A quick bit of arithmetic
Posted on
September 30, 2012 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Scrapping universal free prescriptions would, after the administrative costs of means-testing and suchlike, save Scotland somewhere in the region of £50m a year. By our calculations, it’d take just 254 years before the policy recouped this gigantic Labour waste of NHS money. But every little helps, right, Johann?
Are you seriously suggesting that Scotland could save 50M by means testing prescription charges when (as I understand it) Scotland’s entire prescriptions cost is currently 57M???? Care to cite a source?
My understanding is that the £57m figure represents the net extra cost compared to the previous situation, where a large percentage of prescriptions were free anyway. If I’m wrong, do correct me.
OK. Table 5.9 of link to scotland.gov.uk would appear to support your claim. You’re right and I was wrong.
Yay!
Surelysavings depend on who qualifies for the free prescription? At what level it is set?
£50million a year? A massive £10 for every person in Scotland? Do it, I say. I WANT THAT £10 BACK IN MY POCKET!!!! I LOVE £10!!!
It is absurd that such pittances (on a national scale) are being argued over and dragged into the arena while much bigger issues are left by the wayside. Especially as it’s an expenditure that most people approve of in the first place!
O/T, but are the knives being sharpened?
link to heraldscotland.com
As Doug Daniel rightly says £10 odd a year?
Seems like a hell of a good deal to me.
Juteman – there’s no one to take her place. The only people who could conceivably take the bull by the horns are down in Westminster, but even if one of them wanted to stand for election, I think everyone realises their leader in Holyrood HAS to be their overall leader.
This is Labour’s leadership problem, and it’s entirely of their own making. They have too many people vying for position as the top cat in Scotland, and electing Johann as the first “proper” Scottish leader has done nothing to solve that. There’s still the problem of a far more articulate (although ten times more weasely) deputy leader who tends to take to the studios when you would expect Lamont to be on. There’s still Margaret Curran, who although ostensibly under the auspices of Lamont is clearly very much under orders from Milibean. There’s Jim Murphy, who still acts like he’s Scottish Secretary, and Douglas Alexander, who just floats about giving his “thoughtful” speeches about how to reform Labour, which are actually just Blair-lite pish.
The Tories and Lib Dems don’t have this problem. I suppose for the Tories it’s basically because Ruth HAS no one to challenge her authority, except David Mundell, who is about as articulate as James Kelly; and for Willie Rennie it’s because no one really gives a crap what he thinks, and his party doesn’t have to try and defeat opponents on both the left and the right of it.
Labour needed to get someone credible from Westminster into Holyrood last year, elect them as leader, and decide who their real opponent was – the Tories or the SNP – and remain consistent. If it’s the Tories, then just go along with the SNP, not against them, and if it’s the SNP, tell Milibean to fuck off and win Middle England without Scottish Labour’s help.
They’ve done everything wrong. And it’s hilarious and tragic at the same time.
For sure , how can anyone grumble with that, these are the things that taxes should be used for. No one can argue otherwise surely.
Thanks Doug.
So you reckon this talk of ‘labour sources’ in that article is just internal frustration, as they know they’re screwed politically in Scotland?
@Juteman
Interesting article – it does not surprise me that Labour’s “Political Strategy Board” hasn’t met since it was set up in October. However, I hadn’t realised that Labour had set up a Devolution commisison in March 2012 … which hasn’t met yet either. What’s the new commission on Devo+ going to talk about (if it ever meets). I would now like to draw attention to the confessions in the comments thread which are revealing if true (forgive me for quoting them verbatim but they made me laugh out loud).
Jim Gray, Siegen, Germany
As a member of Labour’s Political Strategy Board, I feel I have to come to the defence of Johann Lamont, who is in no way to blame for our failure to get together. There are many reasons for these extremely busy people being unable to attend these meetngs, the main one being invitations to weddings, birthday parties, christenings and similar events. Illness and holidays came a close second followed by a feeling of ‘general sluggishness’ brought on by an excessive workload. Occasionally one or two people just forgot. Rest assured that 2013 will see a whole series of meetings held in Edinburgh and London. We are all highly motivated and our results will no doubt silence our critics.
john fegan, glasgow
Thank you for clearing that up Jim. Here was I thinking it was indolence with a large helping of incompetence.
