The Speech needs to tackle problems with restoring productivity in public services, encouraging smarter working with a happier and better rewarded workforce.
1. Repeal the independent management of NHS England, as everyone still blames Ministers for management failings.
2. Reduce layers of management in NHS and strengthen powers of Trust CEOs and Boards
3. Strengthen rights to free speech in universities and Colleges
4.Amend public procurement rules to give proper recognition to the tax and job contributions to UK made by UK based suppliers
5. Require Ministers to hold annual meetings with quangos to 1. Set objectives for the year ahead and agree budgets; 2 to review annual report and accounts; 3 to review performance.
6.Grant NHS patients the right to free treatment in the private sector if the NHS fails to deliver in a stated time
7 Block loans to Councils wanting to make commercial investments given the big losses some of them are recording on past attempts at property and green ventures
8. Review and consolidate government property holdings to cut costs and reduce dominance of expensive London
9.Cut energy use in public sector
10. Charge foreign visitors for using public services
July 18, 2023
Setting aside the anarchists, I cannot see that this is controversial at all. Surely these policies have the support of the whole nation and the whole political establishment? Surely we don’t divide on any of these proposals?
Why is all of this not standard practise anyway? What an indictment of the failure of Government in The Great Destruction Age – 1990 to date.
July 18, 2023
Lynn, agree – seems like common sense. That’s teh world we live in.
Sir J, On the NHS points you ned to be more radical. Study the working health services in the developed world and adopt the model that is working best. CLUE: It isn’t the UK or USA model.
July 18, 2023
I’m sorry you felt the need to remove my post pointing out that the two amigos won’t do anything on your wishlist.
They will continue with their wrecking ball, destroying the motor industry, power grid, rental market and tourism all in the name of net zero.
The manifesto will be filed under fiction like the last 13 years worth.
July 18, 2023
And all in the quest to reduce our carbon emissions from c. 1% of the World’s total to c. 0.5%.
Lunacy!
July 18, 2023
and once we arrive at that splendid figure it will become apparent that we are racing towards even lower figures due to the total collapse of industry, economy and motivation by the people to do anything other than find ways to live on the State support available, while obesity rates will fall due to hunger, people will be thirsty due to reducing risk of our drinking water, and for many months of the year cold!
July 18, 2023
wise words
July 18, 2023
some people in history have all but destroyed nations using munitions, others are doing their best using laws, blackmail, untruths and bullying.
July 18, 2023
2022 Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. John Clauser declares his climate dissent: ‘There is no real climate crisis’ – Warns ‘climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience’ You can find his whole article online.
July 18, 2023
@Lynn A
Support of the Whole nation, excluding CCHQ, the Conservative Party and this Conservative Government
July 18, 2023
Spot on Lynn. The general Conservative attitude to life exists among the electorate in spades. Boris cracked it open in 2019 , but sadly failed to respond to it in power. Whether he really wanted to is questionable. Today we have around 50+ Conservatives in the HoC, the rest on both sides want power for the sake of power and have no answers for the electorate whatever they might say. Half of them are working out what to say and changing the message as they go in the hope of dumping more snake oil on us. There is a political party out there that is on message. Whether that 50+ have the courage to join them is in the air. Equally, whether Reform can generate the financial backing and get their timing right is currently open to question, however they do have answers for our abandoned electorate. Check them out.
July 18, 2023
Good morning.
Nice suggestions, Sir John but they do not tackle what I think is the root cause of the problem. And that problem is that the NHS is an institution, much like the BBC, that has grown to exist to serve itself rather than those who basically fund it.
To explain. The connection between the consumer and the provider is no longer equal, they are in balance and, that imbalance is very much in favour of the supplier and not the consumer. We all know and accept that, if the balance is the other way around competition would force change and would lead to a better service.
The BBC and the NHS do not need to change since their funding is pretty much guaranteed. One through direct taxes and the other through force of law. The BBC is in a more precarious position by virtue of the fact that technology has circumvented its method of funding ie The rise of the PC and the internet. This competition is forcing those who do not wish to pay for the BBC to go elsewhere and so the BBC is losing money. It is this that is forcing the BBC to rethink its model of funding and nothing else.
The NHS through both the Unions and Labour, both of which indirectly benefit through funding from the NHS, will always push for more and more money. If you want better outcomes from the NHS you need to break the way the NHS is funded and place the consumer / patient as the driver of funding. That is why I always suggest that the government need to remove private healthcare as a benefit. This would allow companies to offer it and people to see a private doctor or dentist when they need to reducing waiting lists etc.
The government will be creating a larger market for healthcare providers from which it can tax and people get to be treated for their ills. There is no point in taxing the healthy and then those same people when they need help having to stand at the back of the queue. These people need to be treated quickly so that they can get back to work and keep the economy going.
