Trump's tariff wars...long post.

[Lozz196]

A good review of it might help. My Dad had to have a stent in the artery in his leg a few years back, carried out in Hertfordshire.

 

Fast forward to Xmas just gone and he was in such pain he called an ambulance and was taken to A&E in Bedfordshire. They said they didn’t have access to the medical records for the stent as it was done by a different trust and they don’t like providing this information.

 

Firstly - National Health Service, with the emphasis on National. All hospitals should have access to this information so if a patient has to visit any hospital they can be treated with full knowledge of procedures already carried out.

 

Secondly - Like. What the trusts “like” should be insignificant in comparison to the “likes” of the patients, which should be liking the fact that they can be treated nationally, with the relevant staff having full access to all records.

 

Reminds me of how the Yorkshire Ripper evaded being caught for all those years, each Police Force having their own records rather than national.

 

 

[tegs07]

7 minutes ago, Russ said:

The Australian system would work better. Basically, it's all free, but if you earn over a particular amount (I think it's AU$97,000 right now - about £48k) you either have to pay up to 1.5% more income tax depending on how much over that amount you pay, or you have to get private insurance. 

 

The French system is not much different to the NHS - the main difference is that your contribution to it is itemised on your taxes (as membership of a "mutuelle"). It also comes with (small) co-pays for doctors' appointments. Breaking out NHS funding into a separate line item on your taxes might not be a bad thing, rather than the funding for it just coming out of general taxation. I know you get that pie chart every year from HMRC that shows what percentage of your taxes are going to what, but seeing it as an actual amount might remind people that it's not actually free, just free at the point of access. 

TBH I have come to the conclusion that when people think something is free they don’t value it or the people offering it. A nominal fee might make people turn up for doctor/dentist appointments and only ask for medication that they need.

 

I have a friend who is one of the rare unicorn NHS dentists who has a firm ethical belief that dentists should be for everyone. After 20 years of people not turning up, being abusive when told that they actually need to brush their teeth and floss she is ready to jump ship.

 

Edit: I found exactly the same mentality with Freecyle and other free services. The number of chancers messing me about when giving stuff away was ridiculous. Charge a nominal sum and they show up. 

Edited Friday at 13:35 by tegs07

[chris_b]

3 minutes ago, Russ said:

The Australian system would work better. Basically, it's all free, but if you earn over a particular amount. . . .

 

In 1979, when I lived in Sydney, we had to buy annual ambulance insurance, or they wouldn't send out an ambulance. 

[chris_b]

. . . . another double post!!!

Edited Friday at 13:35 by chris_b

[Al Krow]

35 minutes ago, tauzero said:

 

14 years of deterioration wasn't damaging it then? It took that long for the party in question to fail to survive.

 

But it wasn't due to a lack of the previous government's spending on the NHS, was it? That went up quite a bit, unlike most public expenditure.

 

I'm hoping the current lot under our current excellent Health Sec. will be able to set the foundations for a better, more efficient NHS. The departure of Ms Pritchard last week was a necesary first step.

 

Edited Friday at 13:40 by Al Krow

[SumOne]

16 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

TBH I have come to the conclusion that when people think something is free they don’t value it or the people offering it. A nominal fee might make people turn up for doctor/dentist appointments and only ask for medication that they need.

 

I have a friend who is one of the rare unicorn NHS dentists who has a firm ethical belief that dentists should be for everyone. After 20 years of people not turning up, being abusive when told that they actually need to brush their teeth and floss she is ready to jump ship.

 

Edit: I found exactly the same mentality with Freecyle and other free services. The number of chancers messing me about when giving stuff away was ridiculous. Charge a nominal sum and they show up. 

 

Yeah, or a more degenerate example - anything with a free bar, or 'all you can eat'  there is a lot of waste. Either charge a bit for it, or have a wastage fee and it's make things more efficient. Perhaps rather than charging for Dr appointments a small fine for missed ones would work (although I guess quite an admin hassle to deal with, but you'd think all the digitisation of records and NI the government could just take that bit extra as NI from you).

[Agent 00Soul]

39 minutes ago, chris_b said:

 

Our lot are naive simpletons in comparison to the maniacs running the US Government.

 

Why is there this assumption that UK negotiators are bad and are always going to accept a bad deal.  On one hand, there is this stereotype about how uneducated and short-sighted people in the US are.  On the other hand, whenever there is talk of UK-US trade negotiations, there seems to be the view that the UK negotiators are pliant and going to be fooled by the wily Americans.  It was the same post-Brexit.  I remember people in the Guardian writing about how the EU negotiators would outfox the UK ones easily.

