A vision for the future.

I don't see either of them as ignorant Glorianny. I think they, and others in their position, have more insight into how to achieve their priorities than we can possibly have.

It's a bit like the fishing analogy. You want to feed people today. So do I. So no doubt, do others, including Starmer et al. However, we are not responsible for the management of the assets. They have to ensure enough for today and also enough to build a sustainable and viable future. That is what anyone running a business, a huge corporation or a country must look at.

We may stamp our feet and shout "I want it now", should we choose to do so. That is because we don't have responsibility for the outcome. It has always been the case that with great power comes great responsibility. Leaders should be people who can take difficult decisions when necessary for the long term.

It's often the extremists, Johnson, Corbyn, etc., who believe that they can get away with doing everything that looks like the right move instantly, while taking no responsibility for the future.

The politics that come with the job means they have to understand that if you're not in power, you can do nothing. FPTP is a system that makes this particularly true. I don't think Starmer is being dishonest nor is he ignorant. I just think he is keeping his powder dry for the time being.

More than anything, we are in this position because of the Tory government. So why attack people who are offering a solution and possibly hand power back to the Tories, simply because you can't have what you want "now". I can never understand that.

DaisyAnneReturns

I don't see either of them as ignorant Glorianny. I think they, and others in their position, have more insight into how to achieve their priorities than we can possibly have.

It's a bit like the fishing analogy. You want to feed people today. So do I. So no doubt, do others, including Starmer et al. However, we are not responsible for the management of the assets. They have to ensure enough for today and also enough to build a sustainable and viable future. That is what anyone running a business, a huge corporation or a country must look at.

We may stamp our feet and shout "I want it now", should we choose to do so. That is because we don't have responsibility for the outcome. It has always been the case that with great power comes great responsibility. Leaders should be people who can take difficult decisions when necessary for the long term.

It's often the extremists, Johnson, Corbyn, etc., who believe that they can get away with doing everything that looks like the right move instantly, while taking no responsibility for the future.

The politics that come with the job means they have to understand that if you're not in power, you can do nothing. FPTP is a system that makes this particularly true. I don't think Starmer is being dishonest nor is he ignorant. I just think he is keeping his powder dry for the time being.

More than anything, we are in this position because of the Tory government. So why attack people who are offering a solution and possibly hand power back to the Tories, simply because you can't have what you want "now". I can never understand that.

Perhaps because there are NOW 120,000 children who are effectively homeless DaisyAnneReturns and whatever scheme may improve things in the future they need housing now and not sometime in the future, 'maybe' The NHS was not brought about by gradual change, the housing problems of the 40,50s and 60s were not solved by gradual change but by policies and beliefs that it wasn't good enough to leave people in poor housing and ill health for a generation or so.
And actually the concept that it is essential to do things gradually is why I believe Blar and Starmer are either ignorant or uncaring, because if you have seen the terrible conditions some children are living under, and all you can offer is pie tomorrow and never pie today, you must be one or the other.

Glorianny

Whitewavemark2

Glorianny

I can't decide if people like Blair and Starmer are totally ignorant about the very real problems facing society, or know about them, but don't prioritise them because the people involved often don't vote.
120,710 children were homeless or living in temporary accommodation last Christmas. Why isn't this being used to promote a proper housing policy? Why isn't it being shouted from the rooftops?

They do have a housing policy. One thing is that they will allow LAs to avoid the “hope value” of land for development, thus being able to buy it much more cheaply, provided it is used to build affordable housing or social housing.

That's tinkering again. It's no use having land to build on if you can't afford to build houses anyway. A policy which gave LA's allowances, grants or some financial rewards for building residential property would help.. Most LAs are not building any houses. The government gives out millions in grants to new businesses. Why not do the same for housing? There would be financial benefits (less to pay out to landlords in benefits) and huge health benefits,

It's that new economic model again, Glorianny.

