Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

George Osborne under fire over £2bn NHS pledge
Labour dismiss announcement as ‘spin’ after it emerges that £750m of extra funding is recycled health department cash. 30/11/2014



George Osborne, the chancellor, has come under fire after it emerged that a headline-grabbing extra £2bn a year being allocated to the NHS includes £750m being re-allocated from within the Department of Health.

The extra health funding, announced before the chancellor’s autumn statement this week, was widely welcomed by health experts. Labour said it would match the extra funding and top it up with an extra £2.5bn a year for the NHS from its planned “Time to Care” fund.

Tories argued that the £2bn headline “extra funding” figure was justified because, in addition to the increase in the overall health budget, Osborne also announced that £1.1bn would be spent over four years modernising GP surgeries. That £1.1bn is a one-off sum that comes from the fines imposed on banks after the Libor rate-rigging scandal.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, the chancellor described the extra funding as a downpayment on the NHS’s five-year plan.

The NHS’s chief executive, Simon Stevens, launched the new five-year plan in October, and said the health service would need an extra £8bn a year by 2020. The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is due to make a statement in the Commons on Monday formally announcing that the government is accepting the target.

But Hunt will not say how the government will be able to find an extra £8bn for the NHS by the end of the next parliament, and the controversy generated by Sunday’s £2bn announcement illustrates how difficult it will be for the next government to increase health spending in real terms so substantially.

Osborne will announce more details of future government spending plans in the autumn statement on Wednesday, but he faces a particularly tough task because he is expected to admit that his deficit reduction programme has stalled.

On Monday Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, will argue that because income tax receipts and national insurance receipts have been lower than expected over this parliament, and welfare spending has been higher, Osborne’s “failure to tackle the cost-of-living crisis” has cost the Treasury £116.5bn. The party will say that the loss is the equivalent of almost £4,000 for every taxpayer.

Osborne’s decision to make health a key feature of the autumn statement reflects his eagerness to neutralise the issue in the runup to the general election. Labour, which has a clear lead on health in opinion polls, wants to put the NHS at the heart of the campaign, but the Conservatives want the election to be fought over the economy.

Speaking on the Marr show, Osborne confirmed Sunday newspaper reports that he would be putting an extra £2bn a year into the NHS, starting from April next year. Government sources subsequently confirmed that £750m of that was coming from internal health department savings – “essentially moving money from [the back office] to the NHS front line” – while the rest would come from underspends in other government departments.

Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, said that this meant the £2bn figure was “spin”, because Osborne was “proposing to recycle funds already in the Department of Health budget. “Labour’s plan is fully funded and will give the NHS £2.5bn a year over and above the plans left by this government,” he said.

The Tories argued the £2bn new money figure could be justified by the additional £1.1bn being spent on GP services, with the money coming from the fines paid by banks involved in the Libor rate-rigging scandal. Some £1bn will be going to England and the rest to other parts of the UK by using the Barnett formula.

In England, the money will be used to improve GP community services, with premises being modernised and technology improved so that facilities such as chemotherapy and dialysis can be provided in local centres. This is in line with the strategy set out in the NHS five-year plan.

Stevens, the NHS England chief executive, said the extra money “represents an extremely welcome vote of confidence in the NHS’s own five-year plan”.

Nigel Edwards, chief executive of the Nuffield Trust, the health thinktank, also welcomed the investment, saying it would help the NHS “through what looked like being an impossible year in 2015/16”. But he warned that in future, governments would not be able to rely on recycling money from the Department for Health budget.

“Taking money from elsewhere in the health budget may not be an option in coming years, as the vast majority already goes towards the NHS and underspends are running out. Future increases will have to be almost entirely new money,” he said.

Paul Johnson, the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said on Sunday that Osborne would have to admit on Wednesday that the public finances are in worse shape than the Office for Budget Responsibility was forecasting at the time of the last budget, in March.

