UK Politics

[Nobody Interesting]

5 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

you mean we should live within our means or something...household budget economics?

 

Something needs to change somewhere - it really is unsustainable living of made up money.

Living within our means can be done with changes to how it all works. £billions could be saved by joining computer systems so they talk to each other rather than having thousands of people all creating the same data but for different departments as they won't share stuff.

My wife is a teacher, she is retireing next month but to get her pension every council she worked for has to separatly talk to the Teachers Pension service via the DOE to confirm their system agrees with the TP system and then they check to see it agrees with the DOE system. All systems data came from the same place but is then not shared. It has so far taken 5 months and she does not have figures yet but a decent computer system with access to all the data would give that answer in seconds. Private businesses do not triplicate work like this.
That is just one example from our life. HMTreasury is worse than that and the DWP systems are so dire (brother in law recently worked trying to sort out major problems) that a days work takes a month due to data being split all over the place.

Anyway, we need to change how we do stuff, we need to simplify things and that alone will save lots. NHS needs  a central purchasing system. I can buy bandages cheaper than they do just by using Amazon.

Once huge changes are made then living within our means should be easy...................................... and would not need, as we do now, massive tax increases just to stand still.

[steviewevie]

1 minute ago, Nobody Interesting said:

 

Something needs to change somewhere - it really is unsustainable living of made up money.

Living within our means can be done with changes to how it all works. £billions could be saved by joining computer systems so they talk to each other rather than having thousands of people all creating the same data but for different departments as they won't share stuff.

My wife is a teacher, she is retireing next month but to get her pension every council she worked for has to separatly talk to the Teachers Pension service via the DOE to confirm their system agrees with the TP system and then they check to see it agrees with the DOE system. All systems data came from the same place but is then not shared. It has so far taken 5 months and she does not have figures yet but a decent computer system with access to all the data would give that answer in seconds. Private businesses do not triplicate work like this.
That is just one example from our life. HMTreasury is worse than that and the DWP systems are so dire (brother in law recently worked trying to sort out major problems) that a days work takes a month due to data being split all over the place.

Anyway, we need to change how we do stuff, we need to simplify things and that alone will save lots. NHS needs  a central purchasing system. I can buy bandages cheaper than they do just by using Amazon.

Once huge changes are made then living within our means should be easy...................................... and would not need, as we do now, massive tax increases just to stand still.

ok...simple. Maybe you should suggest it to someone. We should stop borrowing and live within our means.

[Nobody Interesting]

1 minute ago, steviewevie said:

ok...simple. Maybe you should suggest it to someone. We should stop borrowing and live within our means.

 

As a former Civil Servant who worked for HM Treasury for 9 years that was exactly what I did......................... and yet nothing ever changed despite a myriad of voices saying that same.

Top dogs were stuck in their ways and leadership from government was zero.

and here we are today, same old things, same old way

[steviewevie]

2 minutes ago, Nobody Interesting said:

 

As a former Civil Servant who worked for HM Treasury for 9 years that was exactly what I did......................... and yet nothing ever changed despite a myriad of voices saying that same.

Top dogs were stuck in their ways and leadership from government was zero.

and here we are today, same old things, same old way

We just need to be more efficient then we could cut taxes and cut borrowing?

[clarkete]

1 hour ago, Nobody Interesting said:

 

Something needs to change somewhere - it really is unsustainable living of made up money.

Living within our means can be done with changes to how it all works. £billions could be saved by joining computer systems so they talk to each other rather than having thousands of people all creating the same data but for different departments as they won't share stuff.

My wife is a teacher, she is retireing next month but to get her pension every council she worked for has to separatly talk to the Teachers Pension service via the DOE to confirm their system agrees with the TP system and then they check to see it agrees with the DOE system. All systems data came from the same place but is then not shared. It has so far taken 5 months and she does not have figures yet but a decent computer system with access to all the data would give that answer in seconds. Private businesses do not triplicate work like this.
That is just one example from our life. HMTreasury is worse than that and the DWP systems are so dire (brother in law recently worked trying to sort out major problems) that a days work takes a month due to data being split all over the place.