Until politicians acknowledge that the government is perfectly able to invest what is needed in infrastructure (in which I'm including housing) without having to issue bonds or tax to cover the costs, we're going to be stuck with the 'we can't afford it' mantra, or make disastrous alliances with the private sector (as in PPI).

It's not exactly a new concept, seeing as that was what Keynes was proposing back in the 1930s, and it is growth promoting in so many ways.

So why attack people who are offering a solution

Because when their 'solutions' have at their base the same economic 'orthodoxy' that the tories have held to ever since Thatcher there is little hope of meaningful change.

What I don't understand, MaizieD, is if it was that easy, why doesn't anybody do it? I know I've asked you before all about the economic measures you think should be taken but I failed my economics exams several times which finished off my professional qualifications is Accountancy!

icanhandthemback

What I don't understand, MaizieD, is if it was that easy, why doesn't anybody do it? I know I've asked you before all about the economic measures you think should be taken but I failed my economics exams several times which finished off my professional qualifications is Accountancy!

Possibly because the people it would help don't usually engage or vote and there are thousands of people who do vote who believe in the household budget concept of economics, which means you are actually losing votes. And votes seems to be the main concern of all politicians now, principles having disappeared some time ago.

icanhandthemback

What I don't understand, MaizieD, is if it was that easy, why doesn't anybody do it? I know I've asked you before all about the economic measures you think should be taken but I failed my economics exams several times which finished off my professional qualifications is Accountancy!

These are the views of a minority, currently, icanhandthemback. There does seem to be some substance in them but, as usual in a rebelion, the almost evangelical leaders of this movement are quite arrogant. That doesn't make them wrong but it does make them hard to listen to although Maisie has managed to stick with it.

A couple of quotes:

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a macroeconomic theory that says government spending should not be restrained by fears of rising debt.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is essentially an offshoot of Keynesianism in that government can spend ad nauseam and commensurately print money without any ill effect. With the historic inflation we are now experiencing, MMT has been thoroughly repudiated

Google will give you many like this, and I expect it will give some more in agreement too.

icanhandthemback

What I don't understand, MaizieD, is if it was that easy, why doesn't anybody do it? I know I've asked you before all about the economic measures you think should be taken but I failed my economics exams several times which finished off my professional qualifications is Accountancy!

Money is such a complicated subject, but basically, a sovereign state, i.e. one that issues, and demands the use of its own currency for transactions, is free to issue as much as it likes so long as the money is trusted by its users and so long as it doesn't issue so much that it causes excessive inflation. There is no physical material, such as gold, 'giving value to the money that is issued; that was abandoned in the early 1970s. Since then all the worlds' currencies have only been valued against other currencies.

Even when backed by, say, gold, governments have usually issued enough physical note and coin to ensure that transactions can take place within the domestic economy; if they hadn't the economy would grind to a halt, or some sort of substitute for physical money would have arisen. Like, for instance, men in POW camps during WW2 would use cigarettes as a unit of payment. Issue of physical currency would also accommodate a rising population. If we look at money available to the population of 45million post WW2 and available to the current UK population of some 66 million it is clear that the supply of physical money has expanded hugely and that isn't because it's been 'earned' by trade with other countries.

A great deal of our money is 'created' by commercial banks when they make loans to businesses or individuals. This is completely new money and has nothing to do with money held in the bank's deposit accounts. The money is created, is used in the economy to sustain private enterprise and create of maintain jobs. When the loan is repaid the created money is essentially destroyed, but it has stimulated a great deal of economic activity before that happens. Banks are licenced to create money by the government.

Money issued by the Bank of England is exactly the same. It is created out of thin air, by keying in numbers on a keyboard, or by ordering the manufacture of physical money, paid for by the same 'numbers on a keyboard' method...

