George Osborne confirms an extra £2bn in annual funding for frontline NHS

Comment

Look at The Disapearence of the NHS threadthread. Ball has started rolling .

AlieOxon

I am sorry that post looks a bit 'snipey'.

Not my intention, sorry.

Playground politics carries on regardless with Ed Balls saying that whatever the Conservatives give the NHS, they will give much more. Just so difficult to make a sensible comment when those in power act like children.

And it wouldn't be anything to do with the election that's due next May, would it

You mean the same as the Labour pledge of finding 2.5 billion?

Did UKIP say £3 billion? Or am I getting with the little green men from Mars?

It's the same whoever they are. Come the election, come the promises

All governments try to save a bit of money so they can splurge just before an election in the hope we'll all forget the previous years of austerity or hell.

Apart from Maggie who cynically took us into a war instead

Which - again cynically - is one way to distract the people from what I going on at home......

is !

It is almost certainly electioneering and I wouldn't trust any of them. Especially UKIP who have no idea about government and will say anything they think is populist.

What does it mean anyway? Do any of us know? Does the chief exec of the NHS (is there just one?? Is this just NHS England?) suddenly find £2bn in the 'money in' column of his bank account? Does he sit musing, 'now, what shall I do with that then?' How does it sit with the huge debts the NHS has accrued? And yes, what about those vultures, like Lockheed circling?

I am being facetious of course but it sounds so simple yet isn't.

£3bn has been spent in the re-organization of the NHS. Supposing that the £2bn was a truthful figure, which it isn't this still leaves the NHS £1bn short and over the past 5 years this would have attracted enormous interest let alone the inflation value so the true lose to date is much more than the £3bn, which everyone now agrees was a total shambles and waste of time and money. Not a single person in the UK voted for it.

GO is electioneering like mad and what really p......s me off is that he seems to assume we are all dim witted enough to believe him, well I have news for you G, we aren't.

I agree Tiggy I did a double take watching him on television when he said whatever the Conservatives give we will give more. He really did say that just like a child in the playground with mine's bigger than yours.

Its going to be a long ride to May!

If the money if forthcoming and it is a big if - I wonder from where the Treasury intends to get it - shall watch with interest to see how the books are going to be balanced.

Whitewave, don't forget before that there was the £20 billion in savings from the Nicholson challenge.

They haven't succeeded though have they? Which would be no surprise.

And now, to distract - 15bn towards the roads!

Suppose they abolish the proposed rail link(s), we could all suggest how to spend the billions saved there.

To be fair about the proposed road [tunnel] in Hampshire, this money had been agreed and 'put by' if you like, for quite a long time .
I would have thought that most people would be pleased by the money going to the NHS. On Sunday, Andrew Marr did his level best to get Ed Balls to comment that it was a good thing[and failed] because you see, the £2bn being given by George Osborne wasn't as good as that same £2 bn that Ed would cough up [only in Ed's eyes of course.]

But that's not new money either, roses. Most of it is already in the NHS and just being shifted from one area to another. Mainly from hospitals to GPs.
One of the roads he said about was the A1 upgrading near Newcastle. That's been causing chaos here for the last six months and is going to take another 18 months to complete. The only new bit is dualling it north of Alnwick and a bit between Alnwick and Morpeth. That's the cheap bit, and there will still be over 20 miles between Alnwick and Berwick that will still be single carriageway.

Better than nothing for the road users though?

Dualling the A1 has been promised since John Major was in power, so yes, it's better than nothing. However, it is not going ahead until next May, after the elections, so it will be interesting to see how much he then complains about the new government spending so much, when he's in opposition. Just like he did before the last election.

This is what the NHA party thinks of Osborne's bribes.

nhap.org/george-osbornes-nhs-election-bribe-little-late/

You can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, and some of the people are just never pleased whatever you do any time.

Robbing us again to bribe us with our own money. They all do it, our lovely politicians. And they are usually well-off enough to be immune from the consequences of their own actions. We are still a very wealthy country with the potential to spread that wealth widely and fairly. But we don't, we let the rich and powerful screw us over again and become even richer and more powerful. Its all very medieval, really, and it works pretty well for the big knobs. Every now and then the peasantry/plebery do rise up in protest, but the status-quo soon returns.

So I shall listen to Osborne's statement on this week and Ball's response without any enthusiasm. Sure, Osborne will drop a bit of pre-election cash into the black-hole of the poor old NHS, but most of that will be swallowed up by paying-off debts, fat-cat salaries and private contractors bills, which means that the money ends up in the hands of the rich again. Same old story. What the NHS needs (and in fact the whole of the public sector and national infrastructure as well) is a strategic, costed plan. Perhaps Santa will drop one down our chimney!