“Things haven’t gone as well as hoped since March, not in the sense that the economy has done less well than hoped but, because earnings growth has been relatively poor, other tax receipts have been relatively poor. We’ll probably end up with the deficit a bit higher than the OBR was expecting back in March,” Johnson told BBC1’s Sunday Politics programme.

He said that even with Osborne’s promised squeeze on welfare benefits, there would have to be big cuts to other public services in the next parliament. “The consequence will be that by 2018 we are looking at spending cuts of one-third in a whole slew of public services – local government, police, justice, police environment – all of these things,” he said.

But, in his interview, Osborne argued that the IFS analysis was wrong, because it did not make allowance for the fact that a future Conservative government could introduce even more welfare cuts.

“The IFS and others assume there are no further savings in the welfare budget. I don’t think that’s the right choice for this country,” he said. “We should be making savings in welfare.”

Speaking on the same programme, the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, said Osborne had failed to meet his aim of eliminating the deficit and that his proposed tax cuts were unfunded. He said that “pretty much everything” Osborne was saying “falls apart under scrutiny”.

Osborne refused to rule out increasing VAT after the election, saying he had no plans to do so.

Balls said that “no plans to raise VAT” was exactly what Osborne said before the 2010 general election, after which he raised it from 17.5% to 20%.

Balls told the programme that Labour would put an extra £2.5bn a year into the NHS, partly paid for by its mansion tax on homes worth more than £2bn. Osborne said it was more accurate to describe this as a “homes tax”.

He said: “Of course they come on this show and say it’s for people with houses worth £10m or £15m, but once Labour introduces a homes tax, it will be people with homes with a fraction of that who will be clobbered with it.”

On Monday, at an event in Nottingham, Miliband will argue that the government’s failure to tackle the cost of living crisis is hampering deficit reduction, because it has cost the Treasury so much in lost revenue and extra welfare spending.

According to House of Commons library research for Labour, income tax receipts during this parliament have been £66bn lower than expected in 2010, national insurance contributions £25.5bn lower, and social security spending £25bn higher.

“The government’s failure to build a recovery that works for every-day people and tackle the cost-of-living crisis isn’t just bad for every person affected, it also hampers our ability to pay down the deficit,” Miliband will say.

“Britain’s public finances have been weakened by a Tory-led government overseeing stagnant wages which keep tax revenues low.

“The result has been David Cameron and George Osborne missing every single target they set themselves on clearing the deficit and balancing the books by the end of this parliament.”

from above.....

According to House of Commons library research for Labour, income tax receipts during this parliament have been £66bn lower than expected in 2010, national insurance contributions £25.5bn lower, and social security spending £25bn higher.

A case of rats not joining a sinking ship

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/alan-johnson-snubbed-ed-miliband-over-return-to-shadow-cabinet-9894265.html

Sunday 30 November 2014

Alan Johnson snubbed Ed Miliband over return to Shadow Cabinet

Ed Miliband approached Alan Johnson about a return to the Shadow Cabinet ahead of the next election but was turned down by the former Home Secretary.

Mr Johnson, still one of Labour’s most popular politicians and now a best-selling author, revealed how much he had disliked his short spell as shadow chancellor after the 2010 election.

Where you moving to then H/S? Not near me I hope.

Where would that be?

Not saying, just in case -):

Which broad area? NSEW?

well we now no that camerons speech was all bull shit lies and more lies
this man is taking the public for fools he needs to look at is gov for those

a party of liars and crooks

most popular boy's name in UK for 2014
a definite one for MrT ......

the answer is Mohammad!!

interestingly, no counterpart girl's name in Top 20 :-)

I'm surprised.. where did Alf come Alf -):

H/S Lets something straight, you ain't living nowhere near me.. all right.

161st :-)

Outrageous! -):

Diane Abbott going for London Mayor , to stand up against anti immigration in capital . Please no.

thought you might have commented "I wasn't asking your weight!"

Whats all this about Paxo standing for Mayor then?

For Hays,

For Cynic,