It is hard work persuading government to cut out waste and remove marginal or undesirable programmes.
There is a vocal group of MPs who want the rest of HS2 cancelled. The business case was always poor, relying on diverting a lot of passengers from the existing network. The sharp fall in commuting and business travel thanks to lockdowns followed by more home working further undermines the case. The government does not seem to want to save £100 bn.
This week saw the foolish decision to bankroll the Bank of England to lose £11 bn this year to let them take losses on bonds they do not need to sell.I was the only MP to say this was wrong.
There is substantial agreement we should not be adding perhaps £3bn more this year to bills for hotel accommodation for illegal migrants, but still the system resists any Minister and proposals to end the dangerous trade in people.
We continue to spend more than £1 bn a year on free smart meters and their promotion when anyone who wants one now presumably has one.
We spend large sums on maintaining, heating and lighting huge office blocks in expensive city centres when many civil servants now work from home. The estate should be streamlined.
Councils build large commercial property portfolios in their areas on borrowed money in time to lose a lot in a falling property market. Why let them borrow this money?
We spend large sums on benefits for people born and legally settled here whilst inviting in hundreds of thousands of migrants to take the jobs. The state incurs large bills to provide the new arrivals with homes, school places, health facilities etc Let’s get people already here into work.
We still send overseas aid to thug states and countries with expensive weapons programmes.We should confine aid to humanitarian relief in crises and the very poor countries. Trade is often better than aid.
We are now subsidising well off people to burn more energy by price capping power for their heated swimming pools, garden lighting, saunas and the rest instead of limiting the amount of price capped power each can have to the needs of an average family. Let’s rejig the energy scheme.
October 28, 2022
All sensible points so what is driving this gross incompetence? Is it just stupidity, gross incompetence, vested interests, party donations or just pure & outright corruption?
They clearly prefer to serial rat on the manifesto on the triple lock (perhaps even for a second time) so pensioners freeze, NI increases, income tax increase and frozen allowances (income tax, CGT, IHT…)
You could also add the soft “loans” for duff degrees (about 75% surely are), net zero, burning imported wood at Drax, subsidies for electric cars (that actually significantly increase CO2 output & not decrease it compared to keeping your old car), landlord licencing and other endless & evil red tape and attacks on the self employed, the endless road blocking agenda… Plus the endless waste and misdirection at the NHS the diversity & net zero officers and the huge cost of medical negligence particularly huge in second rate maternity units. The failure to charge patient who should be paying for medical care too often people who are insured anyway.
October 28, 2022
“Is it just stupidity, gross incompetence, vested interests, party donations or just pure & outright corruption?”
It sure isn’t helping the UK, or it’s people, but somebody must be benefitting from the vast amounts of money spent by the government. WHO? Why are we paying the highest tax in 70 years for declining services, lack of availability and all but a very few being driven towards poverty. WHAT is this governments priority? Whatever it is, it appears to be detrimental to the UK AND it’s people!
October 28, 2022
+1
October 28, 2022
Look at Guido at the alleged ministerial jobs given out to Tory MPs, none appear to be of any value but just to give them a pay increase!! How much is this costing the taxpayer JR? How many were given parachute payments under Johnson and then Truss?
Why is there a need for so many ministers? Cull the Lords they will not be missed.
October 28, 2022
“still the system resists any Minister”
Why?
October 28, 2022
Mike,
I think we can accept that phrase from JR as another pass the blame from him and his Tory ministers. Either the ministers are capable of managing people and their brief or they are not. How do people in the private sector manage their large organisations!
Sunak is not competent, he lacks character of leadership, he does not have life experience and his social and religious beliefs are alien to most people in this country. Totally unsuitable for office. The back room remainers have got their man in place through his vanity and we will now pay the price.
JR highlights the BOE selling bonds at a huge loss!! Our money not BOE or inanimate govt. but our taxes our money! Why is Sunak the whizz stopping it? Why did Sunak make “school boy errors” of over £11.8 billion of our taxes without wanting to investigate because it might embarrass him! He does not sound intelligent or competent to me. How about eat out to help out! Paying our taxes to people to eat out!
Again, yesterday I heard several commentators say this is not a Conservative party it is definitely a socialist one with socialist taxation and spending. Hence wasteful HS2 a pro EU infrastructure project to connect continual cities to UK ones, no other reason. Stop fracking here but happy to import fracked gas from Qatar and US! Sunak is an idiot.
October 28, 2022
We have to follow the WEF programme which is to impoverish us for the benefit of the BRIC countries.
Soonack is a star member of the Davos crowd and he will ensure their agenda is kept.
Braverman will be shunted out because she has a plan to stop the channel invasion.
October 28, 2022
Ian Wragg
Well said. WEF rules ok
October 28, 2022
WEF defo in charge
October 28, 2022
IW,
Sunak is certainly not trying to manage a well run, independent nation state or follow voters wishes.
It seems pointless to suggest ways of cutting public spending. He will continue with the same old, same old and offer excuses for why things happen or don’t happen.
More nonsense today on radio4 about illegal arrivals from Albania and the idea that working with the French will address that. We know nothing will change. A true leader like Orban would nip the problem in the bud.
October 28, 2022
As Stalin stated in 1935:”Kadry Reshaiut Vse”(“The cadres decide everything”).
October 28, 2022
Mike, why don’t you try an experiment. Turn your computer on, log into your bank and tell it to give you £10,000 for free. Will it comply? I don’t think so. The system has resisted you! Amazing! Why is that, do you think? Something to do with the system being reality and your wishes being fantasy?
October 28, 2022
It is what only your masters can do gazza.
Not available for us ordinary folk.
October 28, 2022
Why are we paying the highest tax in 70 years for declining services,
Welfare state with open borders
We are importing non-contributors who need subsidising while continuing to subsidies our own.
October 28, 2022
@NS; “Welfare state with open borders”
That might explain high taxes but not the declining services, many of which are contracted out to private commercial companies. The fact that X number of illegal migrants landed on a Kent beach last month doesn’t explain why my Council Tax funded household refuse waste service, 100 plus miles away, is now very poor value for money compared to only 15 years ago, never mind 40+ years ago, I doubt it even explains similar problems for those actually living in Kent.
You say these migrants are “non-contributors”, I assume you are talking about illegal migrants, and indeed they do not contribute, because they can’t -even though many dearly want too, UK asylum laws prevent them from working (and punish them if they do) until their asylum status is decided and as the system takes so long, even before any appeals… Stop complaining about the system you and others have created during 20 years of UKIP style bleating.
October 29, 2022
The majority of immigrants take more out than they pay in Jerry whatever Jonathan Portas wishes to say. The infrastructure alone for each new addition costs £250K.
Declining services because there is not enough money even with increased taxes.
It is your 20 years of Socialist defence of the system that is at fault and prevents it being reset. Couching it as “being nice”. How about being nice to the paymasters?
October 29, 2022
All contribute to GP.. even if indirectly by spending via hotels or low social rents etc. Those that are allowed to work drive wages down where competition still works.So making the minimum wage a maximum wage usually plus benefits. Hardly aspirational for UK workers at the lower bound.
The individuals are probably making rational choices. In some cases they may be desperate economic migrants. UKIP did not created this system. The anti-democratic system sorted that. Its all fixed. The EU ECHR Schengen plus created & enabled this mess. Effective borders do not exist. Passports are almost pointless except to control the tax serfs, just as CBDC will be.
Nothing wrong in being a democrat and supporting open borders etc.You should get what you vote for.
Apparently Ghandi replying to a question said “Democracy what a good idea”
October 29, 2022
@NS; “The infrastructure alone for each new addition costs £250K”
As does every UK born college and university ‘graduate’, and many of them will never pay back the debt they already owe in student loans, with far to many (according to @FUS elsewhere) seemingly preferring part-time work, on the NMW, claiming top-up tax credits.
“Declining services because there is not enough money even with increased taxes.”
Even more reason to allow these migrants to work, doing jobs the indigenous population clearly don’t want, so not only will the state not have to pay their accommodation costs (the employer or now working migrants would), the state would receive extra income and purchase taxes. The argument against asylum seekers and migrants is not an economic one, whet ever the overly ‘patriotic’ political party activists briefing notes tell you…
October 29, 2022
@anon; “Those [migrants] that are allowed to work drive wages down where competition still works”
No, market forces do that, otherwise UK produce does not compete with the cheaper products available to import. For example, it was because of high wages in UK toy factories that lead to many -perhaps the majority of- such products now being made abroad, either in cheaper eastern European countries or in Far Eastern countries such as India and China. It was high UK labour costs that drove much of the UK’s horticultural sector out of business too, what remains (along with much agriculture) has been dependent cheaper eastern European workers.
“The EU ECHR Schengen plus created & enabled this mess.”
The UK was never in the Schengen area/agreement, unless that’s what you meant, the fact that once here illegal migrants are effectively trapped, if our ‘system’ doesn’t get them on the way in it gets them on the way out!
October 28, 2022
Shirley. None of it is surprising when you have what amounts to a socialist government.
October 28, 2022
@Shirley M; “Why are we paying the highest tax in 70 years for declining services”
That is surely simple to explain, although unwelcome to our host I suspect, back in the 1950s many such services were wholly owned/run by the State (within the NHS, Local or civil [1] Authorities, for example), many are now being run by private owners/contractors who need to make money to pay shareholder dividends; there’s only two places such profits come, given the nature of the work, either by keeping operating costs low which in turn means a lower quality of service to the end user, or from demanding a higher contract cost from the taxpayer, sometimes as users and taxpayers we suffer both!
[1] such as the then State owned British Airports Authority
October 28, 2022
”Highest tax in 70 years” ….and what are they doing with all our money, buying smart meters, wind-turbines, HS2, hotel rooms, EV subsidies etc etc
October 28, 2022
Under a Tory government that 99% of Tory MPs support
October 28, 2022
Dear Glen–Re HS2, just think how much more sense it would make if it were seamlessly joined with HS1 so that the shedloads of freight that travel to and fro across the Channel every day and night could go via HS1/2 all the way from the frozen wastes up North without changing. At present, best I (don’t) understand, this traffic either goes by road or has to be offloaded and then loaded on again somewhere north of London which is ridiculous. I of course I dismiss out of hand the nonsense of the hordes of dashing laptop-laden businessmen desperate to get to Birmingham. Would be nice to get at least some return for the £100 billion. If there were a tri-way (HS1, 2 and Euston) car friendly terminus at say Watford, close to the M25, it would be just as easy, if not much more so for some (eg me, from Essex ), to get there as to Euston thus relieving pressure on not only London Transport but also many of the overcrowded overground lines in to London. BTW I didn’t need a model to work this out!
October 28, 2022
@Leslie Singleton; Linking up HS1 and HS2 is not an insurmountable problem, but post Brexit rather pointless, through passenger trains from Glasgow, Manchester Leeds and/or Birmingham to Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rome anyone?…
As for freight, that traffic doesn’t need HS1 or HS2 and can already travel door-to-door, so long as the train complies to Network Rail’s more restricted loading gauge. Should HS2 been built, probably not, but given the progress so far, cancelling all or part will simply created an even bigger white elephant, like a road bridge to nowhere.