Anyway, we need to change how we do stuff, we need to simplify things and that alone will save lots. NHS needs  a central purchasing system. I can buy bandages cheaper than they do just by using Amazon.

Once huge changes are made then living within our means should be easy...................................... and would not need, as we do now, massive tax increases just to stand still.

 

Surely it's not a big surprise that any individual can buy stuff more cheaply than amazon?  Firstly that's all they do and secondly anyone who's used any business procurement system has found that, yet of course  one of their core objectives is cutting costs and making more profit. 

 

Every large business I've worked for has duplicated systems and in many cases that's despite them breaking the business into multiple divisions. 

 

You talk about NHS purchasing and of course it's by far the largest organisation in the UK.   

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers

 

I've also read and heard several times that purchasing power has been very effective when buying Meds, for example compared to the US system broken into states. 

 

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2022/07/nhs-saves-1-2-billion-on-medicines-over-three-years/

 

There are some centralised systems across gov, but even those took years to roll out and upgrading (which you constantly have to do for support and security) is a herculean and massively expensive task. 

 

[Nobody Interesting]

25 minutes ago, clarkete said:

 

Surely it's not a big surprise that any individual can buy stuff more cheaply than amazon?  Firstly that's all they do and secondly anyone who's used any business procurement system has found that, yet of course  one of their core objectives is cutting costs and making more profit. 

 

Every large business I've worked for has duplicated systems and in many cases that's despite them breaking the business into multiple divisions. 

 

You talk about NHS purchasing and of course it's by far the largest organisation in the UK.   

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers

 

I've also read and heard several times that purchasing power has been very effective when buying Meds, for example compared to the US system broken into states. 

 

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2022/07/nhs-saves-1-2-billion-on-medicines-over-three-years/

 

There are some centralised systems across gov, but even those took years to roll out and upgrading (which you constantly have to do for support and security) is a herculean and massively expensive task. 

 

 

It should not be a surprise that we can buy stuff cheap from Amazon - but do most realise that the NHS pays more for stuff than we can buy it on Amazon. That is what I am saying is wrong. Why does the NHS pay more when they buy in huge amounts than I can buy one bandage myself?

The same goes for meds. The NHS pays more for some than they should do. Contracts are not renegotiated and jut rolled forward. It is only very recently that the NHS has started to use some generic medicines rather than the more expensive branded ones. 

[Nobody Interesting]

1 hour ago, steviewevie said:

We just need to be more efficient then we could cut taxes and cut borrowing?

 

When the government talks about 'efficiency savings' always read that as cutting staff and expecting the remaining ones to do more work as that is what they really mean. Civil service bosses have little or no idea what their staff do on a daily basis. Perhaps it is the bosses we need to scrap?

Another example for you on that...... HM Treasury wanted ISO 9001 for one major department (since then privatised) and Admiral Consultants met with senior management to agree a contract. Contract was agreed and drawn up without anyone talking to the people who actually did the job.
Day one, consultants arrived and said a new procedures manual was needed and promptly started to produce it. Staff had no idea what was going on and why as nobody explained it al to them. After a few weeks when an understanding had been built staff went to the consultants to discuss the manual (12 generic volumes each hundreds of pages long). The consultants said they had to have it as ISO 9001 was, in short, 'Say what you do, do what you say and provide evidence to prove it' and the manual was the first part.
One staff member went over to a nearby shelf and got down a red file. That red file was the procedures manual that had been in place for over a decade. The consultants had no idea this existed as the bosses had never told them.

So in short there were now 2 procedures manuals in place, it took a month of expensive consultancy to add tghe second by which time it was woven in to everything else that needed to set up and so had to be kept thus duplicating the workload.

So a huge waste of money and all because the bosses had no idea what the people who did the jobs actually did.

So yes, efficiency savings by all means by getting rid of useless highly paid bosses - which will never be what happens as government ministers always pass the task onto those same bosses to decide how to make efficiency savings.

For my next trick I shall make  a short post LOL

[Nobody Interesting]

Not that long ago Labour moaned about the Tories giving their donors rewards.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg2jz3djedo

[Nobody Interesting]

"The decision that the winter fuel payment will no longer be universal risks pushing some pensioners into fuel poverty."