Win-win all round
July 18, 2023
Regarding your point about BBC funding. In Austria the state broadcaster has until now had a licence fee, collected from all households with a TV. It has the same funding problem you allude to (bleeding funding to tablet and mobile users, as people search for better entertainment/news). So from next year, anyone with an internet-capable device will be charged the licence fee.
The broadcaster thinks it will get more cash, but the reaction of the population remains to be seen, and how enforcement can be achieved. EU elections next year may provide people a way to show what they think of this policy.
July 18, 2023
We treat our cars better than we do our bodies.
We pay to send them for annual MOTs.
If they have a vital fault we ban them from use.
Who, amongst us, is not interested in whether they have incipient diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s.
We pay more to insure expensive cars comprehensively.
Are we not prepared to pay more for life prolonging remedies if we need them in the form of a higher percentage National Insurance? – could obesity demand a surcharge?
July 18, 2023
I, Fishknife do not want to know if I have any of these life-threatening ailments as I no longer have trust in the doctors of the NHS. I have witnessed them experimenting with the population of Britain with no regard to the oath they make at the start of their career.
If I cannot find natural remedies for any illness I get, I will suffer it out until death! possibly helped on by overdose or poison if things get that bad.
July 18, 2023
What is really needed in healthcare is free competition and choice, not a rigged market. If you choose to pay privately you should not have to pay taxes for the NHS (but just pay if you do (perhaps) ever use it in emergency for example). Currently you can pay four times over, once for the NHS that you do not use, once for the taxes on the extra money you earn to pay the insurance premium, then the premium and then even a 12% IPT tax on top. This market rigging kills all fair competition & innovation and gives us a dire & a virtual state monopoly. A get what you are given, when we feel like it and just shut up system.
Under Thatcher we had tax relief on medical insurane cover and no IPT. Even this was not a completely fair market. One should not have to pay for the NHS at all if you choose not to use it anymore than one should have to pay for state schools or the BBC if you choose not to use them or other peoples houses. Rigged markets and unfair competition are not good especially from the tax payer funded state sector.
To increase the “productivity” of the state sector first stop doing the many things that they do that cause huge net negative outcomes and fire the people doing this so they can get a productive job instead – this mainly in the damaging over regulation of almost everything, the wars on motorists, landlords (and this tenants), the self employed, in planning and attacks on small businesses. The Net zero religion need to be culled completely.
July 18, 2023
I hold three assumptions, all I think reasonable:
1. The drive for Net Zero is an unstoppable force, whether motivated by truth, delusion or deception.
2. It will continue to grow at an exponential rate.
3. Emergency powers will be invoked.
July 18, 2023
I fear your number 3
July 18, 2023
I can’t believe what I read here sometimes Lifelogic. You, who wants doctors to be paid a lot more money complaining about paying national insurance. Private healthcare doesn’t train its own personnel, it takes it by offering NHS doctors and other healthcare workers more money on top, which is why lots of them only like doing NHS work 3 days per week to secure their pension and benefits then get good top ups in the private system.
You have to pay for state schools in order to provide and educate the workers for everything else you use in your life. If children aren’t educated well we end up with a much bigger welfare state, which unlike Owen Jones, I believe should be better controlled because the people with the big claims and putting their families into poverty often do so through bad choices.
July 18, 2023
I agree with the first part of 2) including the removal of these jobsworth Diversity and other – ersity roles . Regarding the Trust Boards, they also need slimming down. Most, if not all of them ,now have a CEO and a COO and deputies for both, as well as Directors of Strategy ( CEO’s job) and Directors of Transformation and Change, Directors of Commuity ????? . They also need to have people who have run large organisations , not the career , public sector aparatchiks presently occupying them
July 18, 2023
@David Peddy you cannot have Diversity when it is 100% discrimination.
July 18, 2023
My council has a vacancy for ”Historic Environment Internship”
July 19, 2023
You’re lucky you’ve got anything Historical in your council area, believe me, when your town is mainly built in the 60s, and the only historical building has broken windows, a dirty facia, unloved and unused, you’d be pleased someone is looking out for assets and ways to use historical buildings to pay for their upkeep.
I was hoping they’d sell one of the old buildings to the nearby school to have a through school to age 13 to take the pressure off the new High School that’s oversubscribed and can’t take all the children from the Town now; at least as a school (even though they’re saying they are all falling down now) that building would have a considerable amount of spending on it, that’s been done on the old primary school with new windows and improvements.
July 18, 2023
King’s speech in 5 words: “My government shall be sensible.”
July 18, 2023
…following my example? (joke).
July 18, 2023
I was half expecting to be hauled off to the Tower.
July 18, 2023
Number 3. Strengthen rights to free speech in universities and colleges………..and throughout the land I should say. A bastion of our culture/identity that seems only now to be the privilege of those with the ‘correct’ political/social views.