October 28, 2022
That’s a good idea
October 28, 2022
Indeed. I spent 45 minutes waiting on the phone to speak to HMRC about my self assessment tax return. Then I spoke to a miserable, unhelpful individual, who was going to pass the matter on to someone else to expedite it. Our accountant submitted our return in August. He agreed we had but …………….nothing had been done. The tax rebate I’m due will have to wait until they’ve processed the return. I’m going to get down to Dover, get me a rubber boat, go out and then return pretending I’m an illegal speaking pidgeon, and demand my 4* Hotel, free food and board, mobile phone, pocket money, free health and dental care and…………stop paying tax for the pretendy conservatives to waste it. HS2, foreign aid to nucleur powers, 5000,000 on benefits, 300,000 families where three generations have never worked and your lot keep taxing me and the working population to pay for it. Highest taxation in 70 years for what?
October 28, 2022
LL,
The savings list can be as long as you want it to be. The problem is not in people outside the civil service identifying where to save money. The problem is the civil service mindset and resistance to implementing these ideas.
Bring in people from the private sector who are used to finding savings and bring in incentives for staff to save money – Measures drive Behaviours.
October 28, 2022
Often people from the private sector turn native one appointed to positions in the state sector where they are spending other people’s money on things for other people. They tend to care not what they pay not what (if any value) is delivered. Their main concerns are often do they have an impressive, convenient, posh office, power, good pay, expensive and a bit of travel and a large gold-plated pension.
In the Telegraph Sunak plans to expand windfall tax grab – yet another mistake on top of his fracking ban!
October 28, 2022
+many
And often the management is sooo impressed by what it views as “movers and shakers” that it agrees to any lunacy.
Believe me…I’ve seen some!
October 28, 2022
LL,
It is not a mistake. It is a deliberate act. Either he has not got the courage to lead with his own mind and views or he is deliberately making us all poorer. JR has blogged many times why energy security and independence is necessary for Business and residents. It is pretty basic stuff. Sunak like the Tory party just want power. Unfortunately for us they have not used it for the nation or people’s benefit just their own selfish ends. Look at Cameron and Greensill while in office!
Rejoice Osborne and Hammond are back supporting Hunt!! Both failed to balance the structural deficit upon which they were elected, both increased taxes to record highs, both helped mass immigration all against their manifesto and promises and Osborne made clear the govt he was in was not serious about immigration. Sunak is putting him as ethics commissioner! Sunak claimed a couple of days ago to serve with integrity. I think there are many example to show he lied.
October 28, 2022
They shouldn’t be appointed, they should be on performance related short term contracts.
October 28, 2022
Ian Wragg
Exactly.
For the length of each parliament depending on performance.
October 28, 2022
LL.
No, he doesn’t. Telegraph says he ‘could’ and thats quite different to ‘planning to’ (in the same headline).
Don’t be so quick to believe the Media. Their business seems to be,to tear whoever is in power, to pieces!
October 28, 2022
That was already tried a few years back.
What those business people found was that the problem wasn’t the the civil service or the civil servants, who they found were doing their best, it was the politicians who were consistently unable to give clear direction or instruction, and who repeatedly changed their mind on what they wanted.
October 28, 2022
Just halve the number of people in the Councils, Admin in the NHS, all Diversity and Climate change posts, Union positions paid for by taxpayers, bonfire of the quangos. Halve the numbers in the useless Home Office, Treasury, OBR etc get rid of the Human Rights Act, net zero, Climate Change Act. If Rishi is banning fracking then ban the import of the same as we’re sick of the virtue signalling.
October 28, 2022
Lifelogic, you say, “ All sensible points so what is driving this gross incompetence? Is it just stupidity, gross incompetence, vested interests, party donations or just pure & outright corruption?”
I think there’s still a lot of the blob following EU diktat, and so resist sensible change. Plus all of what you suggest, I think.
October 28, 2022
+1
October 28, 2022
The points you make seem to suggest something sinister, it is difficult to ignore.
October 28, 2022
With Halloween approaching it is as dark as night that something sinister is lurking in the shadows … Booh 🫣
October 28, 2022
not in the shadows – round the EU Commission table.
October 28, 2022
A sensible Govt would act on its own volition to cut waste without needing others to work hard to persuade it to do so.
October 28, 2022
Why would pensioners freeze? They are being targeted by both the extra £1,200 (that benefit recipients are also getting but PAYE serfs are not) and the retail price has been frozen.
Emotive language is unhelpful, same as mentioning starving children when discussing free school meals.
October 28, 2022
it is not emotive it is reality.
October 28, 2022
They are not sensible points at all, it’s just the usual simplistic solutions for very complex problems. No more spending on hotel accommodation for illegal migrants? OK, but John Redwood has not offered one idea how to stop the crossing of the Channel. We had a way when we were in the EU, based on co-operation under EU law with France, but of course the Brexit ideologues trashed that, and now act surprised we can’t solve the problem on our own
October 28, 2022
Illegal immigration across the Channel carried on whilst we were in the EU gazza.
When has France actually tried hard to stop it?
October 28, 2022
The data below is for the 24-hour period 00:00 to 23:59 27 October 2022.
Number of migrants detected in small boats: 308
Number of boats detected: 9
Pizza Anyone
October 29, 2022
GC – That pizza cost the tax payer 2021 to Aug 2022 in excess of £2 million. Now look at the D. Telegraph’s report of 28/10 ( article available MSN free ) ” UK will give Albania millions to spruce up state & stop migrants wanting to leave”
£ 9m cash being used for development. £ 4m last month by H O to modernise Albania’s criminal laboratory to boost its forensic capability. £ 2m for a police station in Tirana airport. ( Are those promised Albanian policemen stationed in Dover yet ? ) Multi millions £ for projects to combat organised crime groups plus the export credit agency likely to provide tens of millions to underwrite bids in connection with building a new dam. Let’s hope that British businesses DO get something out of all this. Meanwhile, I hope Albania’s EU accession is going well.
October 29, 2022
Peter 2
What do you know about what the French are doing to stop them?
Do you know how many illegal migrants the French have in their country?
October 31, 2022
How is that comment relevant eubilly?
More nonsense from you and no facts either.
Hilarious
October 29, 2022
thelocal.fr , 12/11/2021, ‘What is France doing to prevent illegal small boats crossing to the UK?’
‘Over the past three months France has stopped 65 percent of attempted crossings by illegal immigrants’.
Furthermore in 2021, according to Eurostat and UK Home Office, Germany got and registered 134,255 refugees, France 119,945, the UK 43,665. According to surveys by the Migration Observatory (ox.uk) the reasons why migrants want to come to the UK are:
– some English language,
– some family members already in the UK,
– UK historic links with their own country,
– some unhappy at the way they had been treated in France (as France requires ID papers and registration to allow to stay there),
– thinking that they can find jobs in the UK without needing identity papers.
For people able to read French, illegal immigration in France is also an increasing problem: see observatoire-immigration.fr , 09/08/2021 ‘L’immigration illégale en France’.
For 2021, leparisien.fr , 20/01/2022 , ‘Plus de 50000 migrants ont tente de traverser la Manche vers la Grande-Bretagne en 2021’. However only 26 or 27k of these 52k actually entered the UK. So it would appear that France is doing something.
What P2 might not realise is that
1/ the free circulation within the Schengen area makes the potential flow of illegals/migrants much higher within countries of continental Europe than towards the UK,
2/ the immigration policies in a number of continental European countries are stricter than in the UK (and this despite the repeated blah blah blah by the successive Home Secretaries in the last 12.5 years),
3/ the problem might also lie with the Home Office, the BEIS, the UK Parliament unable to take and apply decisions consistent with what is being told to the public.
October 30, 2022
Just a few random points – Immigration policies in a number of continental countries may be stricter, certainly the case, it seems to me, in terms of the care & provision compared to the UK. Serious problems have been widely reported in France, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Spain to name but a few. Mr Macron intends to deal with their policies & is reported as having stated that 50% of “delinquency” in Paris involves immigrants. The tax take in Germany from their new arrivals since 2015 is reported to be vastly below expectation. A recent report (29/10 Breitbart ) states that French media had revealed that 90% of deportation orders in France are not enforced. The EU is putting pressure on Serbia to look at its visa / entry systems & operate under EU rulings to stem the flow now of travellers arriving as tourists on regular flights into the capital Belgrade and from previously largely unseen markets, Middle East, Africa and Asian countries, and seen as a stepping stone into Europe and the European Union by most if not all. Even when in the EU our returns to the EU were extremely low. It’s a sad, global mess.
October 31, 2022
Irrelevant cut and paste heffy
The original claim was it was because of Brexit.
November 1, 2022
You wrote ‘When has France actually tried hard to stop it?’ . And your ‘cut and paste’ comment starts to be rather stale. When one tries to bring a proper argument there’s often a need for a reference. You can call that ‘cut and paste’, this C&P certainly doesn’t impede your posts.
October 28, 2022
The will wasn’t there to solve the problem while in the EU which proves a point about the Conservatives.
Australia isn’t in the EU but managed to solve the problem for themselves. This has nothing to do with Brexit at all.
If we can’t stop people breaking into our country because of X,Y,Z treaty or so and so in some international body won’t like it, then we are in a much more serious place than I thought and have really been sold up the swannie.
As I understand it from a Migration Watch paper on maritime law, we are not obliged to do most of the things we have been doing.
It can be stopped, Braverman knows it and that’s why they want her out, not least because a lot of people are making good money out of it. Human rights and immigration lawyers, all those providing B&B, all those running asylum centres. No wonder it has been allowed to go on for so long.
Always follow the money.
October 28, 2022
Gary Megson – The answer is very simple. Why do refugees want to escape France ?
October 28, 2022
They’re required to carry ID in france …..its more dificult for the criminals and those with records in France and their own country
October 28, 2022
My memory fails me again. I had an idea that lorry loads of illegals were getting access and crossing via ferries for years while we were in the EU without France detecting them?
October 28, 2022
2 boats with a pontoon between them. Drones in the air. Position the boats half way across the channel. Block the oncoming dinghies and tell them to turn back – they will NOT be allowed to illegally land on our shores. You’d only have to do for a couple of days and the boats would stop.
October 28, 2022
Rushi Sunak has spectacular fail upward.
As Chancellor, he manufactured two thousand two hundred billion pounds sterling, in 2020. That’s two years before ‘Putin’s price hike’, and in January 2021 the BBC were already noticing the increasing rate of inflation[1].
Now Sunak ‘vows’ to fix Liz Truss’ mistakes[2]. I never thought much of Truss who as foreign secretary couldn’t tell the difference between the Black and the Baltic sea. But given that the economic quicksand she tried to found here policy on is all of Sunak’s creation, if I were Truss, after Sunak’s plain lie, I’d be looking for an opportunity to spike his guns.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jan/19/uk-inflation-hits-near-three-decade-high-rising-to-54
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63388007
October 28, 2022
I agree with all of these points.
At present my area is changing IT systems to an out of date system which breaks down, is slow and complicated to use . Money has been spent trying to fall in line with Manchester so information can be shared more easily. What it is doing in fact is causing more problems for patients as we are slowed down considerably and becoming frustrated with this old fashioned product. The upshot of this is political. Rather than Manchester use a more refined system where the patient turnover is rapid and safe the rest of us have to downgrade to their systems which still show floppy discs as icons .Money is spent on trainers , time is again a considerable factor and yet another spanner has been put in the works of the NHS. This is not the first time we have to lower our standards to fall in with Manchester. Money is spent to provide a worse service!
October 28, 2022
“Money is spent to provide a worse service” this is very common in the state sector (but even in the private sector) especially with new computer systems or “upgrades” to software or new brandings. The costs of everyone learning or training on the new systems can be huge.
