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The budget 2014

256 replies

VikkiMumsnet · 14/03/2014 15:32

George Osborne is all set to deliver this year's budget on Wednesday 19th March.

Here's a useful link for what's expected to be covered. Headline issues are likely to include property tax and stamp duty, as well as an increase in the personal tax allowance (up to £10,000).

What do you want to see as part of the budget, and what are you dreading coming up? Share your thoughts below.

OP posts:
TheGreatHunt · 19/03/2014 14:32

Pmsl laughing Contrarian

Do you know anything about the state of healthcare before the NHS came along? Honestly. Do a bit of proper research.

Contrarian78 · 19/03/2014 14:35

Calm down dear

I didn't claim these things were universal, but they certainly existed. It wouldn't be difficult to maintain universality which would likely have come anyway I do not advocate the American system (though it's curious that when little Timmy gets really ill his parents will arrange a fundraiser to get him treated across the pond) but the system we currently have isn't perfect. Far from it in fact.

Your comments about the State pension aren't entirely correct. Unions and mutuals were providing pensions for the working man long before the Welfare State was a twinkle in anyone's eye.

I understand (and have lived with) the workings of the 'real world' for many a good year now. Grin

Contrarian78 · 19/03/2014 14:37

TGH Things have moved on so far that such a comparison would be meaningless. That said, all of the great teaching hospitals that I can thik of, pre-date the NHS/Welfare State (even though they're now under State control). Whilst I think on it, it's the same for Education.

Contrarian78 · 19/03/2014 14:39

I'd be interested to know how you think that the NHS (as an organisation) has actually improved healthcare. I mean the actual science of healthcare. Something that the NHS has done which wouldn't have been done otherwise.

JaneinReading · 19/03/2014 15:11

There are some schools set up in the 1600s in the UK to educate the poor. Provision for the less well off is not a recent thing.

Contrarian78 · 19/03/2014 15:18

Now come on Jane nobody did anything before the State started doing it for us!

I wouldn't be suprised to find that charitable giving and mutuals started to become unpopoular around the time the State started levying taxes to fund its welfare ambitions.

Laymizzrarb · 19/03/2014 15:31

Loving the air tax reform. And as we travel long haul first class at least once a year, we get double the bonus! Thanks George!

TalkinPeace · 19/03/2014 16:01

Janeinreading
What proportion of poor children went to school in the 1600s?
If that was such a great time, why were the Education Acts needed later.

Contrarian
Health care for the rich in the USA is great
but the second you lose your job you've had it.
A family member was given a Kidney transplant but not anti rejection drugs under the US system - they are dying slowly and painfully.

And since when is the NHS about scientific advancement?
That is the job of the Research Councils and Universities
but of course you'd probably stop their state funding too.

Contrarian78 · 19/03/2014 16:11

TGH was suggesting that the NHS had improved healthcare. I don't believe that it did (it's just a mechanism through which healthcare is provided - badly)

I am not holding up the american model as being perfect, in fact, I'd sooner have the NHS than that system - however, it's not an either/or. There are other options.

I do think there needs to be an overhaul of University funding. In that instance, we can look across the pond. That's one thing they do much better than us. Let's reward true excellence, rather than supporting the box-ticking facade that we currently have.

The point I believe jane was trying to make (perhaps) was that the poor did go to school in the 1600's. It was by no means universal, but we likely would have got there. State meddling in education has been an unmitigated disaster.

TalkinPeace · 19/03/2014 16:16

re US Universities
Let's reward true excellence, rather than supporting the box-ticking facade that we currently have.

WOW, you really know very little about how the bulk of the US College sector works
and the trillions of dollars in student debt that will be written off because junk degrees from junk colleges lead to jobs in drive thru's

caroldecker · 19/03/2014 16:18

Just because the state may fund education/healthcare, it does not need to provide it.
Other universal healthcare systems exist here and school vouchers are used successfully in many parts of the world.
We really need to split funding and provision.

Contrarian78 · 19/03/2014 16:22

They have more highly ranked universities than we do.

caroldecker I couldn't agree more. I advocated the voucher system earlier on during the thread.

TalkinPeace · 19/03/2014 16:25

caroldecker
Singapore is a city state that has no agriculture and little rural land and has never provided for its own poor - it just pushed them out
it is NOT comparable with any normal country

find a REAL country that does not have state schools but has good universal provision

Contrarian78 · 19/03/2014 17:09

I agree, but she did also mention the voucher system. The fact remains, there's more than one way to skin a cat. Free Schools and private particpation in the NHS are a step in the right direction. If I'm honest though, even I would prefer to see the NHS mutualised (rather than privatised)

Most of us don't need the State to do everything for us. I'd happily take 75% of whatever it costs the State to run a service and then top it up and make my own choice.

caroldecker · 19/03/2014 18:18

My comment on singapore was heathcare, put France has a similar system of private doctors and hospitals, with a mix of state funding and insurance.

On schools, try sweden
"Hence, the educational performance effects are interpretable as positive
effects on school productivity. We further find that the average effects primarily are due
to external effects (e.g., school competition), and not that independent-school students
gain significantly more than public-school students"

TheGreatHunt · 19/03/2014 18:26

Yes the teaching hospitals also banned women originally so I'm not about to suggest we revert to historic models.

The NHS is one of the most efficient in the world. Give me evidence that it is bad, beyond anecdotes.

Why split provision and funding? That is crazy - because I want providers to be accountable for the money they spend and I don't want it going towards profit.

