UK Politics Thread

It's a balancing act for sure, but driving is also something which affects different parts of the country differently (regardless of income).

In London, a car is a luxury. I use mine sporadically and mainly for long trips either up North, to the Lakes or off to festivals.

Back when I was living in Northumberland it was a necessity. Local busses were effectively non existent so anything like a big shop needed the car, and whilst I did walk and cycle a lot, with the kids that wasn't always practical. It cost more to get the train 20 miles into Newcastle than drive (and took twice as long) so for working the car was the obvious option. 

On the flip side, owning an electric car where I live now would simply be impractical as the public infrastructure isn't there, whereas up North I might even have a driveway to park in and charge.

Once everything shifts to electric, and there is no more duty on fuel coming in, something is going to have to replace it whether thats drive per mile, an additional cost at the point of purchase or something else. And whatever the option, it's likely to hit different people in different ways and not just the poorest the hardest.

I see the farmers are complaining and being forced to give up farming as it’s now totally unviable.

The rich whinging fucking cunts

A level headed look at the impact of the IHT changes on farms:

A Bluesky link for those that don't have Twitter accounts:

bsky.app/profile/danneidle.bsky.social/post/3l7sm2yd27k2n

Not one of them comments that maybe schools, hospitals, roads etc might be a little less shit either.

It’s going to cost me more and I’m outraged! Who cares that maybe a few less people will die alone in a hospital corridor.

It doesn't cost me more directly but I wish it did.

The NI increase will eventually be passed on to employees and consumers I'd rather it just be honest and take it straight from my pay not a roundabout way.

Nope not directly, that's the Economist's biggest gripe with the budget, it missed a perfect time for serious reform. 

Oh and their usual line of big state bad, small state good...even though that has never worked. 

They did go big but they did it in a round about way that isn't transparent, probably cause all political parties are shit scared of increasing taxes directly on income. Even though that's blatantly what's required. The reason for this, because people don't like taxes but don't want shit service but also don't like paying for anything. 

The reason people are apathetic about politics is at least partly because people are fucking stupid and don't want to admit to reality.

They did include changes to support small business from NICs?

Ah, well if there is then those that are effected should just suck it up. I could understand small businesses getting upset, but assuming those mitigations are sufficient then I don't see an issue.

Did have a massive belly laugh when I saw that Talk TV brought on Liz Truss for her analysis of the budget. Jesus christ.

Do you mean because of the uptick in NI contribution? Surely that’s cost neutral for the NHS essentially?

Ok, to expand.

The NHS is not just run out of one head office somewhere with payroll by DoHSC. The total NHS budget is actually the budget of lots of different providers or related organisations, which all sit within an elaborate ecosystem. Any one worker within the NHS will be employed by a specific provider. That specific provider will have a specific budget. That budget will be set by whatever contract it has with whichever contracting organisation operates in their footprint. That contract will dictate their funding. The funding they get may be a "block" contract where they get given a chunk of money to do a bunch of defined things, it might be performance related (achieve certain targets, get more money), it might be a capitation contract (more patients you have, the money you get), or it might be something else, or it might be a combination of any or all of those.

Essentially though, it is *not* defined by how much it actually costs to employ the people you need to employ to deliver those services. Doesn't matter if you're a massive Hospital Trust catering for a metropolitan area of millions, or a single handed GP looking after 4 farmers and a tramp in bumfuck nowhere. It is up to the entity that holds the contract to manage their budget and deliver their service, and manage staff costs accordingly.

SO

When it becomes more expensive to employ people, what are those providers going to do?

Big hospital trusts can just blackmail NHSE centrally and be bailed out, but their governance dictates they should run to budget. And their budget is what the NHS is expecting them to cost in the long term.

Now, if you think NI contributions go directly to the NHS: HAHAHHAHAH. No. It's all coming out of central govt spending, which is running at a deficit anyway. NI is just another form of general taxation.

Now, if you're thinking: surely this is just an exercise in moving numbers round in a spreadsheet? A lot of people on the provider side of the NHS agree with you, and therefore this *should* just be a thing that is easily solvable. But it turns out that this is not a given by the government. I mean to the press it is, but to the people who actually have to square those budgets it isn't the message being received at all. In fact, as of this very point in time there's a lot of very senior people on the NHS provider side having phone calls with very senior people incl ministers for DOHSC going "what the fuck dude?" and DoHSC minister going "err....let me speak to the treasury" and we're no further ahead.

Currently, most NHS providers have only just received in their bank accounts the back payment for the 6% pay rise that the govt announced they were giving all NHS workers fucking ages ago. That bump in payment is now looking to be totally wiped out and then some (possibly) with the NI contributions.