Excellent article in Bournbrook magazine entitled ‘Our universities are becoming expensive echo chambers’
July 18, 2023
@Michelle – the UK taxpayer should not be forced to pay any enity that removes the right to ‘free speech’ The taxpayer funded State as an employer should stop all hires that come from entities that restrict free speech.
As an aside in the US those that get their legal qualifications from collages that restrict free speech are barred from the central judiciary system.
July 18, 2023
Labour has accused the government of “attacking the aspirations of young people” with its plans to limit access to university degrees in England based on what students might earn years after graduation. Last. time I looked the “median” A levels of university entrants was something like DDE.
The aspiration to have circa £75k of student debt, three+ years loss of earnings and a worthless degree certificate from say the ex-poly of Bognor, in grievance & media studies or similar I assume? But what caused all this was soft “loans” that most will never payback funded under Cameron, May, Boris, while Sunak was Chancellor and is still being funded. Another huge crony and parasitic industry.
July 18, 2023
@Lifelogic – The UK Political Parties no longer use taxpayer money to achieve the best-of-the-best
July 18, 2023
So if you are likely to be a low earner, working part time and taking career breaks (this more likely for women and there are about 30% more women and men at UK universities) and you fancy three years having fun at university then why not take advantage of the £50k+ of the student “grant” and live off the backs of other tax payers for three years!
This is what the system that the Tories have for 13 years presided over (and Sunak has funded) is suggesting people do so many do so. Just as the migrant system say get yourself to Calais and jump on a RIB.
Still better later than never. I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.
We just now need his repentance on HS2, net zero, red tape, ECHR, IR35, the war on landlord, motorists, businesses… the size of the state, tax levels, the size of government, the woke lunacy, on the net harm vaccines, on the NHS structures…
By-elections give the electorate a painless chance to kick the government and Sunak’s dishonest and grossly incompetent ConSocialists certainly deserve a very severe kicking indeed. Even if Labour/LibDims would be even worse as they surely would be. We need growth and Sunak’s policies are currently all very anti-growth.
July 18, 2023
3 years of indoctrination + a superiority complex = lifelong Marxism.
We need to send more to university! Is the cry of the damned!
July 19, 2023
Higher Education Student Statistics, 2021/22 (hesa.ac.uk) does not agree with Lifelogic. Not surprising as LL is used to invent his statistics, which is awfully easy for him to do as he very rarely gives the sources of his ramblings.
July 19, 2023
Hefner, you are very good at finding statistics, could you link me to statistics that say what % of students enrolled in the first three years of tuition fee charges to English students have fully repaid their student loan after 25 years please?
Do you also know where I can discover how much the government and medical charities pay funding English universities above their student tuition fees for ‘medical students in the UK’ obviously overseas students pay over £170,000 pa compared to UK students contributing £38000 in loans plan 2,
Do the UK universities get any funding from the EEA, EU for funding all the EU students in medical schools? How much is repaid after they graduate? Are they the students leaving at FY1 and FY2 status back to the EU to do their ongoing training so they don’t become overseas students now having to pay nearly £50k per annum, I’m wondering if thats the reason doctors in training are leaving in bigger numbers because they can no longer get the UK NHS to pay their tuition fees perhaps?
July 19, 2023
Just one example of overseas medical students costs – Applying to University of Warwick
https://warwick.ac.uk › fac › sci › med › study › ugr
Fees for Overseas Students for 2023/24 are £27,290 for year 1 and £47,580 for each of years 2, 3 and 4. The University may increase fees in line with any …
Oxbridge are higher still.
John, What tie in to the UK NHS do FY1 and FY2 students get for their £100k plus no tuition fee that is paid by the NHS? Do they have to do so many hours for the NHS after these first two years training to repay that? If not, why not and why don’t the doctors in training striking right now see this massive benefit for what it is? Other masters students in other disciplines have to pay around £12k per extra masters years or an extra 6% graduate tax. There seems to be no recognition at all for the cost of training people that NHS England is taking on. People I know paid for their own masters by working and saving for it. I know one man who was funded for his undergrad and masters by the Singapore Navy but they demanded I think five years working for them to earn it out.
July 20, 2023
According to an old fullfact.org post (28/02/2018) ‘About 17% of students are forecast to fully pay back their loan’, this from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The remaining 83% only repay a fraction of their loan.
ifs.org.uk 03/10/2017 ‘Higher Education finance reform: Raising the repayment threshold to £25,000 and freezing the fee cap at £9,250’.
theguardian.com, 15/03/2022 ‘791 medical graduates could miss out of NHS junior doctor training’.
bma.org.uk 09/06/2023 ‘Medical student finance’
bmj.com 24/02/2022 ‘The real reason that new UK medical schools are focusing on international students’, E. Wilkinson
July 20, 2023
Thank you, I think the public has a right to know exactly what % of the cohort from 1998/99 have paid back in full 100% by 2028, by more than 90%, 75%, more than 50%, I’d like to know the nationality of those under 50% pay back. They borrowed very low figures in that first year so one would expect a full repayment as they also didn’t have interest at the plan 2 rates.