Prove that public sector provision is worse than the private sector.

caroldecker · 19/03/2014 19:14

Public sector provision is always worse than private sector - do you think that a private hospital, or any other business would have got away with the mess at Stafford, then continued with the same staff whilst there was an enquiry? Winterbourne view shut very quickly when the Panarama programme came out.
Providers are always accountable - don't like it, don't use it

TalkinPeace · 19/03/2014 20:12

Public sector provision is always worse than private sector
Do you have empirical evidence for that belief statement?

bearing in mind that private sector banks did a pretty good job buggering up the capital markets due to the "light touch" state oversight

and find the me the private hospital with an A&E department

Providers are always accountable - don't like it, don't use it
Emergency medicine
emergency mental healthcare
chronic SEN schooling provision
housing for those with no means

not much evidence of the private sector there - because they are into PROFIT, not service provision

TheGreatHunt · 19/03/2014 20:15

No that's anecdote and private sector hospitals don't do quite the same as large NHS hospitals - you hear of public sector failures but private sector ones are kept quiet generally. Although do you remember the failure of some old people homes run by private companies? How long did that go on before it was uncovered. It would be incredibly naive and foolish to assume that one sector is better than another without evidence.

Private sector companies make mistakes all the time. As do public sector ones. But I don't think public/private sector ones make mistakes because they're public/private.

TheHoneyBadger · 20/03/2014 06:17

before the state schools schools for the poor were mostly church run. i don't want church schools personally. i don't muslim schools - if you've heard what's been going on in a few of the inspected, on the radar ones imagine what they'd become without regulation? education should not be religious indoctrination nor should it narrow and ghettoise one's intellectual landscape.

think too that without state legislated education there would be sectors of communities where female children were not educated at all, potentially not even taught english. large swathes of the population might barely come in contact with each other - racial tensions that usually ease over a couple of generations via mixing at state school would become more entrenched and possibly even encouraged and taught at religious/cultural/ghettoised schools.

without a state healthcare system how does one monitor for child abuse? no health visitors to know that a baby is being abused or a mother is suicidally depressed. that's if she hasn't died in childbirth of course because the church led health care would try to take her baby away from her because she's single so she didn't dare go to them.

and where will industry recruite from? modern industries require a high level of skills even for their most basic jobs these days - how will they source the people they need? ok the rich and privileged or the religious elite groups will manage to ensure their children are well educated but what about the rest (because those people won't want to work for peanuts in 'little' jobs that actually need doing).

you'd have ghettos - cultural, religious, economic, etc and massive unemployment and lack of a useful workforce and business would go elsewhere to countries where the state DOES educate it's population. you would have nightmare policing and security issues.

one thing you don't seem to really take on contrarian is that business profits from state education and healthcare - it needs a fit and educated workforce - the state isn't a charity but a function and society needs a healthy balance of state, private sector and people groups (3rd sector, religion if we must, unions, etc) to function.

TheHoneyBadger · 20/03/2014 06:22

and also that state education is about producing 'citizenship' and value conformity as well as numeracy and literacy. i wonder if you've thought through the level of consequence to withdrawing it? i mean really in terms of crime and policing, extremism and threats to security and economic repurcussions?

JaneinReading · 20/03/2014 06:50

You can cut back the frontiers of the state radically however and halve the bloated public sector which has never been as large though without abolish all state education and health. One of our biggest costs if the elderly. We could move to a system where relatives support the elderly for example. NHS food costs £2bn a year. We could require food be brought in as happens often abroad. (You tend to eat better that way too - 60% of NHS meals are thrown away)

ttosca · 20/03/2014 07:20

Public sector provision is always worse than private sector

Wow.

ttosca · 20/03/2014 07:25

The NHS improved healthcare precisely because it was universal. It's 7.20am and I have to get ready for work, but this is really basic stuff.

Do some Googling on the state of the health of the nation before and a decade or two after the NHS was created. On several measures, the nations health increased dramatically. There were fewer communicable diseases, fewer miscarriages, etc...

----

"Life in Britain in the 30s and 40s was tough. Every year, thousands died of infectious diseases like pneumonia, meningitis, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and polio.

Infant mortality - deaths of children before their first birthday - was around one in 20, and there was little the piecemeal healthcare system of the day could do to improve matters.

Against such a background, it is difficult to overstate the impact of the introduction of the National Health Service (NHS). Although medical science was still at a basic stage, the NHS for the first time provided decent healthcare for all - and, at a stroke, transformed the lives of millions."

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/nhs_at_50/special_report/123511.stm

TheHoneyBadger · 20/03/2014 07:43

there are families who can barely support themselves - how are they meant to support elderly relatives? what about the likes of the lady who lived next door to me until she died who had no relatives i ever saw? or those whose children refuse to care for them (i personally no longer have any contact with my family of origin for complex reasons and would not be willing to resume contact)?

the cost of living is so high that just supporting your own household and children is task enough for most and 'children' are having to be supported further into adulthood and with huge costs in terms of their education - how in that context do people then also find a way to support the elderly at the same time?

people live in tiny houses (most of us) without extra space to provide room and support for extended family. the bedroom tax increases this further encouraging people to live in the smallest house possible. economic policy and cost of living drives towards making everyone work - who provides care in that system? generally it falls on women in those kind of situations to do all of the care - would you be willing to care for your elderly relatives day in day out and how would you make ends meet if you're stuck home dealing with personal care?

our current elderly are relatively wealthy thanks to property price increases and the like in their time but those coming up are not going to have property to sell with massive equity or big fat private pensions and their children will have massive student debt and no property of their own or massive mortgages.

large properties that once could have housed large extended families in urban areas have been bought and turned into mansions for the rich or broken down into small rental units for profit.

it jsut doesn't add up in any way.