David Steadman, Glasgow
I must object to mr Gray’s cheap laugh comments, as a real member of this group I must pen a reply to put the record straight we have attempted to meet on at least three occasions on the first attempt we waited at the allotted tram stop in Edinburgh only to find they weren’t running yet, the second attempt johann herself organised by means of a new meeting committee committee but this meeting committee committee failed to meet thus rendering our second meeting a failure. The third meeting was to be held johann’s home but due to johann’s lack of direction we ended up in a wilderness and gave up.
I wish to point out that is no fault of the Scottish labour party and has been orchestrated by others who have a political agenda to make us look stupid, feckless, badly organised, and to be honest not capable of being a credible opposition party. I wish to point out that is the Tory position in Scotland and we are in talks with the Tories to ask where they went wrong.
Comedy Gold.
Johann Lamont, Glasgow
was unavailable for comment.
I believe Lamont was unavailable for comment Adrian because she was too busy digging a new bolt hole!
@juteman,
I see faux socialist Cllr Terry Kelly is toeing the party line. Loyal as ever to the party but treating with contempt the people he’s elected to serve. God help Ferguslie Park.
Juteman – aye, I reckon that’s just someone who’s sounding off because they feel helpless. They’ll go along with the party line but moan about it to people who’ll listen.
In some ways, those types are even worse than the sycophant Hothersall-types who embrace the party line and will gladly go from arguing black is black to black is white in mid-sentence on the say so of their party. At least those types are being true to their ways. If this senior source is so pissed off with how badly things are going, he shouldn’t be ignoring it and carping from the sidelines.
Major – those comments are class.
I liked that line from MacWhirter in the Herald, about Johann’s Newsnicht interview.
“The interviewer, Isabel Fraser, adopted the politely exasperated tone of a social worker trying to understand why a rather confused elderly patient hadn’t paid their council tax.”
When articles like that start to get published in the mainstream press, the writing is on the wall.
Daily Mail running a 15 things you should know about the UK. I don’t quite see number 4 the same way they do
link to dailymail.co.uk
Actually, when I saw the title of this post, I wondered if someone else had been doing the little bit of arithmetic on those latest poll results. Which were, for Scotland,
SNP 48%
Labour 35%
Tories 12%
UKIP 3%
LibDems 2%
Tiny numbers, and I think in fact only one person said LibDem and one said UKIP, but it’s not out of line with earlier polls. And the research was done before last Tuesday.
Depending on which electoral calculator you use, and whether or not you use the new boundaries, the SNP end up on anything between 38 and 44 seats (old boundaries) or 33 (new boundaries) and Labour on maybe 14 to 21. The LibDems may or may not keep the Northern Isles.
If this is anywhere close to reality, if there were a general election this side of the referendum, we’d slaughter them. Which would make for some very interesting times. I think the coalition will do literally anything to make sure the current Westminster parliament goes its full term.
Doug Daniel,
You let Terry Kelly off too easily.
The man believes that he is a ‘socialist’ and that what he is witnessing in the Labour Party in Scotland is socialism. It is completely farcical.
It is a Labour Party municipal hegemony that he really appears to believe in. The ‘victory’ of Labour in Glasgow is stunning, the SNP are on the run, etc, etc.
He is also some sort of class warrior. Despite the economic advantages of getting back the tax we pay as free prescriptions to all, despite it being a marginal cost, it is the lack of power that that causes, nay his feeling of his latent power usurped, that is what exercises him.
The rich – who are you and I and other readers of this blog, y’know ordinary punters – are bastards and we must be pulled down to his level. Then Terry Kelly, will have the power to decide.
I wouldn’t let him have power over a cold cup of tea…..
Could this be the future for Scotland if we believe a word of what Lamont comes out to say?
link to facebook.com
@Doug Daniel
You’ll no see your tenner, since all that money is going to go to Glasgow Cooncil:
link to bbc.co.uk
Erchie, I see thon “British” history is the usual history of England with the other bits added on as and when they become part of England. e.g. the English Civil War is described as the only civil war in “our” history, and the Wars of the Roses (curiously, not a civil war according to the prof.) caused turmoil in “Britain”.
Oh, and only the Scottish Parliament dissolved itself in 1707, apparently.
By the way, here is my MP making a twit of himself:
link to scotsman.com
Reducing income tax by 1p? Where can he have got that idea from? Also, I believe he’s been appointed to the “cuts commission”.
As one of the commentators notes, he’s not the brightest.
Gordon Matheson is being setup as new leader of Scottish Labour….we’ve already had a puff piece from the Herald. Lamont is being killed off with enough space between elections(they hope) and Matheson will sweep in with a new ‘socialist’ outlook. Just join the dots.