Unwanted Liberal Advances

Nick Clegg's Lib Dems have managed to hang onto Eastleigh, and thus Nick Clegg has managed to hold onto his Lib Dems, despite the Huhne/Price and Rennard scandals. Whilst holding a seat is not so much an advance as a maintenance of the staus quo, with the incumbent MP heading off to jail and defending a tiny majority and polling nationally in the single digits, this was quite something for the Yellow Terror.

The main point, though, about both of these stories was that it is very clear that lots of people (his own people I should stress, not Tory or Labour malcontents) say that Cleggo knew about both of these in pretty vivid detail. Weirdly, he has come down with a touch of the Murdoch's and can't remember being told any of it. Convenient because if the very many people who essentially say he is lying are being truthful, Nick would be in a spot of integrity-based bother. And the Lib Dems are all about integrity. There are 3 possible conclusions:

1. Nick Clegg is not suited to Government as he simply cannot recall even the obviously most important things he has been told.
2. Nick Clegg is not suited to Government as he runs such a loose ship that he doesn't want to properly investigate serious allegations made about very senior party members, or else his deputy, 'Quad-member' Danny Alexander, doesn't bother telling Clegg the important bits once he has investigated them.
or...
3. Nick Clegg is not suited to Government as he is telling whoopsies, the lying little tyke.

The whole unsavoury affair brought to light an interesting point though, which Toby Young tried to explain a couple of weeks ago (not particularly well) to the Labour Party Conference (Question Time audience). This was that we should be a little careful over calling an amorous advance a sexual assault. There is a big difference, and screaming "how dare you, you chauvenist rape-condoning pig" at anyone who points this out does nothing to help those victims of actual sexual harassment or assault.

Think back - have you ever thought "I'm in here" and lunged at the object of your fancy? Maybe you were 15, at a party in the room with the coats with the pretty girl from French class, maybe you were 25, dancing the light fantastic with a fellow reveller in a nightclub, or simply 35, trying "to steal a kiss" as you dropped off your dinner date at her door. Now that was rather ageist of me to suggest that only teens do house parties, 20 somethings go out clubbing and 30 somethings do dinner, but you see the point, no doubt?

You have not always asked for written permission to go for a kiss I will wager - and nor should you. Or (for those kissing girls - because the way we are hard wired means it is generally boys who have to chase girls) when kissing to go for the hallowed ground of the boob touch. Now "no" means "no", but we must agree that working out sexual signals is a dark art, and one which backfires sometimes. Etiquette dictates you go very red in the cheeks, become very very English and mutter things like "I'm terribly sorry...I thought I saw you catch my eye...too many sherberts...I'm awfully embarassed...etc" In normal circumstances, getting it wrong is not a sexual assault - crossed wires are just that. We cannot legislate the (un)knowing glance.

Now clearly I'm talking about Lord Rennard and his alleged Lib Dem activist fetish - presumably for him there is something enduringly sexy about a moronic idealist with discalculia. Clearly one can go too far in trying one's luck, but just trying it is no crime (I'm not advocating forcing yourself on someone, but leaning in for a kiss or stroking a leg is flirting, and you are allowed to get it wrong if you behave correctly immediately on finding out your error). It is irrelevant that he could be mistaken for Eric Pickles from afar, or that in trying his luck he would be attempting to commit adultery. If he only propositioned these women and tried unaggressively to kiss them, on the criminal side of the ledger if he is guilty most of us should be locked up.

The more important charge is that it does seem likely, if these allegations have any substance to them, that he has abused his position of power. That is very different to the general commentary in the press which is incredibly worrying and has all the hallmarks of a society on the march toward "sexual thought crime." Romantic misunderstandings are par for the course, forceful abuse of power is not, nor of course sexual assault. Let's not mix them up though, eh?

