing, instant mental health support etc that is often discussed on here could ever be financially viable.

AIBU?

I am in no way defending the government but let's look at PPE first . There was a world wide shortage of PPE in every sector that needed it, the government had to source from every available place including paying over the odds.

Now if your argument was we should have never been in that position in the first place I would agree with you.

Now the COVID loan fraud,. I can remember screams of we must get money out there to help business and people quickly. Putting in the usual checks and balances would have taken months so HMRC missed out a lot of the checks.

Now time should be spent investigating these frauds even if it costs more to find the people just on principal.

I agree.

If you mean the poor, its a tiny % but if you mean the very wealthy, then that's a majority, they demand (and get) lower taxes, tax breaks, inside information, access to ministers to formulate policy, access for friends/donorsto distort planning laws (Robert Jenrik) access to Russian money.

Ministers routinely break the law and get away with it, with a code of conduct that in any other walk of life would see you fired and/or criminal investigation - bullying and security breaches being the two most recent.

Do they? I’d settle for the level of public services we had in 2010. Nobody thought we had ridiculous expectations then.

I mean both

I want no part of a low tax, small state society, but it is the road that the UK has embarked on

But surely the last couple of years have been anything but?

In other news, I must find the recent poll where most people would rather reduce services than pay more tax, and there you have the problem with our population. No-one thinks they should pay more tax.

@Blossomtoes

I did

People having been ripping the piss out of the nhs and the state for as long as both have existed

I absolutely hate the torand they are 100% responsible for the shit we are in. Including brexit.

But I'm not about to pretend that no one ever wants the state to pay for everything. Rich and poor.

@sst1234
This thread is indicative of everything that is wrong with what we expect from government. People here are falling over themselves demanding that government should tax the rich and corporations more. The hammer and sickle crowd are protesting that the government isn’t getting enough taxes.
Rather than demanding to know where the existing taxes are being spent, since we have the highest post war tax burden right now. There is no moral outrage about the fact that the latest round of borrowing is to pay for people’s energy bills because the government failed to build nuclear power 10 years ago. No moral outrage that they printed half a trillion pounds to lock up healthy people at home and destroy the economy. No moral outrage that the tax burden is about to go up because growth has been so weak

We can do both?

But of course it was your lot that did ALL the things you are complaining about.

On energy, because its privatised (who did that?) it wouldn't matter if we had 10 extra Hinkley C's, the price for energy would still be set at global rates - you either don't know what you re talking about OR want to nationalise energy production?

The gap between the wealthiest and poorest in the UK is far wider than in comparable neighbouring economies.

In the UK the richest 10 per cent take home six times more than the bottom 10 per cent. In most of Europe that figure is typically about a factor of three.

In 2018, typical households in the UK, France and Germany have remarkably similar incomes – around €34,000. But those similarities hide big differences.

The rich in the UK are richer. The rich here in the UK have incomes 17% higher than their equivalents in France.

In 2018, the poorest households have to survive on incomes 20% lower than those in France (£14,700 v £18,500). That meant higher poverty, lower living standards and no margin when things go wrong.

In the last four years, things have gone very wrong indeed and the UK economy is performing poorly. All the Tories are concentrating on is reducing the burden on the wealthy in the form of tax cuts for the rich. The situation for the poor here is quickly becoming catastrophic.

Re checks, the simplest of checks would have saved millions in fraud, such as checking a company applying for a loan actually existed before covid - lots were either formed days before applying for the loans or were dormant for years (as per companies house) before applying. Literally a quick 2 minute look on the Co House website would have revealed whether the company had a proper trading history, as would someone in HMRC spending a couple of minutes on their database to check corporation tax return history.

After all, it's what HMRC did re the SEISS grants - they cross checked against prior submitted tax returns before paying the grant. Quick and simple.

Not to mention the additional restriction grants administered by local authorities, many of whom DID require lots of checks, requiring sight of bank statements, lease agreements, etc before giving grants of just a few thousand. Local authorities went way over the top in checking applicants out forcing them to prove they "rented" premises, had trading history (ours required sight of trading profit and loss accounts for last 2/3 years).

If local authorities could do checks for just a few thousand, then HMRC and/or the banks should have been one hell of a lot more vigilant for loan applications of tens of thousands!

The Tories should take responsibility for destroying our country and fix it rather than blaming the public. For the Party of personal responsibility they don't half whine and try to shift the blame.