[tauzero]

3 minutes ago, Agent 00Soul said:

Why is there this assumption that UK negotiators are bad and are always going to accept a bad deal.  On one hand, there is this stereotype about how uneducated and short-sighted people in the US are.  On the other hand, whenever there is talk of UK-US trade negotiations, there seems to be the view that the UK negotiators are pliant and going to be fooled by the wily Americans.  It was the same post-Brexit.  I remember people in the Guardian writing about how the EU negotiators would outfox the UK ones easily.

 

And the EU negotiators walked rings round the UK ones, as the EU negotiators had been negotiating trade deals with lots of different countries and the UK ones hadn't (David Davies even turned up without any notes at the start).

 

I don't think that the UK negotiators are any worse than the US ones. However, Trump has shown how willing he is to use extortion and blackmail at a national level. If the UK negotiators are willing to walk away rather than get a shitty deal, all well and good. If they're desperate to make a deal, they'll be screwed.

[Russ]

1 minute ago, Agent 00Soul said:

 

Why is there this assumption that UK negotiators are bad and are always going to accept a bad deal.  On one hand, there is this stereotype about how uneducated and short-sighted people in the US are.  On the other hand, whenever there is talk of UK-US trade negotiations, there seems to be the view that the UK negotiators are pliant and going to be fooled by the wily Americans.  It was the same post-Brexit.  I remember people in the Guardian writing about how the EU negotiators would outfox the UK ones easily.

The negotiators working for the Tories the last time we went through this seemed willing to put everything on the table - the post-Brexit desperation for anything that could be spun as a foreign or trade policy win was very much apparent. That won't be the case now. 

 

Starmer and Streeting seem a bit more flexible than I'd like on allowing private interests into the NHS, but I think it's highly unlikely that they'd offer up much of value. Maybe the opportunity to bid on IT systems contracts or something like that (goodness knows the NHS is in desperate need of properly joined-up IT systems). No insurance companies, and no clinical commissioning. 

[tegs07]

10 minutes ago, Agent 00Soul said:

remember people in the Guardian writing about how the EU negotiators would outfox the UK ones easily.

erm. the negotiations (and negotiators) were a disaster. it’s worth reading Barnier’s recollections of them.

[Agent 00Soul]

In what way did the EU negotiators pull one over on the UK?

[tegs07]

18 minutes ago, Agent 00Soul said:

In what way did the EU negotiators pull one over on the UK?

They didn’t pull one over on the UK. What they did do was to make sure that they understood the rules, regulations, intricacies, nuances of the European Union, how it functioned, what it offered, how it was structured and what was achievable for different case scenarios.

 

This from Barnier might summarise the “deal” reached and the objectives of its negotiation team:

“It seems to me that Brexit is an issue of permanent debate in the UK. That means Brexit was not so clear,” observes Barnier. “From the very first day, the UK ministers not only underestimated the consequences of Brexit — they did not know the consequences of Brexit.”

 

and 

Johnson said once, ‘I want a deal because I need a deal.’ This sentence was key for me . . . I wasn’t surprised by the madman strategy. I was told that this strategy was taught in university in the UK.”

 

 

Edited Friday at 14:39 by tegs07

[Beedster]

Just now, tegs07 said:

They didn’t pull one over on the UK. What they did do was to make sure that they understood the rules, regulations, intricacies, nuances of the European Union, how it functioned, what it offered, how it was structured and what was achievable for different case scenarios.

 

This from Barnier might summarise the “deal” reached and the objectives of its negotiation team:

“It seems to me that Brexit is an issue of permanent debate in the UK. That means Brexit was not so clear,” observes Barnier. “From the very first day, the UK ministers not only underestimated the consequences of Brexit — they did not know the consequences of Brexit.”

 

 

 

That's a pretty robust analysis if you ask me; Brexiteers all shouted for it telling us how much better things were going to be, but very few of them had done their due diligence on how things were actually going to be. Given the state of the EU and the World right now, only history will determine whether Brexit was to the greater good of UK citizens or not (I specifically avoided saying "Whether Brexit was a good decision" because I doubt that the basis for the decision at the time could be described as such in strict terms), but what's absolutely clear is that many of the people driving it actually had no f***ing idea whether it was or not, it was just all about political dick waving with little concern for business/economics/science/security

[Beedster]

16 minutes ago, tegs07 said:

I wasn’t surprised by the madman strategy. I was told that this strategy was taught in university in the UK

 

....and we're back to the problems with the UK University sector  

[Lozz196]

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

 

But it wasn't due to a lack of the previous government's spending on the NHS, was it? That went up quite a bit, unlike most public expenditure.

 

I'm hoping the current lot under our current excellent Health Sec. will be able to set the foundations for a better, more efficient NHS. The departure of Ms Pritchard last week was a necesary first step.