Civil Disobedience

Hot on the heels of my NHS rant I feel we should opt for some thematic consistency and stay with the public sector - and what better example of overpaid, bloated, self-perpetuating beauracracy than the not so Civil Service. The news now a couple of weeks ago (almost current this blog - so relevant, no?) is that they are beginning a series of strikes, starting with budget day. Why? Are they being indiscriminately fired? Is there rife abuse of power, sexual harassment and so forth perpetrated against the voiceless and penniless Bob Cratchet types staffing the Home Office workhouses? Perhaps they are working 23 hour days and are forced to send their babies down the pits at the Energy Department? Which Herculean task is ahead of them? Which ignoble wrong must these Trade Union leaders right? Surely it must be some great disservice being foist upon these loyal, industrious bastions of our society? Oh no, my mistake, they want another enormous pay rise. What a bunch of pumpers.

Yup, yet again the Trades Unions are going to war with the Government over pay, holding us all to ransom for a 5% pay rise in a recession when there's clearly no money to pay for it. Everything else is fine. There is no point in their existence other than a way of finding jobs for quarter-wits (think Len McClusky) and holding the country to ransom over eye-watering pay increases for their members whilst everyone else has to live in reality (not something with which Bob Crow is particularly au fait) and tighten their belts during tough economic times.

We've been here before.

Please try to remember, when the BBC plaster wall to wall coverage on Budget Day and thereafter of these "vital cogs" in our society explaining that they are being "victimized" by the Government in a public vs private, divide and conquer strategy, and they are just trying to "make ends meet" and "put food on the kitchen table" and "clothe their children" and other such shit, that everyone is trying to do that yet they are demanding a pay rise none of us could hope for in this climate.

And they want it from you. From your pocket. Big pay rises to them mean less money for education, for public transport, or to keep fuel prices down. It's why there is no money for a tax cut for anyone, why child benefit is no longer universal, and why the upcoming budget will be no better news than the announcement of the next series of Big Brother. It's just pure unadulterated greed - and the Beeb will sell it to you in its standard, tawdry "it'll only hurt the children" mantra. Just don't buy into it. Because if you do, we'll all end up paying for it.

Farewell the Deserting Rats

A rare, but sensible criticism of the military here. The grumpy old codgers moaning about the 7th Armoured Brigade's history of tank warfare need to look back at the regimental annals. Regiments get re-roled, as do their other Service counterparts. Tradition is very important in the forces, but not at the expense of any forward movement. Parts of our armed forces are centuries old - but they have had to adapt to survive. We have cavalry units complaining about losing tanks now. Would they rather we went back to horses?

I am the first to admit the defence review might have been somewhat hurried and may prove in the long term to be somewhat of a poorly effected hatchet job, but both cuts and change are necessary in some measure - anyone can see that. If we upheld everyone's claims that "we've been doing x since blah blah blah", there would never be any change and the Armed Forces a worse place for it. The only way is to embrace the change and try to work with it rather than against it. Tradition will not always be your best defence in trying to divert the axe.

As an example look at the Rifles - now one of the most prestigious and over-subscribed infantry groups after under 10 years since formation. The writing was on the wall at the turn of the century that there were too many small infantry regiments and amalgamation and maybe disbanding would be inevitable. The Devonshire and Dorset Light Infantry, the Light Infantry, the Royal Gloucester, Berkshire and Wiltshire Light Infantry and the Royal Green Jackets chose their bedfellows. They embraced change and created a fantastic fighting unit with a real sense of union. Others had it forced on them and tangibly lack the success that cohesion brings.

So let us have less sniping about the sideline matters, it only serves to drown out the more important arguments over future size, structure and funding. That, too, is not only a lesson for the Armed Forces. Other departments would do well to remember to pick their battles and not sweat the small stuff, or else people will have stopped listening to their cries by the time the real wolf does come along.

Those in Glass Houses

Over the last few years the Clergy have been increasingly vocal in their voicing of political views. The last Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams seemed drawn to public political statements like a moth to a flame. Bishops positioning themselves for high office it seems likewise like to make tactically timed public comment about Government policy. It seems the new spiritual leader of the Church of England is no different.