Governments 'borrow' money because that's what they've done for hundreds of years, but this could be looked at as providing a safe saving facility for peoples' money, in that the money 'lent' (saved) will always be repaid on request, or, in the case of bonds and gilts, at term. The government pays interest on these 'savings/borrowings'. Individuals and institutions find them a reliable source of income. And have done for hundreds of years... just read some Jane Austen, a heroine's £1,000 invested in the 5%s would give her a reliable £50 p.a income

But, during recent moments of financial stress the government used Quantitative Easing to put more money into circulation. It created a situation in which the money for the govt. bond purchases either went to the Treasury for govt expenditure (covid) , or, to the commercial banks to, in theory, lend to businesses to promote growth in the depression following the Global Financial Crisis.

Having said all this, there is absolutely no compelling reason why a government shouldn't cut out the middle man of 'investors/savers' and bond purchases, and just pay for what it purchases directly. Instead of it returning via loan repayments it can return to the government via taxation, or savings and investment.

So, really, to answer your question, 'people' do it all the time... They just have to be careful that they don't create more than is needed and be prepared to tax back excess to control inflation. But inflation's not too much of a worry so long as there are goods and services available to be purchased. There are other functions for taxation.

I'm not sure that conventional economics courses really look at the origin and creation of money.

Your first 'quote' tells half the story, DAR and your second is just untrue.

So let's take one of your examples, Glorianny
The NHS was not brought about by gradual change, ...

The NHS started on 5 July 1948. Are you suggesting that someone had the idea on 4 July 1948 and that all the planning, law-making, employment contracts, hospitals, etc., were ready the next day?

You seem to know little about the long march towards the NHS. The ideas can be traced back to the 1900s and the Minority Report headed by Beatrice Webb for the Poor Law Commission promoting "a state-run medical system".

As a founding member of the Fabian Society Beatrice, with Sidney Webb, wrote the original Clause 4 of the Labour Party’s constitution. I would have thought you might have come across her.

Planning for real started in the 1930s when the London County Council then took over responsibility for around 140 hospitals, medical schools and other institutions after the abolition of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. By the time the Second World War broke out, the London Council was running the largest public service of its kind for healthcare.

By 1941, the Ministry of Health was in the process of agreeing a post-war health policy with the aim that services would be available to the entire general public. A year later the Beveridge Report put forward a recommendation for “comprehensive health and rehabilitation services” and was supported across the House of Commons by all parties. Eventually, the Cabinet endorsed the White Paper put forward by the Minister of Health Henry Willink in 1944, which set out the guidelines for the NHS. The principles included how it would be funded from general taxation and not national insurance. Everyone was entitled to treatment including visitors to the country and it would be provided free at the point of delivery. These ideas were taken on by the next Health Minister Aneurin Bevan.

So I would very much disagree that plans, laws and implementation can come newly hatched on the day a party enters government.

You appear to have gone into your standard attack mode. Why do you think I neither know nor care about the growth in homelessness and the poverty children live in? You shout, but what does your shouting achieve? Where I have the skills I help.

No one has proposed we "do things gradually". Making up others' words does not help any argument you may put forward.

Planning, drawing out objectives, forming strategies, designing messaging and how to finance the plan, will all have been going on since the early days of Starmers leadership.

Your only real issue is that they haven't told you, me or anyone else what they are. Quite right too. The first step is to actually form a government. Until that happens there is no next step.

(Sources: various)

So, has any country done this successfully?

MaizieD

Your first 'quote' tells half the story, DAR and your second is just untrue.

But that is what the "majority" are saying Maisie, not me. That's what a quote is. I thought the the second quote was lazy but that is what you are up against.

icanhandthemback

So, has any country done this successfully?

Has any country done what, successfully?

DaisyAnneReturns

So let's take one of your examples, Glorianny
The NHS was not brought about by gradual change, ...

The NHS started on 5 July 1948. Are you suggesting that someone had the idea on 4 July 1948 and that all the planning, law-making, employment contracts, hospitals, etc., were ready the next day?

You seem to know little about the long march towards the NHS. The ideas can be traced back to the 1900s and the Minority Report headed by Beatrice Webb for the Poor Law Commission promoting "a state-run medical system".