 

Yep, although I’m not a Labour man I like Wes Streeting and am hopeful he can get some things moving in the right direction.

[Russ]

1 hour ago, tegs07 said:

They didn’t pull one over on the UK. What they did do was to make sure that they understood the rules, regulations, intricacies, nuances of the European Union, how it functioned, what it offered, how it was structured and what was achievable for different case scenarios.

 

This from Barnier might summarise the “deal” reached and the objectives of its negotiation team:

“It seems to me that Brexit is an issue of permanent debate in the UK. That means Brexit was not so clear,” observes Barnier. “From the very first day, the UK ministers not only underestimated the consequences of Brexit — they did not know the consequences of Brexit.”

 

and 

Johnson said once, ‘I want a deal because I need a deal.’ This sentence was key for me . . . I wasn’t surprised by the madman strategy. I was told that this strategy was taught in university in the UK.”

 

 

Yep. The negotiators went into a gunfight armed with a spoon. They had no idea what they were doing, or even the rules of the game. 

 

I got the impression they went in there all cocksure, all "we're the UK, you need us and you'll give us what we ask for", and they weren't treated that way at all. Davis, Frost and co were entirely unprepared, only had the vaguest of outlines of what was achievable, and were pretty much winging it the whole way. 

[Russ]

57 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

Yep, although I’m not a Labour man I like Wes Streeting and am hopeful he can get some things moving in the right direction.

Streeting seems to be a pragmatist rather than an ideologue. He knows where they need to get to, and what resources are available, and unfortunately a lot of those resources are not within the NHS itself.

 

As someone who is a Labour man, I'm not against using private services where it is cost-effective to do so and where it will improve outcomes and reduce waits. Of course I'd prefer it if Nye Bevan's original vision for the NHS was maintained, but (largely thanks to 14 years of mismanagement) that's not where we are right now and a course correction is required. 

[Obrienp]

1 hour ago, Beedster said:

 

Given the state of the EU and the World right now, only history will determine whether Brexit was to the greater good of UK citizens or not

I didn’t vote for Brexit and I was upset when the (slender) majority went that way. However, I have always believed that the UK would be alright in the end. We will eventually recover from all the ill effects but you have to ask why we would want to put the country through 30 years, of vast extra expense, turmoil, disunity and general misery to come out the other end roughly where we were when we started.
 

The current state of the world order means that we need to integrate militarily, politically and financially with the Europe we recently left, because we can’t count on the USA doing the right thing, or having our back. Effectively we will need to create a whole load of extra treaties and agreements, which will bind us as tightly to Europe as we were when in the EU but with few of the benefits of membership, so really worth all the extra expense and disruption then!

Edited Friday at 16:13 by Obrienp

[Beedster]

1 minute ago, Russ said:

I'd prefer it if Nye Bevan's original vision for the NHS was maintained....

 

I agree, IIRC average life expectancy then was 72 and most people were in relatively good health until they died. LE is now about 10 years later with most people being in poor health for the last 20 years of their life. The two effects combined mean that the vision in question - no matter how virtuous and no matter how effective it was in at inception - is not fit for purpose now without a level of taxation that would not be sustainable. But a very big part of the problem is that too many decision makers are still working under the misapprehension that it can work in line with that vision

[Beedster]

5 minutes ago, Obrienp said:

I didn’t vote for Brexit and I was upset when the (slender) majority went that way. However, I have always believed that the UK would be alright in the end. We will eventually recover from all the ill effects but you have to ask why we would want to put the country through 30 years, of vast extra expense, turmoil, disunity and general misery to come out the other end roughly where we were when we started.
 

The current state of the world order means that we need to integrate militarily, politically and financially with the Europe we recently left, because we can’t count on the USA doing the right thing, or having our back. Effectively we will need to create a whole load of extra treaties and agreements, which will bind us as tightly to Europe as we were when in the EU but with few of the benefits of membership, so really worth all the extra expense and disruption then!

Very well put. I always thought both Trump and Putin must have rubbed their hands in glee when Brexit was formalised, it weakened the EU, and it weakened the UK, and it tipped the balance of power Worldwide

[SumOne]

On 17/02/2025 at 16:08, SumOne said:

The most tricky thing about overseas aid seems to be communicating the value to voters.

 

Voters can see their money being spent on a new boat/wall whatever and news footage of them stopping and deporting migrants. It is much more tricky to show in a 'soundbite' sort of way that long-term supporting vaccinations/education/farming/industry/rule-of-law etc. abroad has made it a better place for people to stay and stopped so many wanting to migrate in the first place (and that a lot of charity campaigns will be quite short-term, e.g. give money now to feed people starving in a crisis today, rather than less newsworthy long-term aid programmes that strategically help build up a country to not have war/famine in the first place).