Whenever I hear a churchman talking about the ills of Government policy I cannot help but think of gay-yet-gay-bashing paedophiles hurling sanctimonious stones out of their glass houses. Just saying - it's the image that pops up. I wonder perhaps if they might consider staying on line for a spell and putting their own houses in order?

Now as Iain Duncan-Smith pointed out this week, it is certainly right that church leaders (and all men and women of the cloth) are concerned for their flock and indeed those outside it, especially the meek, poor, weak and needy that the Bible and other religious texts points out could do with some help. But it is the manner of their intervention that is so unseemly.

A few weeks ago the Bishop of Liverpool condemned the Government because the welfare cuts fell disproportionately on the poor. Yes. They do. Because poor people use welfare more than rich people. It is a non-point. The fact is most public money goes to those with less (it's the hallmark of a generous and humane society), but that does mean that cuts in this largesse will also work in the reverse. It is disingenuous and moronic to pretend it is a ghastly thing or indeed avoidable.

If the Government spent public money on providing Beluga caviar and Cristal champagne for all those earning £200,000 a year, it would be eminently sensible to cut that budget first. But they don't. The fact remains that the rich subsidise the poor through taxation, and take little draw on the public coffers, so cutting their take is pretty tricky. When it comes to decreasing spending (and it is clear that must happen, because our economy and therefore tax take is not about to jump 15% to cover the shortfall between spending and income) the Government can only decrease what it does spend money on, which naturally is stuff that more poorer people benefit from.

The other side of the coin is certainly the question of whether more money could or should be extracted from the richer in society. But, as mentioned here before, with some of the highest tax rates in the world, not only are "the rich" already doing more than their moral "fair share", but they also will not produce more by an increase in taxation. We are already well beyond optimal levels of taxation for money gathering and economic growth purposes. Pretty much all tax rises now are essentially economically self-defeating in the long term and politically- (masked as morally-) motivated in the short term.

The latest church intervention by Justin Welby mirrored these type of comments, condemning the welfare reforms for sharing the burden incorrectly. He is right it is shared incorrectly, but not in the right direction - half the tax collected in this country already comes from just 5% of us and 1/2 of us take more than we give. He has rowed back somewhat since his comments last weekend, qualifying that the welfare system is shot to pieces and requires reform, but he is still out of lane.

If he thinks his words were not political or guaranteed to be used politically, he is far to naive for Lambeth Palace. The church's (all churches, not just C of E) place is not in politics, despite (no more obvious now than with the recent Papal elections) politics being rife within the church. It would do well to tend to its own dwindling flock and its failings than try to draw attention away by one-eyed, economically unsound political point scoring to divert attention and raise personal profiles. If they really want to help the poor, they could always sell some of their lovely golden clothes...

Horses for Courses

There has been a lot of water under the bridge since my last outburst, and I have felt the rage building at story after story until I could no longer hold back, despite my new, joyous 4 hours of daily commuting rather depleting my hours available to blog. Like a hardened con waiting for his 'basic human right' of a conjugal visit, there's rather a lot stored up.

So where to start? Well we should probably go with the story that had the most direct and dire consequences for the public at large - likely widespread criminal behaviour in one of the most important sectors. A vile underbelly of corruption masquerading in a great illusion of quality forced on the unknowing British public. I speak, of course, of the HORSE MEAT SCANDAL! You'd be forgiven for thinking I meant the appalling NHS Mid-Staffs affair - the report detailing the horrific standards of care and indeed lack of basic human compassion reported that led to at least 1,200 deaths. You see, whilst that seems important, it appears we don't care very much about that, based on the column inches. No, we care much more that unscrupulous people have been selling Shergar in place of Daisy the cow.

Not to belittle the affair, but nobody is dead. Horse meat in general is perfectly edible. Clearly the issue is with mis-selling (and making a profit from selling a cheaper meat as a dearer one) and quality (if you don't know what is in it, you don't know how good it is or if it is safe/organic/volunteer beef). Fair enough there's been a bit of a hoo-hah about this, but the perspective is very wrong.