October 28, 2022
A computer system should enable users to reach the solution they seek easily.
Systems that involve solving sequences of puzzles just to discover how they happen to work are unfit for purpose.
The level of training needed reveals how obstructive they are.
October 28, 2022
The “Change” agenda (management consultancy,Accenture’s,new TV advert belabours it) is the equivalent of permanent revolution.
October 28, 2022
Another example of deliberate sabotage? Who makes these decisions, and have they been sacked yet?
October 28, 2022
+1
Probably true.
They want a “remote” health service.
AI for as much as possible.
October 28, 2022
@Shirley M; “deliberate sabotage”
Whoever has suggested that, talk about over emotive language. 🙁
“Who makes these decisions”
Be careful what you wish for, the only reason IT systems are not upgraded and kept modern within the likes of the NHS is budget restraints, and we all know who stops govt departments from spending whatever they need, remember the buck will stop at the top, who has been in govt for over 12 years now…
October 28, 2022
Eh? Budget restraints would surely prevent upgrading, but the discussion is about downgrading. So are you for, or against, spending time and money downgrading systems. What else can it be but deliberate sabotage? Stupidity, ignorance … if so, they do the decision makers have those jobs and retain them?
October 28, 2022
@Shirley M; Nonsense! Read @margaret’s comment again, the issue is clearly that Manchester has not been upgraded.
October 28, 2022
Yes, Jerry, which is WHY they are downgrading another system, at great cost and additional costs for training! They can find money for down grading, but not upgrading????
October 28, 2022
@Shirley M; The point is, it is obviously cheaper to ‘downgrade’ the other IT systems, than to upgrade the computers in Manchester NHS.
New Computers, new servers, new software, new physical networks, retraining & up-dating support IT services etc. all costs real money. Running older software or just programs, that are already licensed, on newer but compatible hardware, by people already trained in those older software or programs costs little or nothing to the NHS IT department and thus the taxpayer. As I said the debate is about how to save money, not how to save a frustration!
October 28, 2022
Spending on the NHS recently, has increased greatly.
From 148 billion in 2020 to 190 billion
(Source The Kings Fund billy)
Maybe a sensible budget would have included the costs of improvements to IT
Most companies have this included.
October 28, 2022
@P2; But not by enough to allow Manchester NHS to have a nice new modern IT system, evidentiality!
October 28, 2022
Well thanks for an example of their total failure to budget properly Jerry.
October 28, 2022
@P2; “thanks for an example of their total failure to budget properly”
Indeed, most likely at the DHSC in London, otherwise the problem is with NHS Digital or their predecessors (NHSIA or CFS [1]), not NHS Manchester.
[1] those responsible for attempting to rollout that Department for Health’s NPfIT system… 🙁
October 28, 2022
Again you inadvertently agree with me Jerry.
It is a failure to budget properly
October 29, 2022
@P2; Whatever, but surely if you are telling us it is not the fault of NHS Manchester then you are agreeing with me?! Try actually reading the tread before attempting to troll….
October 31, 2022
I’m not saying that Jerry.
I’m saying they need to budget for improvements to IT within their total revenues.
October 28, 2022
“Waste” says Sir John.
So what did we get for the £35 billion spent by his government largely on test and trace “consultants” then?
It made no significant difference according to respected analysis.
October 28, 2022
NLH – why are you spreading falsehoods? Just a quick google search reveals testing was by far the biggest expense not consultants:
FactCheck
The NHS Test and Trace budget was originally £22 billion in 2020/21 and £15 billion in 2021/22, making a total of £37 billion (though the 2021/22 budget was subsequently revised down to £14 billion). NHS Test and Trace spent £13.5 billion in 2020/21, while spending in 2021/22 amounted to £16 billion, making a total of £29.5 billion.
The vast majority of the £13.5 billion spent in this period—£10.4 billion—was spent on testing. As we’ve previously written, the next largest expenditures were on local Covid-19 outbreak management and support (£1.8 billion) and national contact tracing (£910 million).
The budget set for the second year of the scheme was similar, with testing by far the largest projected expense.
October 28, 2022
@a-tracy; “NLH – why are you spreading falsehoods?”
That not all the allocated money was used is neither here nor there, nor is citing the total HMT allocated money necessarily a falsehood, after all whilst allocated to “A” the same money can not be spent on “B”. What NHL was pointing out is the waste, be that £35b or just £13b, paid to private sector “consultants” here in the UK, when in Europe the public health sector did the same work at vastly less cost than even the revised costs you cite.
“FactCheck”
Whose FactCheck?… A quick Google can be quite unreliable, given how Googles algorithms work, ever wondered why some (often shopping) sites follow you around, it would not surprise me if our favored politics also follows us around if we are silly enough to allow Google access to our metadata, returning type of content we prefer reading.
October 28, 2022
The Fact Check organisation, I believe it is run by Channel 4.
They said it wasn’t paid to consultants if you have facts otherwise or NLH I’d like to read your source information.
October 28, 2022
NLH overdid it on the numbers but he is right to draw attention to the scandalous amounts spent on private consultants. The House of Commons committee that investigated the matter found that the NHS simply didn’t have a grip on what it was spending here, even producing nonsensical figures, e.g. ‘It estimates that it will spend a total of £195 million on consultancy in 2021–22, but at the same time, indicated it would be spending £300 million on its top ten consultancy suppliers alone.’ https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/7651/documents/79945/default/
Their report is so damning that in any civilised democratic country you would’ve expected heads to roll. Not so with the corporatized NHS.
October 29, 2022
@Hat man; “The House of Commons committee that investigated the matter found that the
NHSUKHSA simply didn’t have a grip on what it was spending here”There, corrected that for you @Hat, as stated in the final paragraph of the Summary of the report you cited.
The UKHSA, who operate and oversee Covid 19 NHS Track and Trace, is a govt Agency directly accountable to the DHSC, totally bypassing the NHS, despite their use of “NHS” in the title of that service. I wonder why the govt allowed that…
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/uk-health-security-agency/about
October 31, 2022
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is a government agency in the United Kingdom, responsible since April 2021 for England-wide public health protection and infectious disease capability, and replacing Public Health England. It is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
Responsible since April 2021. Covid was from March 2020. Public Health England (PHE) was an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care in England which began operating on 1 April 2013 to protect and improve health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities. Its formation came as a result of the reorganisation of the National Health Service (NHS) in England outlined in the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
October 28, 2022
@Nottingham Lad Himself
You seem to be suggesting, by mentioning another example of waste, that two wrongs make a right. You’re saying because the government wasted a fortune on track and trace that other examples of waste don’t count and should be ignored. An odd way of thinking.
October 29, 2022
@Mike Wilson; “An odd way of thinking”
Indeed YOUR logic is odd. Someone pointing out other examples of govt waste doesn’t mean they condone the original waste, or any other waste for that matter, quite the opposite.
October 28, 2022
@margaret; “Rather than Manchester use a more refined system where the patient turnover is rapid and safe the rest of us have to downgrade to their systems”
How much extra cost is being incurred by this ‘downgrade’, how much extra cost would the taxpayer have to stump-up to upgrade the Manchester system, that is the question surely posed by our host, not how frustrated some are getting! I agree with you though, Manchester should have a better IT system, but then I’d be prepared to ask people to pay more taxes to fund it, are you?…
“systems which still show floppy discs as icons “
Not sure what your point is, many everyday icons show representations of now outdated technology from 1950s & 1960s, never mind that of the 1990s, the fixed-line GPO telephone for example, the simple reason being everyone still understand the icon.
October 28, 2022
Good morning.
We know. We all know. But what we do not know is that those who control the purse strings see all this as someone else’s money and, in anycase, if they run out, they can always print more.
It is this cavalier and reckless manner in which those whom we place our trust first devalue our currency and then the economy.
The Conservatives under Mrs.T knew real austerity and hardship. They lived through bombing and blockade which led to rationing. They had to be frugal with just about everything, especially those things that had to be brought in by convoy. Everything they had that was brought in by that route was costed in sailors lives.
I mention the above because we have a man at the helm who has, and never will, know what it is to want. For him life has been very easy, and the same can be said for many of his predecessors.
Has anyone seen the price of cake recently ?
October 28, 2022
Ha Ha – but what about bread, pasta, rice, butter, canned food, vegetables?
And the cost of cooking the staples!
October 28, 2022
Mark,
I think the catastrophic of this party and govt is made clear in everything it does. Why has this govt allowed former RAF pilots to train Chinese pilots!! Why not pass on all state secrets and strategies as well!
What has useless Wallace done to stop it. Is this not against OSA? Our pilots have always trained ally countries but China FFS!
October 28, 2022
Hope.
Another consequence of lockdown I’m afraid. These highly trained pilots could not find fair paying employment in civil aviation with the industry closed down.
October 28, 2022
We have so-called allies I would never permit to benefit from our skills and trainers.
And as for universities – you might as well hand over copies of technologies the first day they enrol.
October 28, 2022
“we have a man at the helm who has, and never will, know what it is to want. For him life has been very easy, and the same can be said for many of his predecessors.”
This is a weak argument against the double coup and its beneficiary. What we want is sound administration and we have had that in the past from very rich men.
Besides, do you ever hear anyone getting at Starmer and La Thornberry, or Rachel Reeves, for being well off? It seems that a new rule is coming in: moderately successful people may enter public life, especially if they are socialists, but not very successful people who are conservatives.
October 28, 2022
Your party is part of the problem not the solution
October 28, 2022
I hope you dont think Labour has the answer DOM as you will be very disappointed.
Starmer is a chancer with no answer to any problem!
October 28, 2022
The majority part! I applaud Sor John’s points made here – but where are the dozens of MPs who should be rallying to his call for efficiencies and savings where waste plays such a big part?
October 28, 2022
Dom,
Not part of the problem it is the problem. Repeated lies day after day. If they actually stated what they would actually do in power they would never get elected. The most dishonest party in history.
If they said they would pursue:
Mass immigration
Highest taxation in history
Highest debt and spending in history
Authoritarian laws to snoop at your computer
Clamp down on free speech everything else is hate talk
Only accept govt narrative on everything
Smart meters to vary charge by the half hour
Become dependent on Chinese products from coal fired power stations but shut our own
Be dependent on EU and Russia for energy when we have hundreds of years of supply in UK
Import wood chip from US
Give away N.Ireland to EU
Give away territorial waters to EU
Pay EU billions to be friends and nothing in return
Be under EU court control ie ECJ and ECHR
No GP appointments given to boat people
Health tourism welcomed and allowed by Hunt, 7 million UK citizens made to wait
This is what they have done, who would vote for that!
October 28, 2022
Well said, Hope. I dare the CONS to try and justify this to the electorate!
October 28, 2022
+1 They’ve lost the red wall and tory voters, I think they know there days are numbered …so they’re just doing whatever they like !
October 28, 2022
Too many families get back up benefits which encourages them not to look for a meaniful job, where 16 hours a week constitutes enough hours to get top up benefits. These jobs invariably areminimum wage. Where are the incentives to break the cycle. Can the country really afford to carry on this way of operating? The money involved in managing it has to be taken into the actual cost of the benefits.
October 28, 2022
Little incentives to pay more than the minimum wage (of to do extra hours or overtime) as if you do so little of the extra money gets to the employee after Tax/NI and loss of benefits and other costs of work like commuting they can get less then 10p of each extra £1 paid by the employer.