It would also be interesting to learn which subjects paid back in full don’t you think?
July 19, 2023
Any part-repayment of any loan for English students is less costly for the State than before. Blair charged tuition for English students only and maintenance loan repayments in the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 (the Tories would have done the same). Tuition fees started at just £1000 1998/99 as most of these extra charges do, they start low then advance. 2004 they increased to £3000 pa (£2.79bn in loans instead of grants – remember, people in your generation used to get grants for free!). I do not believe that many of these loans haven’t been prepared from those first taken out in 1998, the 30-year term is up in 2028, so it won’t be long before we find out how many of the 1998 loans were repaid in full. Furthermore, any repayment is more for the exchequer than all those lucky people who were educated FREE.
The Brown Review in 2010 found more money was required for Universities; the Con/dems put the fees up for English students to £9250 in 2012 and £9500.
Also, your maintenance loan (grant) figures out, over a three-year degree, a couple working with a household income of £50k with a teenager has to top up the maintenance loan as their child can only loan £4,869 pa or £14607 for a 3-year course, not £50k, this amounts drops the more that couple earns.
July 18, 2023
Strengthen the right to free speech for the King. Then he wouldn’t need to read such drivel and nonsense like a guest on Jackanory telling children’s fantasy stories.
July 18, 2023
He’d talk non-stop about Net Zero and Just Stop Oil.
July 18, 2023
His views aren’t representative of the voting majority
July 18, 2023
Then a bit on the migrants too & hop back on a private jet, into his Aston Martin or into a helicopter to travel back one of his many expensively heated large and mainly empty palaces.
July 18, 2023
Agree but tougher language and tougher measureable targets required with punishments for failure.
July 18, 2023
Another good list JR, shame no one is listening or even thinking of taking action.
Keep plugging away because someone has to, and you have more influence than a thousand of us out here in the wilderness die to your position and contacts within the tent !
July 18, 2023
Just so. The common sense, one might say blindingly obvious ‘ideas’, repeated here by Sir J, seem to be at odds with the objectives of the CPC and it’s leadership. One has to ask why the Government is following a course to it’s destruction. See the comments on Guido; the PCP is going to be toast at the next election if it carried on like this.
P.S. Has anyone in Government actually asked for a set of remedies for the lack of performance by the NHS from it’s senior management?
July 18, 2023
Re your last sentence – evidence suggests otherwise. The impotence of a backbench politician in the party of govt defies belief.
For 13 years we’ve read JR’s views on what should be done, while witnessing his party, in government, do pretty much the exact opposite.
July 18, 2023
Sir john
All talk and NO action
Thank you
July 18, 2023
5. How is this not already happening – extend reviews to any organisation receiving taxpayers support of over 30% of gross revenue.
3. Free speech needs to be entrenched in society not just Universities. Identity and feelings are not all-important. Make “hate speech” a civil rather than a criminal matter so that the “victim” has to pursue it themselves through the courts without wasting police time.
8. End national pay levels for the civil service and then disburse the London portfolio
10. Charge upfront or deport. Speaking of which I read that the 500 illegals being housed on the barge in Portland will need to be registered with a doctor. How will that help the people of Portland?
July 18, 2023
Those 500 illegals can roam freely without fear of arrest nor documentation ….where else in the world
July 18, 2023
Glen down in Spain and other places in the EU there are thousands of British illegals – people who never thought to regularise their situations with the various authorities ‘ they think being ‘expat’ covers everything until they come up against the police and that’s the end it it they get expelled. One of the judges even said that they should instead be sending them to Rwanda. Sauce for the goose
July 19, 2023
Are there really thousands of British illegal immigrants trying to claim asylum in Spain ? trying to get a free hotel, free food and benefits ?
July 18, 2023
How about the Government stop trying to micro-manage everything ….. and light the Quango Bonfire? Oxford Uni was in the media yesterday having felled 100 plane trees located near the A34 which provided screening. Quango Natural England had demanded it because they’re not native trees in the UK. They’ll be so pleased to have ticked another box on their KPIs.
Off topic, but I see the House of Frauds finally accepted the Government’s Illegal Immigration Bill yesterday ….. only a week after Bilderberger Ken Clarke basically told them to – and warned them that otherwise the Westminster Uni-Party would be shattered. And only a day after the Speaker of the House of Frauds proposed reforms …… saying that “for things to stay the same, everything has to change.”