 

That is just one aspect of it, there are all the soft power and other advantages that are hard to quantify and communicate  e.g. reducing risk - reducing the chance of of pandemics etc.  

 

I think most politicians can see that foreign aid is generally a good use of tax money - but not a good way or getting themselves elected.

 

It is one of those times that a country like China has an advantage - they will do it  strategically long-term without worrying about votes. 

 

... the fact that China does a lot of international aid work without disclosing the cost probably says a lot - it isn't to brag, isn't to appease domestic voters, so are they just doing it from the goodness of their hearts? or are they doing it because it will strategically benefit China?

 

 

Since this comment the UK Gov have quite predictably gone for the path of least resistance 'play to the gallery' and follow the Trump playbook by cutting international aid to fund defence. They have framed it as either/or, which isn't correct, they go hand in hand. 

 

It often seems the only reporting is NGO leaders etc complaining aid cuts are a bad idea, people might rightly say 'of course they do!', it plays right into the Trump/Farage 'woke lefties' us vs them playbook. What should have more focus is this response from the ex head of the British Army:

 

Gen Lord Richard Dannatt (hardly a title associated with some 'woke lefty'!)

 

"I ran Britain’s army. I know what it needs. Don’t cut aid to fund defence"

 

"Britain’s security and influence on the world stage depend on a balanced approach – one that integrates our military strength with diplomacy and development. To wield power effectively, we need hard and soft power working hand in hand. Cutting development aid undermines our ability to stabilise fragile states, reduce the conditions for extremism and build alliances that enhance our security. Simply put, well-targeted aid prevents conflict and reduces the burden on our armed forces in the long run.

 

Moreover, the premise that aid and defence are in competition is a false one. In reality, they are two sides of the same coin. Well-targeted development assistance helps to stabilise fragile regions, preventing crises before they require military intervention. It is aid that helps to rebuild war-torn societies, counter radicalisation and reduce the refugee flows that destabilise Europe. Without this investment, Britain will face an increased terrorist threat, more humanitarian emergencies and greater pressure on our borders. By neglecting this crucial component of security, we are setting ourselves up for greater instability, which will require even more military spending in the long term.

Furthermore, the burden on Britain’s armed forces will only grow. If we cut aid, we will be forced to deploy military resources in areas where we could have mitigated instability through targeted development"

 

And Gen James Mattis, the former US secretary of defence previously said  “If you don’t fund the state department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition, ultimately.” 

 

These aren't aid charities or aid beneficiaries, or people that could be described as being lefties - these are ex-heads of UK and UK armed forces. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/27/britain-armed-forces-cut-aid-fund-defence

 

The problem with governments spending on international aid in an increasingly selfish and insular world seems mostly down to problems with communicating the nuances to voters when they are up against simple 'we give foreigners £ but should spend it at home instead' messages that initially sound correct, whereas it is a bit more complicated to explain 'we spend £ to influence the world and make it a better place for everyone - including us'

 

Edited Friday at 16:32 by SumOne

[Agent 00Soul]

I was discussing this very thing with my usually reliably leftie neighbour and she basically shrugged her shoulders and said aid didn't stop 7/7 or 911.  Again, not the reaction I was expecting.

[Woodinblack]

9 minutes ago, Agent 00Soul said:

I was discussing this very thing with my usually reliably leftie neighbour and she basically shrugged her shoulders and said aid didn't stop 7/7 or 911.  Again, not the reaction I was expecting.

 

Indeed, but it is impossible to know how many other random dates that it did stop

[SumOne]

8 minutes ago, Agent 00Soul said:

I was discussing this very thing with my usually reliably leftie neighbour and she basically shrugged her shoulders and said aid didn't stop 7/7 or 911.  Again, not the reaction I was expecting.

 

Yes, another problem with 'selling' the concept of international aid is that it is very difficult to measure how much it has helped to reduce risks. Would we have had more of those attacks without it? Would there have been more pandemics? Would there have been more wars that we'd got involved with? Difficult to say with certainty, but people who know about these things - like heads of the army think so.

[tegs07]

The saddest part about the current geopolitical situation is the biggest challenge that the world faces is climate change and its impact on migration. Instead of spending billions of dollars trying to combat these issues the money is being spent on defence and coming out of aid budgets.

 

Whilst I think that upping defence spending is a long overdue (and a hasty, ill prepared scramble) the long term consequences will have to be addressed at some point. To depressing too contemplate in any depth.

Edited Friday at 16:49 by tegs07
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