October 28, 2022
We are subsidising women who claim they have no partners to look after their children (whilst wanting more and more tax off parents that do work) and those who work part-time and say they only do 16 hours-20 hours.
This full range of benefits should only exist until the child reaches school age, and the mother should be expected to work school hours. There are plenty of care vacancies and other part-time vacancies in everything from shops to telephone sales, from nursery care to teaching assistants, from cleaning to cooking, accounting to payroll, and customer services to hospital cleaning and caring. 35 years out of work, which one mother I know achieved with a well-spaced out four children, leaves them incapable of ever being economically active.
If a married woman is out of work looking after her own child at her working partners expense then up to the age of 5 why can’t she have her full personal allowance moved to her partner to get the £2514 tax allowance or £48 per week, it is a lot less than if she kicks him out and gets her rent paid on the state.
October 28, 2022
and what about absent fathers – enjoy the benefits of shacking up until she gets pregnant and scarper.
Often refusing to name the man who ‘likely’ fathered the child, they get the benefits without the pain of confronting the man.
October 28, 2022
I know a couple of absent fathers who got kicked out because Mum was better off on benefits, they have to cough up £350 and £400 per month.
October 28, 2022
a-tracy – and plenty who default – mum has to put up with it or contact the authorities who need to track them down – – – right up to ending fulltime education.
October 28, 2022
Why even bother to work 16 hours when you can do no work at all? You are free to work on the side and pay no tax at all while collecting your benefits and all the extras that go with it. Take someone working for a meagre wage. They could be earning hardly anymore than a recipient of benefits but get none of the perks they get. Those on benefits have been given the most help for the cost of living crisis. Those on a low wage have received alot less. Benefits are too lucrative now and too easy to keep claiming whole sitting on your backside doing nothing. I have them living either side of me and believe me when I say they are not going without . How do you feed a cat and 4 dogs, one of which is a Great Dane and have a half share in a horse on benefits? It can be done as my neighbour proves.
October 28, 2022
@FUS; Well unless you are advocating such people contact the knackers yard whenever they loose work or hours…
Yes some people will find ways of feeding their pets, in such circumstances, perhaps by missing meals themselves.
October 28, 2022
Jerry. I can assure you my neighbours are not starving themselves. One look tells you that. If you are not aware of people ‘working the system’ then I suggest you get out more. Nobody is saying that everyone is conning the system but some have been claiming benefits for years and continue after the children are adults. Indeed many of their children then go down the same route. Dont tell me that’s not the case. I know examples of this personally.
October 28, 2022
@FUS; “people ‘working the system”
Oh you mean like how some use tax avoidance methods, claiming all the tax allowances they can, perhaps not being 100% truthful about how the tax deductibles came about etc – everyone plays the tax system, probably even more so if ones parents also do/did. Don’t get me wrong, I in no way condone benefits scroungers/cheats, anymore than I condone those who legally or otherwise ‘work the tax system’…
October 28, 2022
They could be claiming for more children that they actually have. People seem to get away with massive benefit fraud, and they are the ones we find out about. How many are never caught?
October 28, 2022
I think being on benefits means free vet care.
October 28, 2022
@turboterrier; “Too many families get back up benefits which encourages them not to look for a meaniful job”
Such “meaningful” jobs first need to be available and then accessible to such people, and as you say, rates of pay are not generally in the gift of PAYE employee, nor the actual hours available. Many UK employers appear to limit available hours to each employee to less than 16 hours per week as that means employment and tax laws are for part time workers, not full time, such as simpler hire and fire rules, so do not necessarily assume those claiming top-up benefits are themselves choosing to limit their hours…
To break the cycle you describe, first we need break the political and economic cycles that have become dominant here in the UK over the last 43 years. Strange how countries such as Germany do not appear to have the problems the UK does, but then trade unions are stronger [1], whilst a large proportion of the population rent rather than own their homes, meaning they are perhaps more able to move to find “meaningful” work.
[1] but strikes are seen as a last resort because of effective and legally enforced employee representation on company boards etc, there being a far more consolatory than adversarial approach
October 28, 2022
Jerry, why do you believe it is easier to hire and fire part-timers? My understanding is they have to be treated the same. Pay SSP sick pay to part-timers and SSP holiday pay. Pay pro-rata holidays and treat them exactly the same as full time workers on any other perks and benefits a company offers.
October 28, 2022
@a-tracy; Are you referring to the “Part-time Work Directive 1997”?
October 29, 2022
https://www.gov.uk/part-time-worker-rights
The main statutory protection for part-time workers is contained in the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000).
My Aunt worked for a big public sector employer for over 40 years part-time and I remember a big row many years ago that they had been excluded from the pension and I think they used the Equal Rights Act of 1970 because the pension was compulsory for full time staff but part time staff were excluded.
Part time staff have equal access to employment tribunals in my experience there are no simpler rules for hiring or firing part time workers, in fact you get the same cost to do the interviewing for potentially only half the output of a full time worker.
Other legislation includes:
The Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 (Amendment) Regulations 2002 (SI 2002/2035)
The Equality Act 2010
The Employment Rights Act 1996
The Work and Families Act 2006.
October 28, 2022
Debtors’ Prison used to emphasise the importance of personal responsibility as a harsh extreme.
Minimum Wage laws have reversed that attitude to confinement sat at home on a couch.
People accept a job if it is worth doing. Employers pay the acceptable rate or lose business.
Govt interference subsidises employers for less worthwhile jobs.
People should work and buy at the market rate.
Govt should support them if they are unable until they are able.
October 28, 2022
@bloke; “Debtors’ Prison”
How many people would ever sign a HP/credit agreement, never mind one for a 3x+ annual salary mortgage, if faced with that threat/possibility hanging over them. Let’s be honest, whilst no doubt the consumer likes to have the new house, car, 70″ TV or whatever it is the builder, retailer, manufacture who push the “BNPL” culture, because they need to show those ‘sales’ on their bottom lines.
“People should work and buy at the market rate.”
Indeed, so no more tax relief or allowances either then?… 😛
October 28, 2022
jerry:
Prison wasn’t proposed but merely mentioned as what used to be. Sales occur only if the end-user accepts. Tax inflates prices and reduces demand. Govt uses tax to pay for what it buys & moderate behaviour, but over-complicates. Relief and allowances are like correcting mistakes. Taxing solely energy at source might feed through to all prices fairly without such muddle. However, lengthy tax rules are increasingly entangled beyond what even specialists can understand or steer through.
October 29, 2022
@bloke; Sorry, yes I did understand your jesting about Debtors’ Prison, and I did add smiley at the end of the post; but more seriously, consumer law should make such contracts very clear, the use of the word “Credit” should be banned, the customer is agreeing to take out a DEBT for which they are personally liable for.
“Tax inflates prices and reduces demand”
Nonsense, people simply live within their means, whatever the tax level, after all 60-70 years ago the UK had very high levels of taxation yet the economy was booming, so much so the then PM told us we had never had it so good! Yet if truth be know, the economy was probably running far to hot by then, meaning tax (and/or interest) rates were actually to low, given history tells us that economic miracle was about to burst.
October 29, 2022
Jerry:
I thank you for your added info. My ref to tax increasing prices and reducing demand was in situations such as increasing VAT. Someone might want to buy a garden shed but its increased price might result in no sale.
October 28, 2022
You say “Councils build large commercial property portfolios in their areas on borrowed money in time to lose a lot in a falling property market. Why let them borrow this money?”
Indeed, this is clearly grossly unfair competition for other property developers too especially as they often control the planning system too. Unfair competition between the state sector and the private sector should be addressed by government & competition authorities. It is huge in education, healthcare, social housing, transport and elsewhere. It leads to a huge lack of efficiency and innovation. Hard to compete with free healthcare, social housing, subsidised buses or trains or free schools. If you want to use private healthcare you have to pay four times over once in taxes for the NHS (that you are not using), tax on the money earned to pay you medical insurance premium, the insurance premium itself and 12% IPT tax on top. Similar for schools but without the IPT – though socialists like Gove wants 20% VAT on them too.
Fair competition, efficiency and sensible innovation are thus killed or damaged hugely.
October 28, 2022
‘We want to rewire the entire global financial system for net zero’. Sunak
Digital Marxism
October 28, 2022
The man is clearly a deluded socialist with either zero understanding of climate, energy engineering/economics or science or he is lying & he realises Net Zero is a complete con trick, but thinks it suits his personal agenda or he (wrongly) thinks there are votes in this hugely net harmful, net zero, climate alarmist lunacy.
October 28, 2022
LL
I suddenly realised the importance of your PPE theory.
Of course!
THAT is how so many politicians were convinced that there are viable alternatives to petrol and meat and oil and milk and eggs and all the lovely things we rely on.
Wonder if they are waking up yet to the fact that there just ARE NOT!
October 28, 2022
I think PPE graduates and Law graduates very often think you can change the laws of physics, energy and engineering as easily as passing laws in Parliament. They even believe people who claim they can tell you the climate in 100 years when they cannot tell you what it will be a week on Monday!
October 28, 2022
Lol
+many
October 29, 2022
@LL; “I think PPE graduates and Law graduates very often think you can change the laws of physics, energy and engineering”
As do some Landlords, it seems! After all if they themselves had any meaningful Degrees, even C&G or NVQ style qualifications, you would be making your fortune designing & manufacturing the latest and greatest ‘widget’, not renting out bedsits to students. 😛
The aims of ‘Net Zero’ are noble (given fossil fuels are finite), and achievable eventually, the problem is the UN (COP & IPCC) inspired woke need and their time-scale, thus all the non-commercial white elephants it is spawning; more haste, less speed, as Isambard Kingdom Brunel might have said…
October 28, 2022
I assume this means deter investment in fossil fuels even to further push up the cost of energy and make it less reliable and less on demand. Great plan Sunak!
October 28, 2022
all part of the plan supported by apparatchiks and misguided WEF who both want all the people to reach base level living standards to allow total control.
October 28, 2022
Spot on. It’s why the Globalists deliberately destabilised the markets to bring down Truss/Kwarteng and install THEIR choice for PM.
He’s not “our” Prime Minister. He’s theirs.
October 28, 2022
Maybe that should be rephrased as “There is no point in the UK achieving Net Zero unless the rest of the world also actively tries to achieve this”, that’s if NZ can be proven to achieve it’s stated aim of limiting climate change in the first place….
October 28, 2022
Dom.
Interesting article on The Conservative Woman website this morning about Mr Sunak.
October 28, 2022
Thanks for providing the quote Dom …I believe its still Sunaks policy
October 28, 2022
When is government going to get rid of all the quangos and external committees and advisors?
It is reported JRM plans to cut back all the EU laws that frustrate business’s could be scaled back.
When are the government going to actually put a real cost on NZ and how it is going to be paid? Is this behind those trying to ŕemove charitable status from the GWPF to stop the questioning of the costs and information being readily available to the critical masses?
October 28, 2022
The GWPF are part of the same 55 Tufton St collective who gave us Truss and Kwarteng’s fiscal event.
Given how damaging that proved for ordinary working people up and down the country, we don’t need any more of their ideas anywhere near government policy. People can’t afford it.