And that’s the hint. They will accept some change in order to preserve the status quo LibLabCON-trick.
The Establishment is seriously concerned that the Blue-Green branch of the Westminster Uni-Party will be obliterated in the General Election ….. allowing a new, genuinely conservative, alternative to prosper.
July 18, 2023
No 5 , I have never understood why visa rules for foreign visitors doesn’t require them to show proof of having a health insurance policy.
July 18, 2023
No 10 , why did I type 5 , no idea.
July 18, 2023
You need to show evidence of health insurance in many countries of the world and I’d never travel without it
July 18, 2023
because NHS have never wanted to make foreigners pay.
July 18, 2023
…and never will
July 18, 2023
Review quangos on a yearly basis? There’s over a thousand of them. Wouldn’t it be better to slim the numbers down and amalgamate?
July 18, 2023
Would those quangos make any difference if they didn’t exist …what public good do they do ?
July 18, 2023
When David Cameron had his bonfire of the quangos, he claimed he would have gotten rid of many more but couldn’t due to the EU. We have left the EU, so the government must relight this bonfire.
In all cases of regulatory quangos, they must prove their oversight and rules are superior to leaving the industry alone to genuine competition, Civil Law, general statutory protections and voluntary product standards.
July 18, 2023
Hey, why not have another ‘bonfire of the QUANGOs’ – like ‘Call me useless’.
July 18, 2023
Cancel Net Zero. There is no climate emergency.
As I write (08:05 18/07/2023) the 28 GW of installed wind power is providing just 0.29 GW or 1.06% of demand.
It doesn’t matter how many more wind turbines are built as N x 0 = 0.
Reliable, on demand power, can his can only be solved with renewables by building even more wind turbines to provide sufficient excess power to enable the storage of energy either through hydrogen storage or batteries. This is so inefficient that it will cost £1 trillion for hydrogen storage and £3 trillion for batteries and hence why no such plan exists.
Furthermore, if it was considered strategically unsafe to allow Huawei to supply all our telecommunications equipment, why is it considered not unsafe for all our energy infrastructure – wind turbines, solar panels and the minerals, if not the actual devices themselves, for motors, generators, batteries and cabling to all be supplied by China, a country described by our security services as “hostile”.
July 18, 2023
According to the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament’s recently published (redacted) report on China, in June 2019, BEIS signed the UK–China Clean Energy Partnership, which allowed collaboration on transitioning to greener sources of energy.
So whilst China is building ever more coal fired power stations at speed they are at the very heart of our Government and Civil Service promoting our transition to expensive, unreliable and intermittent renewables, all supplied by China, which will destroy our economy.
You couldn’t make it up!
July 18, 2023
“3. Strengthen rights to free speech in universities and Colleges”
This should apply everywhere. No-one should be sacked from their job for expressing an opinion.
Or refused essential services, such as a bank account.
July 18, 2023
11. Institute a requirement for all tax-payer paid employment – civil service, quangos, councils, institutions, education establishment etc. to reduce staffing costs by 5% per annum
July 18, 2023
I agree with most of these points but I have a few caveats:
4. Without lapsing into overt protectionism and starting a trade war.
6. Free at the point of consumption doesn’t work no matter who supplies the treatment. Waiting lists are a consequence of having no demand management.
10. Ensure that the cost of the necessary accounting systems does not exceed the revenue gained.
July 18, 2023
Sir John
Yet again you seem to be pushing for a Conservative Government, Peoples Freedoms along with common sense and logic.
All the time we have diehard Socialists that have signed up to WEF’s ‘Great Reset’ program running the Conservative Party and CCH there is no chance of change. Just look at what is coming out of No10, it is not the manifesto put to the electorate, its the WEF, ‘Blob’ and EU prescription put forward by unelected, unaccountable, self-indulgent egotistical bureaucrats. We have a pseudo leadership that has forgotten who it works for.
July 18, 2023
@Ian B
If further indications were needed of how the UK Political system has descended into farce just look at yesterdays fiasco in the House of Lords yesterday. An unelected, unaccountable rabble trying to hold sway over the elected chamber. That is nothing other than bringing Democracy into disrepute, the actions of a 3rd World Dictatorship.
Yes we need a revising chamber, but it needs to be elected, the obvious model is the US Senate, just 100 for a Country of 350 million, HoL is 784 no-bodies. 784 people that cant get let alone find a proper job all on an ego trip with no credibility just because they are friends of friends, all with no authority getting to play in a Democracy – it is more than just disgusting.
July 18, 2023
If you feel so strongly about these things and are not getting anywhere then why don’t you do the honourable thing and quit – it’s obviously not the same party – so set up your own.
July 18, 2023
Yet more sensible suggestions.
1&2 I covered yesterday with the thought that there is too much management between hospitals a d the minister. At 47% of the NHS workforce it is top heavy even before we get into the lifestyle none jobs we seem intent on creating throughout the UK in many other fields.
