A Manifesto for 2024

[mr brightside]

Free trade agreement...have you tried buying anything expensive (over £200) from Europe recently?

I have. 320 Euro on car panels cost a total of £920 to get to my door, including 565 euro for shipping. I may have the numbers wrong there, but basically it cost a grand to get a tailgate and a rear apron into blighty from Germany.

[Mike T]

Mike I agree on the £2000k. The number is incorrect. It could be more, it could be less, but it is a guess and I don't like that kind of debate, but they are toast, floundering around for anything to pick at.

However, I'd just like to point out that public spending has doubled IN REAL TERMS from 646 Billion in 2000 to the OBR forecast of 1.22 Trillion in this financial year.

That is a monetary increase, and an increase as a % of GDP from 34.8% to 45.6% over the period.

Over the same period we have 500,000 extra public sector employees.

So we have gone way beyond pay a little more tax for improved services.

One has to also take that in the context of National debt that has gone from 28% of GDP to 98.8% over the same period and soon to reach 3 Trillion with no end to the deficit in sight during the next Parliament.

And our interest payments on that debt? £74 Billion forecast this year as we still run up the national overdraft.
That's the 5th highest category of spending, almost double the defence budget.

So when any of these politicians say "our plans are costed" they are talking shite.

If I ever took such a budget to my board, I would have been fired.

Modern Monetary Theory of course says that deficit size is irrelevant, what matters is has so much money been printed that it causes significant inflation, in which case tax and interest rate rises and pay restraint become necessary to control it.

As to public sector numbers, I can only comment on the NHS which is grossly understaffed - if I had to live my professional life again, I would return to Oz after a 2 to 3 year stint in the UK - this brain drain is a real problem - some hospitals in Oz have huge numbers of UK trained medics - they need to be encouraged with better pay and better working conditions to remain in the UK, and we need to train far more of them, rather than the poorly skilled so called Physician Associates.

[Witton Park]

Overall trend in staff
Currently there are over 1,410,000 directly employed staff working in NHS hospital and community services in England, around a further 212,000 in general practice and more still working as, for example, outsourced workers in the NHS. Staff costs make up around two-thirds of NHS expenditure, and have – across NHS and foundation trusts – doubled in cash terms to £67 billion in 2020/21 relative to 2008/09 (1.6 times higher in real terms).

The number of NHS staff in England has increased substantially since 2014, with over a quarter of a million (26%) more working in hospital and community health services in November 2022 compared to eight years prior, and over 36,000 (29%) more working in general practice. Much of this increase has occurred in the latter half of this period (see the darker blue bars in the chart below). The expansion of the NHS workforce between 1998 and 2022 has also exceeded the increase to population need over the same period, growing by 62% compared to a 28% increase in the needs-adjusted population.

The Nuffield Trust

[Witton Park]

I suggest you have a word with your shipper.

I could bring 2 pallets from Slovakia for that.

I can bring a pallet of CO2 cylinders from Germany weighing around 400kg for less than that.

But consider before Brexit your 320 Euros would have been closer to 400 as the VAT would have been applied at source, whereas now it is applied on clearance, and will be added to your carriage, so you carriage might be nearer 350 euros, but then add in the vat on carriage and vat on your goods and bingo.

Overall, the only extra charge should be a small clearance fee. I pay £12 to DHL per consignment as an example.