October 28, 2022
Another way to save money (& CO2 should that wrongly concern you) is not to send anyone to COP27. Sunak at least is not going but the Alok Sharma’s team are. Sharma even has a BSc in Applied Physics & Electronics albeit from Salford – but still he should surely know enough so as not to be taken in by this exaggerated net zero, “CO2 is a World thermostat” religion. CO2 certainly is no such thing. He certainly should know that EVs increase CO2 and most solutions being pushed wind, solar, bikes, walking really save little or no CO2 either when fully accounted for. He was an accountant too.
Or does he know but is just good at acting & producing tears and hankies on demand?
October 28, 2022
+many
And I guess they will be rowing or jogging there?
Apparently the Net Z zealots are going after methane now…an excuse to cull even more farm animals in order to sell us “plant food”.
So we actually will freeze and starve within a very small travel radius.
Already in Oxford you can’t drive between zones I believe.
If MPs really can’t see what is really going on, then what? They are fully on board the agenda?
With us or agin us!
October 28, 2022
Spot on …its now them or us, the same people who we voted for have became the enermy
October 28, 2022
++100
October 28, 2022
If they row or jog there they will produce more CO2 than flying. Human food will power them and it is very inefficient to produce.
October 29, 2022
Because obviously in his immense wisdom Lifelogic knows that people travelling by plane do not need eating. One can wonder why there are so many eateries in airports, or meals served in medium- and long-flights.
How is it possible that such a multi-BSc repetitious neuroatypical man could tell us such stupidities that so many contributors here consider as relevant?
October 28, 2022
I’m waiting to hear the Just Stop Oil protestors supergluing themselves to John Kerry’s private jet. I’d laugh at that.
October 28, 2022
Please stop rescuing them, let them be, leave them glued, just walk by, and stop our emergency services and police from providing any assistance
October 28, 2022
Glen I couldn’t agree more.
October 28, 2022
They actually did that somewhere…in a car showroom I think.
The staff just turned off the lights, locked up and went home! Leaving the glued ones cold, hungry and in need of the loo!
The howls! 😂
October 28, 2022
brilliant
October 28, 2022
sadly the Police eventually turned up, rescuing them rather than attend burglaries.
October 28, 2022
A good report 28/10 on Conservative Woman (TCW ) site ” The Climate Scaremongers: Reality catches up with the electric car ” Also suggests savings by removal of GOV subsidies.
October 28, 2022
The costs of our public services involved in these pathetic disruptive protests should be claimed back from those actually physically involved and the people behind the scenes orchestrating the movement. The money must be coming from somewhere. If those engaged in actively protesting are on any benefits they should be automatically cancelled.
October 28, 2022
Hear, hear Turbo.
October 28, 2022
They should also be made to sort out the damage and clean any property they have thrown disgusting things at. This nation is far too soft on vandals.
October 28, 2022
Agree 100%, FUS. Soft justice is merely an invitation to keep on doing whatever they are doing.
October 28, 2022
I agree.
Those groups involved with disruptive protests should be sent a bill for the costs involved.
Why should the taxpayers have to foot the bill?
I would also like to see these businesses that have had orange paint sprayed over their frontages, take these clowns to court, to recover the costs involved with clearing up their mess.
October 28, 2022
All sound ideas, ones many have been begging for, for far too long. Policies promised over and over again only to be reneged on the minute bums are on seats in Parliament.
Everything seems to be about placating those with other ideas i.e we’ve had Labour in charge from Cameron onward in many of these areas.
Is it all too late I wonder. These sound principles have been missing in action for far too long and others with very different views have taken over just about everywhere not least the media, education and politics in general.
I had parents who voted differently to one another, yet there was much common ground between them on many of the items listed in this article. I doubt they were unusual. I think it used to be the way of things which helped us have a good place to live. People were connected.
There is now a yawning chasm where there was once common ground on important things such as immigration, law and order (one law all were equal before, not a tailored one to suit multi-culture that no one ever voted for) personal responsibility, sound education as some example.
October 28, 2022
As Michelle Dewberry pointed out on GB News last night, there is a real need for a center right party to come along because the polls and surveys are pointing to this. Fat chance all the time we have PR. We need a change and a new start but we’re not going to get it with this lot.
October 28, 2022
On a slightly different note but indicative of all that’s wrong, I notice the side bar tweets.
Why should the water companies need to be asked to do their job???
Tell them to do it, it’s what we are paying for.
Unbelievable, and we wonder why things have gone so terribly wrong.
October 28, 2022
‘We’ are spending this amount, ‘we’ are spending that amount, you say, Sir John. No, ‘we’ are not spending the money, it is your colleagues voting or ministers deciding to spend it, supposedly on our behalf. Yes, big reductions are necessary in the areas you mention, but the problem is that ‘they’ don’t listen to you. International lobbies seem to dictate the decisions to be taken, not the views of the public. As for MPs, I doubt whether many of them have the knowledge to understand the points you make regarding economic issues.
October 28, 2022
The Hof C seems full of sheep, was this the motive in PPC selection built up over years and elections?
October 28, 2022
If pensions and benefits go up in line with inflation does that mean that the recipients are benefitting twice – first, from the inflation-protection, and, second, from having had their energy bills subsidised?
P.S. I’m disappointed to hear more talk on the radio this morning about ‘windfall taxes’ on energy companies. If the oil companies are making bigger profits then the Chancellor already has a windfall coming, doesn’t he?
October 28, 2022
He can’t tax Saudi sovereign wealth.
October 28, 2022
It depends on where the profits are reported and how much magical cross border accounting goes on, eg “transfer pricing”
October 28, 2022
Good morning Sir John
‘Build it and they will come’
From a Government/State/Establishment point of view create a department then the first instinct is to protect and insulate – create an empire.
We saw similar when Taxpayers money was handed to the NHS during the pandemic, the management didn’t set about creating more front line medical staff to cope, no they set about building their own personal empire with ‘diversity management’ staff.
The first rule of spending taxpayers money should be ‘real’ value for money. Money that heads off to build Empires at the expense of delivering service should be a No, No. Taxpayer money used for personal political pronouncements is also a No, No, we have a sort of elected HoC for our politics.
Taxpayer money going to any entity with out direct accountability to the taxpayer(elected chamber) is a No, No.
Governments once in power become deluded, they don’t have and don’t spend their own money, they are custodians of what they nowadays seem steal from people pockets
October 28, 2022
+many
Agree 100%
A deferred life
Hard work 11+ onwards. No promises ever kept.
Deferred salary…never repaid
Deferred enjoyment…never achieved
Grudging pension…taxed to the hilt by a Tory government!
October 28, 2022
Sir Johns suggestions are correct, but there are many more savings to be had, but for some reason the government are reluctant to act.
The people will be unhappy if they bear the brunt of these cuts when savings which have little effect on them could be found first.
It looks like Sir John needs support from other like minded mp’s.
October 28, 2022
Stephen Reay
Like minded MPs?
Not a lot of them in parliament sadly.
About 50 tops. Nearly all of them banished to the back benches. The rest are neither use or ornament..
October 28, 2022
Not many MPs seem interested in Christopher Chope’s vaccine harms bill. Sad.
October 29, 2022
+1
October 28, 2022
The gross inefficiency and incompetence of NHS management processes is unbelievable – to anyone who has not experienced their attitudes over many decades! I could fill a page with current issues, including the remark by a social worker that the NHS’ system of NON-communication with each other and patients was Byzantine. And someone with the time should check out the huge number of Boards and Committees within the national NHS structure, all of which come with salaries and expenses.
October 28, 2022
+1
October 28, 2022
Heated swimming pools eh?
How about the other end of the “unfairness” spectrum? The benefits hot tubs, the constant, noisy parties?
I’m rapidly coming round to the view that the energy companies should in some way have taken the hit.
October 28, 2022
The energy companies should have no standing charges and a few units PA at cost price to help those who really need help. The true cost price of gas is only about 7p KWH and electricity from coal or gas less than 12p per KWH. The reason the cost far more than this to consumers is due to taxes, government market manipulation, net zero, lack of fair competition and excess profits/red tape for some suppliers.
October 28, 2022
Oh is this the endless playing of the record about Sunaks millions?
I’ve got far more against him being PM than the fact he’s wealthy. All PM’s have been wealthy in comparison to me, all MP’s are wealthy in comparison to me.
Some of the wealthiest people I know and have met are socialists and marxist.
I don’t think Sunak’s wealth came from the public purse did it?
I think those at the BBC playing this record really are off the scale with their hypocrisy, trying to pretend they are somehow going to feel the pinch the same as average Joe public.
Where are their consciences regarding the huge salaries many of them are on, and that does come out of the public’s purse even the poor.
October 28, 2022
Who mentioned Sunak? Does he have a heated swimming pool?
JR mentioned them in his article above.
If you take the trouble to read my remark you will see that it is benefit recipients I rail against.
They live the life of Riley and ruin mine with their high on the hog, noisy lifestyles!
October 28, 2022
Yesterday the Telegraph reported “Shell dodges windfall tax despite profits doubling” I like others presumed that it then inferred double profits in the UK meant their tax payments would as well.
However, as with International Companies while they create their money in the UK and enjoy the benefits of its taxpayer funded infrastructure they don’t pay tax in the UK. The Chancellor raising Corporation Tax from 19% to 25% means nothing to them, zero payment will still be zero payment. Its not illegal but why when you have choice would you pay tax in one of the highest levied Countries in the World?
Its the Tax system that is wrong, it penalises the indigenous companies that have to subsidise the Intentional Companies. International Companies get to enjoy the wealth, health and infrastructure for free while the other pays double to ensure it is there for everyone.
Tax should be everyone contributing equally.
The Chancellor/Government is punishing the taxpayer with a 70 year high for no other reason than it continues with its own prolific Empire Building creating ‘jobs-for-boys’, while heaping the cost of this miss management onto a shrinking wealth creating pool.
‘Its the economy stupid’
October 28, 2022
Good points, but it would seem that those in charge have a different agenda to what is actually required to get this country viable. How long before we all realise this?
We can see the waste all around us – huge sums are allocated to black holes all the time, that offer no hope of any return, with quangos and ministers forever seeking new ways to increase our debt burden.
The new, and should we say, unmandated regime, has already shown its destructive intent for the country, and one wonders what state we will be in when they reach their final target of absolute net-zero-insolvency.
An election would cure nothing, considering what the opposition parties have in mind for us if they ever get power – we are in between a big rock and a high cliff, waiting to be crushed or chucked to our general demise …. SO, where do we go from here?
Support the foul measures being imposed on us, or?
October 28, 2022
None of it makes sense and none of it is done in OUR interests.
What Sir John is alluding to, via his very tactful critique of Establishment/LibCON policy, is that they are not working in OUR interests. They are Globalists and they are doing what the Globalists require to be done.
Hence the decision to scrap even the possibility of fracking in the UK. The EU introduced a policy of energy-interdependence 15 or so years ago (and was in the planning for far longer) and we are not to be allowed to become energy independent. Energy security is verboten.
October 28, 2022
Mr. Redwood- why doesn’t your party and your government listen to you?
October 28, 2022
Because unlike JR they have no interest whatsoever in the well being of the country or its prosperity.
And they fear clever, capable people like JR.
October 28, 2022
Sir John hasn’t gone along with ‘on message’.
October 28, 2022
I was no fan of Liz Truss as part of the Boris Johnson Cabinet she was equally responsible for the mess Boris and Rishi created for the UK economy and the 70 year high in taxation.
However, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, albeit presented badly, did understand it was all about the economy and the need to grow it. They didn’t go around singing about how they were going to correct the Boris/Rishi mistakes. Their enemy wasn’t the UK electorate, it was the Establishment, the Orthodoxy, the UK’s Foreign Competitors and those that think they run the World(WEF, IMF etc).