"This is why I am keen to work closely with the new UK government on our shared ambition of tackling poverty to develop a permanent, effective form of protection for households in need,"

Jane Hutt
Labour SENDD Member

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gdlpe1egdo

[steviewevie]

emailed Streeting to buy drugs from amazon. Not got a reply yet the fascist bootlicker.

[steviewevie]

End the two child benefit cap or uturn on binning universal winter fuel payments?

(and you're not allowed to say both)

[Nobody Interesting]

26 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

End the two child benefit cap or uturn on binning universal winter fuel payments?

(and you're not allowed to say both)

 

The two of them

[clarkete]

1 hour ago, Nobody Interesting said:

 

When the government talks about 'efficiency savings' always read that as cutting staff and expecting the remaining ones to do more work as that is what they really mean. Civil service bosses have little or no idea what their staff do on a daily basis. Perhaps it is the bosses we need to scrap?

Another example for you on that...... HM Treasury wanted ISO 9001 for one major department (since then privatised) and Admiral Consultants met with senior management to agree a contract. Contract was agreed and drawn up without anyone talking to the people who actually did the job.
Day one, consultants arrived and said a new procedures manual was needed and promptly started to produce it. Staff had no idea what was going on and why as nobody explained it al to them. After a few weeks when an understanding had been built staff went to the consultants to discuss the manual (12 generic volumes each hundreds of pages long). The consultants said they had to have it as ISO 9001 was, in short, 'Say what you do, do what you say and provide evidence to prove it' and the manual was the first part.
One staff member went over to a nearby shelf and got down a red file. That red file was the procedures manual that had been in place for over a decade. The consultants had no idea this existed as the bosses had never told them.

So in short there were now 2 procedures manuals in place, it took a month of expensive consultancy to add tghe second by which time it was woven in to everything else that needed to set up and so had to be kept thus duplicating the workload.

So a huge waste of money and all because the bosses had no idea what the people who did the jobs actually did.

So yes, efficiency savings by all means by getting rid of useless highly paid bosses - which will never be what happens as government ministers always pass the task onto those same bosses to decide how to make efficiency savings.

For my next trick I shall make  a short post LOL

I've worked in several companies that did 9001 and it often had a flavour of that.  Someone pays a third party, it could always have been done better, but it had been mandated elsewhere. 

 

There's clearly some validity to some of your points, but certainly not all, the others are too oversimplified. 

[steviewevie]

32 minutes ago, Nobody Interesting said:

 

The two of them

no wonder they ignored you.

[LJS]

anyone else think this Labour Government is turning out to be a bit Tory?

[clarkete]

14 minutes ago, LJS said:

anyone else think this Labour Government is turning out to be a bit Tory?

 

Thank heaven very different to the most recent tory governments. 

[LJS]

12 minutes ago, clarkete said:

 

Thank heaven very different to the most recent tory governments. 

Talk me through that, if you don't mind.

[clarkete]

25 minutes ago, LJS said:

Talk me through that, if you don't mind.

 

Nah you're alright thanks

[steviewevie]

5 hours ago, LJS said:

anyone else think this Labour Government is turning out to be a bit Tory?

I think there aren't any real surprises so far...they weren't exactly offering a socialist wonderland. They've inherited a bit of a mess in terms of state of public services and finances, limited what they could do with promises not to raise main taxes for electoral reasons, and now we are facing a tough budget in the autumn which will probably have some tax rises on wealth and some spending cuts, and next few years could be difficult unless they get the economy growing quickly which is unlikely. They have done deals with trade unions and thrown money at public sector workers, and taken some money from pensioners..kind of the opposite to what Osbourne did and a bit of a re-balance. But no one likes money being taken away from them, and pensioners vote but not for labour so...

They are still doing the GB Energy thing and that fund thing and going to attempt to battle nimbys by building houses and infrastructure..have to see how all that goes, they might face a lot of opposition and financial constraints.