We don't mind eating chicken nuggets (some of us), and having carved a chicken up last Sunday, I certainly didn't find any naturally occuring ones. We knowingly put in our mouths things which are labelled one thing because of a sometimes rather loose connection with one of the ingredients - think turkey twizzlers, beef kebabs and value pork chipolatas. There are all sorts of filler put in cheap meats the world around - to use my favourite quote that I crowbarred into every history A level essay I wrote; "laws are like sausages, it's best not seeing one made".

Otto von Bismarck's erudite point is certainly true of the (no pun intended) ghastly horse trading that today sees 1/2 a Lib dem policy and 1/2 a Tory policy put together to ensure the alienation of both sets of supporters in conjunction with an utterly useless piece of legislation. It is no less true of cheap meats, and has ever been thus. That someone has found that they can pass off selling horse is no surprise considering how much water-blasted shin gristle, 'reclaimed' scampi and sawdust-based fillers we've probably eaten in our time.

Surely there is a suitable legal chain whereby shops have a certain requirement for due diligence in confirming what they are being told they are receiving really is just that (they cannot personally monitor every animal from cradle to gravy, so it has to only be a reasonable level of diligence). If they have done that (as dictated no doubt by the FSA (not the banking one)), they're in the clear and can then sue their suppliers for reputational damage, whilst the courts can prosecute those who intentionally deceived them. If not, they're in hot water too. No matter how many people in the chain, the process works the same. Not surprising, not terribly important in the grand scheme of things and already perfectly well catered for in law. Move on shall we?

The actual big story though, is the elephant in the room. The Tories are so concerned by their lazy but extrmemely adhesive image of the nasty poor-bashing party that they dare not do the right thing over Mid-Staffs. It seems you simply cannot say that there are some useless people in the NHS. You also cannot say there are some nasty people in the NHS. No, every worker in the NHS goes to work wanting to do good.

Quite how everyone is content that every single one of the 0.5 million banking sector employees in this country go to work with greed and class-based hatred in their hearts, yet cannot countenance even one of the 1.5 million NHS employees not being 'an angel' is beyond me. We are a nation of morons, intent on buying into themes, not listening to facts and making sound judgements. It's how Labour are ahead in the polls where everyone thinks the economy is the most important thing but cannot see Labour have not produced a single economic policy in 3 years of Opposition since they totally ruined the country's finances for generations to come.

The Tories refuse to point out that whilst Sir David Nicholson certainly is accountable over all the deaths to a degree, what is far more important is that at least several hundred medical professionals are vastly more culpable in individual cases. No, the "system" and the "culture" wasn't right in many ways, and top management (and all the levels in between) have to take responsibility for that. However, to allow someone to dehydrate to death in bed, to give someone a vase of flowers to drink from, to allow someone to not be moved for days at a time causing fatal bed sores, to fail to monitor properly the care of over a thousand people (and they're only the ones who died - I dread to think how many suffered and survived), that is cold-hearted, even evil, certainly sackable, definitely culpable and probably criminal behaviour. And it must have been perpetrated by hundreds of nurses, doctors, ward sisters, health workers, care assitants etc.

Sod the "we don't learn by blaming" - I don't remember such restraint (still ongoing) regarding 'the bankers' (catch-all for every single person in the financial services, all misanthropic, all went to Eton (they must have big classrooms), all earn £1,000,000 a year, all eat babies and love Jimmy Savile). There are people in this "envy of the world" health system of ours that deserve to go to prison, not just fired and never again allowed to work in healthcare. But no, the Tories don't want to give the Grauniad et al the "nasty Tories turn on the NHS" headline they are dying to print. Which of course is why DC still won't cut their bloated budget despite the damage it is doing to other departments.