Every entity with undemocratic pseudo World Rule aspirations didn’t like their own World being rocked by someone trying to get on with life and remembering for them it is the people that elected them they serve.
Aided by an ever increasing left leaning MsM they got the usual Socialist diatribe spin in action to pull them down. The usual lazy MsM joined the throng without thinking or checking, negative equals a ‘good story’, truth doesn’t figure. Now we are left with an anti Brexit, WEF obedient servants that will trash the UK before supporting it, and see their own thief-doms grow while the Country shrinks.
It is still about the Economy, no economy equals no tax. Governments the World over are notoriously bad at spending someone else’s money.
October 28, 2022
Off topic, so Northern Ireland is heading for fresh elections to the Assembly in December, which are unlikely to change anything, and how has it come to this? This is from last October:
https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2021/10/01/bottlenecks-and-opportunities/#comment-1264289
“It’s October, another month has gone by, Lord Frost is still hanging back from doing what he keeps saying he would do if the EU left him with no choice but to do it, but maybe in reality Boris Johnson would never allow him to do it anyway, and in any case it would not necessarily be the right thing to do without having first put in place an alternative control system to protect the EU Single Market and so deflect some of the international condemnation when we unilaterally dump the protocol, an alternative system foreshadowed in paragraphs 43 and 62 of the July Command Paper.”
And so forth.
What I hadn’t realised then is that an alternative control system could so easily be set up by the trade secretary making an Order to extend the remit of the existing Export Control Joint Unit:
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/export-control-joint-unit
Just add:
“Export controls: all goods carried across the land border into the Irish Republic”
as a third category of goods for which export licences might be required, granted on condition that the goods met the requirements of the EU Single Market, thus rendering redundant the pernicious EU import controls.
Do those leading the so-called “Conservative and Unionist” party secretly want to dump Northern Ireland?
October 28, 2022
Can I expect the government to announce that it will be sending no-one to any future WEF meetings?
October 28, 2022
I almost fell off my chair
October 28, 2022
nor EU discussions, UN, GDPR, COP meetings….
October 28, 2022
John,
Just help the Reform party write their next manifesto, its more likely to influence actually implemented policy than a back bench government MP, or any Conservative manifesto.
October 28, 2022
We live in an elective dictatorship with no real opposition and MPs who seem to have more desire to represent global interests rather than those of the constituents they purport to represent. If our democracy is not dead it is in its death throes. How can you bear to be part of this?
October 28, 2022
Correct – I don’t see any party championing freedom, sovereignty, capitalism, Christianity, British culture & pride, British first ….nor lower taxation, smaller goverment, elected lords etc
October 28, 2022
The place in the world where respect for laws and democracy is/was observed.
Oh my aching sides.
October 28, 2022
The Capital Market has now got its preferred captain on the UK ship of state bridge. Have a read of “Brexit & The City: The Impact So Far April 2021 Brexit by Eivind Friis Hamre & William Wright” at “New Financial”.
In October 2016 David Davis MP, when he was Brexit secretary, told the Banking and Finance industry that it was strong enough to stand on its own two feet and didn’t need special government support. Then he prioritised the UK fishing industry over the two hundred times bigger finance industry. This was compounded by the BoE not wanting to sign up to any “equivalence” agreements, saying it would be ‘problematic’ to sign up to equivalence if it meant becoming a rule-taker from Brussels again.
To quote New Financial blog: “Australian-style: the irony is that while the UK government insisted last year that it had nothing to fear from an ‘Australian-style’ trade deal (euphemism for ‘No Deal’), in financial services it has ended up with what might be described as ‘Australia minus’: Australia, more than 10,000 miles from London, officially has better access to EU financial markets than the UK (it has equivalence in 19 areas, just behind Canada on 20 and the US on 23).” The UK had two at that time of writing, Jan 2021.
October 28, 2022
I see the treasury officials told Truss that if her budget went ahead UK would enter a 20 year slump and be reduced to 3rd world status. Good old Project Fear never fails. Of course they won’t tell Starmer that when he borrows to spend.
October 28, 2022
How right you are and it really is that obvious isn’t it, with reference to you last sentence.
Likewise the media deciding who we will be governed by and how we will be governed.
October 28, 2022
We live in hope (permanently) that the CONS will actually deliver on some of their promises. So far, it has been restricted to net zero (and even accelerated), which few want anyway. Why does the government hang onto wasteful spending on non-essentials?
Why are we spending £billions on ‘uninvited guests’? I hear Sunak wants to renegotiate with Macron to deter the boats, and no doubt Macron will want £million for doing absolutely nothing, and our appeasing government will give him whatever he asks for and expect NOTHING in return. Is this just another stealthy way of feeding taxpayers money to the EU?
October 29, 2022
Well EDF have 50% of reactors offline (PWR’s). I wonder if our EU remainers knew of all the problems and when they knew it, before entering into these EDF contracts. The French State being controlled via the globalist EU.
October 28, 2022
Benefits and pensions must be held at average wage rises. There is case for pensions to be tied to average market gains/losses as they would be with a private pension but I would not do that yet.
There is no reason why those in receipt of taxpayer funds (and yes I know that pensioners have paid in throughout their lives hence my point about market gains/losses) should be insured against inflation in a way that PAYE serfs are not.
The gas and electricity bailout should be limited to average use.
Immigration – can we make them sew mailbags? Reduce their living standards as far as possible, do not give them spending money and deport once processed.
Cut the number so MPs and Lords and their hangers on.
Make the devolved administrations collect a local tax for their running costs. Same with local authorities, give them no money centrally but allow them to raise any monies they need through Council tax and local business rates. Make them self sufficient.
Abolish Mayors and PCCs
Suspend gift aid
Suspend the workplace pension scheme.
October 28, 2022
Abolish all specifically diversity roles. HR should be for all not just the few.
October 28, 2022
Please ”Abolish Mayors and PCCs”
October 28, 2022
I could vote for this manifesto in its entirety.
“We spend large sums on benefits for people born and legally settled here whilst inviting in hundreds of thousands of migrants to take the jobs. The state incurs large bills to provide the new arrivals with homes, school places, health facilities etc Let’s get people already here into work.”
Thank you.
Let’s focus on training via FE, traditional apprenticeships and incentivise businesses to train employees. Even those on welfare should be able to contribute to community service and receive skills training in return.
October 28, 2022
Thank you SecretPeople for highlighting this common sense suggestion, but I have to ask … why isn’t the government doing that already? It should be a permanent policy!
October 28, 2022
Spending money on skills training for the unemployed would be hugely beneficial.
We can spend money in Foreign Aid allegedly to help with skills, education etc., we have a wonderful package of training etc. on all those the Conservatives have boasted of bringing in. Yet seem to drag our feet giving our own a helping hand up if they have genuinely fallen on hard times.
October 28, 2022
None of these sensible ideas will be adopted. The baton has been passed to yet another WEF agenda following fifth columnist, who wants to break the UK, to enable the ultimate goal of the introduction of a digital currency. This will enable the government to have total control of our money and what we will be allowed to spend it on.
Expect more net zero, more attacks on our food production, and more travel restrictions to be put in place. Look at the new proposed travel zoning in Oxford and Canterbury and see where our country is going, where residents can’t drive outside their zone more than the allotted number of times per year. A Chinese-style social credit system is where we are headed.
If the few half-decent politicians don’t make the move to a new party soon then all will be lost.
October 28, 2022
Ask yourself why the authorities don’t crack down on the eco protestors or why they actively encourage thousands of Albanian criminals to enter the country or why the grooming gangs are allowed to operate. It is so the public is primed to accept draconian measures on protesting and curbing crime. This isn’t to stop the above it’s to stop ordinary people from protesting when government policy starts to affect their lives. Be very careful when allowing things like the online harms bill and curtailing protests.
October 28, 2022
+100
Exactly!
October 28, 2022
“still the system resists any Minister”
Why, because Ministers are not in control of it, the Plebs within the HoL enjoy the patronage, it helps maintain their Ego’s! And, a nice little earner!
Take, for example, the Suella Braveman case, and whether she has the confidence of MI5, and the other Security Services?
You’ll find that it’s about the case she has made for the repeal of ECHR Act, and, as she has said; there is no other way to solve the illegal crossings.
So, who is positioning against her then? Who has the influence, and could use their position to influence the Security Services?
Well, simple ……………hiding within the HoL, that’s who!
They are the central architectures of the Re-joiner alliance!!!
And, they are trying to protect, or stop, the repeal of the high ground left aligned with the EU, so if they are to get us to re-join, they will need it in place!
It would to good to hear from RS(PM) if he is going to support the Home Secretory, and is he willing to repeal the ECHR Act?
If not;
He cannot get a suitable deal over the NI protocol!
He cannot send anyone to Rwanda, and will have to accept large flows of migration!
He cannot stop the Re-joiners seeking to undermine his Government, going into the next General Election! Labour, SNP, PC, SF, they will sort it out, NOT!
He needs to start, ASAP! Repeal ECHR Act!
Any thing else, will be BS, and we will know it!
BR
An EX_Tory_Voter!
October 28, 2022
“We continue to spend more than £1 bn a year on free smart meters and their promotion when anyone who wants one now presumably has one.”
BEIS know that wind power will not provide the “cheap, abundant and reliable power” promised in their Net Zero Strategy – Build Back Greener. There is no economic non-fossil fuel long-term back-up system. Hydrogen requires installed wind power capacity to be increased by 7.5 times and Li-ion batteries are impossibly expensive even if sufficient raw materials can be mined.
So wind energy will be expensive and intermittent requiring “volatile pricing” (quoting the Head of UK Strategy National Grid at a HoL Industry & Regulators Committee evidence session on 02/11/2021) and even rationing (rolling blackouts), euphemistically called “demand management”, to ensure that demand matches supply (reverse of today’s supply matching demand) and thus preventing the breakdown of the complete grid.
As admitted by the Head of UK Strategy National Grid at this meeting, the Net Zero Strategy is impossible without everyone being fitted with a smart meter.
October 28, 2022
Sounds like a criticism of another party.
But your leader and his ministers and government get your 100% loyalty so why should they they pay any attention to you – they know you are no danger and they can call on you if they need to.
Doesn’t matter how much they ruin us, you will be there.
October 28, 2022
“We spend large sums on benefits for people born and legally settled here whilst inviting in hundreds of thousands of migrants to take the jobs.”
The numbers working in the Civil Service, quangos, councils etc. are far too large for the size of our country.
Cutting back on tax-payer funded employees has the double advantage of not only cutting back state spending but also releases employees into the market to do real jobs.
October 28, 2022
If the government is deaf to yours and other mp’s saving suggestions, then threaten to change those at the top,you have the power.
October 28, 2022
SirJ could be the first ‘Reform Party’ MP in the house
October 28, 2022
Cutting spending needs to start with cancelling our unilateral Net Zero, a project which is so expensive that the Treasury refused to give the HoC Public Accounts Committee any costing. It is totally reckless to blow up fossil fuel power plants, defund fossil fuel exploration/production and force the country to depend upon Chinese supplied renewables with no non-fossil fuel replacement system in place for grid stability and long-term back-up. We are not going to be a prosperous country when our energy is insecure, expensive and intermittent and the electrical replacements impractical.