4. Yes but professionalise purchasing by employing from outside the pool of scribes. Add to it Value Analysis, the use of which would have ensured HS2 was a still birth.
5. What happened to the bonfire, were the matches wet.
6. If it impinges on waiting times for private insured patients you will just create a further problem. The real solution lies within the NHS and government.
10. Demand that foreign visitors and students are insured before visas and entry is granted.
July 18, 2023
11. Also increase the number of foreign workers needed for the construction fishing and agri sectors. Dispense with minimum wage requirements and other silly nonsense like having to have a level of English language proficiency – as not required for bricklaying or working in the fields.
July 18, 2023
I hope the King’s speech 4, is going to be about upholding traditions, communities, society and Christian nation
July 19, 2023
In your dreams.
July 18, 2023
Every freedom loving Democrat on this Planet, can see the logic of what needs to be done to create a heathy vibrant and prosperous UK. Then we have this Conservative Government on a different track, dictating someone else’s agenda, not even their own manifesto a different path once elected. This crowd is a wrecking ball dedicated to destroy so the UK cannot return.
Thank-you Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) and the Conservative Party for cheating and betraying us all.
July 18, 2023
Sorry, Sir John, but you are treating the effect & not the cause!
No 1 – Cut Government spending to 30% of the economy. How by making 400,000 Civil Servants redundant, then you will see productivity increase, cutting all quango budgets by 50% now, & a further 50% in 12 months time, stopping all wasteful spending, including to charities that then oppose the government.
No 2 – Cut personal & business taxes as a result of No 1, & watch the economy grow.
July 18, 2023
Number 5 you have already said previously and it should come as first part of annual review:- what is your purpose? why have you not achieved it yet? when will you achieve it and thus no longer be needed? (shock horror!!!).
July 18, 2023
Get Sunak in a corner and impress upon him all of the items that have been addressed in the Kings’ Speeches so far. If he won’t listen and properly consider the value of these objectives , then get him removed . All of these should represent how the Conservatives should operate in Government on behalf of all sectors of the public . The country would then be in a better and happier state .
July 18, 2023
Once again, all things I would join the electoral roll to vote for a candidate supporting same.
This series of very sound policies you advance makes me proud to be a Redwoodista.
July 18, 2023
“Charge foreign visitors for using public services”
Are council provided public toilets supposed to check passports and visas at the front door and charge visitors more? Ditto council provided public parks.
Will nationalized railways etc have to charge the full economic fare to visitors? Should ticket inspectors have to check passports and visas as well as tickets. (Wonder what Mr Lynch will want in extra pay for that!)
Will hotels have to somehow figure out which TV or radio channels foreign visitors use in their rooms and charge them more for the Bourgeois/Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation?
July 18, 2023
As I no doubt boringly said before.
You can plan all you want.
State your preferences and articulate your beliefs…
BUT if there is another LOCKDOWN…that will be IT! The end.
And MSM is reporting CCHF virus.
And when our politicians are told “jump” by the WHO they will go into orbit.
Lock down harder.
July 18, 2023
From today’s media,
In a tweet directed towards UK motorists after the call, Mr Shapps said: “I have just got off a call with supermarket and petrol station bosses to demand that they immediately stop overcharging you at the petrol pump.
“When their costs were falling they kept prices high and refused to pass on the savings on to to you.
“Well, there’s no excuse and the government is saying `enough is enough’.
Usual dishonest disingenuous spin, this UK Conservative Government takes around 3 times more in tax at the pump than the producer, wholesaler and retailer do combined, and they do something with the money – they don’t give it away.
Going forward in the Kings Speech MP’s sign-up and commit to Honesty being at the front of all output
July 18, 2023
Charge foreign visitors for using for public services? Last time I needed medical treatment in UK I fully expected to have to pay but could not find a GP or medical centre that had the facilities to take payment. Eventually a medical centre in Hemel Hempstead, if memory serves, decided it would treat me anyway. It was just too much hassle as the centre didn’t have an EFTPOS terminal. The Agreement between UK and Australia covers only emergency treatment. When my visitors to Australia need the doc I take them to mine and they pay the surgery before leaving. Every Aus GP surgery has an EFTPOS machine. How many in the UK do?
As I have said many times before, there will be no improvement in the NHS unless and until the flow of funds is determined by patients making the money transactions ‘at the point of delivery’ of their choice.
Stop the ‘Free at the point of delivery’ mantra. You might find also that doing so would also reduce illegal immigration as well as waiting lists..
July 19, 2023
Peter, The public should tell the NHS to sort this out immediately before you start charging us, who are already paying your national insurance premiums. Even SMEs with one person can bill and receive payment on a phone right now; it’s pathetic. NHS: “Give us more money”, and more and more but unwilling to sort this out themselves, tell each clinic they can keep the treatment money collected themselves then watch the change of attitude.