And the other reason we are quiet over the hundreds of awful and culpable workers? Because if we convince ourselves only the chief exec who will never have even set eyes on a single one of the victims is to blame, then as he wasn't also the chief exec of all the other hospital trusts, there's no chance this exact behaviour isn't mirrored in all parts of the country. If, however, we admit the NHS is a very sodding long way from perfect and throwing money at it doesn't cure it any more than applying a soothing balm constituted of £50 notes cures cancer, we might have to look under a lot more stones and find a lot more willful neglect and in some cases, outright abuse. And more dead people, naturally. And we wouldn't want that - we'd rather moan about pony arrabiata.

The Great NHS Free-For-All

Today, an important but understandably touchy angle on the seemingly perpetual divide between the realists and the fantasists. Yesterday, the Labour MP, Dave Anderson had a letter published in the Torygraph bemoaning Nice - the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. As you know, it is the job of this unfortunate set of souls to decide what we can afford to cure 'free'.

By this I mean they look at treatments and medicines, work out how much they cost and what benefit they deliver. They use necessary but harsh sounding units called "cost per quality-adjusted life year". They take all this into account and work out if the NHS should add this treatment to the sanctioned list that John Q Taxpayer can undergo or be prescribed free at the point of delivery.

It must be a desperately depressing job. When they rubber stamp something that helps people out, they are unthanked (naturally, one might think - it's their job). However in the absence of the smooth, they certainly get their 'fair' share of rough; when we do hear about them, it is not normally in a story showing them in the greatest light. You can probably recall at least half a dozen articles along the lines of 'Nice refuse to fund cancer drug condemning little girl to death' or other such monocular representations of the very complex situation.

Now the thrust of Anderson's letter was a criticism of the decision to place under Nice's remit the assessment of viability of "high-cost, low-volume drugs for very rare conditions." Sadly it appears he has previous experience with one such condition having lost two family members to myotonic dystrophy. However, in his concluding paragraph he exposed the ultimately flawed opinion which characterises his party.

He stated "people affected by rare diseases should not be faced with the uncertainty of knowing whether Nice would deny them treatment on the grounds of cost." Whilst I can empathise with someone who has experienced the terminal illness of a loved one, I cannot agree with this statement. We should strip out the "rare" part and analyse what he says - essentially "diseases should all be treated free of charge by the NHS regardless of cost".

This is one of the reasons why we have a cyclical political cycle. The Tories piss everyone off / stab their leader in the back / erupt into civil war and Labour get in. Labour then bankrupt the country because they subscribe to the economics school of Ocean Finance. Cue Tory return. Ad infinitum.

As I blogged about in part here, referencing this excellent comedy sketch (here), there is a finite amount of money to be apportioned to varying competing demands (and the same goes in all areas of Government, not just health). What Anderson is essentially saying is there should be no Nice. Drug companies should simply create procedures, treatments and drugs and the Government should pay whatever price those companies choose to charge, because everything should be free. Nothing's too good for our loved ones, surely? NHS means 'Free For All', right?

Anyone suggesting otherwise surely wants people to die? Painfully. What total Tory bastards.

Or of course, they know that there is only a certain amount of money and lots of ill people. So you have to take a utilitarian sort of view and try to do the most good and the least bad. Now those closest to illness are naturally biased. I would have been a terrible Chancellor or Health Secretary whilst my father was ill. I suppose I might have sold all the eye units, pawned off the heart disease research centres and put the maternity wards on eBay. I might have traded it all in for as much anti-cancer stuff as I could get my hands on. Luckily I wasn't in charge, so that didn't happen.

Like Dave Anderson's brother and sister, my father didn't make it. Unfortunately, that's life, and indeed death. It comes for us all, and there is likely not a family in the country who have not had somebody succumb to one illness or other. Many of them no doubt feel very strongly about funding for research into the disease or condition in question. But that's why we have Government to make impartial, unemotional decisions. MPs are part of that and should be able to speak as a representative of their constituency, not just of their family.

