2013 July 19 « Dr Alf's Blog

UK Independence Party (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I thank Dr Alf for reblogging Tthe article entitled The Tories Can Ill Afford to Crow About Welfare, by Simon Danczuk MP, published in the Huffington Post. Here are my own views.

No political party can afford to crow about welfare reform because none of them have a convincing and cogent approach.

Capping rents in London and freeing up housing stock for wealthy foreign investors makes sense but unless more houses are built elsewhere, the Housing Benefit Bill will rise outside of the “cordon sanitaire” of the M25.

Capping rentals, as Ed Miliband proposes, and introducing landlord registration will not produce more rental properties but will produce fewer as smart landlords look overseas in more business friendly locations.

Those who are not so smart will sell up and stop being landlords so in the absence of more mortgage finance, cheaper construction methods, more construction workers to replace those who have turned to taxi driving /left the industry you will have an explosion of homelessness and greater use of foodbanks.

All of this will happen under either Government, or even a hung Parliament with UKIP holding the balance of power, yet Simon Danczuk and the Coalition have nothing to contribute or say about these matters.

Currently, we have a shortage of 10.5 million homes but are building about 100,000 a year and have a population including illegal immigrants of 70,000,000 people which is increasing. This has been a growing shortage even under the 1992 Blair regime when under” Predict and Provide” it was 4.4 million rising to 5.4 million when the 1 million Poles arrived just before the inception of E-Borders the Raytheon /BT Global Services inspired system for counting passport holders into and out of the country.

The economy is not growing any faster than 0.50% per year which means that with inflation it is in reverse despite what Government Ministers say.

You need 3% growth for full employment yet since 1946, some 67 years we have through successive administrations only averaged 1.4% growth and now have next to no exports and lowest productivity of the G7.

Draconian measures on benefit recipients without the alternative of some work even of the most menial kind is going to trigger lawlessness and drug taking with all the attendant social costs of mental illness, depression, divorce and poverty.

Labour has said that it will stick initially to the Coalition’s spending plans but has said nothing about export led growth or how we propose to create enterprise, narrow the gap between those at the top and those at the bottom or prevent 80% of all the jobs going to people who are not born in this country whilst allowing almost unfettered immigration from the EU.

Simon Danczuk is right to talk about personal responsibility but the issues relating to UK PLC’s top line performance or lack of it, immigration, population size and makeup, enterprise creation, the corporation tax system, our lack of productivity and competitiveness are the responsibility of Governments and the silence from him, Miliband,Clegg, Cable , Cameron,Osborne and the rest of our out of touch and unimaginative elite is deafening.

The Tories Can Ill Afford to Crow About Welfare | Simon Danczuk MP – Huffington Post (dralfoldman.com)
A Hard Look at the Left, Gibberish, David Cameron and Peter Oborne – John Gelmini (dralfoldman.com)
Increasingly Tory MPs must worry about life after the next election – John Gelmini (dralfoldman.com)
A Hard Look at UK Austerity and Correcting the Mistaken Lessons of History – John Gelmini (dralfoldman.com)
A Hard Look Beyond the UK Immigration Backlogs – John Gelmini (dralfoldman.com)
Why UK Chancellor George Osborne will not be allowed to use the axe on the Public Sector – John Gelmini (dralfoldman.com)
UK Decline and EU Membership: Response to Lord Heseltine – John Gelmini (dralfoldman.com)
A Hard Look at UK Defense Spending – John Gelmini (dralfoldman.com)
A Hard Look Beyond the 13,000 Needless NHS Deaths – John Gelmini 2/2 (dralfoldman.com)
A Hard Look at Individual Liberty in the David Cameron’s UK – John Gelmini (dralfoldman.com)

Sketch map of Whitehall, London, showing the position of the major UK Government buildings there (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is an interesting article published by the NYT. It’s WELL WORTH A READ. Check it out!

via What Makes U.S. Health Insurance Exchanges So Complicated – NYTimes.com.

The author, Uwe E. Reinhardt, is an economics professor at Princeton, with some financial interests in the health care field.

As I read the article, my mind wandered to European public healthcare in countries like Switzeland, Germany or France, and then it settled on the UK; this blog has repeatedly argued that the UK NHS is in a state of terminal meltdown.

The current UK Government seems to be quietly favoring increasing outsourcing of NHS services.

Perhaps, it would be better for the Government to learn from the national healthcare practices in countries like Switzerland or Germany?

Any thoughts?