July 18, 2023
The government should change how it uses modelling across all areas, not just the Bank of England. It would be best to introduce dynamic modelling, whereby you consider behavioural and other second-line impacts of policy changes when predicting likely outcomes. Where modelling analyses worst-case scenarios, the government should be forbidden from using these for PR purposes. Spin doctors must always give the central case prominence in government communications.
I suggest you legislate for this to make sure it happens.
July 18, 2023
We are having a gun held to our heads at the moment by the Health service. Our doctors don’t treat us for three weeks, they refer to you paying at the pharmacy, going to another clinic somewhere, tell you to just drink water for three days to see if a serious sickness bug goes by itself without checking if its food poisoning. Now our hospital doctors and consultants are demanding more money or we won’t get treated unless we can afford private.
Unlike lots of people I don’t blame this government for this, there are pay review bodies, there are managers in the NHS on six figure sums who decide how to spend their budgets, a lot of healthcare as been devolved and some of those are the worst performing trusts. They could have less diversity officers and pilgrims and just concentrate on treating people and getting their staff off long term sick leave (start with those over 9 months) or move them sideways or out.
Every hospital that treats tourists should have a bill produced to their insurers before treatment commences like just about every other country I’ve ever visited.
July 18, 2023
Super to see the growing King’s Speech list Sir J, my experience of your no. 10 was being a Jonny foreigner in J’burg & requiring urgent assessment/treatment for a sudden onset of excruiating stomach/back pain.
Upon entry to A&E the 1st step of their process was taking a swipe of my credit card and signing the chit, took seconds. The final part was the the itemised treatment bill and completing the payment, which took a bit longer.
My follow up question Sir J is… where are the equivalent A&E/NHS payment processes, payment terminals at receptions, the formalised price book and adapted financial systems? When will the ‘use cases’ be defined and rolled out to all NHS hospitals, GB/NI and all NHS dentists. Please tell them to get on with it.
July 18, 2023
The NHS needs to be run by the medically qualified. The NHS could afford many more doctors and nurses if its payroll was focused on them. Far too much of the NHS budget is wasted on overpaid underqualified jobsworths with or without arts degrees. Much of the wastage in the NHS is because of the poor organisational skills of the administrators. The Trust CEOs need to be doctors and the hospital boards need to be at least half medically qualified. I read of a case recently of a surgeon who was waiting in a fully staffed operating theatre for a patient to brought in, but the ancillary staff responsible did not roll in for work till 9am so there was no one to bring in the patient on a trolley. This is what happens when arts graduates run hospitals and staff them with shirkers and non essential functionaries.
Do not ask arts graduates to look at how to reform the NHS; they are not going to identify their own non-essential role in healthcare provision.
With regard to private provision to deal with NHS waiting lists: the private sector does not have its own doctors; they are moonlighting NHS doctors. Furthermore private hospitals do not have the range of expensive equipment to be found in hospitals. They deal with a limited range of conditions and without emergency backup.
July 19, 2023
forhurst, I’m sorry, but I disagree about the qualified medical staff working in operational management; they aren’t trained in that.
Operational Management degrees exist and are planners and routers and used by most private businesses to get the best results. Arts graduates are often trained in spreadsheets and reporting; their degrees need to go one stage further or have important modules in operational management if they want to be used in those tasks. However, it is not unachievable without taking people who are very expensive to train clinicians into non-medical roles. After six-nine years of training, they are too expensive to take off the front line.
July 18, 2023
ONS survey farce update –
Today I received the second letter with the code to access the ONS website to undertake their survey, it addition, enclosed was a complimentary cotton for-life shopping bag (same item in supermarket cost £2.99) ….the farce continues, as does the costs of this quango spending taxpayer money
July 18, 2023
The farce continues –
I’ve just undertaken the online survey and been offered a £10 gift e-voucher upon completion …more quango spending taxpayers money
July 18, 2023
As I see the completion of a government survey a civic duty I declined the £10 gift e-voucher
July 19, 2023
OMG, why do they waste money like this?
July 18, 2023
I think John Redwood is a cool guy even though I don’t agree with him on everything. I like him when he talks about technical stuff like here (and energy and transport and a lot of business issues too – but not all). He seems like the kind of politician who actually thinks deeply in a technical sense about problems and how to solve them.
July 18, 2023
Hello Boys
What is right and what is wrong.
Not religious. Just plain obvious.
When you boys acknowledge this
( if you can ) then all will be ok.
July 18, 2023
I wonder… is the use of the term “King’s Speech” instead of “Conservative Manifesto” to avoid people remembering that the Conservative Party simply ignores its manifesto once it has served its sole purpose (which is to get the socialists in the blue rosettes elected)?