All to save our 1% contribution to global CO2 emissions and when there is no evidence that we have CAGW. Satellite data shows average global temperature rising by just 0.13 degrees C per decade and sea levels by 1.6 mm/year.
In fact we need to emit more CO2 into the atmosphere to promote food growth and prevent famines and to counter the sequestration of CO2 by shelled marine animals that has brought the CO2 down over the last 150 million years from many times its current level to just 180 ppm at the last ice age, just 30 ppm above the minimum for plants to survive.
In fact, if volcanos are no longer emitting sufficient CO2 into the atmosphere, a world-wide Net Zero Strategy, would eventually cause CO2 to drop below the level plants, and hence all life on earth can survive.
October 28, 2022
These are all reasonable points, but it begs the question: why is it still happening? I assume that the bulk of the Cabinet and the government’s backbenches aren’t unusually cognitively impaired relative to the rest of the human population- so I would be interested in any insights as to what is causing such blatant disfunction. In a normally functioning private enterprise (the ones that survive anyway) there are processes in place that largely prevent multi-billion pound investments that don’t have a proper business-case behind them. How is it that government decision-making is completely lacking these safeguards?
October 28, 2022
The cat is out of the bag:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-26/liz-truss-s-ouster-wasn-t-the-markets-doing
October 28, 2022
Now thats an interesting read …they say it was the BoE, I’d say it was the BoE with the encouragement of left woke Tory MPs
October 29, 2022
A pity he uses the customary rhetorical device of dissociating himself from the object of the injustice with an unjustified reference to inflation and unemployment, lest he come to reputational harm.
October 28, 2022
A week on and nothing has changed, apart from Sunak cancelling ‘Fracking’ there hasn’t been any new policies – the markets haven’t changed, the petrol pump price up again another 3p, domestic gas & electric supply the same high cost, inflation & food costs still high and getting higher, immigration high and getting higher ….but the pound is up against the dollar 2.5p to £1.16
It looks like we have all the same of Boris policies but without Boris
October 28, 2022
There are many stupid expenditures in each Government Department and the Chancellor knows this ; he , however can only direct them to cut a percentage back and impose a ” penalty ” charge if they do not do so .
On another matter the replies made are often too long and boring ; I hope Sir John invokes a discipline to control this .
October 28, 2022
280934Z
“… I was the only MP to say this was wrong.”
Two things at work here, Sir John: first, as I’ve mentioned so many times it must bore your readers, Parliament is f.a.p.p. scientifically and economically illiterate; secondly, the fear of being seen not to agree with the majority.
Other M.P.s and, disgracefully, members of the upper house do not want to be thought of as disagreeing with the ‘consensus’. This was a matter Liz Truss raised in a small way during her campaign for the leadership, in that case speaking of Treasury thought (contradiction/oxymoron?).
When she did, I thought, ‘I wonder whether she’ll extend that idea to the anthropogenic-climate-change fraud.’ Unfortunately we never found out owing largely to her and Quasi’s charging at the Treasury wie ein Elefant im Porzellanladen … as they say in Germany.
ΠΞ
October 28, 2022
Oh the folly of it all – cycle lanes
Everyday the common tax paying plebs see the folly of the governments spending, passing newly built empty cycle lanes that no-one is ever going to use. After a 2 year trial period, with almost zero usage my council has decided to build more, due the central funding & instruction …those green targets – oh the folly
October 28, 2022
an easy Government led saving….but they won’t.
October 28, 2022
“We continue to spend more than £1 bn a year on free smart meters and their promotion when anyone who wants one now presumably has one.”
Yep – 🙂
My supplier is pestering me to replace my old meters as they are apparently approaching the end of their certification period. I believe they are working fine and I have suggested this could be checked. The green solution would, of course, be to leave the meters in situ and maybe adjust them if necessary. I put this question to Ofgem, but they have so far declined to answer. A reply from my supplier is awaited.
There are also the reported potential security risks of cheap meters imported from China.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11321855/Chinese-smart-meters-threat-power-supplies-Britain-critics-fear.html
Who is in charge of all of this ?
October 28, 2022
I still don’t understand how a smart meter benefits the domestic consumer, as we’ve always had the ability to switch off lights and heating. It’s a con, a con that all our MPs voted for and made law …against the people & taxpayer
October 28, 2022
It is hard work persuading government to cut out waste and remove marginal or undesirable programmes you say JR. The government knows you haven’t got a clue who is spending what and why, so a “spokesman” can basically give you a glib answer knowing you can’t prove otherwise.
Which statutes are causing monies to be spent. You have no idea if or where the supposed waste is. You can’t prove if a programme is marginal or undsirable. Select Committee reports are rarely progressed.
The US Congress, the “legislature”, had a similar problem, it wanted to know what the “executive” was spending to the penny and got the Daily Tresuary Statement
https://fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/dts/
The UK has its executive embedded in and dominating the legislature, so any similar request would be overruled by the executive, not wanting such scrutiny of its spending that could be used against it.
October 28, 2022
Given you say you were the only Mp who objected to the BOE bonds sale fiasco says it all really, either most Mp’s are completely ignorant as to financial matters and how it all works, or they vote like sheep on party lines.
We will never resolve our problems whilst this is the norm.
As far as HS2 is Concerned has anyone actually seen the contracts that have been awarded ?
I guarantee that if when seen it will now cost more to stop it, than complete it, such is the incompetence of people who agree Government contracts.
Just look at the new ArmyTank purchase fiasco, billions paid, and a few delivered which are impossible to drive !
NHS funding increased massively in recent years with no apparent gain, front line staff appear to do a good job, but seem to be let down by management and administration chaos.
Is the NHS Pension scheme part of the HNS annual budget cost JR, or is this separately funded.
If not separate from the annual Budget then this is part of the problem, with so many organisations including the Police, Local Government etc etc, as all this extra funding will be going to pay for people who now contribute nothing to the present service.
October 28, 2022
Sir John,
On the Serco website you will find a page titled “Calling all landlords” which is an appeal for properties in the North West, Midlands and East of England. They are advertising for residential properties with leases of at least five years or more. They are offering rent paid in full, repair and maintenance, payment of utility and council tax bills, property management and no letting or management fees.
They state they are “responsible for over 30,000 asylum seekers in an ever growing portfolio of more than 6000 properties.”
This looks like a business that will keep growing no matter what the cost to the taxpayer.
October 28, 2022
A virtuous circle!
October 28, 2022
Mark
Yes, utter bloody madness.
What about our own homeless, many who have paid into the system for years, simply abandoned and left to get on with it !
Shameful really shameful.
When will the crass incompetence end.
October 28, 2022
Which Minister is supervising illegal immigrants?
Has he or she have the whereabouts of these people?
Where they are housed or residing in hotels around the country?
Has he or she the information of their progress through vetting before
they can stay and work or returned to god knows where?
Our local hotel was given over to down & out Brits.
We now have Afghans who have been with us for most of this year.
When will this Minister and his aids be invited to which ever select committee
to face questioning?
October 28, 2022
Clearly the Government needs to cut spending in order to satisfy “the markets”.
When coupled with world-wide inflation and the deliberately high energy prices of the Net Zero lunacy of replacing cheaper and more reliable fossil fuel and nuclear energy with expensive and intermittent wind, many people will suffer severely reduced living standards.
In which case I wouldn’t be betting on the Conservatives winning the next election if they continue also with their current plans for legal immigration at over 1m/year and inability to deal with illegal immigration now at invasion level where unidentified young men of fighting age, many of whom are now alleged to be Albanians seeking non-taxpaying/black market jobs, if not actually involved in criminal activity, are given free (and warm) accommodation, free health (and dental) and social care, £40/week pocket money and the complete freedom to roam our streets.
October 28, 2022
You say “This week saw the foolish decision to bankroll the Bank of England to lose £11 bn this year to let them take losses on bonds they do not need to sell.I was the only MP to say this was wrong.”
After Truss’ mini statement pension funds sold guilts heavily to increase their cash positions, this caused a run, and a drop in values.
The Bank of England bought to stop the run.
Prices rallied and now the Bank is selling in a recovered market.
How can this cause us an £11 billion loss?
In the past you have intimated that this is a choice for them, suggesting that it isn’t a necessity, which in turn points to a resale rather than a new flotation.
October 28, 2022
It is hard work persuading government’s.
No Sir John, its bloody nigh impossible as they seem to change the minute they are promoted and lose all common sense and understanding. Talk a lot but don’t listen and operate in cabinet auto pilot.
October 28, 2022
A good report 28/10 on Conservative Woman (TCW ) site ” The Climate Scaremongers: Reality catches up with the electric car ” Also suggests savings by removal of GOV subsidies.
October 28, 2022
Henry Bolton OBE has said on Talk TV this morning that much of the £40 billion black hole could be plugged by dealing with the various costs involved in dealing with the migrant crisis – which continue to increase on a daily basis.
However, all we likely see is the usual ‘easy options’ being taken. With various amounts being lopped off the easy targets in Government spending.
Public services and spending are in dire need of urgent reform. Yet, I doubt Rishi has the backbone to do so.
Most eople are not going to be prepared to stump up yet more of their earnings in tax for various public services that do not deliver. Nor support those who can’t be bothered to do a days work, or have no legal right to be here.
October 28, 2022
Once again the suggestion that the only concern about illegal immigration is that it is ‘dangerous’ to the participants. If this were the case, the solution would be to distribute free Eurostar tickets in Calais. Will no politician consider the indigenous British people who never voted to be displaced from their own country? I live near an arterial road four miles from Birmingham Centre and one by one all the pubs on that road have closed and become businesses suited to the Replacement Population. The migrants aren’t fools, and would vigorously oppose deliberate alteration to the demography of their own countries.
October 28, 2022
What is going to happen to all of this office estate?
Around us, large buildings are just empty. I can’t see people going back to larger-scale office operations in the public sector and that’s the sector that rents these big places and banks that seem to be streamlining too.
October 28, 2022
When foreign criminals abuse our hospitality and get prison terms, do we reach any agreements with their home nations to put them in their prisons, most of those would be cheaper per head than ours, even if we have to pay for it?
October 28, 2022
I bet Sunak will re-introduce the 0.7% foreign aid budget this year
October 28, 2022
It’s probably a lot more than 0.7% glen when you consider the rescue operation in the Channel, the hotels, legal aid, phones, clothes and allowance we’re spending on foreign nationals rocking up in dinghies. I think I read on a comment here its costing £2bn.
October 28, 2022
“We spend large sums on benefits for people born and legally settled here”
For Income Support (IS) or Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), you are classed as working full time if you do 16 hours or more paid work per week. There is help available for single parents who work 16 hours a week or more. It covers help with rent, council tax, tax credits and other sources of financial help. The benefit cap inside Greater London is: £442.31 per week (£23,000 a year) if you’re in a couple. £442.31 per week (£23,000 a year) if you’re a single parent and your children live with you. £296.35 per week (£15,410 a year) if you’re a single adult.
Just how many adults do we have only working 16 hours per week and living on benefits?
October 28, 2022
I am puzzled. Many people are facing heat or eat decisions. You’d think, given the rise in energy prices, that the energy companies (there is SUPPOSED to be competition!) would charge a fair price – their cost plus a reasonable profit – so that they would be competitive.
But, no, they have all jacked up their prices and are making record profits – and our moronic, idiotic government responds by borrowing money to reduce our bill.