At the end of the day there isn't enough money (even if we had not been left in such a parlous state by the last Government) to treat everyone to the highest levels. Those lucky enough to afford private healthcare can mitigate this to some extent. Those lower down the economic scale cannot. So we have a system that tries to make sure the money goes as far as it can. Often this means refusing to fund medicine that would help some sick people quite a lot. It is not out of spite. It is because they have decided they can spend the same money elsewhere and make a few more people better.

It is very sad for the unfunded group, but we should not let Nice become a punching bag. Perhaps the equation they use could do with tweaking, perhaps it does not take all of the right things into account? But it has to be there in one form or other. It has to exist. It is as necessary as a medic on a battlefield deciding which soldier to treat - given the time he has and the equipment with him, where is his help best put to use? We should all feel sorry for the man left to bleed out as the medic moves to help the man lying next to him and then the next and the next, all in the time the medic would have taken to treat the first man and still perhaps not save him. We can make a song and a dance about it if we wish, but we should not question the medic's motives nor forget the greater good he did by not treating the first man.

This is Government; trying to do the most good for the most people but being realistic about the fact that we will never please everyone. Unfortunately, there are too many people commenting disingenuously about decisions on where we can afford to spend and where we cannot. We know there isn't enough money to go round. Yet we still hear bleating of evil cuts as if there was no need to budget.

This is the fallacy Labour would have us believe - that the cuts are for shits and giggles; some kind of old-Etonian 'screw the poor' party where all the spare money is spent on champagne and fox hunting or just burnt in great bonfires for fun. Because if they pretend the choice to fund a drug or not is not an economic one but a moral one and anyone who disagrees is just punishing the ill, they hope you'll forget the reason why so many of these decisions do actually have to be made from an economic point of view - because they screwed the economy of this country for likely decades to come.

We must feel great sadness for those who are struck down by illness and even more so for those whose treatment is not economically viable. It would be lovely for those falling ill to not have to worry about treatment costs, but to pretend their having to is the whim of a malicious, uncaring Government is poor form. They rightly do have to worry because there isn't enough to go around and objectively the money might be better put to use elsewhere. It is the fantasy of the centre and left, of Labour and Lib Dems, that all decisions should be made on principle and not economics. It is what got us into this mess in the first place. If they are let back in, they will cause chaos again in the economy - then the NHS really will be a free-for-all.

Another Slice of the Golden Goose

This week David Cameron decided it was time to stand up to aggressive corporate tax avoiders to mixed reviews. Some companies complained of the added cost of being forced to publish their basic tax positions. This sounded a lot like saying "we'd rather you didn't know" since they already produce annual reports and statistics for various bodies, not least of all their shareholders. I can't imagine it would take an intern more than a day to look at the column in the excel spreadsheet that says "UK taxes paid", divide it by the column that says "UK profit" and multiply by 100. That would go some way to satisfying the desire to check tax is being returned in reasonable proportion to the country of the citizens who funded the profit.

Really the only people who are going to whine about this are indeed 'doing a Starbucks'. I don't think it's morally wrong - that's not important, and it's an opinion of which DC should have but didn't steer clear. As I've said before, a company owes it to its shareholders to maximise profits; this includes getting staff to work for as low a wage as they can reasonably offer, buying raw material cheap, selling product as high as they can and paying as little tax as they can whilst complying with their legal obligation to pay full tax in whichever jurisdiction their company structure allows.

Some people like to bang on about moral obligations - the 'fair share' tax lobby for instance. I, for one, think that's a load of old cock. Companies should behave in a moral way, but legally minimising one's tax bill (as anyone with a personal ISA or parents who pay into their children's ISA or child trust fund is) does not contravene moral behaviour. We're talking about not paying exploitatively low wages, not using child sweat shops, not trading in blood diamonds - that sort of stuff.

