Free stuff in Scotland - how?!

[ncgfryhfdg]

I’ve just read that personal care for the elderly is free in Scotland… it seems also that Uni fees are free and prescriptions and period products (well done for that one!)
But I’m just wondering how the hell they can afford to do this?! As far as I’m aware they pay the same tax and NI as us English so where does the money come from to pay for it all?

We pay more income tax than n England.

And free bus pass for under 21s. It's great.

Income tax is higher in Scotland.

It's down to how the government in Edinburgh chooses to run the country.

Finance for the devolved administrations is provided under a long standing protocol - Barnett Principles.

Free prescriptions are supposed to be a preventative to more serious medical conditions that require hospital stays and NHS treatment,

Yes higher income tax. I don't mind paying it but do feel a lot of it has been wasted by the SG. Free tuition fees isn't really going to be sustainable for the sector much longer.

@ncgfryhfdg we are also more skint than england!! sturgeon demanded an increase of provision from westminster each time they gave something free in scotland!! everything which is supposedly free is actually paid for by the public!! the only things free in life are death and taxes!!

The roads are really shit though

They really are !

And our education

It's smoke and mirrors. We have shit roads, a nationalised rail service that is running an emergency 50% timetable because a 100% timetable needs drivers to drive trains on their rest days - you know, the days when they are meant to be rested so as not to compromise safety - higher taxes to pay for these, and an SNP "government."

Higher income tax and higher council tax (we pay almost double CT compared to London). Some things are better and some things are worse. I read a while back that the free uni thing doesn’t apply in certain areas eg if you wanted to do law at Edinburgh then they were accepting applicants mainly from areas considered deprived, which is tough if you come from a poor family living in a non deprived area. But I haven’t looked at the stats on that so not sure whether it’s a one off or if is hard to get into engineering/medicine/law at a top Uni like Edinburgh.

I love period products getting posted in a box direct to your home via your local authority website. Been doing this regularly for around two years and been able to try out various products for free. Mix and match etc.

I agree with the LEAPS initiative. And DS may possibly benefit from it next year.

There's a massive black hole that they're going to have to face at the next budget.

Income tax is thousands more for higher earners (not that high!).

Healthcare is aggressively rationed and free elderly care is largely theoretical due to staff shortages.

Will be interesting to see what gets cut.

And university places are tightly restricted and tend to exclude clever kids who can't show enough "deprivation points".

Bins in Edinburgh haven't been collected on time on the southside since early may!
Loads of house building but no other infrastructure eg schools or GP surgeries. My surgery and most of the others in SE Edinburgh closed their lists as can't cope with demand of new patients wanting to join.
Loads of teachers qualifying but no where for them to work

Yup it's great paying more tax for this.

On another thread it seemed like our NHS hospital waiting lists were far higher than England.

In my area, you can wait a year for gynae (even my urgent appt took 3 months), 2 years for gastro and a whopping 3 years for psychiatry.

I wonder if that's to do with the number of main hospitals scotland has ? Although ours was taken over by the Scottish government last year because of mis management.

You are wrong about us paying the same tax and NI. We pay more and more council tax to fund these initiatives but try getting a train from Inverness to Elgin today.
Try getting your bin emptied in Edinburgh in the next few weeks and try having a baby in Moray where you don't need to travel in excess of 60 miles to Aberdeen.

Free care for the elderly sounds good doesn't it, unfortunately massive staff shortages mean care homes are closing all over Scotland

Echoing everyone else really. Higher income tax and being spent in wrong areas. As a full time worker I used to pay £98? a year or thereabout and this paid all my prescriptions for the year (I had quite a few meds). Or for those who generally didn’t have prescriptions it was about £6 an item? NHS is getting steadily worse (I used to be a massive advocate of them
but not now). No money is spent on local services. Not had a CT rise in years but we are paying the price. All that glitters is most definitely not gold!

The SNP have no other strategies than doling out supposedly "free" stuff. Everything else's is falling to shit.

I pay a shit load more tax than I would do if I lived in England.