So, to recap, our government is borrowing money to give directly (via our bills) to the energy companies who are making vast, windfall profits. I think calling them moronic and idiotic is justified. Or are they corrupt? I never thought I’d write these words (after Blair and Brown) but
ROLL ON A LABOUR GOVERNMENT.
No-one could be this useless.
October 28, 2022
LABOUR DIED IN 1979
October 28, 2022
and any resemblance to Conservatives followed suit quickly after MrsT.
October 28, 2022
Correct – and the Labour, Tory & Greens parties merged in 1990s. There are only two democratic parties left; the Reform Party and the Monster Raving Loony Party …one will get my vote
October 28, 2022
We can’t go on spending money so recklessly. When will the government listen? Or (heaven forefend) is their true aim to turn us into a third world country? Who is pulling their strings?
October 28, 2022
It is astonishing how many people seem genuinely to believe that the government has a bottomless purse! This morning on Woman’s Hour, people wanted free childcare, child minders to be paid the Living Wage, people with children to get more handouts, etc. In the old days, one spouse went out to work, for a reasonable salary, and the other stayed at home to bring up the children and to teach them their own family’s values, not to be indoctrinated with the “entitlement” and envious ethos which is bringing down our country. We are funding the whole world! If they arrive by sea, we may put them in plush hotels, feed them, clothe them, educate them and kowtow to their every need. Anybody with a health problem uses our International Health Service. The only people who don’t get a look-in are the indigenous British, who are at the bottom of every waiting list.
I think that the state is taking far too much on itself. The main business of the government, imo, is the defence of the realm, and we have been cutting our defence budget for donkey’s years. As a result, we now have a huge fifth column hiding, waiting its time before overwhelming us, and we simply don’t have the forces to protect ourselves. We should leave all social welfare to local charities, which are vastly better at weeding out charletons and imposters. Faith groups should support their own – and many did, during the lockdowns. (Secularism is as much a faith as any other.) Conservatives should leave the Tory Party, which has been socialist for years, and I suggest should regroup with John Redwood as leader. Otherwise, the country is done for. It may be too late already.
October 28, 2022
I quite agree that sensible savings could and should be made, but I can’t let this pass without again mentioning the plight of those amongst us who are on frozen pensions. My wife and I live in Canada having paid for our UK State pensions for 40 years. Because of the arbitrary action of politicians our pensions have been frozen, in our case for 20 years! What with the fall in the value of the £ what we now get is very little indeed with no chance of any rectification.
If you are to continue throwing money away what about to us?
October 28, 2022
How much do they give each of you per week, Richard?
Did you both work full-time and pay NI for 40 years?
The only thing that I can think of is that council tax is so high now in the UK, and the tele-tax they take about 30% of the pension straight back.
October 29, 2022
Yes. I paid in for 40 years, my wife for something less. I get £89 per week, she gets £62. Not a lot!!!
R
October 31, 2022
So the basic state pension if born before 1951 is £7376.20 or £141.85, and you get 62.7% of it. I was surprised to read that in some external countries you can get the full amount but others you can’t is that because you can get a reciprocal top-up benefits from Canada and retirees in the UK from Canada can get top-up benefits like pension credits here? Did you know when you emigrated that the pension was frozen or did it change once you were over there?
I believe people were very much misled about the basic state pension, when they forced everyone out of private provisions into the State umbrella care they told people to trust in them. I didn’t know until this year that if a man died aged 66, as a college of mine did last year his state pension died with him in its entirety, and his widow gets nothing from it at all.
October 28, 2022
but you live cheaper in Canada I bet? Have you any idea of the amazing range of taxes we have to pay over here. In reality the annual increases have not kept up with the cost of living rises – even Tory voters recognize that. So our pension is worth less on how it has to be spent leaving aside the value of the £ if we wish to spend it outside UK.
Thats why the triple lock was a good gesture to win support from us oldies….but of course promises in manifestos etc are easily abandoned once in power.
October 28, 2022
@Richard Hobbs
Apart from the fact that it was never envisaged that state pensions would be paid for 20 years (when introduced male life expectancy was 68 years) (and you and your wife have 40 years between you – virtually a whole working life!), it is not unreasonable to think that if a state pension is paid here it will be spent here – providing demand and some tax generated by that demand (and, of course, council tax and VAT). But you receive your pension in Canada and spend it there. You should get less as none of yours comes back.
October 29, 2022
But why not apply the same rule to all non UK countries? and other benefits. Does this apply to defined benefit gov pensions?
Yes they have been lucky longevity wise. Are you suggesting we term limit pensions because with inflation that is exactly what is happening?
Maybe we should means test state pensions?
A lot of public servants on defined benefits would lose, private sector contribution pensions are so low that they probably claim benefits anyway. The private contributory pension middle class, well that’s heading for extinction, as markets turn and the agenda comes online.
October 29, 2022
Well, we are certainly getting less, and this amount reduces continually because of the value of the £. We have to pay tax here too!
I agree with anon above, why only certain countries penalised. Why should UK pensioners in USA get full pensions when those of us across the Niagara River don’t? Why do those in EU continue to get full pensions and so on.
R
October 28, 2022
You’ve made a big mistake with Sunak. He has no charm. He comes over as smug. He will not be popular with voters.
October 28, 2022
If only we had a Tory PM that put ‘growth’ first and foremost
October 28, 2022
We could stop paying the idiots in the public sector who have introduced a permanent 60 speed limit on the M1 around junction 33 for “air quality”. Never in a manifesto, counter productive to keeping the country working. No doubt they will claim it is temporary, but I have driven it lots now over the last few months and it is always in force. We don’t need people like this on the public sector payroll.
October 28, 2022
Iain, and they wonder why productivity dips when they just slow everything down. Empty motorways at night with smart motorway 50 mph limits, causing log jams in two of four lanes as they have speed cameras. Then they drop them to 40mph saying an obstruction is ahead which was cleared an hour before.
October 28, 2022
yes indeed
October 28, 2022
I repeat what I have said before, Sir John.
I hope you make sure your very sensible proposals are listened to by the people in government who make the decisions.
October 28, 2022
I suspect it is useless expecting government departments, quangos and MPs to make sensible spending reduction choices. I think it might be instructive if there were a TV show where each department would list its spend and explain the purpose, with viewers invited to rank the spending. Then run cross department rankings for the least popular items. It might prove more entertaining than dance offs.
October 28, 2022
Another way we can save money – and gain money – is by expelling the EU from Northern Ireland. That oppressive bureaucracy is costing us all a lot.
October 28, 2022
Good common sense again Sir John.
I have difficulty understanding why my comment from yesterday failed to pass moderation (not the first time). I observe that other contributors here often express their views in much stronger terms.
Was the use of global, or perhaps the association of certain people to certain institutions, or are we in the territory of ‘legal but harmful’? Or am I just too critical/cynical? It would be good to know, so that we know how much our freedom of speech is curtailed.
October 28, 2022
I regularly buy & donate books at my local charity shop …today they told me that they’re closing down after 40 years, due to the cost of energy, heating & lighting – enough said
October 28, 2022
So we have cheap immigrant labour working in hospitality & hotels probably receiving universal credit, free heath & other benefits and we have illegal immigrants staying in those same hotels at taxpayers expense – utter madness
October 28, 2022
I like this list very much. Over the past couple of weeks I have identified as many public expenditure cuts and deregulation measures as I could; it currently runs to six pages. If only Liz Truss had believed in some of them and published them she might still be in power.
October 28, 2022
Mark
Yes, utter bloody madness.
What about our own homeless, many who have paid into the system for years, simply abandoned and left to get on with it !
Shameful really shameful.
When will the crass incompetence end.
October 28, 2022
Lindsay
Poor communication from the Conservatives yet again, they have been absolutely useless in getting any sensible message across since before Cameron, and have not got any better since, it will cost them the next election for sure. Boris got away with it because he was Boris, but Sunak will not
October 28, 2022
The Conservative Party 2019 election manifesto states that “We will not support fracking unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely.”
At the Sky News Leadership Hustings on 04/08/2002, Mr. Sunak said about fracking :
“Where it has the support of local communities I’m in favour of it. It has to be done with the support of local communities but we do also have a study from 3 different Royal Societies…geologists and engineers and a third group…all of whom said that fracking was safe and the seismic activity is not out of the ordinary. If we can get it to work it is good for our long-term energy security”.
So if his reply to the Green Party MP in the HoC PMQs last Wednesday 26/10 was that he supports the 2019 manifesto and he believes that 3 different Royal Societies have said that “fracking was safe and the seismic activity is not out of the ordinary” does this mean that fracking will be allowed or will he be reneging on what he told us at the Sky Leadership Hustings?
If so, it didn’t take long for a very serious reversal of a policy promise to occur after becoming PM and it certainly won’t be good “for our long-term energy security”.
October 28, 2022
I read Sunak has started backtracking: –
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has scrapped a Tory leadership campaign pledge he made to fine patients in England £10 if they miss GP or hospital appointments. He made the pledge during this summer’s leadership contest against Liz Truss. Mr Sunak had argued it was “not right” some patients were failing to turn up, taking slots from those in need. But a No 10 spokeswoman said that, after “listening to GPs”, the government decided it was “not the right time” for the policy. She added that Mr Sunak wanted to deliver “a stronger NHS and the sentiment remains that people should not be missing their appointments and taking up NHS time”.
[GPs would argue of course that a missed appointment gives them more free time].
October 28, 2022
and moving on – or entering a time-warp if you prefer:-
The UK and France have pledged to boost co-operation to tackle migrant crossings in the English Channel, Downing Street has said. Rishi Sunak held his first call, since becoming prime minister, with President Emmanuel Macron on Friday. No 10 said the two men expressed a commitment to “deepening” their work to deter the “deadly journeys.” A statement from the Elysée Palace after the call made no specific mention of migrant boats.
There have already been promises to deepen co-operation earlier in October, after then-Prime Minister Liz Truss met with Mr Macron in Prague earlier this month. The pair pledged an “ambitious package of measures” to be announced this autumn.
Downing Street has refused to give details on any future plans or when an announcement will be made.
But Mr Sunak is said to have “stressed the importance for both nations to make the Channel route completely unviable for people traffickers”.
October 28, 2022
Excellent ideas.
October 28, 2022
The chief executive of Cuadrilla has said it “beggars belief” that Rishi Sunak has decided to bring back the ban on fracking and branded the move as having “no rational scientific justification”
October 28, 2022
Just think of all the government lost revenue from extra taxes ‘fracking’ would have produced
October 28, 2022
Why is Mr Heaton Harris adhering to a rule over calling an election no-one wants, when HMG has departed from the rules in the Act of Union and the Belfast Agreement; and the EU has ignored those two as well as its own Treaty of Lisbon articles 50 and 8? Why does HMG never mention the EU’s breach of articles 50 and 8?
It feels as if the civil servants and whoever happens to be the Secretary of State at the time, together with the very offputting chairman of the Select Committee, are determined to hand over the Province to the EU and the South.
October 30, 2022
I will vote for any party that promises to stop the energy companies from hassling their customers to make them have smart meters. I don’t want a smart meter. EDF ring me twice a week about this (three times this week) and email me once a week. They are aggressive, and say that my current meters are no longer usable, and that by law I have to have a smart meter installed. Both of these things are untrue. I have asked them never to ring me again but still the calls keep coming. Now I no longer answer my mobile phone or my landline because the call is probably going to be from EDF. It’s the government that is responsible for this harrassment. If Labour promised to stop it, I’d vote Labour.