France votes for Socialism over austerity

[Patriot]

The bank bailouts will in time turn a profit for the taxpayer. Short term they have been inconvenient and caused problems, hence various changes have been put in place in the sector. However it's simplistic and just plain wrong to suggest that the banking crisis is the cause of the deficit. Our capital and revenue budgets have not been balanced other than for a few years in the late 80s under Thatcher and under the last years of the Major government who handed over a balanced budget to blair and brown who then went on the spending spree of all spending sprees leading to the huge deficit we have today. We spend more on debt interest than we do on defence, we spend nearly five times more on debt interest than we spend in totality on Ulster.

 

And this is looking at the on balance sheet figures, without factoring in Labours massive hidden spending on PFIs which will massively inflate the running costs of many public services for decades to come..

 

 

 

We've been collectively living way beyond our means so we need to either increase the tax take radically or cut spending radically. Direct and indirect taxes are pretty damn high already and increasing them will discourage growth and investment so we need to make changes to spending.

 

I'll give you an example, NHS hospital food. It costs the NHS a lot of money as it has to dish out a lot of food. Poor quality food that from personal experience does not do anything to help patients recovery. Why are we doing this? Charge for meals, provide a lower and higher cost option but make them both nutritionally balanced. If inpatients paid a tenner a day for 3 meals it would be significantly more than the current budgets, would save the nhs millions and lead to better patient care. We can work a lot smarter than we are doing.

 

Andy. You were doing really well until I read that sentence.

Let's turn this round and go through another door.

 

*Why can't we give patients the same quantity and quality of food we give prisoners?

*What would happen under your proposal if a patient cannot afford or chooses not to pay £10 per day for food? There is no guarantee that such a system will provide better food.

*Why are you considering charging patients when it is possible is it not that a proper cost/benefit audit of hospital catering could produce savings within existing budgets?

*Invite Britain's four largest catering companies to tender for providing 3 nutrionally balanced meals a day (with random sampling of foods by A.N. Other) and ensure they can do it at a cost of no more than £2.20 per day.

Before anyone jumps up and decries this:

 

HMP Manchester has one of the lowest food costs per prisoner, costing less than £2 per day to feed inmates. A Prison Service spokesperson said: "The average cost of prison food is £2.20 per prisoner per day. "The National Offender Management Service has national food contracts in place which means uniform prices are paid for food in prisons throughout England and Wales. "The prison service has set minimum requirements in relation to meals which includes advice from the Food Standards Agency

 

I can relate instances where, in my working life, private caterers provided A1 meals. In some companies the food was subsidised and in others we paid full price but there were never ever any complaints about the quality and quantities of the food provided.

[MrSmith]

Ah, but austerity because of paying for the mistakes of bankers is ok I guess?

 

I think it's time people really understood why austerity is and why governments are trying to force it onto their citizens.

 

And for the right wing nutcases who are not the elites but who are enthusiastically supporting austerity what do you expect to gain personally? And why do you think you are uniquely placed to benefit?

 

 

Why do you assume people supporting austerity expect to gain anything?

[donkey]

Perhaps a lot of ordinary people realise you can't carry on spending indefinately what you don't have.

 

A lot of ordinary people realise we shouldn't allow those who caused the credit crunch to continue dictatating about how we should deal with its consequences.

[MrSmith]

How is the debt we have because of a crisis created by bankers? The Labour government were spending far more than they had coming in even during the economic boom!

 

There wasn't an economic boom, there was a debt induced boom driven by a housing bubble.

[andygardener]

Andy. You were doing really well until I read that sentence.

Let's turn this round and go through another door.

 

*Why can't we give patients the same quantity and quality of food we give prisoners?

*What would happen under your proposal if a patient cannot afford or chooses not to pay £10 per day for food? There is no guarantee that such a system will provide better food.

*Why are you considering charging patients when it is possible is it not that a proper cost/benefit audit of hospital catering could produce savings within existing budgets?

*Invite Britain's four largest catering companies to tender for providing 3 nutrionally balanced meals a day (with random sampling of foods by A.N. Other) and ensure they can do it at a cost of no more than £2.20 per day.

Before anyone jumps up and decries this:

 

HMP Manchester has one of the lowest food costs per prisoner, costing less than £2 per day to feed inmates. A Prison Service spokesperson said: "The average cost of prison food is £2.20 per prisoner per day. "The National Offender Management Service has national food contracts in place which means uniform prices are paid for food in prisons throughout England and Wales. "The prison service has set minimum requirements in relation to meals which includes advice from the Food Standards Agency

 

I can relate instances where, in my working life, private caterers provided A1 meals. In some companies the food was subsidised and in others we paid full price but there were never ever any complaints about the quality and quantities of the food provided.

 

I'm all for different ideas, if we can deliver high quality food at lower prices by outsourcing then fantastic. I know from personal experience when our lass badly shattered her leg and foot the food she was getting was inedible slop. She and most working people would I think be happy to pay for decent food while in hoispital, we have to feed ourselves day to day so why should the nhs be expected to feed us (badly) in hospital for free? It's not it's core function, I'd rather pay for decent food than divert nhs resources away from treatment to provide free slop. If people can't afford a tenner for all their meals in a day, then as i suggested have a lower priced cheap but nutritionally balanced alternative, your prison service example shows that can be done for a couple of quid which nobody can claim they can't afford, they'de have been starving when they weren't in hospital if they haven't got a couple of quid for food each day.

[andygardener]

A lot of ordinary people realise we shouldn't allow those who caused the credit crunch to continue dictatating about how we should deal with its consequences.

 

Quite. That's why we got rid of Gordon Brown.

[donkey]

Quite. That's why we got rid of Gordon Brown.

 

And replaced him with another stooge of the financial Masters of the Universe. Whoop Dee bleedin' Doo!

[donkey]

Quite. That's why we got rid of Gordon Brown.

 

BTW, although Brown - like most leaders of developed nations - was complicit in allowing the credit crunch to come about, you can hardly say he caused it, given that it was mainly as a result of the US sub prime mortgage market, over which he exerted about as much influence as Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

[Frank Sidney]

Will the last person leaving France please turn the light out...

[andygardener]

And replaced him with another stooge of the financial Masters of the Universe. Whoop Dee bleedin' Doo!

 

Tell you what lets just lock all the bankers in the Tower and shut the banks.

 

Who needs pensions, mortgages, ISAs and unit trusts anyway?

 

Oh right, that'll be us.

 

For all there have been problems in the banking sector including now criminally punished origins in the US sub prime sector which were just straight fraud, the eyewatering sums we've asked these chaps to make ever bigger are lest we forget our own. Grans pension fund, mums savings account, uncle Rogers ISA. How many of us ticked the "super low risk try to keep pace with inflation box" when we instructed our fund managers to invest our money? Not many.

 

It's easy to just pretend that their is this evil race of creatures called Bankers and they singlehandly caused all the ills of the world and the ordinary guy in the street is nothing to do with this. Actually we gave them our money, through morgage endowment policies, through pension funds, through ISAs, through life assurance, through unit trusts and told them to make it grow and grow quickly. If we don't accept our roll in that then we are living in a fantasy land and given the challenges of the rise of the BRICS even if our deficit was sorted we're in for tough times ahead so denial and blamemongering are not luxuries we can afford.