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theinspectorst

@ theinspectorst @kbin.social

Posts

55
Comments

440
Joined

3 yr. ago

Liberal, Briton, FBPE. Co-mod of m/neoliberal

Moderating

UK Economy feddit.uk

2y ago

Michael Gove says no-fault evictions will be banned this year
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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago
Michael Gove says a lot of things.

2y ago

UK farmers vow to mount more blockades over cheap post-Brexit imports

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

Cheap food imports? During a cost-of-living crisis? Blasphemy! Bring back the Corn Laws!

2y ago

Liz Truss targets 'secret Tories' with new campaign

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

[Mogg] declared the death of "Davos man" - members of the global and political elite who descend on a Swiss ski resort every year for a global economic forum.

Ah, yes the famously left-wing extremists of ... the World Economic Forum.

2y ago

King Charles III diagnosed with cancer, Buckingham Palace says

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

Maybe turn on the human being bit of your brain. The guy has cancer.

2y ago

King Charles III diagnosed with cancer, Buckingham Palace says

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

Imagine asking if it's good or bad news that an old man has cancer.

2y ago

UK state pension age will soon need to rise to 71, say experts

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

No, the NHS under the Tories received real terms budget increases every year but one (in the second year of the Coalition, when NHS spending rose by very slightly less than inflation).

The problem is that, with large sections of the general public living more and more unhealthy lives, the demands on the NHS have been growing even faster than the real-terms budget. Obesity is correlated with a range of serious health problems - diabetes, cardiovascular disease, various cancers - that devour NHS resources, so the real-terms NHS budget would need to grow at a much faster rate than inflation to cope with the continuing deterioration of public health.

Ultimately, this isn't a problem we should have been trying to spend our way out of anyway. The solution to an obesity epidemic shouldn't have been to try and load the consequences onto the NHS; it should have been to take strong preventative measures to head it off well before the point when a quarter of the adult population of England were technically obese (and as many again were overweight).

When Covid hit, we went into lockdown to avoid overwhelming the NHS - where was the obesity equivalent of the Covid lockdowns?

2y ago

UK state pension age will soon need to rise to 71, say experts

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

Yes, my point was that above-inflation budget increases (so real-terms budget increases) ought to have led to improving services, other things being equal. But other things aren't equal - partly because people are getting older, but also partly because people are living unhealthier lives.

So just to stand still, the NHS would have needed even larger above-inflation spending hikes than it got; or, heaven forbid, government policy would have had to start treating mass obesity as the public health emergency that it is, rather than fretting about the Tory press calling this a 'nanny state'...

2y ago

UK state pension age will soon need to rise to 71, say experts

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

This is a really big factor. The public discourse around the NHS would lead you to think that NHS spending had been squeezed over the last 14 years - but it hasn't. Cameron made a big political choice in 2010 that the NHS would be exempt from the budget cuts that affected the rest of the public sector; and the NHS budget has actually consistently grown faster than inflation under a decade and a half of Tory health secretaries.

So why does the NHS feel under so much more pressure today than under New Labour?

Broadly, two reasons. The first, outside the government's control, is that the population has aged since 2010, and old people are more likely to need GP appointments and hospital beds. And the second, at least somewhat more in the government's control, is that public health has continued its deteriorating trend of the last several decades - the share of people overweight or obese in particular, who also find themselves disproportionately taking up health services.

We can't do anything about people getting older but we can act on the public health problem. We should be treating combating obesity with the same urgency we treated Covid.

2y ago

About 200,000 people protest across Germany against far-right AfD party

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

It is really inspiring that so many Germans are coming out to make their voices heard like this. It's easy to tell a pollster you don't like Nazis; but coming out on the streets week-after-week in the middle of winter like they've been doing recently shows commitment.

2y ago

UK minister: Brexit checks ‘price you pay for being a sovereign state again’

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

And we'd like the refund, please.

2y ago

'We're the country of beef, but we can only afford chicken'

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

Argentina was once one of the richest countries in the world, richer than France or Germany.
And much of that wealth was built on exports of beef, especially to Britain. But that was well over 100 years ago.
Now, thanks to a profound economic crisis, it languishes in around 70th place, according to the latest figures from the World Bank.

It wasn't 'an' economic crisis that caused that change. It was a long-term political crisis. The fundamental cause of Argentina's economic decline was political misrule - the combination of decades of political instability, military juntas, protectionist trade policies and hyperinflationary monetary policies, all of which discouraged long-term investment and left Argentine businesses and industries inefficient and uncompetitive.

Argentina dropped out of the developed world because the Argentine political class chose to drop out of the developed world.

Argentina is what those Americans flirting with the idea of re-electing Trump should be thinking about. Right now, MAGA, protectionism and political chaos are a one-term aberration in American politics. If they bring him back, if they make Trump's form of politics a regularised part of the American political culture, Argentina is their future.

2y ago

Ken Clarke Warns Rwanda Bill Moves UK Towards An 'Elected Dictatorship'

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

He was the only candidate.

2y ago

Ken Clarke Warns Rwanda Bill Moves UK Towards An 'Elected Dictatorship'

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

300-odd (and odd) Tory MPs.

2y ago

Ukrainians who have moved to the UK have highlighted the lack of dentists as among the most astonishing aspects of British life

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

'We have experienced something truly horrific. The city centres have become wastelands. People go hungry and homeless. There's a basic lack of provision of essential services ... How do the British get by like this?'

2y ago

Secret EU plan ‘to sabotage Hungarian economy’ revealed as anger mounts at Orbán

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

No, they can do more. The nuclear option is to use Article 7 to suspend Hungary's voting rights at the European Council if they deem that Hungary is acting against the EU's values.

Stopping the flow of EU funds is part of the escalation route towards that but they won't do it unless they've exhausted other options - it's a tricky balancing act to cajole Orban into behaving like a European, and once they use Article 7 there will be no more escalation threats available.

2y ago

Help with a player that likes the idea of being a caster, but not the mechanics

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

Could they play a Hexblade warlock?

2y ago

Hungary far-right would lay claim to neighbouring region, if Ukraine loses war

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

It's not Orban's party but that doesn't excuse him. He's been in office for the last 14 years and deliberately cultivated a political climate of aggressive nationalist conservatism fuelled by propaganda about historical greatness and foreign betrayal. He's the one who has moved Hungary's Overton window so far to the far right that politicians such as these can get elected.

2y ago

Hundreds of thousands of EU citizens ‘wrongly fined for driving in London Ulez’

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theinspectorst @kbin.social 2y ago

I mean, it's worth being clear: these are EU citizens who did break the rules, in terms of not registering their (supposedly ULEZ-compliant) cars before driving into the ULEZ zone in London as they are required to. For UK-registered cars, TFL can determine ULEZ compliance directly from the domestic car registry database, which they can't for foreign cars.

The complaint against TFL is much narrower: the company they used to chase down these rule breakers then itself seems to have broken data protection rules, since ULEZ breaches are civil not criminal matters and so the relevant EU rules didn't allow for their information to be shared.

But at its core - if these people had just registered their cars as required before they drove into London, none of this would be an issue. It's not about UK authorities unfairly targeting EU citizens (not least as it's London we're talking about - Remainer central!)