Prescription charges to be abolished in Scotland, where, as in Wales and Northern Ireland, they still get to live in somewhere that it is recognisably Britain, whereas in England we are the guinea pigs in the never-ending crazy experiments of the think tank teenagers.
Take out everyone over 60, everyone under 18, everyone on sickness benefits, everyone just on JSA (rather a lot of people at the moment and for the foreseeable future), pregnant women, nursing mothers, cancer patients, everyone with a long-term condition lasting at least six months, everyone in Wales, everyone in Northern Ireland, and now everyone in Scotland. Exactly how many prescriptions are issued to people who do not fall into any of those categories? If I were a betting man, then I would give you good odds that the whole thing brought in less money than it cost to administer. Whether or not that is the case, away with it. Roll on electoral reform.
In the meantime, however, how does Scotland or Wales (Northern Ireland less so, I expect) feel about the growing likelihood, and indeed the growing reality, of much of the population being made up of people who, not so much because of this decision as because of various others, have retired there from England in order to live out their days in something resembling the Britain in which they grew up, with the costs duly met by Her Majesty's Exchequer in London? Hardly a boon for the separatist cause.
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Try googling it. In fact, don't bother, as I did. It's on the first page. This suggests that income was £421m in 2007/8, and administration charges were £4.5m.
ReplyDeleteYou might have slightly more credibility as a blogger if you did a shred of research, you know.
As I said in the post, it doesn't matter.
ReplyDeleteExactly, as David said, he'd never looked it up because it doesn't make any difference. If it makes a loss, it's a waste, so "away with it". If it makes a profit, it's a racket, so "away with it". Either way, "away with it".
ReplyDeleteRe: the last paragraph, David also knows, as we all do, lots of people retiring to Scotland for the OAPs' freebies, and also lots of middle-class people with children looking to relocate there to avoid student fees. The character of Scotland will be changed a great deal as these trends pick up.
Already is being.
ReplyDeleteSince the Scottish devolved body has its own revenue-raising power (which it has never used, after all the fuss to get it), the cost of extending these schemes nationwide should be met by reducing its block grant, with any shortfall to be made up by the use of that power. No losers there.
Poor Shalo, horrified at the idea of poor people having healthcare. His kind used to say that "they don't have it America" like that was a knock down argument. What are they going to say now? Where is Shalo going to move to now?
ReplyDeletePerhaps we are going to emigrate to America for the healthcare, once Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and Lansley have taken it away from us here? There is not the room for all of us in Scotland.
ReplyDeleteHow green with envy Tony Blair and David Miliband must be. They always wanted to destroy the NHS. Like Shalo, of course.
There is plenty of room for all of you in Scotland (five million people in an area half the size of England). It would benefit from an influx of middle class consumers - the only people who could afford to leave England, as poor pensioners wouldn't get council houses if they moved. Think of the jobs created in labour-intensive care for the elderly. Does anyone in the Scottish Borders complain about English immigration?
ReplyDelete‘In the meantime, however, how does Scotland or Wales (Northern Ireland less so, I expect) feel about the growing likelihood, and indeed the growing reality, of much of the population being made up of people who, not so much because of this decision as because of various others, have retired there from England in order to live out their days in something resembling the Britain in which they grew up, with the costs duly met by Her Majesty's Exchequer in London? Hardly a boon for the separatist cause.’
ReplyDeleteIt is quite bemusing to get economic migrants from a G8 country. But as for separatism, it makes it logistically more complex given that Scotland’s famously aging population is largely due to English immigrants, but frankly I do feel proud of my country that Cameroon hotshots Michael Gove and Liam Fox have to be parachuted as far away from the Scottish border as possible to be elected.
As for ‘resembling the Britain they grew up in’ whilst the loudest Scottish Nationalists tend to be buffoons with an incoherent ideology about ‘Celtic’ identity, in fact it is the Northumbrian Lowland culture that both inspires and develops Scottish identity (and which reaches all the way North along the East Coast). I don’t see this as any way antagonistic to English culture, but it seems more the case that the geographical entity of England is at war with itself (I think Scotland would already have become independent if Thatcherism were as savage here as it was in Northern England) and a good number of English people seem to want to be American.
I signed the petition against privatising England’s forests and was pleased to do so. It may seem ironic that I admire some things about the SNP and would like to see the English people get more out of their nation and economy than the demented neo-liberal plutocracy wants them to get. But I see no conflict.
Whatever you can say against Alec Salmond, I think few would deny his intelligence, and so I think he is postponing a referendum on independence when the ball is in Cameron’s court. Cameron knows that the Lib Dems are finished as an electoral force so he has two options: return to a vaguely one-nation Toryism (taking the right of Lib Dems/Labour, and yes, SNP with him) or try to reach out to UKIP economic liberal nationalists (who loathe Scotland); maybe in doing so expand upon the Westminster Council’s ban on feeding homeless people. And just for a laugh go abroad at the time and get his ‘favourite political joke’ to tell the Houses of parliament that doing so is ‘progressive'.
If the latter then that’s not my Britain and I would support the SNP. If Westminster Council is not the Britain of many English people, then I wish them all success in building a more egalitarian and caring country. But I’d rather that they stopped voting for whoever they consider the most charming candidate before worrying about the policies.