The Labour Government

Dereck Jeffries 3 wd said:
Unfortunately there are starving people all over the world ( mainly due to badly run countries who take money in charity and waste it) are we to fund the rest of world? And/or bring them all over here?
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Mainly due to corrupt politicians stealing public resources and shifting the profits out of the country, almost always with the help of our banking system and our tax havens, and often at the behest of our corporations. Fix that, and they wouldn't need charity in the first place. People talk about reparations for colonialism, but how about fixing the robbery that's still happening seemingly with our full blessing?
 
I'm With Stupid said:
Why? Why should someone working and paying tax have to pay twice just because they're an immigrant?
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Its not twice, its £1k a year or there abouts for temporary residents. Plenty of potential for additional costs, eg costs with getting your medical history from your home country, interpretation of them (possibility you’ll need an interpreter at appointments), you’ve not paid in to the system up until the point you arrive. Other / all countries have this type of system - the UK isn’t unique.

Once they become an ordinarily resident they don’t pay it. By then they’d have contributed a few years to the system.
 
metalblue said:
Its not twice, its £1k a year or there abouts for temporary residents. Plenty of potential for additional costs, eg costs with getting your medical history from your home country, interpretation of them (possibility you’ll need an interpreter at appointments), you’ve not paid in to the system up until the point you arrive. Other / all countries have this type of system - the UK isn’t unique.
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It's a cash grab plain and simple. If it wasn't, immigrants could opt out of it and get private health insurance instead. It also wouldn't have increased by around 500% in a few years if it was actually based on cost. In France, immigrants are entitled to healthcare after 3 months of paying taxes, and have to get private health insurance to cover those the three months they're not entitled. The UK could easily do that. In most countries, they operate an insurance system, so the immigrant has to pay in exactly the same as everyone else and gets the same benefits as everyone else.

In the UK, I could be working and paying taxes for 5 years (i.e. infinitely longer than any British person when they make their first use of NHS services they've contributed nothing towards) and still have to pay a 'surcharge' because I'm on an immigrant visa. It's simply BS that that is in any way justified. It's just a cash grab by a far right party that realised that they can treat immigrants like shit, and not only would no-one give a shit, they'd actively revel in it. Hell, they even tried to charge it to NHS workers at first, until they realised the optics didn't look quite right.

And it is twice, because if I'm paying an NHS surcharge, but then also getting charged NI on my salary, which is supposed to pay for the NHS, then I'm effectively paying twice for the same thing.
 
Brewster's millions said:
Not when you’re (incorrectly) referencing the cost of hospitals, which the last Labour government wasted many, many billions of pounds on.

It’s a specific and relevant comment.

Plus the fact that I’ll happily admit that the Rwanda scheme was a terrible waste of money.
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But , of course, the Conservatives (who introduced PFI) and reintroduced it in 2012 (after it had been discontinued by Labour ) won't have wasted a penny on it will they?
 
Ifwecouldjust....... said:
But , of course, the Conservatives (who introduced PFI) and reintroduced it in 2012 (after it had been discontinued by Labour ) won't have wasted a penny on it will they?
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Did you sleep through the Blair/Brown years then?

Reeves wouldn’t go full PFI would she?

How awkward would that be for you to defend?
 
blueinsa said:
Did you sleep through the Blair/Brown years then?

Reeves wouldn’t go full PFI would she?

How awkward would that be for you to defend?
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No ... I didn't 'sleep' through the Blair / Brown years..... PFI & PFI2 was / is an absolute disaster in the form used. It is the constant blaming of the Labour party for its introduction and use that gets on my wick ,
 
Ifwecouldjust....... said:
No ... I didn't 'sleep' through the Blair / Brown years..... PFI & PFI2 was / is an absolute disaster in the form used. It is the constant blaming of the Labour party for its introduction and use that gets on my wick ,
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At least we did actually get new Blair / Brown hospitals unlike those 40 new Liar Johnson hospitals.
 
blueinsa said:
In other news Labour are starting to fulfil their promise of nationalising the rail services which I think the vast majority support.

Gas and Electricity next please.
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Unfortunately Gas and Electricity were not in their manifesto so wont be this parliament according to the new Transport secretary and they already have GB Energy on the cards.

I would guess, looking at the state of it, Water would be next if anything.
 
Kompany Car said:
Unfortunately Gas and Electricity were not in their manifesto so wont be this parliament according to the new Transport secretary and they already have GB Energy on the cards.

I would guess, looking at the state of it, Water would be next if anything.
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Isn’t it all to do with contracts? Rail have short term contracts, about 5 years lease, whereas utilities have far longer agreements and are very difficult to bring back into public control. With water, I think the only way to get them back is if the private companies basically hand them back.
 
Ifwecouldjust....... said:
But , of course, the Conservatives (who introduced PFI) and reintroduced it in 2012 (after it had been discontinued by Labour ) won't have wasted a penny on it will they?
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You do appear to get quite animated by this, so I've helpfully provided some figures for you to place the issue into context.

The Treasury has useful spreadsheet on its website which list the various PFI deals, shows which government signed off the deals, the capital value of the projects, profile of repayments and so on. Unsurprisingly, they do show the very large majority of deals being signed off by the Labour government.

As of end March 2023, the latest data available, there are 669 deals outstanding in total, with a capital value of £50.2bn, resulting in repayments of £278.3bn.

The Labour government signed off 576 of these deals, accounting for £42bn of the capital value and £246.7bn of the repayments. That's 89% of the cost of the deals. They also signed off a deal just 5 days before the 2010 election, so they clearly didn't discontinue the use of PFI at any point.

Interesting figures given the speculation of Reeves reintroducing PFI. She can't be that dumb, can she?
 
The Future’s Blue! said:
Isn’t it all to do with contracts? Rail have short term contracts, about 5 years lease, whereas utilities have far longer agreements and are very difficult to bring back into public control. With water, I think the only way to get them back is if the private companies basically hand them back.
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Yes the franchise only runs for a set period on a particular route so it does make it easier. Not sure what happens however with the utilities if the regulator decides they are failing and they dont act on the improvement notices. I would assume the government remains the operator of last resort.
 
Kompany Car said:
Yes the franchise only runs for a set period on a particular route so it does make it easier. Not sure what happens however with the utilities if the regulator decides they are failing and they dont act on the improvement notices. I would assume the government remains the operator of last resort.
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I seen something about waters and it basically said that the companies would have to poison people for an extended period of time for the government to step in. Even then, the companies would retain overall control until the end of the contract. A rolling 25 years seems to ring a bell?
 
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