As a founding member of the Fabian Society Beatrice, with Sidney Webb, wrote the original Clause 4 of the Labour Party’s constitution. I would have thought you might have come across her.

Planning for real started in the 1930s when the London County Council then took over responsibility for around 140 hospitals, medical schools and other institutions after the abolition of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. By the time the Second World War broke out, the London Council was running the largest public service of its kind for healthcare.

By 1941, the Ministry of Health was in the process of agreeing a post-war health policy with the aim that services would be available to the entire general public. A year later the Beveridge Report put forward a recommendation for “comprehensive health and rehabilitation services” and was supported across the House of Commons by all parties. Eventually, the Cabinet endorsed the White Paper put forward by the Minister of Health Henry Willink in 1944, which set out the guidelines for the NHS. The principles included how it would be funded from general taxation and not national insurance. Everyone was entitled to treatment including visitors to the country and it would be provided free at the point of delivery. These ideas were taken on by the next Health Minister Aneurin Bevan.

So I would very much disagree that plans, laws and implementation can come newly hatched on the day a party enters government.

You appear to have gone into your standard attack mode. Why do you think I neither know nor care about the growth in homelessness and the poverty children live in? You shout, but what does your shouting achieve? Where I have the skills I help.

No one has proposed we "do things gradually". Making up others' words does not help any argument you may put forward.

Planning, drawing out objectives, forming strategies, designing messaging and how to finance the plan, will all have been going on since the early days of Starmers leadership.

Your only real issue is that they haven't told you, me or anyone else what they are. Quite right too. The first step is to actually form a government. Until that happens there is no next step.

(Sources: various)

I suppose you could see the organisation of London hospitals as an attempt to provide a service, but in fact Bevan viewed local authority control as damaging to a National Health Service The Bevan solution, opting for a regional scheme rather than one based on local authority boundaries, was a work of genius. The key was the realisation that, without executive control of both the voluntary and the municipal hospitals, effective hospital planning was impossible. It was like a breath of fresh air to the officials involved, Sir Wilson Jameson, the CMO, who had an instinct for what was required, George Godber who did the medical drafting and John Horton and John Pater who dealt with administrative issues. The regional concept brought together service considerations (the natural territory within which normal and highly specialised services could best be organised) and the university medical schools (the natural centres of research, development and education). These would ‘fertilise’ the services in the surrounding areas.77 Indeed it was difficult to conceive of a region without a medical school, and vice versa. With university and medical concurrence, regions could establish an integrated specialist system and rationalise nurse training. Bevan’s regions were sizeable; large regions were less likely to attempt detailed local control, but any high degree of local autonomy might have prevented the region from organising a coherent service. Boards had to have the ability to close, amalgamate and expand hospitals. If the boards were too weak, the anarchy of the old voluntary system would begin all over again
Of course there had been some medical provision, but the nationalisation of hospitals and health services, the adoption of responsibility for the nation's health by the government and the coordination of all services in a single Act passed in 1946 was a radical change. Nothing which came before in any way resembled it. www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/

Sorry link
www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/coll-9-health1/health-01/#:~:text=The%20National%20Health%20Service%20Act,

It’s KEIR Starmer not Kier. Kier are the people who empty household bins. 😝

Diplomat

Agree wholeheartedly EEjit. That man is the greatest champagne socialist ever. Can't bare to look or listen to him.

💯👏👏

I apologise if you thought my attack wa on you . As far as I was concerned it was upon Blair and Starmer, both of whom seem unable to appreciate that" tweaks" and minor improvements are quickly reversed by a Tory government.
Had Blair acted to allow LAs to use the money they earned from selling houses to build more we might not be in the situation we are now with such huge numbers homeless.

Glorianny

I apologise if you thought my attack wa on you . As far as I was concerned it was upon Blair and Starmer, both of whom seem unable to appreciate that" tweaks" and minor improvements are quickly reversed by a Tory government.
Had Blair acted to allow LAs to use the money they earned from selling houses to build more we might not be in the situation we are now with such huge numbers homeless.