The country couldn't afford it back then either. Brown/Blair just borrowed the money (expensive PFI) for the new schools and hospitals built under their watch. I.e. buy now pay later (at ruinously expensive interest rates built into the PFI contracts plus ruinously expensive service/management fees - i.e. only the PFI contractor can replace a light bulb for hundreds of pounds a time!). Blair/Brown shafted the country and it's part of why we have no money now - we're still paying for the PFI deals (and will be for decades to come).

Ssshhhh. You’re not allowed to speak facts.

PPI was a political decision. The economists pointed out at the time there were far cheaper ways to build.
Decisions are made for political reasons all the time rather than economic ones. A decent NHS would be a good economic decision. A shit NHS and private healthcare is a political decision.

And most people do not understand even basic economics so get fooled all the time by successive governments.

How about we save the “the government can’t do everything” chat for when the government starts doing ANYTHING? The Tories have no right to be saying this shit after everything they’ve done.

Precisely the point in my posts. They need to fix the problems they have created not gaslight the public that we should expect our living standards to decline because of their mistakes.

Some things they cannot control. Many things they can and are their direct responsibility to get right. They haven't. This is their problem and in no way is it acceptable for us to have tax rises, service cuts or pensions decimated by tax relief cuts and double taxation when there are ways they can fix the majority of the deficit without any of that pain.

Under Blair/Brown Govt borrowing was at 35% of a growing GDP, 60% after the GFC, now its 97% after 12 years of the Tories and we have had a self inflicted debt crisis - not the first time the Tories have done this either.

Without PFI, the spending would have gone on the books and then we'd not have been able to borrow for CV and Energy.

Facts! bloody things.

But they overspent simply because they could. Did we really need huge shopping centre style hospitals with atriums etc? Or posh office blocks for the NHS administrators? They could have probably built perfectly adequate hospitals & schools for half the money (or less), but they wouldn't have looked quite so shiny and exciting for their media appearances. It was all smoke and mirrors. They did it because they could, simply by kicking the huge financial costs into the long grass and off their balance sheet!

Facts! bloody things.

Indeed. This government promised 40 new hospitals in 2019, how did it propose paying for them? Oh, maybe by borrowing the money. Fiscal responsibility is borrowing for capital projects, fiscal irresponsibility is borrowing for tax cuts, remind us which party thought the latter was a good idea.

@Cuppasoupmonster "Comparisons with much smaller countries don’t work, because you can’t really do economies of scale with larger populations. It’s like when posters talk about the Scandinavian model when our population is over ten times that of Sweden."

While I don't live in Germany, what I describe in my earlier post applies equally there as it does to where I live. Germany is a bigger country than the UK with a much bigger population.

The "Scandinavian model" is only one model (if it even exists - Sweden, Denmark and Norway have very different ways of doing things, but do share a common theme that puts society and well-being before profit). There are other models, such as the German/Central European model, that have as a starting point that government, business and employees actually have shared goals and that everyone should benefit from the prosperity produced. Look at the time and energy wasted by UK businesses, government and politicians and the disruption caused by strikes - largely because of the UK's adversarial culture, "Us and Them", promoted by the media and the government and reflected everywhere, even in the layout of the House of Commons.

Why can't we "really do economies of scale with larger populations?" If anything, economies of scale should be greater with a larger population - e.g. the NHS should be able to get better deals on drugs and equipment for 60 million people than a country with only 5 million people; or the administration costs of government schemes (or of hospitals, utilities, transport services etc.) should be lower per head as the fixed capital costs are shared amongst more people.

Comparisons with much smaller countries don’t work, because you can’t really do economies of scale with larger populations

What? Do you understand what "economies of scale" are?!?

This has to win stupid comment of the day. 🏆 Congratulations!

But you are not a civil engineer, so you re guessing these things could be built for half or less the cost - You simply don't know.

My point still stands, had this money been borrowed and on the books, we'd not have been able to borrow for subsequent crisis, not a Blair plan but a handy consequence.

Why shouldn't NHS staff have decent working conditions? they have to compete with organisations that do have shiny new buildings to work in.

High quality administrators/managers are vital for efficient running of the NHS.

💀

I'd really like an answer to these points from any of the posters on this thread who disagree with me that the Government position so tactfully put by Mr Sunak - that he believes it's our job to pay for their fuckups yet again when there are other ways to fix much of it without decimating people's standards of living - is unacceptable.

So we shouldn't aspire to provide better services and help close the wealth gap in case we fall a tiny bit short of perfection? It's either perfection and creating utopia, or no bother trying? Yep, sounds like a classic lazy Tory approach to not have to actually do anything

To me it's all about what kind of society we want to aspire to, even if you fall a bit short of it. And I would rather aspire to a more nordic/Scandinavian approach to society which values community than an American individualistic one