Or perhaps… it’s because the King’s Speech seems destined to contain the utterances of the socialists in the traditional red rosette colour this time round, so this is simply an intellectual exercise for a Conservative politician at this juncture?
July 18, 2023
It’s reported now that the two passenger barges chartered to house the asylum seekers have been sent back – apparently nowhere for them to dock safely – can you believe that – nowhere in the UK for them to dock? The whole thing is daft
July 18, 2023
Sir John, I think it’s time you abandoned the Conservatives and joined a party that might conceivably present a Kings Speech along the lines you suggest.
July 18, 2023
What is a man ?
Until this is acknowledged
all these words are meaningless.
The root of all problems is the above.
Hard to accept for some, but it’s true.
July 18, 2023
Off topic, the tidying of files continues, slowly, and I have got to the Reading Evening Post, February 17 2005:
“Immigrants too are the victims of deceit”
“The idea that a new Labour government will cut back on immigration is laughable.
(“Clarke pledges to curb immigration”, Evening Post, February 7)
Before the 1997 general election, Labour spokesmen had many harsh words to say about Tory mismanagement of the asylum system.
But once in power, they did all they could to encourage people from overseas to come to this country.
In an interview on the BBC a few years later, a young Albanian at Dover explained he had come because he had heard on the radio that “England needs people”.
Now, I wonder who put that message out across the Balkans?
No doubt that young man was one of the many millions of decent people who are just looking for a better life, and who believe that we have issued an open invitation.
He would not understand that our government has done this without our approval.
Those who come here, expecting a warm welcome, cannot be blamed.
Like us, they too are the victims of a deliberate, wicked deceit by our government.”
Now we have record net immigration under a Tory government which is simultaneously trying to discourage the established population from having more than two children per couple:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claiming-benefits-for-2-or-more-children
July 18, 2023
On a lighter note its rained on St.Swithin’s day 15th July and everyday since, but you wouldn’t know as the BBC weather are busy telling everyone how hot it is in the USA and the Mediterranean
July 18, 2023
Well a lot of the population are intending to leave UK to go on holiday, getting away from the daily misery, to sunnier places like the USA and the Mediterranean, although in the latter they get more than they bargained for.
July 18, 2023
Sunak and Hunt are unelectable, nobody but nobody will vote for either of them.
Is the Conservative party so stupid that its going headfirst up against the majority of voters on so many important issues?
July 18, 2023
PaddyPower odds next general election
Labour 3/10
Conservative 7/2
LibDem 250/1
July 18, 2023
This 3-part alternative political programme is helpful. It will allow us to see the gap between this government’s policies, to be announced in the King’s speech, and what a traditional Conservative supporter would normally vote for.
Four years ago, Johnson understood that you win an election by a landslide by listening to what voters want, not what the Westminster commentariat want. I do wonder how much Sunak understands about politics, in the relatively short time he has been a politician, rather than an international banker.
July 18, 2023
West will need years of UAF pilot training and billions of dollars to achieve fighter parity with Russia – Pentagon
July 19, 2023
The jig is up. Ukraine will not join NATO, now or in the foreseeable future. Bring our special forces boys home before any more of them get killed.
July 18, 2023
35 excellent proposals in three posts, Sir John. If Sunak did even half of them, he would win next year in a landslide. I’m not holding my breath. Playing Sunak bingo, I may finish up with an empty card.
July 18, 2023
I see the government has taken the countries cheque book out to bribe Tata to make some batteries in the UK.
Cos governments choosing winners always turns out so well.
And cos throwing more money at an organisation which has made the core of its wealth from outsourcing cheap IT labour to the UK and USA with massive tax perks has been so good for the British economy, and all the British workers it has thrown on the scrap heap.
Somehow I think the idiots really are in charge.
I predict the obvious scandal when the inevitable pollution from this comes to light. And when its obvious that Tata are raping the British.
No doubt Rishi has close family links.
July 18, 2023
If everyone loves EVs and wants to buy one and support net-zero – why does the government need to bride Tata with £500 million to produce batteries and subsidy to purchase their EVs ….there are hundreds of thousands of EVs stockpiled unsold in China
July 19, 2023
Its the “white heat of technology” just like Concrorde, etc, that always turn out to be massive losses of money,
Considering the ruling class has just about shut down manufacturing in this country with their various wheezes, and tried to turn us into purely financial services and tourism based economy, trying to pick one narrow part of manufacturing to be subsidised is not good business.
Any new techniques invented by the British workforce will be given by Tata to their plants in cheaper countries, and used to undercut this country, just like they do with everything else.
July 19, 2023
‘Block loans to Councils wanting to make commercial investments …’ Yep – councils should stick to their knitting. Adult oversight – in Whitehall – of councils has been appalling.