If a party of whatever persuasion is in power for 13 years they have time to do a lot more than tweaks, and nothing that is happening now that couldn’t have reversed old policies from 2010.
My money is on Blair and Starmer, Brown et al having a far stronger and clear sighted handle on the way forward than you are giving them credit for. I think the issue here is that you don’t share their vision.

Casdon

Glorianny

I apologise if you thought my attack wa on you . As far as I was concerned it was upon Blair and Starmer, both of whom seem unable to appreciate that" tweaks" and minor improvements are quickly reversed by a Tory government.
Had Blair acted to allow LAs to use the money they earned from selling houses to build more we might not be in the situation we are now with such huge numbers homeless.

If a party of whatever persuasion is in power for 13 years they have time to do a lot more than tweaks, and nothing that is happening now that couldn’t have reversed old policies from 2010.
My money is on Blair and Starmer, Brown et al having a far stronger and clear sighted handle on the way forward than you are giving them credit for. I think the issue here is that you don’t share their vision.

I really don't get why the policies of the Tory government come into this and perhaps I don't share Blair's vision because of the complete ineffectiveness of his vision last time.

Glorianny

Casdon

Glorianny

I apologise if you thought my attack wa on you . As far as I was concerned it was upon Blair and Starmer, both of whom seem unable to appreciate that" tweaks" and minor improvements are quickly reversed by a Tory government.
Had Blair acted to allow LAs to use the money they earned from selling houses to build more we might not be in the situation we are now with such huge numbers homeless.

If a party of whatever persuasion is in power for 13 years they have time to do a lot more than tweaks, and nothing that is happening now that couldn’t have reversed old policies from 2010.
My money is on Blair and Starmer, Brown et al having a far stronger and clear sighted handle on the way forward than you are giving them credit for. I think the issue here is that you don’t share their vision.

I really don't get why the policies of the Tory government come into this and perhaps I don't share Blair's vision because of the complete ineffectiveness of his vision last time.

The Tories come into it because you were blaming the government that exited 13 years ago for the homeless problems today when clearly any policies made before that would have been reversed anyway, so it was a pointless point you made.
I disagree about Blair having a lack of vision when he was in power, history already shows how much was achieved. He got a lot wrong, but also a lot right. He could never match up to your wishes though, and I’d suggest that no party in power in the UK ever will.

I have just been watching the video and they seemed to be talking about trickle down economics and PFIs.
Keir Starmer seems to think, like a lot of people do, that reforming the NHS will be easy. I don't think saving paper (like he says he did at the CPS) is going to make the difference.

They also seemed to be a bit nostalgic about 1997. Using the different financial situation as an excuse not to spend money on reversing one of the Tories most cruel policies, If the economy was so strong and growing and inflation so low, why didn't we keep the Tories in?

Rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic comes to mind tbh
If tweaking things in the NHS was easy it would have been done already. Real changes need to made which requires a bit of chutzpah.
Tony Blair is now wiser with age but that doesn’t mean all his ideas are great and he isn’t in power or likely to be.
Neither are Brown or Corbyn.The Tories won’t be in power much longer and it will be all they can do to manage keeping things ticking along badly let alone major changes that need doing.
I hope Starmer has the right sort of vision.

Ilovecheese

I have just been watching the video and they seemed to be talking about trickle down economics and PFIs.
Keir Starmer seems to think, like a lot of people do, that reforming the NHS will be easy. I don't think saving paper (like he says he did at the CPS) is going to make the difference.

It depends if you buy into the fallacy that reorganising the NHS will solve the issues it has. It’s not the structure of the NHS that is the issue though, it’s the failure to define exactly what is expected of it, and what it won’t do.

Saving paper will actually be one of the most profound improvements possible, if by doing so repetition of the same data is reduced by a fully integrated IT based system, it would save millions of hours of time for professionals every year and a lot of annoyance for patients too.