Just a correction. That particular15% demand. Was ordered to come from administrative costs. Basically firing civil servents. Not cuts to services provided. Reeves is still trying to deny its austerity. By taking direct decisions on cuts to actual services provided to the public.

The gov is claiming employment os civil services expanded drematically since covid. No idea if that is true. But the desperate attempt from 2 govs in a row to redefine words like austerity dose not fill me with trust. I feel the urge to disinfect anything that comes out of their mouths atm.

for those who can afford it,

Yeah 2 issues with this.

Free school meals was not restarted as a fiscal support measure. It was designed to help ensure children get at least one healthy meal a day. Unfortunatly having an income in no way ensures parents know how to provide healthy nutrition. Infants being the age where healthy growth is most dependent on such things.

Second while above is true. It is also far from unheard of for young inexperienced parents to be above poverty income wise but suffer debt issues etc.

Old farts like me. Remember news of research from the 1950s to 80s, when all under 10yo children were given free meals at schools. Then this was cancelled in the 80s by thatcher. It was learned that the number of children not having a healthy meal in a day increased. This lead to nutrition issues and health issues in a sizable number of children treated by the NHS.

This is def good for the enviroment.

But I cant help but wonder how this os actually working money and KWH use vs generation wise.

IE hospitals and to a lesser extent schools are relativly high power users.

So is this using GBE to green hospitals schools etc. While reducing the gov cost of paying their power bills.

Good eco wise but not what GBE was sold to the electorate to achive.

Or will these sites generate enouth power over their own use to help green and reduce cost of residential consumer energy.

Both are positive moves. But interesting political dynamics.

LOL. AIs help will would be significant, but not adequate on its own. It’s just not at that level yet. I did this for Y2k in the financial industry and worked for the US medical industry in the early 2000s doing similar legacy migration.

The issue is distribution of solutions. The NHS has 50 years of random IT roll-outs, handling in very different ways with little unification. The system would need a huge change to unify the data formats and sharing policies. This on its own would take years to manage over such a large organisation that basically cant do the shut a system down and see what breaks diagnosis used by many to investigate old servers long since forgotten.

It’s doable. AI will help staff do it faster. But it will still miss a lot, and live testing is way more dangerous than would ever be expected.

The best approach in my opinion would not only be to re-write everything and roll out a whole new system within every NHS and linked system. With a collection of APIs allowing all the old data types and interfaces used to link to that system. Then spend a year or 3 running them in parallel with staff using the old system. Using AI and skilled developers to hunt for and fix areas where data fails to get added/updated to the system as expected. Then slowly start moving staff over to the new system.

But its also the most expensive option and does little to address the human problem in such situations. IE basically risking repeating the London ambulance service IT roll out like issues.

I suspect the real reason is that the NHS has a pretty shit record keeping system

Yep honestly in genral this is true.

But gender historically has not been a field expected to change. This is an easy fix when such medical information has no relevant on the use of the data. IE pretty much every other database used.

But when you make a change where historical data needs to be kept. The age and design of such systems makes the changes much more complex and expensive.

As a retired legacy systems software engineer. Where updating old database structures and all the systems related to them was my job for 20+ years.

This would involve hunting down old and badly documented systems all over the nation.

It is the need to address what would have been implemented as a fixed variable never expected to change. But also used to decide on many medical pathways. Even more so over the last 30 years as the medical industory has been correcting male dominated research bias on treatment pathways.

And having to find every instance connected to it and ensure it can handle something that is now a data type with a historical status.

Unfortunatly developers have historically implemented code with the expected prejudices society embodies. We were after all only human so did stupid human things with out knowing the potential harm.

That debt interest repayment. Fuuuuck.

The interest is less a issue then media indicates.

Its 8+ % of the total annual spending. And while you can’t judge nstional debt like family debt. The maths is far different.

Most families with a mortgage are paying a higher % on their income on interest to the mortgage, car loans and credit cards etc. And getting much less money in result.

When a government borrows the interest rate is fixed at the time of borrowing. And that rate promised for the lifetime of the bonds/loan. As such they are able to get much much lower rates then you or me.

The issue that is worring them no is any new loans are at our current credit rating. IE crap. And our growth rate is lower then the interest rate we would get. This means borrowing more money now is expensive. Whereas whe we borrowed our current debt it was cheap. Growth in gdp and lowering of the £ all make paying back loans(or bonds way cheaper then the value of the money when borrowed. This with the low interest. Means most of that payment is free when compared with the growth it purchased since ww2.