Trying to go the Clegg route of minimum effective rate of tax is not going to work. I think, for once, there is some merit in the idea, but actually far more applicable to personal not corporate tax. We can investigate that one another day. The main point though, is that this hasn't been thought through - like everything that leaves the Lib Dem leader's mouth. Putting aside the potential resulting disincentive for businesses to operate in a country that doesn't allow very effective (read: "aggressive" in today speak) tax avoidance, the law would be too complex and probably very easy to get around.

The far more obvious route to go is public pressure - look at Starbucks. If you make everyone show they're playing fair, consumers can talk with their wallets and not patronise those companies who they think take too much in profit from their country and return too little in tax. That's what DC is suggesting and makes sense - I just wouldn't have framed it in the somewhat anti-business rhetoric he did.

It is up to him and his Chancellor to set rates (and corporate tax rates are not the only relevant business tax - many others have been rising to offset the decrease in the headline corporation tax rate) that attract people to pay their tax bills in the UK. The key is being cheaper than the financial cost of setting up an avoidance system and the reputational cost of being exposed as an "aggressive tax-avoider".

But I've said most of that before. What I really wanted to talk about was how popular tax avoidance rhetoric is these days. So much so that Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary has tried to jump on the band wagon with his new target. There is a group of people out there engaging in a disgusting tax avoidance scheme. They make Jimmy Carr look like Lord Sainsbury. Who are these people refusing to pay their fair share? Old people who refuse to get dementia.

Bastards. Old, fully-marbled bastards.

Let me explain, Manuel…

Labour have not learned that our money is not their money. Still. So they are trying to revive their "death tax" in response to the Coalition plans to introduce the social care cap (which looks like it may be the first actually well-thought out policy of this Parliament). Yup, beyond the already monstrous theft that is inheritance tax, Labour would like to take some more of your already taxed money to pay for the care of the elderly. Regardless of whether you ever need any yourself.

Amazing.

Having grasped the wrong end of the stick, Burnham thinks the extensive reviews into how to save those unfortunate enough to require care in their latter years from liquidating often their only asset which they have spent a lifetime paying for is actually an excuse to tax everyone some more. He and his moronic pals have thought this would be an excellent opportunity to make everyone pay an extra 10% of total estate on death to pay for someone else's care.

Now I have already written about the dubious script that everyone seems to accept unquestioningly that elderly care required for age-related illnesses (e.g. dementia) is somehow different from infant care required for age-related illnesses (e.g. premature babies and various infant conditions). Because it is apparently different, the latter is free at the point of delivery having been paid for by general taxation budgeted to the NHS. The former though is apparently something different - an optional extra like reverse parking sensors, built-in GPS or heated seats. Therefore it is something we all have to pay extra for if we require it.

Now you know I accept there is not enough money to pay for everything - it's why we don't have 10,000 uber-hospitals with 1:1 doctor:patient ratios and 15 minute waiting lists. I just think we don't present this one in the correct light - call it what it is. We have to charge people for elderly care because there's no money left. That's because we spent rather than saved whilst the sun was shining. We failed to recognise the burden of population growth. We sold all our gold at rock bottom. We raided our pensions. We sold all our Government assets to pretend we had annuitised income to spend on buying elections when really we were reducing our capital base and often then decimating our 'earnings' in a very short time renting back the assets. For 'we', I think you know what to replace in its stead…

Now Burnham and Labour think on top of all the taxes we pay through our lives, when we get to the end we should then pay another great whack to pay for extra care that should have already been covered by our taxes but instead was squandered by a Labour government who tripled NHS spending without improving anything because more money for granny's hip and little Timmy's asthma was a good news story. Apparently, having to pay the social care cap (or insurance premiums to cover it) is forcing people to pay a 'dementia tax'. Therefore those people who have the audacity, nay the temerity not to suffer in their old age are avoiding this tax. And that's not 'fair'. So let's tax them some more. It's always the answer.

Hopefully Labour will make this anti-tax avoidance message central to their election campaign. I think we'd all sleep a lot better in our beds at night knowing they will never get near Government with it.