LEaders' debate

[number 6]

Sturgeon won by a landslide in my eyes , total professional but you can tell she is genuine. I liked the welsh girl too , but she doesn't cut it as a politician.

[David Johnson]

I suspect that Nicola Sturgeon did well because south of the Border the vast majority of people know nothing about her. In that sense she is to last night's debate what Nick Clegg was the tv debates at the last election i.e. the new kid on the block.

When people know more about the SNP in practice I suspect they will realise that Sturgeon has been making her own "austerity" cuts. Like Clegg, Sturgeon is a good talker but is no more trustworthy than Cleggie turned out to be.

E.g. on education



And on health, the SNP has been cutting the Scottish Health Service whilst blaming Westminster for any problems

"One of Scotland's leading economists, Professor David Bell, told the Guardian that the Scottish government actually spends ?670m less each year on the NHS than its pro rata share of Treasury funding. While Scotland gets total funding from the UK government, which was ?1,343 per person or 15.4% higher than for the UK average in 2011 ? 12, actual spending by the Scottish government on the NHS that year was only 9.9% higher. That is "clearly" less than could have been spent, Bell said.

Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, said in a blog that this pattern of spending was not new. In fact, Scotland's overall health spending had lagged behind that in England. It has grown in real terms by 29% from 2002 to 2010 in Scotland, compared to a 43% increase in England, he claimed. "So it seems that historically, at least, Scottish governments in Holyrood have placed less priority on funding the NHS in Scotland (and more on funding other services) than governments in Westminster have for England," Johnson's blog said."

[alicia_fan_uk]

Arginald,

Xenophobia aside, Scotland will be delighted that you actively endorse that it's "their oil" billions.

[alicia_fan_uk]

All interesting stats/info, thanks.

It's a complex situation. And I'm sure all politicians are keen to interpret the grey areas for their own interests.

An initial thought:

- Scotland has relatively generous free personal care for the elderly arrangements. This costs some ?0.5 billion per annum (and rising). There are further, related substantial costs for care homes etc. This spend is actually recorded separately to the core health/NHS spending (including within IFS reports), and has the impact of reducing the need for such equivalent NHS spending. The Scottish Govt could cancel the policy and save hundreds of millions (which it could then vire back to the NHS budget), but I suspect the policy's mix of popularity, "spend to save" rationale, and cross-party support (it was introduced by Lib/Lab) prevents that. Whether you agree with that decision is legitimate debate, but it's well worth taking into account when crunching the numbers.

- One such impact is that the number of delayed discharges have reduced (by between 75% - 85%). It's still a problem, but such "bed blocking" costs a lot; an average of ten times as much to treat someone in hospital as it does in their own home. So taking money notionally "out" of the NHS budget can help iron out the bottlenecks and costs across the end-to-end system.

- Health and social care integration (both the Scottish and English flavours) will have some impact on NHS/other spending stats. How successful the initiatives are in driving better outcomes and savings, and how the related spending is recorded by "the bureaucrats", will be interesting to monitor over the next few years.


Fuck knows for sure if Scotland or England spends money better in the respective countries. And there's a wider context in terms of if any government isn't spending as much on X, then (unless it's under-spending) it's choosing to divert those resources to Y. We can all disagree based on facts, ideologies, personal preference etc as to how best to cut the cake.

[David Johnson]

Interesting.

Much is still be done re. bed blocking in the NHS according to this article



I draw your attention to the following

"Recent figures show bed blocking is also a problem south of the border. NHS England reported 139,156 days where patients were stuck in beds, unable to leave, in December. But while this figure is far more than the 31,610 reported in Scotland for the same period, the NHS in England caters for a population 10 times the size.

[alicia_fan_uk]

Yup, it's very much a problem. And it certainly looks relatively more so in Scotland given the stats you quote above. So I can only guess how much worse it could otherwise be without funded personal care etc.

I guess that's why the Scottish Government's Health and Social Care Integration is such a radical move. I remain to be convinced that it will achieve all it (notionally) sets out to. But I think there's also an unspoken Plan B in there, too; if it doesn't work, H&SCI makes it easier to put (say) health bodies more in control (as opposed to a health/council hybrid, with the layered political complications).

Sorry, I'm going off thread now so I'll shut up on that point.

[max_tranmere]

I find that most of what Nige says about immigrants is true. He should balance it out more though, and mention how many do jobs others wont do, and also the fact the NHS heavily relies on foreign staff. My view is that I'm all in favour of diversity, but not in favour of domination. When the ethnic majority, people refered to on government census forms as 'white British', become the minority in whole regions of the country, and those who've come don't assimilate nor have any patronage to the country they live in and demand patronage from, then I have a problem.

No one is going to like seeing their language, culture, race, traditions, and so on, be eradicated and replaced. Would it be ok to go to Paris and hear no one speaking French, or Berlin and hear no one speaking German? Go to Lagos, Nigeria, and see no black people - or go to what is traditionally refered to as a 'muslim country' and see that the majority of religious buildings there aren't mosques but are Sikh temples? None of this would be seen as reasonable. For some reason the way things are viewed here is the opposite. It's ok to have everything gradually replaced by other things. I don't know why the UK is viewed differently.

It can't be seen as more reasonable here because of a debt we have to the former colonies, a lot of people here aren't even from the former colonies. There is a massive Lebanese community in the Edgware Road area of London, it makes up that whole region of the city, all the side roads coming off Edgware Road and so on. Lebanon was a French colony, nothing to do with Britain. We had nothing to do with eastern Europe, but there are vast numbers from there here too. People feel threatened, and rightly so, by the never-ending expansion of other communities here - while the areas of cities where the people who DON'T fall into the category of 'ethnic minority' are always shrinking.

[Essex Lad]

Didn't watch it but what on earth were Plaid Cymru and SNP taking part for? They aren't standing in 80 per cent of the country. Their views are totally irrelevant to much of the country. And before anyone says that they should be heard because they might hold the balance of power, no one in England votes for Labour or whoever on the off chance the Scots or Welsh might get their foot in the door of No 10.

[Bob Singleton]

Arginald Valleywater wrote:

> An interesting point......Sturgeon is not, and is not planning
> to be an MP. So why was she there? I assume that a non elected
> Jimmy Krankie tribute act is going to tell the elected SNP MPs
> what to do? Surely the SNP should have a Westminster leader who
> leads on national issues while Miss Fanny Dabby Dozy deals with
> purely Scottish issues such as the price of shortbread,
> oatcakes and their drastically collapsing oil revenues.......?


Of the seven leaders, three were not MPs in the last Parliament (and I suspect that of the four who were, Clegg may well lose his seat this time round).

I doubt Natalie Bennett will get significantly more than the 2.5% she got last time in Holborn & St Pancras. As for Farage, UKIP got around 5% of the vote in South Thanet in 2010 (the winning Tory candidate got 48%) Even accounting for a reasonably numerous rabidly xenophobic and moronic population in the area, it will still take some doing for Farage to get into Westminster

Although Clegg got over 50% of the vote in Sheffield Hallam, many of his constituents are students!!! I doubt many will vote for him this time, and local polls suggest he will lose his seat unless some sort of miracle occurs. Labour, who came third in 2010, look likely to win with about a 3% to 4% lead over the Tories who came second.

Regarding the SNP, their former leader, Alex Salmon, *is* standing for Westminster in a very winnable seat, so they will have an extremely strong mouthpiece leading them there while Nicola Sturgeon gets on with the job of running Scotland (as the leader of the majority party in the Scottish Parliament, she is the First Minister).