But we borrowed a lot during covid. And failed to use it to invest i our economy. (It went into billionaires savings atcway higher % then any past borrowing).

Inflation would actually help the gov borrow cheaper for future investment. But also likely lose them power as it screws over UK the poor and rich alike.

This has nothing to do with this topic. I don’t disagree with your points. But removing the benefits designed to allow disabled to actually function in anything close to an equal manner. It is in no way going to help your issue.

And refusing to cover rental housing costs for the poorest members of our population. Without hugely increasing homelessness and death. Will require a huge investment in social housing and time. Long before the nation is ready to stop covering that cost.

But I agree that sort of move is needed. But that would require an electorate and political party willing to support it.

the benefits system is riddled with fraudulent claims

If this was true. These actions in no way address such claims. They are purely about making it harder for genuine claims to actually pass the process, and paying less to those that remain. Absolutely nothing in this plan addresses false/fraudulent claims.

Also, while some fraudulent claims exist, riddled is totally false. The Tories have spent their whole time in office trying to prove your statement. Yet the cost of implementing their extra checks has been hugely more expensive than any claims cancelled.

You like much of the nation have fallen for the media and channel 4 propaganda.

Seventy percent of rejected claims are won on appeal

This actually underplays it.

35% of claims rejected by the internal appeal, Then start a court tribunal. Of those, the DWP overrides 25% before the case gets to court. So they already recognise they have no hope of winning 25% having rejected twice.

Of the remaining cases that then go, on to a tribunal hearing. The court decides with the claimant in 70% of cases.

The false rejection rate is way higher, the 70% it is insane.

But we will never know2 the number of false rejections that do not have the energy to face the stress of taking DWP to court. Especially as we have a history of this process taking years. The cases then being due for re-review soon after the court case is won. And often getting falsely rejected again. The last 14 years of media coverage of these cases seem like DWP is trying to bully qualified claimants out of the benefit.

Given, this is not an income based benefit. But one where the majority of claimants work. Designed to help cover the excess cost disabled people face just living, interacting with society and travelling to life events or work and back. Its goal is to make a minimal attempt to allow disabled to have anything close to an equal chance and role in society with able-bodied.

This is more than just a motivation within DWP to reject valid claims. It is abuse of a perceived invisible section of our society. And an attempt to scare/tire them out of gaining any equality.

The thing is they have to be found guilty for the UK to be breaking the law supplying arms to Israel.

An arrest warrant is not evidence of guilt just suspicion. And the UK gov seems determined to ignore it as long as they possible can.

International law is nothing more then a collection of treaties between national governments. And depends on those governments willingness to cooperate to actually have any real meaning.

The majority of people on PIP are already working.

It is not an income based benifit. Your income and assets make 0 difference to your claim.

Its whole purpose is to cover some of the extra costs disabled people have to pay to interact and be involved in society as a whole.

The getting people back into work is just an outright lie when it comes to PIP reductions. Its about removing the cost of making society accessible to disabled people.

IE their direct chance at any form of equality. And for many lower earning disabled. Their whole ability to get to work participate and keep their employment.

"The cost of 0 VAT on financial services is devastating. "

And only used by the wealthy.

Why should someone who needs an accountants time get it tax free. But needing a plumbers time dose not.

I wouldn’t even say that Lammy got rebuked. Just look at the language. They’re pretty much just saying “This is the FO’s/David Lammy’s view, we do not technically endorse it. Please speak to them.”

But when you add.

They added: “The government is not an international court, and, therefore, it is up to courts to make judgments.”

Id say that was very much the equivalent of. “Oi Lammy you are not in a position to make such statements as an official. Wind your neck in a bit.”

The foreign secretary later said he “could have been clearer” in the chamber, when asked in an interview with Bloomberg if he regretted making the statement.

Could even be interpreted as “neck retracted one click.”

In the context of the govts relationship with Israel I think this is actually good news.

When you consider the. “Israel’s actions in Gaza are at clear risk of breaching international humanitarian law”

Yeah, I’d agree they may at least be worrying a little about the need to re-evaluate the relationship, depending on Israels continuing actions.

Millions. But yeah agree entirly.