As for immigration and asylum seekers, they never promised to be that liberal with all that, not sure how anyone is surprised or disappointed. Starmer talked about training british workers so didn't have to rely on immigrants for our health/social services, and they didn't say they would bin Rwanda because it was inhumane but that it was expensive and wouldn't work, they said they'd speed up application processing, return those who fail, smash the gangs and go after employers who employ people illiegally and pay below min wages etc.

Anyway, ramble ramble. I think there aren't any surprises so far, they are a new government finding their feet, at moment they don't want to f**k things up but...ultimately people usually vote tory because they want lower taxes, and vote labour if public services need sorting out, and that should be their priority.

[Nobody Interesting]

13 hours ago, steviewevie said:

no wonder they ignored you.

 

LOL

 

I was doing a 'you' and making  a flippant comment ignoring what rules you had set as my reply

[Nobody Interesting]

13 hours ago, clarkete said:

I've worked in several companies that did 9001 and it often had a flavour of that.  Someone pays a third party, it could always have been done better, but it had been mandated elsewhere. 

 

There's clearly some validity to some of your points, but certainly not all, the others are too oversimplified. 

 

Great ideas all start from simple thoughts.

No great idea was ever created as the whole picture in the first instance - time and thought are taken from simple beginnings and change, real meaningful change, can happen............................... if there is a will do let change happen.

[Nobody Interesting]

7 hours ago, LJS said:

anyone else think this Labour Government is turning out to be a bit Tory?

 

7 hours ago, clarkete said:

 

Thank heaven very different to the most recent tory governments. 

 

Overall they are different - in that politics is now quite dull and we don't get scandals and stuff every other day.

Policy wise there really is not that much difference so far. Fiscal rules, cutting things that harm people struggling whilst not touching the wealthiest who can afford to pay more.

 

They are not Tory, but they really, so far, are not really 'Labour' either.

Reading this morning that Rachel Reeves might now change what figure is used to decide if there is too much debt to create more money without the need for cuts - that is just what the Tories have always done to 'create' money so they look good.

Not that the money exists anyway, and never really has.

One day the electorate will realise that there is not really much difference and actually vote in someone else.................. one day.

 

[Nobody Interesting]

2 hours ago, steviewevie said:

I think there aren't any real surprises so far...they weren't exactly offering a socialist wonderland. They've inherited a bit of a mess in terms of state of public services and finances, limited what they could do with promises not to raise main taxes for electoral reasons, and now we are facing a tough budget in the autumn which will probably have some tax rises on wealth and some spending cuts, and next few years could be difficult unless they get the economy growing quickly which is unlikely. They have done deals with trade unions and thrown money at public sector workers, and taken some money from pensioners..kind of the opposite to what Osbourne did and a bit of a re-balance. But no one likes money being taken away from them, and pensioners vote but not for labour so...

They are still doing the GB Energy thing and that fund thing and going to attempt to battle nimbys by building houses and infrastructure..have to see how all that goes, they might face a lot of opposition and financial constraints.

As for immigration and asylum seekers, they never promised to be that liberal with all that, not sure how anyone is surprised or disappointed. Starmer talked about training british workers so didn't have to rely on immigrants for our health/social services, and they didn't say they would bin Rwanda because it was inhumane but that it was expensive and wouldn't work, they said they'd speed up application processing, return those who fail, smash the gangs and go after employers who employ people illiegally and pay below min wages etc.

Anyway, ramble ramble. I think there aren't any surprises so far, they are a new government finding their feet, at moment they don't want to f**k things up but...ultimately people usually vote tory because they want lower taxes, and vote labour if public services need sorting out, and that should be their priority.

 

When was the last time an incoming government did not inherit a mess?

[steviewevie]

8 minutes ago, Nobody Interesting said:

Policy wise there really is not that much difference so far. Fiscal rules, cutting things that harm people struggling whilst not touching the wealthiest who can afford to pay more.

 

haven't even had the first budget yet

[steviewevie]

9 minutes ago, Nobody Interesting said:

They are not Tory, but they really, so far, are not really 'Labour' either.

deals with trade unions and pay rises, new workers rights and conditions, no tax rises for working people. I would say that is actually pretty "Labour".